Putin’s Great: Russia’s impact on the world in 20 years

Vladimir Putin has been perhaps the most influential world leader since Winston Churchill.

Just think, this statement is very significant about a man who had no political ambitions to begin with. If the ailing and helpless Boris Yeltsin had not asked him to guarantee his power and the survival of his family – or if he had turned to someone else – Russian history might have looked very different.

When Putin became Prime Minister on August 19, 1999, his political importance was zero and his popularity was one percent. Most believed they would be replaced quickly amid the ongoing crisis, as Yeltsin hoped. At a time when the North Caucasus was in the grip of civil war and other parts of Russia threatened with secession, there was no shortage of crises.

But instead, 20 years later, Putin is still here.

During those two decades, this young bureaucrat from St. Petersburg, the KGB, left his mark on almost every aspect of life in Russia.

I am your everything

Today, the old footage of Boris Yeltsin inviting 46-year-old Putin to his office for the first time has changed more than just fashion. Putin has completely changed Russia’s political system in power.

The undeniable trend of this era is the growth of dictatorship.

Putin spent much of the early years of his rule rebuilding ‘vertical power’, bringing the executive branch and various regions under a single system and control. This resulted in a return to Soviet-style institutionalization, a doubling of central government control over the economy, and the return of secret security apparatuses to Russian life.

At least two distinct theoretical phases have emerged in this direction.

The first phase was pro-Western populism: indifferent to NATO, pro-American, and free-market reformers within Russia. This ‘diet potenism’ lasted until about 2007-2006.

Later the ideas of ‘national sovereignty’ prevailed. First, the concept of ‘sovereign democracy’ introduced by Putin’s influential aide Vladislav Surkov was a sign that Russia was beginning to distance itself from the West. At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin delivered a scathing speech against the global security system. This was followed by the controversial annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the war in Ukraine, which led to other changes such as isolationism and an independent economy.

“In the last 20 years, America has seen Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Trump with different policies,” said Glub Pavlovsky, who served in the Kremlin during the first 12 years of Putin’s government as a political adviser. .’

‘People think that if you only have one president, you only have one policy. Not at all. Putin’s first term bears no resemblance to his current term.

So make no idol for yourself

If Putin has changed Russia, then Russia has also changed Putin.

Initially Putin was not ready for the big screen, and his team was concerned about his reputation. Putin had never been on the front lines of politics before, and he was not used to being in the spotlight. For a while, they even had trouble finding suits in their size.

“Whenever he sat down, the back of his coat would go up,” Pawlowski recalls.

It took years for this detective to break out of his familiar background.

Today, Putin is part of a cult. The image of this fiery leader can be seen on t-shirts, cups, knives, watches, calendars and sports shirts. All of them showed him as a problem solver. All action hero. Defender of the Nation – Shirt optional.

Putin’s image as a strongman has persisted, even as the popularity of nearly all of his subordinates has declined.

Putin’s popularity has dipped only three times in recent years: in 2005, after a modest reform of the social welfare system, in 2011 after rigged parliamentary elections, and last year when nine out of ten people were against pension reform.

Despite recent declines, Putin is by far the most popular Russian politician. Only 20% of the country has a very negative opinion of their government.

But veteran pollster Lou Gudkoff says the numbers aren’t a sign of love. According to him, Russians are cautious in their assessment of Putin. They see Putin as representing the interests of bureaucrats, the military and the security apparatus. They realize that Putin is ready to suppress any opposition.

‘Such a position,’ says Gudkoff, ‘creates neither love nor special sympathy.’

Do not take the name of the God of creation in vain

By the time Vladimir Putin came to power, the prospects for liberal democracy in Russia were already slim. The first decade of post-Soviet life saw incredible opportunities for some Russians. But for most of them, it was a grim battle for survival.

Boris Yeltsin laid the foundations for a move away from emerging freedoms – returning power to the security services and handing the prime ministership to Vladimir Putin, the head of the security agency.

The ex-spy seized the opportunity to completely, ruthlessly and deliberately suppress rights and civil society. In the mid-2000s, they changed people’s assembly rights, and any demonstration now requires permission from the authorities.

As a result, sanctions reached an almost gratuitous peak.

Russians jailed for sharing their stories on Facebook. In 2018, an unemployed carpenter was fined for calling Putin a ‘stupid f-head’ in the first use of a new law against defamation of officials on the internet.

But Putin’s crackdown on dissent has met with minimal opposition. After the turmoil of the 1990s, the Russian people wanted peace, security and stability. The majority of the people were willing to accept less freedom in return.

With the help of rising oil prices, Putin was able to fulfill his promise. At the end of his second term, he can reasonably claim to have joined the ranks of Russia’s most successful leaders.

Remembering the day of worship

With the support of the majority of the people, if the Russian president wants to change the constitution to stay in office, he does not face much opposition. But Putin decided to experiment and chose a successor. He has been the Prime Minister since 2008 and Dmitry Medvedev the President.

Constantin Gaz was an advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture at the time of the transfer of power. He recalls that the entire government was happy with the implementation of this ‘big plan’ – it was the first time that presidential power had been transferred without death or declaring a state of emergency.

