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Guest Post: Russia After Sochi
Submitted by Stephen Sestanovich via The Diplomat,
By hosting the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia has brought a surge of international attention to the state of its economy, its interethnic relations, its domestic politics, and its foreign policy. Already much of the scrutiny has become unwelcome.
The staggering $50 billion price tag for the Games highlights official waste, fraud, and abuse. The threat of terrorist attacks reminds the world of the volatile state of Russia’s southern regions and the separatist movements that operate there. Legislation on so-called gay and lesbian “propaganda” calls attention to the illiberal elements of President Vladimir Putin’s governing ideology. The reluctance of many foreign leaders to come to Sochi provides a convenient scorecard by which to evaluate Russia’s global standing.
Corruption, terrorism, human rights protests, high-level no-shows—all these represent ways in which the Sochi Olympics have embarrassed Putin. Yet in each case, the problem goes well beyond any connection to the Games. Each reflects a major tension in the system that Putin has created. And even if all goes well at Sochi, they suggest continuing challenges for the Western effort to create a cooperative relationship with Russia.
A Slowing Economy
Rapid economic growth has, for many Russians, been the most important achievement of Putin’s tenure. Between 1999, when he became prime minister and then acting president, and 2008, on the eve of the global financial crisis, annual growth averaged 6.9 percent. The impact of the crisis was severe for Russia, but the recovery was also quick. Rebounding smartly, growth in the three years after 2009 averaged 4.1 percent.
Last year, however, the Russian economy slowed significantly. Growth was only 1.4 percent, and the World Bank forecasts only slightly higher growth (2.2 percent for 2014); other forecasts are lower still. If so, Russia will be the slowest growing of the BRICS economies in the year ahead. Inflation, meanwhile, remains relatively high—approximately 6~7 percent in 2013; it is likely to continue at that rate in 2014. And all this has occurred with the price of oil, a key Russian export, still high. In the event of a real drop, economic forecasts become much more negative.
When the slowdown began, Putin sought to deflect blame for it; he traced lower growth to economic difficulties in Europe as a whole. More recently, he has acknowledged that the causes are “internal, not external.” Russian economists, businessmen, and officials are now engaged in a debate about how to respond. Among Western-trained experts, the right course has seemed relatively clear-cut: Russia needs market-based solutions that allow more small- and medium-sized businesses to form, reduce the size and power of state corporations, lighten the burden of corruption, and encourage both foreign and domestic investment.
Putin has embraced some of these ideas, but has given few indications that he is ready to change course. Some of his pronouncements have, in fact, had a distinctly atavistic flavor (like his proposal to recreate Soviet-era mechanisms for evaluating national economic competitiveness).
Ethnic Friction
Chechen separatism and associated terrorist activity originating in the North Caucasus have gripped Russia’s attention for two decades. They are a headline-grabber for the Sochi Games too. But the challenge posed by violent extremism may not be the most severe ethnic policy problem Russia faces in the coming decade. That distinction should probably go instead to the growth of a large workforce of immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus in Russia’s biggest cities.
With its long-running economic boom, Moscow in particular has been a magnet for jobseekers from the south; estimates of the number of undocumented migrant laborers living in the capital range from one to several million. Although many of them are in fact citizens of the Russian Federation, they are widely seen to be taking jobs from ethnic Russians, engaging in criminal activity, and exploiting social services.
These tensions periodically express themselves in violence, most recently after the October 2013 killing of a young ethnic Russian, allegedly by an Azeri migrant, in the Moscow suburb of Biryulevo. Many Russian commentators called the fighting that followed a “pogrom.” More than a thousand migrants were arrested (even though Russians had launched the beatings), and the entire Moscow police force was put on high alert.
Ethnic issues had been a topic of lively debate before the Biryulevo incident, and even some liberal oppositionists have felt obliged to appease popular hostility to migrants. While disavowing the nationalist slogan “Russia for Russians,” Alexei Navalny, the best-known new leader of the opposition, said visas restrictions should be imposed on visitors from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Slower economic growth seems likely to increase the demand for such measures.
