The political and social changes in Russia since President Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power in 2000 deserve the title of restoration. History is replete with short lived revolutions terminated by the return to power of deposed elites, from Charles II in Britain to the Bourbons in post-Napoleonic France. Such restorations rarely manage to restore society quite to the way it used to be, but they try. The restoration of the former Soviet elite from the security services, mostly the old KGB, has been accompanied by resumption of state control over the mass media, the re-nationalisation of privatised property and politicisation of the legal process. The restoration regime’s stability is founded less on terror, as during the totalitarian era, than on elite bureaucratic corruption financed by oil and gas exports.

Optimism followed the collapse of communism in Europe during 1989 to 1991. Despite democratisation (especially in the countries that joined the European Union recently), however, all post-totalitarian societies share persistent high levels of corruption, weak civil societies and rule of law, strong influence of the government on the mass media, and low levels of transitional justice--sanctions against totalitarian perpetrators and reparations for victims. In these respects, the differences between the ‘new Europeans’ and Russia are of degree rather than kind. The Putin Restoration and the persistence of some totalitarian traditions in post-totalitarian countries call for an explanation.

I theorise the transition from Communism and explain its results in terms of the adaptation of the rights of the late Communist elite, the nomenklatura, to its interests. The peculiar oscillations in the Russian transition are best explained by the elite’s initial perceived risks in adapting political rights to economic interests and its choice of fronts (the oligarchs) that resulted in a subsequent readjustment by the late Soviet KGB elite.

No Destiny

Theories of post-totalitarianism are often called theories of transition. Transition often assumes knowledge of the end or destiny of the historical process, presumably liberal democracy, Francis Fukuyama’s end of history. If we know the beginning and end of the post-totalitarian process, social scientists just need to fill in the details. However, as the Marxists have learned the hard way, history has no destiny. History results from the countless interactions and shifting alliances of groups of people who struggle to fulfil their desires and interests in various circumstances. History does not have a goal. Social groups have goals. Free market democracy has not been the goal of the late-totalitarian elite that brought about the collapse of Communism and has continued to be the dominant economic elite of post-totalitarian countries. This elite has usually been indifferent towards democracy and hostile to free markets where it cannot enjoy continued state patronage, subsidy and protection. It prefers a system of private property and economic inequality by which it appropriates the assets from, and passes on the liabilities to, the state.

Accordingly, democratic countries cannot sit back and allow an inevitable process of transition to democracy to take shape. It is quite doubtful that without Western intervention, at least Serbia, Georgia and the Ukraine would have been on the democratic path today.  Nor will democracy emerge in other parts of the world like China or Iraq without social groups that have it in their interest and at least the tacit indifference of existing autocratic elites. Democratic governments can certainly assist in this process by supporting the first and weakening the second.

Against the simultaneous transitions theory

The so-called double transition theory, of simultaneous democratisation and economic restructuring (including macroeconomic stabilisation, microeconomic liberalisation of prices and deregulation, and institution building, most notably privatisation), dominated the ‘90s. This standard theory assumes tension between economic restructuring and democratisation: Presumably, immediate economic hardships brought about by economic restructuring may cause the electorate at the very least to elect an anti-reformist government or at worse to turn to anti-democratic populists. This hypothesis was refuted. True, democratically elected post-totalitarian governments have rarely survived more than a single term, often as a result of popular dissatisfaction with the social effects of economic restructuring. Yet, policies of quick or slow economic restructuring and democratisation have continued autonomously of each other, virtually unchanged from one government to the next, including the return to power of reformed Communist parties. Following decades of totalitarianism, society is too atomised and demoralised to be able to mobilise for or against economic reforms or yet another change of regime. Instead, atomised individuals try to survive and stay warm. Despite the carnivals that accompanied the end of totalitarianism from Prague in 1989 to Kiev in 2004, once the change of regime is approved by popular acclaim, mass mobilisation ends.

No Elite Settlement

‘Elite settlement’ and ‘convergence’ were useful concepts for understanding post-authoritarian transitions in Latin America and Southern Europe where opposition and government elites negotiated and concluded a deal—transition to democracy in return for protections and sometimes privileges for the old elites. In Eastern Europe, the conspicuous economic success of the nomenklatura in post-totalitarian societies led to conspiracy theories accusing the dissidents of similarly exchanging immunity and economic assets to the nomenklatura for political power for themselves.

