Window on Eurasia

Moscow’s ‘Sovereign Democracy’ Becoming Ever Less So, Analyst Says

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 19, 2006 – The central element of the Kremlin’s current ideological campaign –its insistence that Russia is “a sovereign democracy” -- is intended to distract attention both domestically and internationally from “the gradual liquidation” of the country’s sovereignty and democracy, according to a controversial Moscow analyst.

If Russia’s retreat from democracy is widely recognized, Maksim Momot
writes in an essay posted online yesterday, the decay and even
“liquidation” of its sovereignty have not yet received the
attention they deserve, although the signs of them are “ever more obvious”
[http://www.prognosis.ru/news/nacional/2006/7/18/momot.html].

Momot, whose essays on the breakdown of the Russian state and the
possible disintegration of the Russian Federation have been much
criticized, argues in his latest article that “Russian sovereignty is
in the process of liquidation in the North Caucasus republics and what
is less widely noted in the Middle Volga ones as well.”

Increasingly, he suggests, the republics in the North Caucasus resemble
failed states like those elsewhere in which “external administration
is tyupically applied.” This “external rule” is just now being
supplied by Moscow, but “the less the Russian government controls
these states, the greater chances for them to change their
sovereign.”

That will become even more likely if “in two or three years,”
Georgia becomes a member of NATO, and Tbilisi and its Western allies,
having put an end to “Russian pretensions” in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, begin to look northward to the unstable portions of the
Russian North Caucasus.

In that event, the state “which controls the external border of the
North Caucasus republics will be in a position to influence the
processes of an enormous country now broadening or reducing assistance
to the separatists.” And in this way, “the possible liquidation of
the Russian Federation” as a whole could begin there.

Moscow would be in a better position to resist or even reverse this
trend if it were not for two other factors -- the degradation of the
Russian elite and the degradation of the Russian economy -- Momot
argues. But at present, Moscow’s policies are exacerbating rather
than correcting these two problems.

When a country’s elite degrades, when its members care more about
their personal well-being than anything else, that country almost
invariably is in trouble, Momot says, and he points to the example of
France in the years before 1789 as a distant mirror of Russia’s
current situation.

Despite the efforts of foreign leaders like Russia’s Catherine the
Great, French aristocrats were more interested in living well even if
that mean living abroad than in fighting for the future of their
country, and they were unwilling to engage in the political struggles
necessary for the survival of their country.

Unfortunately, Momot continues, something similar is true in today’s
Russia. And adding to that problem is the fact that Russia’s economy
is rapidly degrading as well, however much its earnings from the export
of oil and gas at a time of high world prices may be creating an
opposite impression.

On the one hand, Russia’s continuing reliance on the export of raw
materials rather than the production of goods and especially services
means that the country is lagging behind not only the industrialized
West but also behind many countries, like India, which used to be
counted as part of the “developing world.”

And on the other hand, the failure of the Russian political system to
develop the kind of legal guarantees necessary for attracting
investment and planning for the future means that “Russian business does not
have the opportunities to achieve” even what it could achieve.

None of this is irreversible, Momot concludes. The Russian authorities
could turn things around in each case, but he suggests that doing so is
becoming ever more difficult and consequently ever less certain. And he
argues that the Russian political elite should focus on the following
rather than on the ideological slogans of the Kremlin.

Last year, the controversial analyst notes, more than a third of those
who phoned in to an Ekho Moskvy radio show said they were prepared to
have the United States assume control over the nuclear arsenal of the
Russian Federation. Admittedly, these people were the most angry of the
most “democratic” and “opposition” groups.

But the Moscow analyst continues with a question: what does it say
about a country when a significant portion of whose active population is
prepared to cede national control “over that element of the security
of the Russian Federation which to a remarkable degree protects its
sovereignty?”

On the basis of this, he suggests that “the well-known anecdote about
the proposal of [Russian] deputies to declare war on America and then
quickly surrender so that they will occupy and feed us is quietly
taking place” – an unfortunate joke that puts to lie all bombast about
Russia’s supposed “sovereign democracy.”

Latest Window on Eurasia stories | Religion Archive | Islam in Russia and CIS Archive | Orthodox Church in Russia and CIS Archive | All Window on Eurasia Stories Archive |