Almost three years to separate August 31, 1994the date when the last Russian soldiers left the now-extinct East German territory Mikhail Gorbachev refused to suppress military manual The fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany and the day the President took office on February 24, 2022. Vladimir Putin He ordered his army to enter the neighboring country of Ukraine, which had already become an independent state, and install a sympathetic government there. In this time period, consecutive leaders At the head of the Kremlin, they turned the country’s politics upside down like a stocking. indoor space and abroad, in transit from a country immersed in a country opening process and allergic to using force to solve their problems foreign affairs a distinctly totalitarian state capable of initiating full-blown land invasion Against another state, a reality not seen in Europe since the Second World War.
When a nation undergoes such radical changes, historical period relatively short, the same values that drive society and its elite very opposite to each other, the question is almost inevitable: what went wrong in Russia? Why was the transition initiated by the USSR/Russia? in the 80s failed and finally canceled upon arrival Vladimir Putin to power in 1999?
Carmen Claudín, principal investigator of the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB), is reluctant to explain the situation. “transition” Political processes in the last years of the existence of the USSR and the beginning of the Russian Federation as an independent state. But a “extreme and innocent belief“on behalf of intellectuals and leaders in the transformative capacity of the market economy” 80’s and 90’s carried the weight of the reforms. (Yegor) “Gaidar and other thinkers believed that by privatizing and implementing the market economy, democratic changes would come naturally; in democracy, institutions also They are very important”, underlines EL PERIÓDICO, a newspaper belonging to the Prensa Ibérica group and this media, in a telephone conversation. If institutions remain essentially the same and operate in the same way, “everything depends on the people responsible for them and their ultimate will”, thus reforms and changes take place and evolveGo on.
justice without reform
As an example, he cites, among others, justice, a justice that has not been reformed since Soviet times, inciting abuses as soon as a head of state comes to power with an oppressive will to silence it. dissenting voices Like Putin. “Without independent justice, without transparency, there is no democracy,” he emphasizes. Actually, lack of independence allowed the persecution and imprisonment of judges and magistrates in recent years in today’s Russia. fabricated or false accusations a competitors anyone critical journalistsreminiscent of trials-farce Organized against dissidents in the USSR, as reported by human rights NGOs.
Another of the elements that allows a president open allergic To democracy, like Putin, the concept of freedom to reverse the opening direction that Russia is marching on is “a granting authorization“, not as a right or an advance belonging citizens for whom we must fight and stay vigilant ensure their survival. “The process of change came from above, not the result of mobilization from below,” recalls Claudín, which greatly facilitated the task of the authorities when they decided to take a step back.
First of all, plan “psychological shock” and the feeling of distrust spreading among citizens due to the changes. “What the country has been through since the 1980s hasn’t been just a change of government, not even a regime change,” explains Claudín. about a “system change”Similar to what happened in the country after bolshevik revolution, Go on. “More than economic difficulties produced afterWhat shocked and alarmed the citizens, very similar to what existed in the Soviet era, was the disappearance of the certainties and guarantees that the State gave them under the USSR”, concludes the researcher.