"Putin Has A Strong Political Platform," Aubert Claims

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Russia Insights www.russia-insights.com

Feb 29, 2012, 01:13 ET

PARIS, February 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Oscar Aubert, political scientist and expert on West Europe, Russia and CIS, has recently discussed the main issues that face Vladimir Putin, President elect.

Aubert said: "During the election campaign a conversation between Vladimir Putin and system and non-system opposition gradually became a debate about three main issues: National policy; Welfare state; and market economy.

The national policy

Russia, like most European countries, faced with the inability of multiculturalism policy to solve all the problems caused by powerful migration flows. The peculiarity of the Russian situation is that these flows are both external (immigrants from former Soviet republics) and internal (migration from ethnic regions into central regions of Russia) character.

The model, which is introduced by Putin, can be roughly characterized as state patriotism which treats "the Russians" as a political nation, and first of all, as a linguistic-cultural community. But for Russian nationalists that make up a significant number of protesters (especially in Moscow), such an approach is unacceptable. They are led by a popular blogger Alexei Navalny and stand for ethnic nationalism. And there is no doubt that an attempt to implement the slogan "Russia - for Russians!" is quite capable of blasting Russia from the inside...

There are a lot of supporters of this slogan which can be seen from stable results shown by Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia for many years during the parliamentary elections.

The welfare state

Despite the change of social economic formation after the collapse of the USSR Russia maintained a high level of declared social protection of the population.

To make the level of social protection match the capabilities of the economy Vladimir Putin, as the president and as the prime minister, undertook a number of steps unpopular in the Russian society. These steps were the monetization of benefits, creation of the Stabilization Fund from oil super profits (the fund played the role of a major financial damper during the 2008-09 economic crisis) and gradual (approximately by 2015) leveling of gas prices on domestic and foreign markets.

An alternative to Putin's social policy is the policy of the left opposition (in particular, the Communist Party), under which social security should be determined not by means of the economy but by needs of socially vulnerable segments of society. The Russian leftists advocate reduced prices on gas, housing services and medicine. Before the economic downturn they actively demanded to divide the Stabilization Fund between the Russian citizens.

In case of insufficient social allocations there is an eternal formula - "the expropriation of the expropriators", first, in a form of additional taxes and charges for private businesses.

In the "system" part of the political spectrum these views are backed by the Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, in the "non-system" part - by the Left Front brilliant leader Sergei Udaltsov. Before the election Udaltsov became Zyuganov's authorized representative, thus the "distribution" ideas began consolidating the left electorate.

The market economy

Today in the West many people tend to forget that Russia got the status of a country with market economy not in mid 90-s or late 90-s, the era of Yeltsin's liberalism, but in 2002 (EU) and 2003 (USA) under President Vladimir Putin. The share of the public sector in Russia since 2004 has been gradually going down, inflow and outflow of capital to the Russian markets is free.

During the election campaign Vladimir Putin suggested stopping the privatization of strategic objects, which not only the absolute majority of Russians, but also many Western analysts consider to be an outright loot of national property. However, the current owners of this property will have to pay for it...

The main opponents of Vladimir Putin in this issue are Russian liberals, who played an important role under Boris Yeltsin - Mikhail Kasyanov and Boris Nemtsov. However, the debate in the Russian society about the pace of reforms is purely theoretical: in practice, an extremely negative attitude of the absolute majority of Russians towards the reforms of the 90s is shifted on the Liberals.

The new generation of liberals includes the major oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov. But in his campaign he does not focus on the promotion of an ideology, but on the desire of the Russian educated young people to succeed while he presents himself as the symbol of success in the eyes of his supporters.

To sum it up, we can only suggest that our readers should draw a conclusion, whose platform - Vladimir Putin's or his opponents'- meets the Western values more. At the same time the electoral sociology confirms that this platform is supported by the absolute majority of Russians."

Oscar Aubert is a sociologist, political scientist, an expert for West Europe, Russia and CIS

SOURCE Russia Insights www.russia-insights.com