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Winning ugly in Russia
29.09.2010
by Aurel Braun
After weeks of political melodrama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fired Moscow’s defiant mayor, Yury Luzhkov – “fired” is the term the President emphasized. The dismissal came after some of the most vitriolic Soviet-style attacks by state-controlled Russian television on Mr. Luzhkov. The firing tells us a good deal about the state of democracy in Russia, the democratic credentials of Mr. Medvedev, and the risks for anyone trying to have an independent power base in Russia.
Now, it is difficult to mourn the seeming political demise of Mr. Luzhkov. True, in the past 18 years, he has played a large role in making drab Moscow into a dynamic city, grand and gaudy, which produces almost a quarter of Russia’s GDP. Critics, however, rightly have long contended that Mr. Luzhkov ran the city like a private fiefdom. Corruption is indeed widespread.
However, Mr. Medvedev – who has the constitutional power to dismiss governors and Moscow’s mayor, and who officially declared that he had lost trust in the mayor – was upset by Mr. Luzhkov’s earlier criticism that suggested the President was a weak leader, and by the mayor’s defiance in the face of subsequent presidentially directed media counterattacks. For, in a country where Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Mr. Medvedev’s allies have enormously enriched themselves at the expense of the population at large, and in a city with the second largest number of billionaires in the world, singling out one individual for alleged corruption – Mr. Luzhkov – after decades of the Kremlin accepting and even praising him, is disingenuous.
First, such “selective justice” highlights the glaring gap between claims to a rule of law by the Kremlin and the reality of arbitrary rule. Second, it casts doubts on Mr. Medvedev’s carefully nurtured image as a democratic politician who has pushed whenever possible for liberalization and modernization. During the past few weeks, as he directed a Soviet-style media campaign against Mr. Luzhkov, it has been difficult to see how he has differed from Russia’s paramount political leader, Mr. Putin. Third, it has also become evident that, as Russia is moving toward parliamentary and presidential elections, the Kremlin leaders are not prepared to tolerate someone with an independent power base like Mr. Luzhkov.
Of course, we could all be surprised, and Mr. Luzhkov’s firing might be an indication that Mr. Medvedev is moving to centre stage. In that case, the firing would signal the beginning of a wide-scale campaign that would truly address the vast corrosive corruption throughout the country, and Mr. Medvedev would have to move against the numerous siloviki – political operatives from the security and military services – who have phenomenally enriched themselves. There is little sign of this. It may also be possible that Mr. Medvedev is beginning to challenge Mr. Putin, and will stand as his own man for re-election in the presidential contest in 2012. There is little credibility to this, since Mr. Medvedev does not have a substantive power base, and Mr. Putin continues to control the preponderant ruling United Russia party.
More likely, Mr. Medvedev is working closely with Mr. Putin, and the relationship is one of concentric circles, with the tough Prime Minister in the centre. The “kinder, gentler” Mr. Medvedev is then part of the same regime, where the iron fist quickly emerges whenever a challenger, even one with a record of supporting Mr. Putin, opposes a “component” of the ruling system. This perhaps should be a lesson to Mr. Medvedev, who ironically may find his current victory a Pyrrhic one.
The next moves are up to Mr. Luzhkov and Mr. Putin. In the weeks to come, we should get further clarification about the political lineup in a country where attachment to democracy looks ever more dubious.
Aurel Braun is a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto.
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