A Political Awakening?
The huge demonstrations that shook Russian politics are now two years in the past, and in most respects Putin has successfully blunted their impact. No significant new opposition groupings, much less a united opposition coalition, have formed. New laws have been passed to impede the activities of organizations that already exist, especially by trying to choke off foreign funding for civil society. The near-term electoral calendar offers few opportunities for breakthroughs by candidates who want to challenge the near-monopoly of Putin’s party, United Russia. Putin himself does not have to face the voters until 2018, at which point he will be eligible to run for another six-year term.
Despite the seeming lull, however, Russian politics has hardly returned to the status quo prevailing before 2012. The NGO sector remains robust, buoyed by the amnesties of December 2013. Many organizations have worked around legal hurdles to sustain foreign funding. In a series of cases both administrative and civil, Russian courts have actually ruled that NGOs should not have to register as “foreign agents.” (The Constitutional Court will take up the issue soon.)
On the electoral front, elections to the Moscow city council offer an opening for opposition candidates to emerge as new leaders in 2014. Democratic activists continue to think that Moscow is fertile ground for them, and Navalny’s strong showing in the mayoral balloting of September 2013 bolsters their claim.
Another opposition victory in 2013 was the election of Yevgeny Roisman, a defector from United Russia, as governor of Sverdlovsk. In the coming year, there will be gubernatorial elections in fourteen other Russian regions. Many of these will not be genuinely competitive contests, but taken as a whole they may test the continued dominance of United Russia as the institutional expression of Putin’s rule.
As for the president’s own popularity, the picture is interestingly mixed. His own approval ratings have improved in the past year, and 68 percent of poll respondents say they would vote for him in a new election today. Only 22 percent, however, say they want him to run again in 2018, and 47 percent want someone else to run instead.
Russia’s Global Standing
The Sochi Olympics represent a genuine reputational risk for Putin. Damage could be done to Russia’s international prestige in any number of ways—by a terrorist attack, by some major shortfall in the preparation of the Games, by too-rough treatment of protestors, and so on.
Yet this picture of the situation is incomplete in two ways. An estrangement between Russia and leading Western countries has been underway for some time, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Olympics. Moreover, this estrangement has been to a large extent a matter of deliberate strategic choice by Putin. He has sought greater distance from the United States and Europe, and is likely to perpetuate it no matter what happens at Sochi.
That foreign leaders are holding Putin at arm’s length was clear from President Obama’s cancellation of a Moscow visit in September 2013. It was underscored by the cool reception the Russian leader received in Brussels for the EU-Russia summit in late January 2014. For Washington, Russia’s grant of asylum to Edward Snowden was the prime grievance; for European leaders, Russian efforts to block the EU’s relationship with Ukraine were central. How long this set-jaw style continues will be tested four months after the Olympics when Putin hosts the annual summit of the G8—once more in Sochi. (Even if the mood among the leaders improves, the event is certain to produce a new wave of anxiety about terrorist incidents.)
For Putin, social slights by foreign leaders may carry some sting, but he has defined Russia’s aims and identity in a way that downplays what others say and do, and puts a lower premium on international problem-solving. He argues that what makes Russia one of the few truly “sovereign” countries in the world is precisely its ability to pursue its own interests and rebuff outside interference in its affairs. Lately he has given this theme a still more ideological dimension, portraying Russia as a brave holdout against Western decadence.
This “exceptionalist” outlook has resonance in important sectors of Russian society, especially the Orthodox Church. Yet it worries those who want Russia to be a “normal” country, one with modern democratic institutions and social norms. Long after Sochi, Russians will be arguing about whether Putin has advanced this goal—or put it further out of reach.
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Seriously, what is an article like this doing on zerohedge, did the council on foreign relations pay off some zerohedge tylers with a lot of fiat to post this garbage?
Seriously, what is an article like this doing on zerohedge, did the council on foreign relations pay off some zerohedge tylers with a lot of fiat to post this garbage?
Zerohedge has always published, from time to time, pieces supporting the establishment point-of-view.
