Leaders | Russia under Putin

The struggle for Russia is just beginning

Although Vladimir Putin is at the height of his power, Russia’s elites are already jockeying for position

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THE ballot-stuffing, blatant and in full view of the cameras, only underlined Vladimir Putin’s impunity. The official result on March 18th gave him 77% of the vote, on a turnout of almost 70%. But the unofficial one would not have been very different. The election was not a genuine exercise of choice so much as a ritual acknowledgment of who holds power. After 18 years, Mr Putin is not just the president but the tsar.

As important as last weekend’s vote, however, is the struggle to come. That will be over the future of Russia. And, as impregnable as Mr Putin looks, it begins today.

The gun has fired

Mr Putin cannot legally run again for president in 2024. Drawing on a mix of persuasion and brutal repression, he could force through changes to the constitution to let himself stand again, as Xi Jinping has just done in China. Or he may retire from his daily duties instead, as Deng Xiaoping did, in the hope of exerting power from behind the scenes. But then again, if Mr Putin starts to show a lack of resolve or cunning he could find himself pushed aside at the end of his term.

Already the elites in Russia are jockeying for position. The outcome is highly uncertain. At worst, the country could yet embrace an even more extreme form of the nationalism that has defined the politics of Mr Putin. He portrays Russia as assailed by enemies, and argues that it has nothing to learn from foreign ideas like human rights and open democracy. That view has already fuelled a new cold war and led to rows over manipulated elections and political assassinations abroad. In Crimea, Ukraine and Syria it fuelled real wars.

But there is an alternative. A rising elite in its 30s brought on, in part, by Mr Putin himself yearns for Russia to be a more “normal” country. For them much about his rule is archaic. They cringe at his conservative agenda, his traditional values, Orthodoxy and isolation.

This new generation will play a central part in shaping what comes after Mr Putin’s next term. Our briefing this week describes its members, who range from regional governors and businesspeople to independent politicians. They have their differences and their rivalries, naturally, but they also have more in common with each other than they do with the elders who are their bosses. They tend to see the end of the cold war in the 1990s not as Russia’s loss, but as a victory for common sense. Well-travelled and informed, they do not suffer from the inferiority complex that led Mr Putin’s generation to copy the West and, later, lash out against it. Their parents grew up with shortages and measure success in terms of money. They take material comfort for granted. Having watched as public life has been corrupted by Mr Putin’s lies, propaganda and graft, they see the benefits of rules, laws and transparency.

During the next six years of Mr Putin’s presidency, this elite will assert itself in every walk of life. Think-tanks and journalism increasingly reflect their ideas. Six of Russia’s 85 governors are under 40. Mr Putin has started installing young technocrats in the Kremlin and government ministries.

He may hope that the technocrats’ loyalty will preserve his legacy. But Russia lacks the institutions that transfer power peacefully from one leader to the next. A departing leader cannot be confident that he and his family will be safe. A new leader cannot use the debased currency of elections to establish his legitimacy. Thus, even those Mr Putin favours may well end up rejecting him, rather as he consolidated his position by rejecting his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who first brought him to power.

There is no guarantee that the coming generation will succeed in making Russia more normal. Russian history is shot through with failed attempts to find a settlement with the West—in which the country has veered between aspiration and hostility. The fortress mentality that Mr Putin has fostered has instilled feelings of jealousy, resentment and victimisation. The main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who was barred from last weekend’s election, has said that his biggest enemy is not Mr Putin and his cronies, but the debilitating conviction among ordinary Russians of their own powerlessness. If the security services attempt to exploit fear in order to cling to their privileges and their power, the Russian people may behave as their willing accomplices.

It’s everyone’s business

The struggle for Russia will be determined inside Russia. But the West has a part to play. It is worth remembering how the Soviet Union was undermined not just by the military might of the West, but also by its economic, cultural and moral appeal. It took decades for communism to crumble, but today’s Russia is economically weak and Mr Putin has a greater need to derive legitimacy from conflict at home and abroad.

Even as the West targets him and his cronies with sanctions and protests at his aggressions, it therefore needs a counter-narrative for the Russian people. The aim should be to remain engaged with ordinary Russians while containing Mr Putin’s aggression, just as Western diplomats distinguished between the Soviet regime and its citizens. Even as the Kremlin restricts Russian contact with the West, the West should encourage it.

That will not be easy. It is hard to punish Mr Putin without alienating all Russians. Cultivating the new elite could justify a purge by their enemies. And the West is less of a model than it was. Disillusion with the European Union and strife in America over the presidency of Donald Trump, which Mr Putin does his best to foment, have tarnished the West’s appeal.

This week Mr Trump played into that weakness when he uncritically congratulated Mr Putin on his re-election, without raising Russia’s abuses at home and abroad. That was a mistake. The message that might is right only frustrates the rise of more open young Russians and justifies the repressive instincts of their opponents. This is bad not only for Russians but also for everyone else. Andrei Sakharov, a Russian Nobel prize-winning humanist and nuclear physicist, put it best. A country that violates the human rights of its own people, he argued, cannot be safe for the outside world.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The struggle for Russia"

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