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Mironov, or the Matrix?

putin-matrix

The escalating war between Putin and House Speaker Sergei Mironov, who is being pressured to resign for daring to criticise the budget and the Prime Minister by name on national TV, may be just the opposite of what it seems.

“Do not try to bend the spoon. Try to realize the truth: there is no spoon”

To recap:  Mere days after a massive unsanctioned demonstration in Kaliningrad called for Putin’s resignation last weekend, Mironov, the number three figure in the Russian goverment and member of a recently created ‘loyal opposition’ Just Russia party, told a national television talk show that he disagreed with Mr. Putin’s budget and economic-crisis plan, characterising Putin’s program as one of “doubtful conservatism.”

As Putin’s name has rarely been so publicly attacked, Mironov was immediately called on to resign, even from members of his own party, for “dishonesty and inconsistency in regard to Vladimir Putin – a person who has done so much for the country and its people.”

Some analysts, however, believe that “the sudden scandal was in fact an attempt to move the media spotlight away from Kaliningrad”, which seriously rocked the ruling elite, in favour of a manufactured controversy involving the non-threatening Mironov.

According to the Communist Party’s Sergei Obukhov, “two boys are imitating a fight to get public attention away from the problems that led to the mass protest erupting in the Kaliningrad region.”

“Both of these parties – United Russian and Just Russia – as has long been known, are the right and left legs of today’s authorities,” a KPRF’s press secretary told the Kommersant news daily, referring to the fact that the Just Russia party was the product of a merger of two pervious Kremlin-created parties: Rodina and the Party of Life, possibly with the goal of syphoning off left wing votes from the Communists.

The very existence of a guessing game about the authenticity of the Mironov incident reflects the enduring prevalence of what the political scientist Andrew Wilson has called ‘virtual politics’.

Virtual politics involves using political technologies such as establishing fake political parties to syphon off votes from  genuine opposition parties, using ‘kompromat’ or blackmail, or choreographing political distractions, in order to preserve the status quo’s grip on power short of outright authoritarianism.

Particularly relevant to Mironov-Kaliningrad is Wilson’s concept of “dramaturgiia , which is the reshaping of politics as highly choreographed event, the concoction of stories to shift political events in one’s favour, or to sell a particular party or politician”.

On the other hand, Virtuality is not the only driving force of Russian politics; an equally strong current is patronage.

And Mironov’s falling foul of these rules  might offer an alternative explanation for his downfall, as explained inTom Balmforth’s Russia Profile article:

Although Mironov was fairly mild in his opposition, ‘there are certain rules in Russian politics,’ said Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst at the Center for Political Technologies. ‘If someone pushes forward your career, for instance, installs you as the speaker of the Federation Council (in this case, it was then-president Putin) and you then distance yourself from him when he is in a tough position, say, as prime minister during the economic crisis, well that runs against those principles,’ he said.

Indeed, an another political technologist said annonymously, “Mironov shouldn’t have used Putin’s name three times in a negative context; better to have just criticised the budget”.

So which paradigm explains the Mironov brouhaha?

I am inclined to think ‘all of the above’: a virtual distraction from the Kaliningrad riots, a slap-down for an uppity Mironov, and a warning/delineation of the limits of presidential criticism.

And, virtual or not, the episode did lead Mironov to publicly raise a key point about the current political system: “Do members of United Russia think that opposition and criticism is dishonest? In a civilized society this is the duty and goal of the opposition.”

Yet, when his party was created three years ago, Mironov saw its role very differently, saying:  “If United Russia is the party of power, we will become the party of the people…We will follow the course of President Vladimir Putin and will not allow anyone to veer from it after Putin leaves his post in 2008”.

Whatever the true meaning of the episode, it has called into question the long term possibility of a state controlled ‘loyal opposition’ : whether such an opposition will inevitably become either ‘real’ or simply be absorbed back into the ruling party.

 

Author

Vadim Nikitin

Vadim Nikitin was born in Murmansk, Russia and grew up there and in Britain. He graduated from Harvard University with a thesis on American democracy promotion in Russia. Vadim's articles about Russia have appeared in The Nation, Dissent Magazine, and The Moscow Times. He is currently researching a comparative study of post-Soviet and post-Apartheid nostalgia.
Areas of Focus:
USSR; US-Russia Relations; Culture and Society; Media; Civil Society; Politics; Espionage; Oligarchs

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