Russian democracy in peril Despite the high hopes of a decade ago, post -communist Russia has clearly not

emerged as a liberal democracy. Why has it not done so?

GV100

Spring 2011

Hasan M. Zulfiqar

Word Count: 2,831

1

When, in May 1985, in the then city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Mikhail

Gorbachev announced reforms in the USSR, both economic and structural, there were high

hopes in the West of a prolonged period of détente. By 1991, however, the Soviet Union had

ceased to exist and those who had before expected only structural reform, now hoped that

glasnost and perestroika would eventually lead to ‘liberal’ demokratizatsiya.1 Two decades after

the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Russian Federation is still a powerful global player, but has the

hope of liberal democracy transpired?

The title question of this essay asks why Russia has not emerged as a liberal democracy

despite more than twenty years of reform. To begin to answer this question we must first

ascertain whether the expectations of Russia transforming into a liberal democracy were

justified. Why did politicians and political scientists in the West take it for granted that a post-

communist state would inevitably move towards liberal democracy when no proven models were

available? Surely there are other factors besides simple multi-party electoral reform that need to

be taken into account when determining processes of systematic change, to allow for any firm

teleological view to be convincing.2

Russia came, in what Samuel P. Huntington called the ‘third-wave of democratization’,

by a process termed as ‘replacement’, in which the authoritarian regime collapsed leaving a

quasi-vacuum in political authority.3 Though the transformation is considered by some to be

towards a democratic system of government in theory, the final destination is a matter of debate.4

In this work, we will first seek to establish what conditions are necessary for the establishment

and consolidation of liberal democracy, and why Russia has not met these requirements. In this

short analysis, it would be impossible to discuss in great detail all the reasons but the most vital

will be dwelt upon. We will analyze the crucial years of transition after the fall of communism

and determine what steps were taken in the process of democratization. We will also look at the

1 Glasnost (openness), perestroika (reconstruction), and demokratizatsiya (democratization) were some of the policies pursued by

Mikhail Gorbachev in order to reform the failing economy of the USSR.

2 Carothers, Thomas. "The end of the transition paradigm." Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (2002): 5-21.

3 Huntington, Samuel P. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma

Press, 1993.

4 Murrell, G.D G. Russia's transition to democracy: 1989-1996. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1997.

2

political actors, institutions and interests which ushered Russia into the twenty-first century.

Thus, with the aid of models of democratic transition this work will establish the core reasons as

to why Russia has not emerged as a liberal democracy and thus hope to provide a definitive

analysis of the question posed.

Models

Sanford Lakoff, in his detailed analysis of democratic reform, provides us with five

different proven ‘modes of transition’ to liberal democracy.5 Of these five, the ‘transformation

from above’ method fits best with the process of reform that has been prevalent in post-

communist Russia. Democracy was not the call of the people in Russia, who had wished in 1990,

for more political and economic freedom, at best. The initial process was begun by the ruling

elite of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), more specifically by Gorbachev.

Though his reforms did not include any transition to democracy from communism, the process

was hijacked by ‘democrats’ within the higher echelons, forcing him at last to concede. These

‘democrats’, as they were known, instituted a gradual move towards a more representative form

of government, aided by an oligarchical elite.6 Though in no way did these men see the final goal

of Russia as liberal democracy. And for all the ‘hopes’ of NATO members, those who were close

to the reformists in Russia, themselves did not envisage liberal democracy as seen in the West.

Even today, calls for liberal democratic reform have only been heard from isolated sectors of the

Russian academia, and are not representative of the majority of the Russian populace.7

For, as Richard Sakwa has argued, the Russian psyche is not ready or willing for liberal

democracy.8 The multinational Russian peoples have always had strong, federal centers of power

and the concept of a decentralized government is quite unappealing to the majority. Fareed

Zakaria has argued that, for this reason, those who are at the helm of the reform process have

5 Lakoff, Sanford. Democracy: History, Theory, Practice. Oxford: Westview Press, 1996.

6 Ibid.

7 Hassner, Pierre. "Russia's Transition to Autocracy." Journal of Democracy 19, no. 2 (2008): 5-15. Accessed February 20, 2011.

http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/Hassner-19-2.pdf.

8 Sakwa, Richard. Russian politics and society. 4th ed. Oxon: Routledge, 2008.

3

been unwilling to share power with other political parties or involve the public in decision-

making and thus Russia can be said to be a democracy ‘in theory and not in practice’ - an

illiberal democracy.9

A related issue that has oft been debated is the way in which this ‘transformation from

above’ is being instituted. Most scholars of democracy will agree that a country which has

recently emerged from communism needs to reform both its economic and political policies to be

able to move towards democracy.10

However, the order in which these should be reformed is

contentious. Observers of China say that its policy, in recent decades, of economic restructuring

towards a more open market policy before any political reform is the most stable method of

approaching democracy. Russia is in the process of reforming its politics before economics, and

many question if this viable, for stable and lasting political change in a country is best permanent

when the economic conditions are healthy and cannot be exploited by opponents of democracy to

advocate for more autocratic methods of government.11

Though the push towards capitalism has

been accompanied by economic successes, such as the increase in Foreign Direct Investment

(FDI), foreign markets are still quite closed for domestic producers and recent trends towards

protectionism have somewhat reversed this process of economic liberalization. Another

drawback of any successes in the economic sphere is the monopolization of the markets by the

elite who are close to the Kremlin. Because access to this newly acquired prosperity has not been

shared amongst a wider base of Russians, with economic activity being heavily influenced by

closed business interests, it has provided little opportunity for true democratic participation.

