Last weekend, international media was agog with news that Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent Russian oligarch had been released after ten years of incarceration in Karelia, a Russian region that borders Finland.
There was plenty of surprise at the development. After all, Khodorkovsky had been a prominent rival of president Vladimir Putin. The head of Yukos, one of the largest companies to emerge in the Russian Federation due to the privatization of state assets in the 1990s, he was a business magnate, oil baron and philanthrophist and had been seen to have political ambitions – all of which caused Putin to nearly wreck his career.
But there were more surprises to come. On Sunday and Monday, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, two members of the Russian punk rock group, Pussy Riot were freed. They had been sentenced to two years in prison after they organised a ‘punk prayer’ against Putin in a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in early 2012, and were arrested on charges of hooliganism.
Next in line to be ‘pardoned’ could be the ‘Arctic 30’, Greenpeace campaigners who had boarded a Russian oil rig in September this year to highlight the plundering of the Arctic. If released, they would have spent two months in prison.
Officially, the pardons are being made as part of a sweeping new amnesty law adopted by Russian lawmakers on the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of a new constitution for Russia in 1993, two years after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
But as any keen Russia watcher would tell you, nothing in the country moves without the consent of one man – Putin.
In the case of these pardons, international observers are reading a subtle message by Putin: Ahead of the upcoming Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin wants to tell the world, especially his western critics, that he ‘listens’ to their criticism of him. And as they have time and again pulled him up on the worsening human rights situation in the Russian Federation, so he is now effectively pardoning some of his worst enemies.
To his ‘subjects’, ‘Tsar’ Vladimir Putin is sending a completely different message: rebel against me and your whole life would be ruined. And he can back this up with examples of the people he has just released. Khodorkovsky has come out after ten years. His company is destroyed. His children, wife and parents lived ten years without him. The two Pussy Riot members were treated miserably in prison – living in the most unhygienic conditions, with a belligerently hostile prison administration watching their every move.
There are other instances too, where incarcerated individuals who have recently been freed have lost their physical and mental health. Many have not been released since they are not as prominent and continue to rot in prison.
The assumption therefore that Putin is ‘changing’ is completely erroneous. Instead, the opposite is true in that so strong is Putin’s hold over every aspect of Russian life today that he need not feel afraid at all about anybody and is thus releasing some of his ‘enemies’.
The pardons by Putin round off what has been, a remarkable year for the Russian strongman, especially on the world stage. On the one hand, he has been successful in thwarting US-led attempts to raise a coalition for an Iraq-style invasion of Syria. Secondly, he has been once again successful in thwarting EU-efforts to enter his own backyard – in this case, the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine, where his personal intervention led to the EU withdrawing from signing a landmark deal with Kiev.
Year 2013 has only strengthened ‘Brand Putin’, which began its upward ascent back in 1999, in a completely different Russia.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, its largest republic, the Russian SFSR, which became the Russian Federation, had to face untold misery and hardship. Under Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, the transition of the world’s largest state-controlled economy into a capitalist society began.
State assets – coal, petroleum, even media and telecommunication – were privatised in the 1990s. The privatisation largely shifted control of enterprises from state agencies to individuals with inside connections in the government. The most significant result of this was the creation of ‘oligarchs’ – business magnates, who controlled huge business interests and were extremely unpopular among other Russians.
Many of these individuals moved billions in cash and assets outside of the country. Social services collapsed. Millions plunged into poverty.
Corruption and lawlessness became rife. The Russian Mafia arose. On the other hand, Chechen separatists in the north Caucasus region raised the banner of revolt, declaring independence, causing the First Chechen War. A last proverbial ‘nail in the coffin’ was the Russian Financial Crisis of 1998, where the government was forced to devalue the currency, the rouble.
It was in these conditions, in 1999, that Yeltsin, whose health had been failing, handpicked a then-unknown Putin (a former KGB man) as his successor.
Putin immediately went to work. His first task was the Chechens. Hostilities were renewed and the Second Chechen War began. This time, the Russian army succeeded in capturing the Chechen capital of Grozny and Putin declared victory.
The Second Chechen War convinced Yeltsin that he had made the right decision. He then retired, having given all power to Putin.
Putin won the 2000 presidential elections, riding on his popularity made in the Chechen War. Since then, Putin has been at the helm in Russia, sometimes as premier and sometimes as president. His reign has coincided with the Russianeconomy coming out of the throes of crisis and growing for seven straight years. He has also taken on the unpopular oligarchs during this time and has stifled all forms of dissent (the most recent was a series of middle class protests in 2012) and his men have taken over media organisations. Despite all this, his popularity in Eussia is as high as ever.
Political pundits have coined a term to describe the unique system of governance in place currently in Russia: Putinism. Reams have been written about Putinism, which is described as neither Communism, nor Stalinism but a system more akin to fascism or even a personality cult.
Putin’s rapid rise and tenacious hold on power says a lot about Russia itself. Ever since its founding days as part of the Kievan Rus’, Russia has always been dominated in most if not all parts, by a single charismatic individual - whether it was Rurik and his successors or Grand Prince Ivan the Great, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Peter the Great, Empress Catherine the Great, Lenin, Stalin – the list is long.
For how much longer, Tsar Vladimir Putin holds sway in the Kremlin is anybody’s guess. For the moment though, he is here to stay – whether you like it or not.
