Sinikukka Saari

European regional organisations have spent significant amount of time, energy and money in supporting Russia's transition towards the western liberal-democratic model since the end of the cold war. This book explores the role the Council of Europe, European Union and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have played in Russia's post-Soviet transition in the field of human rights and democracy.

The book argues that the organisations have played an important initial role in setting the reform agenda and in providing a general framework for interaction in the field of human rights and democracy. However, since the mid-1990s the impact of regional organisations has been slipping. Lately Russia has challenged the European human rights and democracy norms and now it threatens the whole framework for regional normative cooperation. Russia's attitude towards western liberal order has become more assertive and its defiance increasingly concerted even internationally.

The main finding is that democracy and human rights promotion is not a one-way transference of norms like much of the theoretical literature and European practices presume. The Russian case demonstrates that the so-called target state can influence the norm promoters and the interpretation of the norms in a fundamental way. This is a finding that has significant implications both for theory and practice.

After the so-called colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, Russia stepped up its PD efforts abroad significantly, in particular in the post-Soviet states. Another boost of PD came with the Ukrainian crisis; this time around though, the primary target was in the West. These two strands, Western and post-Soviet, are distinct. The post-Soviet strand draws heavily from the Soviet practice of manipulation and “active measures” while the Western strand of PD first relied on the soft power of attraction but gradually turned towards the strategies of manipulation,  albeit still of a softer kind than in the post-Soviet context .

Crimea is not Russia’s only land grab in the post-Soviet neighbourhood. Russia has just signed an integration treaty effectively abolishing the border between Russia and South Ossetia, a separatist enclave of Georgia. In practice, it is hard to see much difference between integration à la South Ossetia and annexation.

The new Minsk ceasefire agreement empowers Russia-backed separatists with a number of leverages over Ukraine. If implemented, the agreement could provide a functioning framework for a mutually acceptable political settlement. In the event of non-implementation, a re-eruption of hostilities is highly likely.

The traditional cornerstones of the popularity of the Putin regime – stability, growing prosperity, the increased status of Russia in international affairs – seem to be rapidly eroding, which has led many observers to predict major changes in Russia in the near future.

However, there are significant structural issues – alongside the mechanisms of ‘political technology’ and the outright oppression of dissent – that support and maintain the Putin regime, regardless of its malfunctioning and undisputed failings.

Even in the unlikely event of Putin suddenly disappearing from the political scene, significant hurdles remain for the restructuring of the Russian economy and political system. No major modernisation or reform mode is to be expected.

The EU and Finland should base their policies on a realistic assessment of Russia’s long-term trajectory. There are unlikely to be any shortcuts to success, and no western policy is likely to produce positive results in the short term. What is needed now is a long-term perspective and principled policies, while acknowledging that only the Russians can change Russia’s political direction.

The role of public diplomacy in Russian foreign policy has grown in recent years. There are two distinctive strands of Russian public diplomacy: one directed mainly towards Western states, and one towards the former Soviet republics. Despite the rhetoric of mutual interests and high respect for state sovereignty, the post-Soviet strand of Russian public diplomacy has more in common with the Soviet practice of ‘active measures’ than with the soft power of attraction commonly connected with public diplomacy. Russia's current policy runs the risk of eating away the soft power potential that Russia still enjoys in many post-Soviet states.

Many in Russia have expressed their disappointment with Putin’s decision to run for a third presidential term. They claim that Putin is becoming the new Brezhnev and that the stability he was once praised for bringing about in Russia is now turning to stagnation.

Cynicism and disillusionment with the Putin regime seem to be becoming more widespread in Russia. Ever-increasing corruption, lack of the rule of law and political competition as well as lack of innovation and dynamism in the economy all reinforce the general feeling of pessimism.

One would expect that the weakening legitimacy of the regime would lead to vocal demands for change. However, this is not the case in Russia, where several historical, political, structural and sociological conditions make wider popular protests unlikely.

The tragedy of today’s Russia seems to be that the regime is too weak to reform itself, yet simultaneously strong enough to prevent viable alternatives to its rule from gaining ground. Despite the likelihood of a negative future trajectory, Putin’s Russia seems set to drag on.

In early October 2011, Russia’s prime minister – and putative president in waiting – Vladimir Putin unveiled his plans to create a ‘Eurasian Union’ of the former Soviet countries. According to his vision, laid out in an article in Russian newspaper Izvestia, the envisaged Eurasian Union would become a powerful supranational body with political, economic and value basis.

