A December 7, 2006 posting to Johnson's Russia List by Vladimir Shlapentokh of Michigan State University. Posted on ucsj.org with the permission of the author.

Corruption and Xenophobia--Not Liberalism or Communism--are the Major Social Forces in Putin's Russia

By Vladimir Shlapentokh
Michigan State University

/You are saying procurators are all looters,/
/But I'd rather choose a looter than a slayer/
(From Joseph Brodsky's poem "Letters to a Roman friend," 1972)

Unlike the situation in democratic nations, if Russia's current ruling elites lost their positions in power, they would not only have to forfeit the various perks that come with the job, but also their personal fortunes, because much of their wealth was created through illegal activities. What is more, many elites could face criminal prosecution in Russia and abroad. Valentin Falin and Gennadii Estafiev--two former high officials of the Soviet times--recently submitted a sensational report to the State Duma describing America's plan to destabilize Putin's Russia (/Moskovskii Novosti,/ September 2006). The authors suggested that the United States could achieve this goal by blackmailing high Russian officials, given their deep involvement in corruption.

For this reason, an ideal scenario for Russian elites is a continuation of the current regime with Putin in the Kremlin, or in some other role that perpetuates his control over the country. In October, Viacheslav Nikonov, a Moscow analyst known for his loyalty to the Kremlin, expressed a strong belief that Putin could stay in power for as long as he wishes. A return of the country to the democratic path would be a nightmare for the ruling elites. Democratic institutions, particularly an independent parliament with investigative powers and independent courts, represent the greatest threats to the ruling elites.

Vladimir Borodin, the former editor of /Izvestia, /discussed the victory of the Democratic Party in the United States on Russian TV on November 8, 2006. He cited the famous sociologist Wilfredo Pareto who developed a theory that identifies the "circulation of elites" as a key condition for normal political life. The journalist noted, with evident sadness, that such an event in Russia is practically impossible, because the power holders in Moscow will do anything to prolong their control of the country ad infinitum.

Pareto talked about how two types of elites replace each other in the process of a political cycle. He named one type "foxes" (innovative but opportunistic politicians) and the other type "lions" (conservative people whose major merit is an allegiance to principles). This typology is irrelevant to contemporary Russia where almost all politicians pursue their egotistical interests. Very few officials can be regarded as genuine innovators or as strong conservatives who are concerned about the nation's long-term interests.

Joseph Brodsky offered another typology of the Russian elites. Many years ago the future Nobel Prize winner, still living in the Soviet Union and fresh from his exile in northern Russia, mused in a poem about his experiences in totalitarian society. He proposed the idea of dividing rulers into two categories: "looters" and "slayers." The poet expressed his preference for the looters, who, for him, seemed more humane than the murders and torturers from the KGB.

Twenty years later, in the 1990s, this line from Brodsky's poem was often mentioned by Russian intellectuals when they discussed the developments after the anti-Communist revolution of 1991. Indeed, when liberals rose to power they looked more like "looters" than champions of democracy. The first generation of "looters" was created by Yeltsin and his family. For the sake of personal enrichment, the Kremlin removed the legal constraints on privatization and triggered the grabbing of state property and full-scale corruption. In November 2006, Irina Khakamada, one of the few Russian politicians who still publicly defended democracy, struck up a debate with Sergei Lisovsky, who worked both as a senator and a wealthy entrepreneur. In describing the low moral standing of her opponent, Khakamada mentioned that "his wealth was shaped in Yeltsin's time." In the Russian context this was equivalent to calling him a thief.

The first generation of looters headed by Yeltsin and leading liberals such as Gaidar and Chubais was able to build an ideological justification for plundering the state. They suggested that the only alternative to the "looters" was the Communists who wanted to return to the time of Brodsky's "slayers." Behind the catchphrase "Vote or lose," which was used by Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential campaign to retain his power, there was a clear message: "liberal thieves are better than the Communist murderers who will replace us if we lose the election." In fact, without the Communist "threat," the looters may have lost the election.

