Publication date:  24 March 2005

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The speech delivered by Gleb Pavlovsky to a seminar for PR exerts develops on a subject touched upon in a public lecture he delivered two weeks before at the Bilingua Club. The lecture was titled "The Power and the Opposition: Efficiency Criteria". Just as the lecture, the seminar contribution also focuses on the developmental logic of the present political cycle, as analyzed in the context of experience relating to other cycles. However, for a first time ever, the speech is tentatively intended to shift the emphasis from the descriptive field, i.e. analysis of the current state of affairs, on to a field of projections, i.e. forecasting and planning the logic of development of a political process for the near future viewed in a tough format of the next tree years.

I would like to talk about Problem 2008, as it is called in the press and political circles. The problem relates to the presidential election of 2008. This problem is normally regarded as an area of intensive lobbying behind the scenes. A lack of the public lobby resulting in a dangerous monopoly of completely unrepresentative groups is the most prominent feature of the problem, as far as I am concerned. What exactly am I talking about?

2008, 2007 or 2015?

Let me start by saying that Problem 2008 is, in fact, a Problem 2007. A presidential election in this country kicks off way before its official launch. It is not a clash of personalities, it is a consolidation of groups. As a rule, a group that manages to consolidate during an election to the Duma has an advantage. This particular feature stems from an election cycle in which a Duma election campaign turns eventually to a presidential campaign. A Duma election is something like a "super primary" in the presidential election. So what does this Problem 2007 stand for?

As things really stand, Problem 2007 is a Problem 2015. I mean the year 2007 plus another eight years equals 2015. We might as well talk about 2016, but this figure is not so comely. In other words, a group that can get into the core of the agenda for the next 8-year rule and absorb the energy of a new ruling generation is likely to win an advantage. All of us know that in the past before the election, media outlets were, all too often, unaware of the real order of the day or the real group of priorities, the basics that indicate a winner. The voter's decision depends on those basics. Some people will hook up to the wave of a new public energy, and produce an answer as to a new leadership. Such a group will gain an advantage in the Duma election, not to mention a huge leverage when pinpointing a future president. The odds gained could be a decisive force for securing a victory just as was the case at the 1999 Duma election. They could also give a tremendous boost to a political party right at the start of a campaign just like it happened to Zyuganov in the year 1995, though the Communists failed to convert that boost into a victory. A group that is capable of correctly drawing a tentative agenda and a subsequent mandate to rule in the next electoral cycle (in the next 8 years) will gain the "presidential odds", i.e. an advantage in the presidential election even though the advantage may not look obvious at the start, or be shrugged off altogether.

In the light of the above, the 2007 election has "control" over the politics of the whole second term, the so-called "final" presidency. This control remains intact whether or not an election will take place at the end of the second term. Will an election be canceled or not? It is a favorite topic for discussion. But does it really make any difference to the current cycle? As regards the cycle, canceling an election can be viewed as an extreme and, in many respects, a very risky development of the election scenario. It is likely to be accompanied by dramatic changes of the political landscape that will be equally critical - and perilous - to those who opt to cancel. Therefore, the aftermath of an election canceled can be as serious as that made by an election held. The cancellation of an election is a politically risky, legally unfeasible variety of the election campaign. That is why those who come up with a scenario that involves canceling an election are often defeated by those who tackle the issue by ballot. We can refer to Russia's 1996 election to this effect.

The next "Duma and presidential" election will result in the formation of a national leadership based on the political class that already took shape inside the new Russia, inside the Russian Federation. This class is well-off and well-adjusted. It rests on an actual social and business environment. It is not afraid of society, it shares its values, and it is able to tackle those values. That is the ruling class. That is the final political product of a revolution. We repeatedly announced the end of revolutions, the onset of a Thermidor, the advent of conservatism, yet we could never prove it due to the lack of a new ruling subject. The existence of the Russian ruling class can be an end result of the revolution.

