Page 20 - bne_newspaper_March_31_2017

Opinion
March 31, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
Taken separately, all of these factors – angry teen- agers, law enforcement forces with little account- ability, criminals in places of power and influence, a tolerance of violence, a climate of anger as promoted by the media and economic instability – may not mean much.
But look at them all together and you see a recipe for violence – for things going out of control ran- domly and quickly. And this is all besides the fact that Russia has an entire region, the North Cau- casus region, that has exported and capitalised on violence for some time now.
Any protesters' deaths would be a blow to the Kremlin’s credibility and legitimacy. There is a rea- son why Putin was said to have been shocked and angered by Nemtsov’s murder. Putin has cultivated the image of a strong, masculine leader who is fully in control – random violence threatens this image.
More restrictive legislation, coupled with more ag- gressive domestic propaganda, is therefore likely on the cards. The idea is that if you discourage the people from taking to the streets in the first place, you are more likely to stave off any unpleasant incidents.
This plan worked for the Russian government in the wake of the earlier cycle of protests, but it remains to be seen whether it will work again. What’s glaringly obvious is that a system that has
one man as a consensus figure – and that figure, for the majority of Russians, is Putin – is insecure and inefficient to begin with.
It’s no accident that many members of Russia’s working class protest to Putin directly – they trust him and have zero trust in their local officials. But even if Putin retains his position until he’s 100 years old while continuing to retain his popularity, one person cannot run around putting out various fires.
And if Putin is able to pull a brilliant consensus figure of a successor out of a hat, the system’s flaws will remain, even though the tolerance for those flaws will decrease over time. The demise of the Soviet Union should have certainly taught everyone that lesson.
Insecurity and inefficiency, meanwhile, breed political unpredictability on all levels, widening the gulf between citizens and officials, and undermin- ing the legitimacy of local government institutions. To put it in plain terms, things in Russia are likely to get ugly before they get better. I would love to be proven wrong, of course, but would like to err on the side of pessimism for now.
Natalia Antonova is a writer and journalist. She works as associate editor of openDemocracy Russia, co-founded the Anti-Nihilist Institute, and tweets as @NataliaAntonova.