How Do You Slay A Dragon

Under the new regime, all of the property currently held by this criminal gang that calls itself “the authorities” in Russia must be expropriated. I can see no alternative to this tough decision. The basis of this expropriation and its boundaries will have to be carefully worked out in the future, but they will be extensive. All of this property should be placed temporarily in a fund under social control.

All “escheated” property must also be placed there – enterprises that are controlled by clans dependent on the state that in reality have been bankrupt for a long time, but have been kept afloat only by direct and indirect grants from the state budget. By my reckoning, today both categories together account for up to half of the total national wealth; a significant sum.

The most difficult task, though, is not the seizure of these assets, but how to deal with them efficiently. I suggest that all of this confiscated property should not be handed directly to the state, where it will be managed by officials, but put into independent mutual funds under the direct control of society. We don’t need many of these funds, around ten or so. Some of them could be organised on the basis of certain industries. The principal criterion should be economic expediency. Every citizen of the country who reaches adulthood would become a shareholder in these funds.

Creating nationwide mutual funds from these confiscated assets is an emergency and temporary measure. It’s a one-off action to re-establish economic justice. Therefore, it’s the current population who should benefit most from this. Every citizen should receive their share of these funds, along the lines of the voucher system. But they won’t be allowed to cash in their share immediately. A moratorium will have to be enforced to prevent expropriation and to stabilise both the situation and, consequently, the value of the shares. It is vital not to allow a repeat of what happened 30 years ago.

After a certain period of time the moratorium will be lifted and people will have the opportunity to sell off their shares, receiving equal and fair compensation. Those who don’t live long enough to see this day should have the right to pass on their shares as inheritance. This will maintain for them, too, the principle of justice. Selling shares during the moratorium period could be allowed in exceptional circumstances and under conditions provided for by a special law (for example, were there to be a force majeure).

Before the moratorium is lifted, these funds should work as normal commercial enterprises, the aim of which is to make a profit. Profits received should be reinvested in the fund. But part of it may be used as extra social insurance for the shareholders. Which events would be covered by insurance and the amount that should be paid if they occurred would be decided by law each year, depending also on the financial condition of the fund. Most likely this would cover expenses such as expensive medical treatment, for which today the state and society collect money according to the principle of “every little helps”; although somehow funds are always found for palaces and missiles.

The management structure of the funds should be on two levels. Each fund should have a supervisory board, whose members would be appointed directly by parliament. The responsibilities of the supervisory board would be limited. They would appoint a management company and take decisions on the acquisition or disposal of fixed assets. At some stage the sale of assets would become a valuable source of income for the fund, but this could happen only once normal economic conditions are in place.

All of the day-to-day management of the fund would be concentrated in the hands of the management company, which would have been selected following a tender, carried out in line with a special law. The management company would have just one goal: the efficient management of the company and the maximisation of profits, from where the shareholders would be paid dividends. When necessary, they should also prepare the fund’s property for a future privatisation – a normal, economically-based, transparent privatisation, approved by society.

It would be unwise and inadvisable for the funds swiftly to sell off the expropriated assets, since the sale of property during the crisis conditions of the transition period would inevitably happen only at inadequately low prices. We all witnessed this in the 1990s. Therefore, the property of the share funds should be frozen, and leaving them with compensation would be allowed only in exceptional cases and in extreme circumstances. In the future, and not before five or ten years, a new, honest, privatisation of these assets could take place, one that could be acknowledged as rational. This should finally bring an end to the long-drawn-out argument about the fate of the privatisation of the ‘nineties.

The task of the temporary government would be to give back to society direct control over national wealth, and destroy the parasitical property of the criminal gangs. If it’s unable to cope with this task, then it’s unlikely to win the trust of society for everything else.

PART II: HOW DO WE AVOID CREATING A NEW DRAGON?

The dragon isn’t actually a malicious person but a symbol for the state. It’s the type of state where its three heads – the legislative, the executive and the judicial – are firmly attached to the one fat, corrupt body of the mighty bureaucratic machine. And thanks to the unity of its heads, it can walk all over a fragmented society. In order to establish society’s control over the state, it’s essential, on the one hand, to unite society around the idea of citizenship (in other words, create civil society); and on the other hand, to tear all three of these powerful heads from the bureaucratic body and force them to live separately. This is no easy task. Because over the many centuries of Russian autocracy, these three heads have become such a part of this absolutist body that neither they themselves nor anyone around them can imagine how they can be made independent of each other. One reason why there’s a transitional period, therefore, is to learn how to do this. And if we don’t do this, then it won’t be a transitional period, but simply an operation to transplant the dragon’s heads. The dragon will survive, and after a short period of rehabilitation will once again return to its former ways. In order to prevent this from happening, society must take upon itself the responsibility for solving the most difficult problems that Russian history has set it.

Chapter 12. The Choice of Civilisation:

An Empire or a Nation State?

For the past 500 years, from the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Russia has been an empire; that is, a country that’s made up of various parts that differ from each other in culture and in their socio-political make-up, and are brought together not so much by a desire to live together but simply by armed force.

All the generations that are alive today and dozens of generations who came before them have known nothing but empire, and couldn’t even imagine any other type of political system. And when the empire was weak, it usually led to turmoil, destruction and civil war, which all brought greater troubles than all the problems of the empire taken together.

Each time, the turmoil ended with the creation of new, more ambitious and more aggressive empires. The Romanov Empire took the place of Rurik’s Tsardom of Muscovy; and the Romanovs, in their turn, were replaced by the Bolsheviks. Between each of these periods there was a terrifying civil war. People in Russia have grown used to living in an empire. They trust it, and they see it as saving society from destruction and disorder.

What’s more, they don’t believe in themselves. They don’t believe that they can live without “a tsar” (it doesn’t matter whether he’s called the Emperor, the General Secretary, or the President) with his iron fist, with his police, his army and his officials. They don’t believe the promises of those who call for freedom and democracy, because on a genetic level they remember that the alternative to empire is turmoil, destruction and chaos.

But while Russia was building and destroying empires, building even more powerful empires and destroying them again, the world around it was radically changing. As a way of governing people, empires were disappearing. In their place came the concept of the nation state: that is, countries where a single culture dominates (the language, the literature, and daily customs), and people wish to live according to one set of laws and on one territory (I’ll say more later about the ideas of multi-culturalism that have arisen – not entirely successfully – in recent years).

Suddenly Russia was left as the only empire on the planet; a kind of Middle Ages “Last of the Mohicans”.

Today, Russia is surrounded by peoples whose lives are arranged according to completely different principles than empire; and not only do they not perish, they flourish. Although these nation states have plenty of their own problems, the gap between them and “the last empire” is growing apace, in terms of economic and technological progress, in their levels of education and healthcare, and simply in their peoples’ longevity and quality of life. With each day that passes the chasm grows wider, and the day’s not far off when the gap will become disastrous, unbridgeable for one or even two generations.

In the near future, those who have been born and live on what has become “the edge of Russian civilisation”, and who are responsible for the country’s future, are facing an epoch-changing choice between living in an empire or in a nation state. They will have to answer the following question: do they wish to maintain traditions, and therefore try at any cost to re-build their crumbling empire; or are they prepared to ditch their traditions, kick the empire onto the rubbish heap of history, and attempt to build their own nation state in its place?

This truly is Hamlet’s question. The choice is between the old world, that may be imperfect and sentenced to death, but one where they’re familiar with every last detail; and a seductive, unknown world, that promises much – yet at the same time is frightening. The problem for the current generations in Russia is not that they don’t like the actual choice (which is only natural; no one likes having to choose between death or change), but that they don’t have the opportunity to put it off and pass the responsibility for the fate of our Russian civilisation onto the shoulders of their children and grandchildren.

Russia is at the crossroads of civilisation. The choice between an empire and a nation state is a fundamental choice of civilisation. It opens the way for answers to dozens of other questions. These may be less global in scope, but they’re also complicated issues that are facing Russian society in the early years of the twenty-first century. If this choice is not made now – or if the wrong choice is made – then there will be no choice for their children and grandchildren to make.

My choice for Russia is that of the nation state; a choice for the future, not the past.

The Russia of my dreams is an association of people of different ethnic backgrounds who are brought together by an internal civilizational unity, for whom what they have in common is more important than their differences; and not an empire, kept together by a steel ring of militarised bureaucracy, like an old cracked barrel. I don’t deny that the Russia of our children could still exist in the creaking shell of an empire. But if we want our grandchildren to see Russia, then we need to create something else: a state based on a genuine (and not an imaginary) desire for people to live together inside a space where there are shared values of language, culture, law and politics.

I reject nostalgia for the empire, be it open or dressed up in a pseudo-democratic and pseudo-liberal way. The creation of a Russian nation state is the greatest historical task that Russians and the other peoples who live in the country have been insistently but inconsistently debating for centuries, and one that has to be solved once and for all by the generations that are alive today. We are now in such an historical framework that this decision can no longer be put off: it’s now or never. Either we do it, or no one will.

Russia needs something more than an empire, where the people are kept down by forces that are outside the needs of society – the army, the police and the bureaucracy, that help to give the appearance of order on its territory.

The stronger an empire is, the more all-encompassing it is, and the more uniform its political space. But the weaker it is, the more exceptions there are to the overall rules: so there’s one rule for Moscow, something else for Chechnya, a third for Crimea, and so forth. The unity of the empire is an illusion, and it’s only symbolically embodied in the figure of its leading figure, inevitably producing the impression of being someone sacred: “there is Putin, therefore there is Russia”, and so on.

In place of the symbolic unity of the “political nationhood”, represented by proxy by the irremovable “national leader”, the nation should be genuinely united, not needing a “senior policeman-tsar” for indivisible control over his “subjects”. The unity of a political (civil) nation doesn’t come from outside but from within, and not with the help of an army of officials, police and soldiers, but through direct political links that arise in a society that’s free of dictatorship.

The unity of a political nation, as opposed to the unity of “political nationhood” is elementary: it is not created by the state – the nation creates the state. That is why a state created by the nation, as opposed to a state that controls the nation, becomes a genuine constitutional entity. For such a state to emerge, you need a consensus – the agreement of the majority on the fundamental values and principles of the social structure. The person who agrees to accept the basic principles of the constitution as their own, and who’s prepared to defend them if necessary even by taking up arms, becomes a citizen; and a people that is made up of such citizens becomes a nation.

The peoples of Russia are creating a Russian nation – but they haven’t got there yet. The USSR endeavoured to create something new in history: the Soviet people. However, since this project was a part of the totalitarian Communist project that rejected the fundamental constitutional norms necessary for creating a nation, it failed. People simply refused to consider the principles of Communist totalitarianism as their own.

Today, we have to solve this issue again, but within the framework of the constitution, and not through terror.

A nation state can emerge only as a result of the free self-determination of the peoples of Russia. People must be given a genuine possibility to make a conscious decision, based on all the information available, and not false information, as happened in 1993, nor the insulting views put forward later. They have to decide whether they are ready to live in a united state according to the principles laid down by the general constitution, or whether they want to continue to make their own history, with all of the benefits and hardships this brings. This is a serious test and brings great political stress, but there’s no way round it. You can’t build castles on sand.

So in order to create a nation state in Russia, three historically important steps must be made:

A clear rejection of the concept of empire and the creation of conditions for a free choice for the peoples of Russia;

The passing of a genuine act for the establishment of the new Russia. This was what the Constituent Assembly was prevented from doing a hundred years ago, because it was dissolved by the Bolsheviks. Perhaps a new Constituent Assembly will have to be created for this, that can use the current Constitution, parts of which have been suppressed;

Carrying out radical constitutional and legal reforms, so as to create the political and legal infrastructure of the Russian nation state.

The nation state is the state of all the peoples of Russia who declare that it is their desire and their will to become its co-founders. It will have nothing in common with a state that is based on privilege given by blood or belief. However, it cannot ignore the simple fact that the political space out of which it has grown was formed by the active participation of the Russian people and is based on their culture.

Being too embarrassed to acknowledge this historical fact is as mistaken and unacceptable as would be trying to drag some kind of political advantage out of it, and create privileges for the “titular nation” that wouldn’t be legal.

For almost half a century Europe has tried to solve this question under the banner of “multiculturalism”. This played an important role in the struggle against xenophobia and the general relaxation of morals. But as events have shown in recent years, notably the crisis over immigration, multiculturalism isn’t a panacea. Because too frequently it ignores the objective situation that modern societies don’t develop in a cultural vacuum, but within certain cultural traditions that have developed through history. These traditions, that are the basis for all the other elements of culture, deserve to be treated with respect. Therefore, it’s important for Russia to include in the philosophy of multiculturalism the principle of cultural integration, to provide for harmonious relations between different ethnic groups and beliefs, on the basis of their being flexibly included into the general space of Russian culture.

The ability to speak the Russian language freely and a knowledge of the basic facts of Russian history and culture should be compulsory in order to receive Russian citizenship. Also, there has to be an awareness of basic economic, political and legal knowledge, as well as a readiness to accept the fundamental legal norms and traditions of Russian society.

These demands in no way infringe upon the dignity and interests of the other peoples of Russia, each of whom will be granted guarantees and conditions for the unhindered development of the language and ethnic culture of their forefathers, as well as their own self-government at the local level.

One of the most important functions of school – and, indeed, the whole system of education – is to teach people how to be citizens. And I mean “citizens”, not simply the obedient subjects of yet another autocrat. The nation state is as far away from the empire with its devotion to a superior ruler who secures his place by stick and carrot, as it is from the Cossack communities of freemen, the so-called “failed state”, where everyone set their own rules. The first task of the nation state is to guarantee order and the safety of the individual at a higher level than is the case in the empire, where behind the façade of legality lies despotism, often motivated by corruption.

In a genuine nation state, the citizen is proud to identify themselves first and foremost with their country, and only after that with their ethnicity, place of birth, home territory and their work.

I spent a month in a prison cell with Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, a military intelligence officer and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who became known throughout the country after being accused of the attempted assassination of Anatoly Chubais and even of organising a military coup.

We’re people from different worlds and with different opinions; we are, let’s say, fierce opponents (to put it mildly). But when we discussed the question as to why our authorities and our society are afraid of our own special forces – spetsnaz – while the Americans aren’t afraid of theirs, he summed it up in a way that I still remember 15 years later:

“The American special forces’ soldier sees himself first and foremost as a citizen of the USA, and only then as being in the special forces. This is natural. If something happens to him, then he’ll be protected as an American citizen. The Russian, though, is convinced that the opposite will happen. If something happens to you, don’t expect any help from the state. The best you can hope for is that your friends and fellow soldiers will come to your aid. So our officers are special forces’ soldiers first, and citizens only after that, while for the Americans it’s the other way round.”

The Russia of my dreams will be re-established by citizens who want to organise their lives together. People for whom the national interest is more important than that of their estate, their corporation or their tribe. People who understand that it’s better to be together than being apart.

Chapter 13. The Geopolitical Choice:

To Be a Superpower or To Consider the National Interests?

If you travel beyond the Moscow Ring Road, you quickly find yourself in a different country. If Moscow can rival any modern European capital in terms of its public services, then outside it there lies a different Russia; a Russia where 120 million people live, that looks like a picture from a post-war film about Europe – poverty-stricken and destroyed. It’s difficult to believe that you’re looking at a country that was the victor in the most terrifying and bloody war in the history of mankind.

How did we arrive at this? Why, 30 years after our “victory” over Communism; after 20 years of an unchanged new “elite” running the country, who have “cool heads and clean hands”; after years of an unbroken and completely unimaginable glut of oil, the price of which was three times higher than the average Soviet and early Russian price: why does this country lie in ruins? After all, Germany was defeated in the War, yet despite being occupied by the “frightening” Americans, by 1965 West Germany had a higher standard of living than most of Europe, and its industry had pretty well returned to the position it had had previously. Why did the Russian provinces, that hadn’t been occupied by anyone, not begin to live better?

There are many reasons for this. There’s the inability to manage; theft is everywhere; the ubiquitous monopoly; and as well as all that, there’s been a serious mistake in the choice of political priorities, making the most important of them the messianic plan to re-establish Russia as “a superpower”.

This new striving for superpower status didn’t appear out of nowhere. Determined to use any means possible to prevent the geopolitical transition of Ukraine, Russia’s ruling clan opened up new “mineral deposits”, ones that were much more profitable than oil or gas, under the title of “Russia’s greatness”. Since then, it seems that the authorities have been mining this inexhaustible “fuel” in Russia in industrial amounts. It’s proved to be the ideal ingredient for the engine of Russia’s authoritarian power.

In 2014 Russia swapped one social agreement for another. To the old agreement of “stability in place of freedom”, that had been the case in Russia since 2003, the Kremlin made a significant addition: “greatness in place of justice and prosperity”. So the new social agreement runs as follows: “greatness and stability in place of freedom, justice and prosperity”. Russia’s greatness now justifies all of the regime’s villainy: despotism, corruption, cultural degradation and backwardness. All of this has to be tolerated in exchange for the possibility to attack Ukraine with impunity; to shit on “the American bastards” in Syria and Libya; and to place “our” private armies all over Africa and even, it’s rumoured, in Venezuela.

