True enough, the entrenching power of centralized bureaucracy in Russia according to its ages-old tradition is embodied in the Kremlin, and the man who reigns in it at a particular moment, whatever his name may be. That gives Russian autocracy a distinct personal touch, with the man presiding over the state machine defining the style and agenda of bureaucratic rule. Nevertheless, the real power vests with the bureaucracy itself, which may be shaped and used for arbitrary ends though within limits, and able to resist the strongest pressures when its vital power instincts are infringed upon.
That is the reason why this book, which I hope tells a lot about “Putin’s Russia”, may appear too brief on Putin himself. Despite the nearly mystical power that both his loyalists and many of his opponents ascribe to him, he is essentially an integral part of Russia’s present political system, its product and explanation. His mindset is that of a typical member of Russia’s privileged bureaucratic class slightly influenced by peculiar secret-service fancies. A going theory that he by his personal will turned back the tide of 1990s and transmuted a young Russian democracy into a dictatorial state is nothing but a myth. In fact the opposite may be true: his power is a reflection and a direct continuation of the system of government and trends which materialized in 1990s.
It was exactly the time when the Soviet-era administrative elite, which had presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union and had taken control over what remained there after its demise, did not risk letting itself divide and create competing centers of power. Power in Russia remained undivided, the ruling group was subject neither to control from beneath or from competing rivals, nor to the possibility of replacement or rotation through collective decision of the privileged classes. Its power was limited only by the technical feasibility of policies to be implemented, not by binding obligations or external checks. Competition in political life was tolerated as long as rival groups aspired for the opportunity to influence the government, but not for the power it held. The single centre of undivided and unquestionable power (in the 1990s it was then-President Yeltsin) used competing groups below as checks and counterweights against each other, but its own power could not be either checked or counterbalanced.
It is exactly this kind of political system that was inherited and conserved by Putin. Moreover, he has stripped this system of unnecessary disguise and hypocrisy, and consolidated it, as well as its self-evaluation, thus making it more assertive. In fact, his personal contribution to the system could be summed up as two important things.
For one thing, he has determined the direction of its further course. As a possibility he could have opted to try changing the path of the system’s evolution towards laying the foundations for political competition and Western-style democracy, if he chose so. He did not do that for at least two reasons.
First, nobody really pushed him to do that. Neither the Russian political class at large, which had no aspirations for the role of the modernizer of Russian society. Nor the West, which talked to Putin as a man who was presiding over a country that had lost the Cold War and hence the right to participate in deciding the rules of international and even its own domestic political affairs.
Second, he himself being a true son of the old Soviet ruling elite (the siloviki part of it) did not believe in the power of political competition, considering it harmful to the unity of the Russian nation and to the strength of national statehood.
Another thing, which Putin contributed to the Yeltsintime political system, were his efforts to nullify elements that were alien to authoritarian system, that is 1) competitive elections and 2) independent private big business capable of gaining political power (the so-called “oligarchy”). In both cases he made a considerable advance in this direction even before the fresh round of authoritarian restyling of Russian politics in 2013-2014. The latter made the goal of building a near-classical autocracy based on “one nation
