Usuario:Ana Caballero dlc/Taller/Rusia bajo el régimen de Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin in 2012

Vladimir Putin ha gobernado Rusia como presidente por 3 periodos (2000-2004, 2004-2008, y 2012-presente) y también fungió como presidente interino desde 1999 hasta el año 2000, siendo el sucesor de Boris Yeltsin debido a su retiro anticipado.​ Vladimir Putin también fungió como primer ministro durante tres meses en 1999 y cumplió un mandato completo entre 2008 y 2012.

Durante su mandato, Putin ha sido miembro del partido “Unidad” y “Rusia Unida”. También se encuentra afiliado al Frente Popular, donde en 2011 un grupo de seguidores de Putin organizó una reunión masiva, con el fin de ayudar a mejorar la percepción de la población acerca de la “Rusia Unida”.​ Su ideología política, prioridades, y políticas implementadas, son englobadas en el término “Putinismo” (en ruso: путинизм).

Putin he obtenido altas calificaciones de aprobación nacional y en 2007 fue nombrado “Persona del Año” por la revista Time.​ En 2015, fue designado número 1 en la lista Time 100 de la revista Time que engloba a las personas más influyentes del mundo​ En 2013, 2014 y 2016, fue colocado en la posición número 1 en la lista de las personas más poderosas del mundo publicada por Forbes..​

Perspectiva

El sistema político de Vladimir Putin junta algunos elementos del liberalismo económico, una notoria falta de transparencia en el gobierno, el “compadrismo”, el nepotismo y la corrupción en los procesos gubernamentales. Esta forma de gobernar ha sido apoyada por mucha gente, pero también ha sido catalogada como una “forma sistemática e institucionalizada” por otros, entre ellos Boris Nemstrov.​​​​​​ Entre los años de 1999 y 2008 la economía Rusia creció contantemente,​ algunos expertos atribuyen este hecho a la devaluación del rublo en el año de 1998, las reformas estructurales de la época de Boris Yeltsin, el aumento en los precios del petróleo y el crédito barato por parte de los banco occidentales.​​​ Michael McFaul ex embajador, dijo que el “impresionante” crecimiento económico a corto plazo de Rusia “vino simultáneamente con la destrucción de los medios libres, las amenazas a la sociedad civil y una corrupción de la justicia sin paliativos”.​

Durante los dos períodos de su mandato como presidente Putin publicó reformas económicas liberales, tal como, el impuesto a la renta fija del 13%, la reducción de los impuestos aplicadas a las ganancias y los nuevo códigos civiles y de tierras.​ durante este periodo la tasa de pobreza en Rusia se redujó en más de la mitad​​ y el PIB creció rápidamente.​

En relaciones internacionales, Putin busca realzar la grandeza, beligerancia y expansionismo de la antigua Unión Soviética.​​ En noviembre de 2007, Simon Tisdall columnista del periódico “The Guardian” señaló que “al igual que Rusia alguna vez exporto la revolución marxista, ahora está creando un mercado internacional para el putinismo” debido a que “elites nacionales instintivamente antidemocráticas, oligárquicas y corruptas encuentran una apariencia de la democracia, con trampas parlamentarias y pretensión de pluralismo, es mucho más atractivo y manejable que lo real ".​

El economista Richard Rahn (septiembre 2007) llamó al Putinismo “una forma de gobierno autoritaria nacionalista rusa que pretende ser una democracia de libre mercado” y que su linaje proviene mas del fascismo que del comunismo,​ señalando que “el putinismo depende de que la economía rusa crezca lo suficientemente rápido con el objetivo de mejorar el nivel de vida de la gente y, a cambio existiría una disposición a soportar la represión existente”.​ Y predijo que “a medida que la suerte económica de Rusia cambiaba, el putinismo se volvería más represivo”.​ Después de las observaciones de Rahn, Putin tomó medidas para reducir la democracia, promover creencias y valores conservadores; y silenciar la oposición a su administración y políticas..​

El historiador ruso Andranik Migranyan consideró que el régimen de Putin restauraba las funciones naturales de un gobierno después del período de la década de 1990, cuando los oligopolios actuaban conforme a sus propios intereses y que estos gobernaban a Rusia. Migranyan dijo: “Si la democracia es la regla de una mayoría y la protección de los derechos y oportunidades de una minoría, el régimen político actual puede describirse como democrático, al menos formalmente. Existe un sistema político multipartidista en Rusia, mientras que varias partes, la mayoría de ellos representando a la oposición, tienen asientos en la Duma del Estado".​

Putinismo

Los términos "Putinismo" y "Putinista" a menudo tienen connotaciones negativas cuando se usan en los medios occidentales.​​​​​​ para hacer referencia al gobierno ruso bajo Putin, donde siloviki, el establecimiento de seguridad militar, controla gran parte del poder político y financiero. Muchos siloviki​​​ son amigos personales de Putin o han trabajado previamente con él, en agencias de inteligencia y seguridad del estado, como el FSB, el Ministerio del Interior y el ejército.​​​​​​​

Cassiday y Johnson argumentan que, desde su ascenso al poder en 1999, “Putin ha inspirado expresiones de adulación como nunca se había visto desde los días de Stalin. Homenajes a sus logros y atributos personales han llenado los medios posibles”.​ Ross dice que el culto hacia Putin surgió en 2002 y enfatiza la “voluntad de hierro, salud, juventud y determinación de Putin, amoldada por el apoyo popular”. Ross concluye: “El desarrollo de un mini culto a la personalidad de Putin se basó en una personalidad formidable en su corazón”.​

Programa de campaña de Vladimir Putin

El 31 de diciembre de 1999, el presidente Boris Yeltsin renunció. Bajo la Constitución de Rusia, el entonces primer ministro de Rusia, Vladimir Putin, se convirtió en presidente interino.​

