The Pipeline, the Protest, and the President
A Siberian Lesson on the Putin System
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Russia is planning an oil pipeline from eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast that will run close to the Lake Baikal. The project has run up against opposition for several years. Now President Putin in a decision staged for television has relocated this section of the pipeline. This does not reveal a trend towards a democratic about-face in Russia. Putin’s intervention is more like a didactic play about a political system in which state and society stand irreconcilably opposite one another and the president as the “good Tsar” boosts his legitimacy by dressing down high-ranking state functionaries or business leaders on television for all to see.
(Osteuropa 9/2006, pp. 43–56)