HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

From a practical point of view, the success of the transformation will greatly depend not only on the effectiveness of the Constituent Assembly, but also on the competence of the government that takes over on day one of the revolution, and that will rule the country until a permanent government takes office following free and fair elections. This temporary government must be capable of closing the gap between the start of the democratic transformation and the point when these democratic changes come into force. Agreeing the goals and the tasks of the temporary government is more important right now than talking about future constitutional innovations. This can be discussed in the Constituent Assembly; but the temporary government won’t have time for that.

The phrase “after Putin” is a rather abstract one. “After Putin” could happen when Putin is still alive; or it could come many years after his death. We must not assume that another “Putin” – or an even worse example – would not come to power when Putin goes. And there could be many such examples. Opponents of the Bolshevik regime predicted its demise nearly every year, but it continued for almost 70 years. It’s a different matter that it won’t go on forever. There will come a time when civil society will be allowed to find its place in the political sphere. That will be the point when the transitional period begins.

To some degree it doesn’t matter who makes the first move, or how they do it. It could be someone from the ranks of the successors who, as Gorbachev did, will declare that, “we cannot go on living like this”, and will start to gradually loosen the screws on society. It might be a “traitor to their own class”, like Yeltsin, who manages to burst through to the highest echelons of power and build “a revolution from above”. It’s not impossible that it could even be a coalition of democratic forces, that carries out “a revolution from below”; although in a police state such as Russia, that, for now, seems unlikely.

Those are three possible scenarios for Russia, three different fates for her; but whichever it is, the first act of this drama will be the same. Out of apparently nothing a government will arise that will start to dismantle the old system, strictly on the top-down principle, and it will bring those “below” (i.e. civil society) into the political process. This government will not have the legitimacy apparently held by the old authorities, nor will it have the freedom of movement to do as it wishes. Its term in office will be brief, but notwithstanding this it will be faced by the most challenging and important task possible: to make the process of transformation irreversible and to save the country from disaster. Its mission will be accomplished when it forms a government with a new constitutional majority.

Judging by the experience of both Russia and other countries, history has shown that two years is the limit of trust that the people will give to democratic forces that begin a reform programme. After that, cracks start to appear, which is only to be expected. At that point, power has to be transferred to a newly-elected government (which rarely will have good relations with its predecessor), or the authorities can try to hold onto power with the help of “revolutionary violence”, overcoming opposition from the population who will now be even more firmly against the reforms.

The second option is what happens most often; but if that path is taken then the government will likely be forced to bid farewell to any plans it had for democracy and leave them until history’s next big event. This is exactly what happened in Russia in 1993, just two years after the overwhelming democratic revolution. Russia received its new Constitution on the back of the tanks which shot up the first parliament of the new Russia. This underlines that, however difficult it might be, it is vital to ensure that the first steps to reform are carried out in those first two years.

So the temporary, democratic government that comes to power after the Putin regime is over will have an historic mission. It will have to re-launch democratic processes in Russia and lay the foundations for a permanent constitutional government; one that is legally elected. The problem, however, is that it will have to carry out this mission in the most extreme circumstances. One of the greatest challenges of a transitional period after any lengthy authoritarian rule is that it is virtually impossible to avoid the economy – and politics in general – going into a nosedive. Thus, another mission for the transitional government (and one that is equally important) is not to allow society to descend into chaos.