It is a class that should be built on solid national foundations, it should be recognized by society, it should have its own mechanism of producing the executive personnel, the mechanism that should be acceptable to a majority of the population. In fact, we are talking about a new political generation advancing to power.

The new ruling class can only rely on the so-called middle strata. I deliberately refrain from using the term "middle class" because it denotes a concept that has been heavily mythologized. In any case, a public poll shows that the middle strata account roughly for 30% of the population, judging by their self-estimation. However, should we use a different criteria system, which reflects our actual level of income and our concept of an average guaranteed level of living standards, the figure will shrink somewhat by half. In other words, we are talking about approximately one sixth of the population. On the other hand, roughly the same number of totally unadjusted citizens acts as a counterbalance to the above group in our social world. The number also ranges from 10 to 15%, i.e. one sixth vs. one sixth. Getting used to abject poverty cannot be a sustainable process, therefore certain new political subcultures are taking shape, out to cut a bigger slice of the pie.

"Putin the Loner" and "successor as a weapon of defense": candidates' scenarios.

How can we describe the 2007-2008 elections that the present electoral cycle has in store? They look like a tug of war between a fairly small group of political personnel centered round Putin, and a similarly small group of the so-called "opposition." Speaking of the opposition, we mean a certain club of dissatisfied politicians who take advantage of the voter's discontent and seek to weaken the power of Putin and defeat his team in the election, in the long run. Launching an all-round assault like a pack of wolves is a philosophy of the "2008 Committee." They believe this tactic cannot fail.

This is a sort of a fast-pace fight for Putin. Ha has to deal with yet another group of attackers while curbing the hostile forces around him at the same time. And every attack repelled is a signal to another group to mount a fresh attack. Thus Putin is expected either to lose so the winner takes it all or he may win but only after cutting a deal with one of the groups closely connected with him. Subsequently, Putin will have to rely on that group in the future. For one thing, this pattern is originally meant to equalize the potential of Putin's team and the potential of any candidate's team. But this scenario of the forthcoming election is not based on the assessment of reality-it rests on an image-making policy of power.

The image-building machine pictures Putin as an irreplaceable personality, a singular individual. But the reasons for his uniqueness get airbrushed by the same machine. I am not going to comment whether the laying of PR emphasis on Putin's uniqueness, his original stand-out position in the whole political field, was the right thing to do or not. I hereby state that "Putin the Loner" is a fictitious image, it is not political reality. In terms of sociopolitical relations, Putin is not by any means alone. Putin's political and social resources center on the groups and strata which staked on him. His resources may also be based on those whose long-term social stakes require long-term guaranties and political prolongation (with respect to the above, a number of such groups can be found even within the opposing class). The opponents of Putin anticipate that the authorities will try to build the 2007-2008 election strategy proceeding from the 2000 image-making strategy. In other words, the authorities are expected to play games involving the Duma and the President, and end up using "a successor as defense." As a result, a new candidate will have an advantage. A successor nominated by Putin will face a very tough challenge as to requirements relating to a new presidency, requirements formed by the eight years of Putin's presidency. Those requirements will eventually cut down the successor. Is it at all possible to meet leadership requirements Putin embodied during his presidency? Not to mention a few other ones he brought to life but never fully implemented. It would be an unbearable burden for the successor. The successor should be endowed with some extraordinary faculties to meet the challenge. It is his own standing as successor to Putin that gives an advantage to the opponents. Let me put it this way: a politician widely regarded as "successor to Putin" will kick off the game, but another hopeful will eventually defeat him. One should not expect the Putin team to choose a strategy of losers. The team will not plan an election campaign using the image-building strategy of the past presidency as a blueprint. The planning will base on a new political reality, a new political potential.