El día anterior, un artículo llamado “Rusia en el cambio de milenio” fue firmado por Putin y posteriormente publicado en el sitio web de gobierno. E l potencial jefe de estado expresó su punto de vista acerca del pasado de la nación y los problemas existentes.​ La primera tarea en la visión de Putin era la consolidación de la sociedad rusa: “El trabajo fructífero y creativo, que nuestro país necesita, es imposible en una sociedad dividida y atomizada internamente”.​ Sin embargo, el autor enfatizó: "No debería haber un acuerdo civil forzado en una Rusia democrática. El acuerdo social solo puede ser voluntario".​

El autor hizo hincapié en la importancia de fortalecer el estado: "La clave para la recuperación y el crecimiento de Rusia se encuentra hoy en la esfera política estatal. Rusia necesita un fuerte poder estatal y debe tenerlo". Detallando su punto de vista, Putin enfatizó: "La principal fortaleza del estado en Rusia proviene de su estructura de estado federal democrático, basado en la ley y viable".​

Respecto a los problemas económicos, Putin señaló la necesidad de mejorar significativamente la eficiencia económica, la necesidad de llevar a cabo una política social coherente y que éste basada en resultados, dirigida a combatir la pobreza y la necesidad de proporcionar un crecimiento estable del bienestar de las personas.​

El artículo afirmaba la importancia del apoyo gubernamental a la ciencia, la educación, la cultura y la sanidad ya que "un país en el que las personas no gozan de buena salud física y psicológica, son poco educadas y analfabetas, nunca llegarán a los niveles más altos de la civilización mundial".​

El artículo concluyó con una declaración alarmista acerca de Rusia y su posición en medio de uno de los períodos más difíciles de su historia: "Por primera vez en los últimos 200 a 300 años, se enfrenta a la amenaza real de deslizarse al segundo, incluso tercer, rango de estados mundiales ".​ Para evitar eso, es necesario un gran esfuerzo por parte de todas las fuerzas intelectuales, físicas y morales de la nación porque "todo depende de nosotros, y solo nosotros, de nuestra capacidad para reconocer la magnitud de la amenaza, para unirnos y aplicarnos a un trabajo largo y duro ".​

Como indicaron los doctores rusos de Historia Barsenkov y Vdovin, las ideas básicas del artículo fueron representadas en la plataforma electoral de Vladimir Putin y apoyadas por la mayoría de los ciudadanos del país, lo que llevó a la victoria de Vladimir Putin en la primera ronda de las elecciones de 2000, con el 52 por ciento de los votos emitidos.​

The outline of Russia's foreign policy was presented by Vladimir Putin in his Address to Russia's Federal Assembly in April 2002: "We are building constructive, normal relations with all the world's nations—I want to emphasise, with all the world's nations. However, I want to note something else: the norm in the international community, in the world today, is also harsh competition—for markets, for investment, for political and economic influence. And in this fight, Russia needs to be strong and competitive". "I want to stress that Russian foreign policy will in the future be organized in a strictly pragmatic way, based on our capabilities and national interests: military and strategic, economic and political. And also taking into account the interests of our partners, above all in the CIS".​

In his 2008 book, the Russian political commentator, the retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov, noted that Putin's program article was barely noticed then and never revisited later—a fact that Leonov regretted, because "its content is most important for contrasting against his [Putin's] subsequent actions" and thus figuring out Putin's pattern, under which "words, more often than not, do not match his actions".​

Sociological data

According to Dr. Mark Smith (March 2003), some of the main features of Putin's regime were the development of a corporatist system by pursuing close ties with business organizations, social stability and co-optation of opposition parties.​ He determined three main groupings in Putin's early leadership: 1) the siloviki, 2) economic liberals and 3) supporters of "the Family", i.e. those who were close to Yeltsin.​

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who carried out a sociological survey in 2004, put the relative number of siloviki in the Russian political elite at 25%.​ In Putin's "inner circle" which constitutes about 20 people, amount of siloviki rises to 58% and fades to 18–20% in parliament and 34% in the government.​ According to Kryshtanovskaya, there was no capture of power as Kremlin bureaucracy has called siloviks in order to "restore order". The process of siloviki coming into power has allegedly started since 1996, Boris Yeltsin's second term. "Not personally Yeltsin, but the whole elite wished to stop the revolutionary process and consolidate the power". When silovik Putin was appointed Prime Minister in 1999, the process boosted. According to Olga: "Yes, Putin has brought siloviks with him. But that's not enough to understand the situation. Here's also an objective aspect: the whole political class wished them to come. They were called for service... There was a need of a strong arm, capable from point of view of the elite to establish order in the country".​

Kryshtanovskaya noted that there were also people who had worked in structures believed to be affiliated with the KGB/FSB, such as the Soviet Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Governmental Communications Commission, Ministry of Foreign Trade, Press Agency News and others. The work per se in such agencies would not necessarily involve contacts with security services, but would make it likely.​ Summing up the numbers of official and affiliated siloviki, she came up with an estimate of 77% of such in the power.​

According to a Russian Public Opinion Foundation 2005 investigation, 34% of respondents think "there is a lack of democracy in Russia because democratic rights and freedoms are not observed" and also point on the lack of law and order. In the same time, 21% of respondents are sure there's too much of democracy in Russia and many of them point on the same drawbacks as the previous group: "[T]he lack of law and order, irresponsibility and non-accountability of politicians". According to the Foundation: "As we can see, Russians' negative opinions about democracy are based on their dissatisfaction with contemporary conditions, while some respondents think the democratic model is not suitable in principal". Considering the modern regime: "It is interesting that most respondents think Putin's government marks the most democratic epoch in Russian history (29%), while second place goes to Brezhnev's times (14%). Some people mentioned Gorbachev and Yeltsin in this context (11% and 9%, respectively)".​

At the end of 2008, Lev Gudkov, based on the Levada Center polling data, pointed out the near-disappearance of public opinion as a socio-political institution in Putin's Russia and its replacement with the still-efficacious state propaganda.​