Why did Russian society agree to this deal so easily? It seems that people were ready for such a turn of events, and were even impatiently waiting for it. It’s indicative that after Crimea was “returned” the majority of those living in Russia experienced genuine euphoria. This joy was genuine, not just imaginary. But it happened not only because people considered that the taking back of Crimea restored historical justice, but also because people had grown tired of defeats, and longed for “victories”. It seemed to them not that Crimea had been returned, but that Russia had been; the Russia that they’d known before. This sense that strength had been restored was more important for many than the seizure of Crimea, something which up until that point hardly anyone had thought about. If they had, it was simply as a place to go for their holidays, although in any case if they had the opportunity many now preferred to go to Egypt or Turkey.

There’s nothing surprising in this reaction. For centuries Russia had been an empire, and its subjects were brought up in the tradition of empire. To this day, the majority of people find it hard to imagine that there could be any alternative to the imperial way of thinking. This is not only a Russian problem. Other former empires have encountered similar challenges, and continue to do so. (A clear illustration of this are the events in Britain in recent years around Brexit.) But in today’s Russia, which had not long before experienced the collapse of the USSR, these processes proved even more destructive than anywhere else.

The birth of the new post-Soviet world occurred painfully, and was accompanied by great difficulties, both for society and for the state itself. The inevitable challenges that a transition period brings were compounded by the negative influence of the huge number of strategic and tactical errors made by the leaders of the new Russia. As a result, the economy drastically collapsed and the institutions of state failed, which in turn led to all aspects of life – society’s and the state’s – falling into criminal hands. At that time, the country not only lost a sizeable part of its territory, but also stopped playing any significant role in world affairs. It was as if it went from being centre stage to sitting in the stalls.

The central government’s defeat in the military campaign in Chechnya and the fiasco of Russia’s foreign policy in the Balkans turned into two very powerful stimuli evoking imperial nostalgia. Society regarded each of these events as a national humiliation. This led to the emergence of a “Versailles syndrome” in society – the sense that was felt in Germany after the defeat in the First World War. Instead of seeing itself as a country that could be justifiably proud of achieving a major revolution that had overthrown Communism throughout Europe, Russia mistakenly saw itself as the country that had lost the Cold War.

There were two possible ways to emerge from this post-imperial crisis, that in itself wasn’t unique. It could either spend all its resources on a parody, creating the illusion of strength and an apparent re-birth, whilst simply pushing into the background the ruins of the old society; or it could go through a deep spiritual, socio-economic and political transformation and once again become strong.

The Germans tried both paths. They went down the first one after the First World War, and it led to a national disaster. They tried the other one after the Second World War, and it led to the re-birth of the nation. The first path was directly linked to the past. It was the path of revanchism and militarism, the violent reawakening of worn-out historical processes. The second was linked to the future. It was a way of re-assessing matters and searching for new solutions.

Unfortunately, in Russia it was not the constructive, but the re-constructive scenario that was played out. At the start of the twenty-first century the ruling clan tied society to the first path, the revanchist one, and started to push “the elixir of greatness”. The superpower drug worked. For some years society wandered round in a state of endless psychosis, revelling in their imaginary superiority over other peoples and a sense of might that didn’t actually exist (especially after seeing Putin’s famous cartoons about the power of Russian weapons). However, tiredness has already sunk in, along with an awareness that Russia has begun to pay for it, and in the future will be paying an exorbitant price.

The Kremlin doesn’t want to achieve Russia’s greatness by developing its manufacturing potential, or by the glory of its education and science, or by revitalising its culture. All it wants to do to make Russia great again is to employ brutal military might and nuclear blackmail. It shows its level of sophistication and inventiveness by waging a “Scythian war” without rules, what’s become known as “hybrid war”. To do this, it mercilessly uses the military-technical potential that it inherited from the USSR, that might last another 20 or 30 years; in other words, to the end of the lives of today’s Russian rulers. They couldn’t care less about what comes after them. But this should be of concern to society and that part of the elite who are capable of looking over the horizon of their own greed and vanity.

Criticism of this newly announced, post-Soviet militarism comes either from a generally humanistic position – pacifism – or from the point of view that these Kremlin ambitions are impractical – utopian – and that Russia can’t wage war on the whole of humanity and will simply end up killing itself, as the USSR did.

This is both true (in the long-term view) and untrue (in the short- to mid-term view). Generally, Russia’s military adventures are not costing it a great deal. I can show with figures that for now these military provocations (with the exception of Ukraine) were not particularly burdensome for Russia. For example, its “investment” in Syria has been fairly modest by Russian standards. The sums put into Venezuela are manageable. And the African “experiments” are low-budget outlays. The attack on Ukraine, of course, was not merely a crime, but also a massive mistake.

Russia can just about allow itself these costs without destroying the foundations of its economy, especially all the while oil revenues are growing. It’s another matter, though, that this third world war game that the ruling clan is trying to involve Russia in is dangerous not from the point of view of running costs, but because it excludes Russia from the ability to take its place in the twenty-first century economy, and dooms it to a slow, civilised death in an historic technological and social dead-end.

Western countries have excluded us from the global division of labour because we’re not regarded as an equal ally or a safe partner. In the technology market, China, which is steaming ahead, doesn’t need us as a competitor. On our own, of course, we can’t put out even the bare minimum of the technology we need. There are simply too few of us!

In this sense, superpower status is a dangerous myth, and trying to pursue it contradicts the genuine interests of the nation that’s trying to come together. But, I repeat, in the near future these problems won’t threaten the stability of the regime.

The principal question is not one of cost, but of sense. There was an old Soviet joke: “Someone asked Armenian Radio: ‘Could they build socialism in America?’ Armenian Radio replied: ‘Well, they could, but why would they?’” It’s the same with the Kremlin’s war. Could Russia tactically overcome the West, make itself totally isolated from external influences through autarky (like North Korea) and still extend its control over its neighbouring territories? Well, let’s say it could; but why would it? We should look not at what would happen if the Kremlin’s scheming fails, but what would happen should it succeed. That’s where the real disaster would be, because in this logic the Kremlin’s victory would mean the defeat of Russia, and vice versa.

So the Kremlin’s aim is to demarcate zones of influence with the West (and then with China) so that it can spread its political and military control over certain territories, having put up a new iron curtain. But here’s a question: why does a country that has the largest territory in the world (most of it uninhabited) and that’s facing a demographic crisis, need new land under its control? After all, controlling a place means that you have to take responsibility for it and spend resources on it, both material and human. Maybe Russia needs more useful mineral resources? But Russia can hardly cope with what it has already. Maybe Russia needs markets for its production of high-tech equipment? But Russia cannot make such equipment (even military equipment) without the cooperation of the same Western world that it wants to shut itself off from with a new iron curtain. And using military means to bring about such isolation excludes any such cooperation, anyway. So why is it doing this? What’s the secret?

At first glance, the answer is as follows: Russia is ruled by people with an archaic mentality, people who are mentally stuck not just in the last century but the one before that. They have a primitive, peasant-like understanding of the purpose of politics, that rests, like the Russian peasant’s view of the world, on the back of “three whales”.

Firstly, there’s the view that any relations with the outside world represents a zero-sum game: there’s always “us” and “them”, and if “they” win something then “we” must have lost by the same amount, and vice-versa. There are no shades of colour in this game, there’s only black and white. A compromise is just a tactical trap. Alliances just mean military cunning. And in general Russia has just two allies: its army and its navy.

Secondly, there’s the view that holding territory is what’s most important of all. That this represents the basis of strength, wealth and influence. The bigger the territory held, the better. The aim of any politician must be to expand their territory. In the confines of this political philosophy, losing any territory is a tragedy, whilst gaining it is an undoubted positive step. As in the past, they judge the historical significance of any ruler by the amount of territory they’ve gained or lost.

Thirdly, in the view of the Kremlin strategists the whole world is divided up into distinct spheres of influence. A sphere of influence is rather like an extension of your territory. It’s a space where, even in a limited way, your sovereignty can be extended. It’s essential that your foreign and domestic policy is aimed at extending your sphere of influence. All of the functions of the state should be geared towards achieving this.

In the post-modern world, such traditional views have undergone a significant re-think. But this news has not yet reached the Kremlin.

All of the main players in modern politics and business are already operating according to different rules. At the basis of the new rules is not the theory of the zero-sum game, but the “win-win” strategy, the so-called “Nash equilibrium”. This is the theory that in complicated systems no one side in the relationship can work out a successful strategy if the other sides don’t agree to change their strategies. In other words, in the modern world no one can achieve overall success on their own when playing against others. On the contrary, it’s only when you’ve learnt to cooperate, agreed the rules with everyone else, and you’ve consented to fulfil them yourself, that you can improve your position. The modern world represents competition within previously agreed borders that are in the interests of all the players. Anyone who wants to play without these rules is thrown out of the game.

Furthermore, in the twenty-first century, with modern digital technology, the seizure of territory is certainly not guaranteed to be an advantage. This extra territory could turn out to be a definite disadvantage, and become a burden. The expense of maintaining order in an occupied territory, as well as keeping daily life going, and paying for social and other infrastructure could well outweigh any benefit gained.

For some time technologies have been available that allow “an economic harvest” to be gathered from “foreign fields” without needing to use military force to seize them. The size, number and high level of education of the population has become a much more important indicator of economic and political strength, and bears witness to a country’s great potential. But Russia’s strategists have a real problem with this. Russia is not simply losing numbers of people, but it’s suffering an intellectual decline as the best brains in the country are being forced out. And the more war games the country plays, the more intensive this process will become.

In the post-modern world there are no longer clearly defined dividing lines, and, consequently, no straightforward spheres of influence. One and the same territory can fall within the sphere of influence of a number of different countries, at the same time having an influence on each of them. Everything is relative; and everything’s fluid. There’s a constant battle and constant competition going on in these grey areas. What tends to happen is that if someone tries to establish their single control over such an area they end up losing all influence over it.

The clearest example of such a losing strategy is Russia’s policy towards Ukraine since 2014. Despite having a huge historical advantage, Russia refused to compete with the West for influence over Ukraine and, by its actions, has turned it into a hostile state for decades to come, if not forever. Ukraine is now a zone of alienation between Russia and Europe.

Does this all mean that the principal driving factor of the Kremlin’s policy is stupidity? Only partly. Greed plays an even bigger role. In reality, the ruling class in Russia doesn’t want to fight. Over the 20 years they’ve been in power their representatives have integrated themselves into European life in a way that’s never been done before. They’ve sent their children, their wives and their mistresses to Europe; they’ve acquired real estate and bank accounts; they’ve become the favourite clients of European bankers and generous patrons of European politicians. Dozens of university campuses throughout Europe bear their names. They own fashionable galleries and shops. They don't shy away from innovation, especially when it’s a long way from Russia’s borders. Yes, they don’t want Russia to be free; but they’re more than ready to make use of other countries’ freedom (and security) in the West. That’s the whole point.

Possibly to an even greater extent than events in Ukraine, the Magnitsky Act became a trigger point for the Kremlin’s crusade against the West. The so-called “war against the West” carried out in the name of Russia was a war of the ruling class for its privileges and, above all, the right to spend its money in the West. That was in its own way a kind of primitive blackmail. Russia didn’t attempt to conquer the West (the Kremlin does understand the limits of its capabilities), but just wanted the West to accept its conditions. The principal one was, don’t poke your nose into our business, don’t pay attention to what’s going on here with human rights and corruption, leave us to amuse ourselves with our imperial ambitions within the boundaries of the zone of influence that was established by the USSR, and just get on enjoying your comfortable European lives. Now everything’s changed. Putin’s dragged Russia into a war that’s put the Russian ruling class back in its usual place in the international community for many years to come. Now their place is the same as that of the elites of North Korea, Iran and other such marginal countries. That’s the mistake; or rather, it’s the result of Putin’s evolution from being a thief to being a fanatic. The interests of the elite have also been thrown overboard.

So how does this match Russia’s national interests? The answer is: not at all. How can we understand what those interests are? Let’s ask ourselves this question: what do we want to do, bomb Voronezh or restore Voronezh? If we want it bombed, then we don’t need anything and we can go ahead and fight the West. Ah, but if we want to restore it, to make it not like Stalingrad in 1943, but along the lines of Montreal, then there’s a lot we have to do; and all of it is hindered by our confrontation with the West. We need new technology; massive investment; know-how and skilful management; qualitatively new education and healthcare; normal competition. Without all of this, we have no hope of emerging from this stagnation. All of this can be achieved only through integration into the global economy; and integration and war simply don’t go together.

Many critics of the current regime go to the other extreme, suggesting that the idea of “Russia’s national interests” is simply an illusion; you can’t even shake on it. But Russia genuinely does have national interests, and these need to be protected. They do not, though, have anything in common with the narrow, clan interests of “the group of thugs from Leningrad”, who seized power in Russia and have implemented total militarisation of the country. The real national interest for Russia is its fastest possible integration into the global economic system and the restructuring of its political and economic life in such a way that the country can take up a worthy place in this system.

Everything that helps us achieve this goal is in keeping with Russia’s national interests. Everything that hinders the achievement of this goal, or puts off the overdue transformation needed, goes against those interests. The pursuit of imaginary greatness is insulting to Russia’s genuine greatness; there is something to be proud of, not just the atom bomb.

The Kremlin and its henchmen want to isolate Russia from the West, while at the same time adopting a Western lifestyle for themselves. So for this they want the country to have the status of a military superpower. But Russia’s national interests are diametrically opposed to this. We need to remove the country’s isolation, whilst on the other hand isolating all those who use the threat of war to maintain their feudal privileges, including the right to steal money from the country with impunity, and spend it in the West. They want Russia to be closed off, so that they can steal and cheat forever. We want Russia to be open, so that this can never happen again.

Chapter 14. The Historical Choice:

Muscovy or Gardarika (which has nothing to do with Gaidar)?¹

Will Russia will be an empire or a nation state? Will the focus be on building a practical way of life, or will people try to create yet another utopia of universal proportions? Whatever the situation is, a crucial question for future generations will be about the centralisation of power in Russia. Should the Russian political system remain strictly centralised, with most (if not all) authority based on the single point of the federal government in Moscow? Or should the system be de-centralised (even artificially)? And, even if it takes huge efforts, should a number of places across the country be empowered to make various political decisions, depending on their level of competence?

Either variant is possible within the liberal and democratic model. Simply turning away from the authoritarian system doesn’t remove the question. In both theory and practice a democratic state can be strongly centralised – Britain and France are examples of this – or it can be largely de-centralised, such as in the USA and Germany. We shall have to choose which would suit Russia best, taking into consideration our cultural heritage, and the particulars of the new, unique historic tasks that will lie before us. This is neither a simple nor an obvious choice, not least because it goes against a deeply-rooted political tradition.

Matters are made more complicated because centralism is the sacred cow of the Russian political mentality. Attacking this would be fraught with risks. In each of the three previous incarnations of its civilisation – Muscovy, the Empire and the USSR – Russia was a hyper-centralised state. The tradition was laid down by Muscovy; strengthened by Peter the Great’s Empire; and taken to the extreme by the Communist empire. And neither in the 1990s, nor in the first decade of the twenty-first century did anything change significantly. So for the past 500 years of history, the movement has been only towards greater centralisation, and never the other way. You could say that, despite the many changes of era, Russia is still Muscovy.

Paradoxically, centralism as a political principle is so deep-rooted in the mass consciousness that the idea unites both the supporters and the opponents of the current Russian regime. Among the latter group, there are fanatics who believe in concentrating power in the hands of a national government in Moscow just as much as do the apologists for the regime. Even though the motives for each of these political forces are completely different, they each relate to the idea of de-centralisation with the same scepticism and suspicion.

For the clan that rules Russia, this is a question of the type of control that they can exert over the situation, a matter of maintaining the political and economic status quo. For them, hyper-centralisation is a tool for suppressing any challenges that threaten the established political order, or for dealing with local grievances. Naturally, for them, centralism is the main means of maintaining the stability of the regime. They are totally dependent on the centralised apparatus for repression and propaganda carrying out its work effectively. It’s also the way in which they maintain control over the resources that are essential for keeping this apparatus going.

For the opposition, centralism is a guaranteed way of defending citizens from the despotism of the local elites, whom they see as strongholds of reaction. The results of an experiment to introduce the idea of local self-government that was carried out by the young Tsar Ivan IV (later to be known as “the Terrible”) have still not been wiped from the historical memory. In the regions, power was seized from the governor by the strong “shouting men”, whose despotism was even crueller than people were used to from the tsar’s governor. As a result, the experiment had to be stopped in its initial phase.

Perhaps this is why many of the brains behind Russian liberalism support centralism, because they feel that de-centralising power in Russia would inevitably lead to incidents like the one in Kushchovskaya in 2010, when local gangsters killed 12 people. They fear that this could create a kind of confederacy of such lawless principalities, each run by criminal gangs. They believe that the only thing that could prevent this disastrous situation would be to give the dominant role to a “progressive” central authority, that would be controlled by “the correct” political forces; that is, the victorious westernised liberals.

Therefore, just like the reactionaries, certain Russian liberals speak out in favour of maintaining strict centralisation. Their principal area of disagreement is simply over who should control this united centre, and what signals the centre should send out to the regions. Those loyal to the regime believe that the centralised power should guarantee stability and prevent change; while this group of liberals and democrats think that the centre should ensure that necessary reforms are moved from the top down throughout the country.

It would be possible to consider the arguments from these liberals in favour of centralism wholly convincing, were it not for one thing: in a huge country like Russia, sooner or later centralism will inevitably lead to authoritarianism.

While there is a high degree of centralisation of power, it’s impossible to maintain for a long period a workable model of democracy in the country. However liberal the centralised power of the victorious “progressive forces” started out, it would quickly cease to be so and would simply become authoritarian.

