The Deepening Divide

Window on Eurasia

Putin’s Post-Beslan Moves Deepen Divide Between Power, People

Paul Goble

Tartu, September 7 – In the wake of the Beslan tragedy,President Vladimir Putin announced a series of measures – including the appointment rather than election of governors and a set of new Duma electoral rules designed to boost larger political parties at the expense of smaller ones. -- intended to strengthen the state and enhance its ability to fight terrorism.

But now, twelve months later, some Moscow analysts are suggesting that Putin’s moves then especially when viewed in conjunction with his unwillingness or inability to impose order within his own regime since then have done relatively little to reduce the threat of terrorism but have deepened the divide between the Kremlin and the Russian people.

In an essay provocatively entitled „Beslan Consolidated Power Against Society,” Tat’yana Stanovaya, a senior analyst at the MoscowPolitical Technology Center, suggested that Putin’s actions over the pastyear were „directed at the defense of power not only from anti-government actions but also from society itself” (http://www.politcom.ru/, September 2). The concentration of power that Putin promoted has had the effect of creating a force which „is being used for the defense of power itself” rather than for any other purpose, she writes. And that in turn means that Putin’s reforms have reduced rather than increased both the dependence of government agencies on and their responsibility toward the population. Indeed, Stanovaya concludes, „the political consequences of the tragedy in Beslan made the power much more alienated from society and at the same time much less effective.” But Putin and his team do not appear to care about that. For them, the most important things is „to make the organs of power controllable and loyal to the maximum extent possible.”

Stanovaya’s argument were extended by Vitaliy Leibin in an essay posted online on Monday. Looking back over the past year, he concludes thatPutin has failed to find a common language with the Russian people, at least in part because he views them as a greater threat to his power than are the terrorists. (http://www.polit.ru/author/2005/09/05/sept.html).

Putin’s inability to connect with the people was very much on display at the end of last week, Leibin suggests. On the one hand, while he was in the northern Caucasus on September 1 for the opening of the Kuban Agrarian State University, he did not visit Beslan, the site of one of Russia’s greatest national tragedies.

And on the other, his meeting with a group of women who had lost children and other relatives in the Beslan massacre was by all accounts not a comfortable one for him or for them, with Putin conceding general responsibility but indicating by his comments how little he actually knew –or was prepared to admit he knew – about what had happened there.

But more disturbing than this failure to communicate, Leibin continues, is Putin’s continuing failure to do what he has promised to do. On the first anniversary of Beslan, the Russian president said that that tragedy was precisely the occasion for putting the country’s law enforcement agencies in order.

But he has not done so, either at the lower levels where the militia appears to be acting with ever less regard for the law nor at the upper reaches were he has failed to fire any of the leaders of the force structures, officials who might have been expected to be dismissed after the disastrous outcome of the Beslan school siege.

„The pictures of moral dissolution in the force structures are connected with the political and nomenklatura-like sense of untouchabilityand independence of their leadership,” Leibin writes. However, government security agencies „without political control are not the genuine article but rather [simply] marauders.”

Indeed, Leibin writes, the situation is so dangerous that Putin stands before „a simple choice: either he can build with his friends the next [super-profitable corporation] or he can get involved with the country.” If he choses the latter, then he will have to face up to the fact that he won’t be able to do so „without the citizens, that is, without massive political support.” Today, the commentator concludes, it is not clear which choicePutin will make, but the commentator suggests that as the Georgian and Ukrainian situations show, force structures which do not enjoy theconfidence of the people may not save a country’s president however much confidence he may repose in them.

(via MAK)