Economic policies

On July 9, 2000, while speaking to the Russian Parliament, Putin advocated an economy policy​ which would have introduced a flat tax rate of 13%​ and a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 24 percent.​ Putin also intended for small businesses to get better treatment under this economic reform package. Under Putin, the old system which included high tax rates has been replaced with a new system where companies can choose either a 6 percent tax on gross revenue or a 15 percent tax on profits.​

In February 2009, Putin called for a single VAT rate to be "as low as possible" (at the time it stood at an average rate of 18 percent), which could be reduced to between 12 percent and 13 percent.​ The overall tax burden was lower in Russia under Putin than in most European countries.​

Rising living standards

In 2005, Putin launched National Priority Projects in the fields of health care, education, housing and agriculture. In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin proposed increasing maternity benefits and prenatal care for women. Putin was strident about the need to reform the judiciary considering the present federal judiciary "Sovietesque", wherein many of the judges hand down the same verdicts as they would under the old Soviet judiciary structure and preferring instead a judiciary that interpreted and implemented the code to the current situation. In 2005, responsibility for federal prisons was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice.

The most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.​

During Putin's government, poverty was cut more than half​​ and real GDP has grown rapidly.​

Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia in 2007 article has emphasized the influence of American private investments for Russian democracy as well as the amount of local support for them: "In a nutshell, the booming Russian economy is transforming that nation's outlook, standard of living and opportunities for its people in ways that were unimaginable only five years ago. More than 10 million Russian citizens have traveled abroad. Private enterprise is thriving. Russians are happier, healthier and more optimistic than ever in their lives. And, contrary to what you might hear, surveys show that the Russian people are as pro-American, if not more so, than the populations of many a European country, and most hope for closer relations with the United States". He also said: "I would argue that the American business community has played a not insignificant role in fostering these developments. By their willingness to invest in Russia's future, American companies have become effective ambassadors for the United States and its values, while creating new jobs and benefiting the economies of both our countries. And the Putin government has been supportive of these efforts in ways that some might find surprising. Russian officials go to considerable lengths to be cooperative and accommodate the needs of American business, while at the same time revising their regulations to align them more closely with international standards".​

In 2006, chief of Business Week's Moscow bureau Jason Bush commented on the condition of Russian middle class: "This group has grown from just 8 million in 2000 to 55 million today and now accounts for some 37% of the population, estimates Expert, a market research firm in Moscow. That's giving a lift to the mood in the country. The share of Russians who think life is 'not bad' has risen to 23% from just 7% in 1999, while those who find living conditions 'unacceptable' has dropped to 29% from 53%, according to a recent poll". However, "[n]ot everyone has shared in the prosperity. Far from it. The average Russian earns $330 a month, just 10% of the U.S. average. Only a third of households own a car, and many—particularly the elderly—have been left behind".​

At the end of Putin's second term, Jonathan Steele has commented on Putin's legacy: "What, then, is Putin's legacy? Stability and growth, for starters. After the chaos of the 90s, highlighted by Yeltsin's attack on the Russian parliament with tanks in 1993 and the collapse of almost every bank in 1998, Putin has delivered political calm and a 7% annual rate of growth. Inequalities have increased and many of the new rich are grotesquely crass and cruel, but not all the Kremlin's vast revenues from oil and gas have gone into private pockets or are being hoarded in the government's "stabilisation fund". Enough has gone into modernising schools and hospitals so that people notice a difference. Overall living standards are up. The second Chechen war, the major blight on Putin's record, is almost over".​

Corporatism and state intervention in economy

According to Dr Mark Smith (March 2003), Putin's regime had developed a "corporatist system" in the sense that under him the Kremlin was interested in close ties with business organizations such as the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Delovaya Rossiya and the trade union federation (FNPR).​ This was a part of the regime's attempts to involve broad sectors of society in the making and implementation of policy.​

There is a school of thought which says that a number of Putin's steps in the economy (notably the fate of Yukos) were signs of a shift toward a system normally described as state capitalism,​​​ where "the entirety of state-owned and controlled enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the cabal around Putin—a collection of former KGB colleagues, Saint Petersburg lawyers, and other political cronies".​

According to Andrey Illarionov, advisor of Putin until 2005, Putin's regime was a new socio-political order "distinct from any seen in our country before" as members of the Corporation of Intelligence Service Collaborators had taken over the entire body of state power, followed an omertà-like behavior code and were "given instruments conferring power upon others—membership "perks", such as the right to carry and use weapons". According to Illarionov, this "Corporation has seized key government agencies—the Tax Service, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Parliament, and the government-controlled mass media—which are now used to advance the interests of [Corporation] members. Through those agencies, every significant resource in the country—security/intelligence, political, economic, informational and financial—is being monopolized in the hands of Corporation members".​ Members of the Corporation formed an isolated caste and according to an anonymous former KGB general cited by The Economist, “[a] Chekist is a breed ... A good KGB heritage—a father or grandfather, say, who worked for the service—is highly valued by today's siloviki. Marriages between siloviki clans are also encouraged.​

Jason Bush, chief of the Moscow bureau of the magazine Business Week has commented in December 2006 on troubling growth of government's role: "The Kremlin has taken control of some two dozen Russian companies since 2004, including oil assets from Sibneft and Yukos, as well as banks, newspapers, and more. Despite his sporadic support for pro-market reforms, Putin has backed national champions such as energy concerns Gazprom and Rosneft. The private sector's share of output fell from 70% to 65% last year, while state-controlled companies now represent 38% of stock market capitalization, up from 22% a year ago".​

On September 20, 2008 and when the late 2000s recession had started to hit the well-being of Russia's top tycoons, The Financial Times said that "Putinism was built on the understanding that if tycoons played by Kremlin rules they would prosper".​

Although Russia's state intervention in the economy had been usually criticized in the West, a study by Bank of Finland's Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT) in 2008 showed that state intervention had had a positive impact on the corporate governance of many companies in Russia as the formal indications of the quality of corporate governance in Russia were higher in companies with state control or with a stake held by the government.​

Véanse también: Gazprom y Rosneft.

