Putinism

The Slow Rise of a Radical Right Regime in Russia

Kenneth A. Loparo, Marcel Van Herpen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349448739, 9781137282804
• eBook ISBN: 9781137282811
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this original analysis of contemporary Russia, the author shows how Putin's regime is a completely new, right-wing political model that combines features of Mussolini's Italy with the 19th Century Bonapartism of Napoleon III and 21st Century Populism of Berlusconi. An essential read.

Part I
“Weimar Russia”

The Validity of a Historical Parallel

1

Russia and the Weimar Republic: Does a “Weimar Parallel” Exist?

Both Europeans and Americans increasingly assume that peace and calm are the natural order of things in Europe and that the first 45 years of this century, not the most recent, were the aberration. This is understandable since Europe has been free of war for so long that an ever-growing proportion of the Western public, born after World War II, has no direct experience with great-power war. However, this optimistic view is incorrect.¹

John J. Mearsheimer

Introduction: The danger of Praetorianism

In 1968 Samuel Huntington published his classic book Political Order in Changing Societies in which he warned that the outcome of sudden political changes in countries with ineffectual political institutions could be chaotic. A sudden increase in political participation, he wrote, instead of promoting democracy, could lead to a praetorian system. A praetorian system was, according to Huntington, a system in which “social forces confront each other nakedly; no political institutions, no corps of professional political leaders are recognized or accepted as the legitimate intermediaries to moderate group conflict. Equally important, no agreement exists among the groups as to the legitimate and authoritative methods for resolving conflicts (…) Each group employs means which reflect its peculiar nature and capabilities. The wealthy bribe; students riot; workers strike; mobs demonstrate; and the military coup.”² Huntington’s description of a praetorian system seemed rather adequate to describe the transition period in the Soviet Union from 1988 to 1991—even before the abortive KGB-inspired coup against Gorbachev.

Huntington’s analysis was later adapted by Jack Snyder in an article published in the spring of 1990 in International Security with the title “Averting Anarchy in the New Europe.”³ In this article, Snyder pointed already to the possibility that the introduction of a market economy and a pluralist parliamentary democracy in—what then still was—the Soviet Union, would not, in itself, herald an epoch of international peace. On the contrary, it could be the beginning of an epoch of new, unknown conflicts. Snyder was concerned over what would happen in the Soviet Union, “which was undergoing a huge leap in mass political participation in the context of an authoritarian tradition and a demonstrable de-legitimation of its previous governing institutions. ‘Traditional’ elite groups, in this case the conservative sectors of the Party and the military, have corporatist interests that in the past have inclined them toward a conflictual approach to international politics.”⁴ Snyder mentioned the Weimar Republic as a possible model for political developments in Soviet Russia: “In the 1920s, for example, Weimar Germany and Taisho Japan were societies on the cusp of emerging from praetorian patterns. Liberal, democratic, free-trading, non-militarist institutions were potentially emerging in these two states in the 1920s (…). When this relatively liberal international order collapsed with the Depression at the end of the 1920s, however, the liberal regimes in Germany and Japan collapsed along with it.”⁵ Fifteen years later, Snyder’s doubts about a possible negative evolution of post-Soviet Russia had all but disappeared. In a new book, Electing to Fight—Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, written with Edward Mansfield,⁶ the authors wrote: “The period of democratization by great powers has always been a moment of particular danger, in part because when states are militarily strong they may seek to use their force in pursuit of nationalist goals. Vladimir Putin, for example, calculated carefully in using the Second Chechen War to win election as president in Russia in 2000.”⁷