I also am saddend by the slow creep of " the main stream " veiw that has begun to shade the type and sentiment behind the articles posted on this site.
The true value of ZH was that it embraced the reality of The state of our financial / political world. The move towards being just another tool for the dissemination of the propaganda meme of the day is dispiriting.
The Tylers may be looking to enlarge their taget audience.
I understand, Its all about revenue growth. I wish them luck with the new model.
Typical university-speak, written for the Council on Foreign Relations, I assume, where good-old Stevey is currently a senior (that is senior, not senile) fellow: filled with biases, unexamined assumptions, and devoid of any historical depth, a report 6 feet wide and 6 centimeters deep. I met so many guys like Stevey when I was in university in the U.S. that they all eventually became indistinguishable in my mind: not a one of them with an original thought in their head, each one singing the same songs to the choir. Blah, Blah, Blah... . The reality is Putin and his people are making Stevey and his buddies, Hilary, Kerry, and their cronies look like the idiots that they are at every opportunity.
Yep. Agreed. This article is for shit. Went through this shit as a kid ala Red Dawn/Rocky III style. A tad non-plussed at the conspicuous stank-ness of Dip-socraps' wee-rant.
Concerning the ZH: Cyclopian under-nose turds like this are still the exception. One wonders: What Wicked Which Way(?) Comes when a site like ZH grabs the attention of an IMF or Draghi. Apparently, ZH suffers a "non-congenital" form of some disassociative disorder...after none, it was but a few days ago "Fuck the EU" article was up.
Still, I come here multiple times a day and usually find material of worth. Trolls haven't ruined the best part being the comments, yet. + I laugh my ass off, invaluable in present time(s) with it all going to places in a hand basket.
Hey, Anybody remember this headline from 2003?
Johnny C&B made a remark about Putin "Clawing back resources, etc....."
The "HONORABLE LORD" Redshield.
- Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker [the Rt Hon Lord] Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest, the Sunday Times reported.
Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr. [sic] Rothschild, 67, under a "previously unknown arrangement" designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer "act as a beneficiary" of the shares, it said.
We could do without "the diplomat", Tyler.
I like variety. but if you prefer only one brand of truthiness...
Let's see! Who had the "Crash"? Who is becoming more in debt and trending to a Socialistic Central Government dominated State? Who is implementing in the most amateurish way federal programs that are ill-conceived? Who has more internal debt and issued more currency compared to natural resources on hand? Who has more debt per citizen by the Central Government? Who has invaded more lands and started more wars? Which President sounds more like a dictator "I will do all I can without Congress"? Who has more as a percentage unemployed people between the ages of 18 and 65?
We still, by a thread, have a portion of the greatest Constitution written by great men like Jefferson and Madison! But, if we keep violating that Constitution or interpreting it in a Lincoln philosophy instead of a Jeffersonian method we will become a socialistic shadow of our former selves! This President is leading us down the wrong path as did the last one as well. Blame both and quit being "Party"-centric and begin being Jeffersonian Constitution-Centric. Jefferson wrote:
“The Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” “A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!” “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny.” “Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.” (Author’s Note: The Federal Reserve falls into this category). “I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarms only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” President Jefferson’s words written in the late 1700’s, over 200 years ago are prophetic and apply especially today! They define realities of today. President Jefferson counted them as signs of future dangers of lost democracy to all citizens.hedgemastermb.blogspot.comI like articles like this: no real facts and basically hatchet jobs, but they do reveal the ZH posters that have their heads firmly buried up their asses....
If you really think Putin is leading Russia forward, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and move there?
An alternative view from Missouri farm born living near Moscow. http://windowstorussia.com/
Yeah, find another 1000 like that and you may be on to something..,
Good luck...
what was our budget for drones to kill farmers who pick up a weapon in their home country? Heck we have $90 Billion slush fund known as food stamps. I would rather build a new winter resort than give "benefits" to people who trade it in for drugs and alcohol!
Oh my a right wing troll...
Let me guess, you get your news from Fox?
msnbc for you, Flak?
Don't get my news from the boob-tube...