A ‘managed’ democracy

The Russian Federation, since Boris Yeltsin’s constitution of 1993, has been a semi-

presidential political system with separately elected executive and legislative branches. Though

9 Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal democracy at home and abroad. New York: Norton, 2007.

10 Nagle, John D., and Alison Mahr. Democracy and Democratization. London: Sage Publications, 1999.

11 Gibson, James L. "Social Networks, Civil Society, and the Prospects for Consolidating Russia's Democratic Transition."

American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 1 (2001): 51-68. Accessed February 18, 2011. Stable URL:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2669359.

4

the controversial constitution embodies a separation of powers, this is not the case in practice.

Both Yeltsin and his successor Putin, have regularly acted unilaterally to curb legislative and

even judicial powers, enacting ‘presidential decrees’ which carry the force of law.12

If we take

the United States as an example of a liberal democracy, then the concept of a separation of

powers, with each of the three branches of government acting as legal checks on one another and

accountable to each other, is essential. From the outset, this has not been the case in Russia, with

the so called ‘democrats’ acting as autocrats. Lakoff points out that though the ‘transformation

from above’ method has been successful in countries such as Portugal, the endgame of those

instituting the reforms must be liberal democracy.13

In the case of Russia, the current power

behind the government, Vladimir Putin, has always been ambiguous as to what the aim is. Thus,

many argue, that the steps taken by Yeltsin in the 1990’s were not helpful to establishing liberal

democracy, and that this has been continued by Putin and Medvedev. However, to fully

understand how and why Russia has failed, we must analyze the important developments in post-

communist Russian politics so as to ascertain which aspects of the system are hindering a

possible advent to liberal democracy.

The hegemonic presidency

The office of the Russian president can be viewed as the primary source of power in the

federation. Russia’s first post-communist president, Boris Yeltsin, set the agenda for the post in

his time in office. Though his election was seen by foreign observers as ‘mostly fair’, the actions

he took whilst in power significantly harmed any prospects for future liberal democratization.

Vladimir Putin has gone further and consolidated this power in the presidency, to the point where

the post has become ‘too powerful’.14

This centrism is reminiscent of Tsarist Russia and is little

different in its functions. Putin has ruled from the top through his party loyalists in United

Russia, and the parliament or Duma, has been no more than his tool for implementing his

policies. Even after Medvedev took the presidency and Putin became Prime Minister, he is still

12 Jack, Andrew. Inside Putin's Russia. London: Granta, 2004.

13 Lakoff, Sanford. Democracy: History, Theory, Practice. Oxford: Westview Press, 1996.

14 Ross, Cameron. Russian politics under Putin. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.

5

the dominant power broker, though the constitution gives precedence to the president. This

brings into disrepute the question of the rule of law, and if it is indeed being adhered to. Since

the early 2000’s Putin has repeatedly cut down the powers of the lower elected house of

parliament, the Duma, and has filled it with his supporters.15

The way in which this has been

achieved is nothing short of autocracy. In the 2007 Duma elections, the ability of anti-Kremlin

parties to effectively run for seats in the lower house was significantly diminished by various

kinds of restrictions which were imposed on them by the administration.16

Though early

elections in the Russian Federation were thought to be competitive, this has reduced significantly

during Putin’s time in office. The lack of any viable opposition to Putin’s rule is a negating

factor which hampers any prospects of encouraging a transition to a representative liberal

democracy.

Putin has also been active in reducing the powers of provincial governors of the oblasts17

,

putting in their place his own supporters. These deputies proved to be a threat to Putin and over

the course of the past ten years, more than twenty six elected governors have been forced out of

office either through blackmail, threats or false accusations which have led to impeachment.18

Like Yeltsin before him, Putin has also installed his associates in places of power, men he has

known from his St. Petersburg days, the ‘Pitertsy’ and the remnants of the ‘family’.19

The

judiciary has fared no better with accusations of bribery and intimidation rife in the Russian

newspapers. It is perhaps by this route that Putin has most successfully fought the oligarchs,

those wealthy Russians who gained from the collapse of communism, as they were considered a

prime threat to his dominance. The continuance of ‘imperfect legislation’, laws from the

communist era, also does not help in this regard, as they are not compatible with democratic

15 Colton, Timothy J., and Cindy Skach. "The Russian Predicament." Journal of Democracy 16, no. 3 (2005): 26-113.

16 White, Stephen, Zvi Gitelman, and Richard Sakwa. Developments in Russian Politics 6. 6th ed. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2005.

