RUSSIA in 2020 Scenarios for the Future MARIA LIPMAN NIKOLAY PETROV EDITORS
© 2011 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Carnegie Endowment. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 202-483-7600, Fax 202-483-1840 www.ceip.org The Carnegie Endowment does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented here are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Endowment, its staff, or its trustees. To order, contact: Hopkins Fulfillment Service P.O. Box 50370, Baltimore, MD 21211-4370 1-800-537-5487 or 1-410-516-6956 Fax 1-410-516-6998 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this book are available ISBN 978-0-87003-263-9 (pbk.) – ISBN 978-0-87003-264-6 (cloth) Cover design by Mission Media Composition by Oakland Street Publishing Printed by United Book Press
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TABLE of CONTENTS Foreword
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Thomas Carothers
ACKNowLedGMeNTS
INTrOduCTION: ruSSIA IN 2020— dEvELOpmENT SCENArIOS
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Maria Lipman and Nikolay Petrov
pArT I. ruSSIA IN ThE WOrLd Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four
ruSSiA ANd The worLd Thomas Graham
ruSSiA iN worLd-SySTeMS PerSPeCTive
25
ruSSiA’S ForeiGN PoLiCy ouTLooK
45
ruSSiA’S PLACe iN The worLd oF uNiNTeNded CoNSequeNCeS, or MurPhy’S LAw ANd order
67
ruSSiA ANd The New “TrANSiTioNAL euroPe”
89
Georgi derluguian and immanuel wallerstein
dmitri Trenin
Fyodor Lukyanov
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
3
Arkady Moshes
The SouTh CAuCASuS iN 2020
Thomas de waal
109
pArT II. pOLITICAL ECONOmy ANd ECONOmICS Chapter Seven
The “Third CyCLe”: iS ruSSiA heAded BACK To The FuTure?
125
Kirill rogov
Chapter Eight
ruSSiA’S PoLiTiCAL eCoNoMy: The NexT deCAde
149
daniel Treisman
Chapter Nine
The ruSSiAN eCoNoMy ThrouGh 2020: The ChALLeNGe oF MANAGiNG reNT AddiCTioN
165
Clifford G. Gaddy and Barry w. ickes
Chapter Ten
The ruSSiAN eCoNoMy iN LiMBo
187
vladimir Milov
pArT III. pOLITICAL SySTEm Chapter Eleven
iNSTiTuTioN BuiLdiNG ANd “iNSTiTuTioNAL TrAPS” iN ruSSiAN PoLiTiCS
215
vladimir Gelman
Chapter Twelve
TrANSiTioN AS A PoLiTiCAL iNSTiTuTioN: TowArd 2020
233
richard Sakwa
Chapter Thirteen
CAN The MAChiNe CoMe To LiFe? ProSPeCTS For ruSSiA’S PArTy SySTeM iN 2020
255
henry hale
Chapter Fourteen
SCeNArioS For The evoLuTioN oF The ruSSiAN PoLiTiCAL PArTy SySTeM
277
Boris Makarenko
pArT Iv. STATE Chapter Fifteen
The exCeSSive roLe oF A weAK ruSSiAN STATe
303
Nikolay Petrov
Chapter Sixteen
CeNTer–PeriPhery reLATioNS robert orttung
329
Chapter Seventeen
The Continuing Revolution in Russian Military Affairs: Toward 2020
349
Pavel K. Baev
Chapter Eighteen
The Armed Forces in 2020: Modern or Soviet?