But there was no post-totalitarian elite settlement. The absence or at least extreme weakness of alternative oppositional elites and civil society in post-totalitarian countries released the ruling elite from negotiating much beyond passing on the keys of a weak state and unwieldy and disloyal late totalitarian bureaucracy. In the absence of alternative elites, the nomenklatura would emerge spontaneously and effortlessly on top, with no need for a conspiracy.

Post-Totalitarianism vs. Post-Authoritarianism

Understanding post-totalitarianism, unifying its various manifestations, and explaining the differences between its various outcomes requires reintroducing the contested distinction between totalitarianism and authoritarianism, between regimes that attempt and nearly succeed to eliminate civil society between the state and the family, and regimes that are merely interested in non-democratic control over political institutions and suppression of political opponents.

          

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Post-totalitarian systems of government display common features that may differ in degree, but hold true from Vladivostok to Prague:

• Elite continuity. A political revolution (if any) never develops into a social revolution.
• ‘Spontaneous’ privatisation of the state by the elite.
• Lack of elite interest in power as an end, rather than a means for obtaining wealth from the state.
• End to universal persecution of political opposition, though political gangsterism may persist.
• Rise in visible poverty, unemployment and crime.
• Ineffective control of the government over the executive bureaucracy.
• Feeble civil society.
• High levels of corruption.
• Weak rule of law.
• Political control and manipulation of the mass media; freedom for other forms of expression.
• End to any ideology as a mass mobilisation tool.
• Free travel in and out of the country.
• Low levels of transitional justice: victims receive very low levels of compensation and totalitarian perpetrators are rarely punished.
• Members of the former secret police continue to be powerful and their status is a political issue.

By contrast, post-authoritarian societies display: 

• Elite heterogeneity.
• The authoritarian elite maintains interest in political power as an end in itself.
• The economy is not controlled by the authoritarian elite.
• Vigorous civil society.
• Approximation of the rule of law.
• Free media.
• Ideologies continue to mobilise voters.
• Eventual high levels of transitional justice; victims are compensated and perpetrators prosecuted.
• Continued special role and power for the military and military veterans whose status is a political issue. 

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The distinction between totalitarianism and authoritarianism was the subject of intense debate around 1980. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, later Ronald Reagan’s U.N. representative, used this distinction to criticise President Carter’s foreign policy. By undermining traditional authoritarian regimes in Latin America and Iran, claimed Kirkpatrick, the U.S. was installing much worse totalitarian regimes. Critics from the left retorted that the conceptual distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is obsolete; Pinochet’s authoritarianism is no better than Brezhenev’s Soviet Union, thus supporting Détente and Carter’s human rights based foreign policy.

In hindsight, Kirkpatrick was right about the immense differences between authoritarianism and totalitarianism and why the first is less intolerable and irreversible than the later. Since authoritarianism does not attempt to overhaul the culture, economy or social status quo, has no significant ideology, does not centralise the economy and preserves much of civil society, post-authoritarianism is not dominated by the legacy of the past to the extent that post-totalitarianism societies are. Yet, late-totalitarianism is distinguishable from earlier revolutionary totalitarianism by its mission of maintenance, of resistance to change, of freezing the social system that resulted from the revolutionary transformation of yore. Through the rhetoric of revolutionary transformation may be retained, terror and transformation ended. Late totalitarian regimes do not attempt to change human nature; they manipulate it as they made it, petty, materialistic, and envious. Kirkpatrick missed the changes that had already been well under way below the totalitarian frozen surface. Within apparently static societies, one dissatisfied group also had the power to effect change, the nomenklatura.  

Social Stratification: New Conductor, Same old Orchestra

Revolutionary totalitarian elites create a single politically controlled social stratification by physically eliminating all existing or potential alternative elites. But victorious revolutionary totalitarian elites suffer from a lack of security, purges, arrests etc. To secure themselves, the elite thugs must choose docile bureaucrats as their deputies and eventual successors. The kind of elite that survives the revolutionary totalitarian stage and is chosen by ruthless revolutionaries establishes its dominance through networking, lobbying, creating alliances, conspiring, and not standing out.

This late-totalitarian elite craved what normal elites do, to amass wealth and power and pass it on to their offspring. This had been predicted in advance of the Bolshevik revolution, for example by German sociologist Robert Michels, who foresaw the emergence of a bureaucratic hierarchy under socialism, and its transformation into a ruling class. However Michels had underestimated the length of the process. The first revolutionary generation was too fanatic, sadistic, and did not survive long enough in power before meeting a violent end in yet another purge, to form a class. Class formation emerged later as the result of the selection by revolutionaries of bureaucratic successors who wanted to die in bed.

