Focus: The Opposition

Okay, so for a long time they were the Evil Empire. Then along came Mikhail Gorbachev, who brought us Glasnost and Perestroika, which were … you know … lots better. Then there was a failed coup attempt which ruined Gorbachev’s and everyone else’s reputation except for Boris Yeltsin’s, and so Yeltsin went on to become the poster boy for Democracy, Russian style.

Democracy, Russian style, sad to say, turned out to be taking care of your cronies and drinking yourself to death, at least to judge by Yeltsin’s subsequent life path. This brings us to Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister and president emeritus, who clearly can never be the poster boy for Democracy, Russian style – he does not drink. In the land of alcoholic binge drinkers, the teetotaler is king, although they don’t actually use the word king … yet.

Putin is former KGB, which folks find sinister. Compared to what? I wonder. The KGB were the only people back in the old Soviet Union power structure who had a clue as to what was really going on, and this explains much about the fall of the Soviet Union. Yuri Andropov (former KGB) hand-picked Mikhail Gorbachev as his successor, although Andropov died of cancer before the succession was firmed up and so there was an interregnum before Gorby – with KGB backing – came out on top. The late Andrei Gromyko, one of the last of that tough generation of Soviet leaders who came up through the ranks in World War II, once described Gorbachev as a man who “has a big smile, but steel teeth.” I like that – sort of the Russian version of “Walk softly but carry a big stick.”

Face it, the KGB were the guys who eventually figured out the real numbers on their economy and what the West was doing, knew which way the bars on the graphs were headed, and were career pragmatists as opposed to ideologues. I doubt that any of them anticipated exactly where they would end up 15 years down the road, but they succeeded in one goal – they made the fall of the Soviet Union soft. That’s an achievement worth at least our grudging admiration, considering how many millions died when the Czar fell hard. It also would have been damned inconvenient to have the country with the second largest supply of nuclear warheads on the planet slip into anarchy. That many of the former KGB guys have since morphed into international criminal kingpins, or billionaire industrial oligarchs, or both, is less cool.

All that having been said, what’s up with Russia these days?

It may be that Churchill was right when he famously said that Russia was a question wrapped in a riddle surrounded by an enigma – or something like that. But I am inclined to think Churchill was more interested in crafting a good turn of phrase than he was in putting in the effort required to figure out what was going on. In his defense, Russia was a lot more complicated “back in the day.” Today the former Cold War threat has become absurdly simple.

To paraphrase James Carville, “It’s the oil, stupid.”

The fuel sector (oil and natural gas) accounts for over 20% of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP), over 60% of its export revenues, and 30% of all direct foreign investment in Russia. The production of oil and other natural resources (but mostly oil) accounts for a whopping 30% of Russia’s total governmental revenues.  No wonder when the price of oil skyrocketed, Russia sat up like a vampire rising from its coffin after someone dumped in a gallon of blood. And no wonder it’s wilting, now that the price of oil is back in the cellar.

Russia will flex its muscles when the price of oil is high, in part because that’s the only time it will have real muscles. Expect it to flex its muscles in places which are critical to its ability to produce or market oil – for example, some place a potential pipeline from the rival Central Asian oil fields might pass through on its way to the European market … some place like, just for the sake of argument, Georgia.

Democracy in Russia will not advance, or will advance very slowly, while the price of oil is high. Plentiful oil revenues enable the regime to buy off the opposition and keep the economic needs of the population generally satisfied – in common with almost every other oil-rich country in the world. It is only when oil revenues drop that domestic opposition will mount and real concessions become likely. Look for major political changes in Russia if the price of oil stays down for a year or more. If it climbs back up, not so much.

About the Author: The major landmarks in Frank's historical interests range from ancient Persia through the Crimean War, World War II, and the modern U.S. Armed Forces, with a lot of stops in between. Frank is fascinated by the unusual, the overlooked, and the surprising. He is the New York Times number one best-selling author of the Desert Shield Fact Book (1991) and he is currently writing an historical novel on Alexander's conquest of Persia – from the Persian point of view.

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