Yeltsin's looters were absorbed only with their personal enrichment and perpetuating their luxurious lifestyle. They were supportive of lawlessness in society as the necessary condition for their involvement in corruption. Leading liberals such as Egor Gaidar and Anatolii Chubais either ignored the rampant corruption or justified it as unavoidable or even useful for society. In the 1990s, the economists who served them published several scholarly articles that praised the looters as positive agents of progress whose bribes "diminished the social tension in society," as recently (2006) argued by Ruslan Grinberg, the director of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As Yeltsin's heir, Putin came to power in 1999 with an obligation to protect the wealth that had been illegally appropriated by Yeltsin, his family and close associates. Putin not only refused to prosecute Yeltsin and his close circle, but even kept some of his aids in power, including Anatolii Chubais, a corrupt liberal who continues to run RAO, one of the biggest companies in Russia. Another member of Yeltsin's circle, Alexander Voloshin, a politician who was deeply enmeshed in the financial scandals of the 1990s, served as the head of Putin's administration until 2003. In November 2006, Voloshin visited Washington as Putin's emissary to discuss Russian-American relations with leading American politicians.

Putin's main contribution to the problem of corruption was his creation of a new generation of looters. He recruited them mostly from the ranks of the former KGB, placing them on the boards of directors of the most lucrative Russian corporations--oil and gas companies in the first place. He allowed them to exploit their positions in the government and become wealthy stockholders. Yulia Latynina, a prominent economic analyst, discussing the mysterious circumstances of the auction of the oil company "Yuganskneftegaz" (a big part of Yukos) in mid December 2005, alluded to the president's participation in this semi-criminal business deal and his use of KGB techniques.

Putin's close relationship with the multibillionaire Roman Abramovich has special importance. Putin not only ignores the dark origin of Abramovich's wealth, but continues to help him run and expand his financial empire through dubious transactions with the state. Without Putin's consent it would have been impossible for Abramovich and his friends to purchase the company "Sibneft" for $100 million from the state in 1996-7 and sell it back to the state in 2005 for $13 billion.

Putin endorsed Abramovich as governor of Chukotka--a position that provides him with immunity against judicial prosecution--even though the oligarch spends most of his time in England. Many Moscow observers believe that the mega yacht "Olympia," valued at roughly $50 million, which formally belongs to the Kremlin administration, was a gift to Putin from Abramovich. There are several pieces of evidence that Putin maintains close and cordial relations with several other oligarchs, including Victor Vexelberg and Alexander Mamut who are both ready to serve Putin in all possible ways. We can credit the common sense of the Russian people since two thirds of them, according to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center of Public Opinion in October 2006, believed that Putin has "close connections" with oligarchs.

Protecting the looters of the first and second generations, Putin did not have any high officials brought up on corruption charges. The targets of Putin's ire included only a few oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky who challenged his political authority and whose company Yukos represented a coveted chunk of wealth that the president wanted to distribute among his supporters. The leading political party created by Putin--"United Russia"--was labeled by its critics as "the party of corruption." Lubov Sliska, a leading member of this party and the deputy speaker of the parliament, after a burglary in her Moscow apartment in October 2006, reported that the thieves had taken 85 thousand euros in cash, money orders worth $30,000 and 86 pieces of valuable jewelry, according to an article in /Komsomolskaia Pravda/. Meanwhile, only a few months earlier, Sliska had been accused by media of receiving a bribe from a major corporation in her native city that was worth 19 percent of the company's stock. Another leading politician from this party, Viacheslv Volodin, controlled a fortune worth $90 million, according to /Forbes./ Considering his modest salary as a Duma deputy, the national media accused him of corruption.

Absorbed with their personal enrichment and the regular redistribution of property, Putin's elite has a meager record as the ruling body in Russia, in spite of the flood of oil revenues. While the regime was able to make some improvements in the standard of living, all other spheres of Russian life continue to suffer. During Putin's presidency, economic growth has been completely dependent on oil and gas production. Meanwhile, leading Russian economists talk about the country's "de-industrialization." Science continues to stagnate, negative demographic tendencies persist, corruption thrives in each cell of society and government agencies remain incompetent. What is more, the frequency of murders of businesspeople, journalists and politicians has remained as high as it was in the 1990s. Having taken extraordinary measures for their own personal protection, the ruling elites have seemingly acquiesced--considering only the cases from September-October 2006--to the slayings of prominent people, including the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaia and the leading banker Andrei Kozlov.

