MOSCOW — August was a fateful month for the Russian authorities. There was a terrorist explosion in Pushkin Square, then the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk, and, on August 27, the Ostankino television tower caught fire. What happened to the tower is symbolic of the state that Russia is in.
The tower was built in 1967 and, at the time, exemplified the highest achievements of Soviet technology. Most of the industrial equipment now in use in Russia was produced in the 1960s, when the USSR seriously rivalled the US on the technological plane, and when its growth rates outstripped those of the West.
From the 1970s, Soviet growth rates went into an uninterrupted decline, and throughout the 1980s the pace of technological renewal slowed. With the beginning of neo-liberal reforms, investment in replacing worn-out equipment virtually ceased. Lacking funds for modernisation, the new owners simply ran the machines into the ground, working them until they fell to pieces.
Each year, the fall in the value of Russia's basic productive assets has been around 8%. This trend has not changed even with the economic growth that began in 1999. In the first place, most of the rise in GDP simply reflects the increase in world oil prices, and is not linked to increases in production. Secondly, even where new equipment is put into operation, it is simply hooked up to old equipment which remains in use; there is no comprehensive modernisation.
Impending collapse
Well-known economist Grigory Hanin, writing in the September 25, 1999, Novye Izvestia, noted that within 10 years "almost nothing will remain of Russia's economy".
In the Ostankino television tower, new electronic equipment had been continually fastened onto the increasingly decrepit equipment. The result was that its wiring could not carry the excessive current.
Early this year, I published an article in Novaya Gazeta entitled "Wear and Tear". I predicted that Russia would face technological catastrophes. Unfortunately, the prediction is being fulfilled.
As Komsomolskaya Pravda observer Yevgeniya Anisimova put it on August 29, "We have come too close to the threshold beyond which ungovernable processes begin. Complex technology is about to start going berserk on a massive scale. If, that is, the process has not already begun."
The Ostankino fire revealed that Russia did not have the means of extinguishing a blaze at a great height. The power ministries and the fire service, after conferring for many hours, proved to be incapable of putting out the fire.
With the highest television tower in Europe being completely burned out, residents of Moscow and Moscow province were left without television. Numerous pager companies could no longer operate. The armed forces also suffered. Among the systems put out of action was one that had been used to maintain communications with Russian forces in Chechnya. Back-up systems that had been prepared in Soviet times for the possibility of a major war all turned out to be non-operational.
The television companies have lost millions of dollars due to the cancellation of advertising contracts, not to mention the equipment that was destroyed. To restore the tower to working order will be virtually impossible, and there is no money to build a new one. Every day that television is off air, the losses of the media barons mount, and the panic among the bureaucrats grows stronger.
For the Russian authorities, television is the main method of political and social control. The inability of the country's leaders to maintain the normal functioning of the broadcasting system, which is so vital for them, testifies to the depth of the regime's crisis.
Weak state?
It is often considered that the state in Russia today is weak. This is wrong. The Russian state is not weak, but irresponsible — in relation to its citizens and to its social obligations, which it lacks the decisiveness to renounce openly. The present state corresponds fully to the economy and society Russia now possesses.
Russia is no longer a superpower. From being an industrially developed country (even if not the world's most efficient economy), Russia is turning into a classical "raw materials appendage" of the West, into part of the periphery of the capitalist world system.
In these circumstances, it is simply absurd to demand that the state and the government again meet the Soviet standards (while, this time, guaranteeing respect for human rights and freedoms). In its number of bureaucrats, in its diverse range of police structures and in the readiness of these structures to use coercion, today's "democratic" Russia not only concedes nothing to the USSR, but surpassed it long ago.
What Russia needs is not a "strong state" but social reforms that would ensure greater equality and structural transformations to stimulate the development of an economy oriented toward the development of manufacturing industry instead of the export of raw materials, and which would allow the population access to modern information technologies.
However, such reforms are not needed by Russia's new elites, since this would mean the end of their prosperous existence. As a result, no-one is going to implement such reforms, or even seriously discuss them. The powerful state machine serves the interests of the elites, and is indissolubly bound up with them.
The notion of the "weak state" works to the advantage of precisely those people who have led the country into a dead end. Strengthening the state means an even greater strengthening of their power, a reinforcement of the structures and procedures through which Russia is being transformed into an "Upper Volta with rockets".
From the past, Russia's authorities inherited not just an army, but also a powerful propaganda system which they strengthened still further, combining the old Soviet "brain-washing" methods with the newest US advertising techniques.
Privatising the mass media did not make the media free, but subjected them to the control of a handful of oligarchs, most of them linked to the Kremlin.
Putin's role
Putin has become the symbol of the bureaucracy, the figurehead of the supporters of the police state. However, the experience of the past month has shown that in Russia the president cannot be merely a symbol and a figurehead.
Putin has been depicted as a "strong leader", a resolute politician, but he was and remains a middle-ranking bureaucrat completely lacking his own will and political initiative. If Putin had had such qualities, he would never have become president. Yeltsin never tolerated politicians with ambition in his vicinity.
Yeltsin entrusted Putin with the job of president, in the way subordinates are entrusted with bureaucratic tasks. Any person with a sense of dignity, with intelligence and boldness, would have found the strength to refuse. Putin, as petty bureaucrats are supposed to do, simply replied: "Yes, Mr President".
Putin's weakness as a politician has had to be covered over with arguments about his supposed strength; his lack of self-confidence, with a lie about his steadfastness; and his fear of the future, with a demonstration of courage before the television cameras.
Yeltsin at times put on a guise of weakness, playing the idiot, and this ploy saved him more than once. The president's "weakness" merely served as a cover for his complete civic irresponsibility. Whenever the question of power presented itself, whenever the interests of the ruling group needed to be defended, Yeltsin proved to be unexpectedly strong.
Yeltsin understood that he would not prevail without the support of the regional elites. The centralised government had collapsed, and in the regions, local interest groups had coalesced. Yeltsin made continual, demonstrative concessions to the regional elites. When the question of power arose, the regional elites (even those that had considered themselves as part of the opposition) lined up beneath his banner, since they recognised that to confront the Kremlin directly was too dangerous.
The numerous oligarchs feuded with one another, and Yeltsin skilfully set some against others, then acted as the neutral arbiter. It was only toward the end of Yeltsin's reign that this method of rule began to break down. Yeltsin began to show a preference for the clan headed by his own daughter. This destroyed the system of checks and balances that he had painstakingly constructed during eight years in power.
When the Kremlin team and the oligarchs allied with them replaced Yeltsin with Putin, they thought they had replaced an ageing, increasingly feeble autocrat with a young and energetic leader. At the same time, they wanted a leader devoid of initiative in the areas that might affect their interests or disturb the existing equilibrium.
The Russian elite acquired a leader who was not only too weak to accept responsibility for his actions, but who also took all his cues from his entourage.
In order to rule a country, it is not enough to provide the president with cue cards and write the scenarios for his television clips. Especially since, as the events of August show, nothing in Russia is guaranteed, even the ability of the government to lie to the country on television.
In substituting Putin for Yeltsin, the Russian elite has acquired a leader too weak to become a full-blown dictator, but also too feeble and inexperienced to play at democracy. The elite are unable either to respect civil liberties or to impose a dictatorship. With each day, the impotence of the regime becomes more obvious.
BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY