Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Putin, the last Tsar: The Orthodox Church’s approval

Throne and altar: Patriarch Kirill and President PutinAccording to the opposition Putin is a despot, but Patriarch Kirill sees him as a gift from heaven. 

While the country’s leader harshly clamps down on public demonstrations, the Russian Orthodox Church turns a blind eye, it goes even further by blessing him as the saviour of the mother nation. 

An indissoluble bond between altar and throne becomes an obstacle on the path towards ecumenism. 

This authoritarian tendency raises concerns for the Church in Rome and further alienates the “estranged brothers” (Catholics and Orthodox). 

AsiaNews comments: “Putin back in the Kremlin, like the tsar his challenge is to embrace reforms. Not only the pomp and ceremony of the inauguration but also the violent crackdown against protests in Moscow have led many to compare Putin III to Russia's last tsar. If power becomes entrenched, the opposition will radicalise, something Russia has already seen in the past, with revolution lurking around the corner.”
 
In a ceremony open only to “high officials”, far from the people, behind the gilded walls of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin is president again for the third time in 12 years. 

“Indeed, the swearing in ceremony was worthy of Imperial Russia, and the president's attitudes towards the challenges that now await him bring back memories of the last tsar, Nicholas II,” observed the online news agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, adding: “Still steeped in a world view centred on repression and unable to adapt to a country no longer blinded by the aura of sacredness that surrounded his first two mandates (200-2004 and 2004-2008), Vladimir Vladimirovich could go the way of the Romanovs . . . violently.”
 
AsiaNews highlighted how social peace now rests on a precarious balance especially linked to the development of the economic crisis. 

Putin will have to deal with a country that is no longer willing to abide by the old rule: “stability and growth, in exchange for silence and loyalty to Moscow.” 

A majority of voters (63 per cent) chose him because there were no credible alternatives.
 
On a macroeconomic level, the Russian Federation has withstood recent crises and the country's GDP grew by 4.2 per cent in 2011. 

However, with government spending at 37 per cent of GDP in 2011, two thirds of which came from oil and gas exports, the situation is indeed dangerous, at a time when markets in Europe are weak and oil prices, uncertain. 

In order to fulfil the populist promises he made during the campaign (more money for families, military, researchers and pensioners), Putin must hope for oil to average between US$ 140 and 150.
 
In his last address as prime minister, he said that security and population growth are his two main objectives for the future of Russia. The country, he stressed, must develop its far Eastern region, diversify its economy and become the leading power in the Eurasian region. 

These are goals of a real tsar, if the people would let him. 

 For now, the opposition is divided and has no one real leader. 

According to experts, Putin should use the situation and meet the challenges by adopting the reforms Russia needs to become a modern nation (fighting corruption, independent judiciary, better climate for investments, infrastructures).
 
From the first signals in his new mandate, it appears however that Vladimir Vladimirovich is deeply set in the old way of exercising power, just like the last emperor of Russia. 

Many commentators are warning the president that taunting demonstrators, who have been in the streets demanding radical reforms to the political system, and using force against protesters, as he did in the first three days of his mandate when about a thousand people were arrested in Moscow alone, could lead to the radicalisation of the opposition until the point of no return.  

Foreign Policy magazine recently pointed out that the Bolshevik movement became radicalised by years of repression under Nicholas II. 

In such situations, and Russian history bears this out (not only in 1917 but also in 1991), there is a risk that the country's leaders might view overtures to grassroots movements as a sign of weakness, whilst the opposition might move from demanding reforms to a total overhaul of the system. 

If this were to happen, paralysis would eventually be followed by a system-busting revolution, as it has happened in the past.
 
“In fact, extremism is taking hold inside the anti-Putin camp as events on the 6 May in Bolotnaya Square show. Increasingly, the grassroots want real action. The time for poking fun and heaping scorn on leaders at rallies pre-arranged with the authorities is over.” 

AsiaNews explains: “For protest leaders themselves, Putin's new mandate is a throwback to the reign of the last tsar. On Twitter, environmentalist leader Yevgenia Chirikova compares the clashes in Bolotnaya Square to the tragedy of Khodynka Field in 1896, which cast a curse on Nicholas II's coronation.

The collapse of a platform set up for the celebrations of the new emperor, in a field just outside Moscow, sparked panic, leaving thousands dead or injured.”
 
The massacre in Khodynka was seen as an omen announcing the future tragedies that marked Nicholas' reign until the October Revolution and the killing of the entire imperial family in 1918.

Although Putin is back in command in the Kremlin, his charisma has lost its lustre. 

According to political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky, Russians cannot forgive him the role-play with Dmitri Medvedev (which had been planned for years, as he himself admits today) and for the large-scale poll rigging in last December's parliamentary elections that led to Russia's 'snow revolution'.

This time, if he wants stability as he claimed he did during his election campaign, he must act more like a president and less like a tsar. Indeed, trouble is brewing outside Moscow and St Petersburg. 

Even regions far from the capital are becoming hotbeds of social and political activism, and certainly not to the benefit of the ruling United Russia party, as a new report by a Kremlin strategic think-tank will show.