Chapter 7: Putin Is Popular, and Not

The odds of popping into a British bookshop and coming out with a framed portrait of the prime minister are, I think it’s fair to say, pretty slim. Yet go to the big Moskovsky Dom Knigi (or Moscow House of Books) on New Arbat Street and upstairs you can get your pick of pictures – a Medvedev maybe, probably a Shoigu, usually one of Moscow mayor Sobyanin, but above all, there will be Putins. Then, head to one of the souvenir kiosks and pick up a Putin T-shirt, or perhaps a fridge magnet calling him ‘the most polite of people’ – a play on the Russian term for the ‘little green men’ who took Crimea. If that’s not enough, why not splash out 232,000 rubles – or £2,800, almost eight times the average Russian monthly wage – on a limited edition Supremo Putin Damascus iPhone? Made from white gold and Damascus steel, it’s decorated with a picture of the man himself, the Russian coat of arms and one of his less-than-snappy catchphrases: ‘We will respond to all challenges!’

Some of this is for tourists, and some of it is for those who feel they need ostentatiously to demonstrate their loyalty. Yet it also reflects Putin’s very real – but also paradoxical – popularity in his country. As of late 2018, his personal approval ratings have plummeted to a mere 66 per cent because of his lacklustre handling of pension reform, when he had previously been in the eighties. Yet even this ‘low’ figure is the kind of level that Western politicians would kill to achieve: at the same time, for example, British prime minister Theresa May’s is at 25 per cent, French president Emanuel Macron’s is 32 per cent and US president Donald Trump’s is a highly polarised 42 per cent.

So Russians are happy? It’s not quite that simple, as Putin’s personal popularity ratings are only part of the story. Even setting aside the problems of polling in a fairly authoritarian state, Putin is not being benchmarked against any rival. Who, after all, did he stand against in the 2018 presidential elections? Well, there was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the seventy-two-year-old caricature ultranationalist, who has written longingly about an imperial push southwards until ‘Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean’. There was Pavel Grudinin, a millionaire who was standing for the Communist Party, even though he had never been a member. Then there were other candidates who stood no chance of getting onto the second ballot, including Ksenia Sobchak, daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, Putin’s patron from the St Petersburg days. Best known as a socialite and reality television host, she was standing on an ‘against everyone’ platform.

Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democrats receive a lot of Kremlin money for advertising, and the Communists still have the remnants of their old organisation and a near-inexhaustible army of Stalinist grannies volunteeering to push leaflets through letterboxes. But the leadership of both parties seem to have effectively accepted their role as the fake opposition. The only figure who might have had the will and ability to give Putin a run for his money, if not beat him, was anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, but thanks to a distinctly dubious court case, he was barred from standing.

Navalny’s boyish charm, quick wit and detailed accounts of the dodgy deals and luxurious homes of the elite have made his Internet-distributed videos popular as devastating indictments of the open-mawed corruption of late Putinism. His 2017 video ‘Don’t Call Him Dimon’ blew away Dmitry Medvedev’s image as a relatively clean member of the government, claiming that he had embezzled almost a billion pounds through fake charities. A 2018 video about the alleged corruption of Viktor Zolotov, commander of the National Guard, provoked him into challenging Navalny to a duel and promising to ‘pound him into a juicy steak’.

It is a mark of the concern that the Kremlin has about Navalny that on the one hand they keep throwing him into prison for thirty days here, a few months there, but at the same time they hold back from treating him more seriously – as will be discussed in Chapter 9, the idea that this is a regime that disposes of enemies without a second thought is actually very wrong. Navalny is essentially banned from television (where even mentioning his name is taboo), but he is a savvy and effective political operator on the Internet, which remains his main method of mobilising support. ‘Don’t Call Him Dimon’ was viewed 1.5 million times in its first day alone. The Kremlin is keenly aware that his message is potentially dangerous, not least as every Russian from a neurologist in Novosibirsk to a street-cleaner in Stavropol has their own experiences of corruption and knows full well that the great and the not-so-good enjoy privileged lives at their expense.

Despite trying to muzzle Navalny, despite having ensured that the alternatives to Putin were unelectable and unappetising, the government still rigged the 2018 elections. There were numerous cases of soldiers and factory workers being told for whom to vote, of people being bussed to multiple polling stations to vote at each, and of station staff openly stuffing handfuls of fake ballots into the boxes, in full view of the cameras that had been installed to stop precisely that kind of behaviour. This was due less to any Kremlin directive so much as the momentum of the system: local officials, terrified that a bad result for the boss from their district would reflect badly on them, or who thought they had received a signal from Moscow, went ahead and rigged things as usual, sometimes to the Kremlin’s embarrassment.

However, the electoral corruption was also a product of a clear sense from Putin and his political technologists that it is not enough just to be in charge – it is important to be able to claim an overwhelming popular mandate. The purpose of elections in Russia is not to determine who will get to run the country – that is a foregone conclusion, and no incumbent has ever lost power through the ballot box – but to demonstrate why it is right that they do.

Furthermore, it is clear that the Kremlin does not feel wholly confident and comfortable, despite those seemingly strong approval figures. Putin and his political managers in the Presidential Administration may not have had a direct role in the rigging of the 2018 poll (though even if they did not, they certainly were involved in rewriting later local election results), but they certainly bombarded the country with propaganda beforehand. It says something that they kept not just Navalny but other politically awkward figures, such as the ultra-leftist firebrand Sergei Udaltsov (who has spent most of the time since 2012 either in prison or under house arrest), off-screen. It says something that the government continues to maintain its grip on television and that it continues to explore ways in which it could control the Internet. It may not be able to replicate’s Beijing’s draconian ‘Great Firewall of China’, but by arresting and imprisoning people who post or retweet even mildly anti-government messages, it is able to create a climate in which people don’t dare to share such views. It says something that Putin created the National Guard – an independent force dedicated to domestic security, with some 180,000 armed troops and as many security guards – in 2016, and put his loyal henchman Zolotov in charge. It says something that the Kremlin is trying to squeeze non-government organisations that tackle issues such as corruption, police brutality and electoral fraud, closing them down, blocking their funding and harassing their workers.