Alexander Golts
371
PART V. Regions Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Russia’s Regions and Cities: scenarios for 2020
395
Natalia Zubarevich
Political Systems in the Russian Regions in 2020
417
Alexandr Kynev
Chapter Twenty-One 2020: The Last Chance for the North Caucasus? Alexey Malashenko
435
PART VI. Society and Civil Society Chapter Twenty-Two Society, Politics, and the Search for
Community in Russia
Chapter Twenty-Three The Inertia of Passive Adaptation
499
Nikolay Petrov
Chapter Twenty-Five The Evolution of Civic Activeness
477
Lev Gudkov
Chapter Twenty-Four the nomenklatura and the elite
459
Samuel A. Greene
531
Jens Siegert
PART VII. Ideology and Culture Chapter Twenty-Six Russia and the New “Russian World”
553
Igor Zevelev
Chapter Twenty-Seven Society and the State on the Internet: A Call for Change Alexey Sidorenko
573
CONCLuSIONS
593
Maria Lipman and Nikolay Petrov
iNdex
615
CoNTriBuTorS
681
CArNeGie eNdowMeNT For iNTerNATioNAL PeACe
685
fOrEWOrd
For more than ten years, the signal characteristic of Russian politics has been stability. It is a stability that has exacted a serious price with regard to hopes for reform yet also brought reassurance to many Russians unsettled by the events of the prior decade. Russia’s leaders appear set on trying to maintain that stability throughout the present decade as well. Whether they will manage to do so is a defining question for the country. It is also the question that animates this book. In 2010 Maria Lipman and Nikolay Petrov assembled a remarkable group of experts on Russian politics, economics, and security and tasked them with analyzing what Russia will look like in the year 2020. They urged them to explore the forces for change and the imperatives of continuity, the potentials and the pitfalls, not for the goal of predicting but instead for understanding the range of possibilities and the most likely determinants of the country’s path. The result is a kaleidoscopic study not just of Russia’s future but also its present situation. True to its subject, it is a sprawling, multilayered account, steeped in the complexities that make the study of contemporary Russia such a compelling and also challenging task. Lipman and Petrov proceed from a core belief—that in the face of varied internal pressures that are likely to increase, the political system Vladimir Putin built over the last ten years cannot be maintained in its present form for another decade—that in effect the Putin era as we understand it is ending even as Putin enters a new period as president. From this outlook many important arguments and conclusions follow, as the richly diverse chapters by the different experts show.
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The commitment that the Carnegie Endowment made to Russia and U.S.-Russian relations when it opened the Carnegie Moscow Center in the early 1990s endures. This book is a happy exemplar of that commitment and reflects its core principles. It brings together scholars and policy researchers from Russia, the United States, and Europe, across disciplines, national boundaries, and ideological perspectives, united in the common endeavor of deep-reaching exploration and elucidation. It takes seriously the task of understanding Russia on its own terms, but also equally seriously the challenge of communicating that understanding to others outside Russia in the hope of contributing to a better future for Russia and for Russia’s relations with the world. Thomas Carothers Vice President for Studies Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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ACkNOWLEdgmENTS
This book is a joint effort of many people, and we are deeply grateful to all those who made it possible, even if we cannot list everyone on this page. First of all, we want to thank our team for their contributions and for the terrific participation that ensured a creative, thought-provoking, as well as warm and friendly atmosphere at our joint events. Carnegie Endowment Vice President Thomas Carothers took part in some of our discussions and helped us throughout the project; we are indebted to him for his profound insights, his advice, and his moral support. Ambassador James F. Collins, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Program in Washington, D.C., was a wonderful chair at our events at the Endowment and offered useful comments at various stages of our project. Carnegie Moscow Center Director Dmitri Trenin not only contributed to our project, but also greatly encouraged us throughout our work. We would like to thank Senior Publications Manager Ilonka Oszvald and her team of editors and proofreaders for the excellent organization of the production process and for their patience with our 20-plus authors. Marina Barnett and Ann Stecker of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Program in Washington, D.C., were infinitely helpful organizers of our D.C. events. Thane Gustafson, our intellectual role model in the Russia forecast endeavor, generously shared his experience with looking into Russia’s future. We are grateful to all those scholars and experts who at various times took part in our discussions, especially Sergey Aleksashenko, Harley Balzer, Aleksey Berelovich, Timothy Colton, Boris Dubin, Stephen Holmes, and
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Ivan Krastev, whose sharp comments and honest critiques added depth to our analysis. Several prominent institutions provided their venues and generous assistance for our discussions: Rob Garris and Pilar Palacia at the Rockefeller Foundation’s gorgeous Villa Bellagio; Alex Nice at Chatham House, and Gertraud Auer Borea d’Olmo at the Bruno Kreisky Forum. We deeply appreciate their hospitality and perfect organization, which made our stay at all these places productive and enjoyable. Our special thanks go to the Open Society Foundation for sponsoring this project. Lenny Benardo took a personal interest in our project at the early stages and provided valuable advice. Our project also benefited from a grant of the C.S. Mott Foundation, and we are grateful for that. Tatiana Barabanova, Maria Lipman’s assistant, and Yelena Sheetova, Nikolay Petrov’s assistant, worked indefatigably to help this project happen and committed much effort to the preparation of this book for publication. We would like to express our gratitude to Carnegie Endowment President Jessica T. Mathews for her interest in our project and for her support from the very beginning and through the publication of this volume.
