Moscow Carnegie Center Director Andrew Kuchins at the presentation of the report "Russian-American Relations: How to Achieve Success" in Moscow in January 2005
Photo:
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
The Wizard of the Besieged Fortress
// Why They Led the Valdai Club to Vladimir Putin
There's no point in letting the Russian population know that Russia's foreign partners are constantly cheating it. America's policies with regard to Russia are strengthening the position of Kremlin strongmen in their battle with liberals. And this is going on against the backdrop of the increasingly fierce struggle for the right to become Vladimir Putin's successor in 2008. Senior Kremlin officials said all of this and more right to the faces of the Valdai Club of foreign political scholars and journalists during their recent trip to Russia. In this article, Director and Senior Partner of the Russian and Eurasian programs of the Carnegie Foundation Andrew Kuchins writes about his impressions from the trip and about the group's meeting with Vladimir Putin.
My head is spinning after a week spent in Russia as a guest of the Valdai Club – one of the most effective of the Kremlin's P.R. projects. Although the club no longer means as much, since the notions of "positive image" and "Russia" have become almost oxymorons in the West.
In case someone from our motley team of 40 foreign scholars and journalists doubted the significance of Russia, we were driven to the city of Khanty-Mansiisk in Western Siberia. It's funny, but with its population of less than half a million, the region of Khanty-Mansiisk produces more oil than the United States. Can you imagine? In 2005, the region's GDP grew by 105% in the wake of rising oil prices.
Khanty-Mansiisk is the home region of "Yuganskneftegaz," formerly the pearl in the empire of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and now part of the Kremlin's oil heavyweight, Rosneft. Yuganskneftegaz extracts around one million barrels a day, and we were shown its enormous Priobskoye oil field. It isn't worth being surprised by the fact that Rosneft is more sure of its ownership rights than Mr. Khodorkovsky (who is currently in Eastern Siberia, in case you've forgotten) and that the company, having tripled its investment in Yuganskneftegaz, plans to achieve a 50% increase in extraction in the course of the next few years.
Upon our return to Moscow, the Kremlin politicos made clear exactly what they wanted to drive home to their slightly na?ve guests. "A senior Kremlin official" informed us that the succession battle is heating up between the forces of "good" (liberals, like he himself) and "evil" (the strongmen – the guys with cannons), but stupid American policies are strengthening those on the dark side. And America's refusal to reach an agreement concerning the accession of Russia to the WTO this summer was a huge mistake, one that is undermining the position of the liberals. With striking conviction and emotion, he said, "for young liberals like me, Putin is our hope." And, unlike President Bush, who will also be departing his post in 2008, Mr. Putin is taking upon himself the responsibility of "choosing a successor." I was duly impressed by this refreshing lack of pretense on the subject of democratic processes and other well-intentioned foolishness.
It is difficult to tell whether this gentleman, who was so vividly and clearly expressing his thoughts, was just an actor or whether he actually believed in what he was saying. Probably both. Trying to understand what is actually going on in the Kremlin is like peeling an onion. Layer after layer, and the only thing that is true without a doubt is that the process will lead to tears. The politics of the Kremlin are an opaque, merciless struggle, where the stakes are high both for the participants and for those outside the Kremlin walls.
The other important impression made by our Kremlin interlocutor concerned the widespread "besieged fortress" mentality among those inside the walls. There's no point in confiding this to the Russian population, but Russia is constantly being misled and cheated by its foreign partners ("cheating" is a verb that our Kremlin conversationalist liked to use often). I came out of it with the impression that the boss of the Kremlin is like the Wizard of Oz, whom everyone reveres and fears but who is actually despairingly improvising, pulling on different levers with the blind hope that his efforts will have an effect.
But we met with the Wizard himself, who hosted us at his government dacha outside Moscow. During the five-course feast, which lasted for three hours, Mr. Putin keenly and effortlessly answered questions from his guests. He was even bored by the fact that our group lobbed him such easy questions. Mr. Putin came prepared for a proper fight, not a pillow fight. He is apparently a very cold-blooded man. It was fairly warm in the dining room, but there was not the tiniest line of sweat to be seen on him, even as we all wiped our damp foreheads and some of us, despite protocol, took off our suit jackets.
Mr. Putin's message had two parts. The first was not new. In questions of democracy in Russia, it is necessary to be very cautious. The Russian population is very anti-American, as opposed to Mr. Putin's own pragmatic approach to Washington. And do not forget that democracy has allowed into power such anti-American forces as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.
The second part of the message was that Russia has not only regained levers of influence but also new possibilities in case we do not take Russian interests into account. Out of all the guests, Mr. Putin paid the most attention to the Chinese representative, a Shanghai professor who politely invited the Russian president to visit his native city and who was described in return by Mr. Putin as a miracle of evolution. He also characterized Russian-Chinese relations in an extremely positive key. With regard to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the relatively recent union of Russia, China, and the Central Asian countries that many alarmists consider anti-NATO, Mr. Putin emphasized (he twice used the phrase "honest to goodness") that the rapid evolution of this alliance had really caught him by surprise but that "it is responding to the demands of the time after the collapse of the bipolar world." In Mr. Putin's opinion, a natural gravitational force attracts Russia and China. And the Americans and Europeans had better abandon their ideas of Russia's relative humiliation when the Chinese come knocking at our door, bearing presents. Russian political machinations? We'll see.
Andrew Kuchins
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 20, 2006
|
|
|