There’s an obvious reason as to why the hyper-centralisation that’s been preserved in Russia ends up as a model of authoritarianism. Centralism presupposes the necessity for the constant redistribution of resources within a huge country (otherwise there’d be no material base). This means that enormous financial flows have to be serviced, and a massive bureaucratic structure is needed for this. And this, in turn, hangs over a society that doesn’t have the means to control it, nor ways of defending itself against it.

The chain is simple: centralisation – redistribution of resources – a huge structure to service this – pressure on civil society.

In other words (and this is very important), in Russian conditions centralisation inevitably breeds autocracy, and vice-versa.

Whatever innovative ideas the “revolutionary centrists” might have had when they came to power in Russia, they’ve already slipped into (and will continue to slide into) the same well-worn historical rut: imposing change from above – creating a powerful structure of centralised power – the necessity to focus resources on servicing this structure – turning this structure into a power that lords it over society – the formation of an authoritarian (at best) regime – the need for a new revolution.

So how do you break out of this vicious circle, and how do you get away from the authoritarian nature of this centralised power without becoming the hostage of the local criminal gangs?

The answer seems pretty obvious. You strengthen society’s control over power; decentralise power, giving balance and the division of powers; you allow for a strong opposition that is guaranteed a place in maintaining control over the authorities; and you have independent media.

But how do you achieve all this in a country where, for the last 500 years at least, there has been virtually no such political experience?

The decentralisation of the political system is perhaps the single most important political task facing the coalition of forces that in practice, not in theory, is trying to bring about the democratisation of Russia.

This is an extremely difficult task. It’s impossible to leap across this chasm in one bound and land immediately in a “decentralised paradise”. Too many archaic layers have formed in the Russian political system. It’s too difficult to bring them all down to a single common denominator; and there’s a great risk that in chasing after this ideal you lose sight of reality and end up disappearing into the chasm. At the same time, though, you can’t avoid making the jump. Because sooner or later all of these archaisms will tear the country apart at the seams.

So we have to immediately attack on two fronts: prepare the ground for a tectonic shift, while taking temporary, compromise measures. These may be imperfect, but they’ll still go some way to solving the problem.

What can serve as a template for this new system? Strange as it may seem, the answer can be found in Russia’s distant past, even further back than the usual point from which Russian statehood is measured: the Tsardom of Moscow.

Today, the united forces of reaction are pushing us into the past, and they see their ideal in the state that was created by the princes of Moscow. But our history didn’t begin with the victory over the Tatars and the creation of Muscovy that followed this. There was another Rus’ before this. It was a country of self-governing and totally independent towns: Gardarika (as the Vikings who came from the north called it in their epic tales of the time). And even though these towns have been lost in the endless boundaries of Russian civilisation, it’s Gardarika that we need today in place of Muscovy as a fundamentally different state structure; an alternative to the harshness of centralisation.

Towns have always been the cornerstone for the development of European civilisation, and to this day they remain the principal places for the growth of the new global civilisation. But now we’re talking not just about towns, but about metropolises – huge cities where millions of people live in close proximity to each other. As the fundamentally new way of social organisation, it’s these metropolises that have become the engines of global technological, economic and even cultural change.

Strategically, even in the medium term historical perspective, Muscovy, with its single dominating centre for taking political decisions, should be transformed into a metropolis of political multi-centrism. Ideally, the basis of the state structure in Russia should be a political union of metropolises. This would greatly broaden the political class, taking it beyond the Moscow Ring Road.

The fundamental difference between the modern world and that of centuries past is that now there are far fewer centres of development. Development is now focussed on huge metropolises, where there’s a sufficient concentration of people and infrastructure. A metropolis is a place where people live in relatively close proximity to each other, and where you can reach the centre in less than an hour. The surrounding area then becomes the territory for servicing these centres of growth. In Russia, the emphasis should be placed on developing into a metropolis any city with a population of three to five million people, bringing it up to 15 to 20 million.

This is less of a technical question than a political one. How many of these centres do we need, and how many can we allow ourselves? This is the essence of proper strategic planning (if, of course, we want to control the direction in which we are heading and not merely go with the flow of time).

In my opinion, there should be no more than 20 such centres in Russia. We simply don’t have a large enough population for more than that. In the future these metropolises will become territorial centres, the capitals of a new structural organisation. We might call them “lands”.

We’re talking about new economic and political entities. These will be the building blocks of the new Russia, constructed from the bottom up, and not from the top down, as has been the practice up until now. This new network of “lands” will eventually replace the existing system of oblasts and republics.

I am convinced that in any case at some point in our historical development we will have to change today’s territorial and state delineation of Russia, that has its roots partly in the country’s ancient history, and partly through spontaneous decisions and passing interests.

It may well be that we have to change the territorial division of guberniyas and oblasts, that we’ve known for nearly 300 years. These divisions arose randomly during endless Russian colonial expansion. They underpin uneven development, and strengthen the peaceful coexistence between the rich regions (each of which could become a separate European state), and the poorer areas, that survive only thanks to grants from the centre and are totally unprepared for an independent existence, not just economically but in the wider cultural meaning of the word.

Nowhere in the world are all regions set up on an equal footing. There’s always a contrast between the leaders and the outsiders. But everything’s relative. You won’t last long if you try to harness to the same cart the mighty “steed” of a modern post-industrial nation state with a nervous “donkey” from a tribe. The levelling up of different regions is essential politically: raising the status of the outsiders to that of the leaders. Improving the most backward regions that are not currently able to fulfil the political functions of a subject of the Federation (and, indeed, are not even classed as “subjects”), is a very difficult but essential task.

But you can't do this on the spur of the moment. First, you have to develop the metropolises as potential administrative political and economic centres so that they can carry out their new role. We have to begin by creating a proper, quality university, that will set the level of the future metropolis. And this will take a long time.

So what can we do now? If we simply rely on the possible growth of the metropolises, we may never live to see the bright new future. The project for the deep restructuring of Russia’s territorial state system could take decades, if not longer. And if throughout these years the power structure remains as centralised as it is now, then there’ll be no possibility of breaking out of the prison of authoritarianism and backwardness that Russia currently finds itself in. This means that at the same time as the new system is being rolled out, we have to have a time frame to reform the existing system.

How should we approach the current reality? History has known two main ways of effectively decentralising power: self-rule and federalism. Neither of these have been studied in depth in Russia. Even though they’re both mentioned in the Constitution, they’ve never been put into practice, and so they remain there as mere false decorations of the political system. We can merely guess at how genuine self-rule and real federalism would work in Russia.

Russia has never really been a genuine federal state. The idea of the federation was simply a political formula to legitimise the limited autonomy of the colonies in their relation to the metropolis. The model of a federation has never worked in Russia, and no one can even be sure that it would work here. It was effective in the USSR only so much as it fitted the false federal model of Soviet power that protected the tough centralised machinery of the power of the Party (the real deep state), where there was no place for genuine federalism.

Self-rule has fairly deep roots in Russia, and in the pre-Soviet period it played an important supporting role in rural areas at the lower levels of governance of the empire. From the mid-nineteenth century, more complicated methods of self-rule began to develop, such as the zemstvo. But in the Soviet period all self-rule was wiped out, and the tradition was lost. Nothing of its kind has been created in the post-Soviet period. So any moves towards self-rule will have to start from scratch.

Nevertheless, we do have something that could be used as a starting point, and something that could be used for careful political refinement. I see the advanced development of local self-rule as the key condition that would make it difficult to slide into the well-worn rut of authoritarianism. Developing federalism would be an extra supporting factor. This is because it would be relatively easy to build public control over the structures of power, and a democratic tradition could be created on this basis.

The basic essentials for developing local self-rule should be granting it a protected budget – and competence. The concept of “joint (or mixed) competence” is a sly one. It’s a grey area, where the centre always wins. Self-rule, of course, means there must be responsibility. This a closed circle of political technology: a clearly defined area of competence, its own revenue base and management by elected, responsible people, who answer to the electorate for the results. The electorate themselves then carry the responsibility for their own mistakes, and can’t blame them on a higher level.

Clearly, like the people, the regions are not all the same, and in a massive country like Russia nothing will be achieved if there isn’t a redistribution of resources. But this must be done transparently, by a united fund for the regional development, and not secretively through the murky articles of the overall federal budget. So the question of transparency has to be decided separately.

Access to subsidies has to be fair and to stimulate local development. Subsidies must not be used for political trade-off, nor as a means of paying for “voting the right way”.

As local self-rule develops, it will help change the rotten stick of the authorities into a pyramid, with self-rule as the foundation of this pyramid. This means that the whole system will be turned upside down. People must learn to solve problems at the level where they happen. No democracy in the world exists without this foundation. The rules are simple: it’s your competence, your budget, your elected representatives.

At the top of the pyramid we have the central authorities. In practice, they should be secondary to the local authorities, complementary to their work, and not the other way round. The central authorities are not there to solve the problems of the local authorities, but to establish the rules of the game and make sure they are rigorously observed. If not, then the foundations of the system will begin to crack, and the same criminal gangs will take over once again.

Furthermore, the central authorities are there to solve national issues. To ensure they can do this, they must have their own protected competence and sufficient resources, including a central budget. They have to be strong enough to ensure that “on the ground” the rules and order are kept; but they have to be sufficiently kept in check so that they aren’t tempted to “privatise the localities” and devour the competency of the local authorities.

But here an extra problem arises. If the central authorities are too weak, they won’t be able to hold the country together. But if they’re too strong, then they’ll overpower the local authorities and undermine them.

In order to regulate the power of the central authorities, and to ensure that they cannot break the established order by de facto seizing power from the local authorities, an artificially-created extra, horizontal, barrier has to be set up from within. This is to guarantee the separation of powers. This extra regulator built-in to the central authorities is federalism. In such an enormous country as Russia, it is essential to make sure that the balance between the centre and the regions is maintained.

Unfortunately, the very meaning of the word “federalism” is today besmirched by many years of Soviet propaganda.

Federalism is a specific way of organising state power, where along with the vertical division (the classic division of powers), there is an additional horizontal division, the so-called “constitutional deal”. This makes it possible for the two levels of state power to operate on one territory and, according to the established rules, for each to have full autonomy in one or more areas of competence.

The federalism that I’m talking about here has nothing in common with today’s false federalism. In the future, it will be an integral part of the metropolises that will be the centres of the new subjects of the state. But we need to start by changing the relationship within the boundaries of the existing territorial divisions of the state.

In the future, the metropolises will become the capitals of the “lands”, and will be granted all the necessary administrative and political attributes of local capitals, as well as the judicial system, the military districts and so on. The lands will have their own jurisdictions within the powers granted to them. It’s possible today more or less to predict what the list of the lands and their capitals will be, by looking at how individual regions are developing. They can already be prepared for their new role, including by purposely and systematically strengthening the existing subjects of the Federation.

Only an all-encompassing system will be able to survive in Russia, with a strong central government, a metropolis as a regional centre and strong local self-government. If one or other of the links in this chain collapses, or if the system flattens out and stops being all-encompassing, then it will inevitably return to the traditional authoritarianism, or run the risk of the state disintegrating into tiny pieces. The foundation of all three elements must be self-rule. And this must be defended by each region holding its own budget and being responsible for its own work.

The old model of Russia’s management is Muscovy, a country of a single city-state. But for Russia to become a modern state, the new model has to be Gardarika, a country of multiple cities that take power into their own hands. Gardarika versus Muscovy. Ultimately, this is the argument upon which the fate of Russia will depend.

Chapter 15. The Political Choice:

Democracy? Or a Return to the Terror of the Oprichnina?

If we stop to think about it, why do we need democracy? Why do we need this system of power based on regular general elections and the division of the branches of power? Why is it necessary in general? And why specifically in Russia?

The answer is far from clear. Or, to be more precise, it’s far from clear for everyone. The liberally-minded Russian opposition tends to believe that everyone understands that democracy is a good thing; and those that don’t understand this are just pretending they don’t. But this is a serious delusion.

Even in the most liberal of circles, you come across fierce anti-democrats who are convinced that democracy is merely for the chosen ones. And in the non-liberal sphere, where opponents of democracy dominate, not everyone speaks out on this topic, many preferring to remain silent. So the question as to whether Russia really should become a democratic state remains an open one.

The simplest thing to do would be to stamp “demo-scepticism” on this stagnation or lack of culture; but it’s much more complicated than that.

First of all, there are quite a few highly-educated intellectuals among the opponents of democracy; they’re not all just people who’ve been duped by the regime.

Secondly, there are plenty of genuine problems in the way modern democracy works, and these have discredited it in the eyes of people who have a wide variety of political views.

Thirdly (and perhaps most importantly), Russia has only a tiny experience of democracy, whereas at the other end of the scale its experience of authoritarian rule is huge; inertia has instilled into many people much more trust in this system.

And we have to remember that Russia is an atypical dictatorship. Russian authoritarianism is unique in its own way, and has never demonstrated any ability to modernise. Throughout its evolution, the Russian political system has formulated its own original answer to the challenges of history, which can be summed up as a permanent oprichnina. This system is not as primitive as many might think it is.

The essence of the oprichnina is the division of power into an external and an internal state, where the internal controls the external and is a hidden political force.

First established by Ivan the Terrible, the oprichnina has gone through multiple transformations. At different times this internal state has been called by different names (such as “the court”; “the Communist Party”; or the “‘Lake’ cooperative”). But in essence it has remined as it always was: while the regular state has existed, this oprichnina has been a network of informal power above all the usual laws and institutions, and one that hasn’t been identified by any laws. It’s the power of the superiors, standing above the law and living by their own privileges. It’s a specific kind of Russian “eternal Middle Ages”. It changes and constantly adapts to new circumstances, but never, ever, disappears.

The image of some magical force of this “Middle Ages” has become an integral part of the people’s historic memory, and people remember that any attempt to escape from this paradigm has ended with some kind of “time of troubles”.

This image doesn’t need to be helped by propaganda. It’s the first association that springs into the mass Russian political consciousness. So the renewed enthusiasm for Stalinism that many talk about today shouldn’t be regarded simplistically as just people being brainwashed by television. It has deep roots, not to mention that a significant element of the population retains sympathy for Stalin, and his methods for running the country survived even during the “riot of democracy”. Of course, this part of society didn’t always behave as aggressively and as shamelessly as they do today, but they haven’t changed their principles in the slightest.

At the base of this enduring sympathy is a belief in the effectiveness of Stalin’s way of ruling, especially when it was necessary to quickly mobilise limited resources so as to achieve a specific result.

A significant part of Russian society is convinced that Stalinism has great potential for modernisation, and this is a reality that cannot be ignored. Well before Putin appeared on the scene, there was talk in Russia about Stalin and even Ivan the Terrible as being efficient managers, but no one really paid any attention to it, dismissing it as nonsense. Wrongly, as it turns out. Here we need proper arguments, not emotions. For now there’s been more of the latter than the former.

The substantive objections that the liberal part of society puts forward against Stalinism and in favour of democracy are largely based on two principles, the ethical and the economic. The ethical principle talks of “the price paid” – the millions of lives lost to win Stalin’s “victory”. The economic principle maintains that half a century later the country broke up, and a significant reason was that we had clearly fallen behind democratic countries in our economic development.

The Stalinists usually fend off the ethical argument by saying that democracy has also not always been whiter than white, that democratic revolutions frequently were accompanied by masses of victims. And to the economic argument they answer that the fatal lag in the economy took place in the post-Stalin period.

Some people may feel that the Stalinists are right, and that the potential of the totalitarian society for modernisation was truly unlimited. But this impression swiftly disappears when you take into account the long historical perspective.

It doesn’t actually appear as if Peter I and Stalin each reached great heights in the economy once they had the country under their control. But towards the end of their lives, just one or two generations after they began their reforms (between 20 to 40 years), stagnation set in that it was impossible to resist. And the roots of this stagnation clearly lay in “the period of great victories”. Ultimately, it could be seen that these “victories”, as consequences of the revolution, turned out to be the reasons for the backwardness of the system. Thanks to the authoritarian nature of Russia’s modernisation, the country developed from revolution to revolution, along the lines of “one step forward, two steps back”. And as the centuries passed, the upheavals, like a pendulum, swung back and forth ever stronger. There’s no point in making the usual comparison between authoritarian modernisation now with the way it was done in centuries past; we need to compare how effective authoritarian and non-authoritarian modernisation has been over long periods of time.

In places where democracy ruled, development happened much more evenly, with fewer swings of the historical pendulum. And over long periods of time this gave society a massive head start. The people’s patience wasn’t exhausted under the yoke of autocracy, nor did it explode into a bloody civil war, nor turn into appalling apathy witnessing the endless rule of gerontocratic leaders. One set of politicians just peacefully took the place of another, one political course was exchanged for another, and society merely tacked against the wind of the various hardships that life brought.

Again and again, Russia has been put in the position of trying to catch up, as a result of all the sacrifices that were placed upon the altar of authoritarian modernisation. This is where Russia is now once more. With a long historical perspective, if we look far into the distance instead of simply looking under our feet, we can see that for Russia there is no alternative to democracy. Otherwise, sooner or later another swing of the pendulum of revolution will simply destroy Russia as a state. And a massive swing of this pendulum can be avoided only with the help of democracy. But the question is, what sort of democracy does our country need, and how can we build it with the minimum of cost?

