by Vyacheslav Nikonov, President, The Polity Foundation

The Polity Foundation is a nongovernmental, research and political consulting organization founded in 1993. Its mission is to assist the work of politicians, academics and business leaders in promoting political and economic reforms in Russia and in working toward the creation of a civil society and a law-based state. In this essay, translated from the Russian, Vyacheslav Nikonov presents his views about democracy in Russia.

It is well known that there are many definitions of democracy, but to me most of them sound rather like noble intentions that cannot yet be fully realized anywhere. Whichever of the definitions we adopt, however, one thing is clear: there was simply no democracy in Russia until recent times. Unfortunately, the Russian historical tradition is anti-democratic. Both under the emperors and under the Communists, power was authoritarian, or even totalitarian; there was no civil society, free markets, human rights or other freedoms. The legal standards can best be described in the words of a famous Russian adage: “The severity of Russian laws is balanced by the fact that their enforcement is optional.”

Russia launched an attempt to break free from authoritarianism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the collapse of the USSR gave rise to hopes of a quick and painless transformation to a genuinely democratic country with a flourishing market economy, entering into the family of civilized countries. That period was dominated by undivided criticism with regard to the past, and the western model of democracy was perceived as the absolute standard.

To what extent has the democratic breakthrough been successful? Many western journalists and Russian rights activists give this response: Boris Yeltsin made heroic efforts to lay the foundations of a genuine democratic regime, and Vladimir Putin made several steps backwards—towards a controlled democracy.

I have a hard time accepting this characterization, and not only because I am unaware of any examples of uncontrolled democracy. It is just that the Russian democratic process is developing in a much more complex, paradoxical manner.

During Yeltsin’s regime, anarchy reigned because practically nobody was running the country and it was in a state of free fall. Yes, there was democracy, insofar as there were free elections for the offices established by the Constitution, but there were also elements of authoritarianism, despotism and oligarchy, as we see from the fact that during Yeltsin’s prolonged absences, the country was often run by a collection of his relatives, better known as the Family. This group also included powerful tycoons, who made up a new financial elite.

Putin, on the other hand, has been able to restore some order to the country and reduce anarchy. His family does not run the country. Oligarchy is not at the helm. At the same time, there have not been any radical changes to the elections. The Constitution has stayed the same.

Does democracy offer a division of power, a system of checks and balances? I believe they are not superfluous, although in the European countries the division of power is almost unheard of, and this does not prevent them from being generally democratic. The Russian constitutional system is a major improvement compared to the Communist system, founded on Vladimir Lenin’s ideas of the merging of the executive and legislative powers and the subordination of the courts to the control of the Communist Party. The division of powers in the current Constitution is mandated at one point, but it is effectively refuted by other articles. The reason is that the president, invested with enormous authority, is outside the system of checks and balances, and is not a part of the executive branch (this branch is represented by the cabinet of ministers). At the same time, the head of state effectively fulfills the functions of both the executive and the legislative powers through his authority to issue edicts.

Yeltsin dealt with an independent and sharply opposed parliament, which was dominated by Communists and nationalists who did not allow a single democratic law to be adopted. Now, thanks to strenuous efforts by the Kremlin, Putin has a majority, which allows him to adopt almost any reform laws against the objections of the Communist and nationalist opposition, whose size has been significantly reduced.

The judicial system has escaped from the control of one party and has become formally independent. However, judges’ salaries remain low, which has made the judiciary accessible to the trends of the material world. Today, the role of the courts is growing, but this is due in large part to the fact that Russia’s “entrepreneurs” have finally grown tired of clarifying issues with the help of hired killers and have turned, instead, to the courts.

If we were to judge by the criteria of political pluralism and freedom of activity of political parties, Russia would appear to be the most democratic country in the world. There have never been fewer than thirty parties on the ballot for the State Duma, and hundreds of others have been allowed to register and participate in the primary elections. The menu is enormous, but the quality of the political cuisine leaves something to be desired. And to complicate matters, the highest authorities are not generally associated with any party. Not surprisingly, party loyalties have not sprung up; no more than 1.5 percent of voters associate themselves firmly with a particular party, and people perceive the struggle between the parties as a largely unnecessary and annoying farce.

The important factors for democracy are a local initiative, a vertical distribution of power and federalism. Russia, of course, is a federation to a much greater degree than the Soviet Union was. Governors in the 89 divisions of the federation are elected by a national vote, in which the elections are not simultaneous, and therefore the country remains in a condition of permanent election campaigning in the various regions. As early as the beginning of the 1990s, Yeltsin proposed that the governors take as much sovereignty as they could swallow. They swallowed a lot. The power was in the hands of 89 powerful elected leaders, among whom there were almost no reformers or even honest and competent people. They were completely independent and outside the control of the Kremlin, which was much more democratic than the regional lords. Local initiative came under repression from the opposition, the free press and the arbitrary redistribution of property. All the governors adopted laws for themselves, which did not prevent a quarter of the normative acts passed in the regions from contradicting the federal laws and the Constitution.

