In March 2012 Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was returned as president in the Russian election. It would be his third term in the supreme office and his second coming to the peak of power, and he was determined to seize back the initiative by pushing Russian policy, external and internal, back into the framework it had in 2008, when constitutional law prohibited him from immediately standing again for the presidency – a problem he solved by handing over the office to his protégé Dmitri Medvedev on the understanding that he himself became prime minister.
The four years of Medvedev’s presidential term had nevertheless been a frustrating period for Putin, who had to sit back while Medvedev adjusted some of his cherished policies. When Putin resumed the presidency, he reverted Russia’s foreign policy to a stance of confrontation with America. He promoted social traditionalism in Russia. He reinforced the political and security institutions. Putin and his team were avowed conservatives and militant nationalists who aimed to spread Russian influence beyond the country’s borders. They would tolerate no challenge to Russia’s power and prestige from the other states of the former USSR. America’s attempts to expand its influence would meet with resistance. The Russian armed forces would exploit their renewed capacity to impose Moscow’s will and a campaign of propaganda would begin to win hearts and minds around the world for Russia’s cause. Putin had started on this path in his first and second terms. On resuming the presidency, he intended to complete the journey.
When in 2000 Putin had initially inherited power from Boris Yeltsin, he reduced the arena of democratic and civic freedom. He loosened the reins on the security agencies. He licensed an official cult of his greatness. Until 2004 he entertained the idea of partnership with America, but he objected to the continuing American armed intervention in Afghanistan and the Middle East and also to the anti-authoritarian revolutions in Ukraine and elsewhere. He tightened the Russian state’s grip on its society and economy and he threw down a challenge in world politics. During the Medvedev presidency, he nursed a determination to wind the clock back to his own kind of policies once he retook the supreme office. His electoral victories in 2012 and 2018 gave him ample chance. In 2024, when he is again scheduled to step down, he will be seventy-one. Nobody knows whether, by then, he will have decided to amend the country’s constitution and enable himself to stand for a fifth term.
Russian domestic and foreign policies evoke a mixture of fear, respect and admiration around the world. There is a sustained barrage of hostile commentary about Putin and his administration, citing a sequence of assassinations, cyber-crimes, quasi-imperial pretensions and military aggression.1 Pro-Kremlin commentators are few (though Donald Trump is one of them), but there have been several attempts to put the anti-anti-Kremlin arguments which commonly designate Russia as the victim and omit mention of Russia the victimizer.2 The two sides frequently fail to take each other’s arguments seriously. One camp takes it for granted that nothing good can come out of Russia and that no improvement in the current situation is conceivable; the other emphasizes the unwarranted harm done by foreigners to Russia without taking account of Russian self-harm – or at least the harm done by the Kremlin.
If we are to move beyond polemics, it is crucial to examine how Russians feel and think about their country and the world – surely a prerequisite for judgement regardless of whether one lauds or criticizes Putin and his administration. Even the critics – I am one – must recognize that Russia has a lively society simmering with zest and potential. Although Russian affairs have taken a menacing pathway, there have always been alternative routes that many of its citizens have wanted to pursue. They and their leaders, however, are at one in feeling a strong resentment about the way that they and their people have been dealt with by the West. Though millions of Russians dislike the harsh, corrupt ways of their rulers, there is also a widespread opinion that the Putin administration has restored dignity and authority to the country. Like most states, Russia has much diversity in the attitudes of its people. Its ruling group has made a strategic choice to restrict civil rights and challenge America. Even so, Russia is still not as unfree in politics, the media and IT communications as China, Saudi Arabia or North Korea. Though it would be foolish to count upon a complete transformation of Kremlin policies even after Putin leaves power, the option of permanent no-change is unrealistic. Even if it takes decades, change will happen, and the rulers know they can never take the patience of the Russian people for granted.
For years after the USSR’s collapse in 1991 it was usual to regard Russians as perennial losers. Their economy and armed forces were in tatters. They had given up control of eastern Europe and found themselves dispossessed of the other fourteen republics of the former Soviet Union. But when Putin became president in 2000, a rise in revenues from oil and gas exports benefited the economy, and the new administration followed up the invasion of Chechnya in 1999 by stamping hard on political opposition across Russia. Between 2003 and 2005, when ‘colour revolutions’ took place in favour of democratic accountability in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and the Americans pursued their plans to install an anti-missile defence system in east-central Europe, Putin began to confront Washington. President Barack Obama, the Democratic politician who succeeded George W. Bush in the White House in 2009 and announced a ‘reset’ of America’s Russian policy, failed to improve the climate. Frost turned to ice in 2014 when Putin sent his army to occupy Crimea.
Dominant opinion in the West blames Putin, the Russian leadership or even Russia as a whole. Russians themselves have undergone a steady restriction of their political and civil rights and have experienced their country’s increasing pariah status. Yet Putin is still popular in Russia after nearly two decades in power. His percentage rating admittedly fell to the low sixties in 2018, well down from its peak in 2015 after he had annexed Crimea, but it remains at a level that most of the world’s leaders would envy.
Putin and his team have intentionally disrupted the order of world politics – this is not a secret: they admit as much themselves. They have also set about neutralizing political opposition, media criticism and public protest in Russia by fair means or, more usually, foul. But how has this happened without provoking greater unrest at home? What is the role of the security agencies and what part is played by TV channels, press and the internet? Indeed, what kind of political order exists in Russia? Does it merely wear the apparel of democracy without being democratic? Is it really an autocracy and, if so, is it individual or collective in nature? But why is there so much repression and corruption? Why has Chechnya suffered such brutalization? Moreover, what factors led Putin to decide on the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the intervention in the Syrian civil war? Or to license covert interference in the politics of America and the European Union? And what is the significance of the Chinese card in Russian hands?
These are tantalizing questions that intersect and complicate each other. One view is that America and the European Union could have proceeded with greater restraint and circumspection; other observers heap the blame on Putin. As we shall explore, Putin was never likely to be an enthusiast for democracy or an easy partner of America even though he gave a different impression in his first presidential term. Nevertheless, there is also a need to attempt a ranking of Putin’s personal responsibility and the sheer pressures of the Russian political and economic order. This is not a straightforward task because he has actively sought to minimize leaks from his administration. But is Putin himself perhaps less a gaoler than a detainee of the political order that he has helped to create? And how much is it the case that Putin and the ruling group, including security officials and big businessmen as well as ministers, gave a peculiar harshness and durability to their policies?
How long Russia’s current stability will last is unpredictable, and many questions arise about the Russian future. How strongly ensconced in power is the current ruling group? What is the balance of force and persuasion in its methods? Can the Kremlin take public opinion for granted? Has the West mishandled the Russian leadership since the fall of communism? Is there a new Cold War? If so, is it as dangerous as the old one? What is the link between Russia’s internal and external policies? This book is intended to lay out how to fill the space between those who see the Putin administration as more sinned against than sinning and those who find it hard to believe that anything good will ever emerge from Russia.