The public discourse has seriously deteriorated, while a parallel, unofficial but in its own way efficient pseudo government has been formed. Decision-making processes have been almost entirely monopolized by people who have never been legitimately granted this authority, and the state’s powerful administrative resources are mired in corruption and solely devoted to personal gain: systematized authority has been replaced with subjective improvisation.
The results of the latest political season in Russia are sad to say the least. The country has stalled or even moved backward in its struggle to become a proper modern state with a competitive economy. The authorities are mimicking active reforms in a variety of spheres, which only increases the sense that the government is improvising, and public debate has deteriorated into a guessing game as to which of the tandem will run for president. The public is discussing neither the reasons why the current state model is so ineffective, which is obvious even to the president and the prime minister, nor the details of the policy that the next president must follow in order to turn the situation around. According to Levada Center polls, the number of respondents who have faith in Medvedev's policy fell to 33%, while the numbers of those who trust Putin stood at 41%, down from last year’s 48% - 50%, with 52% of those surveyed entirely unsatisfied with government. Considering the lack of any alternative, those are extremely poor results; especially since the number of Russians who think their country is not heading in the right direction exceeds the number of those who believe it is on the right development path.
The main result of the outgoing political season is the creation of a super-corrupt system of pseudo state capitalism that is basically engineered to ensure personal gain for high-ranking officials and their friends. This system is controlled by secretive and highly influential clans, without the consent of which no important economic or political decision in the country can be made or implemented. Administrative, financial and legislative powers as well as the major legal mechanisms are all concentrated deep within those clans, allowing them to adjust the whole system to their requirements as they go. It is where the major staffing decisions are made, and it all seems reminiscent of the 1990s: when laws were constantly bent to particular individuals’ specific requirements and circumstances.
The public discourse has seriously deteriorated, while a parallel, unofficial but in its own way efficient pseudo government has been formed. Decision-making processes have been almost entirely monopolized by people who have never been legitimately granted this authority, and the state’s powerful administrative resources are mired in corruption and solely devoted to personal gain: systematized authority has been replaced with subjective improvisation. As a result, officials openly lobby for private projects, which in many cases fundamentally contradict the national interest, while clans are brazenly dividing up the country between themselves.
Raiding is also making a comeback on a massive scale, although unlike the 1990s it is government officials who now play the leading role, intentionally discrediting private companies in order to force the owners into selling their businesses at "discounted" rates to the officials’ friends. There are also individuals in power who charge entrepreneurs for "fixing" the problems that they, the officials, created in the first place. Putin's approach to deciding on the main candidate for the 2012 presidential election ("sit down and talk it over") has become a "one-size-fits-all" method for this kind of clan raid. The owners are invited to "sit down and talk it over" or their venture will get taken over the hard way. In today’s Russia the difference between the real value of a business and its price after one of these conversations in many cases is the source of high-ranking officials’ wealth. The country is left almost without a single venture capable of defending itself against the greed of those officials and their friends. As the national economy degrades, the principles of the free market and fair competition are eroded: this economy is beyond modernization.
Russian corruption is slowly eating away at global financial structures as well. Recently, Russian officials have started to involve the employees of foreign financial organizations in their schemes to influence not only the capitalization of certain Russian companies, but also the conditions on which they enter the global market. This puts Russia at risk of more international scandals that would, in scale, even surpass the scandals of the 1990s which left Russia an outcast from the global financial world for a long time. Foreign investment into the country shouldn't spark any hopes either – the scale is miniscule for an economy this size, and the main states that invest in Russia are Cyprus, the Netherlands and Luxembourg: the most popular jurisdictions among Russian entrepreneurs. This investment can not rightly be considered foreign and this money is in no way related to modern technologies. But most importantly – a significant part of this investment will be taken out of the country again by Russian officials, and their friends from international financial organizations, sequestered away, unrecorded, in private accounts.
This degradation of the government and economy is followed by the degradation of the population and the transformation of its priorities. A forecast recently published by the American Census Bureau predicts Russia will suffer a 21% population decrease (down to 109 million) by the middle of the century, forcing it to move to the 17th place in the world while maintaining its shamefully low life expectancy. According to the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 22% of Russians want to emigrate, while among the youth this is close to 40%. It is predicted that, in 50 years' time, as much as 30% of the country's population will consist of immigrants from neighboring countries who would consider themselves merely temporary residents and who send more than 2% of Russia’s GDP back to their home states already.
Today Russia’s tandem comprises a weak state and powerful corrupt clans. Organized crime and the audacity of the oligarchs of the 1990s have been replaced by organized gangs of government officials and their oligarch "lieutenants" who have seized control over the state. Even the president has no choice but to admit that the system has become incredibly ineffective, hence his decision to call for drastic reforms right before the elections, a move that is quite rare in modern politics. Unfortunately these reforms are impossible due to the absence of any ideology or concept of the state, around which the renewed, decentralized government should be built. What the country needs today is essentially a new state, transparent, dedicated to developing national business, which its own people and the international community find appealing, free of clans and their influence, with systems of checks and balances in place and governed by the rule of law. Ultimately – the creation of such a state should be the main goal of all those who desire to become real national leaders able to prove their worth through tangible actions, not mere words.
This article was originally published in Russian in the
Vedomosti
newspaper.
