Opinion | Drop the Corruption, Keep the Authoritarianism

Yet even this cautious “depersonalization” of the Russian political system is significant and indicative of a long-term change that Russian society is undergoing. Today’s Russians seem to be less and less impressed by the show of strongman leadership at home and Russia’s military might abroad. A demand to be acknowledged as dignified citizens, not obedient subjects, is palpable in numerous protest movements that are ready to stand up to government and police pressure.

The changes that the government has been quietly introducing testify to the fact that the challenge has been accepted. Few Russians would dispute that for an average citizen, interaction with the Russian state is now much more formalized and efficient than even five years ago.

In today’s one-window government service offices, citizens get a slip, pour themselves a coffee, wait a few minutes in a clean waiting area and soon get their requests processed quickly and efficiently. It is a far cry from the time when people had to bribe their way into getting a passport or to get some paperwork done fast and easily required going through an unpredictable, unpleasant interaction with a rude person behind thick glass in a stale government office.

It is important to understand, though, that none of this is meant to make Russia’s governance system less authoritarian. It is meant to make it less corrupt, chaotic, personalized and thus prone to human error. Replacing people with algorithms is a right-on way to achieve that goal. Mikhail Mishustin, a former technocrat who headed Russia’s tax service and was one of the leading officials responsible for bringing the state into the digital age, has become Russia’s new prime minister. His mandate is to cement the system, not to develop it.

Valorization of family and clan values over the interests of the individual or the public has been a feature of Russian life ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, as Mr. Putin’s overarching goal appears to be achieving a peaceful transfer of power and wealth, he seems to be reining in clan interests and even some features of his personalist rule. What does not change is the value he places on cohesion among the ranks over any individual political stance. He has always made a point of saying that a traitor is worse than an open enemy.

Against this background, it is all the more amazing that America’s conservative establishment acquiesces to the fact that not just a politician but a family is running its country’s administration. The speed with which President Trump managed to turn a political party into a clan is eye-opening. Republicans are learning that to get re-elected, they must accept that unity of the ranks is more important than any individual political stance. They now need to defend President Trump at all costs and, indirectly, adopt Mr. Putin’s stance that a traitor is worse than an enemy.

Of course, Russia is as far from achieving a fully rule-based political system complete with separation of powers as the United States is from descending into a personalist autocracy. What we are seeing is a convergence of sorts: Russia’s authoritarianism becoming less personalized while the American system of democratic governance acquires more familial and clan-based features.

At the end of the 1960s, the Soviet physicist and staunch dissident Andrei Sakharov was developing a theory of political convergence, by which he meant the gradual drawing closer together of the socialist and capitalist systems. History has yet to prove him right or wrong. The convergence we are seeing now is of a different kind: The Russian form of civil governance underpinned by family, even tribal values, is developing some rule-based features, while the American system, based on checks and balances, slides deeper by the month into a form of personal leadership that tests the rule of law.

Maxim Trudolyubov is an editor at large for the business magazine Vedomosti in Moscow and editor of The Russia File, a blog published by the Kennan Institute in Washington.

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