From optimism to pessimism

Shortly after Snyder published his first article, the Soviet Union disintegrated. From that moment the possibility of the Weimar Parallel has been evoked on different occasions. Could the new, democratizing Russia develop into a new version of the Weimar Republic? That was the question. The answers varied according to the historical situation of the moment and the views of the different authors. Former U.S. President Richard Nixon was after Snyder one of the first to warn against a Weimar scenario. In his book Seize the Moment (1992) he wrote: “Perilous historical analogies can be drawn to the tumultuous change sweeping the former Soviet Union. We could see a replay of the Bolshevik Revolution, with a fragile democratic order crushed by a reactionary coup. We could see a reprise of the fall of the Weimar Republic, with an economically wounded democratic government gradually eclipsed by ultranationalists promising renewed glory.”⁸ Two years later, in 1994, a Weimar and Russia Forum was organized by the Institute of International Studies at the University of Berkeley. One of the speakers was Andrei Melville, Chair of the Department of Political Science at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations MGIMO. Melville saw some parallels between the new Russia and Weimar. He stressed “the extreme importance” of “the fact that in Weimar Germany and in post-Soviet, post-communist Russia, we are dealing with a post-imperial context. The Weimar Republic emerged out of the rubble of the Wilhelminian empire through the defeat and imposition of the humiliating Treaty of Versailles.”⁹ Equally, in the Russian case, there was a country that “suffered from wounded national pride,” a country “that faced domestically a serious revanchist opposition.”¹⁰ But was this post-imperial trauma, that post-Soviet Russia shared with Weimar Germany, enough to conclude that there was a parallel between both situations? For Melville there was no reason for despair. On the contrary, he was more inclined to see “reasons for cautious optimism.” One of these reasons was the emergence of a civil society. “The genie is out of the bottle,” he said. And if someone would ask him: “Is the glass half-full or half-empty?” he would answer: “I believe it is half-full.”¹¹

This same cautious optimism was still shared by Stephen Sestanovich, Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. In an article in Foreign Affairs, which was published in the same year, he wrote: “New democracies in danger always call forth comparisons with the doomed Weimar Republic, and there is no denying that the analogy is useful for thinking about Russia’s prospects.”¹² He went on to suggest that the situation in Russia was even worse, because “Russians have to create what they call a ‘rule of law’ state,” while “Germany in the 1920s was (…) a Rechtsstaat”¹³ But despite its many handicaps he thought that Russia could overcome its problems and concluded his article with a hopeful: “The struggle is far from over. Yet for all the country’s troubles, the disorder of everyday life and the lack of constitutional traditions, it is getting easier to imagine Russian democracy’s success.”¹⁴ Three years later, in 1997, this same cautious optimism could still be observed in another article in Foreign Affairs, written by David Remnick. In this article, with the title “Can Russia Change?,” Remnick characterized Yeltsin’s Russia as follows: “The rise of oligarchy summons up Argentina, the power vacuum evokes Weimar Germany, the dominance of the mafia hints at post-war Italy, and the presidential constitution recalls De Gaulle’s France of 1958.”¹⁵ Despite these qualifications, Remnick’s overall assessment of the situation, like those of Melville and Sestanovich before him, remained globally positive. “But while Russia’s problems alarm the world on occasion,” he wrote, “none of these analogies takes into account the country’s possibilities.”¹⁶

However, one year later, in 1998, this relative optimism was no longer shared by Andreas Umland, who published a comprehensive study on “Weimar Russia.” According to Umland, “Russia’s fragile unconsolidated democratic regime is operating under political conditions which are in some regards indeed relatively similar or equivalent to those of Weimar Germany.”¹⁷ Therefore, “‘Weimar Russia’ seems to be a not altogether inappropriate metaphor and conveys some insight into the condition of post-Soviet Russia.”¹⁸ The relative optimism, expressed earlier by foreign Kremlin watchers, seemed to have made place for doubt. According to Umland, “to make a definite assessment—whether more optimistic or pessimistic—is difficult.”