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ruSSIA in 2020— dEvELOpmENT SCENArIOS Maria Lipman and Nikolay Petrov
Russia–2020, a project of the Carnegie Moscow Center, was officially launched in early 2010. On the tenth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s model of state governance and on the eve of the next election cycle, it seemed like a logical time to analyze and reevaluate Russia’s prospects for development. How sustainable is the political and economic system put in place by Putin? Can the status quo be maintained for the long term, or does Russia face major changes? These were the fundamental questions that underlay this work on development scenarios for Russia in the coming decade. Ten years was chosen as the optimal period for forecasting. A decade is not too short term—in which case there would be a risk that current problems and temporary conditions might cloud a long-term view—and yet also not too long term, in which case it would be impossible to responsibly propose realistic scenarios. Nearly three dozen experts took part in the Carnegie Moscow Center’s scenario development research project. Each participant offered his or her “thematic” view of Russia’s prospects in various spheres. The group of participating authors was both interdisciplinary and international, representing Russia with fifteen experts, the United States with ten, and Europe with five. In most cases, each topic was considered by a pair of experts, one Russian and one Western, to provide breadth of vision and method-
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ological diversity. Periodically during their work, the authors gathered for public discussions to ensure that many external experts would also have an opportunity to contribute to the final outcome. The main thematic divisions of the project were as follows: • Russia and the world: Georgi Derluguian, Thomas Graham, Fyodor Lukyanov, Arkady Moshes, Dmitri Trenin, Thomas de Waal, and Immanuel Wallerstein. • Political economy and economics: Clifford Gaddy, Vladimir Milov, Kirill Rogov, and Daniel Treisman. • The political system and parties: Vladimir Gelman, Henry Hale, Boris Makarenko, and Richard Sakwa. • The state and political elite: Pavel Baev, Alexander Golts, and Nikolay Petrov. • Federalism and the regions: Alexandr Kynev, Alexey Malashenko, Robert Orttung, and Natalia Zubarevich. • Social development and civil society: Sam Greene, Lev Gudkov, Maria Lipman, Alexey Sidorenko, Jens Siegert, and Igor Zevelev. The project participants first gathered in October 2010 in Bellagio, Italy, where they discussed their preliminary work on the chapters and had a brainstorming session on integrated development scenarios. The experts broke into three teams (so that all the main thematic divisions were more or less represented) and made forecasts in the form of trajectories of development with milestones, crossroads, and the like. This collaborative teamwork was the most vibrant and memorable aspect of this meeting. Work on the combined scenario analyses and descriptions was continued in the next stage of the project. The results of this work are presented in the final, concluding chapter of this volume. The project was kept as open as possible. Anyone who was interested could participate along with the experts. And even before the participants gathered for discussions, a special website (http://russia-2020.org/ru) was inaugurated, with texts specially produced by the project experts. More detailed versions of the thematic scenarios were published in two issues of the journal Pro et Contra. And a significant part of the material from the
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collective discussions was published as a series of articles in the newspaper Vedomosti. In recent years, several other projects have attempted to predict and project Russia’s future, including projects at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,1 New York University,2 and the Finnish Parliament.3 Russia–2010 differs from these projects in two main ways: It was conducted later and thus could use the materials these earlier projects generated; and it is larger in scale and scope. Furthermore, most development scenarios focus primarily on economics and politics. This project, in contrast, also devoted significant attention to society. Indeed, the social factor was given as much attention as the state. This project of the Carnegie Moscow Center is also distinguished by its renowned participants. The monographs by the members of the project’s large collective of authors are, without exaggeration, a veritable library of topics connected with Russia—and not only Russia. The project’s “orchestra” of authors—or rather, its group of soloists—included staff members from practically all the major world centers and schools that produce studies of contemporary Russia, both theoretical and practical. This gave the project broad access to analyses conducted by researchers all over the world and ensured that the ideas proposed by its team of experts would be disseminated even before its joint work was published. The synergy that was so vibrant at the conference in Bellagio was to a great degree preserved in the subsequent stages of the work. Scenario analysis differs from prognostication primarily in that the goal is not to predict the future or to determine the likelihood of various future events. Instead, the task is to provide the entire picture—to show the probable future and the relationship of all the elements in the entire picture. Each author considered a spectrum of possible trajectories of development; the factors that might affect these trajectories; and possible points of bifurcation, where the trajectory might dramatically change. The authors tested the trajectories’ resilience under the influence of external factors and determined their corridors—the boundaries of the trajectories’ fluctuation—as well as opportunities for exerting direct influence on them. The results were not utopias, nor were they anti-utopias. They were not images of the “desired future” but rather études on the same theme, written in a variety of manners and from a variety of positions.