This task has to be solved on two levels at once. Firstly, Russia has to construct a democratic foundation; to do what was done long ago in Western Europe. But just catching up with the West isn’t enough. We have to take into account the new challenges that have arisen. Modern Western democracy is experiencing serious difficulties and is now seeking the answers to these problems. There’s no point in our first creating the democracy of the nineteenth century (which is what everyone is trying to do) and then trying to re-shape it for today.

The classic form of democracy no longer works anywhere. It’s time has passed. In the information age, the methods of political mobilisation that were invented in the middle of the nineteenth century are both pointless and useless. Every day we see how the old system of political parties is stagnating and is no longer capable of fulfilling its function. In Russia we must immediately build democracy for the twenty-first century, leaping at one go over two steps and proving correct the words of the Evangelist, that those who are last can become the ones who are first.

What does “creating a democratic foundation” mean in Russia? There are hundreds of definitions of democracy in the world and dozens of different theories. I don’t intend to put forward a principally new version, nor will I just repeat certain banalities. One way or another, the type of society that’ll be considered as democratic will be the one where society has the last word when it comes to taking political decisions; the whole of society, including its minorities. Not just a part of society, that for some particular reason has the right to vote, such as by material wealth, education, ethnicity and so on, but the whole adult and capable population of the country.

In this sense I shall always be suspicious of democracy in countries where there are too many people who are not treated as citizens, whatever the historical background to this might be.

Let me just point out right away that I’m not talking here about restoring democracy, but about the creation of a social structure that Russia will have for the first time in its history. The right of society to have the decisive voice has never been known here, not in the most liberal, long-gone days (including the short period between the February and Bolshevik Revolutions in 1917 – let’s not confuse anarchy with democracy as a means of organisation), nor in the more turbulent times of recent years, such as the ’nineties.

It is essential that there are no vivid examples of political repression, but this is not of itself a sufficient sign of democracy.

At the end of 1993, after the armed conflict with the supporters of the Supreme Soviet, the Russian political system was deliberately constructed in such a way as to remove the figure of the President from the separation of powers. This was declared – but never happened in practice. In this sense, the Constitution of post-Communist Russia hardly changed from the constitutional laws of the autocratic empire. As a result, this led to the total degradation of statehood in Russia: power became concentrated in the hands of the President and his circle, which led to the establishment of a neo-totalitarian regime.

So the fundamental question for the creation of democracy in Russia is, how do we bring the supreme authority into a system where there is the division of powers, lock it into a method of checks and balances, place the deep state under the control of society, and at the same time do away with its “sacred” significance? This is a purely institutional task, which can – and must be – solved by constitutional and legal ways within the confines of general political reform.

Perhaps in current circumstances the best way to solve this is by switching to parliamentary democracy. Whatever happens, Russia’s political institutions (whatever names they go by) must not be allowed to rise above other political branches of power and gain an authority that is not equal to that of the other branches. This is the only way in which the golden share of democracy can remain in society’s hands, and won’t be seized by gangs close to the supreme leader.

But even if in practice Russia were able to carry out such deep institutional reform, would this make the country a successful and democratic state?

The answer isn’t simple. Democratic? Yes. Successful? No. The reason for this ambiguity lies in the systemic challenges and failures that democracy faces everywhere today; not just in Russia, but around the world, including in the West, democracy’s alma mater. First of all, the electoral mechanisms, which are based on the work of “party machines”, have disappeared. In the developed informational society, political parties have ceased to be the only or even the main instruments for politically motivating the population.

Nowadays, small, mobile groups of activists have become the way of doing this. They may not have strong representation among the mass of the population, but with sufficient resources they are capable of quickly establishing contact with people through modern media, and guiding them in the direction that they want.

This means that the possible sources for providing resources in today’s world are widely differentiated, and it is difficult to establish control even in societies with reliable democratic traditions and stable state institutions.

The meaning of these changes in a functioning democracy is ambiguous. On the one hand, they make the political system more dynamic, adaptive and (naturally) more open. But on the other hand they open up wide possibilities for manipulating public opinion, creating an unhealthy populism and in this way they destroy the very essence of the electoral process. For now it’s not clear how to teach democracy to work in principally new conditions. One thing is very clear: if the best we can do in Russia is simply to build “yesterday’s democracy”, then, despite all the efforts and sacrifices made, it won’t work and the whole project will collapse even before it’s started. And the very idea of democracy will be even more discredited.

This means that all Russia can do is simply try to be not only a democracy, but the most advanced democratic society possible, using the newest political technologies to make this happen. One of the problems is that we don’t really have anywhere to observe how others have done this. We are doomed once again to become a country of social and political invention. Yet again! And this isn’t because we would want it to be so. It’s simply that other countries have time on their side; they can use the political capital they already have, but we can’t do that in Russia. We are as we are, which means that we have to build a democratic system virtually from scratch, in a completely new way, taking into account our fears and our risks, trusting to our own intuition rather than basing it on the experience of others. Certain liberal, westernised, Russians don’t appreciate this. They put too much hope in the approaches that have been developed in Europe.

In addition to the “mandatory programme” of democracy, which boils down primarily to the competent implementation of “institutional reforms”, needed to destroy the Russian system of autocracy by the division of powers, Russia is facing a huge democratic “arbitrary programme”, the success of which will depend to a certain extent on how well it’s carried out. This programme will not be simple. The level of difficulty of the democratic system should be suitable for the level of difficulty of modern society.

I’ll allow myself a comparison. The same principle operates in both a small trading enterprise and a gigantic international corporation. The shareholders make the main decisions based on the majority of votes. But the manner of determining the rights of the majority differs in each firm. A gigantic multi-profile corporation can’t operate in the same way that a small shop does. It has in place a multitude of special mechanisms to guard against most mistakes (in practice, the most common ones). These are mechanisms that guarantee the rights of the majority, but prevent them from halting the work of the enterprise and abusing these rights.

The same is true in a state. Democracy is a very complicated system, perhaps even more complicated then authoritarianism, and one that is always tailor-made for a particular country at a particular moment in time.

Creating such a system for a huge, territorially and culturally diverse country like Russia, with its huge differences in nature and climate, is not easy. This gives rise to the idea that we must experiment with different parliamentary systems, allow asymmetry, and to take as many decisions as possible to the lowest level; decentralise everything that can be decentralised. We have to start from the idea that there’s never been a genuine, classic party system in Russia, and there never will be. Therefore, we’ll build the electoral mechanism around something else – something that’s now replacing traditional parties.

We have to prepare for all of this now, opening up the discussion on the political format of the future Russian democracy, and not leaving the search for a solution until later; because there won’t be time “later”. And this shouldn’t be just empty incantations about the benefits of democracy, nor idle chatter about its general principles.

This must be a discussion about the details, involving specialists and as wide a group of interested parties as possible. After all, the authoritarian devil hides in the democratic detail. This is what we saw in the “very best” Constitution in 1993. We mustn’t allow ourselves to repeat that mistake.

Chapter 16. The Economic Choice:

Monopoly or Competition?

You have only to mention the word “monopoly”, and even more so, “competition”, and all those who aren’t connected in any way to economics or business immediately lose interest, and sigh, “there you go again!” A natural monopoly, unnatural privileges… “How much more are you going to bang on about it?! Everyone knows that monopoly is bad and competition is good.” But it turns out there’s a reason for this. Monopoly and competition don’t refer to the economy. Well, to be more precise, they do, of course, refer to the economy, but only slightly. More significantly they refer to a lifestyle and a way of thinking. In essence, we’re talking here about two different ways of looking at the whole social structure. So it’s about politics, the society and also ideology.

There’s a law that links the various areas of social activity. It runs, if there’s a monopoly in the economy, then sooner or later you’ll have authoritarianism in politics, paternalism in social relations and some sort of totalitarianism in ideology. This happens because monopoly and all of the social and political conditions related to it are the result of certain dominating socio-cultural factors. This is particularly characteristic of Russian society. We can take away the prospect of monopoly only if we manage to change these dominating factors; otherwise we’ll simply swop one monopoly for another.

Monopoly and competition do not sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. They are not totally opposed to each other, as many simply assume. At the same time, they are doomed to be in permanent opposition to each other. But you can never completely remove monopoly, nor competition. Each is really just a way of combatting chaos. They are ways of organising social space. One has some good points; so does the other.

For example, let’s take the state’s monopoly over legalised violence. Nowadays, this is the generally recognised legal norm, but this has not always been the case. But judging by the expanding number of private armies such as the “Wagner Group”, from a historical perspective, who knows?

In a practical sense, there are two ways of fighting chaos. There’s the tough way – clamping down on it with the help of the hierarchy of power (the vertical way) – and there’s the softer way: using “the rules of the road” to find a solution.

So competition shouldn’t be confused with “a war of all against all”. Organised competition, like monopoly, is called upon to struggle against this war, but using different methods.

To a certain extent, monopolies are always natural. The consolidation of capital and the associated increase in production are caused primarily by the need to increase labour productivity. In any case, until recently, labour productivity increased as the business grew larger. This is due to a number of reasons, not least because within a large enterprise it’s easier to form work patterns and implement a system of control that allows you to correct the mistakes of the workers. Of course, such factors as the concentration of resources and the stress tolerance related to this are also significant.

Even the most progressive start-ups regard the true mark of success of what they’ve created as being bought by a transnational giant. But at the same time, from the point of view of the development of a monopoly, labour productivity begins to fall away, because there are fewer incentives to perfect the production process. Why change it if it’s not broken? As a result, sooner or later any giant company becomes less efficient.

So expanding a business is positive when it’s done in a controlled way; but negative if it becomes uncontrolled. The easiest way to establish control over a monopoly is to develop competition; in other words, to put big businesses in competition with each other, providing this is kept within the boundaries of the established rules. The responsibility for this, as the arbiter, lies with the state.

The approaches to this question are generally well-known and universal. Once a monopoly controls more than 30 per cent of the market, it should be placed under observation to ensure against abuse of the system. If it goes over 60 per cent of the market, measures have to be taken to reduce the profitability of the monopoly, by stimulating other producers of goods and services. This is rather like a constant battle against buildings icing over: you have constantly to break off the largest icicles.

Monopolisation in markets is similar to fighting herpes: you can never defeat it, but you can keep it under control if you have political and economic immunity that operates effectively. But unlike herpes, growth is not an illness but natural evolution, and this has to be utilised.

The ways in which this is done can vary. It doesn’t have to be the straight-down-the-line approach of Europe or the USA. For example, South Korea is the home of the Samsung Corporation, a monopoly company. The government keeps tabs on it. It sets Samsung rigid guidelines, such as that no less than 60 per cent of its production should go for export. Should these conditions not be met, the company faces serious sanctions. You could call it competition replacement therapy. This is a very different approach, but it solves the question of control over a monopoly.

The situation changes drastically when a private monopoly becomes a state one, and turns into a state corporation. In this case, neither market forces, nor replacement therapy will work, and any competition will be destroyed by the administration.

No private enterprise can possibly compete with the consolidated power of the state, when the state is both owner and controller. If anyone doesn’t know how this works, they should study carefully the garbage and construction businesses of the Russian Prosecutor General. There can be no question of one official being able to effectively control another official (and by default, all the leaders of state corporations are ipso facto the most powerful officials). Everyone witnessed how even the slightest hint of such control can finish in Russia with the example of the “Ulyukaev affair”. Alexey Ulyukaev ended up in the meat-grinder, where they make “Sechin’s sausages”.

In Russia, the idea of monopoly has deep historic roots, which is why it has so many supporters. Nearly all industry was founded on the state’s initiative, with the participation of the state and under the state’s control (even if that initiative was corruptly motivated by the future owner). Monopoly was the main instrument for the industrialisation of the state. And after the Bolshevik revolution it became its sole instrument for industrialisation. The principle of the monopoly was taken to absurd lengths, far further than it had ever been taken before in any large global economy. In the end, this monopoly was what killed off the USSR, because it made its economy inefficient and uncompetitive.

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia significantly freed itself from the grip of the monopoly. But this was only for a very short period, and it wasn’t able to organise proper competition. The economic and political institutions couldn’t cope with the enormous challenges of the time. As a result, society went into a tailspin, that resulted in exactly the kind of war of all against all that monopoly and competition are supposed to defend against. At the start of this century, the strategic mistake was made to re-start the monopoly, instead of continuing to re-build the field of competition. But this turned out to be a very particular monopoly, the like of which Russia had never experienced.

In this authoritarian regime, that’s corrupt from top to bottom, and that’s bereft of any ideology (in place of which they use some sort of rusty paper-clips), monopoly has become the only way in which the clans can get rich, by sucking up to power. The regime uses monopolies to reward the clans for their political loyalty. So monopolies have become the most convertible currency of post-Communist Russia. Using power instead of money is a way of distributing the monopolies. It started with oil and gas extraction, then spread to road tolls, and then to anything and everything. Now, according to the latest pronouncements, it’s even spread to toilets. It’s not surprising that this vital sector of the economy went to the family of the former Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika; after all, it’s right up his street.

To be fair, it should be pointed out that even before this there were few preconditions in Russia for the successful development of competition. So creating the conditions now for competition would be a tricky task for any government, including the one to which it will fall to build the new Russia, once the present regime evaporates into nothing. Such preconditions usually include a readiness to cooperate, a broad base of trust, and other attributes of a bourgeois society; everything that’s included in Max Weber’s code of Protestant ethics. Unfortunately, no such ethical code has emerged in Russia.

Despite the common perception that Russians have a collectivist mind from birth, even researchers with diametrically opposed views on the fate of Russia have pointed out a pathological individualism (what the philosopher Ivan Ilin called “federalism”) is characteristic of Russian people.

The most severe measures have been employed in order to crush this eternally excessive Russian individualism, including the ubiquitous use of monopolies. To a great extent, over time monopolies in Russia have become a historically determined way of survival due to the notable suppression of initiative. The well-known, violent, Russian concept of sobornost’ [a term without parallel in other languages, but described as “a spiritual community of many people living together” – Tr.], was merely a reaction to the inability “gently” to wipe out individualism with the aid of general rules. But historically even this method has had its limits: after a while it simply stops working.

As a way of dealing with chaos, competition is now preferred to monopoly almost everywhere. But in Russia, with its difficult cultural heritage, competition simply failed to develop sufficiently to be able to carry out what it’s meant to do. At every turn it came up against an authoritarian leader who tried to solve problems that arose by using a monopoly. And the result? It was totally ineffective and cost huge sums of money.

Peter the Great created centralised industry that was almost totally dependent on the state. The Bolsheviks carried this tendency to a logical conclusion, leaving standing only a state-planned economy. It’s not worth dwelling on the cost of this, nor the result. It was always a crude, harsh and uneconomic way of doing things, but it carried on working for centuries.

Why doesn’t this work now? Because when you have a society with a developed system of information, monopoly as the basic way of regulating the social sphere is outdated.

When all societal relationships have become much more complicated, and their success depends more and more on the actions of a solitary individual or small groups, it becomes virtually impossible to support the dynamic development of society by way of a monopoly. Russia has no choice but to move from a monopoly economy to a competitive economy. But doing this is no easy task.

The advantages of competition may not be very obvious, although it’s abundantly clear that competition beats monopoly. The experience of economic development in nearly all large economic systems shows this: USA, Russia, China. The death of the Soviet system is in many ways on the consciences of those who failed to recognise in time the fatal flaws of the monopoly. I would even dare to suggest that had the Soviet system evolved along the lines proposed by Alexander Shelepin and Alexei Kosygin, rather than that of Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Suslov, and had Kosygin’s reforms been carried out in full, then the end of the USSR might have been different.

But it’s less a question of what’s abundantly clear from experience, rather than the basic principle. Competition is simply a more efficient way of running any area of society. It’s very potential outweighs monopoly. Competition is an individual’s game, organised according to general and strictly observed rules. It encompasses both sides of the coin: there’s the players’ freedom of action, and their freedom to choose the direction in which they move, whilst at the same time having previously agreed rules that no individual can change or simply ignore. In other words, the main thing about competition is its rules which, by observing them, give each player a wide freedom of choice.

In monopoly, on the other hand, the main thing is orders. Under monopoly, only one player is free: the person who establishes both the rules and the direction of travel. It’s specifically because it encompasses the two elements – order and freedom of choice – that competition is more efficient than monopoly. Psychologically, it’s competition and not monopoly that suits man’s natural instincts more closely.

From this understanding of competition, it follows that its key features are the drawing up and then the observation of the rules. There can be no competition if “some are more equal than others”. But this isn’t enough.

There has to be equal and fair access to the process of creating the rules, because if they give someone an advantage then competition turns into the opposite of what it’s supposed to be: it becomes a hidden monopoly and leads to chaos. So genuine competition is possible only when there’s a developed civil society and a state governed by the rule of law. These things go together, rather like a “set menu”. If there is no constitutional state governed by the rule of law watching over the economy, then it will be impossible to build an economy based on the principles of competition.

And this is where we come to the most important point. There are countries like South Korea where a monopolistic private company that is under the control of a constitutional state works efficiently. There are countries like Switzerland or Norway, where state corporations controlled by a democratic state work very efficiently (just look at the Swiss railway system). But there are no countries where a state or a private monopoly that is controlled by an authoritarian and corrupt state works efficiently. A combination that starts out like this nearly always ends up like Venezuela.

Corrupt and unchanging authorities (a political monopoly) plus an economic monopoly is guaranteed to be a disaster.