With their bleak political records, the new generation of looters is in great need of an ideological justification for their behavior. The Communists no longer fit the role of the "dangerous alternative." The Communist leaders have been too timid to fully exploit the egalitarian instincts of the Russians and bolster their political opposition against the regime. At the same time, the Kremlin itself, given the illegal wealth and conspicuous consumption of its leaders, cannot borrow the Communists' ideas and resort to a leftist egalitarian ideology, as in the case of some Latin American politicians. What is more, considering the Kremlin's obvious hostility toward democratic institutions, it cannot use the liberal ideology to legitimize the regime, as it did during the Yeltsin period. In fact, the majority of the Russians mistrusts democracy and supports the Kremlin's antidemocratic measures, such as the abolishment of the gubernatorial election process.

The only ideology that can legitimize the elite's power and protect its corrupt wealth is xenophobia in its various forms. The Kremlin's xenophobic ideology has many elements. Some parts of the ideology concentrate on the hatred of foreign countries, including the United States, Poland, nonwhite foreign guests in Russia and "new foreign countries" such as the Baltic republics, Ukraine and Georgia. In December 2006, Sergei Lavrov, minister of foreign affairs, expressed his strong hostility toward the OSCE (Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe) for its critique of Russia's foreign and domestic policies. His thinly veiled threat to leave this organization was accepted by many Russian politicians with enthusiasm--yet another sign of the country's xenophobic contempt for the West and its values. Other elements of the xenophobic ideology incite the hatred of "old" ethnic minorities such as Jews, Chechens and immigrants from Central Asia and China. Political strategists can easily manipulate these ideological elements, stressing or deemphasizing certain types of xenophobia as they see fit.

Considering the deeply rooted xenophobic feelings of many Russians, Putin's strategy may indeed work. By August 2006, roughly two thirds of the Russians, according to a poll by the Levada-zentr, supported the slogan "Russia for Russians." The public responded positively to each xenophobic campaign launched by the Kremlin. The majority of the Russians almost immediately turned against their "Slav brothers" when the Kremlin decided to punish Kiev for the orange revolution in 2004-2005. The absolute majority of the public (80 percent in the country as a whole, 94 percent in Moscow and Petersburg) strongly supported the position of the Kremlin during the gas conflict with Ukraine in December 2004.

In September-November 2006, two thirds of the Russians supported the Kremlin's actions against the Georgians, despite their common religion and historical ties. Most Russians endorsed the authorities' heavy handed treatment of Georgian businesspeople in Moscow and the termination of mail delivery to and from Georgia. Up to 38 percent of them endorsed the idea of deporting Georgians who held Russian citizenship. Staunch Russian liberals were astounded to see Russian TV stations and newspapers justify the harassment of Georgians living in Moscow. Even liberal intellectuals, with few exceptions, repeated one absurdity after another about these people. In October 2006, Irina Petrovskaia, with deep melancholy, noted in /Izvestia/ that the TV bosses immediately acquiesced to the Kremlin and began spreading the hatred of Georgians and various inventions about their life in Russia. Many Russians were not agitated by the similarity between the anti-Georgian campaign (2006) and the anti-Semitic (1949-1953) campaign in the Soviet Union. In both cases, an ethnic group was denounced for its so-called hostility to the Motherland.

Putin and his circle began fomenting xenophobia in late 1999. Whatever the ties of the Kremlin to the explosions in two Moscow residential buildings in September 1999 and the ensuring Second Chechen War, the hatred of Chechens played a crucial role in Putin's ascension to the Russian presidency. Since then the xenophobic card has been used constantly by the Kremlin.