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The Russia-2020 team was particularly interested in the fascinating scenario analysis of Russia’s future by Daniel Yergin and Thane Gustafson.4 It is a unique example of constructing noninertial scenarios, and it combines precise scholastic forecasting with the consideration of minuscule details, transforming the scenario into something close to a work of art. In early 2011, the question of Russia’s future changed from a strictly analytical subject to a broader social topic. A great number of scenarios, strategies, and predictions were published and avidly discussed in the Russian expert community. Of course, this trend was not accidental; it was spurred by the upcoming election cycle and growing uncertainty. Anxiety about the future impelled experts to try, if only on paper, to change the adverse course of events. The most noteworthy publications in early 2011 were a fundamental, 300-page text produced by the Institute of Contemporary Development (Russian acronym: INSOR), Attaining the Future: Strategy 2012; a report from the Center of Strategic Research, The Political Crisis in Russia and Possible Mechanisms for Its Development; and materials from a large group of experts in the state-formed commission revising The Strategy of Economic Development 2020.5 In addition to concerns about the domestic situation—the exhaustion of reconstructive economic growth and the deterioration of the Soviet-era social and physical infrastructure—there are serious concerns about the international situation: financial and economic crises, social upheaval, and regime change in North Africa. These are difficult times for many governments. For the Russian government, which values control above efficiency, the challenge may be roughly seen as a Gorbachev–Mubarak dilemma. Gorbachev opted for reforms, yielded some control, and lost it all. Mubarak would not yield and stayed in power for much longer, but in the end he, too, lost it all. The parallels may not be fully accurate, but they give an idea of the risks and the fears of the Russian leadership. Putin as we know him will not choose the Gorbachev option. But the model of governance that he relied on in the 2000s is unlikely to hold for another decade. The coming years will reveal whether the Russian leadership has the political vision and statesmanship to succeed where Gorbachev and Mubarak failed.
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Notes 1.
Andrew C. Kuchins, ed., Alternative Futures for Russia 2017, Report of the Russia and Eurasia Program (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007), http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/071214-russia_2017-web.pdf. The contributors to this volume include Charles Ryan, Anders Åslund, Thomas Graham, Henry Hale, Sarah Mendelson, and Cory Welt.
2.
Center for Global Affairs, “Russia 2020: CGA Scenarios 4, Spring 2010,” www.scps. nyu.edu/export/sites/scps/pdf/global-affairs/russia-2020-scenarios.pdf.
3.
Osmo Kuusi, Hanna Smith, and Paula Tiihonen, eds., Russia–2017: Three Scenarios (Helsinki: Committee for the Future, Parliament of Finland, 2007), http://web.eduskunta.fi/dman/Document.phx?documentId=lt14107123156950&cmd=download.
4.
Daniel Yergin and Thane Gustafson, Russia 2010: And What It Means for the World (New York: Random House, 1993).
5.
Institute of Contemporary Development (Institut Sovremennogo Razvitiya), Obretenie buduschego: Strategiya-2012 (Attaining the Future: Strategy 2012) (Moscow: INSOR, 2011), www.insor-russia.ru/files/Finding_of_the_Future%20.FULL_.pdf; Sergey Belanovskiy, Mikhail Dmitriev, Politicheskiy krizis v Rossii i vozmozhnie mekhanizmy ego razvitiya (The Political Crisis in Russia and Possible Mechanisms for Its Development) (Moscow: Center of Strategic Research, 2011), www.csr.ru/index.php?option=com_con tent&view=article&id=307%3A2011-03-28-16-38-10&catid=52%3A2010-05-0317-49-10&Itemid=219&lang=en; and materials from a large group of experts in the state-formed commission revising The Strategy of Economic Development 2020; see the commission’s websites http://strategy2020.rian.ru and http://2020strategy.ru.
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RUSSIA in the WORLD PA R T I
C h A PT e R one
Russia and the woRld Thomas Graham Russia emerged as a major European power in the eighteenth century. It was a huge success for nearly three hundred years, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991—if success is measured in terms of augmentation of territory, expansion of political sway, or accumulation of military victories. Indeed, no other country can match that three hundred years of geopolitical advance; few have mattered as much in international affairs. The Russian victories over Napoleon and Hitler and the Russian Revolution—all events with world-historical consequences that enhanced Russia’s power—are only the high points of a remarkable story. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russia was already the largest state in the world, with a territory of more than 10 million square kilometers.1 Its borders extended from Smolensk in Europe to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Sea of Azov, the northern reaches of Central Asia, and China. From this enormous base, Russia continued to expand in subsequent centuries. In the eighteenth century, Russia gained control of the Baltic Sea coastline from the Gulf of Finland to Riga and hastened Sweden’s fall from the ranks of the major powers with its victory in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). Along with Prussia and Austria, it slowly undermined, dismembered, and eventually eliminated Poland as an independent state. It pressed southward, finally driving the Ottoman Empire from the northern littoral of the Black Sea with the annexation of the Crimea in 1783, while it began to encroach on Ottoman lands in the Balkans.
