The Real Russia. Today. Putin gets more credit for Russia's failings, Zolotov's sausages make more headlines, and Stanovaya parses United Russia's future

Thursday, December 13, 2018

This day in history. On December 13, 1989, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union formed in opposition to the Soviet Communist Party (roughly three months before the USSR's multi-party system was technically legalized). LDPSS wasn't formally registered until April 1991. A year later, it was renamed the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

• Half of Russians now say Vladimir Putin is responsible for the country's problems, according to a new poll
• Kashin and Navalny are at each other's throats over Zolotov's sausages
• Russian lawmakers move forward with legislation making it illegal to recruit minors for unpermitted protests
• Evgeny Karasyuk says Mike Pompeo was essentially right about Russian bombers in Venezuela
• Tatyana Stanovaya says United Russia's future isn't as clear as it would like
• Elizaveta Nesterova reports from Yekaterinburg about a mother's stand against her ‘HIV dissident’ family

The buck stops here 📈

For only the third time in Putin’s presidency, more than half the country currently holds him responsible for Russia’s problems and the rising cost of living, according to a new poll by the Levada Center. Late last month, 55 percent of the country said Putin is to blame for these trends. (Sociologists recorded previous spikes in August 2012, at 51 percent, and in August 2014, at 65 percent.)

Only 37 percent of the country says Putin’s cabinet is responsible for the nation’s problems, 21 percent blame Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev specifically, 13 percent blame the governors and local officials, and just five percent blame big business.

Ironically, the same number of Russians — 55 percent — also credit Putin with the country’s economic success and rising prosperity. Just 13 percent attribute this progress to his cabinet and only four percent credit Medvedev.

Nearly two thirds of Russians say they doubt the country is likely to see mass protests against falling living standards or political repression, though 30 percent of the Levada Center’s respondents claimed that they’re currently ready to join demonstrations. Eighty percent of Russians say they’ve noticed protests in their neighborhoods in the past three months.

Sausage party 🌭

Columnist Oleg Kashin and anti-corruption activist and politician Alexey Navalny are at each other’s throats this week, following Kashin’s latest op-ed in Republic, where he speculates that Russia’s Federal Security Service leaked data from its investigation into corruption at the National Guard to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. Kashin says Navalny might have received this information anonymously, meaning that even he might be unaware about its origins, and the data could have come from anyone in the government: from a frustrated secretary at the Federal Antimonopoly Service to the very head of the FSB, perhaps wishing to “fight in silence.”

In any event, Kashin says National Guard head Viktor Zolotov must have known about the federal investigations into his agency, and this is presumably why he recently challenged Navalny to a “duel,” in the hopes of shifting the Kremlin’s focus from an FSB investigation to a more sympathetic battle against “unashamed oppositionist-slanderers.” (Kashin insists that Zolotov is institutionally weak and vulnerable to attacks from other law enforcement agencies.)

Navalny is naturally unhappy about Kashin’s suggestion that the Anti-Corruption Foundation acts as a front for the FSB in Russia’s institutional warfare. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Navalny dismissed Kashin as a has-been writer who relies on clickbait essays to fund his expensive lifestyle as an emigre in London, echoing some of the criticism against Kashin and Republic recently voiced by Yevgenia Albats, after Kashin criticized a crowdfunding drive that miraculously saved her magazine, The New Times, from bankruptcy. (Albats objected to Kashin’s “Nazi-type” mockery of Ukrainian culture in an interview with Echo of Moscow.)

Navalny also insists that the Anti-Corruption Foundation unearthed the National Guard’s corruption independently, arguing that his team’s research is far broader than the reported investigations by the FSB and Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office, which are apparently limited to purchases of sausages and hot dogs at inflated prices.

This week, Kashin invited additional ridicule from across Russia’s liberal intelligentsia by appearing on the Rossiya 1 state television network on Wednesday, where he made hawkish remarks about Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov. (Less controversially, Kashin also criticized journalist Arkady Babchenko’s “Person of the Year” award from Time magazine.)

On December 13, Russia's National Guard stated that it will conduct an internal audit with the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office and “Russian counterintelligence” to review its food-supply purchases between 2017 and 2018. The agency's press release also lashes out at “manipulative investigative reports” and defends the company “Friendship of the Peoples,” which Navalny's researchers say belongs to someone with close ties to Viktor Zolotov.

The kids are alright 🚸

Lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma have passed the second reading of legislation that will make it illegal to involve minors in unpermitted public assemblies. First-time offenders convicted under this law will face between 20 and 100 hours of community service, fines as high as 50,000 rubles ($750), or up to 15 days in jail. Repeat offenders will face community service, fines as high as 300,000 rubles ($4,520), or up to 30 days in jail.

Over the past two years, Russian police have repeatedly detained large numbers of youths at unpermitted political demonstrations (mainly at protests organized and promoted by Alexey Navalny).