Other economic developments and assessments

In June 2008, a group of Finnish economists wrote that the 2000s had so far been an economic boon for Russia, with GDP rising about 7% a year and by the beginning of 2008 Russia had become one of the ten largest economies in the world.​

In Putin's first term, many new economic reforms were implemented along the lines of the "Gref program". The multitude of reforms ranged from a flat income tax to bank reform, from land ownership to improvements in conditions for small businesses.​

In 1998, over 60% of industrial turnover in Russia was based on barter and various monetary surrogates. The use of such alternatives to money now today fallen out of favour, which has boosted economic productivity significantly. Besides raising wages and consumption, Putin's government has received broad praise also for eliminating this problem.​

In the opinion of the Finnish researchers, the most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.​

The rise in the overall living standards further deepened Russia's social and geographical discrepancies. In July 2008, Edward Lucas of The Economist wrote: "The colossal bribe-collecting opportunities created by Putinism have heightened the divide between big cities (particularly Moscow) and the rest of the country".​​

In November 2008, the retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov, in assessing the overall results of Putin's economic policies for the period of 8 years, said that [w]ithin this period, there has only been one positive thing, if you leave aside the trivia. And that thing is the price of oil and natural gas".​ In the closing paragraphs of his 2008 book, the retired general said: "Behind the gilded facade of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, there lies a demolished country that, under the current characteristics of those in power, has no chance to restore itself as one of the developed states of the world".​​

On November 29, 2008, Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation (the largest opposition group within Russia with its 13% of seats in the national Parliament), in his speech before the 13th Party Congress made these remarks about the state that Russia under Putin was in: "Objectively, Russia’s position remains complicated, not to say dismal. The population is dying out. Thanks to the "heroic efforts" of the Yeltsinites the country has lost 5 out of the 22 million square kilometers of its historical territory. Russia has lost half of its production capacity and has yet to reach the 1990 level of output. Our country is facing three mortal dangers: de-industrialization, de-population and mental debilitation. The ruling group has neither notable successes to boast of, nor a clear plan of action. All its activities are geared to a single goal: to stay in power at all costs. Until recently it has been able to keep in power due to the "windfall" high world prices for energy. Its social support rests on the notorious “vertical power structure” which is another way of saying intimidation and blackmail of the broad social strata and the handouts that power chips off the oil and gas pie and throws out to the population in crumbs, especially on the eve of elections".​

To characterize the kind of state Putin had built in socio-economic terms, in early 2008 professor Marshall I. Goldman coined the term "petrostate" in Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia,​ where he inter alia argued that while Putin had followed the advice of economic advisers in implementing reforms such as a 13 percent flat tax and creating a stabilization fund to lessen inflationary pressure, his main personal contribution was the idea of creating "national champions" and the renationalization of major energy assets. In his June 2008 interview, Marshall Goldman said that in his opinion Putin had created a new class of oligarchs, whom some called "silogarchs", Russia having come in second in the Forbes magazine list of the world's billionaires after only the United States.​

In December 2008, Anders Åslund pointed out that Putin’s chief project had been "to develop huge, unmanageable state-owned mastodons, considered “national champions”", which had "stalemated large parts of the economy through their inertia and corruption while impeding diversification".​

Restoring functionality of government

The concept of "Putinism" was described in a positive sense by Russian political scientist Andranik Migranyan.​ According to Migranyan, Putin came into office when the worst regime was established: the economy was "totally decentralized" and "the state had lost central authority while the oligarchs robbed the country and controlled its power institutions". In two years, Putin has restored hierarchy of power, ending the omnipotence of regional elites as well as destroying political influence of "oligarchs and oligopolies in the federal center". Boris Yeltsin-era non-institutional center of power commonly called "The Family" was ruined, which according to Migranyan in turn undercut the positions of the actors such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who had sought to privatize the Russian state "with all of its resources and institutions".​

Migranyan said that Putin began establishing common rules of the game for all actors and started with an attempt to restore the role of the government as the institution expressing combined interests of the citizens and "capable of controlling the state’s financial, administrative and media resources". According to Migranyan: "Naturally, in line with Russian traditions, any attempt to increase the state’s role causes an intense repulsion on the part of the liberal intellectuals, not to mention a segment of the business community that is not interested in the strengthening of state power until all of the most attractive state property has been seized". Migranyan claimed that oligopolies' view of democracy was set on a premise of whether they were close to the center of power, rather than "objective characteristics and estimates of the situation in the country". Migranyan said "free" media, owned by e.g. Berezovsky and Gusinsky, were nothing similar to free media as understood by the West, but served their only economic and political interests while "all other politicians and analysts were denied the right to go on the air".​

Migranyan sees enhancement of the role of the law enforcement agencies as a trial to set barriers against criminals, "particularly those in big business".​

Migranyan sees in 2004 fruition of the social revolution initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose aims were to rebuild the social system, saying that "the absolute dominance of private ownership in Russia, recognized by all political forces today, has been the greatest achievement and result of this social revolution".​

According to Migranyan, the major trouble of Russian democracy is inability of civil society to rule the state, underdevelopment of public interests. He sees that as the consequence of Yeltsin's era family-ruled state being unable to pursue "a favorable environment for mid-sized and small businesses". Migranyan sees modern Russia as democracy, at least formally. While "the state, having restored its effectiveness and control over its own resources, has become the largest corporation responsible for establishing the rules of the game". Migranyan wonders how much might this influence extend in future. In 2004, he saw two possibilities for the Putin regime: either transformation into a consolidated democracy, either bureaucratic authoritarianism. However, "if Russia is lagging behind the developed capitalist nations in regard to the consolidation of democracy, it is not the quality of democracy, but rather its amount and the balance between civil society and the state".​