Seven years later, after Putin’s first term as Russian President, the Weimar metaphor was used again, this time by the British historian Niall Ferguson. Ferguson sounded not only concerned, but outright alarmed. In an op-ed that appeared in the Daily Telegraph on January 1, 2005, with the title “Look back at Weimar—and start to worry about Russia,”¹⁹ he wrote that “the resemblance between Russia now and Germany in the 1930s seems especially apt.” And he continued: “The Weimar parallel is not encouraging. Germany’s descent into dictatorship went in stages: there were three more or less authoritarian chancellors before Hitler, each of whom sought to rule Germany by decree. The question that remains open is whether Putin is just a more successful version of one of these authoritarian warm-up acts, or a fully fledged Russian führer. Either way, he is fast becoming as big a threat to Western security as he is to Russian democracy.”²⁰ Two years later, on May 28, 2007, Ferguson came back on the Weimar analogy in an op-ed that was published in the Los Angeles Times. He wrote that “the man who succeeded Boris N. Yeltsin (…) is doing much to vindicate our analysis.”²¹ And he continued: “Yet this is not Cold War II. Unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, Russia is not self-confident but insecure. (…) It is a waning power. The value of the parallel with Weimar Germany is precisely that it captures the dangers of a backlash against such weakness.”²² Ferguson went on to warn that “Russia is now ready to play a more aggressive role on the international stage. Remember, it was Putin who restored the old Soviet national anthem. And it was he who described the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “national tragedy on an enormous scale.” It would be a bigger tragedy if he or his successor tried to restore that evil empire. Unfortunately, that is precisely what the Weimar analogy predicts will happen.”²³

Normally it is analysts critical of Putin’s government who come forward with the Weimar Parallel. It was, therefore, surprising when in the summer of 2011 Sergey Markov, a prominent Duma member of Putin’s own United Russia party was quoted in Newsweek, warning that “the situation [in Russia] is similar to that during the Weimar [Republic]: there is zero state ideology, deep social imbalance, and the general weakness of state institutions.”²⁴ Adding: “Our regime is scared.”²⁵ Markov, however, considers the Weimarization of Russia as an external threat to a government which does its utmost best to counter this dangerous trend. Other members of the Russian power elite, such as Valery Zorkin, head of the Russian Constitutional Court, expressed themselves in a similar way. Equally, Zorkin defended in April 2009 in a lecture in St. Petersburg the authoritarianism of the Russian government by referring to the Weimar Republic. “One of the most democratic republics in world history,” he said, which “fell into chaos,” as a result of which “one of the most cultivated peoples of Europe saw in Hitler their saviour.”²⁶ Both Markov and Zorkin turned the argument on its head: Putin’s authoritarian government, far from being an expression of the Weimar parallel, was presented as a means to prevent a Weimar situation. The Newsweek reporters—rightly—wrote in a comment: “Markov has been one of the Kremlin’s leading ideologists for much of the last decade, so when an insider like him starts talking about Weimar—the shaky German democracy that preceded Hitler’s rise in 1933—it’s a worrisome sign. In fact, however, the growth of violent racism in Russia has been encouraged by the Kremlin’s dabbling with nationalist ideology and politicized youth groups. And it’s equally clear that the Kremlin, rather than seeking to eliminate the wave of ultranationalism, is doing its best to co-opt the movement.”²⁷

The Weimar Parallel: The maturing process

The “Weimar Parallel” was a theory that first appeared when the Soviet Union was in a phase of political transformation during Gorbachev’s perestroika. It was subsequently evoked when Russia went through an economic “shock therapy” and when Yeltsin bombarded the Russian parliament. After this, it seemed temporarily to lose its relevance, to make a come-back around the turn of the century, and, more recently, during Putin’s and Medvedev’s presidencies. Interesting is the mainly downward sloping optimism curve. While around 1990 there prevailed feelings of doubt (Snyder), some years later, in the period 1994–1997, this doubt made place for a cautious optimism (Melville, Sestanovich, Remnick). But around 1998 this optimism disappeared and made again place for doubt (Umland), followed by outright pessimism in the “Putin years” 2005–2007 (Niall Ferguson).

Was Niall Ferguson right when he remarked that the Weimar Parallel was not obsolete, but had a greater relevance than ever? In answering this question we should not forget that the negative developments that led to Hitler’s accession to power did not take place at the beginning of the Weimar Republic—not even during the hyperinflation period of 1922–1923—but only between 1929 and 1933: 11 to 15 years a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I “Weimar Russia”: The Validity of a Historical Parallel
• Part II The Specter of a Fascist Russia
• Part III Putinism, Bonapartism, and Berlusconism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index