The Pussy Riot trial police dog. No doubt soon to be the Presidential Plenipotentiary to the Northwestern Federal District…
So, two years for each of the three Pussy Riot defenders — conveniently enough less than the three demanded by the prosecution (so this counts as the “leniency” for which Putin called), and meaning that, with time off for good behavior, they can be out before the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Vast amounts of attention will be given this in the media and the blogosphere, so let me confine myself to wondering just why the Kremlin went ahead with this trial and — because I have no belief that this case was not wholly politically-staged — decided on such a penalty.
I may not often agree with the Kremlin’s calculations and solutions, but I certainly don’t believe Putin and his cohorts are fools or unthinking autocrats. They do what they do for reasons. The only plausible reason for this case is that it is meant to be an example.
First of all, an example to current and potential opposition activists. No doubt everyone will be hailing the bravery of the three very composed and impressive members of the band, but I can’t help but wonder whether they would have made their performance had they known they faced a couple of years in a (generally nasty and dangerous) Russian prison? Quite possibly so, but most of us are not heroes, and for all the negative feedback internationally and within liberal circles in Russia, it may well be that the Kremlin is assuming that the sentences will, after a few hours or days of outrage, have a chilling effect on most of the protesters. It’s possible that they are right. States rarely fall to pressure from outside and below so long as their elites are united and they retain and demonstrate the will and ability to deploy coercion. Remember Tienanmen Square?
The question remains, though, whether the Kremlin really has that will and ability. If this one case and the associated treatment of those protesting outside the court does cow the opposition, or at least enough of it that the Navalnys and Udaltsovs begin to look marginal, then it will have done its job. But what if it does not? In what is singularly bad timing for the Kremlin, the opposition has for some time planned to rally on Sunday, in commemoration of the failure of the hard-liners’ 1991 ‘August Coup.’ It will be interesting to see what kind of turnout that gets, and the mood of protesters and authorities alike.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Kremlin has the stomach for any mass crackdown. Nor, for that matter, is it showing any practical signs of preparing for one. Like everything else in life, will must be backed with logistics, from making sure you have lots of handcuffs and detention spaces available to getting your forces ready — and I see no evidence of any of this.
But I also think this is an example to the elite and Kremlin support bases – including the Church. In my opinion, this was not a case the state should have built into such a cause celebre, making international icons out of Pussy Riot. However, there is a case to be made that if you keep giving ground, deciding this particular battle is not worth fighting in the big picture, there is a danger that as well as emboldening your enemies, you dishearten your friends. It is worth restating that the urban middle class protesters do not speak for a silent majority (yet: there is still scope for that to change, but it won’t be the right to make ugly music in a Church that becomes a cross-class rallying cry). From the Uralvagonzavod tank workers offering to come to Moscow and sort out the protesters, through the Cossacks Krasnodar governor Tkachev wants to keep migrants in check, to those ordinary folk who gave Putin an overall majority in the first presidential election round. And, of course, those beneficiaries of the status quo who do not want to see change which might lose them their comfortable niches, their opportunities for embezzlement, etc.
Sometimes politicians have to do dumb things to “play to their base.” It is not that you fear your base will vote for the other guy, it is that you don’t want those people deciding not to both voting, donating, organizing, etc for you. To fail to support the Russian Orthodox Church (which is a significant, if second-rank player within the power elite), would also have been problematic. In a situation such as Russia’s, where there is already concern about the future, where elements within the elite are toying with whether to prepare to deal with the opposition or even get out of Russia, then signs of irresolution from the Kremlin might make them all the more worried. It is a very human thing to prefer our leaders to be strong but stupid rather than unsure.
But I think there may be a third audience: the outside world. I have no evidence for this, but given Putin’s psychology, his tendency to strike back when challenged, I do wonder whether the very scale of the West’s condemnation of the trial might have helped ensure that the defendants were in for a prison sentence rather than a suspended one or a fine or the like. From the Kremlin’s perspective, the West is frankly hypocritical in which causes it raises and which it does not. This doesn’t just mean cases such as (pre-civil war) Syria compared with Bahrain, I even had one conservative-minded Russian from the security world grumble about why the USA in particular is so exercised by the Magnitsky Bill but doesn’t bat an eye at all those disappearances in the North Caucasus…
But also Putin’s experiences with the West are that if he takes a tough enough line he gets away with anything. Chechnya? It’ll blow over. Shut off gas supplies into Ukraine and Europe. Ah, they’ll still buy. War with Georgia? Don’t worry, there will be a reset along shortly. Sadly, we may even have conditioned him to believe that a hard line is safer than a soft one. I certainly don’t think this is a key issue, but I suspect it may have helped tilt the balance. If the West needed to be reminded that they don’t get to influence Kremlin policy, Putin was willing to oblige.
