HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

This means that all Russia can do is simply try to be not only a democracy, but the most advanced democratic society possible, using the newest political technologies to make this happen. One of the problems is that we don’t really have anywhere to observe how others have done this. We are doomed once again to become a country of social and political invention. Yet again! And this isn’t because we would want it to be so. It’s simply that other countries have time on their side; they can use the political capital they already have, but we can’t do that in Russia. We are as we are, which means that we have to build a democratic system virtually from scratch, in a completely new way, taking into account our fears and our risks, trusting to our own intuition rather than basing it on the experience of others. Certain liberal, westernised, Russians don’t appreciate this. They put too much hope in the approaches that have been developed in Europe.

In addition to the “mandatory programme” of democracy, which boils down primarily to the competent implementation of “institutional reforms”, needed to destroy the Russian system of autocracy by the division of powers, Russia is facing a huge democratic “arbitrary programme”, the success of which will depend to a certain extent on how well it’s carried out. This programme will not be simple. The level of difficulty of the democratic system should be suitable for the level of difficulty of modern society.

I’ll allow myself a comparison. The same principle operates in both a small trading enterprise and a gigantic international corporation. The shareholders make the main decisions based on the majority of votes. But the manner of determining the rights of the majority differs in each firm. A gigantic multi-profile corporation can’t operate in the same way that a small shop does. It has in place a multitude of special mechanisms to guard against most mistakes (in practice, the most common ones). These are mechanisms that guarantee the rights of the majority, but prevent them from halting the work of the enterprise and abusing these rights.

The same is true in a state. Democracy is a very complicated system, perhaps even more complicated then authoritarianism, and one that is always tailor-made for a particular country at a particular moment in time.

Creating such a system for a huge, territorially and culturally diverse country like Russia, with its huge differences in nature and climate, is not easy. This gives rise to the idea that we must experiment with different parliamentary systems, allow asymmetry, and to take as many decisions as possible to the lowest level; decentralise everything that can be decentralised. We have to start from the idea that there’s never been a genuine, classic party system in Russia, and there never will be. Therefore, we’ll build the electoral mechanism around something else – something that’s now replacing traditional parties.

We have to prepare for all of this now, opening up the discussion on the political format of the future Russian democracy, and not leaving the search for a solution until later; because there won’t be time “later”. And this shouldn’t be just empty incantations about the benefits of democracy, nor idle chatter about its general principles.

This must be a discussion about the details, involving specialists and as wide a group of interested parties as possible. After all, the authoritarian devil hides in the democratic detail. This is what we saw in the “very best” Constitution in 1993. We mustn’t allow ourselves to repeat that mistake.

Chapter 16. The Economic Choice:

Monopoly or Competition?

You have only to mention the word “monopoly”, and even more so, “competition”, and all those who aren’t connected in any way to economics or business immediately lose interest, and sigh, “there you go again!” A natural monopoly, unnatural privileges… “How much more are you going to bang on about it?! Everyone knows that monopoly is bad and competition is good.” But it turns out there’s a reason for this. Monopoly and competition don’t refer to the economy. Well, to be more precise, they do, of course, refer to the economy, but only slightly. More significantly they refer to a lifestyle and a way of thinking. In essence, we’re talking here about two different ways of looking at the whole social structure. So it’s about politics, the society and also ideology.