In this week’s roundup, New Times outlines four potential candidates for the position of prime minister during Putin’s presumed fourth term; Gleb Pavlovsky contends that the central political conflict in today’s Russia is not between Putin and Navalny, but between Putin and those who support a transition to the post-Putin future; Vladimir Pastukhov discusses the ways the October Revolution can influence Russia in the 21st century; Grigory Yavlinsky argues that the rise of Bolshevik power in Russia was the real geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century; Konstantin Tarasov explains why the Bolsheviks won in 1917. >>>
- While this history suggests that Putin could appoint virtually anyone as prime minister, journalist Denis Vardanyan outlines four potential candidates.
- The liberal reformer: Former Financial Minister Aleksei Kudrin is one of the people Putin maintains a close relationship with and trusts most. He has proven his capabilities in the currency crisis of 2014 and in authoring Russia’s economic development strategy for 2018-2024.
- The centrist reformer: Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, is being so actively discussed as a potential appointee that he has had to publicly refute the rumor. But Sobyanin’s track record shows that if Putin says he needs to be prime minister, he will probably leave his current post.
- Medvedev, again: As the person who gave Putin power, the president will not dismiss his faithful ally—this has recently been evidenced in Dmitry Medvedev’s role in the Ulyukayev case. Medvedev is also a convenient choice for Putin—after Navalny’s film “Don’t Call Him Dimon,” Medvedev can continue to absorb popular discontent, acting in Putin’s defense.
- A young technocrat: The most logical version for a renewal of power would be the appointment of a young technocrat—a successful official without political ambitions. The main candidate is 35-year-old Maksim Oreshkin, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development
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- In the face of the three preceding apolitical elections, Gleb Pavlovsky, the president of the Russian Institute, reflects on how Alexei Navalny has returned politics to the electoral system and what this means not only for Putin, but also for Putin’s system.
- The current campaign’s central conflict is not between Putin and Navalny, but between Putin and the supporters of Navalny, or rather those who support a transition for Russia—a transition to the post-Putin future. Many of Putin’s supporters are not in support of his system.
- To Pavlovsky, Putin now finds himself in a regime of collective regency. The highest echelons of the Kremlin do not rule, but rather serve in a “palace of management.”
- The author argues that fixating on Putin in the 2018 elections—a transition period—is a mistake; the election is less about the president and more about preserving the current political system. Putin’s delayed entry into the campaign does not stem from willpower, but his willingness (or lack thereof) to start liquidating his own regime.
- Putin stands at the top of a disintegrating hierarchy, and his fourth term is already burdened with Russia’s transition into a normal state. Pavlovsky concludes that while he has the strongest chance of remaining in the Kremlin, the 2018-2024 term raises the question of a future president, an issue linked to the future of Russia.
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- In his article, based on his talk at a joint conference between University College London, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia, political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov discusses the open-endedness of the October Revolution—not only the ways in which it failed, but also the ways it can influence Russia’s future in the 21st century.
- The results of the Russian Revolution (Bolshevik victory) and the results of Bolshevism (largely unrealized) are not the same. October 1917 was more of a malfunction in the Russian Revolution that is, at best, a historical loss and, at worst, the beginning of a profound political degradation.
- When perestroika began and the Soviet experience was reconceptualized, the Revolution came to be seen as a tragic error and the removal of Russia from the context of history.
- The political goal of the Russian revolution was to remove autocracy and create a Russian version of national government. This mission did not succeed; the autocratic pattern was reestablished with a Marxist-Leninist myth that replaced Russian Orthodoxy. The pattern paused from 1989-1993, but Putin resuscitated it.
- The conclusion of Putin’s post-communist project, whenever it happens, will mark the end of the Russian Revolution; but to do so, it must accomplish everything it set out to do 100 years ago. Paradoxically, it also has to launch an anti-Soviet project—republicanism, federalism, and parliamentarism.
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- Politician Grigory Yavlinsky argues that it was not the disintegration of the USSR (as suggested by Putin), but the rise of Bolshevik power in Russia that was the main tragedy and geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
- The Lenin-Stalin pseudo-state was founded on revolution, lies, and mass murder. Born out of a state revolution by leftist radical-extremists, Bolshevik power destroyed all positive experience of Russian statehood. On losing the November 1917 election, instead of building a state that functioned as a body of people’s representation, the Bolsheviks constructed a totalitarian system ruled by a new privileged class—the nomenclature of what was now called the Communist Party.
- More than two centuries of Russian state-building oriented toward European law disappeared, as did Alexander II’s move toward democratization and the creation of civil society. The meaning behind the revolution—to accelerate this movement—also vanished.
- Through the Great Terror, the Bolsheviks physically eliminated any possibility of political, economic, ideological, and moral alternative, ruthlessly terrorizing people in order to keep them subordinate. The Communists compensated for systemic failures by sacrificing millions of people.
- Putin and his officials are the real modern heirs to the Bolsheviks and want contemporary Russia to play the geopolitical role of the Stalin-Brezhnev USSR, dreaming of a “new Yalta” that divides the world into three powers—Russia, the U.S., and China—and destroying any domestic political alternative.
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- Historian Konstantin Tarasov takes an in-depth look at the losing and winning coalitions in 1917 to explain why the Bolsheviks won—a question that he states is just as relevant today as it was a century ago.
- At the time of the February Revolution in 1917, the Socialists-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were the most influential leftist parties, comprising a moderate socialist bloc and advocating a long transition period from capitalism to socialism. They also supported the Russian war effort and the Provisional Government.
- In contrast, the 250,000-member Bolshevik party lacked significant strength, its leaders polemicized. Over time, they began to expand their following and gained support in the soviets (councils) from leftists and moderate socialists.
- But when Lenin returned from exile, he offered an unexpected agenda: to break with the moderate socialists and end the war. For Lenin, the “bourgeois-democratic” stage of the revolution was over, and it was necessary to proceed to the socialist stage.
- In July 2017, under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” the Bolsheviks and their supporters demonstrated in various cities to persuade the soviets to take power from the Provisional Government, officially breaking with the moderate socialists.
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- Wall Street Journal, Communism’s Bloody Century, by Stephen Kotkin
- New York Times, What Russian Revolution? by Serge Schmemann
- Washington Post, 100 years later, Bolshevism is back. And we should be worried, by Anne Applebaum
- Guardian, The Soviet 70s: how Russians made pools of light in the totalitarian darkness, by Angus Roxburgh
- National Review, One Hundred Years of Hell, by Arthur Herman