Can Navalny Take Down Putin?
Feb 12, 2021NINA L. KHRUSHCHEVA
Unlike the protests that roiled Russia in 2011-12 in response to Vladimir
Putin’s third presidency, today’s protest movement has a charismatic and
sympathetic leader. But Putin has spent the last decade consolidating a police
state, and he is prepared to use every available tool to retain power.
MOSCOW – There are arguably two moments in the last century when a wrecking
ball was taken to Russia’s political regime. In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution
toppled the country’s teetering monarchy. And, in 1991, an abortive coup by
Marxist-Leninist hardliners against the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev accelerated
the tottering Soviet Union’s collapse. Does the wave of protests that have
swept Russia in recent weeks herald another regime change?
Not likely. To be sure, unlike the protests that roiled Russia in 2011-12
in response to Vladimir Putin’s third inauguration as president, today’s
protest movement has a charismatic and sympathetic leader. Not only has Alexei Navalny been a relentless
anti-corruption advocate for years; when he was arrested last month, he had
just returned from Germany – where he had spent months recovering, after being
poisoned with the Kremlin’s favorite nerve agent, Novichok – to continue confronting Putin’s regime.
But, unlike the twilight of the czars and the Soviets, Putin’s regime is
neither teetering nor tottering. Putin has spent the last decade consolidating
a police state, and he is prepared to use every available tool to retain power.
The leader who invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 to bolster
his foundering approval rating, and who secured a constitutional amendment last
year so that he could remain president for life, is not about to be forced from
power by a movement of weekend protesters.
Yet there is something particularly excessive, even irrational, about
Putin’s suppression of Navalny, his associates, and his supporters. Already,
law-enforcement officers have detained thousands
(including journalists), often using brutal tactics. The government has also
blocked social-media platforms, because they are supposedly fueling unrest.1
Meanwhile, the Kremlin-controlled television networks endlessly broadcast
fawning stories about Putin, and every effort is being made to discredit the
protest movement. By effectively shutting down central Moscow, including public
transport leading to it, the government has severely inconvenienced many
citizens – and made it seem like Navalny’s fault. The government wants “peaceful city-dwellers”
to be able to do their weekend shopping, the narrative goes, but the “law-breaking”
protesters, much like “terrorists,” insist on
disrupting “normal” life.
By the Kremlin’s logic, when foreign leaders, journalists, and diplomats
speak out in support of the opposition, they are merely proving that Navalny is
the factotum of a global plot to destabilize Russia. To drive this point home,
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently expelled three European diplomats
for attending Navalny rallies – while Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high
representative for foreign affairs and security policy, was visiting Moscow, no
less.
The Kremlin is treating Navalny himself accordingly – like an enemy of the
state. Navalny’s farcical court hearings since
his return from Germany recall Stalin’s show trials in the 1930s, with one key
difference: Navalny is not capitulating to the dictator by confessing his “crimes.”
During the proceedings, Navalny rebuked the state’s lawlessness and
denounced his sentence – almost three years in a penal colony –
as illegitimate.
Moreover, Navalny recently released a viral video accusing
Putin of using fraudulently secured funds to build a billion-dollar palace on
the Black Sea. While Russians expect their leaders to be corrupt, Navalny
consistently puts into perspective the scale of the riches that corruption
generates. (He did the same with his 2017 investigation into then-Prime Minister
Dmitri Medvedev.)
Navalny’s attacks thus directly undermine Putin. In this sense, Navalny is
not like one of Stalin’s Trotskyist targets; he is Trotsky himself. And he
needs to be purged.
Putin’s fears are
compounded by the possibility that a slow-motion palace coup may
be unfolding. Since the annexation of Crimea, Western sanctions have been
choking Russia’s economy, fueling resentment among the country’s political
elites, who long for access to their Swiss bank accounts and Italian villas.
They may now seek to oust Putin, much in the same way Nikita Khrushchev was
ousted in 1964. And a humiliated Putin would presumably be much easier to
overthrow than a popular one.
Make your inbox smarter.SELECT NEWSLETTERS
The emergence of mystics and proselytizers with promises of clarity offers
further evidence that Russia’s ossified regime is beginning to destroy itself.
Grigori Rasputin, a self-proclaimed holy man, helped to drive the rotting
imperial monarchy into the ground. In the 1980s, when the Soviet empire was
beyond reform, TV psychiatrists were all the rage.
Today, political shamans of all stripes – from communist to nationalist –
are rising to prominence. They predict Putin’s imminent death, warn of a
Western or Chinese takeover, and speculate that Navalny is a project of
Russia’s security services that got out of hand. Some have even interpreted
Navalny’s name – which translates as “push away” – as a sign that he is the one
who will drive out Putinism.
Nonetheless, as the Kremlin’s response to the protests has shown, Putin and
the state are one and the same. That makes toppling him a particularly
difficult proposition – at least for now.
Writing for PS since 1997
132 Commentaries
Follow
Nina L.
Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School, is the
co-author (with Jeffrey Tayler), most recently, of In Putin’s
Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time
Zones.
No comments:
Post a Comment