These actions all attest to the Kremlin’s deep concerns about just how firm its grip on the hearts and minds of the Russian people may be. After all, what do people mean when they support Putin? They are not necessarily saying that they like the idea of their sons dying in Syria, or of Putin’s cronies enriching themselves through their taxes. Indeed, when polled about their overall confidence in the direction the country is going and what kind of Russia they want for their children, people show a much more nuanced understanding of the political situation. According to the data compiled by the Levada Center, arguably the best remaining independent polling agency in Russia, only a small majority of people are still willing to believe their country is on the right track.

Russians can be unhappy, yet still loyal. Putin is to a large extent being rated not as a man, not even as a politician, but as an icon of Russia. To vote for him is not to endorse a programme, but to express patriotism. By ascending into the heavens as a symbol of the country, the blessed son of the Motherland, has Putin become more or less powerful? A bit of both. On the one hand, it grants him a special, almost mystical status, which separates him from any rival. But at the same time, it means that we should not assume that those approval ratings, whether they are in the sixties or the eighties, mean anything like that much support for his regime, his policies or even Putin-the-man.

The Russian people are as much Putin’s first victims as his devoted supporters. His election in 2000 was won as a result of not just massive state pressure and the absence of a viable alternative, but also of real public relief. Whatever their affection for Boris Yeltsin, his increasingly erratic antics, as pills and alcohol turned him into a caricature and a punchline, were plain for all to see. Besides which, war was brewing in the North Caucasus and a series of mysterious terrorist bombings – which many believe were arranged by Putin’s supporters to terrify the public into backing a ‘security first’ candidate – left people looking for a credible (and sober) defender of the nation. When, in 2002, a girl band sang that they wanted ‘A Man Like Putin’ (‘I want a man like Putin, who’s full of strength. I want a man like Putin, who doesn’t drink’) it was not only a little tongue-in-cheek, it could just as easily have been titled ‘I Want Someone Nothing Like Yeltsin’.

Putin is not a natural campaigner: he is often uncomfortable in public and, if anything, has withdrawn more and more from his own people. Aside from the carefully constructed action-man photo opportunities, he is intensely private. For a long time, there was not even confirmation of the identities of his two children, Katerina and Mariya, and his alleged relationship with Olympic gold medal-winning rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva is still very much off-limits.

However, Putin was tremendously lucky in his first two terms. With the West distracted by the ‘Global War on Terror’ and oil and gas prices high, he had free rein at home. He had enough money to ensure that ordinary Russians could enjoy a better quality of life than ever before, as well as to pour into the military and buy off the elite by turning a blind eye to their own self-enrichment. Life got better, the streets became safer and the fear of collapse and fragmentation receded. Of course, at the same time he set up his sock-puppet opposition parties, reasserted state control of television and suppressed any viable alternatives, but the irony is that he could probably have held free and fair elections and still won.

Won rather than triumphed, though, and he clearly wanted overwhelming statements of support to silence any doubting voices, a coronation more than a mere victory, so from the first Putin’s democracy was so-called ‘managed democracy’. Besides, you can only campaign on not being Boris Yeltsin and this not being the terrible 1990s for so long. Worse yet, over time, international hydrocarbon prices would wobble and the corruption at the heart of the system ensured that it was the masses rather than the masters who paid the price. Despite the temporary patriotic boost provided by the annexation of Crimea, Putin has increasingly had to rely on propaganda and coercion to retain his grip.

Many Russians still revere Putin for making them feel that their country matters in the world again. A diminishing number of others still feel grateful to him for the good times of the 2000s. The feelings of many others, though, seem to represent a country-wide case of Stockholm syndrome, the perverse sympathy that kidnap victims can feel for their captors. This does not mean they will always back him, especially if they come to believe that he cannot offer them and their children the kind of lives they expect. Consider what happened in Britain in 1945. Winston Churchill was widely regarded with colossal respect and enthusiasm by the British people, as the architect of survival and victory through the harrowing years of the Second World War. Yet they still voted him out of office, being able to balance respect for Churchill as a person with a sense that he and above all his Conservative Party did not offer the future they wanted. While the prospect of Putin leaving office because he loses an election is so minuscule as to be near-invisible, we must still remember that the Russian people are no less capable of political nuance.

In 2017, the Levada Center polled Russians about reform in their country. There were massive differences in opinion about what kind they wanted, how quickly it should come, and how far it should go, and the Kremlin is able to capitalise on this lack of any consensus. But at the same time it must also be deeply concerned, as while 42 per cent wanted dramatic reform and 41 per cent preferred incremental change, only 11 per cent wanted to retain the status quo. So 60–80 per cent approve Putin-the-man, but even most of his supporters want to see Putinism-the-system reformed or done away with altogether. They can respect Putin, without endorsing all or even most of his policies; they can want to see statues raised in his name, but someone else in his office.

This duality is what scares Putin and his cronies: it is the reason they feel they cannot afford to let Navalny on prime-time television and it is why they have all those armed National Guard officers deployed across the country. We may still be beguiled by his sky-high approval ratings, but the Kremlin is less easily fooled.