Putin's negative mandate is a means of defense of the middle strata against the revolution

The leadership that deliberately counts on the formation of a political class in Russia, the leadership that relies on its relations with the middle strata, should protect that class against the threat of redistribution looming "from below" and from within the bureaucracy. I call it "the reverse of Putin's mandate" or his negative mandate. It concerns things Putin should not allow to happen. He should not allow the middle strata to lose the prospects of their security. Should it happen, the President's controlling interest in the ruling class of Russia, in terms of political representation, will be gone. Therefore, Putin's mandate includes a ban on nullifying the achievements of his presidency. In other words, it is a ban on revolution. It has nothing to do with whatever personal preferences or requests by Putin, it is an indispensable condition to ensure the prolongation of his mandate.

Support for Putin will quickly erode if there are suspicions indicating that at the end of his second term Putin might tolerate the nullification of everything the middle class gains in 2000-2007. The middle strata would step up their pressure on the President so as to receive guarantees of the material and social investments they made. "Mr. President, what the hell is going on? Did we really agree on yet another revolutionary crisis?" Today, one can already see some signs of annoyance in the middle strata due to a number of reasons that haven't yet become part of the 2007 picture. Putin himself is not the biggest concern to a majority of citizens. They are more concerned about scenarios for Putin squeezed out of the Kremlin, about his vulnerability. But those scenarios are sheer propaganda. They rest on an illusion, a picture showing the authorities and the opposition butt each other for effect. And the picture is transmitted as a forecast for the next election.

Oddly enough, the "administrative resource" is thought to be the only power tool the Kremlin is equipped with. The Kremlin is believed to have no access to an area of direct action, to society, to the streets. In other words, governors are the Kremlin's tools while the opposition has a monopoly on public projects, rallies and demonstrations. The Kremlin can reportedly rely on those employed in the public sector but it cannot rely on the youth. Social conflicts are believed to be a monopoly held by the opposition. They are not considered a sort of resource held by the powers that be. The potential of contradictions, alongside a display of those contradictions, are for some reason reserved to the opposition. But that is not true. A large-scale mobilization dodging by Putin's majority related to the choice of instruments for his first term.
In this context, the latest rallies in support of the replacement of in-kind welfare benefits with cash payments, the emergence of new youth projects will make the political regime more down-to-earth. It will also create more instruments of public resistance and win back enough elbowroom for Putin to perform massive anti-crisis maneuvering.

The middle strata have an advantage and priority when drawing an agenda for the next election. For years to come, their plans will be closely connected with the authorities. The middle strata need freedom, property, and independence along with a ban on revolution, nullification, and crisis. Actually, these are the components for building an agenda for 2007. We should win their hearts and minds, and keep that class within a political orbit ever since. We should work hard so that crucial political and government decisions may originate at this level of society, we should train a new personnel for the new power structures in the years to come until the "revolutionary dregs" of society become history and those 15% of the outcast are socialized.

Until it comes into being, however, Putin must hold control over the criteria of limits applicable to political developments. His controlling position will make part of his negative mandate, i.e. banning scenarios that lead to the destruction of security prospects for the middle strata. These days the authorities - by "authorities", I mean the Kremlin - are searching for their own support, they are cautiously stepping out "into the street", into the area of preservative social action.

2005: the year of pre-election casting and mass political machinery

Now, which point of the election cycle are we in today? As we know, the reading of the Russian political gadgetry starts with the nearest election. A Duma pre-election campaign is actually launched in the spring of the year before the election-2006, in this instance. A maiden parade of Duma 2007 election projects will start in a year, sharp. So 2006 will come as a year of initial pre-election rehearsals. What, now, is this year in the election cycle context?

As the Russian election cycle has it, hopefuls' basic casting falls on the year after the presidential poll year. That "year after" forms principal all-nation coalitions-social, civil and business-to represent forces that will offer their initial election projects a year later. Even though those election projects always undergo major amendments, their public introduction is of tremendous importance. A newly appointed party membership threshold drastically changed the 2005 targets-a party needs at least 50,000 members to qualify for elections. The number must be proved within the year, before January 1, 2006. In that sense, and in the context of membership qualification, this year has another essential aspect-it forces political parties to establish their massive personnel machinery. Twelve months suffices to meet the target, though this deadline demands rapid efforts.