The end of totalitarianism is the end of a united all-encompassing social hierarchy. But the same old nomenklatura and bureaucracy remains in control of the economy, the state bureaucracy, the legal system, the police and the education system. If there is an alternative political elite, the nomenklatura tends to remain united and cohesive and proceeds to incorporate the new political class through corruption. If there is no alternative elite, factions within the nomenklatura may quarrel over the spoils and may use violence in the process. Though the late totalitarian managerial class in general and the nomenklatura in particular are interested in wealth, like real businessmen, most have few useful competitive skills in a free market. They have political skills, experience in lobbying and corrupting, and networks in the government bureaucracy, useful for protecting monopolies and receiving subsidies, government contracts and state property.

In Russia there has been more elite continuity than in East-Central Europe, in politics more than in business. Russian estimates of late Soviet elite continuity are half to two thirds in management/business and 80%-85% in local politics and the administrative elites.  In comparison, in Poland and Hungary about a quarter of the nomenklatura retired, 5% are in politics, and the rest remained in the intertwined worlds of economics and bureaucracy. Few members of the former nomenklatura underwent downward mobility in any post-totalitarian country. 

By contrast, in post-authoritarian societies, there is little continuity in the authoritarian elite. The non-political elites, in the economy, religion, opposition parties etc. were not authoritarian to begin with. By the end of Franco’s Spain, even the government bureaucracy was selected on the basis of competitive exams. The transfer of power and democratic elections means the replacement of the political elites. Post-authoritarian continuity can be found only in the military, and even that lasts only for a few years after the transfer of power. In Greece and Portugal trials purged the authoritarian generals a few years after democratisation. In Argentina, it took a few more years and a split within the military to achieve the same result. In Chile the process is still on going, following the increasing weakness of Pinochet and his clique. By contrast, in post-totalitarian West-Germany, after an initial de-Nazification driven by the allies, there was practically a full restoration of the elites that led the major German institutions prior to 1945.

Social Control and Terrorism

The totalitarian elite considers he who is not with ‘us,’ to be against ‘us’ and some of ‘us’ are against ourselves too… This leads to mass murder, the reshaping of society by physical elimination of civil society, to mass executions, prison camps and extensive expropriations. The centre of coercion in such a society is the secret police that directs and infiltrates all the arms of government and society.

The late-totalitarian elite considers he who is not against ‘us’ to be with ‘us’. Mass murder and random terror stop. Oppression becomes predictable. The elite limits its concern with the lives of other people to organised independent groups that may threaten the totalitarian exclusion of any social space between the family and the state. The nomenklatura uses the distribution of benefits, higher education, jobs, upper mobility, education and housing as a means of control. This shift in control methods was underlined by the sharing of consumerist values by the new elite and its subjects. In late totalitarianism, the centre of power continues to be the secret police, through this power is not as limitless as under revolutionary totalitarianism because its task is no longer the transformation of society, but the preservation of the elite.  Post-totalitarian ‘freedom’ then is not self-government by a community, it is pure negative liberty from extensive interference by the late totalitarian elite. The nomenklatura is unaffected by weak governments, so it is usually not in its interest to interfere with democratisation.

In authoritarian regimes the centre of power and control is a part of the military; most explicitly in military juntas. Some military units exercise terror against political opponents, but they do so independently of other branches of government like the legal system and the civilian police, and even parts of the military. In that respect, authoritarian extra-judicial killings, death squads, prevent the totalitarian corruption of the judiciary and police. Argentinean, Spanish and Greek judges could convict former violators of human rights because they were not involved in these violations. Post-totalitarian judges in Eastern Europe or earlier in West Germany could not ‘throw the first stone’ because the totalitarian regimes operated through them. Authoritarian terror may be as intensive as the totalitarian variety, but it is less extensive. After authoritarianism, military units involved in terror are clearly distinguishable from the rest of the population and even the military, unlike the totalitarian secret police and its army of informants.

Since the secret police was, well, secret, and the ruling cliques within the nomenklatura were obscure, post-totalitarian power is in the hands of informal networks, which contributes to the paranoid nature of post-totalitarian societies. By contrast, the distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are clearer in post-authoritarianism. Once alternative post-authoritarian elites in places like Argentina, Chile and Greece feel confident enough to engage in transitional justice, it is easier to distinguish and convict the culprits.

