December 2, 2007
Russian voters say da to Czar Putin
Vladimir Putin is widely criticized in the West for his strong-arm tactics and occasionally brutal suppression of opposition journalists. But Russian voters don’t seem to mind. CNN reports that Putin’s political party is anticipating a landslide, and has widespread popular support:
Under Putin, once-impoverished Russia has become rich with oil revenue and powerful on the world stage while the war against separatists in Chechnya has faded from view. All of this has made him popular with many Russians.
"We believe in Putin, and we love Putin dearly," Tamara Posekhova, a mass-goer at the Moscow cathedral told The Associated Press. "We want him to go on working for the country."
Key points:
Russia has no real experience with liberal democracy. Russia’s rulers have always been autocrats. This was true under the czars, and it was true under the communists.
Russians will be unlikely to turn Putin’s cronies out of office as long as they continue to deliver economic growth. Right now Russia is heavily dependent on oil exports---so the Russian economy may tank again if oil takes another nosedive. (History indicates that this is likely: Oil prices plummetted at various points in the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.) For now the Russian electorate seems content to live with Putin as a quasi-czar, ruling over an crony capitalist economy that is largely dominited by organized crime.
The average voter’s lack of concern with what we in the West would recognize as “democracy” provides a cautionary lesson. A liberal democracy relies on underlying cultural and philosophical values, not the mere mechanics of elections and political campaigns. (Let us not forget that the Islamic Republic of Iran also technically qualifies as a democracy.) Culturally, Russia is much closer to the United States than Iraq. If Russians have a hard time grasping the basics of democracy, how much longer will the Iraqis need?