What will the Putin crew be doing all that time? If we proceed from the above election cycle patterns, we can expect it to concentrate on a self-sufficient political network to be set up within the next fifteen months, complete with the President's support groups to represent the younger and the older generations alike. Even now, they make a reserve of the new ruling political class, which they are determined to join for a long time and with sound guarantees.

Meanwhile, there is a gap between them and President Putin. This gap offers his opponents a big chance. That is what the myth of an "isolated Putin" rests on. The year must suffice to test efficient patterns of interaction with mass promotion teams, and demonstrate those patterns to Putin's friends and foes. The regime is to prove strong enough against all attacks, even if they combine propaganda with street riots. In this sense, clashes between social groups do not necessarily hamper the regime's efforts to extend its social basis. On the contrary, such clashes occasionally help visualize the majority and consolidate it as protective power. One cannot properly appreciate Putin's support resources before one actually comes to grips with his opponents. Partisans of law and order are no longer to blush as they declare their stances and attitudes. They are to consolidate in a genuine democratic political milieu, which is essentially pregnant with conflict.

The regime is lobbying itself in society. Society is to lobby itself on the ruling top.

No one alleges that the middle strata are contented with everything. They are not sure that their personal strategies will find political recognition on the present-day ruling top. This vagueness presents the only resource of today's opposition. That is a virtual resource. The opposition is out for propaganda, among the middle strata, of a distribution ideology-the ideology of the lower strata, which make one sixth of the population. Whatever initiative the liberal opposition advances bears a pronounced distributive coloring. That is evident. The liberal opposition is drifting to Left Populism-it harps on the hope to seize a "big prize". Underlying this hope is an assurance of the ruling top holding that prize, which is to be snatched and shared out. True, the Stabilization Fund makes Left mouths water. A politician sees that multibillion fund as a huge sack of sweet, juicy carrots dangling above his head. This bait comes to him as a trying test. It is no longer an abstract "social property" but another kind of "no-one's property".

A reverse political lobby, of public coalitions, is too weak in Russia, though it pursues an essential goal-to have the middle strata represented in the ruling circles. There is a client and mastermind behind every lobby. Who is that, in this particular instance? Clearly, the ruling top does not need such a lobby, so the people who discern the Kremlin behind it are quite wrong. The top cannot build a political power single-handed. Actual power lies in communications and conflicts. What we need is an initiative coming from a reverse direction to offer a quality political proposal to the Kremlin. Russia is acutely aware of a deficit of such an explicitly addressed public lobby. That lobby presupposes the mastermind setting up within the community civil coalitions, public coalitions, and associations, in the broadest sense of the word, (I don't mean juridical persons, though they may get involved, too) which may communicate with the regime and enter into contact with it to promote an agenda the middle strata need. Otherwise, those middle strata have ample chances to come out the loser-or they will see an election won without their participation, and allegedly in their favor. Then, the resource Putin will have to rely on will transform into the center of a new ruling coalition, while the middle class will again have to do with strangers who would not express its stances.

I am making a stop here, on the deficit of a political and public lobby in the corridors of power, and on the lack of a correct approach to construing an election strategy and a political program.

Question. Why have you changed your discourse? We know you to have a designer's turn of mind-a technological designer's, to be more precise. Now, Russian political construing of the latter days is fruit of implementing the regime's political projects of the later 1990s-suffice it to mention Project Rodina (Motherland) or Project SPS (Right Forces' Union). What has the middle class to do with all that? Project 2008 is being implemented amid controllable tensions, a controlled market, and a strengthening grip on the media.

Pavlovsky. This stance, of amorphous skepticism, has long been known, and fairly widespread. True, "there is no new thing under the sun"-but what practical conclusions can we make of it for you, for myself, and for our job? We can choose a wait-and-see position, but it may bring the waiting person into a painful situation because there is no insurance in politics. You can work for some situation or other, but you ought to see that you have no guarantees at all! That's what I always do.