The report by Andrew C. Kuchins in November 2007 said that "Russia today is a hybrid regime that might best be termed “illiberal internationalism”, although neither word is fully accurate and requires considerable qualification. From being a weakly institutionalized, fragile, and in many ways distorted proto-democracy in the 1990s, Russia under Vladimir Putin has moved back in the direction of a highly centralized authoritarianism, which has characterized the state for most of its 1,000-year history. But it is an authoritarian state where the consent of the governed is essential. Given the experience of the 1990s and the Kremlin’s propaganda emphasizing this period as one of chaos, economic collapse, and international humiliation, the Russian people have no great enthusiasm for democracy and remain politically apathetic in light of the extraordinary economic recovery and improvement in lifestyles for so many over the last eight years. The emergent, highly centralized government, combined with a weak and submissive society, is the hallmark of traditional Russian paternalism".​

In a 2007 interview with Der Spiegel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn commented on the Putin regime: "Putin has inherited plundered and downtrodden country with demoralized and grown poor majority of the population. And he took on its possible — to be noted, gradual, slow — recovering. These efforts were not right at the moment noticed, not speaking about being appreciated. And can you point on examples in history when measures for recovering strength of governmental management would be benevolently met from beyond the country?".​

According to a 2007 article of Dimitri Simes published in Foreign Affairs: "With high energy prices, sound fiscal policies, and tamed oligarchs, the Putin regime no longer needs international loans or economic assistance and has no trouble attracting major foreign investment despite growing tension with Western governments. Within Russia, relative stability, prosperity, and a new sense of dignity have tempered popular disillusionment with growing state control and the heavy-handed manipulation of the political process".​

BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall in her 2007 article and after describing the "scarred decade" of the 1990s with "rampant hyperinflation" harsh Yeltsin's policies, population decrease rate like that for a nation in a war, the country turning "from superpower into beggar", wonders: "So who can blame Russians for welcoming the relative stability Putin has presided over during the past seven years, even if other aspects of his rule have cast an authoritarian shadow? In the back-to-front world of Russian politics, it is not too little democracy that many people fear, but too much of it. This, I discovered, is why some are calling for Putin to stay on for a third term. Not because they admire him—privately, many say that he and his cronies are just as corrupt and disdainful of others as their communist predecessors were—but because they mistrust the idea of democracy, resent the West for pushing it, and fear what might happen as a result of next year's elections. Recent experience has taught them that change is usually for the worse and best avoided".​

Foreign policy

With Bill Clinton in September 2000

With George W. Bush in July 2001

With Barack Obama in September 2015

With Donald Trump in July 2017

In June 2000, Putin's decree was approved by the "Concept of the Russian Federation's foreign policy". According to this document, the main objectives of foreign policy are:

• Ensuring reliable security of the country
• The impact of global processes in order to create a stable, just and democratic world order
• The creation of favorable external conditions for the onward development of Russian
• Formation of the Neighbourhood zone around the perimeter of the Russian borders
• Search agreement and coinciding interests with foreign countries and international associations in the process of solving problems, Russia's national priorities
• Protecting the rights and interests of Russian citizens and compatriots abroad
• Promote a positive perception of the Russian Federation in the world

In 2010, in an article in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung dedicated to the participation in the annual economic forum it was proposed to create a European economic alliance stretching from Vladivostok to Lisbon. As steps towards the creation of the alliance indicates a possible unification of customs tariffs and technical regulations, the abolition of the visa regime with the European Union.​

In August 2013, according to experts the Russian-American relations have reached their lowest point since the end of the Cold War era. September U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Moscow and his talks with Putin were canceled due to temporary asylum in Russia, a former employee of the CIA Edward Snowden, disagreements on the situation in Syria and the problems with human rights in Russia.​

On September 11, 2013, The New York Times published an article by Putin "Russia calls for caution". It is written in the form of an open letter to the American people, containing an explanation of the Russian political line against the Syrian conflict. It is also the Russian president warns against U.S. President Obama's thesis "About the exclusivity of the American nation". The article caused a mixed reaction of the world community.​​

In 2013, Putin won the first place in the annual ranking of most influential people in the world by Forbes.​ In 2014, the result of repeated.​

In September 2015, Putin spoke for the first time in 10 years at the UN General Assembly session in New York City. In his speech, he urged to form a broad anti-terrorist coalition to combat ISIS and blamed the events in Ukraine on "external forces", warned the West against unilateral sanctions, attempts to push Russia from the world market and export of color revolutions. For the first time, he also held a meeting with U.S. President Obama for two years to discuss the situation in Syria and Ukraine, but in the outcome of the negotiations and despite the persistence of deep contradictions the experts saw a faint hope for a compromise and the warming of relations between the two countries.​

Authoritarian bureaucratic state

Russian politician Boris Nemtsov and commentator Kara-Murza define Putinism in Russia as "a one party system, censorship, a puppet parliament, ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, and hypertrophied role of special services and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business".​

Russia's nascent middle class showed few signs of political activism under the regime as Masha Lipman reported: "As with the majority overall, those in the middle-income group have accepted the paternalism of Vladimir Putin's government and remained apolitical and apathetic".​

In December 2007, the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman (VCIOM) categorized the Putin regime as "the power of bureaucratic oligarchy" which had "the traits of extreme right-wing dictatorship — the dominance of state-monopoly capital in the economy, silovoki structures in governance, clericalism and statism in ideology".​

In August 2008, The Economist wrote about the virtual demise of both Russian and Soviet intelligentsia in post-Soviet Russia and noted: "Putinism was made strong by the absence of resistance from the part of society that was meant to provide intellectual opposition".​

In early February 2009, Aleksander Auzan, an economist and board member at a research institute set up by Dmitry Medvedev, said that in the Putin system "there is not a relationship between the authorities and the people through Parliament or through nonprofit organizations or other structures. The relationship to the people is basically through television. And under the conditions of the crisis, that can no longer work".​

