The recent impressive victory of Vladimir Putin for the presidency of the Russian Federation was expected and it is generally believed that even in a Western type of competitive democratic politics he would have won by a comfortable majority. It is a moot question whether he rules for the coming six years or would extend beyond 2030 as the Russian constitution stipulates the election of the president for a period of six years with a limit of two consecutive terms.
Any change to this provision would require, as in any other constitutional democracy, an amendment to the constitution, which is an ongoing process. A more important question is what explains the unusually long period of Putin’s rule which is an exception even in the postStalin Soviet Union and rarely replicated except in places like North Korea. Procedural democracies with rotational systems mainly are practised in Great Britain and USA regularly. In the latter it required an amendment to the constitution to restrict the presidential term to two terms which was a convention strictly observed till Franklin D. Roosevelt became president during the crisis-situation of the New Deal and the Second World War. In France, two terms of presidentship in a semi-presidential system is for an unusually long period of fourteen years.
Even in a representational parliamentary system in Germany, Angela Merkel governed uninterruptedly for sixteen years. As such, even in the well-established democracies exceptions abound to a strictly eight-or tenyears rotational nature of the top position. In analysing the phenomenal success of Putin’s endurance, one must consider both the post Second World War evolution of the erstwhile Soviet Union and its subsequent collapse and the mishandling of the transitional process under Gorbachev and Yeltsin as these facilitated the rise of Putin. Gorbachev was in unnecessary hurry when he attempted perestroika and glasnost simultaneously without taking note of the internal situation within the then Soviet Union and the hidden Western agenda.
That messed up the process so much that Gorbachev today is a popular face in the West but forgotten in Russia and held responsible for the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the loss of its superpower status. Yeltsin did not do any better. He too mishandled the Russian economy allowing Western economic penetration without protecting the interests of the average Russian.
In the process, he created a situation where the life of an average Russian citizen became difficult with increase in alcoholism, and drastic reduction in life expectancy, contributing to the collapse of the entire economic system. Putin succeeded Yeltsin in 1999. A new period began in Russian history demarcating Putin’s rule with that of his predecessors. In the initial period, till 2008, he was genuinely interested in accommodation with the West as he tried to join the EU and NATO.
He hoped for equal treatment from the West, expecting from the latter a second Marshall Plan like the one extended to Western Europe by the USA, in the post Second World War reconstruction. Meanwhile, enjoying supremacy in a unipolar world, the US-led NATO developed a new doctrine of regime change bypassing the UN which alarmed both Russia and China who were unable to do much as they were in a situation of relative helplessness. NATO began its eastward expansion in the mid-1990s with the inclusion of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, despite a commitment given to Gorbachev by the USA that there would be no such expansion.
The second round, in 2004 included Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Moscow opposed the expansion and NATO’s bombing of Bosnia and Serbia. Russia was in no position to challenge. The turning point was the 2008 Bucharest summit of NATO where Ukraine’s proposal to join NATO was endorsed. Putin was enraged at Ukraine’s proposal and declared that this was unacceptable to Russia. In 2007 Putin pointed out the unfairness of unipolarity and drew the red line for NATO expansion which included Ukraine and Georgia.
He declared Russia’s re-entry as a great power and included both China and India as the new emerging powers who were desirous of a more equitable world order. He repeated his warning to the West in 2008 that any further NATO expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia would be tantamount to crossing the red line. This was the first major assertion of Russia signalling to the West that the days of the unipolar world, which had lasted for two decades, were coming to an end and it was time to recreate the balance of the Cold War period. The unipolarity and unilateralism followed by the US was seen as destabilizing and inimical to Russian interests. Putin and his associates have accepted Yevgeny Primakov’s doctrine based on pragmatism and Russia’s self-interest.
The possibility of a mutually beneficial situation with close cooperation with the West seemed misconceived. It was a zero-sum game with the West led by the US winning and Russia losing. To reduce US power and influence and to resist NATO expansion became the cornerstone of Primakov’s policy. Putin realized the need for drastic internal economic reordering since the West mocked Russia for being a gas station masquerading as a nation. He also realized that the isolationist policies followed during the Soviet era led to disastrous consequences as both in economic management and scientific innovation Russia lagged the West in a big way. An important aspect of Putin’s tenure is continuous economic development raising standards of living and providing quality education in the frontier areas of science and technology.
This has made the Russian economy the largest in Europe despite the western sanctions. Russia, as part of the Primakov doctrine, also activated BRICS along with China and India, consolidated its position with its enormous natural resources, improved technology, and modernized its armed forces. In addition, it has begun collaborations with China with which it has developed a new partnership. This has accelerated the de-dollarisation process in the world and challenged the Bretton Woods order (1944) ushering in a new kind of economic multipolarity in the world today.
Its partnership with the BRI of China has enabled Russia to extend its influence and power in many of the francophone countries in Africa. An alarmed France saw Macron’s desperate announcement of sending French troops to Ukraine. Germany expectedly vetoed it, and Macron’s bluff came out in the open along with massive internal opposition to the proposal. NATO’s unwise policy to initiate a proxy war in Ukraine has been one major reason that has consolidated Putin’s position in Russia. Ukraine is a buffer between Russia and the West. Mearsheimer, rejecting the claim that it was Putin’s unilateral decision, argued that any other Russian leader would have done the same.
He commented “great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory”. It is shocking that Merkel and Hollande admitted that the 2014 MINSK agreements were agreed only to buy time and to prepare the Ukrainian army along with its fascist component. Putin made it clear that Ukraine and Georgia were the red lines and once the Western deception came to light limited army operations had begun in Ukraine. Putin, a moderate, rejected the extremist demand for a massive action.
His moderation came out of strategic considerations and most importantly because ethnic Ukrainians were also Slavs. The 2022 Istanbul Conference presented a golden opportunity to settle the issues of neutrality and autonomy for Ukraine but the Ukrainian government, backed by the West, withdrew from it. Every nation at a particular juncture prioritises security before liberty and prefers order before disorder. After the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, the average American accepted intrusions into their civil liberties by the Patriot Act.
The Monroe doctrine of the Americans and the Cuban Crisis are great examples of great power obsession with its national security, area of influence and power and to think otherwise for Russia was a colossal mistake of the West. The rise of China and the relative decline of the US has led Russia, armed with a formidable nuclear arsenal and a veto in the Security Council to call for a readjustment of the contemporary world system and to move it from unipolarity to multipolarity. Putin resurrected the historical antecedents of a great Russian civilization and united its people which no other leader before him attempted. His supreme achievement lies in providing proper leadership and direction to Russia at a critical juncture of its history, something that eluded both Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
(The writer is a retired Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi)