Russia's cover boy

Vladimir Vladimirovich is Time’s “Person of the Year,” joining Josef Stalin (twice!), Nikita Khrushchev, Yuri Andropov, Mikhail Gorbachev (also twice!) as Russian heads of state to earn the “honor” (coming just a year after YOU won it!) and which frankly says a lot about how important Russia is, and the manner in which it is woven into America’s world view. Russians should be pleased by this. But judging by the tone of the cover package, they probably won’t be. And judging by the OJ’d up portraits they produced, they probably shouldn’t be.

After watching Russia up close for several months now, I am forced to admit with some certainty a fact constantly overlooked in the West: when it comes to Putin, Russia could do a lot worse. It seems that westerners are too busy holding their noses and tsk-tsking to bother to notice the real good that he has done here. He deserves a lot of credit for restraining the Darker Angels of the Russian Soul, specifically the vast military-intelligence-police complex that has had a terrifying hand in running things since the 16^th century. It should also be acknowledged that he broke the power of the 90s oligarchs, when for awhile it appeared Russia would actually be governed by a self-perpetuating criminal overclass. Not so long ago, it was possible to actually trace the chain of power from the punk that would smash you in the head with a brick and take your wallet straight up to the guy that stole the national airline and largest oil and gas companies from the people, who according to Soviet law, owned it.

There’s a lot about Putin I wouldn’t try to defend. In particular, there is no excuse for the cheap nationalism and “political technologies” conjured up by the cynical hacks that he insists on keeping in his employ. I hope that this xenophobia and foreigner-bashing is nothing more than a cheap political narcotic, and reflects just the primitive understanding of how a democratic society works you might expect from one that is only 16 years into its effort. That said, you have to accept that today’s Russia is a sort of democracy. Living here I can say that Putin is legitimately popular, and would clearly win another election in a walk. You are free to point out – as western journalists insist on doing every opportunity – about the state’s restrictons on the media, but frankly… we listen to Echo of Moscow on the radio, I buy Novaya Gazeta every week at a newspaper box in the subway, nothing is blocked on my Internet connection (which some repressive societies, like China, have mastered. Right, Google?), and it really should be noted (certainly better than Time chose to) that the Other Russia rally in Moscow this month did have a permit: they only ran afoul of the police when they tried to march to the elections committee. You have to jump through the same boring old law-and-order hoops in New York City.

Based on Time’s own logic, I think they correctly assessed Putin’s real importance at this moment in time. But how history will judge him is largely dependent on very large and unpredictable forces sweeping around Russia right now, which are far greater than anything being conjured up or manipulated in the birch-forest of Novo-Ogrevo or behind the walls of the Kremlin itself. If Russia can continue to diversify its economy and spread its wealth, encourage the nascent civil society that is now going through a very rough childhood, and keep its security services aware that they are the servants of the people, Russia has a good chance of becoming a “normal” country. But on the other hand, if wealth continues to polarize like it is now, if backwards feudalism built on a foundation of xenophobia and fear is going to be how the state is run, and if the brutishness that lies too close to the surface of much Russian life grows unchecked, it will be disaster for everyone. It is impossible to say which way things are likely to go. But Vladimir Vladimirovich probably deserves credit at least for giving Russia a chance.