The cost of a Putin presidency 2.0 in Russia

Vladimir Putin’s expected return to the presidency next year means stability – and stagnation – for Russians. And neighboring nations, as well as the United States, should prepare for a tough counterpart.

Unflinching understanding of Mr. Putin’s – and Russia’s – strengths and weaknesses is the necessary condition for a realistic American policy.

With last weekend’s announcement that Putin will be the ruling party’s nominee for the 2012 elections, he may become the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, who ruled for almost 30 years.

Putin has held the reins of power – first as president and now as prime minister – since 2000. Another two-term presidency, totaling 12 years, would keep him in charge until 2024. Putin’s protégé, current President Dmitry Medvedev, is heading for the job of prime minister, but were he to later resettle into the presidency – with Putin possibly switching back to prime minister – the “tandem” could conceivably rule until 2036.

With more Putin, however, Russia faces a trade-off of stagnation for stability. Yes, Mr. Medvedev talks about broad modernization. He vocally supports direct elections for the Council of the Federation, the upper house of parliament. He also talks of building up the nation’s “knowledge economy.” Yet during his presidential term he has accomplished little.

Putin talks about selectively importing Western technologies necessary to strengthen Russia’s defense and energy industries. Far from breaking ground, this is a traditional Russian catch-up model for modernization. It has been in place at least since Peter the Great, the stern and westernizing monarch who brought European fashions – and military tactics – to Russia. This founder of St. Petersburg, the home town of Putin and Medvedev, is Putin’s hero.

Political modernization, including the return to the cacophonous multi-party democracy of the Yeltsin era, will be tough to pull off in Putin’s third term. This is regrettable, but not surprising. For over three centuries, western institutions that were imported to Russia underwent such degradation that they became mere contraptions.

Under the czars, after the 1905 revolution, political parties were tiny and impotent. Parliaments (Dumas) have almost never had a true lawmaking function. In the best case, they became talking clubs. At their worst, the Supreme Soviet rubber stamped the most egregious legislation.

The evolution of the post-communist Duma and presidency is a sad testimony to the same process. As before, the all-powerful executive branch – be it the czar, the secretary general, president, or prime minister – more often than not rules by an ukaz, a fiat.

In fact, Russia’s western-sounding pseudo-institutions – such as courts, political parties, and the bicameral parliament – have made Putin’s “managed democracy” just another term for autocracy. The power system today is more stagnant than the long rule of cold-war leader Leonid Brezhnev, and is barely capable of deceiving Russians and foreigners alike. The outcomes of upcoming Duma and presidential elections are of course known in advance.

As the late Russian prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, famously quipped, “Whichever party we build, the outcome is always the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

Russia has been a conundrum for Western policymakers for centuries. Yet the Obama administration claimed great progress in a “reset” policy based on chummy relations between President Obama and Mr. Medvedev. The reset would, they insisted, usher in a new era of cooperation and friendship between the two nations.

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