The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy (49 page)

1
Putin was stationed in Dresden:
David Hoffman, “Putin’s Career Rooted in Russia’s KGB,”
Washington Post
, January 30, 2000.

2
It kept secret files:
Michael Meyer,
The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
(New York: Scribner, 2009), p. 25.

3
stretch almost seven miles:
Hoffman, “Putin’s Career.”

4
According to the regime’s own records:
Meyer,
Year That Changed the World
, p. 25.

5
Putin was shocked at how “totally invasive”:
Quotations from Putin reflecting on his life in Dresden and the collapse of the Soviet Empire come from Vladimir Putin,
First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President
(New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 77. This book is a unique volume. It is the only work I know in which Putin speaks candidly about himself and his past. Put together by three experienced Russian journalists—Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov—the book is purely a transcript of their interviews with Putin on the eve of his first term in office. Putin sat for the interviews on six occasions for four hours each time. He was still a political novice at the time and had not yet learned not to speak to journalists.

6
These reports documented the rising demands:
Charles S. Maier,
Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 106.

7
There was a run on Dresden banks:
Meyer,
Year That Changed the World
, p. 165.

8
crowds tried to fight their way onto trains:
Ibid., p. 124. For more on the mounting protests in Dresden, see Maier,
Dissolution
, p. 145.

9
“He who does not regret”:
Pierre Hassner, “Russia’s Transition to Autocracy,”
Journal of Democracy
19, no. 2 (April 2008), p. 11.

10
“stability, certainty, and the possibility of planning”:
Clifford G. Gaddy and Andrew C. Kuchins, “Putin’s Plan,”
Washington Quarterly
(Spring 2008), p. 121.

11
Putin began with the oligarchs:
For an authoritative account of Russia’s leading oligarchs, see David Hoffman,
The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
(New York: Public Affairs, 2002).

12
Putin brought the media to heel:
For an excellent overview of how the media has become a tool of the Kremlin, see Maria Lipman, “Media Manipulation and Political Control,” Chatham House paper, January 2009.

13
roughly 93 percent of all media outlets:
Fraser Cameron, “Dead-End Russia,”
New York Times
, February 11, 2010. It is not, however, easy to reduce the Kremlin’s control of the media to neat percentages. For example, Ekho Moskvy, a Moscow radio station that offers a critical view of political and social issues, is owned by Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the state-run gas firm.

14
the directors of the three major TV channels every Friday:
Mikhail Fishman and Konstantin Gaaze,
Russian Newsweek
, August 4, 2008.

15
they engineered space for a small handful of opposition parties:
For more on the Kremlin’s creation of opposition parties, see Luke March, “Managing Opposition in a Hybrid Regime: Just Russia and Parastatal Opposition,”
Slavic Review
68, no. 3 (Fall 2009).

16
“the most different strata”:
Gaddy and Kuchins, “Putin’s Plan,” p. 121.

17
According to the Russian journal
Ekspert: Nikolay Petrov, Maria Lipman, and Henry E. Hale, “Overmanaged Democracy in Russia: Governance Implications of Hybrid Regimes,” Carnegie Paper, no. 106, February 2010, p. 26.

18
“What’s the difference between communism and Putinism?”:
Boris Nemtsov, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

19
“Putin has created a kind of dream”:
Ilya Yashin, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

20
“They don’t want to lose control”:
Alexander Verkhovsky, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

21
“90 percent of the civil laws”:
Sergei Popov, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

22
an onerous 2006 law:
C. J. Chivers, “Kremlin Puts Foreign NGO’s on Notice,”
New York Times
, October 20, 2006. For a more detailed analysis, see Graeme B. Robertson, “Managing Society: Protest, Civil Society, and Regime in Putin’s Russia,”
Slavic Review
68, no. 3 (Fall 2009), p. 540.

23
the Ministry of Justice led 13,381 NGO inspections:
Human Rights Watch,
An Uncivil Approach to Civil Society: Continuing State Curbs on Independent
NGOs and Activists in Russia
(New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009), p. 32.

24
A slew of foreign human rights organizations:
Chivers, “Kremlin Puts Foreign NGO’s on Notice.” At the time, I was employed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which had long had an office in Moscow. Although the Carnegie Endowment came under considerable scrutiny by authorities, it was not suspended.

25
Putin followed this law with a 2008 decree:
Human Rights Watch,
Uncivil Approach
, p. 16.

26
it takes roughly two months to register an NGO:
Ibid., p. 27.

27
the authorities intend to have two thousand of these offices:
Popov, interview.

28
this body is a consultative forum:
Robertson, “Managing Society,” p. 541.

29
“The Public Chamber is
allowed
to be critical”:
Tanya Lokshina, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

30
United Russia announced a new center:
Paul Goble, “United Russia Revives Another CPSU Tradition—Watching Officials in the Regions for Moscow,”
Window on Eurasia
(blog), July 31, 2010.

31
“There are a lot of instruments of control”:
Author interview with Moscow activist, Moscow, April 2010.

32
The European University in St. Petersburg learned this lesson:
Author interview with Moscow activist, Moscow, April 2010. See also Human Rights Watch,
Uncivil Approach
, p. 56.

33
“interference by a foreign quasi-government”:
Human Rights Watch,
Uncivil Approach
, p. 56.

34
“The term ‘Gongolization’ was invented”:
Author interview with State Department official, Washington, D.C., January 2010.

35
“The only message from his press conference”:
Lokshina, interview.

36
“The activity of an NGO is not really possible”:
Alexander Brod, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

37
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists:
Committee to Protect Journalists,
Getting Away with Murder: 2011 Impunity Index
(New York: Committee to Protect Journalists, 2011).

