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Michael Birnbaum, How to Understand Putin’s Jaw-droppingly High Approval Ratings
The Washington Post, Mar. 6, 2016.
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Masha Lipman, ‘‘Putin’s Sovereign Democracy ’’
The Washington Post, July 15, 2006. Shaun Walker, Kremlin Puppet Master’s Leaked Emails Are Price of Return to Political
Frontline,’’
The Guardian, Oct. 26, 2016. David Clark, Putin Is Exporting Sovereign
Democracy To New EM Allies The Financial Times, Dec. 20, 2016.
Volodin’s assertion—just months after Russia’s invasion of Crimea that brought on international sanctions—linked the fate of the Russian people with Putin’s own. For Putin and his advisors, the move to co-opt the identity of an entire nation was no doubt fueled by his soaring popularity among Russians—from a slumping 61 percent prior to the Sochi Winter Olympics in February 2014 to above
80 percent in the months after.
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Yet Volodin’s statement also marked a break from the Kremlin’s attempts to maintain a semblance of democratic institutions and processes—it revealed that these institutions and processes, which became increasingly subordinated to the needs and interests of Putin’s ruling clique, now existed only to prop it up.
Volodin’s predecessor as first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav
Surkov, had been credited with developing a policy of sovereign democracy an oxymoronic term
explained by writer Masha Lipman as a Kremlin coinage that conveys two messages first, that Russia’s regime is democratic and, second, that this claim must be accepted, period. Any attempt at verification will be regarded as unfriendly and as meddling in Russia’s domestic af- fairs.’’
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As described in a 2016 profile, Surkov maneuvered through a complex Russian political system to implement this vision, cultivating fake opposition parties and funding pro-Kremlin youth groups. He personally curated what was allowed onto Russia s television screens, and was seen as the architect of ‘post-truth politics where facts are relative, aversion of which some have suggested has now taken hold in the west.’’
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The Kremlin’s concept of a sovereign democracy was intended to serve not just as a mechanism for domestic governance in Russia, but also as a model to other countries. The more that Russia’s sovereign democratic model could appeal to and be replicated elsewhere as a style of government that corresponds with the needs and interests of the power elites the more Russia would be able to extend its diplomatic reach and provide a counterpoint to the democratic principles that the United States has long cham- pioned.
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The trajectory of Russia’s sovereign democracy experiment has unfolded along a spectrum ranging from deft manipulation to outright
oppression of the media, civil society, elections, political parties, and cultural activities. All the while, the Kremlin’s sustained and global effort to undermine human rights and the governments, alliances, and multilateral institutions that champion them has sought to reduce outside scrutiny of the antidemocratic abuses that are core to its sovereign democratic system. And similar to
Putin’s capitalizing on the 1999 apartment bombings to galvanize his own standing (see Chapter 1
and Appendix A, he has used other hardships befalling the Russian people as justification for tightening his grip on power. Such punctuating moments include the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000, which prefaced a crackdown
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17 The Russian navy submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000 after multiple explosions onboard, resulting in the deaths of 118 Russian seamen. In the aftermath of the disaster, reports revealed that 23 crewmen had survived the initial explosion, but likely died several hours later in an escape compartment that filled with water, raising questions of whether the individuals could have been rescued in the interim. Government officials first claimed that the sinking was caused by a collision with a Western submarine, disputing assertions that faulty onboard
equipment led to the disaster, and initially rejected foreign offers of assistance with the rescue effort.
See ‘‘What Really Happened to Russia’s Unsinkable Sub
The Guardian, Aug. 4, 2001. Ina group of Chechen rebels besieged a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, taking more than 1,000 individuals hostage, many of whom were children. Russian security services stormed the facility in an operation to end the standoff, during which approximately
330 individuals were killed. The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in a complaint case brought by 409 Russian nationals that their
government failed to prevent, and then overreacted in responding to, the attack, leading to inordinate loss of life.
See European Court of Human Rights, Serious Failings in the Response of the Russian Authorities to the Beslan Attack Apr. 13, 2017.
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Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, Is Chechnya Taking Over Russia
The New York Times, Aug.
17, 2017. Oliver Bullough, ‘‘Putin’s Closest Ally—And
His Biggest Liability The Guardian, Sept. 23,
2015. In December 2017, Kadyrov was sanctioned by the US. government for gross violations of human rights under the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. US. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Publication of Magnitsky Act Sanctions Regulations Magnitsky Act-Related Designations Dec. 20, 2017. Anna Arutunyan, Why Putin Won’t Get Tough on Kadyrov,’’
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