“When it happened, it was like a beautiful, strong and democratic victory,” he said. ‘We all felt that we were all very wonderful. We thought we had entered a new era and things would return to normal from now on.’

But in practice, the Medvedev era has seen a failure to restore democracy. Almost as soon as the president was elected, a crisis arose. Economic instability quickly led to political instability and mass protests. Seeing that at least some of the elite had defected to Medvedev, Putin regretted his decision to step down.

“Putin worked with him for about a year and a half, but by 2010 it was clear that he had started a power struggle again,” Konstantin Gaz said.

Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 was a very personal triumph, and at a time when he was no longer in power, showed the dangers of handing over power to others.

Putin spent the next year reversing almost all of Medvedev’s actions.

Respect your parents

President Medvedev sought to connect with Russia’s liberal elite and creative class. He took to Twitter and even appeared on Dozhad TV, Russia’s most popular opposition television channel. When Putin returned, the ups and downs in domestic politics had gone in the opposite direction.

“Putin felt the need to unite the people around him,” said Tatyana Satnovaya, a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

‘So they were looking for a new relationship with what they saw as a democratic majority. It was the first time we heard of the nation’s spiritual needs, family values, and the wave of patriotism that swept over the Crimea.’

Since 2011, Putin has sided with the Russian moral faction. A new group was started to promote healthy living and suppression of obscenity. In 2013, the Russian government enacted Section 28, a controversial new law against ‘promoting non-traditional relationships’ between minors. The results were unsurprising: hate crimes soared that were rarely investigated. Hundreds of gay men were tortured in two waves in Chechnya, and at least three of them were killed.

The Orthodox Church was at the center of this new conservative deal, with Archbishop Kirill calling Putin a ‘miracle of God’.

Not everyone agreed with the situation. In March 2012, four feminist activists attempted to hold a ‘punk liturgy’ as a protest at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The Kremlin sent them to a detention center.

“Putin was an agent of the KGB, an organization that destroyed churches, killed priests and killed people in camps,” said Maria Alyokhna, a member of the Posy Roit who was imprisoned. Now the Church is telling us that the KGB’s domination of Russia is great. It’s like the Grand Rabbi praising Hitler.’

You shall not kill anyone

Ivan the Great used dog pens to track down traitors. Putin has more sophisticated ways to track down enemies. But apparently not much has changed in his approach to the instruments of death.

The tragic death of Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006 was a major event in Putin’s presidency. The tragic death of a former Russian spy with plutonium 210, one of the most radioactive isotopes known to man, was broadcast worldwide from a London hospital bed.

Ten years later, a British government inquiry into Litvinenko’s death concluded that it was ‘possible’ that two Russian agents had killed him with Putin’s knowledge.

Targeted killings were not new in other countries. Chechen rebel leader Zalmkhan Yanderbayev was killed in Qatar two years before this killing. The only difference was the place where Litvinenko’s murder took place, on the streets of the British capital. It started a new activity of Russia’s secret forces.

The fear-mongering reached a new level again after the 2018 failed assassination attempt on Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, UK. This time, the finger of blame pointed toward Moscow, with two Russian military intelligence agents and hundreds of other suspects being accused.

Tatiana Sutnovaya of the Carnegie Endowment said, ‘Putin has been soft on terrorist attacks during his tenure. In the past, it was just the dark side of power and nobody talked about it. But now the Kremlin has nothing to do with it. Death has become a more obvious medium.’

You shall not commit adultery

As the failed Salisbury operation demonstrated, capability is not always a necessary part of Putin’s system. The most important thing is often said to be loyalty.

Those who have gained Putin’s trust have made the most progress. For twenty years he appointed four of his personal guards as governors. He has given a high role to the security bloc in the country’s politics.

Author and security expert Andrey Soldau argues that Putin’s former colleagues in the security services have become his ‘new elite’. ‘But after that, it was the army and the GRU military-intelligence factions, which gained the upper hand.

“Russia’s main security apparatus is now playing the role of the KGB in the Soviet Union, controlling society through espionage-obsessed and coercive targeting of elites,” Soldau said. But it is the military that is slowly playing an independent role, which I think is a seemingly bigger role.’

Those who broke the unwritten law of loyalty soon realized this.

In February 2003, Russia’s richest man, the billionaire novelist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, dared to criticize the Kremlin’s anti-corruption policies on a television program with the president. Later that year, Khodorkovsky was arrested. A year later his assets in the oil industry were confiscated.

The operation was part of a war against key figures, a group that wielded unprecedented political power under Yeltsin’s government. Either way, anyone who didn’t want to stay out of politics voluntarily was kicked out. The body of Boris Burzovsky, the most famous of them, was found in a house in Great Britain in 2013.

But as the old figures fell away, a new court emerged. And most of this group had good relations with this great man.

تم چوری نہ کرو

One of the indisputable achievements of the Putin administration was the huge reduction in poverty. This success was the result of historically high oil prices, Putin’s reform agenda and years of high economic growth. In the ten years between 1999 and 2018, Russia’s GDP grew by 94%. A cup of coffee for ten dollars was not impossible.