About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma in late January 2009, when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: "It is no coincidence that Medvedev has taken aim at the country's mayors. Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in 2005. Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia. Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country".​

Rehabilitation of the Tsarist imperial and of the Soviet past of Russia

Tsarist Imperial Russia

It is claimed that Putin models himself on the Tsar Peter the Great, whose reign is reminiscent of a Russian imperial greatness which the Kremlin is keen to promote. A presidential commission asked Putin in 2003 to grant the request of one of Nicholas II's last surviving relatives to rehabilitate the House of Romanov.​ Willing to regain the imperial grandeur of Russia, Putin invited the Romanov royal family to return to Russia in July 2015.​ According to the presidential commission, this move would represent a significant final step in Russia's journey to embrace its imperial history.​

An alliance has been forged between the Church and the Kremlin since Vladimir Putin became the president of the Russian Federation (RF). Putin, an adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church, has allowed the regaining by the Orthodox Church of much of the importance that the Church had enjoyed in Russian Empire and has won the enthusiastic support of its religious leaders.​

Soviet Union

The first politically controversial step made by Putin, then the FSB Director, was restoring in June 1999 a memorial plaque to Yuri Andropov on the facade of the building, where the KGB had been headquartered.​

In late 2000, Putin submitted a bill to the State Duma to use the Soviet anthem as Russia's national anthem. The Duma voted in favor.​

In April 2005 during his formal address to Russia's Parliament, President Putin said: "Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself".​

In September 2003, Putin was quoted as saying: "The Soviet Union is a very complicated page in the history of our peoples. It was heroic and constructive, and it was also tragic. But it is a page that has been turned. It's over, the boat has sailed. Now we need to think about the present and the future of our peoples".​

In February 2004, Putin said: "It is my deep conviction that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy on a massive scale. I think the ordinary citizens of the former Soviet Union and the citizens in the post-Soviet space, the CIS countries, have gained nothing from it. On the contrary, people have been faced with a host of problems." He went on to say, "Incidentally, at that period, too, opinions varied, including among the leaders of the Union republics. For example, Nursultan Nazarbayev was categorically opposed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and he said so openly proposing various formulas for preserving the state within the common borders. But, I repeat, all that is in the past. Today we should look at the situation in which we live. One cannot keep looking back and fretting about it: we should look forward".​ In December 2007, he said in the interview to the Time magazine: "Russia is an ancient country with historical, profound traditions and a very powerful moral foundation. And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people".​

Communist protesters with the sign: "The order of dismissal of Vladimir Putin for the betrayal of the national interests", Moscow, 1 May 2012

In August 2008, The Economist claimed: "Russia today is ruled by the KGB elite, has a Soviet anthem, servile media, corrupt courts and a rubber-stamping parliament. A new history textbook proclaims that the Soviet Union, although not a democracy, was 'an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society'".​

Putin has said that Joseph Stalin's legacy cannot be judged in black and white in 2009.​ Although Putin's policies have been likened to the Soviet era, he has received a lukewarm response by Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).​​​ On the other hand, Roger Boyes considers him more of a latter-day Brezhnev than a clone of Stalin.​

In November, 2008, International Herald Tribune stated:

The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governance of the country. In seeking to restore Russia's standing, Putin and other officials have stoked a nationalism that glorifies Soviet triumphs while playing down or even whitewashing the system's horrors. As a result, throughout Russia, many archives detailing killings, persecution and other such acts committed by the Soviet authorities have become increasingly off-limits. The role of the security services seems especially delicate, perhaps because Putin is a former KGB agent who headed the agency's successor, the FSB, in the late 1990s.​

In August 2014, he rejected Vladimir Zhirinovsky's proposal to return the Imperial flag and anthem.​

State-sponsored global PR effort

Shortly after the Beslan terror act in September 2004, Putin enhanced a Kremlin-sponsored program aimed at "improving Russia's image" abroad.​ According to an unnamed former Duma deputy, there existed a classified article in the RF federal budget that provided for financing measures to this purpose.​

One of the major projects of the program was the creation in 2005 of Russia Today—a rolling English-language TV news channel providing 24-hour news coverage, modeled on CNN. Towards its start-up budget, $30 million of public funds were allocated.​​ A CBS News story on the launch of Russia Today quoted Boris Kagarlitsky as saying it was "very much a continuation of the old Soviet propaganda services".​ In 2007, Russia Today employed nearly 100 English-speaking special correspondents worldwide.​

Russia's deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin said in August 2008 in the context of the Russia-Georgia conflict: "Western media is a well-organized machine, which is showing only those pictures that fit in well with their thoughts. We find it very difficult to squeeze our opinion into the pages of their newspapers".​ Similar views were expressed by some Western commentators.​​

William Dunbar, who was reporting then for Russia Today from Georgia, said he had not been on air since he mentioned Russian bombing of targets inside Georgia on 9 August 2008 and had to resign over what he claimed was biased coverage by the outlet.​​

The PR efforts notwithstanding, according to an opinion poll released in February 2009 by the BBC World Service, Russia's image around the world had taken a dramatic dive in 2008: forty-two percent of respondents said they had a "mainly negative" view of Russia, according to the poll, which surveyed more than 13,000 people in 21 countries in December and January.​

In June 2007, Vedomosti reported that the Kremlin had been intensifying its official lobbying activities in the United States since 2003, among other things hiring such companies as Hannaford Enterprises and Ketchum.​

Paramount leadership or Tandemocracy?

