Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution - Case Study Example

“Putin Rise to Power and the Previous Inherited Government.” Soviet Union was one of the most powerful countries of its time and which collapsed due to factors that may include poor governance, dictatorship, corruption and failure to win and maintain the trust of the people. Most leaders also rely on military prowess as a means of thumbing their power internally or internationally to win recognition. When Yeltsin the predecessor of Mr. Putin left office, he preferred a leader who would continue ruling Russian the way he did, and the one who would not criticize his administration. These are qualifications that Putin met and agreed to as prerequisite for succeeding Yeltsin. When he came to power, Mr. Putin faced a number of problems, dilemma and obstacles in his presidency. President Putin rose to power when the Chechnya problem was at the peak, high corruption in the government and military, economic meltdown and having to choose between a deal not to criticize the former president and doing whatever he believed was right according to him(Baker and Glasser 117). That time marked the worst time ever for the Russian economy, which required the best leadership skills to maneuver the tide. Putin did not let his citizens down in this one. He made some decisions that though were controversial, ended up saving the Russian economy. In fact, president Putin tried very much to change the governance of Russia from a militarized state to a communist state by moving away from military rule. Most countries believe that by being super-powerful in terms of military might, then their citizens and the country at large can be peaceful. However, this might not be the obvious case going by Gorbachevs new thinking on international relations. He believed that even though not everything can change overnight, people will always have different approaches to certain issues. For peace to prevail is to acknowledge the needs and interests of every person or country and the equality of their equality internationally and then striving to provide them (Gorbachevs). The same sentiments seem to have motivated Putin’s presidency going by some of the decisions he made regarding his leadership. This paper is going to examine the presidency of Putin, the problems he encountered, how he came to power and finally how he dealt with the problems. Mr. Putin’s presidency came at a time when the problem of Chechen rebellion was troubling government and wanted to bring the presidency that recognizes the plight of Chechnya and on the same note not portraying the outgoing President in bad light. This was not the only concern to Putin considering that Russia economy was also at its worse and the foreign policy at it death bed. The previous regime had been operating a very militarized government with many civilians and anybody who dared to oppose or talk ill of the government facing the brutality of the military. This was a style that was loved by the government of Yeltsin under which Chechnya rebellion started (Baker and Glasser 118). For reasons of wanting to protect himself from the criticism of President Putin when he gets to power, former president Yeltsin struck a deal with Mr. Vladimir Putin to allow him retire in peace and comfort. Putin promised not to criticize the government of Yeltsin. The latter was also to return the favor by not criticizing his government. Putin was continuing the government of Yeltsin and was specifically observed in a speech that Mr. Putin read where he hinted at his intention to work with the constitution the way it was. As it was known, the constitution as it was, was a creation of the former president Mr. Yeltsin (Baker and Glasser 117). During Putins presidency, he adopted a different approach to major issues that were disturbing Russia. At the time Putin came to power, Chechnya was fighting a separatist war and this provided a number one problem for Putin to handle. However, just before he was voted into the office, one of the military colonel had terrorized one of the Chechnya villages, abducted an innocent girl raped and killed her after. This was going to derail the efforts of bringing a solution to this kind of animosity. While it was obvious the Colonel Budanov had committed a crime, it was also proving very hard for the administration of Putin to just take a soldier who had been serving the nation very well and jail or sentence him to death. This marked the first dilemma Putin faced considering the pressure he was under to do this as a good faith for the talks with Chechnya to even begin (Baker and Glasser 109). Satisfying both ends proved difficult forcing him to devise ways of trying to buffer the soldier from some charges while giving little justice to the Chechnya. This included subjecting Yuri Budanov to government-manipulated psychiatric test to show he was not normal when he committed the acts (Baker and Glasser 111). This case attracted both local and international media attention and was a way also to win the trust of the international community. However, the behind the scenes play also attracted the interest of some journalist who ended up being murdered. This was going to be the first test of his leadership skills to which I rate was well thought of at this time (Baker and Glasser 118). President Putin found Russia in a condition of high inflation, poor foreign policies, and huge foreign debt. This worsened when he concentrated power in the hands of the state. However, he also maintained the private wing by leaving billions of liquid dollars in the private hands, another r wise move by a leader. He also brought back the religion of Orthodox Christianity choosing to let this co-exist with the already trouble causing Islamic Chechens. At the same time, his social policy failed because of the bureaucratic government policy that prioritized itself at the expense of social needs of the Russians. He is however commended for his efforts to revive Russians economy by clearing the foreign debt using reserve from oil sale thereby putting Russia back to the map which was another wise move as a leader. The problem of Corruption was another one on which Mr. Putin used his leadership skills to handle. The political corruption in Russia is reported to have grown tenfold between 1999 and 2008. This is reported to be catalyzed by a combination of authoritarian rule and huge energy receipts (Lynch 89). It was especially serious during privatization and loans for shares programs in 1990s. He tackled this by allowing the individuals who owned or acquired their wealth through corruption to