Opinion and analysis

💸 Karasyuk thinks Pompeo has a point

In an op-ed for Republic, columnist Evgeny Karasyuk says U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was essentially right when he condemned Russia’s decision earlier this week to send bombers to Venezuela as “two corrupt governments squandering public funds.” Karasyuk says Moscow has reduced the federal government’s budget transparency in recent years to fuel rising “expansionism.” (In 2016, “secret and top secret allocations” made up 22 percent of the federal budget.) This trend, Karasyuk argues, highlights the “Soviet spirit” of Russian foreign policy today, as well as the Kremlin’s reluctance to learn from the USSR’s mistakes. “The USSR’s exorbitant geopolitical ambitions and support for marginal regimes across the world left a legacy of multi-billion-dollar, generally irrecoverable debts,” says Karasyuk, adding that Moscow now tries to disguise its losses abroad ($425 million in 2017) as intentional foreign aid.

🗳️ Stanovaya says United Russia's future isn't as clear as it would like

In an article for the Carnegie Moscow Center, political expert Tatyana Stanovaya reviews United Russia’s recent annual congress, arguing that General Council Secretary Andrey Turchak and Kremlin First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko are gradually seizing influence over the party from State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, making United Russia less “personalized” and more “corporate and technocratic.” (This argument recalls analysis by fellow Carnegie commentator Andrey Pertsev, summarized by Meduza in our December 5 newsletter.)

The Kremlin ain’t worried, mostly. Stanovaya says the main takeaway from the December conference is that Vladimir Putin isn’t abandoning United Russia for some alternative (such as the All-Russia People's Front), despite many signals that the ruling party’s days might finally be numbered. (For example, more and more prominent members — like Putin, Sergey Sobyanin in Moscow, Oleg Kozhemyako in Primorye, and maybe Alexander Beglov in St. Petersburg — have been running for office as independents, as United Russia’s popularity has plummeted, following pension reforms.) Putin’s speech at the congress, Stanovaya says, demonstrated that independent campaigns are merely a “tactical method” and not a prelude to the end of United Russia’s electoral monopoly.

According to Stanovaya, the Kremlin doesn’t actually view United Russia’s recent gubernatorial defeats as grounds for major institutional reforms (though party infighting is achieving exactly this). The one problem area United Russia seems to acknowledge is public speaking — specifically the rising number of “tactless and cynical” outbursts by party members. Officials want to address this issue through “educational measures” designed to reduce the number of stupid public comments by officials, and also by enforcing more “modest lifestyles” that are less likely to cause scandals and alienate constituents (though such expectations will tax the loyalty of some members who have grown accustomed to the good life).

Infighting is what really fuels changes within United Russia. Stanovaya is convinced that Kiriyenko and Turchak are slowly chipping away at Volodin’s hold on power within United Russia. She says Kiriyenko is building “cultivation mechanisms” (“like in an incubator”) to gain control over the party without going “head to head” against Volodin (because open personnel warfare would upset Putin’s wishes for “less noise and more work”). Kiriyenko’s “corporate” approach to governance relies on “neutral, faceless, and easily replaceable Mr. Smiths,” and the long forgotten Boris Gryzlov (longtime chairman of United Russia’s Supreme Council) is Kiryenko’s ace in the hole.

Andrey Turchak, meanwhile, has accrued significant autonomy during the Kiriyenko-Volodin infighting, surrounding himself with allies and taking control over new party procedures and systems that will grant him influence over all legislative initiatives and give him the chance to “rate” all deputies with an eye to party lists in 2021.

Where does this leave United Russia? Stanovaya says the party will maintain its direct ties to Putin, but they won’t be ideological so much as a technocratic commitment to fulfilling the president's “May Orders” for more social spending. This will squeeze the party elite between Putin and Russia’s increasingly hostile electorate, encouraging politicians to look more frequently to their own disgruntled constituents.

What it takes to beat ‘HIV dissidents’ 🤰

In a story for CodaRU, journalist Elizaveta Nesterova reports from Yekaterinburg about a woman who contracted HIV from her unfaithful husband and is now secretly taking antiviral medication to fight the disease without alerting her “HIV dissident” spouse and relatives. Nesterova’s story offers a snapshot of Russian gender inequality (the woman at the center of the article is attacked by her husband when she proposes HIV testing late in the third trimester of her pregnancy) and the enormous social pressures mothers face in communities that cling to superstitions denying the existence of HIV and AIDS.

The article follows 27-year-old “Marina” and her abusive, neglectful husband, “Sergey,” who spends most of his time working in Moscow (and apparently sleeping around). Despite a total lack of support from her family, Marina decides to seek testing and treatment, thanks to advice and financial assistance from her close friend, “Nina.” Nesterova also found that Marina buys her antiviral medication through the Internet, ignoring more affordable generic medicines for fear of supply disruptions. An AIDS Center physician in Moscow told CodaRU that is an unnecessary measure, though some patients reportedly take “special combination pills” to disguise their medication as vitamins, to hide their treatment from relatives.