Vladimir Putin’s own version of history calls himself the champion and bulwark of modern Russia.
According to this story, Putin was determined to stem the tide of domestic and foreign rivals, while restoring Russia to greatness.
While these breath-taking stories of Putin’s heroes may still resonate among Russians, who have been fed a lot of misinformation for years, savvy observers will watch. They range from embellished to absurd.
Future historians are unlikely to be kind to Putin. He ruled through a combination of fear and favor, cynically overthrowing Russia’s pro-democracy regime by treating dissent as a crime rather than an important part of it. political life. Russia has become a country dominated by Putin’s unique ideas, rather than a healthy competition between competing ideas.
He has gradually sickened Russian society, creating a toxic culture that glorifies xenophobia, nativism, and violence.
And by waging a foolish war of imperial expansion in Ukraine that his much-vaunted modernizing army proved incapable of winning, he inadvertently exposed his fragility. in its own power structure.
Putin’s ascension
Putin’s political ascent began after he assumed the post of head of Russia’s Security Council in March 1999, long seen as a possible path to executive leadership. He then assumed the post of prime minister of Russia, and soon the country’s presidency as increasingly ailing Boris Yeltsin sought to appoint a successor.
Putin’s willingness to defend the interests of his “family” — the network of confidants and oligarchs that includes Yeltsin’s inner circle — makes him a confusing but nonetheless logical choice.
The fight for order and stability is a consistent theme in the way Putin presents himself. He used this theme during the Russian presidential election of 2000, following the severe financial crisis of 1998 in Russia, and held in the context of Russia’s second war in Chechnya.
During his first campaign, Putin made a vague promise to restore order and turn Russia back into a great power. He faced little opposition when two leading political figures – Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov – withdrew from the race. The Russians elected him with 53% of the vote, out of a sense of relief rather than enthusiasm.
As he assumed the leadership role, Putin began to stabilize the economy. He revised Russia’s tax code, replacing a complex system of loopholes and tax relief with fixed tax rates to increase compliance. In 2004, he effectively re-nationalized the oil and gas industry after the forced dissolution of Yukos, which controlled about 20% of Russia’s oil production.
This sends both an economic and political message: Russia’s future prosperity will be driven by energy revenues, and Russian oligarchs will prosper only when Putin is satisfied. Russia’s dependence on energy is such that by 2021, taxes and dividends from oil and gas companies account for 45% of Russia’s federal budget.
Putin’s economic miracle?
After September 11, 2001, the attacks and the subsequent US-led global war on terror, the Russian economy recovered significantly, supported by high energy prices.
Between 2000 and 2007, average disposable income increased dramatically. Inflation fell and the economy grew about 7% a year, despite falling real wages. While the economy suffered a downturn as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis, growth was quickly restored.
Annual household income rose to an estimated US$10,000 per capita in 2013, but by 2022 has fallen to just US$7,900. Thus, on average, Russians have gotten worse over the past decade.
This was partly due to Western sanctions imposed after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Then, after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia defaulted on foreign currency debt (for the first time since). 1918) and the economy entered a recession in November.
Important structural problems in the Russian economy and society persisted under Putin. Wealth is unevenly distributed, concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in parts of Russia, it is highly concentrated on the local elite.
The life expectancy of Russians under Putin has improved only slightly. In 2021, it is estimated to be 69 years old, compared with 65 years old in 2000.
On average, Russians have a shorter life expectancy than Iraqis (70 years old) and only slightly longer than citizens of Eritrea (67 years old) and Ethiopians (65 years old).
Kleptocrats, meet autocrats
Bribery and institutionalized corruption are also a hallmark of Putin’s rule like his predecessors.
Despite the fanfare of eliminating oligarchs, Russia consistently scores low on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2022, Russia is ranked 137 out of 180 countries. For comparison, after Putin ended his first term as president in 2004, Russia ranked 90th.
Putin’s reign is also the story of Russia’s slide from a “managed” democracy to an autocracy. This is a gradual process, as evidenced by the need for new laws to protect society.
It started in 2003 when Russian media was banned from analyzing politics during elections. By 2012, Putin’s imposition of new laws criminalizing foreign agents, protests and criticism of the government had placed Russia 148th out of 176 countries on the Reporter Organization’s Press Freedom Index. member Without Borders. This year, it has dropped to 164th out of 180 countries.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Russians convicted of “discrediting the military” faced prison sentences, fines, beatings, social ostracism, loss of income and welfare, and even death. mentally ill.
Putin’s Legacy: Boycott and Fragility
Putin’s Russia is a society with many enemies. To external adversaries — NATO members and the broader West — Putin sees regime security as synonymous with national security. As a result, his main fear is personal, not geopolitical.
Putin is not interested in NATO expansion, but what an alliance of largely democratic nations can offer: the prospect of “color revolutions,” in which people seek to seize power. control from corrupt dictators.
By invading Ukraine, Putin actually succeeded in expanding NATO further, with Finland and Sweden joining the alliance. He made Germany and other over-dependent European nations give up Russian oil and gas. And he assures that Russia will remain an abandoned country by the West for the foreseeable future, while leaving the next generation of Russians with an enduring hatred of Ukrainians.
Russia now faces an uncertain future. Instead of Putin’s vision of a Euro-Pacific power, it appears to be just a by-product of China’s nuclear weapons armament.
Worse still for Putin, his rule now looks increasingly fragile. His failures in Ukraine proved that submissive Russian state media cannot weave a victory story.
Putin’s reaction to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s dramatic mutiny in June added to the perception of weakness. Initially, it took him several hours to appear on an emergency broadcast in which he talked about a possible civil war and promised to destroy the Wagner traitors.
But once the hasty deal with Prigozhin was made, that forceful claim was retracted just hours later by Putin’s press secretary, who was forced to simultaneously regard Wagner’s forces as both heroes and villains. enemies of the state.
Later, in a speech to Russian soldiers, Putin thanked the military for saving Russia, even though it did not have to confront the uprising.
The equally indifferent public reaction (in fact, no one tried to lie down in front of a Wagner tank to protect Putin) speaks for itself. So the reality is that Wagner agents were able to escape the mutiny with impunity, while ordinary citizens faced prison sentences for quiet protests even if only for a short period of time. short.
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Putin’s Russia is beginning to resemble tsarist Russia: a state collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, as the British historian Orlando Figes has observed. Russia in 2023 now looks even more fractured than it did when Putin took over, ostensibly to save the country from turmoil.
Perhaps the most ironic thing, then, of Putin’s nearly quarter-century in power is that he has become the embodiment of chaos he has long declared disgusted.
Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Center for Strategic and Defense Studies, Australian National University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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