17 Oblasts are administrative divisions within the Russian Federation.

18

Jack, Andrew. Inside Putin's Russia. London: Granta, 2004

19 Kahn, Jeffrey. Federalism, democratization, and the rule of law in Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

6

values.20

The power lost by the communist regime in 1991 was not effectively gained by the

people but instead a new elite came to the fore.

This has all been possible due to the 1993 constitution which gave the president

enormous powers of decree-making. With this constitution still in place, any hopes for a liberal

democracy in the making will surely be dashed. Because the dominant branch of government is

not the legislature, accountability in the system is virtually non-existent.

Putin and his supporters have justified this emphasis on strong central government by

arguing that a weak regime is detrimental to the prospects of democracy. Polls conducted show

that a majority of Russian people agree with him.21

However this is a disturbing trend in the

search for liberal democracy. If the Putin camp is really aiming for representative democracy

then it is high time that they started to give back some power to the legislature as two decades is

more than enough for power consolidation. The fear of communist resurgence in the mid 1990’s

which prompted Yeltsin to consolidate power in the presidency, is gone now, the successors of

the disbanded CPSU are a threat no more.

The Criminal State

In October of 2006, Anna Politovskaya, a prominent journalist and critic of the Putin

administration, was shot dead outside her apartment building in what many have called an

assassination ordered ‘directly’ from the Kremlin. She was not the only journalist to have been

killed in Putin’s Russia, more than three hundred have died in suspicious circumstances or

disappeared since 1998, and there is strong evidence that a majority of the incidents have a

‘Kremlin connection.’22

Today, Russia has more than forty television media outlets, with half of

them being state-owned and most of the others towing the state line.23

The independence of the

20 Ross, Cameron. Federalism and democratization in Russia. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. 21 Horvath, Robert. "Dissident Legacies." In Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe, Ed. Alexander Woll and

Harold Wydra, New York: Routledge, 2008.

22 Satter, David. Darkness at Dawn: The rise of the Russian criminal state. Yale: Yale University Press, 2003.

23 Ibid.

7

media that was sought after has been continuously hampered by the repeated oppression of the

press. Alexander Litvinenko, another outspoken dissident and former KGB agent, before his

death from alleged radiation poisoning in 2006 by the FSB, authored two books on life in Putin’s

Russia. In them, he exposed why the Kremlin has close ties to underground criminal gangs and

how Putin uses these organizations to further his control over Russia.24

The lack of a viably

independent media has been cited as a strong precondition for transition to liberal democracy and

this may be an important reason why liberal democratic values have not fostered in Russia.25

Freedom of speech in Russia is also a concern, as protesters have routinely been

summarily arrested for expressing public dissatisfaction with the regime. The Muscovite police

have had a strong hand in this as they are known to be strongly loyal to Putin. High levels of

corruption in the state machinery also do not help to instill popular confidence in the institutions.

This is indeed a worrisome prospect for any path towards liberal democracy and has been a

serious obstacle for progress towards it.

Civil participation

The active participation of civil society in all areas of government is considered to be the

most important prerequisite for the making of a liberal democracy. One of the most eminent

political scientists of the twentieth century, Robert A. Dahl has repeatedly cited this as a

necessary condition present in many of the polyarchies of the world.26

However, the above

mentioned factors in this essay, in relation to Russia, have not allowed for any comprehensive

civil participation and thus democracy itself has been under duress. Without the presence of any

viable civil participation and representation in Russia, liberal democracy has not been allowed

the platform from which to grow.

24 Felshtinsky, Yuri, and Alexander Litvinenko. Blowing up Russia: Terror from within. London: Gibson Square, 2007.

25 Barany, Zoltan. Russian politics: challenges of democratization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

26 Dahl, Robert A. Polyarchy, Participation and Opposition. London: New Haven/Yale University Press, 1971.

8

-Conclusion-

It has been a matter of debate as to the extent to which those who have been in power in

Moscow during the past two decades have wanted liberal democracy. If it is indeed the case that

liberal democracy is a goal of the policy makers then the method by which this transition is

trying to be achieved is seriously flawed. Autocratic leadership for the reasons of power

consolidation must cease when the country has been stabilized. It is then that liberal reforms

must take place. According to some scholars such as Kulik, the democratic transition is over and

Russia has very little chance of emerging as a viable liberal democracy.27

However, the question

posed in the introduction to this essay has, as we have seen a simple answer, that Russia has not

emerged as a liberal democracy because it has not instituted the necessary preconditions for such

a system. Russian democracy is at the stage where it must choose either to continue with the

delegative democracy in place or liberalize and move towards representative liberal democracy.

The status-quo must not continue, and only then, will the hopes of a decade ago be fulfilled.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

27 Kulik, Anatolli. Perspektivy razvitiya partiino-politicheskoi sistemy v Rossii: kruglyi stol 'Ekspertiza'. Moscow: Gorbachev-

Fond, 2001.

9

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10

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All effort has been made to track the sources referred to in this article, however the author wishes to

apologize if any breach of intellectual property law has unknowingly taken place.