HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

Let me just point out right away that I’m not talking here about restoring  democracy, but about the creation of a social structure that Russia will have for the first time in its history. The right of society to have the decisive voice has never been known here, not in the most liberal, long-gone days (including the short period between the February and Bolshevik Revolutions in 1917 – let’s not confuse anarchy with democracy as a means of organisation), nor in the more turbulent times of recent years, such as the ’nineties.

It is essential that there are no vivid examples of political repression, but this is not of itself a sufficient sign of democracy.

At the end of 1993, after the armed conflict with the supporters of the Supreme Soviet, the Russian political system was deliberately constructed in such a way as to remove the figure of the President from the separation of powers. This was declared – but never happened in practice. In this sense, the Constitution of post-Communist Russia hardly changed from the constitutional laws of the autocratic empire. As a result, this led to the total degradation of statehood in Russia: power became concentrated in the hands of the President and his circle, which led to the establishment of a neo-totalitarian regime.

So the fundamental question for the creation of democracy in Russia is, how do we bring the supreme authority into a system where there is the division of powers, lock it into a method of checks and balances, place the deep state under the control of society, and at the same time do away with its “sacred” significance? This is a purely institutional task, which can – and must be – solved by constitutional and legal ways within the confines of general political reform.

Perhaps in current circumstances the best way to solve this is by switching to parliamentary democracy. Whatever happens, Russia’s political institutions (whatever names they go by) must not be allowed to rise above other political branches of power and gain an authority that is not equal to that of the other branches. This is the only way in which the golden share of democracy can remain in society’s hands, and won’t be seized by gangs close to the supreme leader.

But even if in practice Russia were able to carry out such deep institutional reform, would this make the country a successful and democratic state?

The answer isn’t simple. Democratic? Yes. Successful? No. The reason for this ambiguity lies in the systemic challenges and failures that democracy faces everywhere today; not just in Russia, but around the world, including in the West, democracy’s alma mater . First of all, the electoral mechanisms, which are based on the work of “party machines”, have disappeared. In the developed informational society, political parties have ceased to be the only or even the main instruments for politically motivating the population.

Nowadays, small, mobile groups of activists have become the way of doing this. They may not have strong representation among the mass of the population, but with sufficient resources they are capable of quickly establishing contact with people through modern media, and guiding them in the direction that they want.

This means that the possible sources for providing resources in today’s world are widely differentiated, and it is difficult to establish control even in societies with reliable democratic traditions and stable state institutions.

The meaning of these changes in a functioning democracy is ambiguous. On the one hand, they make the political system more dynamic, adaptive and (naturally) more open. But on the other hand they open up wide possibilities for manipulating public opinion, creating an unhealthy populism and in this way they destroy the very essence of the electoral process. For now it’s not clear how to teach democracy to work in principally new conditions. One thing is very clear: if the best we can do in Russia is simply to build “yesterday’s democracy”, then, despite all the efforts and sacrifices made, it won’t work and the whole project will collapse even before it’s started. And the very idea of democracy will be even more discredited.