Since then, the economy’s performance has fluctuated, with economic growth averaging one percent and the outlook for the future not very bright. The poverty rate increased from 13.9 percent to 14.3 percent last year.

Despite all the rhetoric of fighting corruption, corruption is still the government’s biggest weakness. Ironically, transparency reforms introduced under Medvedev have provided journalists and researchers with a means to expose widespread corruption.

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny, along with his closest associates – from Medvedev himself to his old colleague Igo Sechin – has made a splash by investigating Putin’s mysterious dealings. But nothing happened against those involved in their reports. Instead, Navalny was tried and imprisoned.

Political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky said, ‘Once people know that Putin’s name is involved, it doesn’t matter if he is corrupt or not. Most of the decisions are made in Putin’s court and they are corrupt in his court.’

Thou shalt not bear false witness

The Russian media’s record from 1999 to 2019 has been a mixture of tragedies and occasional triumphs.

In the case of Putin, the media faced a permanent enemy.

First, his government turned to television media and took over two influential channels, ORT and NTV, with varying degrees of critical journalism on the agenda. Then the government turned to newspapers: first the best-selling tabloids and then the more elite broadsheets. Here, too, the plan was the same: pressure Ashrafieh into owning the publications, then use his other assets against the media business.

Since 2011 and 2012, the Russian public has been exposed to new levels of lies and misinformation. Investigative journalist Alexey Kovalev described the moment as a ‘turning point’, a moment that disturbed him so much that he decided to launch the website ‘The Noodle Remor’ to check the news. Fake stories were often illogical but were published alongside authentic news. For example, claims of active Sharia patrols on the streets in London encapsulate much of the current alt-right narrative.

According to him, by the time of the Ukraine operation in 2014-2015, the Kremlin operation had reached a new peak. ‘The state media dismissed any opposition to Putin as the work of spies. They were constantly spreading conspiracy theories and fake news in almost every language of the world.’

Even against this backdrop, islands of independent journalism managed to survive – especially online. When Putin came in, only 2 percent of the population had Internet users. The number is now more than 80 percent. Encouragingly, the Kremlin does not yet have a coherent strategy on how to deal with the digital challenge.

One of the first victims of the media crackdown was Leonid Parfunov, a star of Russian journalism. Her 2004 interview with the widow of a slain Chechen leader led to her being removed from her role as a news anchor. But today Perfionov is back, his show resurrected on YouTube.

He says, ‘I haven’t worked on public TV for 15 years, but things are better than ever for me. ‘For the first time I am a producer and a broadcaster. I am my own TV channel. That’s quite something.’

Do not be greedy

Although government propaganda about Putin’s success in the country seems less effective than ever, Russians generally accept his rhetoric about re-establishing the country as a major world power.

According to Andrei Soldato, parts of the Russian opposition also support Putin’s expansionism. According to him, this contradiction is not entirely new because imperialism is embedded in the collective psyche of Russians.

But the teaching of patriotism means that this process is long-term. ‘People are tired of the problems in Ukraine and Syria, but this has not changed their core beliefs. We are still living with a nineteenth-century mentality.’

Putin’s Russia will be remembered for its bloody wars – Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria – and its ruthless attitude to the lives of the country’s citizens and the occasional air traveler. Russia will be remembered for increasing military spending from 4.9 percent to 16 percent between 2010 and 2016, before tapering off somewhat.

But foreign policy has not always been bad news for Putin’s Russia. In 2004, Russian diplomats signed a long-awaited peace treaty, ending the centuries-old conflict.

Signatories Alaska Native Indian Tribes.

Russia without Putin

Last summer’s protests — and the brazen policies that led to them — are symptoms of a crisis in the system of government.

How serious this situation is for Putin remains to be seen. Only part of the Kremlin’s repressive regime has been set in motion, and there is no doubt that his government is ready to act. The protest movement is generally confined to Moscow and unrest in other areas is easily contained.

But it is clear that a conflict of some kind is taking shape.

Putin’s second term ends in 2024 and he cannot remain president unless he changes the constitution.

Putin, who now has more power than Brezhnev, has left no escape route. His experience in politics from 2008 to 2001 was unsuccessful. And even if he were to say goodbye to the presidency, he would probably face opposition from his inner circle, who need him more than Putin.

Various possibilities have been discussed: a constitutional amendment that would transfer real power to parliament and allow Putin to play the role of a more powerful prime minister, a model favored by Kazakh ‘father of the nation’ Nursultan Nazarbayev; What is, in which Putin chairs the Council. But Putin’s election as the leader of a superpower, along with the most dangerous country, Belarus, is a challenge unlikely to be welcomed in Minsk.

“We are used to the fact that regimes change most at the beginning, but with Putin’s Russia the situation is completely reversed,” says Konstantin Gaz. In the last five years we have seen the most fundamental changes in the system.’

“The biggest change will happen before our eyes,” he says.

This article was first published in August 2019.