Putin personally initiated the various xenophobic campaigns. He was behind the anti-American campaign connected with the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City in 2003. In October 2006, Putin talked about the importance of protecting the "native population" (ethnic Russians) against non Russians. This formulation had never been used by a Russian leader. His comments were seen by many Russian journalists as strong support for extreme nationalists. While his declaration horrified liberals such as Yulia Latynina, it was greeted with enthusiasm by Alexander Belov, the leader of an extremist group called "The movement against illegal immigration." More importantly, in the Fall of 2006, Putin triggered a campaign not only against Georgia and its president, but also against Georgians living in Russia. Putin has never publicly condemned the slaying or wounding of nonwhite foreign students in Moscow, Petersburg and Voronezh, nor the vicious murders of non Russian guest workers. In 2005, 300 non Russians were attacked by nationalist extremists (25 were killed, 279 wounded). What is more, Putin never condemned the Russian courts, which dismissed the extremist origin of the crimes and treated them instead as "ordinary hooliganism."

Pursuing its Byzantine policy, the Kremlin also wants to propel itself as the single force in the country that can fight and constrain extreme nationalists. Stimulating xenophobia with one hand, the Kremlin also occasionally makes gestures in the opposite direction. For example, Putin removed Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of the nationalist party "Fatherland," from the political scene, because he went too far in fueling xenophobia on the eve of the election of the Moscow Duma in 2005. The Kremlin also restrained the nationalists on November 4, 2006, when they wanted to use a new Russian holiday called "The Day of Russian Unity" (it replaced the Soviet holiday in celebration of the October Revolution) to show their xenophobia, including their hatred of Jews and Muslims. One year earlier, the nationalists had carried out "The Russian March" in Moscow where the participants flaunted their Nazi posters and symbols. This year the Kremlin banned the march, but allowed the nationalists to convene a meeting. Moreover, it assigned the nationalist leader Sergey Baburin, who is known for his close connections with the Kremlin, to run the meeting and prevent its speakers from showing open allegiance to the Nazi ideology. Similar to the tsarist government, the Kremlin wants to keep the extremists on a leash. In general, however, the looters and slayers have become allies during the Putin regime.

In September 2006 the country watched as ethnic tension spiked in the Karelian city of Kondopoga after three Russians were murdered by Chechens. Many Russians ascribed the killings to the Chechens' hatred of Russia in general and their refusal to obey the customs of the dominant culture. At the same time, several analysts insisted that the underlying cause of the ethnic tension was the corruption of the local police, which had often taken bribes from Chechen businesspeople and criminal gangs. With the support of the police, the Chechens controlled the local markets and behaved arrogantly toward Russians. This view was rejected by all officials, from the Karelian president Sergey Katandov to Putin, who insisted that the cause of the murders in Kondopoga was the Chechens' disrespect for Russian customs. They totally ignored the corruption factor. No less remarkable was the fact that during the meeting of the Russian nationalists in Moscow on November 4, 2006, the first poster that was confiscated by the police was "Down with corruption."

Political life in Russia revolves around two issues: corruption and xenophobia. These two developments attract the most attention of the public. No other political event in Moscow, including the creation of a new pro-governmental party that has leftist leanings and the fixed regional elections, even remotely arouses the same level of public interest. Even the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006 was used by some politicians and journalists to pump up hatred toward the West.

The most important question in the country is related to how the current elite will keep their power, assets and direct control over the oil and gas industry after 2008. What will Putin's role be in achieving this goal? The public wonders whether Putin's heir will continue to defend the corrupt elites, whether the looters will increase the level of xenophobia and whether they will rely on the mass actions of nationalist slayers to scare those who demand an all-out war against corruption.

This author believes that the role of xenophobia in Russia will increase in the next years. With the elites' growing self-confidence, which is based on the country's massive revenues from oil and gas, and with the high level of social polarization, xenophobia in its various forms (anti-Americanism, hostility toward the former Soviet republics and various ethnic minorities) will be the single most effective ideological tool for the elites. The alliance of looters and slayers will continue to strengthen.

[HOME] [ACT] [CONNECT] [JOIN] [ABOUT] [SEARCH]