And Assessing Putin's Legacy
A young reformer? Russian Presidential heir apparent Dimitry Medvedev
Russia’s Last Hope
By Victor Erofeyev
The New York Times (republished from the International Herald Tribune)
February 29, 2008
If I recover from a bout of stomach illness by Sunday, I will cast my ballot in Russia’s presidential election. But there’s no need to rush to get well, because my vote will make no difference.
There was a day when it did seem that my vote mattered. In 1996, I found myself in Ireland on Election Day and made a huge effort to go to the embassy in Dublin and vote for Boris N. Yeltsin, because I feared that the Communists could return to power under his opponent, Gennadi A. Zyuganov, and I would again have serious problems. Mr. Zyuganov is running for president again this year, but I no longer fear him. He will lose.
This not only reassures me, but also leads me to think about how President Vladimir V. Putin, in his eight years in power, managed to destroy Communism. He finished it off so brutally that it’s silly to even think about the possibility of its return. Yet some people outside Russia believe that Mr. Putin did away with only the democrats, the liberal parties and the independent news media. No, he also threw out power-seeking oligarchs, who are very unpopular with the Russian people, and he rid the country of chaos and instability, which, he tells us, were rampant in the 1990s.
No matter how you look at it, President Putin also brought order to Chechnya: at least they’re no longer flying young Russian soldiers back in body bags every day. And if television is offering more humorous programs and songs from around the world instead of political discussions, people only welcome this. As for opposition parties, the real ones, they quarreled among themselves and became so indistinguishable in their radical demands that the people, with President Putin’s help, stopped taking note of them...
Click here to read the rest of the op-ed at the New York Times website. Click on the extended post to read comments in Newsweek International from several leading Russia experts about President Putin's legacy.
A rally by the controversial pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi (Ours)
Dr. Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and history at New York University:
In the West, we have a bad habit of trying to write Russians' history for them. The question we should ask is, "What is Putin's legacy as Russians see it?" Here's how I think their historians will write it.
Putin cannot possibly be evaluated apart from the first post-Soviet decade. For nearly three quarters of Russians, the 1990s meant the collapse of their state and standard of living. It was also seen as a loss of sovereignty at home and abroad. Russians believed that their country was semi-occupied by foreigners—from shock-therapy economists to human-rights advocates. They saw Yeltsin as a U.S. supplicant. Putin changed this. He ended Russia's collapse at home and re-asserted its independence abroad. That's how most Russians see it, and it's an entirely plausible and heartfelt evaluation of Putin's legacy.
But the West (and a few Russians) say the cost has been too high: a loss of democracy and good ties with the U.S. Yet there's an element of historical amnesia here. Democracy began under Gorbachev, not Yeltsin. And de-democratization began under Yeltsin, not Putin. Moreover, in the '90s, the destruction of the middle class by inflation and poverty made further democratization impossible. Today, with standards of living rising, a renewal of democracy is at least possible.
As for U.S-Russia relations, could Putin have made more moves like Gorbachev? Sure. But keep in mind, neither Clinton nor Bush made Reagan-like concessions. For example, Putin helped the U.S. with its first military campaign in Afghanistan, but all he got in return was an expansion of NATO and America's withdrawal from the ABM treaty.
Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Russia's UralSib Bank:
Vladimir Putin's legacy is only half-revealed. Putin spent the last eight years rebuilding the influence and control structures of the Kremlin. He extended that control to the commanding heights of the economy, creating national-champion companies controlled by the state.
As a result, three things happened. First, the country has got its self-respect back. Second, the economy has turned around: GDP has grown, wages have increased and poverty is down. Third, Russians have a sense of hope again, a restored sense of optimism about the future.
But the question now is whether Putin and Medvedev will be able to use that control to diversify the economy away from oil and gas dependency. In the past eight years, Russia's economy has fallen into the oil trap: the country became lazy on the back of oil revenues, putting off necessary reforms like modernizing the manufacturing sector, creating a pensions system, tackling corruption, improving legal protections and streamlining the bureaucracy.
That means the hard part is still to come. And the clock is ticking. The government has been relying on high oil prices to meet the rising expectations of its people, and we know that's a dangerous assumption. We need to see a much more active phase of economic reform and diversification over the next four or five years. Only then can we start talking about Putin's legacy.
Cliff Kupchan, a director at the Eurasia Group and former vice president of The Nixon Center:
Possibly the most important legacy of Putin's eight years is the restoration of respect for the office of the presidency in Russia and pride in the office among Russians. He did that partly through his image and partly, in my view, through sheer force of personality. I've spent, with a group of Kremlin-watchers, three meetings of three to five hours each with him, and he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. He goes for three to five hours with no advisers, no notes and no breaks. His iron will and Swiss-watch mind has allowed him to restore respect for the presidency, which is very important for governing any country. On the other hand, Putin did not promote the growth of political institutions, which is important to long-term stability. But in a nutshell, Russia in 1998 was flat on its back; in 2008 Russia is just flat back.
For more comments from Russia watchers, click here to read the rest of the article.
