Mutiny in the Ranks

How optimistic that Gaidar Forum slogan sounds, how very 21st century: “Russia and the World: Looking to the Future.” So full of hope…

We were all glued to our screens yesterday, watching in horrified fascination the proceedings of the Gaidar Economic Forum in Moscow. “Horrified” is what Yegor Gaidar would have been; he’s probably turning in his grave listening to his reforming principles turned on their head. Yegor Gaidar (1956-2009), you will remember, was the architect of the “Shock Therapy” that shook the command economy of the Soviet Union out of its torpor, and dragged it kicking and screaming into assuming the guise of capitalism. Rather like we have the guise of democracy.

How optimistic that forum slogan sounds, how very 21st century: “Russia and the World: Looking to the Future.” So full of hope…

And it’s not that the people at the Gaidar Forum don’t know what they’re talking about. You can’t argue with Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, who said that the Russian budget could only be balanced at an oil price of $82 a barrel; and the 2016 budget should be revised to assume an oil price of $40 a barrel. “Our task is to adapt our budget to the new realities,” Mr Siluanov said.

If only.

It seems like only a few days ago – aah, but it really was a few days ago – that The Supreme Leader was telling the Germans how everything is hunky-dory. He was probably thinking that if he could persuade them, he could persuade anybody.

And yet here we have the first sign of, well, if not mutiny in the ranks, then a sign that perhaps the troops are starting to fret. Echoing the finance minister – something the ruling elite does a lot – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned that tumbling oil prices could force Russia to revise its 2016 budget. He said that the country must be prepared for a “worst-case” economic scenario if the price continued to fall. It’s falling …

Wow! It’s like watching a ball of wool unravel.

So let’s assume it’s all coming apart at the seams. Let’s look ahead, over the wall, as we should be doing. Here’s the problem, as they see it (and they do see it…): they’ve built a top-down vertical power structure that was never designed to withstand a gale force wind. And here we have the prime minister, the man running a United Russia government, talking about budget cuts that are going to hit their core electorate hard, which will surely taint the brand.

And that leaves the Kremlin with very few options going into this September’s Duma elections.

Keep United Russia? Looking a bit discredited. How about starting “afresh” – abandon United Russia, and come up instead with a ‘new’ party, something like the All-Russia People’s Front; you remember, created in 2011 to come up with “new ideas, new suggestions and new faces.” A brand spanking new party, ready to lead Russia into the glorious and hopeful future.

Only what if they haven’t left themselves enough time to make it happen? These are Siamese twins remember. How do you throw away the party, and yet keep the people associated with it? Say you grit your teeth, and stick with what you’ve got. That leaves only one course: a repeat of the electoral falsification that we saw in 2011. And we know what happened after that.