38
“We sat at my kitchen table talking”:
Tanya Lokshina, “Another Voice Silenced in Russia,”
Washington Post
, July 17, 2009.

39
he unexpectedly told a crowd of Washington policy wonks:
Robert Coalson, “Behind the Estonia Cyberattacks,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 6, 2009.

40
“We have no competition inside the party”:
Sergei Markov, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

41
autocracies and democracies have developed at the same rate:
Joseph T. Siegle, Michael M. Weinstein, and Morton H. Halperin, “Why Democracies Excel,”
Foreign Affairs
, September/October 2004, p. 59.

42
when South Korea was a developing authoritarian state:
Yun-Hwan Kim, “The Role of Government in Export Expansion in the Republic of Korea: A Revisit,” Asian Development Bank, EDRC Series, February 1994,
www.adb.org/Documents/EDRC/Reports/rs61.pdf
.

43
oil and gas accounted for 70 percent:
Russian Federation Federal State Statistics Service, Commodity Structure of Exports of the Russian Federation,
www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b09_12/IssWWW.exe/stg/d02/26-08.htm
.

44
it kept state employment at a relatively lean 12.5 percent:
Tianlun Jian, “Priority of Privatization in Economic Reforms: China and Taiwan Compared with Russia” (paper at the Harvard Institute for International Development),
www.cid.harvard.edu/hiid/566.pdf
.

45
state-owned enterprises employ nearly 40 percent of workers:
Carsten Sprenger, “State-Owned Enterprises in Russia” (presentation at the OECD Roundtable on Corporate Governance of SOEs, October 27, 2008),
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/23/31/42576825.pdf
.

46
Russia’s annual spending per high school student: Education at a Glance 2007
, OECD report, September 18, 2007, p. 173,
www.oecd.org/document/30/0,3343,en_2649_39263238_39251550_1_1_1_1,00.html#data
.

47
Graft erases roughly one-third:
Ira Iosebashvili and William Mauldin, “Russia’s Economic Czar Tackles Deficit, Bureaucracy,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 23, 2010.

48
the number of billionaires in Russia:
“Forbes List Sees Russian Billionaire Numbers Double,” BBC, April 16, 2010.

49
The national economy contracted almost 8 percent:
Paul Abelsky, “Russian GDP May Grow 4.5% in Bumpy Recovery, World Bank Says,”
Bloomberg Businessweek
, June 16, 2010.

50
“Practically, we can say”:
Gleb Pavlovsky, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

51
learning about Western democracy promotion:
For more on Pavlovsky, see Andrew Wilson,
Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005).

52
“You should understand the mechanism”:
Markov, interview.

53
Lunch with Mintusov can reportedly cost:
Wilson,
Virtual Politics
, p. 50.

54
“He pointed to the budget for research”:
Igor Mintusov, interview with author, Washington, D.C., April 2010.

55
“The electoral district where I voted showed”:
Sergei Mitrokhin, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

56
Medvedev went before television cameras:
Clifford J. Levy, “President Pick Would Name Putin Premier,”
New York Times
, December 12, 2007.

57
“What is Putin’s main dream?”:
Nemtsov, interview. 41
it wasn’t as if he had any vision:
Author interview with Medvedev adviser, Moscow, April 2010.

58
“we will be able to maintain the course”:
Clifford J. Levy, “Putin Protégé Secures Election Victory,”
New York Times
, March 3, 2008.

59
“As a rule, the skeptics”:
Arseny Roginsky, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

60
peppered with criticism for the political system:
Vidya Ram, “Medvedev’s Mea Culpa,”
Forbes
, September 11, 2009.

61
“Our state is the biggest employer”:
Daniel Treisman,
The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev
(New York: Free Press, 2011), p. 141.

62
66
percent did not believe his reforms:
“Most Russians Expect No Results from Medvedev’s Reforms,”
Ria Novosti
, May 2, 2010.

63
38
percent of his presidential orders:
Michael Bohm, “Dmitry Gets No Respect,”
Moscow Times
, March 26, 2010.

64
it wasn’t as if he had many centers of support:
Treisman,
Return
, p. 144.

65
“You can see the whole tactics”:
Grigory Shvedov, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

66
the Kremlin didn’t need “brown-nosers”:
Anna Nemtsova, “Beset by a Million Bureaucrats,”
Newsweek
, February 21, 2010.

67
the institute released a report:
Ellen Barry, “Research Group’s Report Urges Radical Changes in Russia,”
New York Times
, February 4, 2010.

68
“Our main goal is as a provocation”:
Evgeny Gontmakher, interview with author, Moscow, April 2010.

69
he reminded those assembled that Franklin Roosevelt:
“Vladimir Putin’s Valdai Vision,”
Economist
, September 7, 2010.

70
Putin’s thirteen-hundred-mile drive across Siberia:
Amy Knight, “The Concealed Battle to Run Russia,”
New York Review of Books
, January 13, 2011.

71
“Any leader who occupies a post”:
Neil Buckley, Charles Clover, and John Thornhill, “Medvedev Rules Out Poll Tussle with Putin,”
Financial Times
, June 19, 2011.

72
“I think the chance for Medvedev”:
Nemtsov, interview.

73
“I think it would be correct”:
“Russia’s Putin Set to Return as President in 2012,” BBC, September 24, 2011.

74
“Nothing can stop us”:
A video clip of Putin’s remarks is available at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ynB2CjtXhQ
.

75
75
percent of Russians still did not plan:
“Time to Shove Off,”
Economist
, September 10, 2011.

76
In his first televised response:
Putin also could not resist the opportunity to insult the protesters, comparing the white ribbons they had pinned to their clothes to limp condoms.