Such a combination is destructive. These multifarious clan groups rip the very fabric of the state to shreds in trying to grab one of these monopolies for themselves. Igor Sechin came along and grabbed Rosneft. The Rotenberg brothers came along and got the Platon company to make money out of transport. And so it goes on, right down to the bottom, where you end up with situations like what happened in Kushchovskaya. All of these monopolies came about thanks to the corruption of the authorities, and they can’t exist without it. A whole vicious circle of corruption grows up, of “power – monopoly – power”, and this can be broken only by a revolution. This will go on forever, until an alternative model of political competition is presented that brings competition to these economic and social monopolies. And that, in turn, brings about political competition.

Chapter 17. The Social Choice:

a Turn to the Left or a Turn to the Right?

There are few things more deeply rooted in contemporary politics than the division between “the left” and “the right”. Yet at the same time it’s one of the most blurred distinctions. Nowadays anyone can call themselves “left” or “right” as the mood takes them. The left and right agendas have become indistinguishable. The extreme right-winger, Donald Trump, came to power with a programme built on left-wing, populist stereotypes.

At one time Putin seized the left-wing “anti-oligarch” agenda from the Communists, then carried out a harsh right-wing policy in favour of the bureaucrats and the new oligarchs. It’s become extremely difficult in today’s politics to determine exactly who is who.

A great deal of water has flowed under the bridge since it was possible to determine the left and the right depending on where people sat in the French parliament. “Leftism” and “rightism” were defined differently then.

Usually, those who were labelled “left-wingers” were the zealous supporters of state-owned property, the fanatics of “big government” and the regulated economy and the champions of high taxes for the “haves” and massive advantages for the “have-nots”. At the other end of the scale, people usually called themselves “right-wingers” if they were supporters of the free market, adherents of “small government”, preferred to give out fishing rods instead of fish, and were convinced that when Jesus Christ fed the five thousand he could have got by with three loaves instead of five, so as not to increase the national debt.

Keeping to my task here, I’ll confine myself to a working understanding of left and right, even if it’s incomplete. It seems to me that at the basis of the division into left and right lies the attitude to equality. Typical for left-wing politics is the desire to strengthen equality and eradicate inequality. In right-wing politics there is the inherent acknowledgement of inequality, but above all an attempt to stimulate economic activity specifically through inequality.

I accept that these are the extremes. Between them there are many mixed areas: we might call them “left-right” or “right-left”. But the heart of the matter is somewhere in here.

Neither in society as a whole, nor in the expert community is there a united approach to the question of equality (let’s not confuse this with equal rights). Therefore, there can’t be a united approach to left or right wing politics. Rather like fashion, the attitude to inequality experiences seasonal changes. When, like now, the level of genuine inequality in the world starts to increase, the level of concern about it increases, too. A whole host of studies appear that highlight the appalling economic, social and political consequences of inequality. And as a result, left-wing ideology becomes more popular.

When levelling out begins to triumph everywhere, and thus economic growth falls and the poverty that was the cause of the battle for this levelling out becomes excessive, another wave of studies appears, no less than the previous one, illustrating the dangers of equality and the usefulness of inequality. Consequently, right-wing views gain more adherents.

From this we can draw the very straightforward conclusion that there is no absolute, definitive truth in either left-wing or right-wing ideologies. They are like the movements into the wind of a sailing boat. In order to sail forwards you have to tack, now going a little to the right, now a little to the left. This in turn illustrates that the change from a course to right or left is a cyclical process, and generally the natural thing to do. This shows that the art of politics lies in seizing the moment at which point it’s right to switch from the left to the right and vice-versa.

The peculiarity of the historical period we’re now in is that the moment has arrived for such a change of tack. But due to the complexity of economics and politics, and the way in which they’ve become multidimensional, it’s become very difficult to determine which way we need to change – from the right to the left, or from the left to the right. At times of such uncertainty, temporary leaders appear, with vague ideological profiles; people such as Trump, Boris Johnson, Matteo Salvini, or Vladimir Putin. At one moment they seem left-wing, at the next, right-wing. No one can be absolutely sure in which direction their political course is heading. Quite possibly this is their aim, because they want to appeal to as broad a section of the public as possible (and so far they’ve succeeded in this). But they can’t go on like this forever. At any given moment politicians will appear on the scene with a clear programme.

Who’s standing on the threshold today and knocking on the door of global politics? The left or the right? The answer to this question is not as obvious as it might seem. At first glance it looks as if Europe – and not only Europe – is waiting for a long-expected victory for the so-called far right forces. We have Marie Le Pen in France; the Alternative für Deutschland (the Alternative for Germany, the AfD ); the Lega Nord (Northern League) in Italy, and others. It’s clear that the new-found “Russian Tsar” decided to use these forces to build a “Holy Alliance” to defend traditional European values. But I think there’s a serious question as to what extent these forces that have positioned themselves as being on the right are actually dedicated to right-wing ideas. Most of these parties of the right hold a hidden left-wing agenda up their sleeve. The reason that they’ve had some success in the game of political poker is that the genuine left has temporarily dropped out of the race, having got lost in the mess of migration policy, thus leaving their original place open for the right.

What is it that’s so confusing the traditional left and even forcing them to huddle together, giving up their place on the pedestal to the right, who are promoting leftist ideas? The answer lies on the surface. The traditional left-wing programme turned out to be smeared with a migration agenda that had been superimposed on top of it. This is all rooted in the split at the traditional base of left-wing ideas and the separation from the base of the “new poor” and the “uninvited poor”.

The “new poor” are those who are “relatively poor”; that is, although their standard of living is incomparably higher than genuinely poor people in the past, they nevertheless consider themselves poor compared to the growing wealth of the “new rich”, which gives them a sense of poverty.

The “uninvited poor” are genuinely poor people, mainly immigrants, who are temporarily and illegally employed, and who are not protected by the law. There are huge numbers of such people in the developed economies of the world.

So the problem for the left with their traditional agenda is that their social base is disappearing before their very eyes. The poor are rapidly turning into the “new poor”, and are ready to fight on two fronts: both against the “new rich” and the “uninvited poor”. And since (as is well known) the fiercest competition always erupts on your own doorstep, the war against the “uninvited” occupies the minds of the new poor even more than the war against the rich.

All of this was brilliantly demonstrated by the “Jeremy Corbyn case” in Britain. Even the Labour Party’s ultra-radical programme could not conquer the topic of Brexit in the eyes of their traditional electorate, which led to the failure of the Party (along with the Conservatives) in the election for the European Parliament.

The right poured into this gap. Seizing the pseudo-left’s programme as a weapon, they took advantage of the confusion of the traditional left, who were undecided on the issue of immigration, and achieved significant success. There are reasons to believe, however, that this success could be temporary. This is certainly not because the ideas of the left have some special sacred power. It’s just that now the left agenda is once again in demand. After a few decades dominated by the policies of the right, there’s been a sharp growth in inequality and social stratification. The next long cycle will be dedicated to the battle against inequality, not the other way round. This will be followed by something else, and someone will raise the banner of this “just cause”, whatever it may be. But here and now in the West we can most likely expect a global “turn to the left”, which I’ve been talking about in various formats for the last fifteen years.

This is the general background picture. So what about Russia? How does all this reflect on the country’s prospects? As always, Russia is also taken up by this trend, but here it’s rather more confused, because where the left and the right align there’s not so much a dislike of immigrants as there is, firstly, a nostalgia for socialism, that’s confused with the idea of a welfare state; and secondly, some real remnants of socialism, that are burnt into the class nature of Russian society.

Society holds that the USSR represented a country in which there was no inequality. This is so; but also, not so. If you look at the overall figures, then they show that the difference between an ordinary worker and a member of the Politburo wasn’t so great, particularly if you compare it to today’s situation. But in relative terms, the differences in the strata of Soviet society were enormous and constantly grew. For ideological reasons, this growth was hidden by a lack of conspicuous consumption or publicity, and wasn’t apparent right up until the last moment. But when Communism died, the situation got out of hand, and Russia looked like a country with one of the highest levels of inequality. But it’s wrong to say that inequality arose in the ’nineties. Because it was handled badly, the issue of inequality came into the open only in the ’nineties and destroyed the truce that then existed in society.

In the twenty-first century, Russia has been shown to be a country with one of the highest inequality indices in the world (similar to the USA). The gap in earnings and the standard of living of the different strata of society became even more unacceptable when compared to the long-established Soviet habit where people thought of themselves as equal – outwardly, at least. This meant that at the start of the century it was virtually impossible for right-wing ideas to be promoted in any democratic way in Russia. Against the background of the increasingly sharp stratification of society and with nostalgia for the Soviet past clearly growing, any idea that justified the further stratification of society directly or indirectly would simply have been rejected.

People were presented with a difficult choice: accept either the ideas of the right, under which banner the post-Soviet economic reforms were carried out, including the return of the right to private property; or go for the introduction of democracy, which was the purpose of the political reforms. At that particular moment of Russia’s historical development, the ideas of the right and democracy couldn’t be linked together.

It was at that point, finding ourselves in a position where we could re-think many of the old stereotypes, and unexpectedly realising that we were able to look at things from a different point of view, that I suggested to the reformers and the democrats – basically, all those who were ready to look to the future rather than the past, and who could see Russia as a contemporary, modernised state – to make an unambiguous choice in favour of democracy, and to change the banner. My point was that society would no longer accept the ideas of the right (even though the idea hadn’t been discredited in Russia, and the work that was worth doing under this banner was far from completed), and that this had led me to call for “the turn to the left”.

In proposing to make this significant change of direction, I did not, however, become a supporter of Communist or left-wing ideas. I had in mind something different. I understood that the stratification of society had reached dangerous levels, which wouldn’t be considered acceptable. In a country like Russia, adhering to purely libertarian views when carrying out reforms was seen as utopian. The government could no longer be simply a bystander, and would have to take economic and political measures to try to level out the emerging social imbalance. This meant eventually that we would have to part from the dream of seeing “the small state” in Russia, and would have to learn how to govern and control a normal state in a normal way.

Unfortunately, many of those to whom I addressed my plea didn’t listen. Then, for reasons beyond my control, I was unable to participate actively in this discussion, and could merely observe from the sidelines. The backbone of the forces that were resisting the creeping authoritarianism and neo-totalitarianism refused to compromise with the regime. They were brave, sometimes desperate, people, who continued the ideological and political struggle for human rights, against despotism and in favour of democratic values. These people held onto their right-wing, even libertarian, positions, speaking out for the free market, the advantages of capitalism, and the joys of the “small state”. Maybe this was justified, but in that situation it was hardly appropriate or practical.

The situation worsened, because in the absence of any genuine left-leaning ideas in Russia all that remained were fully left-wing or pseudo-left ideas. The ideological and political space was full of actors who played on the older generation’s Soviet nostalgia, and pushed left-wing ideas to have a calming effect on society. Not surprisingly, among the fair-minded critical thinkers who made up civil society there developed a suspicion of the very term “left-wing”. They began to reject everything that was associated with the left, seeing it as simply archaic Soviet thinking. As a result of this, that space was left empty.

As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum, and the ideas of the left were bought by the most unexpected “buyer”: the right-wing regime. If those to whom I addressed my thoughts didn’t listen to me, in the Kremlin they understood only too well the value of left-wing ideas. Of course, I’d suggested that these ideas should be linked to a democratic agenda, but in the Kremlin they seized the programme of the left and instead used it as a means of suffocating democracy and creating post-Soviet authoritarianism. Under the cover of popular slogans about doing battle with the oligarchs, the Kremlin began to spin a false left-wing programme, pretending it was aimed at closing the gap between the rich and the poor, promising to develop wide-ranging social programmes, and advertising their model as that of a welfare state. The height of this populism came in 2007-2008, when they began actively to push the idea of national programmes for healthcare, education, culture and so on.

At first, this undemocratic “turn to the left” began to show very promising political possibilities. Against a background of bountiful profits from the sale of raw materials at very high prices, and with the impression of having stable relations with the West (that made it possible to attract even more credit and investment), they managed to divert significant resources to the social sector, thus raising the standard of living of a reasonable part of the population to near pre-crisis levels, and in some instances even beating Soviet standards. This led to strong support in society for the regime, and led to the well-known pact with the population of “bread in exchange for democracy”, as a result of which the closed authoritarian system began to be formed.

However, Putin’s social paradise didn’t last long. These policies didn’t lead to any kind of new equality. True, compared to the 1990s the incomes and standard of living of the majority of the population rose significantly. But the income of the main beneficiaries of Putin’s policies – the new bureaucrats and the semi-criminal businesses that attached themselves to the Kremlin – rose even more, by almost astronomical amounts. Social stratification not only didn’t go down, but grew noticeably. A new class of oligarchs appeared, Putin’s, made up of his oprichniki, and the incomes of the majority of the old layer of super-rich also grew. What was happening in Moscow at the national level was repeated many times over in the provinces, where the gap between social groups also widened in the same way. An amazing picture appeared. In carrying out verbally a left-wing programme, the regime actually managed to create an even greater division in society, and the growth of inequality in all areas. What’s more, this was done in the most primitive, almost feudal, way.

All the while there wasn’t just a lot of money around but an awful lot of money, the regime didn’t hear any complaints about their pseudo-left agenda. Surplus profits made it possible to buy off the masses painlessly, hardly affecting the rate at which those around the Kremlin were lining their pockets. But such a “lightness of being” corrupts. Increasingly, socialist ideas became mixed in with nationalist and even militaristic ideas. And as is well known, socialism and nationalism can often be a dangerous mix. Specifically, from the very beginning this turn towards nationalist social programmes was accompanied by the ideas outlined in Putin’s Munich speech of 2007. This beginning then saw the seizure in 2008 of two regions from Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and as “Putin’s socialism” reached the peak of its flowering and the well-being of the post-Soviet people was at its height, in 2014 the war against Ukraine was started. Suddenly things ground to a halt. In conditions of war there was no longer enough money to keep supporting the social illusion.

What happened to Putin’s welfare state when the era of hybrid wars began? In short, it drowned.

First of all, after the financial crisis of 2008 the international situation changed and the price of raw materials started to fall.

Secondly, preparation for war and the establishment of a supposedly autonomous military-industrial complex (even one created just for show) is an expensive business, and, what’s more, in a corrupt state it’s an inadmissible luxury even for the strongest budget.

Next, being denied long-term access to global credit markets and trade restrictions because of the imposition of sanctions, is no laughing matter, no matter what they might say on Russian TV’s Channel One. It seems that only those who make the Iskander missiles might find this funny. Everyone else in Russia cried.

Lastly, the most progressive and economically productive part of society began to leave the country en masse: taking out their money and physically departing. Each of us has but one life; and not everyone wants to spend it in an encampment with thugs. A very basic thing happened: incomes fell, and expenses grew sharply. The pie was no longer big enough to feed everyone, and the state had to choose at whose expense they could continue to “raise the country up from its knees”.

So where should a democratically-minded citizen stand on all this? Should they support the right or the left? In fact, the question itself is now wrong. As mentioned above, in the contemporary world the juxtaposition of left and right movements or left and right ideas is insignificant and relative at best. This is especially the case in Russia. Both left and right are now merely tactical moves, not long-term political strategies as they used to be. There is no “left-wing Putin” or “right-wing Trump”. Now it’s all a myth and opportunistic. And, of course, the left and the right in Russia are not at all the same as they are in Europe.

What’s the classic agenda of the right in Europe? It’s the possibility to earn as much as possible and not share it with others, in the first place via taxes that are paid to the state. Therefore both the state and taxes should be small. Another indicator of the right’s agenda is its relationship to over-consumption. Almost everywhere in Europe this is frowned upon, and, in any case, it’s kept within cultural and fiscal boundaries. From this point of view, the Russian government is, in fact, right-wing, because it’s declared a classic right-wing agenda by directly and bluntly having a unique flat tax rate and by the state and society encouraging over-consumption beyond any measure.

We need to speak separately about over-consumption, and its link with the popular topic of anti-corruption. Society doesn’t mind whatever kind of palaces our officials of the state build. Russia isn’t the birthplace of elephants but of special storage facilities for fur coats. And there has to be a surfeit of everything: an Arab scale; African quality; and an elaborate Asian style. And all of it with the pretension to be another Versailles! There are few countries on this planet with such demonstrative over-consumption. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve done this with stolen money or your own.

What’s important here is that in any normal society this would be considered vulgar. But in Russia, it’s decent. Our society – in contrast to the West – reacts perfectly calmly both to a flat tax rate and to barbaric over-consumption. People might not like it, but there’s no class hatred. What’s more, many people will react far more harshly to the slightest privilege displayed by a neighbour than they will to the luxury of an unknown wealthy person. An iron-studded neighbour’s door will anger them more than the forged metal fence around Igor Sechin’s dacha. Let me explain.

The answer is not obvious. It’s more thanks to history and philosophy than politics. When it comes to consumption, Russia retains a rudimentary class structure and, accordingly, a scale of social claims. Therefore, Russians’ claims on the authorities when it comes to social policy are still restricted by class.

People don’t ask for much; but they’ll never give up the little they have. They hold tightly to the status quo and their modest social benefits, and do not wish to lose them even when these benefits are merely of a symbolic, practical significance. The privileges of the upper layers of society bother people much less than many think they do.

At first glance, the story with pension reform is completely irrational. People were very upset by the raising of the pensionable age, even though in a practical sense this move by the government would affect most of them only in the distant future. But this was less of a practical issue than something that upset the balance: it mattered less that their future was being taken away than that psychologically this was an important privilege for the lower levels of society.

