Putin's Wars (22 page)

In 2005 a debate had already started inside United Russia over the possibility of
organizing different ideological currents inside the party. The initiative for this
was taken by Vladimir Pligin, president of the Constitutional Legislation Committee
of the Duma. Pligin published a text, cosigned by some thirty colleagues, in which
they asked for ideological platforms in the party. The party leadership, however,
was not in favor of this initiative. Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Duma and party
leader, was categorically against. He declared “that there will be no organizationally
formalized platforms or wings in United Russia. Discussion is not only natural and
necessary . . . but discussion must not be to the detriment of party discipline.”
^[42]
And he added: “We cannot and have not the right to divide ourselves into right
and left.”
^[43]
Gryzlov was acting in line with an established Soviet tradition of “democratic
centralism.” He reminded his audience that already “Lenin sternly warned about the
adverse effects of factionalism.”
^[44]
Gryzlov went on to repeat the official party ideology, which was, according to
him, located in the center. It was “social conservatism,” which intended “to maintain
order, social stability, [and] unconditional defense by the government of legally
acquired property.” This “social conservatism,” he went on, “was broader than any
political current, because one can find elements of it in the traditional left and
right.”
^[45]
An ideology that finds its elements “in the traditional left and right” is necessarily
centrist. In 2005, when Gryzlov wrote these lines, order and status quo were, indeed,
still the most important objectives of the regime. This conservatism was logical for
a party in power. Would it be enough, however, to stay ahead when competing against
the parties and movements that were propagating a passionate brand of patriotism and
were animated by great-Russian chauvinism and ultranationalist fervor? Konstantin
Kosachev, a Duma member of United Russia, dared to challenge Gryzlov in an article
titled “Why Would a Bear Need Wings?” Kosachev wrote: “What some hastened to call
‘wings’—something that, as party leader Boris Gryzlov said, a bear, which is the party’s
symbol, hardly needs—should be more aptly seen as working groups . . . and not something
generating internal conflict within the party.”
^[46]
Kosachev won, because Gryzlov’s initial negative response could not prevent discussion
groups being set up before long within United Russia.

One of these was the Center for Social and Conservative Policy. In 2007 this faction
started the Russian Project, led by the popular TV presenter Ivan Demidov and Andrey
Isaev, a Duma deputy. The project initiated a discussion on the Russian nation, national
identity, and “Russianness” (
Russkost
). Thereupon the Kremlin decided that the time was ripe for ideological discussions
in the party and in April 2008 United Russia formalized the authorization for clubs
to be created, on the condition that they did not develop into factions. A Political
Clubs Charter was signed by three clubs: the Center for Social and Conservative Policy,
the Club of 4 November, and the State Patriotic Club. These three clubs were seen
as expressing the new pluriformity in the party. The Club of 4 November—connected
with (nonstate) business circles—was considered to represent the “liberal” wing, whereas
the State Patriotic Club was more right-wing. The Center for Social Conservative Policy,
supported by Gryzlov, took a middle position. But it soon became clear that despite
these different labels the differences between the party clubs were only marginal
and they all shared the party’s new ideology: ultranationalism (called patriotism).
This did not mean that the old ideology centered on the keywords of “status quo” and
“order” had been abandoned. These objectives were still present, but they were repackaged
and recycled into a more marketable product of national
grandeur,
great power status, historical pride, and imperial ambition.

This new ultranationalist course adopted by the leading political party was a consequence
of the generalized spread of chauvinist ideas in Russian society that had been prepared
by the activities of a multitude of extreme right organizations. The political elite’s
pursuit of electoral success led to their embracing the prevailing mood of society.
The political scientist Vladimir Pribylovsky, director of the critical Moscow-based
center for social research Panorama, interpreted the metamorphosis of United Russia
as follows:

A segment of the voters in Russia will turn or may turn to parties that do not support
the president and the present policy. They are talking particularly about the nationalists.
The proportion of the electorate who are receptive to nationalist ideas is, according
to some estimates, some 30–40%. That is a significant part of the electorate, and
a section of these people votes for the pro-presidential parties, but a section does
not vote or votes for the opposition. In the following six months we will see attempts
by the party in power to flirt with nationalist and even xenophobic tendencies in
society.
^[47]

According to another source the stakes could be even higher. Leonty Vyzov, director
of the state sponsored social-political research center VTsIOM, said: “Sociologists
divide the nationalists into ‘soft’ ones, who limit their existing hatred to migrants,
and ‘hard’ ones, worshippers of the slogan ‘Russia for the Russians,’ who are ready
to express their views in public.” “The first . . . makes up 40–45 % of the total
number of citizens, the second about 10%.”
^[48]
This meant that, according to these estimates, in early 2007 ultranationalist feelings
were prevalent in a
majority
of the Russian population.

But this adaptation of United Russia to the prevalent ultranationalist mood was not
the result only of (electoral) pressure from below. We have seen that as early as
1999 Putin himself was a convinced protagonist of giving patriotism a central place
in the new Russian ideology. The decision, taken on electoral grounds, to choose a
more nationalistic course
coincided
with a strategy on the part of the presidential administration to
ideologize
United Russia. The Kremlin was the cockpit of this change: the captain on board was
Vladimir Putin, and his copilots were Vladislav Surkov, the deputy director of the
presidential administration, and Aleksey Chesnakov, the deputy director of the Department
of Domestic Policy of the presidential administration. Another factor implicating
the Kremlin’s central role was the fact that Ivan Demidov, who introduced the new
nationalism in United Russia through his Russian Project and who was called by the
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
, “the incubator of patriotism,”
^[49]
was in 2009 appointed director of the Department of Human Policy and Social Relations
of the presidential administration.

