Putin making Russians ‘restive’ – but don’t expect revolt

Democracy Digest

Sergei Magnitsky died two years ago today, but the political impact of his death continues to resonate.

Several Republican senators want a vote on the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act before they will endorse Michael McFaul, the Obama administration’s nominee to be the new US envoy to Moscow. The measure will deny visas to and freeze the assets of several dozen Russian officials implicated in the lawyer’s mistreatment and death.

Although the Magnitsky case is not an especially egregious or atypical case in a country of endemic abuses, Russian democracy and rights activists believe the case has a broader political significance.

“There are lots of miscarriages of justice in the Russian system, and no one ever answers for them, but Magnitsky was the employee of a prestigious foreign firm and many people worked to bring his story into the light,” says Oleg Orlov, chairman of Memorial, Russia’s leading human rights group. “So, this kind of pressure, even if it gets denounced as ‘interference into Russia’s internal affairs,’ is actually good for Russian citizens,” he tells the Christian Science Monitor. “The case has become a lever that gives rise to real hopes that the system can be changed.”

The dispute over the nomination comes at a time when Premier Vladimir Putin’s anticipated return to the presidency is “making Russians restive, if not revolutionary.”

Some commentators suggest that the hold-up is less about McFaul, a widely respected Russia expert and democracy advocate, than partisan political posturing.

“Comments from both sides of the aisle…have been broadly positive about him,” says Matthew Rojansky, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program. “Where they’re negative is about the ‘reset’ [of US-Russian relations],” he adds.

McFaul was a principal architect of the reset policy which entails a dual-track approach to Russia: pursuing constructive engagement on vital strategic interests, including arms control, while retaining the right to raise concerns over rights abuses and support Russian democrats and civil society.

Some observers have criticized the reset for conceding too much to the Kremlin, and McFaul conceded at last month’s Senate confirmation hearing that the Obama administration should do more to promote democracy in Russia.

But “Foreign Policy” magazine reports that a group of former Republican national security and foreign policy officials have written to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging the panel to confirm McFaul’s nomination:

“We have known and worked closely with Mike for many years and have the highest regard for his professionalism and his dedication to American interests and ideals. He is one of America’s leading experts on democracy and has been a tireless promoter of democracy in Russia and elsewhere around the world,” wrote former Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, former Assistant Secretaries of State David Merkel and Stephen Rademaker, former NSC Director Jamie Fly, Freedom House President David Kramer, former Rumsfeld and McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann, and the Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan.

A report produced at last week’s annual Valdai Discussion Club of leading foreign and domestic analysts gave a bleak assessment of Russia’s prospects.

The experts’ consensus was that the “present model of government, which took shape in Russia in the last 10 or 12 years, appears to have exhausted its potential,” the FT’s Neil Buckley reports:

A report prepared mostly by Russian experts as the basis for the Valdai discussions gave an even starker assessment. Today’s Russia had “no efficient parliamentary system, no independent judicial system, and no developed municipal administration”, it warned. Parliamentary parties were “imitations”. The leadership had “bought” bureaucrats’ loyalty by allowing them to steal. But corruption was out of control, and now the main factor determining policies in many areas.

Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who now leads a liberal opposition party barred from the elections, was surprised to even be invited to Valdai, but not by what he heard. “I don’t see any gap between what I’m saying and what everyone else here is saying,” he said. “We’re all in the opposition now.”

Even commentators who have previously been charitably disposed towards Putin were gloomy.

“[B]oth state and society appear to lack the capacity for internal regeneration,” Anatol Lieven writes in The Moscow Times.

“After 12 years of higher growth in Russia — even if it is largely based on energy exports — the country may have developed a middle class that will insist on real reform,” he suggests. “We can only hope for long-term change because it is woefully apparent that in the short term, nothing much is going to change on either side.”

The latest poll from the well-regarded Levada Center showed a decline in support for the ruling United Russia party which acts as a conduit for Putin’s policies. But most observers discount the possibility of discontent generating a ‘Russian Spring’ of pro-democracy protests.

Anti-authoritarian unrest is unlikely to break out in Russia or even Central Asia for three interrelated reasons, argues Mark N. Katz, a professor of politics at George Mason University: “the limits of revolutionary contagion, the constraints of the international system and the limited expectations about the utility of revolution developed by those who have either experienced it or witnessed it at close hand.”

As one expert told the Valdai forum, after 1917 and 1991, Russia has “used up its quota of revolutions”.

The dearth of social capital and shared moral sentiment is a further factor militating against collective action.

“Because of the Soviet legacy and the 1990s, ordinary Russians don’t trust one another,” says James Sherr of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. “They don’t combine in collective political activity. They solve their problems independently, with their families and friends. They opt out.”

Michael McFaul is a former Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. The Levada Center and Memorial are NED grantees. быстрые займы онлайн unshaven girl https://zp-pdl.com https://www.zp-pdl.com займ онлайн