Civil society and economic reform

Civil society is physically annihilated by totalitarian regimes. The state intrudes to regulate all social interactions. By late totalitarianism, society is atomised, stripped to a bare collection of individuals with basic needs that can be easily manipulated. Totalitarian social natural selection favours the survival of the atomised egotistic person, concerned exclusively with personal or at most family survival, small material gains that can be easily manipulated. Post-totalitarian society has only a rudimentary and feeble civil society. Despite mass protests and demonstrations at the moment of transition, these are short lived. Civic apathy allows elites and governments to undertake radical economic reforms that affect adversely, in the immediate term, the weakest members of society, pensioners, welfare recipients, etc.

By contrast, authoritarian states do not eliminate civil society, which plays a major role in post-authoritarian politics. Post-authoritarian elites have more limited manoeuvring space, facing effective civic pressures and public protest. Accordingly, post-authoritarian elites in Latin America are less corrupt, but are also less capable of making necessary but painful economic reforms, and therefore fall back on populist policies that lead to inefficiencies and even economic meltdown as in Argentina.

The Economy

Totalitarian economies are command, military-style economies. In the late totalitarian era, the economy is composed of relatively autonomous monopolies. The state attempts to coordinate and control, but there is constant tension between the political centre and the economic periphery, as managers attempt to divert resources to local and personal use, while collecting subsidies in the form of ‘loans’ from the state bank that go unpaid. Post-totalitarian managers of monopolies liberate themselves from the control of the centre. The nomenklatura privatises the properties it managed ‘spontaneously’. Since the nomenklatura lacks the skills and horizons actually to manage what it appropriates, it strips assets. Nomenklatura industry’s viability depends on its monopoly status and constant infusions of capital from the state. The state may obtain these subsidies either from taxing healthier parts of the economy such as small businesses; or from foreign direct investment (FDI) and loans; or from selling natural resources, as in contemporary Russia. Oddly enough, the only place where the nomenklatura was initially too insecure to steal directly everything was Russia. It used proxies instead. This is something that Putin’s restoration set to correct.

It is a common mistake to call post-totalitarian economic systems ‘capitalist’. Private and public finances are not sufficiently distinct to talk of capitalism in the sense of large private businesses that accumulate and invest capital. Wealth is not based on accumulation of profit and its reinvestment, but on stripping the assets of former state firms. Capitalism is impossible without respect for and enforcement of stable rules of the economic game.

In authoritarian and post-authoritarian states, there is a vibrant private sector which the state only diminishes by renting monopoly rights, appropriating natural resources if any, and embezzling taxes or the proceeds of state debt.             Some authoritarian regimes, as in Spain and Chile, actually managed to improve the economy and make it competitive with liberal capitalist economies. Totalitarianism always, without exception, results in loss of economic competitiveness.

The Rule of Law

Totalitarianism demolishes the rule of law; judges and policemen become low level officials in the united executive hierarchy, disciplined to follow instructions from upon high. Late-totalitarianism gives low level officials greater freedom to exploit those still lower in the single social hierarchy. Post-totalitarian elite is still above the law. Judges apply ‘the law’ selectively according to power hierarchies.

The totalitarian legal administration is an instrument of suppression, terror and control, unlike authoritarian regimes that used units of the military for that purpose. Consequently democratic post-authoritarian regimes are not challenged by the need to extensively depoliticise their legal administration. Authoritarian regimes do not violate the rule of law through established institutions, but create parallel ones. Significantly, in post-authoritarian states there is an independent judiciary and police that can implement the rule of law, and indeed do so against the former authoritarian elites as in Argentina and Chile.  There are enough Argentinean and Chilean judges, prosecutors and policemen who can’ throw the first stone’.

Bureaucratic Corruption

Totalitarian terror limits corruption. Systemic checks, mutual envy, distrust, and hierarchical controls reduced its scope. In late-totalitarianism, terror subsides and corruption increases. Post-totalitarian decentralisation unleashes corruption. Mancur Olson’s ‘stationary bandits’ become ‘marauding bandits,’ and the old nomenklatura is joined by hungry new political elites. The bureaucracy has a vested interest in avoiding accountability, performance review, transparency and a clear definition of its role to maintain its discretionary powers. Numerous criminal and other lobbying groups target the state.

