ABSTRACT
On becoming president in 2000, Vladimir Putin assumed that he could increase order and stability in Russia by concentrating power in his own office. In his first term, the state-building project pursued by the president was in many ways a success, delivering a sustained period of stability previously unseen in post-Soviet Russia. Yet, in Putin’s second term, on several occasions the systemic changes resulting from his earlier state-building achievements looked set to undermine its further success. In terms of policy innovation, Putin’s second presidential term was much less dynamic than his first. Although by 2008 Putin’s control over television was much greater than in 2000-1, it was in these early years that Putin achieved his most impressive and comprehensive reforms. In particular, a new Tax Code introduced a flat rate personal income tax, and a new Land Code sanctified private ownership of land. During this period, Putin also managed to raise Russia’s international standing by adopting a new pragmatic approach to foreign policy. Putin succeeded in his first two years in office because he tried to satisfy a broad range of public opinion and elite interests in order to consolidate his power and achieve his policy aims. The diversity that still existed in the television sector during this period contributed to Putin’s success. In the early years of his first term, liberal-minded journalists at NTV were key supporters of the president’s market reforms and pro-West foreign policy. 1 Putin came to office with a policy programme that was pragmatic rather than ideological, one that blended a conservative patriotism with a neo-liberal approach to economics (Shevtsova 2003: 169-70). As a result of this mix, those who supported Putin on one issue often disagreed with him on another. Diversity in the media sector provided Putin with the manoeuvrability he required to make his unconventional programme succeed; rather than relying exclusively on a specific base, Putin built coalitions of support around individual policies (Colton et al . 2005: 3). At the start of his second term, diversity in the national television media was already a shadow of what it had been when Putin took office in 2000. Since the shutdown of TVS in June 2003, all major television channels were under the control of the Kremlin or its proxies. Yet, although having just won a landslide election victory – thanks in part to the obedience of the national television media – in July 2004, Putin again moved against NTV, squeezing out its last few independent-minded journalists in response to the channel’s mild
but ongoing criticism of the Yukos affair (Lipman 2004a). In the summer of 2005, the Kremlin also moved against its critics at Ren-TV, despite the channel’s relatively small audience compared to NTV. 2 Emboldened by his success at the ballot box, in his second term, Putin became even less willing to tolerate media criticism of his administration, no matter how minor the comment or its source. After reining in the last remaining independent television media, Putin had far fewer policy successes than earlier in his presidency (Åslund 2005a). Putin’s failures reflect the inadequacy of the new system that he created, including tight state control over the flow of information. As a consequence of suppressing political debate in his first term, Putin made several policy and PR blunders in his second (Åslund 2005b). Three errors stand out: the retraction of social benefits reform; the Beslan hostage crisis; and the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. Although these errors resulted in part from an insufficient diversity of opinion in the media, ironically, control over television also allowed Putin to contain public anger at his mistakes. Furthermore, a lack of visible alternatives to the president on television helped to ensure than public dissatisfaction with his performance never seriously threatened his position or authority. 3
A lack of alternatives to Putin rendered the December 2007 Duma elections little more than a referendum on the president’s leadership (Whitmore 2007c; Lipman 2007). United Russia, which campaigned on a manifesto entitled ‘Putin’s Plan is Russia’s Victory’ and listed the president as its top candidate, won an unprecedented 70 per cent of seats (Whitmore 2007a). Putin’s decision to head United Russia’s party list significantly raised the stakes in the election. Consequently, state-controlled television pulled out all the stops to engineer a high turnout for the party. A landslide victory for United Russia would give Putin a mandate to continue to play a decisive political role after stepping down from the presidency in May 2008 (Robinson 2007; Whitmore 2007a). But Putin’s ambitions were in danger of being undermined by his own success. Lacking any obvious political opponent or danger to the nation, voter apathy threatened to suppress voter turnout (Robinson 2007). To rouse interest in the election, Kremlin strategists used television to create a new internal enemy, destructive forces, backed by foreign governments, with dreams of returning to the wild capitalism of the 1990s (Abdullaev 2007b). The outcome of the 2007 election was crucial because of its proximity to the presidential election in March the following year. As the date of Putin’s departure from the Kremlin approached, competition over his succession revived open conflict within the elite. Owing to Putin’s success in neutering political and media opposition to his administration, rivalry over his replacement was restricted to within his own ruling group. In particular, rivalries between different clans within the siloviki – members or veterans of the security services – caused a ‘nasty and protracted turf war’ (Gulko 2007: 32; Shleynov 2007: 2; Whitmore 2007d). The Kremlin’s control over television kept news of the ‘ siloviki war’ off the airwaves. The same was not true of the print media, which brought the twists and turns of the conflict into the public domain (Whitmore 2007b). Although television was
not the site of the siloviki ’s battle, it was through this medium that Putin reasserted his authority to quash the destabilising affects of the turf war and built support for his chosen successor Dmitri Medvedev.