Just as a great many other people, you proceed from the "control dogma", that is, an opportunity of total control of reality. That is sheer self-deception. Putin has no total grip on social and political developments. He does not owe his strong position to such a grip. He has control only of the ultimate criteria of government developments-he cannot control even some things that do need control. What we have here is not so much controlled democracy as a democracy under censorship. I don't mean press censorship but censorship of political situations. That censorship is a success, to an extent. It is wrong to expect that one can attain all goals thanks to control alone. Such expectations usually form the basis of expectations for another revolution-let's turn everything upside down again! Let's turn over a new leaf! If we make it, things will go fine. If not, I'll snatch something out of someone's pocket, all the same-for instance, a tiny block of Krivorozhstal. That's a bad strategy.

Q. What do you mean by "opposition"?

G.P. My usage of the word rests on the present-day press vocabulary in the respect of a group of political activists. What is Russian opposition proper? What does it look like? What we now have in reality is an opposition discourse. The label "opposition" is stuck, inside that discourse, not even on political parties but on particular groups of then political community. Our opposition is emerging inside the ruling machinery. It relies on the dissatisfied in the bureaucratic circles, who are waiting for a propitious day to strike a deal with the dominant force. Open any newspaper-whom is it calling "opposition"? All people we have long known-for instance, Vladimir Ryzhkov, of all people. No one knows why! Many other names have been cited of late-Julia Latynina, for one, or Georgi Satarov. He's a clever guy, true-but is he an oppositionary? So they make do with mentioning particular names, and that's all. There is another concept: Putin is the ruler, and those who oppose him make the opposition. The analysis stops at that. Real opposition is a team of people of good heart and clear mind, who keep on attacking the regime as they wait for it to get weaker and eventually collapse. They will come up then to take the vacant place. These are people endowed with public confidence. They have either to wait for people of the regime to flee (there were certain such instances in the Russian past), or to oust the regime with the help of the people-in-the-street, and take the vacant throne.

There was a dramatic story in South Korea, thirty years ago or so. A boss of the local CIA analogue entered the President's office one fine day, shot the President dead, and overtook the presidential office-all that without batting an eyelid, as if it were the most proper thing to do! The man died by the firing squad, in the long run, if I am not mistaken. However dangerous this model may be, it is the Russian idea of an ideal victory.

The opposition lacks a proper public and political lobby, as I have said here today. In other words, there is a shortage of pressure on the opposition by groups interested in an extent of efficiency. That leads a handful of people to artificially monopolize a position.

As the matter really stands, an absence or inadequate amount of debates on what the successful middle strata's framework minimum program should be like is a bad problem. To be honest, I don't see just how the regime will cope with it within its own milieu. The regime cannot solve the problem. In fact, when the powers-that-be seek to penetrate the public, they evolve into a pluralist coalition. They fall into factions, each of which starts its own gamble. That is a very dangerous prospect as, the closer we come to an election, the more dynamic each ruling group becomes to stock up resources-each is out to get an independent resource all its own so as to get prepared to the election as thoroughly as possible. If this year does not become a year of establishing public coalitions, it will form an arrangement of bureaucratic coalitions. They will never be transparent, and their stances and interests will be unknown. That is a rather threatening system, which is open to whatever influences from without. The American resource in Eastern Europe is the administrative resource. I often press that point.

