| Stagnation of the Putin’s period can lead Russia
to the same outcome as USSR had after stagnation of the Brezhnev’s
era.
I participated in a conference in Yaroslavl yesterday. The
conference was devoted to the Modern State. And I have an
odd feeling from it. Russian participants sang praises to
democracy as such, softly driving foreign participants to
the idea that we also, in fact, have a kind of democracy.
The foreigners – political scientists and economists – did
not dispute it, instead they were absorbed in sharing their
concepts and discoveries. A living classic Immanuel Wallerstein
demonstrated one more of his talents contracting his many-volume
theory of the world system into a ten-minute speech explaining
what had caused the crisis.
Our section The Diversity of Democratic Experience applauded
to Chairman of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin who
proclaimed that authoritative methods of governing reasonable
in ensuring social justice in the society.
He also warned about the risks of the reforms without tightening
up screws. If Alexander II had not been so liberal, may be
he would not have been murdered. After Zorkin’s speech I had
nothing more to do, but to say banalities.
First of all I asked the audience: do we have a modern state
or not?
My answer was negative. No fair elections, no division of
powers, no freedom of manifestations, meetings, etc. And monopoly
on power for one party. The conclusion was that we do not
have democracy as a modern state system, and modernization
of Russia’s economy (Dmitry Medvedev’s dream) is impossible
without this in the 21 century. By the way, I
told this to Dmitry Medvedev during our meeting on June 11.
As all the foreigners spoke about their theories at the section,
I also could not help speaking about my theory. Here it comes
in a nutshell. Belated modernization is prone of disintegration
for countries with vast territories. The USSR lost a favourable
moment for modernization as early as in 1970s (in contrast
to China).
That is why perestroika and the beginning of Boris Yetlsin
governing represented stages of disintegration rather than
its causes. A catastrophic governing may take place both in
the democratic and the authoritarian governing.
The governing was authoritarian during Nicholas II, however
it resulted in a collapse of the country anyway. And this
was caused not only simply by a talentless governing, but
by abrupt slow down of the reforms during Alexander III reign.
It was unfinished modernization of Alexander II which made
the governing of Nicholas II catastrophic. Generally speaking
it was not Gorbachev and Yeltsin to blame for disintegration
of the USSR, but Brezhhev and Suslov who instead of modernization
(like Deng Xiaoping did in China) responded to the domestic
and foreign policy challenges with deep stagnation.
Today Russia is experiencing approximately the same kind of
stagnation like at the end of all the “frosts” in different
periods of our history (during Nicholas I, Alexander III and
Leonid Brezhnev).
This means that the threat of a “catastrophic governing”
is quite real. And stagnation under Vladimir Putin may lead
the Russian Federation to the same outcome as Brezhnev’s era
stagnation did to the USSR. The “Chinese way” was feasible
for us in 1970s, but today it is the same kind of utopia as
some “ancient Roman way”. Movement towards the Chinese way
means first construction of a communist dictatorship and then
its liberalisation by means of ceding the country to foreigners.
I had to be very brief about all this, as there was not much
time.
I think that not all could grasp it. But foreigners came
up to me saying that I was the only speaker out of several
hundred who spoke about the real situation. And they were
not brave enough to raise the issue themselves.
However, the topic most widely discussed on the sidelines
was Putin’s answer on the question about the next RF President
given at Valdai.
The public at Valdai was shocked by the prose of the answer.
A couple of years ago he had said a formal politically correct
phrase that “the Russian people would make the decision”.
And today it was already something like “we should sit down
with Medvedev and make an agreement”!
Here's a nice modern state…
See also:
the
original (Sergei Mitrokhin's blog at Echo Moskvi web-site)
Anti-Crisis Proposals of the Russian
United Democratic Party YABLOKO. Handed to President Medvedev
by Sergei Mitrokhin on June 11, 2009
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