continue owning them provided they were used for the benefit of the state. This to me was wise especially due to high infiltration of corruption that was even going to be hard recovering. To Putin, what mattered was politics, and so long as these oligarchs stayed out of politics, they were safe with their corruptly acquired wealth. Even though this method may appear appropriate and working, it looked like the president was condoning corruption by allowing corrupt individuals to continue owning such properties. Corruption was indeed was serious resulting in the loss of over half of the $3.5 billion that was to be spent on reconstruction of Chechnya (Baker and Glasser 117). In fact, this acted in a manner to support corruption, which has continued to rock Russia. The corruption allegation that marred the Putin government were also echoed by Mr. Khodorkovsky during the Kremlin conference when he questioned if Mr. Putin the sale of the oil firm Rosneft thereby implying Putins entourage was corrupt. This was not taken kindly by Mr. Putin, who organized his arrest and subsequent jailing (Lynch 85).Transparency International in 2010 ranked Russia as one of the most corrupt countries at number 154 out of the 178 sampled countries. He however, tried to fight this vice by forming an anti-corruption body that was to deal with corruption cases. This body was however seen not to be effective or up to task probably due to lack of independence as there was a possibility of state influence. Under the operation of this body, corruption task reached close to 20% of Russias GDP ($ 300 billion) (Lynch 89). Putin also inherited the problem of piracy from the previous government. He later claimed to have eliminated this problem by September 2005, yet the evidence showed more of it under his government. Funnily, some of his friends including Roman Abramovich were perpetrating this vice. He sold 75% of the Sibneft oil firms stock for around 13.7 billion dollars. A scrutiny reveals that half of this was financed by Putins government while the other by Gazprom, which was also being controlled by the government. Russia under Putin became so corrupt that for a corporation that set zero tolerance for corruption had no place in it. This was confirmed by the exit of the Swedish furniture maker company called Ikea. Then there was the problem of political future uncertainty. Putin just like the previous regime was quite uncertain of their political future and wanted to do whatever it took to ensure certainty of the same. To achieve political certainty, Mr. Putin started his strategy by not doing what could win the hearts of electorate but what could control what electorate heard. This he achieved through multiple strategies including trying very much to control the media and hiring people who were loyal to him only. Most of the private television network including the French-owned media were muted when he chased Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky from Russia under the guise of being corrupt. This act allowed him the control of ORT, TV-6 and NTV television stations and their corresponding newspapers. They would later on purchase and control over 90% of Russian media directly through proxies (Lynch 78) thereby adding to the pool of resources he acquired to use in his favour. This same media control allowed Putin to dictate what the common citizens heard and what it did not hear. The same tactics were also used to suppress his opponents who suffered a lack of media coverage, or if covered, then it was edited not to reveal the politically aggressive comments. Good examples included Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, who released a report about Putin corrupt dealings and named individuals within the circle involved in such dealings. When the government heard of the report, they moved fast not to block its publication, but its distribution thus making the report to suffer public hearing. The other political opponent who also suffered the fate of media black-out was Mr. Kasparov whose media coverage was limited to only chess game thereby presenting him to people as a persona non grata (Lynch 86). Putin protected his presidency by making sure that all his opponents were directly or indirectly muted using government machinery like airports, electricity supply to podiums and many others. Then there was the problem of the sinking of submarine nicknamed Kursk. This presented a challenge to the administration of President Putin considering that the situation forced him to swallow his pride and seek the help of outsiders to rescue the Russian investment. The unfortunate incident happened close to USA submarine monitoring actions of Russians and about 60 miles off Russian shores. While rescue attempts were being conducted by the military, Putin was on holiday. It took Russians military seven days to reach the wreckage of the ship but could not access the area where personnel were. When outside help was sought, Norwegians in twenty minutes achieved what the Russian military took eight days but never accomplished, gaining access to the ship. This attracted criticism from all citizens taken Putin much time to regain the confidence of the Russians (Lynch 76). In general, Putin did a lot better than his predecessor even though whatever he did was also a continuation of the previous government policy. The style of military extra-judicial killing continued under his watch. Corruption levels skyrocketed, and the tendency to impose control of the successor continued into Dmitris government under the guise of being a prime minister. He had and used resources that were available to him in his favor including use of employees loyal only to him, television networks, military, police, and other state owned parastatals to keep him to power (Lynch 79). However, overall, he performed below his ability but better than the predecessor did. His way of ruling according to Mikail was not the best way to maintaining peace of Russians (Gorbachevs). Works Cited Baker, Peter and Susan Glasser. "Kremlin Rising:Vladimir Putins Russia and the end of Revolution." Baker, Peter and Susan Glasser. Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putins Russia and the end of Revolution. Washington DC: Scribner, 2005. 464. Gorbachevs, Mikhail. "Gorbachevs new Political thinking on international relations." Gorbachevs, Mikhail. The end of the Cold War 1985-1991. Collins Publishers, 1987. 232-234. Lynch, Allen. "Putin in power: Domestic Politics and policies." Lynch, Allen. Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft. Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2011. 184. Read More