Resuscitating democratic politics in Russia may prove even more challenging than Boris Kapustin suggests in his sobering and instructive analysis. For many westerners, the reason why democracy has been slow to take root in post-communist Russia is an enigma. The West has generally been happy to give Moscow the benefit of the doubt, and the failure of Russian reforms is mostly attributed to administrative incompetence rather than any lack of political determination. However, recently it has been difficult to ignore the fact that liberal democracy is becoming genuinely unpopular, both among the Russian leadership and the public at large.
The reasons are not hard to find. The democratic interlude during Boris Yeltsin’s rule in the 1990s coincided with economic chaos at home and a huge loss of prestige abroad. For Russians, this was a double tragedy. And while Yeltsin’s policies may have fallen well short of true western democracy, they were still close enough to discredit the image of democracy in the eyes of many ordinary Russians. This experience, combined with a strong belief in Russia’s cultural uniqueness, helped the current leadership to convince the people that democracy is not a suitable system for them.
The restoration of both Russia’s economic fortunes and its international prestige in the last few years was thanks to high oil and gas prices, rather than successful structural reforms. Hence Russia’s largely mono-functional economy resembles Saudi Arabia’s more than Norway’s. This wealth has allowed the Russian leadership to alleviate the socio-economic situation of the nation. But it has also made it possible for the Kremlin to take almost full control of the media, to dominate the political scene and to co-opt or intimidate civil society. This should come as no surprise to the West; after all, the reliance of authoritarian governments on patronage and intimidation is nothing new.
Kapustin recommends that Russia’s beleaguered democrats should establish a grassroots network of non-governmental organisations to counter the regime’s authoritarianism, taking Vaclav Havel’s approach in Czechoslovakia 20 years ago as a model. But Havel is not the only one to use this method. It is something that Islamist organisations – such as the Muslim Brotherhood – have been doing for decades in a number of Middle Eastern countries.
There are two factors, however, which will make this task more difficult in Russia. First, the current regime is, at least for the moment, genuinely popular. Second – and perhaps more significantly – there is no coherent ideological framework in today’s Russia which is instantly familiar to the people and therefore capable of mobilising the masses against the regime. This is particularly problematic in the face of Russia’s suppressed media and the oppressive state apparatus.
Building civil society in Russia from the bottom up is definitely worth trying. However, that is not the same as attempting to consolidate individual grassroots groups into a nationwide movement with a coherent agenda for transforming Russia into a western-style democracy. Certainly, few (if any) of the Islamic popular movements have been successful in grabbing political power from their authoritarian regimes, despite their impressive charity networks.