Q. Are you blaming your Ukrainian setback on yourself?

G.P. Know what? A sense of guilt very seldom goes together with an actual failure. That's like a love affair-you often have a guilty feeling even when the affair has not ended in a flop, or the other way round-you botch up something, and you never know just how much you are to blame for it. The Ukrainian disaster was tremendous. It implied much more than election returns, and we cannot shrug it off saying no one has appointed us to bridle the revolution. In such instances, people come to restrain it of their own free will. True, I do feel guilty a bit, but let us give my guilt an explicit wording in instrumental terms. The field of necessary action was far outside the circle of the competences I had those days-but that's where my blunder is. I never tried to cross the limits of my cozy appointment as political adviser, who is responsible for nothing but evaluating current developments and making adequate recommendations. But that was far from enough-I clearly saw what was taking place before my very eyes. There was an election campaign made in an unprecedented anarchy, and led by desperately incompetent people. There was a bungling and self-assured HQ, steeped into macho-ism. There was a strategy wrong from the start-and its makers never cared to bring their apologies to this day. I don't feel like harping on all that now. The guys have lost, and are running a danger now. But I pointed out all that at that time, on a number of occasions in Moscow and Kiev alike. But what was the use of it? What can one do, and what one ought to do with no HQ, and with no right of decision-making that would be compulsory to anyone? The people in Kiev are circulating a hoax about big bad Pavlovsky, who poisoned Yuschenko but failed to give him a lethal dose. Are we to believe it? True, I ought to have left my job of informant and adviser, and go over to the opposition. I ought to have said a firm "no", and given up the job. That, however, would come as a classical clash of interests because that "no" would have turned me from adviser to political activist, even if I were working inside the bureaucratic machine.

What have spin doctors to do with all that, you may ask? They fill in a political vacuum and, to that extent, go into active politics. They make bad politicians, all too often. Long before its latest poll, Ukraine gave start to an exotic practice-Russian advisers got one with Ukrainian politicians and moneybags. They were getting ever closer together, and that practice became an established arrangement in the late 1990s. Hundreds of Russian experts engaged in it, and possibly all major Russian-based research centers. The thing took its final shape in 2001 into last year. Russian advisers were up to their ears in the Kiev squabbles and alliances. They became performers on the Ukrainian stage as assistants of Kiev political activists, whether ruling or oppositionary. They mixed with politicians, drank vodka with them, visited prostitutes with them, and knew all their private predicaments. Everyone took that for granted. As I came to Kiev, I saw that ugly arrangement of a spin doctor acting as a boss' auxiliary. That was real funny-the Kiev people make politics in their villas, saunas and in brothels. They say we had something similar some ten years ago, in the first half of the 1990s, the fabulous days of ther Kremlin under Korzhakov and Satarov. Moscow could do nothing to cure the matter, and had to put up with that perverse style as Ukraine's exotic feature.

Now I think Russia and Ukraine were staking too high-possibly, I ought to have swum against the current, even if I were trespassing professional ethics. That was what I ought to repent. True, I said to my comrades last autumn that "Kuchma's regime was isolated, early in October, worse that the federal rule in Moscow by the start of October 1993". That's a quotation from my speech of that time. But the danger was great enough to demand greater responsibilities. All were using a revolution in Kiev as bugbear to frighten each other-but no one was taking it seriously. It was one of the central propaganda topics on both sides, and it diverted attention from taking stock of what was up in harsh reality. I never had the slightest idea of what the real revolution would look like in Kiev.

Another issue, now-sociological. It is of tremendous interest, and remains vague. I think that was a first time within the preceding ten years on which all sociological forecasts proved wrong-and these based on representative cross opinion probes. All said Yanukovich had the higher public ratings, even such probes that the Yuschenko HQ ordered. Yuschenko's probes soon vanished from publication as politically awkward. Why? That's what we have to ask sociologists. I saw it as a very bad setback-the past decade made me accustomed to reliable sociometric data, and that time, it all went wrong.

There is a reverse vector of the regime-society lobby. We ought to have worked for public debates on what mattered most-a choice for Kuchma's successor. We ought to have gotten involved in the process long before we actually did. The regime did not do so, for its own reasons, and the public was shrugging off Ukrainian affairs even a year before the election. No one took the slightest interest in it then, but all sat up and took notice when we lost. That's the usual thing. Now, let us draw lessons from it all now that we have wonderful testing grounds close to this country, in Ukraine. May they perform surgery on themselves, and we'll see. That will be all the wiser as the Kiev government now consists of PR people. A PR Cabinet is something Eastern Europe has never had before. We'll wait and see how it works.

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