The 2008 power-switching operation between Putin and Medvedev was widely seen as a pro forma action after the constitution didn't allow Putin to be reelected for a third term in the 2008 presidential election. However, both scholars and the Russian population disagree on whether the course of the operation highlighted the paramount leadership of Putin with Medvedev being just a mascot or if it represented what was called a tandemocracy between the two. ^{[cita requerida]}

Criticism

Personality cult

Satirical cartoon about Putin's influence on the media

In June 2001, the British-funded BBC noted that a year after Putin took office, the Russian media had been reflecting on what some saw as a growing personality cult around him: Russia's TV-6 television had shown a vast choice of portraits of Putin on sale at a shopping mall in an underground passage near Moscow's Park of Culture.​

In October 2007, some scenes at the United Russia congress caused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who was allied to Russia within the "Union State", to recall the Soviet times, complete with the official adoration towards the Communist Party leader and talking to Russia's regional press representatives he said that in Russia Putin's personality cult was being created.​

In 2008, the Paris-based AFP reported that ahead of the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, in which despite being required by the constitution to leave office Putin was widely expected to find some way to retain power as his personality cult was gathering pace.​

After Medvedev was elected President in March 2008, U.S. Government-funded Radio Liberty reported that during his eight-year presidency Putin had managed to build a personality cult around himself similar to those created by Soviet leaders. Although there had not been giant statues of Putin put up across the country (like those of Stalin before), he had the honor of being the only Russian leader to have had a pop song written about him: "I want a man like Putin", which hit the charts in 2002.​

FSB influence

Putin and Nikolai Patrushev at a meeting of the board of the Federal Security Service

According to some scholars,​​ Russia under Putin has been transformed into an "FSB state".

Shortly after becoming Russian Prime Minister, Putin was reported to have joked to a group of his KGB associates: "A group of FSB colleagues dispatched to work undercover in the government has successfully completed its first mission".​​

The former Securitate Lieutenant General and defector Ion Mihai Pacepa said in his interview for conservative FrontPage Magazine in 2006 that "former KGB officers are running" Russia and that FSB, which he called "the KGB successor" had the right to monitor the population electronically, control political process, search private property, cooperate with employees of the federal government, create front enterprises, investigate cases and run its own prisons.​​

Various 2006 estimates showed that Russia had above 200,000 members of the FSB, or one FSB employee for every 700 citizens of Russia (the exact number of the overall FSB staff is classified).​ The Russian Armed Forces General Staff as well as its subordinate structures, such as the Russian Strategic Missile Troops headquarters, are not submitted to the Federal Security Service,​ but the FSB might be interested in monitoring such structures as they intrinsically involve state secrets and various degrees of admittance to them.​ The Law on Federal Security Service​ which defines its functions and establishes its structure does not involve such tasks as managing strategic branches of national industry, controlling political groups, or infiltrating the federal government.​

The political scientist Julie Anderson in 2006 wrote: "Under Russian Federation President and former career foreign intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, an 'FSB State' composed of chekists has been established and is consolidating its hold on the country. Its closest partners are organized criminals. In a world marked by a globalized economy and information infrastructure, and with transnational terrorism groups utilizing all available means to achieve their goals and further their interests, Russian intelligence collaboration with these elements is potentially disastrous".​

The Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky compared the takeover of the Russian State by the siloviki to an imaginary scenario of the Gestapo coming to power in Germany after World War II. He pointed out a fundamental difference between the secret police and ordinary political parties, even totalitarian ones, such as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, i.e. Russia's secret police organizations are wont to employ the so-called active measures and extrajudicial killings, hence they killed Alexander Litvinenko and directed Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts in Russia to frighten the civilian population and achieve their political objectives, according to Felstinsky.​

In April 2006, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Middle East specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), presented a list of those who had "mysteriously" died during Putin's presidency and wrote: "Vladimir Putin's Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe: a state defined and dominated by former and active-duty security and intelligence officers. Not even fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union – all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia – were as top-heavy with intelligence talent. [...] There is no historical precedent for a society so dominated by former and active-duty internal-security and intelligence officials – men who rose up in a professional culture in which murder could be an acceptable, even obligatory, business practice. [...] Those who operated within the Soviet sphere were the most malevolent in their practices. These men mentored and shaped Putin and his closest friends and allies. It is therefore unsurprising that Putin's Russia has become an assassination-happy state where detention, interrogation, and torture – all tried and true methods of the Soviet KGB – are used to silence the voices of untoward journalists and businessmen who annoy or threaten Putin's FSB state".​

One of the leading members of Putin's ruling elite, Nikolai Patrushev, Director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (August 1999 – May 2008) and subsequently Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, was known for his propagation of the idea of "chekists" as "neo-aristocrats" (en ruso: неодворяне).​​​

A report by Andrew C. Kuchins in November 2007 said: "The predominance of the intelligence services and mentality is a core feature of Putin’s Russia that marks a major and critical discontinuity from not only the 1990s but all of Soviet and Russian history. During the Soviet period, the Communist Party provided the glue holding the system together. During the 1990s, there was no central organizing institution or ideology. Now, with Putin, it is “former” KGB professionals who dominate the Russian ruling elite. This is a special kind of brotherhood, a mafia-like culture in which only a few can be trusted. The working culture is secretive and nontransparent".​

Cronyism and corruption

Véase también: Russian oligarch

In 2000, Russia's political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky called Putinism "the highest and culminating stage of bandit capitalism in Russia".​ He said that "Russia is not corrupt. Corruption is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people. They have privatized the country’s wealth and taken control of its financial flows".​ According to scholar Karen Dawisha, 110 of Putin's cronies control 35% of Russia's wealth.​

In concluding her book A Russian Diary (2007), the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya said: "Our state authorities today are only interested in making money. That is literally all they are interested in".​

Such views were shared by politologist Julie Anderson who said the same person can be a Russian intelligence officer, an organized criminal and a businessman,​ who quoted the former CIA Director James Woolsey as saying: "I have been particularly concerned for some years, beginning during my tenure, with the interpenetration of Russian organized crime, Russian intelligence and law enforcement, and Russian business. I have often illustrated this point with the following hypothetical: If you should chance to strike up a conversation with an articulate, English-speaking Russian in, say, the restaurant of one of the luxury hotels along Lake Geneva, and he is wearing a $3,000 suit and a pair of Gucci loafers, and he tells you that he is an executive of a Russian trading company and wants to talk to you about a joint venture, then there are four possibilities. He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover. He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement".​