Authoritarian regimes are more intensely corrupt than totalitarian ones since there is less control over government officials and bureaucrats who can act as rent collectors on their jobs. However, authoritarian regimes are less extensively corrupt because the size of the state is smaller. Post-authoritarian governments have an interest in being corrupt but are limited by an active civil society and independent judiciary and police, unlike post-totalitarian bureaucracies.

Freedom of information and Speech

The totalitarian state must have absolute control over all forms of communication by the physical elimination of alternatives. This continues in late-totalitarianism, though the relaxation of terror creates space for samizdat and infiltration of information from abroad. In post-totalitarian societies, the elites are interested only in control of the electronic mass media for manipulating elections, and are indifferent to the rest, mostly printed media, that is read mainly by urban intellectuals, who would not support them anyway. It is not surprising then that Putin's first political act after winning the presidency in 2000 was to take over the private television stations. After being elected courtesy of these stations, Putin knew that he could not be secure as president until he could control what the uneducated, pensioners, and other atomised individuals think, through television.

Ideology

Revolutionary Ideology is important for mobilisation in totalitarian regimes. It helps the elite to reach and hold power and even limits corruption by the faithful. In late-totalitarianism, ideology becomes ritual when the gap between rhetoric and reality is too obvious to bridge; correspondingly, late-totalitarian language loses contact with reality.

Post-totalitarianism marks the end of ideology. Politically channelled strong emotions like fear to xenophobia may be significant, but they do not amount to a worldview like 19th century European nationalism. Xenophobia, the denial of the moral value of outsiders to a group also characterises extreme forms of nationalism. However, nationalism proper has strong communitarian elements that are absent from post-totalitarian societies that have rewarded free-riders for two generations, and where people attempt to avoid the draft and taxes and do not donate to charity.

In pluralistic post-totalitarian political systems, divisions between parties have at most an ideological façade, but no substance. For example, in post-WWII Austria and Italy, patronage has replaced ideology as the chief mobilising factor that connects citizens with political parties.  By contrast, there are real ideological differences between post-authoritarian parties because non-ideological authoritarianism does not discredit any kind of ideology, as totalitarian ideologies do.

Adjustment of Rights to Interests

Post-totalitarianism is the adjustment of the rights of the late totalitarian elite to its interests. Post-totalitarianism liberates the nomenklatura from the constraints of the system it inherited from the revolutionary generation.

With the collapse of totalitarianism, the nomenklatura assumed the rights they have always coveted, to own what they managed, consume conspicuously, and bequest to their children. In transition, the nomenklatura lost some of its political rights, but augmented its economic rights both by spontaneously appropriating the properties it had managed prior to the end of totalitarianism, and by separating assets from liabilities, rights from duties, possessing the first and transferring the second to the state.

Putin’s Restoration is a final, precise, adjustment of the rights of the late Soviet nomenklatura to its interests. The initial post-Communist adjustment was imperfect, imprecise, off the mark. Since the Russian transition from late totalitarianism to post-totalitarianism was the first, the appropriation of the economy by the nomenklatura appeared risky. The new nomenklatura of late totalitarianism could not know how many of the old thuggish-revolutionary nomenklatura were still around and whether they would reassert the power of the centre and punish those who moved boldly to privatise and appropriate. The solution was to create fronts of risk takers from the fringes of the nomenklatura who would assume all the risk but would share the profits with their patrons at the core of the elite. This worked well for awhile until the fronts, the oligarchs, decided that they and not their patrons were the string-pulling masters.

Sections of the nomenklatura, especially within the security apparatus, were left out of the initial great grab of wealth. All the major assets, from Gasprom to Aeroflot, were already gone. The economic stratification in post-totalitarian Russia was not commensurable with the political stratification of late-totalitarian Russia. Putin’s security elite faction made then a final adjustment, appropriating the most lucrative properties from the fringe nomenklatura oligarchs who, like the legendary puppets, cut off their strings and imagined themselves to be alive. This redistribution of wealth required gaining political power. New wealth in Russia, the wealth that was not appropriated during the ‘90s, lies under the ground. Extracting that wealth, exporting it, and appropriating the proceeds also requires political power, the kind of political power that is unnecessary for the mere stripping of assets. These were the reasons why the Russian security elite needed political power—the Putin restoration.

Dr. Aviezer Tucker is an Australia Research Council fellow at the Department of Social and Political Theory, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University. From January 2006, he will be Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy, Politics, and International Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast. He is writing a book presenting a political theory of post-totalitarianism