In contrast to the West, most Russians recognise class boundaries, and don’t try to break them (an individual might jump over them, that’s fine; but don’t break them). But this notwithstanding, they demand that the quality of life within those class boundaries be maintained and even improved. And if there’s any small lowering of standards, however insignificant in might seem in the grand scheme of things, they will react with howls of protest. The question as to whether it’s possible to break these class barriers in the near future, let alone whether it needs to be done, remains an open one. This question is certainly not at the forefront of people’s minds, because for it to be so there would have to be a genuine revolution in their consciousness.

The class nature of Russian society hinders the development of a genuine left-wing programme in the country. Apart from the nationalisation of the economy, what’s a typical left-wing agenda in Europe? It means a progressive rate of income tax. But there can’t even be any discussion of this in Russia. People simply don’t understand how making things worse for one level of society can improve the situation for their own level. They just don’t see any connection. The 13 per cent tax rate in Russia is simply not considered to be a subject for serious discussion. So in Russia there’s no structured left-wing agenda. It would have to be created, bearing in mind the specifics of the class system.

A properly built social policy is a powerful lever for overturning the pyramid of power. Why is this so important? Putin isn’t a mixed politician; he’s a radical right-winger. The left is simply a false cloak he puts on. As he imitates the technologies of fascist-type leaders, rather like Solaris he changes his mask to suit the situation. Since 2003 he’s been covering up his course with left-wing slogans. But like all of those in his regime who promote a left-wing programme, it’s just for show. There’s actually nothing new in this. Just as there’s no self-rule and no genuine federalism, Putin has no genuine left agenda. He will, though, continue to use the left-wing mask in the future as the situation demands, as his regime becomes ever more decrepit.

Given all this, the situation will only continue to go downhill. Matters will go from bad to worse, since in the global division of labour there’s no place for Russia in the industrial production sphere. That particular conveyor isn’t ours; and, in any case, it’s already taken. Only highly-qualified labour could save us, but unfortunately we’re lowering the prestige of education and cutting off the funding for it. The class nature of society keeps growing. Our children don’t see the value of higher education, and consequently they’ll have nowhere to go when they grow up. It's programmed mass impoverishment.

It’s quite possible that there’s a subconscious political element here: it’s easier to manage a poor society. Poor people’s expectations are lower.

In this way, too, Putin is ensuring that the class system will remain for decades to come. The model is being laid down that means that the majority of the population will be unable to break through to the top because of a lack of qualifications. You can’t evolve out of such a system. You can only smash it.

The regime can be and has to be caught out on this. The democratic movement should put forward a genuine left-wing tactical programme in opposition to the regime’s leftist show. Not an abstract European programme (that wouldn’t work in Russia), but one designed for the reality of the Russian class system. What does a tactical left-wing programme for contemporary Russian conditions look like? It’s nothing supernatural. It’s a combination of two things. A consistent battle against over-consumption and strict guarantees of conservation; and where possible, raising specialised measures of social support for the broad mass of the population.

It seems that it’s impossible to fight against over-consumption in Russia, because there’s no clearly expressed demand for this from society, despite the opposition’s clear anti-corruption campaign. People express their indignation, but this simply borders on philistine curiosity and doesn’t develop into the need for political action. As a result, everything runs into the sand.

There is, though, one small but significant detail. People are ready to accept over-consumption by the fathers, but they’re not prepared to recognise the children’s rights to it. The legitimacy of inheriting large fortunes in Russia, be they in the families of oligarchs or the dynasties of officials remains an open question. Tolerating the class system doesn’t pass on to the next generation. So there’s a window of opportunity for an evolutionary solution to this problem, through the introduction of expropriation taxes for the inheritance of super-large fortunes.

As for social guarantees for wide swathes of the population, Russia is doomed to remain a welfare state where rudiments of Soviet socialism will be around for a long time. Experiments that the regime falls into in a panic from time to time, such as monetising benefits or raising the pensionable age, are unacceptable politically in Russia.

The democratic movement will gain mass support only if they’re able to take a firm and unequivocal position on this question. All financial and fiscal questions have to be solved by increasing the pace of growth of the economy, lowering the cost of corruption and introducing an inheritance tax; but not at the expense of the reserve for benefit payments, which must be left untouched.

To sum up, at the current time the tactical left-wing agenda of the democratic movement could be presented in two parts. On the one hand, phasing out over-consumption through a basic confiscatory tax on the inheritance of overly large fortunes. And on the other, guaranteeing to maintain (and even gradually increase) basic social benefits, primarily in healthcare, education and social security.

Over the last few years, the falseness of the regime’s social policy has been exposed for all to see. The left-wing programme has become a series of ritual excuses. Whilst they’ve continued occasionally to speak of their “national projects”, in reality the government has waged an actual war with its own population for the “optimisation” of social spending. Almost a third of educational and medical establishments have gone under the knife. They’ve even stabbed to death the sacred cow of the socialist past: the low pensionable age. And child benefit has all but faded to nothing because of the devaluation of the rouble, becoming just another miserly routine benefit, and so on.

But another sacred cow has survived: the windfall profits of the ruling clan, that have successfully passed through all the de-offshorisation, the capital increasing both when the funds were taken out of the country, and when they were brought back in. The height of cynicism was the massive redemption by the state of illiquid assets at inflated prices from well-fed entrepreneurs and granting budgetary compensation to those affected by sanctions.

This latter looks particularly disgusting against the background of “the parmesan war”: the counter-sanctions that “bombed Voronezh”, by removing from the middle class their access to quality food products. In this way, and in conditions of a crisis and an undeclared war against the West, the regime managed to realise in practice a typical right-wing agenda: making the poor suffer to compensate the rich. It was less a question of “Crimea is ours” than “Crimea has been taken at our expense”.

If these tendencies continue (and there’s no reason to suppose that they’ll change radically) then the subject of “the turn to the left” will become as relevant as it was 15 years ago. Social division will grow at triple the pace, now not only at the expense of the “new rich”, but also at the expense of the recently-created “new poor”, whose well-being has fallen dramatically as a result of crisis optimisation brought about by the undeclared war. And the subjects of poverty, social inequality and the unjust distribution of resource rent will return to the top of the political agenda. But the regime that’s sunk into a war to try to gather in the slivers of empire will no longer have the ability to take hold of this agenda.

We can assume that the resistance movement will again face the same dilemma as it had at the start of the century: should we make a “turn to the left” and take the democratic path, or choose the ideas of the right and face yet more political isolation?

In conditions of rapidly increasing inequality, when left-wing ideas are gaining ever more adherents in society, reckoning on coming to power by democratic means on the back of a right-wing and ultra-right-wing programme, that’s frequently libertarian, that acclaims the joys of the “small state” and the potential of the free market – this is all an absurd utopia. Acting in this way, that part of civil society that’s most ready to take on the fight risks disappearing forever from the political stage, and passing not just into the stalls but to the upper circle. The stage will be taken over by comedians and speculators.

Once again today we are facing the same conditions as there were when I wrote “The Turn to the Left”. For the opposition it would be an inexcusable luxury to pass up this chance to return to the world of live politics, instead of playing games on Facebook.

If a democratic coalition with a left-wing agenda is unable to come together, then the chances that there’ll be a peaceful transition of power by democratic means aren’t great. The regime will continue to hang by a thread until that thread is cut by a revolution from below, and on the wave of that revolution new Bolsheviks will come to power. If this is the case, there’s a real risk that Russian history will slide into yet another downward spiral, and as a result Russia will disappear from current world history.

Chapter 18. The Intellectual Choice:

Freedom of Speech or Openness that’s Shackled?

Whenever the conversation in Russia turns to discussing the political regime, those who try somehow to classify it inevitably end up with cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, the regime appears undoubtedly authoritarian, repressive and even totalitarian. Those in power are irremovable; the opposition has no chance whatsoever of winning through elections that are merely a formality; any citizen can fall foul of police thuggery at any moment, even if they’re not involved in politics in any way; but if they are involved in politics then they’ve even more chance of being beaten.

It used to be possible to write about all this relatively directly and openly online, and even in certain mass media that was reasonably easy to access. The authorities could be criticised, you could carry out independent investigations, dig the dirt on senior government dignitaries and so on. And basically, they got away with it, although there were individual cases where certain outstanding journalists lost their lives. But such things happen in other countries, too; in recent years, for example, this has occurred in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Malta.

It should be noted that until recently, you could express your opinion in Putin’s Russia more easily than you could in the USSR, even in the most liberal times. Ekho Moskvy Radio, Novaya Gazeta newspaper, the “Rain” [Dozhd’] television channel, a comparatively open Internet and much, much more would have been simply unimaginable in the Soviet Union. You could have been locked up for a long time even for dreaming about such a thing. This is why many people spoke and wrote about Russia as if it were a reasonably free country; at least as a country where there was freedom of speech. Was that justified?

The problem is that freedom of speech in the literal meaning of the words is the highest legal and constitutional principle that the government must adhere to. This freedom is guaranteed by the full force of civil society, and is built into the policy of the state. But there is no such freedom in modern Russia. In its place there is a space, the borders of which are strictly defined by the state, with whose permission, and under whose watchful gaze a native called “Glasnost” is permitted to exist. This old museum piece lives on a reservation allotted to it on the edge of a police state. It’s there to amuse gawkers from the capital or visiting tourists.

Life in the reservation depends entirely on the will of the state: it could shut it off entirely at any moment, but for some unknown reason of its own it hasn’t done this. Apparently, the danger of closing the reservation (with the fuss that this would cause, the need to distract the gawkers with something else, etcetera) for now is considered more dangerous than the threat this openness might bring to the regime. The situation didn’t just happen in an instant but built up historically under the influence of a multitude of factors that were varied and at times contradictory. In order to understand how to get out of this situation and, more importantly, where it might lead, it’s essential to give a brief description of how it evolved.

In the Soviet Union, society was just about as closed as it could be in real life. This closed nature of society gave unique possibilities for state propaganda, which helped the regime to control people’s consciousness, and thus the behaviour of the majority. Herein lies one of the main differences between a totalitarian regime and an authoritarian one. The former relies not only on police repression, but also on the active programming of people’s consciousness and their behaviour with the help of an all-powerful propaganda machine. The present regime doesn’t have anything like this, and I don’t think it will ever succeed in creating it.

From the mid-fifties, when the era of “the great terror” had passed, the main responsibility for maintaining the stability of the Soviet system lay with the state’s propaganda machine. The repressive structures assisted in this, by weeding out those who, for one reason or another, were immune to the propaganda. But such people were relatively few, and so the state’s repressive machinery didn’t have to be kept permanently active. It was working behind the scenes, only occasionally removing those who “thought in a strange way”. Most of the dirty work was done by the “masters of the Party word”.

The state’s propaganda machine was unprecedented in its power and operated at every level of society. Because of this, the population was kept from any true information about what was happening in the country and in the world. It was this that naturally formed the principal front line of the struggle against the regime both inside the USSR and from outside. What annoyed the vast majority of people most in the final years of Soviet power wasn’t the organs of repression, it wasn’t the militia or the KGB, with whom the overwhelming majority of the population had no direct contact, it was actually the Party propagandists, who’d been telling the nation tales that simply didn’t fit in with their own everyday experiences.

We didn’t have to wait long to see the logical conclusion to such a situation. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, effectively the main demand from those at the top and those at the bottom of society was to know the truth. In answer to this political demand, voiced loudly and clearly, the leadership under Gorbachev came up with the slogan of glasnost, openness. Of course, glasnost was a purely Soviet euphemism, reflecting a vague and mythologized view of the Soviet party elite about the related ideas of such liberal values as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, open discussion and so on. It was indeed an extremely inconsistent, limited and internally contradictory ideological concept. But at the same time it’s important to understand that it was the most fundamental, the very first, and the harshest example of perestroika. It was the pinnacle on which everything else was then hung.

Psychologically, from the outset glasnost was seen as the principal achievement of Gorbachev’s revolution, and that opinion remains to this day. It was seen as a focussed response to Soviet totalitarianism, as witnessed by the last generations of the Soviet period. That was why, when the regime began its attack on democracy, and all of the achievements of the revolution brought about by Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were thrown out, glasnost was seen as the last unsinkable bastion of “Communist liberalism”.

For many people, this has created the illusion that some sort of freedom of speech has survived in Russia. In reality, the situation has been much more complicated. Even before the war began there was no freedom of speech in Russia. But the authoritarian, and to some extent even neo-totalitarian, regime partially learnt to co-exist with the remains of Gorbachev’s glasnost, which even brought it some benefits.

Of course the start of the war and the regime’s switching to all-out mobilisation could not but affect this area of life. All of the influential independent and semi-independent media, journalists and bloggers came under unprecedented pressure, as a result of which they had either to stop working, leave the country or go over to the service of the regime.

However, this is the final stage of the development of a dictatorship. We have to understand that we cannot allow this to evolve.

In order to correctly build a strategy to democratise Russian society in the future, it’s essential that we understand the secret of the strange and sometimes unnatural coexistence of the two mutually exclusive beginnings of the life of society: the birth of the truth and the birth of the lie.

The basis of this phenomenon is the regime’s ability to hold the commanding heights of information. It all began when the basic channels of information were taken over by the state and people and structures affiliated to it. The significant moment in this process was the destruction of the old NTV television channel, and the establishment of full control over Channel One by the Presidential Administration. At this point, Channel One became a public broadcasting organisation in name only. Today, the information market in Russia is one of the biggest monopolies.

What’s more, the state directly or indirectly controls not only the pro-government media, but even the bulk of the media that is meant to be on the side of the opposition.

The state’s expansion in this area wasn’t just restricted to the classic media. The growth of the Internet saw the state’s agents move in there, too. A vital border was crossed here when they seized control of the largest social media site in Russia, VKontaktye. Along with this, massive budgetary funds are pumped into various Internet projects through numerous intermediary contractors. Despite the widespread view that much of the Russian part of the Internet opposes the regime, the state is actually the dominant player here, too.

What’s even more important, though, is not the quantity of channels but the quality. It’s not which part of the information sphere belong to the state that really matters, but how it uses it. As a result of the endless efforts the Kremlin has put in over many years, it now dominates the flow of information. Its very aggressive method of pushing out a constant flood of information is like a permanent information war.

This dominant information flow is generated from the Kremlin, and its driving force is the network of obscure Kremlin agents who run specific information resources, often many different ones at once. This is an extremely complicated system, that includes a diverse and decentralised network of think tanks – analytical factories churning out a flow of ideas. It has its own numerous and mostly outsourced production facilities, its own “stars” and its own “cannon fodder”. This system is much more fine-tuned and sophisticated than the coercive repressive bloc, which is not surprising; until recently, it played a key role in stabilizing the regime.

It was this powerful state-controlled information flow that allowed the regime to keep a weak and limited alternative information stream nearby on the reservation, the noise of which was almost inaudible to the masses, since it was drowned out by the roar of the main flow. At the same time, while allowing glasnost to play around in the information sandpit, the regime kept strict control over the doses of information it permitted in the “market-place”, verifying how much was allowed as if it were using a chemist’s scales. This means that it has to have indirect control over the opposition media, and this control has been steadily increasing. Any attempt to break out of the “sandpit” led to rows and the opposition being roughly forced back into line.

But any complicated system is rather brittle. What works on small scale protests starts to shudder and crash on large ones. With ever increasing political loads on the system, it becomes more and more difficult to generate the flow they need. What’s more, the interference created by alternative information currents that are confined to the reservation, is becoming more obvious and more dangerous for the system. As a result, they’ve had to amend the system and make the dominant flow full-on. This signified the end of the era of truncated, post-modern glasnost and a return to the full and simple Soviet method.

By its very nature, glasnost is very vulnerable. It’s a secondary device and is derived from the authorities themselves. Starting in 1999 – that is, throughout the whole period of post-Communist reaction – we’ve been witnessing the regime’s attack on glasnost by limiting the space available to it, both directly and indirectly. All the time there was a genuine threat of a complete clampdown on glasnost, and when the regime decided to carry this out, no one and nothing could stop it. It’s another matter that this brings unpleasant and irreversible consequences not only for society, but also for the regime itself. It will not only slow it down, but it’ll hasten its end.

Well, you might say, to hell with them, let them screw things down as mush as they want! But the important thing is not just when the regime will collapse, but what will take its place. This is why, of course, the defence of any kind of glasnost has a huge significance for the democratic movement.

No matter how illusory truth shut up in a reservation may be, it’s better than a lie that’s wandering around freely. We must fight for every word of truth; we must do battle against any attempt by the regime to get rid of glasnost once and for all; we have to do all we possibly can to help journalists and publications that heroically continue to stand up to totalitarianism, even if now most of them are doing this from abroad. But this shouldn’t be our strategic goal. We shouldn’t be aiming to fully restore glasnost, but to create rock-solid constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.

We need a qualitatively improved leap forward in our policy of openness. I must emphasise that simply turning the clock back now to the time of Vladimir Yakovlev’s Kommersant newspaper, or Igor Malashenko’s NTV television channel is no longer enough. What suited the young, post-Soviet society wouldn’t suit a society that has gained great and varied experience in fighting for democracy. Even if we were to ignore what Putin has sliced off it, Gorbachev’s version of glasnost is no longer the ideal that we should be striving for.

We have to go further, to a fully free and open information market, regulated by very precise laws. Only such a market, where there is genuine competition, can guarantee that the right to freedom of speech will be ensured.

Of course, a free market environment would solve some problems and at the same time create new ones that society would then have to find the answers to. But this doesn’t change my choice of the strategic direction we must move in: competition and the market should provide society with genuine openness.

