Putin's Mission Impossible

So the objectives are clear and the program set: Between 2006 and 2010, Russia is to be transformed out of all recognition. President Vladimir Putin in the first state of the nation address of his second term has outlined "genuinely long-term goals" for Russia.

For the most part, the president's wish list is uncontroversial. Back in Soviet times, Mikhail Gorbachev promised that each and every family would have its own apartment by the year 2000. Now the target for alleviating the accursed housing problem is that by 2010, a third of the working population should be able to buy a new apartment.

By that time, high-quality healthcare will be universally available, and the average life expectancy in Russia will start to rise. Education will be significantly improved, and prestigious higher education institutions will throw open their doors to children from impoverished families.

The economy will have doubled in size; businesses will be paying low taxes under a simplified system; the tax regime will provide companies with incentives to expand, rather than serving the appetites of the Finance Ministry; inflation will have fallen to 3 percent per year, and the ruble will be fully convertible. Russia will at last gain good roads, and oil will flow bountifully through newly constructed pipelines. Once again, we were promised that the number of bureaucratic agencies, bureaucrats and their powers will be slashed; budget discipline will be rigorous with the emphasis on "results"; and Russia will have a modern army.

There will be deeper integration with CIS countries, a closer relationship with EU countries and friendly relations with the rest of the world.

Of its own accord, Russia will become more democratic, freer and with a developed civil society.

Those under the impression that they have heard it all before would not be wrong. Year after year, the program put forward by Russia's leaders remains the same, only the emphasis and the deadlines change. However, it would be wrong to say that the annual state of the nation addresses -- particularly Putin's -- are just a load of hot air. Much of that which has been outlined in previous years has indeed been implemented.

But to what extent can one concur with Putin's main conclusion -- that Russia has become a "politically and economically stable country"?

It is well known that the economic growth of recent years was primarily a product of the normal process of recovery following the 1998 crisis and unusually high oil prices. The oil and gas industry, which employs just 1 percent of the population, accounts for one-quarter of GDP. The degree of ownership concentration and monopolization of the economy has actually increased in the last four years, as has the dependence on foreign, mostly raw materials, markets. Efforts to make the economy more diverse and competitive have met with limited success. Poverty has decreased, but social stratification is nevertheless on the rise. The level of corruption has, at best, remained steady. The lack of independence and probity in the judiciary means that ownership and property rights do not enjoy sufficient protection. What will guarantee economic stability should external factors suddenly take a turn for the worse? The country's stabilization fund and gold and currency reserves are sufficient only for a limited time.

Putin's declaration of political stability does not bear scrutiny, either. The characteristic "flourishes" of the Yeltsin years are a thing of the past, of course. The political power once wielded by regional leaders and oligarchs has diminished. At the center of political life stands an energetic young president and his administration. Putin has a tighter grip on power than any leader since Yury Andropov. But just as in 1983, everything now depends on one man. Andropov handpicked Mikhail Gorbachev as his successor, a choice that turned world history on its head and led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Whom is Putin grooming to fill his shoes? And what can we expect from his successor? The stakes are just as high today as they were 21 years ago. Talk of stability is therefore premature, to say the least.

We would all rest a lot easier if Russia had functioning democratic institutions and a separation of powers; an authoritative and independent parliament; robust political parties both in power and in opposition; genuinely independent prosecutors and judges; television stations independent of the Kremlin; and strong regions and municipalities. But Putin has been instrumental in undermining these building blocks of stability and subjugating them to himself. The regime has grown stronger, while the state has grown weaker.

Having brought parliament, the political opposition, regional leaders, television and big business to their knees, Putin has only two targets left in his quest to cement his hold on power: NGOs and the Internet. In his state of the nation address, Putin issued veiled threats to the NGOs. Can the Russian Internet be far behind?

Nowhere was the gulf between Putin's words and reality so apparent as on the issues of democracy and human rights. At no time has Putin spoken at such length and so forcefully about the need for freedom. The president reproached the West for depicting him as an authoritarian leader and attributed this to fear of a resurgent Russia. But in practice, Russia's "flight from freedom" has continued apace: The regime cynically manipulated the recent parliamentary and presidential elections; state-controlled media are coming in for ever harsher censorship; Mikhail Khodorkovsky sits in a detention facility awaiting trial while his company, under relentless attack from the state, has warned of possible bankruptcy. Putin recently introduced a draconian law to the State Duma that would effectively ban referenda in Russia. Earlier, his government had tried to restrict the freedom of assembly. Chechnya was mentioned in Putin's speech only in the context of the war on international terrorism.

Putin declared that his main objective, and the most difficult one, was the creation of a free society of free people; and not helped, one might add, by the fact that he himself is always pulling in the opposite direction.

The goals outlined by the president presuppose an entirely new Russian state. Only honest, well trained bureaucrats, devoted to serving the common good, could reform education, healthcare and the armed forces. Only when they are held accountable for their actions by legislatures will they change their age-old habits. Only strict and vigilant civilian control of the military, law enforcement and the security services can introduce transparency into the enormous "war economy." To conquer poverty and social stratification, Russia needs independent trade unions and a powerful parliamentary opposition. Only an extensive network of independent media, coupled with independent prosecutors and judges, will allow us to root out corruption. Without democratic institutions, we have little hope of restricting the power of the bureaucracy and of cutting through the red tape that hinders growth. Yet during Putin's tenure, these democratic institutions increasingly resemble cardboard cutouts. Like many a Russian ruler before him, Putin does not control the bureaucracy. Surely this explains his symbolic silence on the issue of battling corruption.

Putin wants to make Russia strong and wealthy. His top priority is to improve the well-being of his people. To that end, he wants to modernize the social sphere, the laws regulating the economic and financial sectors and to reduce state intervention in business affairs. But he hopes to accomplish all this within an increasingly authoritarian system and by means of a traditional bureaucracy that is only outwardly obedient to the Kremlin. Starting with Peter the Great, Russia's rulers have attempted this same sort of authoritarian modernization. The Soviet general secretaries continued this attempt in the 20th century. Each attempt left the country as backward and downtrodden as before.

Putin has set himself an impossible mission. Until the state and society are thoroughly democratized and the economy profoundly transformed, Russia is unlikely to achieve real success.