Why Putin Wins

By Sergei Kovalev

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Immediately following the tragedy of the apartment house bombings of 1999, suspicions were publicly voiced that the terrorist acts in Moscow and Volgodonsk were instigated by the Russian special forces in order to create a casus belli for the renewal of the war on Chechnya, giving Putin the opportunity to demonstrate his decisiveness. This is not the place to discuss whether or not these suspicions were well-founded. What is important is that the authorities did absolutely nothing to refute them. Furthermore, the electorate reacted with complete and utter indifference. I have met people who were convinced that the accusations were true, and yet they voted for Putin with equal conviction. Their logic is simple: genuine rulers wield the kind of power that can do anything, including commit crimes. The new boss of the country had proved that he was the real thing.

Growing suspicions that the special forces have been involved in a series of political murders, including the deaths of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the former FSB émigré Alexander Litvinenko, now seem analogous to the accusations of 1998. The authorities make no attempt to refute such claims in the only way that would be convincing—with a transparent and scrupulous investigation. The murder in Qatar of the Chechen separatist leader Zelinkhan Yandarbiev by agents of the Russian special forces has now been established by the Qatar courts. But have these facts or the demonstrations of the President’s “decisiveness” in dealing ruthlessly with two mass terrorist acts—the seizing of the theater in Moscow in 2002 and of the school in Beslan in 2004—caused any damage to the government’s image? Even though hundreds of innocents were killed? I doubt it; more likely the reverse.

By 2004 the concepts of “absolute power” and the “special forces” had, in effect, merged with the monarchy’s two-headed eagle, as had the Soviet anthem (enriched with the words “Motherland” and “God”). Putin’s team quickly accomplished their most important task—the capture of television—and once it had been completed, the country was subjected to pervasive, incessant propaganda that was far more skillful, effective, and all-encompassing than anything the Soviets ever conceived. The mass media have relentlessly hammered home images of Putin as a charismatic ruler leading a national renaissance, while portraying Putinism as the guarantor of stability and order. They have drummed the values of the imperial state into the social mind. They have consistently caricatured and trivialized any alternative concepts of Russia’s development, particularly those based on values of freedom and genuine, rather than “managed,” democracy. In short, they have transformed all the diverse hypotheses about Putin’s popularity from partial explanations into a single, dominant, and overwhelming reality.

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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20836