Putin is not giving out sovereignty; he is taking it back. The president has theoretically been granted the right to remove a governor from office for violating the Constitution, although this right has not yet been exercised. Representatives of the president in seven federal regions, by one means or another, have made sure that the local laws do not contradict the Constitution. The reform-minded Kremlin has achieved greater control over the regional authorities, which are still very anti-reform. I will not presume to say which system—Yeltsin’s or Putin’s—is more in line with the interests of the democratic process.

Freedom of private enterprise has appeared in Russia. The activity that was punishable by a prison sentence in the Soviet Union has become a respectable business. A compelling game took place in the 1990s, one that the American robber barons did not even dream of: an enormous country, where everything—from the electrical plants down to the nails—was owned by the state, was passing into private hands. Democracy had very little to do with all this. The winners of the game were those who were able to convince government officials, through bribes and corruption, to make them billionaires rather than someone else. Entrepreneurship became so unrestrained that the “oligarchies” that appeared, having free access to any government office, decided that it was unnecessary, for instance, to pay taxes. Incidentally, the rest of the population didn’t do so either.

Putin sent a series of messages to the oligarchies. The first was: federal policy was the president’s business. The second was: at least make it look like you’re paying taxes. The third was: each of you is subject to investigation. The oligarchies became less independent. Those who did not take the first message seriously were confronted with the implementation of the third.

Freedom of speech has also appeared in the new Russia. Under Yeltsin it was much more abundant than in any other country in the world I know. The concepts of political correctness, reliability of information or moral imperatives never entered the minds of the journalists. Almost all twenty national television channels were among the opposition. In Putin’s Russia, the channels formerly belonging to powerful oligarchs have become more loyal. Freedom of speech has diminished: now there is only slightly more of it than in any other country in the world. When one of my American friends asked whether there was opposition in today’s Russia, I asked him to give me an example of an opposition television channel in the U.S. After some hesitation, he mentioned Fox News. Compared to Fox News, any Russian channel is the opposition. And the spectrum of opinions represented in the Russian media is several miles broader than anywhere else. Of course, this is not so much a sign of excessive democracy as of a lack of ideological reference points and intellectual confusion.

Democratic regimes are strengthened when their foundations are based on the people’s faith in the sanctity and stability of basic democratic values. This is just what is lacking in Russia. The people who demanded democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s are now indifferent at best. The very concept of democracy, unfortunately, has largely been discredited. It is associated in people’s minds with the age of Yeltsinism—the loss of all the safeguards of the Soviet period, a 50-percent drop in the economy, four-digit inflation, a transfer of property to the hands of a few, corruption, a surge in crime, an increase in the cost of living, heating and electricity and the virtual disappearance of free medicine.

According to data by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), only 15 percent of the population believes that they have gained from the democratic and market reforms, and 73 percent believe that they have lost. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed believe that order is important for Russia, even if instituting certain limitations on personal freedoms are necessary to achieve it.

Still, the Russians do not want to move backwards. By “order” they do not mean a retreat from democratic principles, but rather political and economic stability (46 percent), strict adherence to the laws (35 percent), a stop to the looting of the country (34 percent), and an opportunity for everyone to enjoy their rights (16 percent). People also have a positive view of their initial achievements in freedom of speech, freedom to travel abroad, entrepreneurship, the right to strike, etc. It is only the political parties they actively dislike. People are not at all inclined to give up their freedoms; they are simply tired of the shock effects of ten years of difficult changes.

Though the establishment of Russian democracy is still on a very winding path, the negative characterization of the situation we are witnessing—the evolution from Yeltsin’s pure democracy to Putin’s controlled democracy—seems to me to be unjustified. In my opinion, if we can in fact speak of a movement, it would be more accurate to say we have moved from Gorbachev’s mild authoritarianism to Yeltsin’s total anarchy, which is turning to moderate anarchy. Some people have even begun paying their taxes.

If the movement continues along this trajectory, one consequence may indeed be democracy. But it would hardly be western-style democracy. Strictly speaking, there are no historical precedents, no stimuli for the development of democracy according to western standards, as there are, say, among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which were told that in order to be admitted to NATO and the European Union, they must follow certain standards. No one is about to admit Russia to these organizations, so it is relatively free to devise standards of its own.

The distance Russia has traveled in a democratic direction may be assessed in different ways. It is going more slowly than many, including myself, had hoped; but it is moving more swiftly than I had expected a few years ago.

I will make one totally paradoxical conclusion. Considering the existence of a powerful tsarist tradition in Russia, I have no doubt that a popular president will be capable of implementing democratic reforms, even if society will not be very happy about it.

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