Putin's recent address to parliament hardly got any popular response. Polls showed that 83 percent of respondents in Moscow did not consider it an important national event. In the provinces, people were more interested in growing inflation. In Voronezh, a typical provincial capital, persistent mass demonstrations kept demanding an end to skyrocketing rents and public transportation fares. Putin's assurances that prices for housing and communal services should rise only if quality is better sound hollow to the people in the street. Most of his speech was not even intended for their ears, but was rather a tedious monologue aimed at the elite. However, not a single catch-phrase or joke interrupted the 52-minute drone. The audience applauded only once for a short moment, at the end. Official accounts mentioned: "Continuous applause turning into ovation", but that was not true.
A notable discussion followed at the VIP "Civilian Debates" club chaired by the president's top PR man, Gleb Pavlovsky. The president, commented one discussant, was sharply criticising the bureaucracy but he himself had become a superbureaucrat who cannot really change anything. In our country, said another participant, everything is done on only one doctor's orders. This time around, that doctor (i.e. Putin) did not prescribe anything in particular. The president, commented a third orator, has lost touch with the political elite. He, concluded a fourth, is cherishing the idea of a "great leap" but is not sure where to jump. Coming from top-notch politologists, the discussion sounds ominous.
In his speech, Putin was complaining about nearly everything. He named most of the country's problems but suggested no practical solutions. He blamed the government for slow economic growth but offered two abstract recipes: cut bureaucracy and strengthen Russia's competitive power. Some analysts believed the next logical step was to fire the cabinet's economic team. But Kasyanov, Kudrin and Gref did not sound worried. On the contrary, Gref whose economic mid-term projection was severely criticised by the president responded with a straight objection saying that acceleration could lead to catastrophe. In short, Mr. Putin hit a stone wall. Was he ready to tear it down? Not at all. Instead, he suggested increasing the staff of Mr. Gref's ministry - the very agency that openly opposed acceleration and publicly lectured him on its dangers.
.Strange? Not really if in his heart the president sympathises with his government's economic policies but publicly blames them to channel popular wrath away from himself. If so, he is succeeding. His own ratings remain high while those of his ministers are sharply falling. This cannot go on forever, but it works for the time being.
A similar incident occurred at a recent session of the State Council that was discussing draft government legislation on agricultural land sales. Most governors composing the Council criticised the document on three principal points. It did not provide rules for renting land, rather than buying or selling. It set an exorbitantly high maximum limit to land ownership of a person or company - 35 percent of the total land available in one administrative unit. And it permitted free buying of land by foreigners, except in areas close to the country's borders. Putin had initially approved the draft but after hearing the governors' objections, yielded on all three points. The draft will be amended to provide more regional authority to decide on most controversial issues as well as on the actual time the law will come into effect on each territory.
All these objections had been voiced in preliminary discussions but were ignored under the pretext that some of them came from the left-wing opposition. As it turned out, most governors (not necessary left-wingers) were equally disenchanted with the government's draft. Putin's aides knew of their position but still believed that nobody would dare oppose the "tsar" at the Council's meeting. That error put the president in an awkward position. As in the case of economic acceleration, he had to recede. That is dangerous because it shows that one can indeed oppose the top boss and get away with it.
There is another lesson to be learned from these incidents. It looks like Putin has no firm views of his own on many of the country's problems. It is normal for a national leader in such cases to lean on advice assuming that the advice he chooses is competent. In accelerating growth rates the president has turned down the only meaningful proposal that would have helped raise growth rates, namely channelling mineral rent from export industries into manufacturing investment. By doing so, he left himself at the mercy of the "do-nothing" Gref policy that leads to stagnation. In the agricultural land case, he relied on incompetent drafters who ignored the prevailing mood in the regions.
The lesson is that the leader who fails to show ability to lead is like a ship's captain who does not know which way to steer. If he has competent aides to correct him in time, nothing dangerous happens. If, however, he demonstrates his own incapacity too often the result could well be personal political defeat.