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This march continued in the nineteenth century with Russia’s victory over Napoleon in the decisive campaign of 1812–1814. Russian troops drove as far west as Paris, and Russia remained the dominant power in the eastern half of the continent—the “gendarme” of Europe—until its defeat in the Crimean War in the middle of the century. Russia continued its expansion into the Balkans, annexing Bessarabia, and consolidated its control over the South Caucasus. As Great Britain, France, and lesser European powers divided up Africa and pushed into South Asia, Russia moved swiftly into Central Asia. Along with the other great powers, it participated in the dismemberment of China toward the end of the century. Finally, in the last century, the collapse of the Russian Empire at the end of World War I proved to be but a momentary retreat. The new rulers, the Bolsheviks, quickly regained most of the empire’s lost territory during the bitter civil war that followed their seizure of power. With victory in World War II, the Soviet Union effectively regained all the territory once controlled by the Tsarist state, with the exception of Finland and Alaska (sold to the United States in the mid–nineteenth century). For forty years after that victory, the Soviet Union dominated the eastern half of the continent and attracted client states in the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Its superpower rivalry with the United States provided the essential geopolitical framework for world affairs.
Russia as a European Power Russia’s emergence as a great power coincided with the formation of the European balance-of-power system. As the eighteenth century evolved, European politics came to be dominated by five powers: France, Prussia, and Austria at the center, and Great Britain and Russia on the western and eastern flanks, respectively. This system provided the framework for European politics—and indeed for global politics, because European powers dominated the global system—until the end of World War I. In its place, after World War I, emerged the bipolar superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, which struggled for primacy in Europe and beyond.
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Despite Russia’s large role in European affairs, the past three hundred years have witnessed a constant debate on Russia’s relations with Europe: Was it part of European civilization, or an Asiatic intruder into European affairs? Statesmen and intellectuals have answered that question in various ways over time, depending on developments in both Europe proper and Russia. But the key point is that, no matter how different Russia might have been from other European states in the character of its internal regime (and on this matter, too, there is a lively historical debate), its foreign policy was driven by the same goals as the great powers of Europe—control of territory, resources, and trade routes; defensible borders and geopolitical advantage; and dynastic prestige—and its behavior abroad differed little from that of those powers in the pragmatic, nonideological pursuit of its national interests. For this reason, the other great powers had little difficulty accepting Russia as an integral member of the European system, no matter how they might at times have feared Russian power. In short, Russia was a European great power, not simply a great power operating in Europe.2 Russia’s essential European character did not change during the Cold War—even if, in the guise of the Soviet Union, it emerged as an existential threat to the West. Soviet ideology was grounded in a socialist worldview with deep roots in European thought and tradition. Soviet external behavior fell well within European diplomatic traditions, once the goal of nearterm global revolution was abandoned in practice if not in rhetoric (by the end of the 1920s, at the latest).
Russia’s Insecurity Despite Russia’s history of success, its central role in the European balance-of-power system, and its superpower status during the second half of the twentieth century, it has historically been an insecure power, prone to see powerful enemies along its borders and skeptical of the loyalty of its own population.3 As Tsar Aleksandr III once quipped over a century ago, “Russia has no friends but its army and navy.” The sources of this insecurity were twofold. The first was Russia’s geopolitical setting. Russia’s borders have been unsettled and contested, even
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As Vladimir Putin prepares to return to the presidency in the 2012 elections, the prospects for Russia’s future are unclear. Russia in 2020 brings together leading experts from Russia, the United States, and Europe to analyze the possible scenarios for Russia’s development in the next decade and the risks that lie ahead. Despite Putin’s imminent return, the authors believe that the so-called Putin era is over. This does not mean that Putin will soon give up power, but the political and economic system he created is incapable of dealing with Russia’s rapidly changing conditions. Crises are likely unavoidable unless Russia changes and modernizes. MARIA LIPMAN i s a n e x p e r t i n t h e S o c i e t y a n d R e g i o n s P ro g r a m a t t h e C a r n e g i e M o s c o w C e n t e r a n d e d i t o r o f t h e C e n t e r ’s P ro et Contra journal. She has had a monthly op-ed column in the Wa s h i n g t o n P o s t s i n c e 2 0 0 1 . NIKOLAY PETROV i s a s c h o l a r- i n - re s i d e n c e i n t h e S o c i e t y a n d R e g i o n s P ro g r a m a t t h e C a r n e g i e M o s c o w C e n t e r.