Your Outlook

Leadership in Russia

Perhaps more than any country in our study of comparative politics, individual political figures matter in contemporary Russia. Historically, you can use the names of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin to tell the story of modern Russia. There may be more names to take into account than there are for China (Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin, Hu Joint), but the Soviet Union had a 30-year head start on communism. As you look at the current Russian leadership there are a few questions to consider:

Will Putin and his administration be able to continue to strengthen and stabilize the Russian state?

Can Putin build stronger and more broadly accepted institutions if the economy continues to flounder?

The Ethnic Factor

Knowing the importance of personal leadership provides some clues about how the Russian government and politics work today, but there are other forces at work too. Ethnic politics may often be overshadowed by economic crisis, but it seems ready to burst into open conflict in many places. Chechnya is only the most violent example. In addition, Russian nationalism is still a strong force, as is the desire for the custodial aspects of Communism. In the spring of 2005, Putin expressed the power of these sentiments when he lamented the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Economic and Political Fate

The transition away from a command economy is a difficult one, and Russia is suffering during the transition. Exacerbating the problem is the role played by the so-called "Russian mafia." Whether organized criminals are as organized in Russia as in other places, the level of illegal activity appears high, and the links to legitimate business and political activity seem powerful.

From the perspective of the Western industrialized democracies, a viable political party system seems to be a key to the success of democratic regimes. The personalized "floating parties" of Russia don't look like the successful systems of the West. Neither does Putin's personalized vehicle for attracting votes.

Mother Nature

Internal forces are not the only ones at work. If environmentalists are correct, Mother Nature is going to come calling on the Russians soon and demand an accounting. The disaster around the Aral Sea may be the next site of nature's "demand for payment." Russia's neighbors may well be stand-ins for Mother Nature. Norway is already demanding changes in the nickel smelter on its northern border with Russia.

Globalization and Russia - the Demands

There is less foreign investment in Russia as a whole than in most countries. Hence, if global forces aren't making environmental demands, there are economic ones. And those demands will probably require more than cash. They will require more restructuring. Controversy seems to follow most of them, so you will be able to find examples reported in the media regularly. Western cultural influences, from missionaries to New York advertising firms, appear everywhere, especially in European Russia. Foreign political and economic advisors as well as academics from the U.S. work for government bureaus and politicians. The International Monetary Fund demands market reforms and offers loans to prop up the economy and the government. But what demands can be met? What demands will be met? Putin's response has been to try to strengthen the state. Critics have argued that he's weakening democracy in the process. At the same time, rising oil prices during the Iraq war have reduced economic pressures on the Putin government. Some international loans have been paid back ahead of schedule.

It is widely known that popular sentiment was never given much thought in the Soviet Union. The USSR has been described as a state without a demand structure in any part of its culture. If that's true, how will all the nations of Russia respond to the attempts to create a market economy and democratic political system? The Summer Institute of Linguistics lists 99 languages spoken in Russia. See Ethnologue, 15th edition (http://www.ethnologue.com) Can we expect any unity to come from so much diversity?