It stands to reason that only a properly functioning democratic political system can provide freedom of speech. This means there would have to be genuine separation of powers, a properly functioning justice system and so on, and, most importantly, society’s readiness to protect this freedom using armed force if necessary. If freedom of speech is political currency, then it has to be guarded by the whole democratic infrastructure of society. But alongside all of these general guarantees, there are specific measures, including institutional ones, without which there can be no freedom of speech.

Among these specific measures there are economic and political ones. Each of these help to achieve the single main aim: not only to prevent the state from limiting freedom of speech, but also to remove the possibility that the state could begin another such predominant information flow, thanks to which the regime manages to manipulate the population with the help of lies, notwithstanding the “islands of freedom” that would be built into the system. The democratic movement must use the experience of post-Communist neo-totalitarianism to ensure that this mistake is not repeated.

I’ll start with the economic measures.

However paradoxical this may seem, the main problem for the Russian press is not censorship, but poverty. The main challenges in the battle for freedom in the last two decades were not fought on the political front, as many think, but on the economic front. There has never been truly economically independent media in post-Communist Russia. Up until the default of 1998 the media retained some freedom of maneouvre – they had the freedom of choice as to “who they depended on”, and therein lay their specific freedom. From then on, the process began of the state completely taking over the media, and around 2006 to 2008 it became the sole donor, directly or indirectly. It was at that point that the fiercest and most frightening blows were rained down on the freedom of the press and, consequently, freedom of speech, and they’ve never been able to recover from this.

Furthermore, in order to give independent media systemic and transparent support and to help them out of difficulty, the government made use of the situation and carried out a large-scale, indirect nationalisation of the independent media by taking the place of the previous owners – often by way of raiding seizures and criminal methods. “Production” was “balanced” between various state-owned companies and financial and industrial groups affiliated with the regime. In time, the state (as the owner or sponsor) took indirect control over all the more or less significant information resources. The picture looks even more depressing when you turn from the giants of the media market to the provincial press, which was already in a dire state.

At first sight, an ideal solution to the problem might appear to be to create normal market conditions for the media, both the traditional media and online, where the state would take on the role of impartial arbiter and regulator. But unfortunately, global practice shows that nowadays this doesn’t work anywhere. Increasingly the media is either a subsidized ancillary business, or else exists on sponsorship funds, made on the basis of a variety of motives, including political ones.

Very few countries get by without having the media subsidised by the state; but it’ll be a long time before Russia can be counted in their number. Therefore, it’s important for us to see how exactly subsidising the media from budgetary funds is organised and how exactly the management of mass media subsidised from budgetary funds is organised. By answering these two questions in sequence, we will largely solve the problem of neutralising the totalitarian claims of the state to form the dominant information flow described above.

If it’s the unavoidable that the media needs to be subsidised from the national budget, then we must ensure that this is transparent, and that neither individual officials nor their corporations benefit from these subsidies. Or, to put it more simply, that they couldn’t demand a lot of small services for every “vitamin fed (to the press)”. All that the state does in the field of information must be done in the interests of society and under society’s control, and not in the interests of the bureaucracy and controlled by the bureaucrats.

Budget funds that are dedicated to support the media must be above board, politically neutral, and allocated on a competitive basis with the participation of the public. Any secret funding of media projects by the state (such as the infamous “troll factories”) must be forbidden by law, and we have to put an end to the era of spending on “specialised journalism” coming out of government funds.

If we manage to stabilise the information market and create the conditions for the rise of a variety of free media sources that can exist either on their own resources (in other words, to be independent financially), or to have government support that’s transparent and controlled by society, then we can focus on the second side of the problem: ensuring political guarantees of the independence of the media. If we don’t, in addition to the state making a slave of the media, it’ll directly invade the information space, actively abusing its position and its resources, perhaps less financially than administratively.

If we think about it, we have a limited number of tools at our disposal to do battle against state propaganda without limiting freedom of speech in Russia. In reality, the state plays a dual role in the media market: as a regulator that sets the rules of the game, and as a player itself. What we want from the state as a regulator is obvious: ensuring a fair competitive environment and guaranteeing freedom of speech for everyone. But what do we want from the state as a player? This is a rather more difficult one to answer. As the founder of various elements of the media, the state automatically has a great opportunity to influence their policies. But the state is a particular type of owner. In theory, we are the owners, because the state is spending not its own money, but every citizen’s money. So what should happen?

Countries with a developed democratic system found the answer to this a long time ago. Information resources that have been created by the state or with the state’s help are entrusted to be managed by representatives of civil society. Trusts or social bodies are in charge of state television and other information sources affiliated to the state. These are directly made up of representatives of civil society. By law, the state cannot influence their membership, and in practice such a possibility is completely ruled out. The procedure for creating these bodies is carried out as transparently as possible, which ensures that their composition is independent of the authorities and respected by society. Any violations, conspiracy or pressure being applied is considered to be a criminal act. The activities of these institutions are regulated by special statutes (rules), which exclude the possibility of legally turning these resources into tools for manipulating public opinion in the interests of certain groups or individuals.

And the last point; last, that is, in order, but not in terms of its significance. Freedom of speech and openness were, and remain, the most important measurement of democracy: they are the cloth that binds society together. Protecting them from attack by any kind of watchdog, whoever that might be, is the most important task of the democratic movement. But freedom of speech can also be subtly used by those whose goal is the destruction of all freedom. It’s very tempting not to allow them this freedom.

The subtlety of freedom of speech lies in the fact that in this battle it’s easier than anywhere else to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s possible to organise such a fight against state propaganda or some other evil that people won’t consider it sufficient, and instead of appalling propaganda, you’ll see even more appalling counter-propaganda. However awful it may seem, we have to admit that any word has the right to be free. We have to be careful with any attempt to limit what can and what cannot be said, written, shown, or broadcast. If you want to ban any single word at all, it could soon turn out to your great surprise that you’ve forbidden the use of a whole dictionary.

My personal position on this is that if there’s any doubt at all, then rather like the principle that the law is on the side of the accused, we should come down in favour of freedom of speech. It’s better that someone should be allowed to say something disgusting than someone should be denied the opportunity to learn something important and essential. The priority that freedom should come before any restrictive measures is the main principle that should be adhered to so as not to stray from the course.

I remain convinced that, for example, the incredibly boring Mein Kampf, full as it is of hatred for mankind, and the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion, just like the secret clauses to the agreement between Hitler and Stalin, should be available to anyone who’s interested in reading them, and should not become some sort of secret knowledge.

It can be very difficult to carry this out in practice, even psychologically. But we have to learn this and other than simply banning it, find alternative methods of suppressing the appearance of extremism in all its manifestations.

We have to learn to live in a world where we exist alongside things that we find unacceptable. The most important thing is that that world is genuinely stable and comfortable.

Chapter 19. The Constitutional Choice:

a Parliamentary Republic or a Presidential One?

Arguments about whether there should be a presidential or a parliamentary republic in Russia continually flare up and die down in the country’s political discussions. From a purely utilitarian point of view, this doesn’t seem out of place, and rather reminds one about dividing up the skin of a bear that isn’t dead yet. A lot of people say, “let’s first work out the democratic contents that we can dress up in an acceptable political format, then we’ll talk”. That’s all well and good, but there’s one small problem: the political content has grown up alongside the political format. In fact, it’s grown up with it so strongly that if we don’t get rid of the political format around it then we won’t be able to fill it with any other content.

So the question of how Russia’s political format will look in the future is neither speculative nor premature. The answer to this is a kind of political litmus test, illustrating a serious intention to break the Russian tradition of autocracy and the preparedness to carry this through to the end, and not simply swop one type of autocracy for another, and even less, one tsar for another. This is not a question of the constitutional structure, but of political philosophy, and thus it is a deeply ideological question. Perhaps this is why it has to be settled before anything else can be.

Indeed, the constitutional and legal significance of the political format in Russia has been somewhat exaggerated. In all seriousness, you can’t simply argue that a parliamentary republic is more democratic than a presidential one or vice-versa. Across the world experience shows that within both presidential and parliamentary models an acceptable format can be created for free representation of the people with a built-in and effective separation of powers. At the same time, any political format can be cut down to fit any authoritarian or even totalitarian system. It’s worth reminding ourselves that, formally, the USSR was a parliamentary republic. It’s more important to integrate all executive power, including the president, into a system of the division and balance of power. So what’s the issue here?

The issue is Russia’s specific situation – the peculiarities of its political history, culture and traditions. People frequently talk automatically about Russia as a presidential republic. That is, to say the least, a massive exaggeration. Not only is Russia not presidential (despite it having a president), but in the exact meaning of the term it’s not even a republic. Over the last hundred years, no ruler of the Russian state has come to power through free and fair and definitely democratic elections. (Even Boris Yeltsin’s victory in June 1991 was achieved thanks to regional elections within the Soviet empire.)

The history of twentieth century Russia is rather like the history of Rome in the era of the “soldier emperors” – in most cases, the irremovable dictators either ruled the country until their death, or were overthrown by a coup. Sometimes these went together. In the same way, autocracy was and is to this day the only natural political format for Russia. To be more precise, it’s the format and the contents all at the same time. And, as the first “red tsar”, Lenin, wrote, this is an objective fact, handed down to us through the generations. How we react to this fact is the main question for the future of Russia and the main political watershed.

The question is this: are we prepared ruthlessly to break this long-established Russian tradition of autocracy, or, despite all of the democratic slogans, in the depths of our souls do we wish still to search for a good tsar who will grant Russia freedom – however paradoxical that may seem? If we choose a presidential model, then there is far more likelihood in the future that the autocratic instincts will rise to the surface of Russia’s political culture once again and give the authorities much greater scope to move away from democratic methods than would a parliamentary model.

This is the main – indeed, the single – reason why I consider that a parliamentary republic is the preferred option for the Russia of my dreams. We have messed around too much by experimenting with personalised models of power, which is why today we need to boldly cut right to the bone. However many times we’ve played with the Lego bricks of the Russian political system, we’ve always ended up with the same result. It’s like the old joke about the worker stealing all sorts of spare parts from the factory. Whenever he got them home and started putting them together, he always ended up with a Kalashnikov rifle. Similarly, however many presidents of Russia you try to put together from various constitutional bits and pieces, you’ll always end up with a tsar.

Even though a presidential republic is usually considered to be the opposite of a parliamentary republic, considering the very many formats that you can find of both presidential and parliamentary systems, understanding the subtle differences between them is not so easy. The key question ultimately is the depth of the separation of powers and the exact way in which this is laid out. There’s an extra dimension provided for the separation of powers in a parliamentary republic: the division of power within the executive branch of government, into the head of state and the head of the executive.

So in a parliamentary republic we have this extra dimension of democracy. And the division of the executive can be very varied. The head of state can be a completely nominal figure (such as the British King, as in other constitutional monarchies); or they can play a specific political role as an arbiter (like in modern Italy); or they can carry out an important and even decisive role in power (as in France, which is a very specific type of presidential-parliamentary republic). There are no general rules or set standards in this issue.

The choice of a specific type of parliamentary republic is the key question in creating a reliable constitutional structure. To a large extent, forming an efficient model demonstrates great skill in constitutional creativity. All the successful working models of democracy have come about as a result of a creative instinct and a deep understanding of the peculiarities of a national culture.

The reality is that societies show much more clearly defined individuality than do individuals. Nevertheless, there are certain principles that can be used in any circumstances to create models that work.

One of the basic principles for building a parliamentary republic is that there’s a relationship between parliament and the government. Whatever different types of parliamentary republic there might be, one factor is always a constant: both the chairman of the government and the whole government are beholden to parliament, which appoints them and can get rid of them.

Why is this important in Russia specifically? Because parliament’s shares will immediately rise on the political market. The same shares that until today have been classified as worthless on the Russian institutional exchange. They were bought up only by “bears”, playing for a fall. If parliament becomes the only body that can appoint and fire the government, then the hour of the “bull” will come to Russia. And at that point not only will parliament’s shares rise, but all those of the democratic cluster linked to it.

If parliament occupies the central institutional place in Russia’s political system, then the value of a member’s seat will also rise, leading to the same across the whole electoral procedure.

This would also mean that holding elections for candidates based solely on their personal appeal, as usually happens with Russia’s presidential election, will become much more difficult. Along with this, the value of regional representation in both houses will also rise sharply, because the quantity and quality will be directly related to satisfying the daily needs of the local population. In other words, the system of federal relations will have true significance, instead of the current situation, whereby in the strictly centralised, unitary state it’s a mere bauble. In its turn, this will pull up with it the compensatory development of local self-government, with the aim of not allowing Russia to return to feudalism and the appearance of individual principalities.

So the switch to a parliamentary republic is the key element that can pull along with it the whole chain of democratic events.

Naturally, the change to a system of parliamentary democracy from autocracy and the strongly centralised personal system of government that’s existed in Russia for centuries, will be a political shock. But it’s an unavoidable and essential shock.

The move to a parliamentary republic is the only real possibility to relieve the political system in Russia, and this is why – and for no other reason – this demonstrates its superiority over a presidential republic.

“That’s all well and good,” the opponents of a parliamentary republic usually reply, “but do we have the right to carry out such experiments in Russia? It’s a massive country with a very specific way of life, and people are used to the idea that power is personalised. People won’t understand or value your well-intentioned plans, they will neither be able to take advantage of this parliamentary democracy, nor would they want to, and the whole thing will collapse into anarchy and chaos. Added to this, Russia is still an empire, a huge melting pot, in which representatives of the most varied nationalities and confessions are mixed together, and they’ve never been citizens of a nation state. If you take out the figure of the ruler who’s the very personification of power (however they’re called), the country will break into pieces!”

How do you answer that one? These are not risks that have been simply dreamt up. They exist. The problem is that they don’t grow any less when we switch from one personal regime to another. If we don’t alter the way Russian statehood develops, then every subsequent regime, however much it promises, will in a few years or even months inevitably become an autocracy. And each autocracy will be worse than the previous one; we can have no doubt about that. And in the end what happens is exactly what the opponents of parliamentary democracy are afraid of: the country will fall apart. But by then there’ll be no hope of saving it and it’ll be forever. At least a parliamentary republic would give us the chance to fight.

All of this comes down not so much to a practical political choice so much as an ideological one. Do you think that an attempt to break the personalised model of governance in Russia creates unacceptable risks? If you do, then you’re absolutely right.

But then a question arises. What are your essential disagreements with the pro-government forces that hold similar positions? Of course, in order to save Russia, they propose preserving “cave absolutism”, while you hope to rule for a long time with the help of “enlightened absolutism”. But 500 years of Russian absolutism have taught us that “the grey ones” are always followed by “the black ones”.

The personal model is like a political drug for Russia. No one denies that the country firmly adopted this a long time ago, way before Putin came along. Coming off such a drug could break society; and it’s not impossible that the process could even lead to life-threatening situations. But does this mean that we should therefore simply accept this political dependency and not try to turn away from the needle of autocracy?

***

At this point in my first draft I had written a number of paragraphs that I later had to delete. I wrote them long before “Tereshkova’s amendment” was added to the Constitution. I admit that I wrongly assumed that there would be a rather higher intellectual level among the people (or person) who were examining the options for such a change; but I’m ready to reassess the talents of my opponents.

The authorities chose to go down the most primitive, direct and blunt route.

Rather than reforming the Constitution, we saw its destruction, so that Putin could continue in the post of president. The result of this has been war, which has sparked the discussion again, with renewed vigour. Russia has two models of sustainable development: the static equilibrium model (autocracy), and the dynamic balance model (the federal one). Of course, Russia is under no obligation to develop. The alternative to sustainable development is stagnation and collapse. However, I believe that the stagnation and collapse of Russia that, understandably, those who are fighting against Russian aggression might wish for, could cause a drastic imbalance in the system of international relations, and create in the heart of Eurasia a group of aggressive and poorly-run (even out of control) bankrupt states armed with nuclear weapons. The genuine and desired choice for reliable players on the international stage is not one between the collapse of Russia or its continued existence, but one between the autocratic (static) and parliamentary (dynamic) models of its sustainable development.

Another version of autocracy seems to be the simplest solution for many, including opponents of the Putin regime; but in reality this is a very unreliable option. A regime that is static and stable thanks to tough centralisation and where the authorities have unlimited power sooner or later will lead to trouble in society. Such a system will be able to extinguish this only by creating distractions in the outside world. Even without this, war is a fundamental component of autocracy, upon which everything else is constructed. And autocratic regimes, including the Bolshevik one, are unstable in the long term (their apparent stability is only relative). They are built on the constant search for a consensus among the elite through democratic centralism. This has a significant vulnerability: as the number of participants in the process increases, the number of connections between them increases geometrically. And the single point – the head of the system – who should take the final decisions becomes no longer capable of acknowledging or taking into account all of these various opinions. As a way of solving this problem, the centre turns to unification – totalitarianism – which once again sets in motion a whole complex of historical problems.

In any mid-term perspective, Russia’s system of autocracy has a clearly defined militaristic profile. This is almost completely independent of the ideology it starts out with or the personality of the national leader. As the system matures, the ideology takes on a radically nationalistic appearance and the leader becomes a military ruler. If the West were to prefer an autocratic (static) civilisation for Russia, it would be choosing an inevitable recurrence of the crisis with the unavoidable consequence of aggression directed against the West itself. Each subsequent crisis would be greater than the previous one, and overcoming it would lead to the threat of sliding into an uncontrollable nuclear conflict. We’d be falling into an absurd endless historic downward spiral, where each subsequent version of Russia was worse than its predecessor.

