Kremlin Winter by Robert Service

Author:Robert Service
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

18. PUBLIC OPINION: THE POTENTIAL FOR UNREST

Kremlin leaders have trampled the rule of law in Russia, protecting their dominance with a regime of fear. But they are not the sole culprits. Lower down the ladder of power stand elected officials and businessmen who have fought to ensure the retention of ill-gotten gains. It was a state of affairs predating Putin’s first presidential term, but by introducing greater order to the national patchwork of malpractice he has made a bad situation worse.

The national and regional rulers would not so easily have imposed their kleptocracy had popular attitudes offered a stronger defence. For centuries there was widespread distrust of those in authority among Russian people: from tsarism through to the communist period it was the norm for families to assume that the government in the capital was a parasite on society, and that the courts were skewed in favour of the powerful and well-off. The response was for Russians to put their confidence mainly in relatives and proven friends. When officials of the tsars came looking for taxes and conscripts, it was understandable for peasants to conceal everything they could – and when the landed gentry demanded excessive payment from their peasantry, misrepresentation of the size of the harvest was widespread. Such evasion and downright illegality were only reinforced during the communist dictatorship. When communism collapsed and a wild capitalist economy was introduced to Russia in the 1990s, the natural reaction was for citizens to concentrate trust once more in families and friends rather than a government that had spawned the growth of the so-called oligarchs. Discontent and despair grew as people struggled to cope with the financial depression that subsequently afflicted the economy.1

Little about all this was inevitable and less still intentional. Rulers in the last decade of the twentieth century were plotting a route out of darkness and carrying few reliable searchlights. But they quickly took advantage of a situation that enabled them to pursue policies in their own self-interest, which surprised only those who had overestimated the chances of installing a healthy democracy and the rule of law. Russia in the last decade of the twentieth century had been a society fed up with political rhetoric, distrustful of politicians and sunk in the tasks of putting food on the table and staying employed. Demonstrations grew fewer. Riots were a rarity.

The rulers knew how important it was to monitor both the public mood and developments in high political and business circles. They understood what could happen when public opinion turned sour. Through the late 1980s Gorbachëv was without rival, but in 1990 pollsters reported a sudden dip in his popularity: it turned out to be irreversible. Yeltsin crested a wave of admiration in 1990–91, only to experience a deepening loss of esteem throughout the rest of the decade. Gorbachëv and Yeltsin had drunk from the chalice of acclaim, and choked on its unpalatable dregs. Both oversaw a crisis that unexpectedly became insurmountable, and both had to step down from power.

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