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Karl Marx
famously said that “people make their own history, but they do
not make it as they please, they do not make it under
self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing
already, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx:2001:7).
Given the decade of turbulence and instability in post-Soviet
Russia that Putin inherited, Putinism is hard to distinguish as
an ideology per se. The question of how similar Putin’s
attitudes would have been had Russia been a fully-functioning
liberal democracy is an interesting hypothesis. Although,
perhaps this distortion of Putinism is offset somewhat by the
highly favourable environment in terms of public good will and
overwhelming support in the Duma. |
This paper
will investigate and analyse the characteristics of Putin during
his premiership as Russian leader and suggest what they say
about the nature of Putinism. To do this, it will look at the
political, economic and social policies that Putin has pursued.
It will then conclude by outlining the timeliness of Putinism
for the Russian Federation despite the torrent of criticism,
particularly from the West, about Putin’s lack of democratic
openness.
Firstly,
Putin placed particular emphasis on the need for a stable
political system by producing and successfully ratifying the Law
on Political Parties in 2001, to develop Russia’s young party
system. In the 1990s, problems of poor party identification,
poor discipline and narrow factional interests plagued the
system. Putin was unambiguous in saying that “no pocketsize
parties should appear, but parties…setting up teams which
operate effectively and which are responsible to society and the
state” (Ross:2004:40). The legislation included new rules such
as:
-
Parties
would need to have regional branches in at least half of the
89 regions with 100 registered members in each;
-
Parties
could not be established on the basis of race, ethnicity or
religion;
-
Private
campaign finance was limited as now parties gaining over 3
percent of the vote would receive state funding proportional
to votes (a concession by the Kremlin was that parties could
refuse state funding);
-
The
congress of each party must approve lists for their
respective elections where proportional representation was
used.
This
legislation was clearly intended to bring permanence to the
party political system. It was hoped that soon parties would
have a national presence based on broad-ranging agendas rather
than the plethora of short-term factional parties that confused
and disillusioned the public. More specifically, it aimed to
provide state funds and limited private contributions which
rendered party politics subservient to business interests in the
Duma during the 1990s. The ‘unholy alliance’ between the
Communists and Union of Right Forces opposed the measure arguing
that the party system should grow spontaneously and that signs
of this were already beginning to occur. Also they were worried
about the state funding being used as a tool to make parties
dependent on the state, hence the concession mentioned above.
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