O poder da Rússia pós-União Soviética. E a hegemonia de Putin

Russia is one of the largest powers in the world today. In many contexts, it is the major opposition to the political and military power of the United States. This permanent dispute between the two poles shaped the history of the 20th century.

But not just that. The persistence of Russian influence in contemporary politics also promises to be one of the hallmarks of the 21st century. To understand Russia’s power currently, it is necessary to go back until at least 1991.

In that year, the country emerged in its current form, built on the heritage and the rubble of the Soviet Union. Until then, the one-party regime - the Communist Party - had dictated the direction not only of the Russians and Soviets, but also of dozens of other countries in Moscow's sphere of political and economic influence. This monolithic communist power actually began to weaken in the late 1980s, when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began a program of slow political opening, known as glasnost and gradual economic opening known as perestroika.

Gorbachev's reforms were an attempt to calm the growing tensions within the Soviet bloc. These internal tensions were compounded by the high cost of the arms race with the United States during the Cold War, when the two countries vied for aerospace, military, economic, cultural and ideological leadership. The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.

Gorbatchev, the reformer, fell. And Russia's first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, took his place. All other former Soviet republics became new sovereign states.

In this rearrangement, Russia emerged as the largest country in the bloc and the world in territory. But Russian entry into the capitalist world was turbulent. Instead of the gradual opening attempted by Gorbachev, Yeltsin bet on a capitalist shock.

The country launched a wave of privatization of its state-owned companies. The Russian economy was opened to foreign companies, which entered a market of nearly 150 million consumers. This was a new market, untapped and eager for contact with the West.

Former Soviet bureaucrats became oligarchs. A new class of Russian millionaires emerged, great tycoons - many of them involved in corruption schemes and organized crime. This turmoil during the transition led the country into a new crisis, sparked by the dynamics of capitalism and newly won civil liberties.

And in 1993, political crisis hit. Under pressure from his opponents, Yeltsin dissolved the Parliament and suppressed demonstrations in Moscow, causing dozens of deaths. Nonetheless, he was elected to a second term in 1996, beating a Communist Party opponent in the second round of voting.

In 1998, economic crisis hit. Deeply in debt, drowning in inflation and unemployment, the country defaulted on its foreign debt, causing negative impacts on the global economy. Internally, it saw a considerable decline in social indicators in relation to the Soviet era.

The Human Development Index and GDP per capita fell throughout the 1990s. And the life expectancy, which was 69 years old in 1988, fell to 64 years old in 1994. The overlapping crises marked the end of Boris Yeltsin's second term.

Worn out and cornered - accused by the Russian press of showing up drunk to public ceremonies - the country's first elected president announced to the national media that he was leaving office. Yeltsin's resignation in 1999 cleared the way for the rise of then-Vice President Vladimir Putin to power. A former agent with the KGB, the dreaded Soviet secret service, would henceforth become a hegemonic leader in Russia.

No other politician could rival Putin for decades to come. After replacing Yeltsin for a year, Putin ran for and won his first presidential election, in the year 2000. He won with 53% of the votes.

And that was just the beginning. In 2004, he had another electoral victory. Putin was re-elected president for a new four-year term, this time with almost 72% of the votes.

The early Putin years saw improvement in key indicators. Life expectancy, for instance, which was 65 years old when Putin arrived at the Kremlin in 1999, rose to 67. 949 in 2008.

And the Human Development Index rose to levels above those recorded during the Soviet Union. During this period, the Russian president consolidated powers. In addition to securing a majority in the Duma and the Federation Council - both houses of the Russian parliament - Putin also expanded the use of intelligence services and police to crack down on civil movements.

He violently smothered separatist movements in rebel Chechnya and did little to solve the assassinations of critics of his government in Moscow. Unable to run for president for the third time in a row, Putin appointed a bland ally, Dimitry Medvedev, to office, while placing himself in the position of prime minister. In semi-presidential systems, such as Russia’s, the president is the head of state, and the prime minister is the head of government.

But this formal division did not keep Putin from exercising control of almost every affair in the country - even when he remained prime minister from 2008 to 2012. Medvedev never came close to overshadowing Putin. Nor did any other opponent.

One of his biggest antagonists, Alexei Navalny, even managed to mobilize some demonstrations against Putin starting in 2008. But real opposition never took off. Largely due to violence and persecution, reported by international human rights organizations and other countries.

Putin again ran for president in 2012. And he won again. Only this time, the presidential term was no longer four, but six years, due to a constitutional reform.

Internal cohesion has boosted greater international ambitions for present-day Russia. Russia's military budget multiplied by more than 12 times between 1999 and 2012. The nuclear threat - central to the Soviet years - has subsided.

The decline in the number of nuclear warheads proves it: from a little over 35,000 in 1989 to just over 4,000 in 2014. The country is the world's second largest arms exporter, second only to the US. But the most ambitious international bid of the Putin era came in 2014, when Russia took over the territory of Crimea.

The move was a mix of military and political pressure exerted on the government of Ukraine, which was cozying up to the European Union. In addition to sending the military to Crimea, Putin backed a referendum allowing residents of the peninsula to decide to leave Ukraine and join Russia. The US and European powers protested, but Putin did not listen.

This is the best example of the latent dispute between Russia and the Western powers. As was the case with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the Russians try to keep a buffer zone of Eastern European ally countries. But this movement is not restricted to the former Soviet republics alone.

Since 2015, Putin has also become the largest military sponsor of the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. And even extended his influence over Venezuela, here in Latin America, on the Brazilian border. In addition to military operations, Russia has also taken international action to destabilize electoral processes of foreign countries.

In 2016, US intelligence services said Russian agents had access to private messages from the Democratic Party during that year's presidential election. An investigation was then opened to determine whether US’s Republican President, Donald Trump, acted in collusion with the Russians to derive political and economic benefits from this relationship. In subsequent years, European countries also accused Russia of spreading fake news and running an army of bots on social media to undermine their electoral processes.

While showing strength internationally, Putin continued to collect victories internally. In 2018 he won the presidential election for another six-year term. Putin's popularity in Russia shows no sign of ebbing.

The 2018 victory came with 76% of the votes. From stepping into the Kremlin as president for the first time in 1999, until the end of his fourth elective term, expected to end in 2024, Putin shall complete 25 uninterrupted years in power - between his roles as president to prime minister. This would leave him trailing only the 29 years Josef Stalin spent in control of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953.

Putin’s Russia is not what Stalin’s Soviet Union once was. Communism has virtually disappeared from the country’s political horizon and the nuclear race with the US has been put on hold. But Moscow still holds ambitions of becoming a superpower, and its role goes far beyond its immediate surroundings.

Putin has autocratic characteristics, journalism faces serious constraints in the country, civil rights movements have little space and opposition is nearly absent. Violent oppression of LGBTI rights has become a negative feature of present-day Russia; a feature that got worldwide attention during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, when tourists were warned not to display same-sex affection in public. The outlines of this new Russia lure leaders from many parts, including the West.

And they defy the US model of liberal democracy. Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow remains an indisputable center of power and influence for the whole world.