This Kremlin-led policy to make United Russia into
the
nationalist party of Russia—leaving the other nationalist parties far behind—was
a great success. With hindsight this transformation from a conservative law-and-order
party into a nationalist party did not even need to be imposed from the top, because
all the new clubs within the party, irrespective of whether they labeled themselves
left, right, or center, indulged in the newly embraced patriotism. The so called liberal-conservatives,
for instance, were organized within the Club of 4 November (
Klub 4 Noyabrya
)
.
The name of this club was in itself revealing: it referred to November 4, a date that
(in 2004) was made by decree into People’s Unity Day, a new national holiday on which
Russia’s victory in 1612 over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was celebrated (the
choice of this day was not really appreciated by the Poles). The club’s manifesto
included the statement that “the real sovereignty of Russia is today, by far, the
most important problem”
^[50]
and that “patriotism is one of the most important values of Russian society.”
^[51]

The second club, the
social-conservatives
, openly expressed the nostalgia of its members for the former Soviet Union. In their
manifesto they wrote: “We all grew up in the USSR and consider the dissolution of
that government a tragedy for all its peoples. We should not consider the current
frontiers of our state to be eternal. We are ready to pursue any unification of states
on the former territory of the Union, and even beyond its frontiers. However, from
this it follows that our readiness to reach out to peoples who want to unite with
Russia, is matched by a readiness to risk a relatively peaceful life or the present
level of wealth. Of course, the more prosperous Russia becomes, the sooner neighbors
will reach out to her.”
^[52]
The fact that in the manifesto the present frontiers between Russia and her neighbors
are not considered to be eternal, written in a program of the dominant group within
Russia’s governing party, is in itself a cause for concern. Even more so, when it
goes on to propose that a (re-)unification with the neighboring peoples on the former
territory of the Soviet Union and “even beyond its frontiers” would require of the
Russian citizens “the readiness to risk a relatively peaceful life.” It echoed openly
the dangerous revisionism of the Liberal-Democratic Party and the Communist Party.

Imperial ambition and ultranationalist fervor were even more prominent in the third
club, the State Patriotic Club (
Gosudarstvenno-patrioticheskiy Klub
), which began its political declaration with the quote: “The state is not located
‘out there,’ outside of us, it lives in us, in the form of ourselves.”
^[53]
Having thus defined the state as a quasi-biological ingredient of every single
Russian citizen, as essential for the individual’s survival as his liver, stomach,
and lungs, it might appear impossible to construct any opposition of interests between
the state and the individual, as is the case in Western liberal political philosophies.
This is also considered unnecessary, because patriotism is the glue that binds the
citizen and the government together. “One of the most important tasks of the politics
of the majority party,” one could read, “must be the permanent strengthening of the
mutual link between the state patriotism (
gosudarstvennicheskiy patriotizm
) of our people and the government’s policy for the people, for its interests and
national dignity.”
^[54]
The club declared itself in favor of a “military-patriotic education” and wanted
to promote “the propaganda of historical examples of military courage and heroism
by the people in defense of the Fatherland.” It equally wanted “to strengthen the
prestige of the military service” and was in favor of the adaptation of history books
in schools, “with the purpose of providing a fuller and more precise account of events
in the history of the Fatherland,” adding that “one of the most important objectives
is to work with the young generation.”

The promotion of martial virtues and patriotism, it continued, should lead to a “rebirth
of Russian state power” (
vozrozhdenie rossiyskoy derzhavy
). The members of the State Patriotic Club, like the social conservatives, do not
hide their neoimperialist ambitions. The declaration spoke about “the historical unity
of the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other brother republics”
and stressed the fact that “our peoples are bound by many millions of ties: family
and kinship ties, friendship bonds, business contacts, creative relationships. Not
to mention a shared language, culture, shared holidays and symbols. For precisely
these reasons any attempts to draw frontiers not only on the map, but also in society,
to split not just property, but a historical heritage, is considered by all of us
a tragedy and a great injustice.” The declaration continued: “Today it is Russia in
particular that is the most committed guarantor of real sovereignty and democracy
for the countries of the CIS, the real defender against external interference and
economic crises.”
^[55]
It remains to be seen, however, if all CIS members would agree with the statement
that Russia is the guarantor of their “real sovereignty” and “democracy.”

This ultranationalist chauvinism of the party in power, however, does not appear in
the official discourse of the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As Laruelle
remarked: “So, notably, even the institutions most attached to the state apparatus
can propound discourses that are regarded as relatively radical in their conceptions
of national identity, and that do not correspond to the official state narrative.”
^[56]
This discrepancy, far from being a reassurance, is rather a reason for concern.
Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of Russia’s Eurasian Movement, had already advised the
Russian leaders to play a
double game:
“The authorities will actively and on a large scale play a double game, outwardly
continuing the declaration of adherence to ‘democratic values,’ but inwardly restoring
little by little the base for the global autarchy.”
^[57]
We may conclude that the “dynamic of change” that has taken place in United Russia
during the first twelve years of Putin’s reign has moved the party farther away from
its supposed center position in the direction of chauvinist ultranationalism and revisionism.