The alternative to an autocratic, static, civilisation could be dynamic, federal, parliamentary stability. What I am proposing would create a dynamic political balance between a limited number of subjects of the new federation (up to 20), with the central authorities playing the role of arbiter and director. The difference between the autocratic and federal models for stabilisation lies in the mechanism for solving conflicts. In the autocratic model, all internal conflicts would be dealt with by the central authorities crushing them using illegal political violence, and the more this is detached from society, the more effective it would be. On the other hand, in the federal model all internal conflicts would be decided by a constant search for innumerable temporary compromises within the confines of a specially-created legal and political framework. In this instance, the central authorities could de facto be even stronger than in autocracy; but this strength would be demonstrated by the authorities’ ability to control the framework, not control the players within the framework.

The problem with the federal model is that it’s complicated and fluid. It’s a model of constant conflict that’s laid in the foundation of the political system as part of its terms of reference. There’s just one advantage of the federal system over the autocratic one: internal disturbances don’t accumulate, but are constantly resolved swiftly within the permanent struggle of the elites. As a result, there’s no need for external aggression as the only possible solution for the long-term stability of the system. However, to ensure that the uninterrupted resolution of the disagreements that are continuously emerging among the elite are not put down by the fear of repression, the mechanism of a rigid super-presidential republic with a shift in the balance of power towards a non-executive central government is not suitable. If this were so, there will always be the temptation to return to freezing conflicts “according to concepts” and stabilizing the system in the habitual way. All it would take would be for there to be one strong ruler and the system would inevitably slip back into the old rut. I believe that the federal system can work exclusively in the format of a parliamentary republic; in other words, as a federal parliamentary republic. The parliamentary system of government answers two demands in the best possible way: it allows you quickly to resolve regional conflicts among the elite, and doesn’t allow the system easily to slip back into the old rut.

The depth of the West’s understanding of Russia’s problems, and the West’s position on this, will play a huge role in the success or failure of the project for a new Russia. The West must choose between an instinctive, superficial approach, and a rational, considered one. Instinctively it’s easier for the West either to dream of the collapse of Russia (giving no thought to the consequent global risks that would bring), or to try to establish an autocracy with which it can have good relations (not taking into account the inevitability that these good relations would inevitably turn sour).

The instinctive reaction is convenient because it doesn’t rely on any participation on the part of the West. It gives Russia the opportunity to continue to stew in its own juice. The rational approach demands efforts from the West, similar to those that the USA took after the Second World War to assist the rebuilding of the political process in Europe. In other words, it means the West being engaged both politically and ideologically. In this the West must also avoid the temptation in the transitional period to split Russia up into separate parts, thus weakening the central authorities’ ability to act as a political arbiter.

Turning Russia into a stable federation is a long-term historical project, and in the first place it’s in the West’s interests. This is not a duty to Russia, but a rational decision, that would make the world order safer and more predictable for a significant period in the future.

Chapter 20. The Legal Choice:

the Dictatorship of the Law or a State Based on the Rule of Law?

If you were to carry out an opinion poll and ask passers-by on the street what they think a state governed by the rule of law is, the vast majority would answer: “it’s a state where people obey the law”. This is close to the truth, but it’s not true! If it were so, the ideal example of a state governed by the rule of law would be the Third Reich. Whatever else, that was a state where the laws were obeyed, and the commandant of a concentration camp who was caught taking a bribe could easily end up as an inmate, although there were cases where corrupt officials were simply transferred to other duties. Anyway, it’s not so much the observance of the law, as it is the nature of the laws themselves.

A state governed by the rule of law is a state where the laws are observed according to certain criteria. What are these criteria? And why is this so important?

From time immemorial, those in power have clothed their will in the form of laws, and demanded that the population obeyed these laws; the people had to bow to the will of the authorities. This is the kind of archaic understanding of what is “lawful” that still dominates in Russia. With their class approach to what was “just”, Lenin and the Bolsheviks didn’t drift far from this archaic understanding. “The dictatorship of the law”, that they so love to talk about in the Kremlin, is the dictatorship of the unbridled wild will of one clan that has usurped power and has had unchallenged control over the Kremlin for more than two decades.

The law and the dictatorship that the Kremlin praises so highly exists for one reason only: to try to give an apparent legitimacy to naked despotism. One of the most unpleasant consequences of such a situation is the inability of the system to adapt to any constructive evolution. Violence simply leads to more violence. And hoping that unjust laws will over time develop naturally into just laws is simply a utopian dream.

Specifically, one of the main reasons why mankind has sought a way of escaping from unjust laws is the desire to avoid revolution as the only way to achieve changes in society.

All of those who have genuinely thought deeply about revolution have understood that it’s a difficult but unavoidable price that society has to pay to history in order to achieve progress. This price became unavoidable specifically because the laws that were in operation were designed in such a way as to prevent any change, in practice or in theory.

It’s from here that the attitude has developed that revolution is a necessary evil. Loving a revolution and wishing for it to happen is as foreign to our nature as it would be to wish pain on ourselves and those around us. (There are, of course, those who do like this and receive pleasure from becoming involved in the chaos of revolution.) But in a hopeless situation, the majority of the population will see revolution simply as a lesser evil.

If life under the old regime becomes intolerable, if all of the internal contradictions associated with this regime are brought together in one unbreakable mess, if all the legal routes point simply to a continuation of this despotism, then inevitably thoughts turn to the sword that can cut the Gordian Knot. This is so inevitable that it isn’t worth devoting a great deal of attention to it.

A revolution happening in Russia is simply a question of when and where. A little less obvious is the question of what it will look like. But what is certainly worth considering is what measures should be taken that could help Russia in the long run to tear itself out of its historical vicious circle, where a revolution begins after every shock. The only way to do this is to move from having unjust laws to having just laws.

There seems to be an easy answer to every question: we have to make the laws constitutional. But this is too simple.

Firstly, purely formally all of the current laws appear on the surface to be in line with the Constitution. You won’t find it written in the preamble or the text of any law, even the most disgraceful, that it was passed in opposition to the spirit or letter of the Constitution.

Secondly, what the spirit of the Constitution is, is something that everyone in Russia understands in their own way; and sometimes this is rather unique.

Finally, only judges can have an opinion about the constitutionality of laws in Russia…and we all know who the judges are in Russia. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the unconstitutionality of laws is covered over by law enforcement practice; but the paradox is that the practice itself has long ago become part of the law. This is indirectly confirmed by the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which is often forced to speak out about laws in the specific way that they’re given by law enforcement practice. So trying to change this practice without changing the laws just won’t work.

So simple solutions don’t work. We have to dig much deeper, until we get to those factors that make laws just, and not rely on the Constitution, which is useless for this task. Strictly speaking, there are two such circumstances: laws become legal due to a certain procedure for their adoption, and due to their compliance with certain principles.

Separately, each of these conditions is insufficient. Both the procedure and the contents are important here. In short, a law can be considered just if it’s passed by the only legitimate legal body: a genuine parliament that’s truly independent from other branches of government, and has been elected according to a democratic electoral law.

The reason for this is clear. A just law should be an expression of the consolidated will of the whole of civil society, and not that of the will of a single ruler, nor of a clan or class group that has seized power. It’s this consolidated will that legitimises the obligatory nature of laws, and is the basis for the authorities to demand its strict observance by all.

Parliament is the melting pot in which the political will of civil society becomes the text of the law.

If we look more closely at the work of parliament, we see that as well as the consolidation of the political will of various sections of civil society, each of which has its own specific interests, it also has another function. Parliament brings together the simple view with the qualified – expert – view, on any question that’s become a topic of discussion in society.

This is why it’s so important that parliament is independent both from the executive and from the society that’s elected it (for the period of its term, of course, and not permanently).

In parliament the political will of the ordinary voter is passed through the sieve of expert analysis. And the other way round: the opinions of the leading experts are subjected to the scrutiny of the highest political expertise.

It is vital to maintain this balance. What we’ve seen in the past few years is that the expert opinion that the government has called upon has overruled the view of civil society. As a result, laws have simply stopped operating, or are just not accepted by society.

Incidentally, the dictatorship of society would lead to the same result, but from the opposite side: this would lead to the breakdown of politics.

The procedure for passing just laws is extremely complicated, which is why it’s so important. There are an awful lot of minute details involved in it, many of which seem to be dry and formal; yet none of them can be neglected. This system has built up over centuries, even thousands of years, and has absorbed international political experience. And it’s particular for every culture and for every specific historic situation.

Russia will have to carefully comprehend and master this experience of parliamentaryism. And not just so as to blindly imitate or simplify it, but in order to develop a suitable system on the basis of this experience. When it operates normally it will allow for the adoption of just laws.

It’s essential to add that even the best format cannot alter the need for the correct content. Even the optimum parliament, which represents the political will of civil society and where there’s the perfect balance of social and expert opinion, is no guarantee that its laws will be just (although without the parliament they certainly won’t be just). These laws must meet certain criteria; that is, they should be built on certain principles that are based neither on time nor territory.

These principles are literally political axioms, that are accepted a priori by liberal democracy, like a faith.

Paradoxically, it doesn’t matter whether they’re written in the Constitution, carved in granite, or exist merely in the minds of citizens. There are countries that don’t have a written constitution but in which these principles are closely adhered to. Yet there are other countries that have detailed constitutions and have these principles written down for every eventuality of life, yet none of them are kept. What matters is not what’s written or where it’s written, but what people consider to be vital.

In my view, one of these basic principles is the idea of freedom. This isn’t surprising. After all, in its own way the law is a measure of freedom. This concept of the law developed as a result of the marriage of the traditions of Western antiquity (from the Greeks and the Romans), and from Christianity. We can extend this to say that herein lies the basis of Europeanism and the modern age.

If we consider our ability to accept such a concept of the law and of just laws we can judge whether Russia is ready to be a European country. All other indicators are less relevant or indicative.

In order to understand whether a particular law is just or not, it must be examined under this political microscope. And whatever formal relationship or coincidence of language there may be with any other law, this is not proof of whether or not a law is just. It’s especially important to stress this, bearing in mind the Kremlin’s habit of pointing to international practice and covering up its despotism by the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which it’s made impotent.

Indeed, laws are passed about gatherings, about extremism, about showing disrespect to the authorities or about mass unrest, on pre-trial agreements with the investigators, on summary proceedings in criminal cases and so forth. We constantly hear how in Russia everything’s the same “over there” as it is “here”; it’s even far better “here”.

Yes, if we’re talking about the way laws are drawn up then we have a lot in common. But here’s the rub: the same way of doing things works differently in different political situations and produces different results. This proves just one thing: comparing the way systems work doesn’t work. We have to look more closely at the details.

In each and every case we have to consider the actual economic and socio-political situation, and ask whether a particular law defends the rights and freedoms of the individual or not.

And it’s not as easy to do this as many seem to think. The principle of freedom is often contrary to other principles and values that are guaranteed by the Constitution. For example, freedom of procession and assembly clearly restrict the rights of those who have no intention of processing or assembling and who just want to have a quiet and tasty meal in a café on the same boulevard. This is a genuine contradiction. So what can we do?

We could decide in favour of those who are taking part in the procession, who are clearly in the minority; or we could rule in favour of those who want to relax in a normal manner; they’re clearly the majority. The Russian authorities decide this in a contradictory fashion, of course, to their own advantage, but in doing so support the majority, who always want to eat. Thus the laws on gatherings in Russia are really just like those in Europe; but in reality they operate in the mythical land of Asiope.

This is because a conflict shouldn’t be decided in favour simply of the majority or the minority, but in favour of freedom as a stand-alone value. In this particular case, the question should be decided in such a way that the freedom of political action is defended.

It is only a law that has this as its basis that can be considered just.

It’s interesting to note that in the years that Putin’s been in power, Russia has undoubtedly distanced itself from Europe and moved closer to Asiope. Some adherents of the dictatorship of the law have even gone so far as to propose revising the hierarchy of the branches of legislation that have been generally accepted since Soviet times, arguing that at the top of the pyramid we should have not constitutional, but criminal law. This, of course, is another loyalist stupidity, but at the same time it is very indicative.

These are the people who say “the law” and mean “autocracy”. And when they talk about “autocracy” they have in mind “the law”.

Why have I spent so much time on this apparently abstract and deeply philosophical question? Because it’s fundamental. There are certain things that you don’t need to prove to anyone. Among those who are opposed to the regime there is agreement that the current law enforcement and judicial system are anti-constitutional and in need of deep revolutionary change. There have been many suggestions as to how this could be done, and most of them aren’t meaningless and are very useful.

Multi-page, detailed reports and brilliant short essays have been written that are full of specific suggestions and complete reform projects. The general outlines are clear. The competence of jury trials should be expanded; the independence of the courts strengthened; the FSB should be transformed from a “second government” into a body focused on combating terrorism and espionage; in general the special services should be disaggregated and diversified; there should be a radical change in the role of the prosecutor’s office; and much more besides. But all of these suggestions will be useless unless the main revolution takes place: inside people’s heads. Nothing will change if people don’t understand the essence of what the concept of just laws really is.

Any structure can be shortened, any mechanism can be perverted, any guarantee can be circumvented if there’s no agreement on the main principle: the criterion by which the success or failure of reforms is judged. And here there is just one criterion: freedom. It is the priority of freedom that overturns the unjust law and accepts the just law; and overturns the dictatorship of the law, that’s dangerous for society (and acts merely as a fig leaf for a new autocracy), and makes the state governed by the rule of law.

Chapter 21. The Moral Choice:

Justice or Mercy?

Max Weber once noted that if you scratch the most rational theory you’ll find that it’s based on some totally irrational idea that we accept on faith. This idea brings together everything that we regard as completely rational and logical.

It’s also the case that at the root of any political programme lies some kind of moral imperative that we vote for not with our minds but with our hearts. This voting with the heart is more important than voting using your intellect. In most cases, logical mistakes can be corrected; but moral errors are usually fatal.

It’s generally accepted that the fundamental moral imperative in politics is justice. Society reacts angrily to any violation of the balance of justice, and if the pendulum swings too far then the balance may be restored by means of a revolution. Yet if you ask the average person what’s the essence of justice, very few can give you an answer. However, ask someone whether they think that Russia is today run “fairly”, then the vast majority – including many supporters of the regime – will answer with a categorical “no”.

In a nutshell, this is the regime’s main problem. On the moral level, it’s rejected by the majority of those who usually ignore politics. The restoration of justice can be delayed, but it can’t be avoided. Sooner or later, this secret political lever will start to operate and turn the next page of history.

You’d think that there would be nothing simpler then bringing morality back into politics: all you have to do is restore justice. But when you look closely at justice, nothing is as simple as it might have seemed.

First of all, each person has their own idea of what justice means, and it’s very difficult to find a definition of what everyone would consider as “justice”. Secondly, and more importantly, the price of restoring the balance of justice frequently seems exorbitant. We must never forget that the Bolshevik Revolution took place on the crest of a wave of a search by the Russian people for justice, and its sworn aim was specifically the creation of the most just society in the world. But what it ended up as was in an even more unjust society, that lasted for decades.

So the search for justice must itself be done in a balanced way. We have to find a balance for the balance, so as not to turn history into an hour glass, using a revolution to turn it over from time to time. Every time that we have the intention to “destroy the world to its foundations by violence, then build our new world”, we are simply – like in the joke quoted above – “making our own Kalashnikov rifle”, that we use over and over again to destroy both Russian civil society and the green shoots of a state governed by the rule of law.

So that we don’t repeat this, we must put spontaneous searches for justice inside a framework. I think that this framework can be constructed in only one way: by combining it with a moral principle that’s even deeper and more universal than justice.

For me, this principle is mercy.

Mercy is the ability to empathise and to forgive; it’s the second level of justice. If we measure politics and the law by justice, then we use mercy to measure justice itself, by not allowing it to turn into its opposite.

The irony of history is that most promises to build a more just world usually end up with the building of a “just” concentration camp. Justice for some quickly turns dialectically into harsh injustice for others. Each time, the restoration of justice becomes an expensive project, and those seeking it end up paying for it, as do subsequent generations.

If we want to avoid repeating this history, we have to acknowledge that naked justice and naked truth are never as attractive as we might wish them to be. It’s only when we apply mercy that we have the opportunity to turn our clever solutions into wise ones. These may seem to be mere words. They are not. They are an attempt to put forward an alternative point of reference for considering and solving the most important practical questions of our political life.

What direct consequences could there be in the discussion on Russia’s future if we place justice, proven by mercy, at the forefront? There are quite a few.

Firstly, the clear division between “us” and “them” disappears. “We are the holy ones, they are the fiends from hell.” If we understand not only ourselves but others, too, we cannot draw such a line.

We have all, to some extent or another, been responsible for what has happened “with our Motherland and ourselves”. Some because they have taken part in events, others because they’ve failed to take part in events. No one is completely right, and no one is completely guilty. There is no “Great Wall of China” in the issue of responsibility between the beneficiaries of the regime and its victims.

From the point of view of revolutionary justice there are two camps: we’ve been made to suffer, now it’s your turn. From the point of view of mercy, there is one society, one nation, one people. Yes, they’re sick. They’re suffering from low morale and cultural degradation. But to a greater or lesser degree this affects everyone. There are very few nowadays who can put themselves in the position of being the one without sin who can cast the first stone.