by Lilia Shevtsova
Russia continues to drift through the zone of uncertainty. The global financial crisis forced the Russian elite to realize that the Russian petrostate would pose obstacles to economic revival and even stability. This elite understands today that reforms are the only way to stimulate economic growth and prevent the social turmoil.
“Renewal or death!” became the new Kremlin mantra. True, in the view of the ruling Medvedev-Putin tandem, modernization is not about the changing rules of the game. On the contrary—it’s about preserving the status quo, that is, the system of personalized power. The key element of the new “reform from above” plan is to borrow Western technology and resources.
This obviously raises a host of questions. How can you hope to renew Russia while keeping a 16th-century governing model? How can you stimulate post-industrial development, which requires freedom and competition?
Meanwhile, the new Kremlin survival tactics forced the Russian ruling team to change the way it behaved toward the outside world. The Medvedev-Putin tandem came to the conclusion that smiles are better than scowls for securing Western help. One, however, has to ask whether smiles could be trusted if they are only skin-deep—that is, if they have not changed the nature of the Russian traditional system?
However, the Kremlin “smiling face” (Medvedev phrase) has allowed the West—both Washington and Brussels—to “reset” their relations with Russia and achieve certain progress. The best case for optimism has been the U.S.-Russian reset that brought notable results compared to the summer of 2008 when, at the moment of the Russo-Georgian conflict, Russian-U.S. relations came close to a confrontation. The U.S.-Russian rapprochement is the best case for optimism in some time. Some well-intentioned people even thought that we’ve dispelled once and for all the shadow of the Cold War.
If only reality would cooperate with such hopeful sentiment. What still separates Russia and the West are not just legacies of divergent histories and cultures, but current divergences of both values and interests. These are so pervasive and fundamental that even an apparent coincidence of interests will inevitably lead to disappointment. Let’s add to this an asymmetry in both side’s motivations: They want to get a lot for a little and, failing to achieve that, each side will blame the other for what went awry.
Thus, hopes in Western capitals that the Russian regime is finally ready to seek a productive course of mutual cooperation and even “partnership” with the West are hardly justified. The personalized system of power still is based on anti-Western sentiments, and the authorities at any moment can drive society back to a “besieged fortress” mentality and behavior. The real Western reset with Russia will come when the Russian people demand from it responsible and responsive leadership.
Meanwhile, the reset appears to be little more than the Kremlin charm offensive. Instead of helping Russia to transform itself, it legitimizes the Russian one-man rule. The Western leaders are pursuing a reset with the Kremlin at a time when Russia is confronting a growing divide between its authorities and society. According to recent polls, 82 percent of respondents think that state officials do not obey the law. The West is making nice with the regime that is losing favor with its own people and the most forward-looking elements of society.
One can’t escape an impression that the Western leaders—afraid to disrupt the reset’s promise of change—are afraid to annoy the Kremlin. They worry about stoking the Kremlin’s aggressive tendencies and destabilizing international relations. Apparently, they believe that Russia can’t be changed and that it is better to deal with the Russian elite on the Kremlin’s terms. And the Western business community does not want to chastise Moscow as it seeks to grease the Russian wheels of commerce.
Western leaders consider “personal chemistry” with the Russian rulers as the secret to success in Russia (remember President George W. Bush peering into Vladimir Putin’s soul?). As a result, they often play along with the Kremlin’s script, making concessions to the Russian authorities and forging private trade-offs with representatives of the Russian regime.
By doing this, the West ignores the powerful tools it has to influence Russia. First, all petrostates depend on the states where they sell commodities. Second, the Russian political class is extremely sensitive to pressure because it is integrated into the Western community on a personal level.
What can the West do, then, to help Russia change? First of all, it could restore the role it once played in the eyes of Russian society—an attractive alternative to the Russia petrostate. Democracy, freedom and competition all working hand in hand toward sustainable economic growth—all of this could give Russians an incentive to re-examine life in their society. “Practice what you preach!”—that’s what the West can do to support the liberal vector in Russia.
Second, a lot depends on exactly how the West engages Russia. The West still emphasizes engagement with the Russian elite, discussing security and economic issues. The Russian elite is prepared to continue this conversation indefinitely, seeing it as a means of reinforcing the status quo. The West needs to find a form of dialogue that bolsters Russian stakeholders who have an interest in opening Russia to the West. Doing so will require creating new means of communicating with Russian society, particularly the younger generations who may be more willing to embrace change.
Third, the West has many ways of showing the Russian elite that its prosperity and the West’s good graces are intimately connected, and that the elite must practice civil society principles at home. Of course, the West needs to be sure that its salvos fall on target. The Russian public should not suffer from the West’s attempts to find a way of civilizing the Russian elite.
Fourth, the West needs to remind Russian leaders that they and their predecessors have signed international documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which commit them to observing democratic norms.
Fifth, successful development in the newly independent states neighboring Russia might provide a good incentive for modernization. The example of a flourishing and democratic Ukraine could make a convincing argument that Russian society needs to develop a new relationship with its regime. If the Ukrainians—a people very close to Russia both geographically and culturally—could create a new system, then so could Russia.
Russian liberals like myself do not call for the West to save Russia, and they don’t expect the West to import values for which Russia is not ready. Russian liberals do, however, believe that the West need not support what is going on in Russia. No one is forcing Western politicians to treat the denizens of the Kremlin as bosom buddies. No one is stopping them from judging Russia’s actions according to their merits, which contradict not only democratic norms but international law.
The West should be interested in Russia’s transformation, not the status quo. Unreformed Russia stuck in the grey area already acts as a spoiler, demoralizing the Western political class.
Without the support of the West, primarily the European community, I believe that Russia’s transformation is unlikely. The question is, when will the West realize that Russia’s trajectory connects very concretely to the fate of Western civilization? Russia—adrift, isolated, building new Potemkin villages—is an opportunity for the West to prove that its global destiny and search for a new mission is far from over.
Lilia Shevtsova is a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, where she chairs the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program. This article is adapted from her latest book, Lonely Power: Why Russia Has Failed to Become the West and the West is Weary of Russia.