According to the political scientist Dmitri Glinsky, "[t]he idea of Russia, Inc.—or better, Russia, Ltd.—derives from the Russian brand of libertarian anarchism viewing the state as just another private armed gang claiming special rights on the basis of its unusual power", "this is a state conceived as a stationary bandit imposing stability by eliminating the roving bandits of the previous era".​

In April 2006, Putin himself expressed extreme irritation about the de facto privatization of the customs sphere, where smart officials and entrepreneurs "merged in ecstasy".​

According to the estimates published in "Putin and Gazprom" by Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, Putin and his friends pilfered assets of $80 billion from Gazprom during his second term as president.​​

On February 29, 2009, the Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev claimed that Prime Minister Putin's strategy for economic recovery was based on cronyism and was fueling corruption and also said: "We have two Putins. There are lots of words, but the system doesn't work".​

Ideology

Political scientist Irina Pavlova said that chekists were not merely a corporation of people united to expropriate financial assets as they had long-standing political objectives of transforming Moscow to the Third Rome and an ideology of "containing" the United States.​ Columnist George Will emphasized in 2003 the nationalistic nature of Putinism: "Putinism is becoming a toxic brew of nationalism directed against neighboring nations, and populist envy, backed by assaults of state power, directed against private wealth. Putinism is a form of national socialism without the demonic element of its pioneer".​ According to Illarionov, the ideology of chekists is nashism (“ours-ism”), the selective application of rights".​

According to Dmitri Trenin (2004), Head of the Moscow Carnegie Center, the then Russia was one of the least ideological countries around the world: "Ideas hardly matter, whereas interests reign supreme. It is not surprising then that the worldview of Russian elites is focused on financial interests. Their practical deeds in fact declare In capital we trust". Trenin described Russia's elite involved in the process of policy-making as people who largely owned the country. Most of them were not public politicians, but the majority were bureaucratic capitalists. According to Trenin, "having survived in a ruthless domestic business and political environment, Russian leaders are well adjusted to rough competition and will take that mindset to the world stage". However, Trenin called Russian-Western relations, from Moscow's perspective, "competitive, but not antagonistic". He said that "Russia does not crave world domination, and its leaders do not dream of restoring the Soviet Union. They plan to rebuild Russia as a great power with a global reach, organized as a supercorporation".​

According to Trenin, Russians "no longer recognize U.S. or European moral authority"—i.e. values gap. He said that "from the Russian perspective, there is no absolute freedom anywhere in the world, no perfect democracy, and no government that does not lie to its people. In essence, all are equal by virtue of sharing the same imperfections. Some are more powerful than others, however, and that is what really counts".​

The Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky believed (October 2007) that "Putin builds the world's Russia" as opposed to a nation state such as Alexander Lukashenko's Belarus. According to Pavlovsky, Russia's power had to be a model one, i.e. the power that would offer itself to others as a kind of a model to emulate (the United States being one such example).​

Véase también: Anti-American sentiment in Russia

Relation to Stalinism

Moscow rally in Sakharov Avenue, the top text says "You are on the right way, comrades!"​ while the bottom text marks "Colonel Putin and Colonel Gaddafi", 24 December 2011

In May 2000, The Guardian wrote: "When a band of former Soviet dissidents declared in February that Putinism was nothing short of modernised Stalinism, they were widely dismissed as hysterical prophets of doom. 'Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarised, the military budget is increasing,' they warned, before calling on the West to 're-examine its attitude towards the Kremlin leadership, to cease indulging it in its barbaric actions, its dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights.' In the light of Putin's actions during his first days in power, their warnings have gained an uneasy new resonance".​

In February 2007, Arnold Beichman, a conservative research fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote in the Washington Times that "Putinism in the 21st century has become as significant a watchword as Stalinism was in the 20th".​

Lionel Beehner, formerly a senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations, also in 2007 maintained that on Putin's watch nostalgia for Stalin had grown, even among young Russians; and Russians' neo-Stalinism manifesting itself in several ways.​

In February 2007, responding to a listener's assertion that "Putin had steered the country to Stalinism" and "all entrepreneurs" were being jailed in Russia, the Russian opposition radio host Yevgeniya Albats said: "Come on, this is not true; there is no Stalinism, no concentration camps—thankfully". She went on to say that if citizens of the country would not be critical of what was occurring around them, referring to the "orchestrated, or genuine" calls for the "tsar to stay on", that "could blaze the trail for very ugly things and a very tough regime in our country".​

Putin has said that Stalin's legacy cannot be judged in black and white in 2009.​ Although Putin's policies have been likened to the Soviet era, he has received a lukewarm response by Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Russian Communist Party (KPRF).​​​ Roger Boyes considers Putin more of a latter-day Leonid Brezhnev than a clone of Stalin.​

See also

• Cult of personality
• Eurasianism
• Freedom of assembly in Russia
• Freedom of the press in Russia
• Mafia state
• Neo-Sovietism
• Political career of Vladimir Putin
• Recovery and growth of the Russian economy (1998–2008)
• Russian oligarchs
• Russian opposition
• Sovereign democracy
• United Russia
• Vladimir Putin legislation and program
• Vladimir Putin's First Cabinet
• Vladimir Putin's Second Cabinet
• Yeltsinism

External links

• Putinism: the ideology – 1:20 lecture by professor Anne Applebaum spoken in London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), recorded on Monday 28 January 2013.
• Putinism and Russian Protest – 2:00 panel lecture/discussion in University of California Television, published on Oct 29, 2012.
• Can Putin Contain Post-Putinism? – 1:20 lecture at ICDS (International Centre for Defence Studies), published on Nov 28, 2012.
• The “Putinist Approach” and “Half hearted” European Union—Ukraine is a story of a “Love Triangle” of a beautiful lady being loved by two men – December 4, 2013, by Agha Iqrar Haroon.