At first sight, the initiative to create a value-based union appears to be a break with Russia’s current policies towards its post-Soviet neighbourhood. The Russian neighbourhood policy is based on Russian political and economic interests – not on any ideology or values. Indeed, Russia’s post-Soviet policies have been described as Machiavellian: flexibly shifting on an instrumental basis between supporting autocratic leaders and scheming against democratic leaders and supporting democratic opposition, or alternatively, non-democratic extremists. Although the Eurasian Union initiative seems new and unique against this backdrop, a closer examination suggests Russia’s post-Soviet neighbourhood policy is unlikely to yield much change.

There is no absolute measure of security in international relations. A situation that one actor perceives as threatening, does not appear that to someone else in a similar situation. Security is essentially about subjective judgements and therefore the role of psychology should not be ignored in security studies. Trust influences the ways states and other actors behave towards each other. This concluding article considers different strategies for managing distrust and building trust in such a way that enhances fragile stability and security and encourages peaceful cooperation between different actors in the wider Black Sea region. Managed distrust means that distrust between actors is under control in such a way that a full-blown conflict is unlikely and that some restricted and carefully monitored cooperation to advance mutual goals is possible between the distrustful actors – be they states or non-state actors. The article starts with analytical consideration of the regional context and then summarises the current trust-related policies discussed in the empirical case studies included in this volume. Finally, potentially effective trust-building strategies in the region will be considered.

The wider Black Sea region – understood in a broad sense and including Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey – is a region torn by instability and distrust. This special issue is based on the belief that trust is a key element in establishing long-term security and effective cooperation between and inside states.  Even in the absence of direct military conflict in the wider Black Sea region, the threats to regional stability are serious: weak and poor states with disputed uncontrolled zones are fertile seeding ground for organised crime, human trafficking and irregular migration. Human security remains weak and distrust to corrupt authorities is widespread in many places in the region. Many of these challenges are transnational in character. The solution of these threats and as well as regional economic development needs a cooperative and regional approach from the states and other actors in the region. This issue explores the current politics of trust and distrust in the wider Black Sea region on multiple levels and their implications to security and stability in the region. This introductory article contemplates various dimensions of trust and distrust. It also discusses the approaches and findings of existing research on trust in international relations, international security and transition studies.

The EU has made many drastic mistakes in its human rights policy towards Russia. First, the EU should have reacted faster and in a more consistent and coherent manner to early human rights violations in Russia. Instead, the EU has sent mixed messages to Russia and Russia has been able to play EU states and institutions off against each other on human rights questions. Second, the EU’s funding schemes have been too complicated and bureaucratic. As a result, aid has been channelled to civil society organisations that communicate easily with the EU funders but which often have weak links to Russian society at large. Therefore, it has been easy for the authorities to convince many Russians that these organisations serve foreign interests and that they are inherently unpatriotic. The third mistake by the EU was the presumption that all post-communist states were undergoing a
similar transition and that the challenges were largely the same from country to country. The transitioning states were mostly seen as ‘target’ and ‘recipient’ states. The EU assistance programmes should have been more engaging and based on the individual needs of the state in question from the start. Although the EU has attempted to improve its external human rights policy in recent years, it seems that these improvements have been too little, too late.

The political system that Vladimir Putin established during the first decade of the 2000s is often referred to as ‘the power vertical’. The term suggests a stable, streamlined and effective centre-led system. Yet, this image does not quite correspond with Russian reality. The system creates inefficiency, encourages corruption and is hostile towards bottom-up political initiative. The current leadership acknowledges that Russian stability is on shaky ground and therefore the system is in need of modernization. The economy is clearly a priority for the leadership: it believes that the political system’s modernization should emerge gradually and in a highly controlled fashion from economic achievements. The current system in Russia is hostile to innovation and prone to corruption and therefore Medvedev’s modernization plan is unlikely to succeed unless transparency and open competition within the system are considerably enhanced. This will be difficult to achieve because the elite benefits from the current corrupt and non-transparent system where the lines of responsibility are unclear.

This article explores international democracy promotion and its impact on Russian policies before and after the colour revolutions in the former Soviet Union. In particular, the article analyses the democracy promotion efforts of major European intergovernmental organizations - the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the European Union - as well as NGOs working in Russia. The article demonstrates that European intergovernmental organizations gave political and economic considerations priority over more consistent and principled policy towards Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s. This instrumentalism partly explains Russia's current aggressive attitude towards international democracy promotion. Informed by the 'colour' revolutions in the former Soviet republics, this negative attitude has turned into a direct, openly articulated and internationally concerted action plan against democracy promotion. This article traces and analyses the shifting dynamics of the Russian challenge to Western democracy promotion. It cautions both against simplistic categorizations of 'democrats' and 'non-democratic forces' by democracy promoters and also against political favouritism linked to them. These categorizations rarely reflect complex reality and they are all too easily manipulated. Overall, the European intergovernmental organizations indirectly legitimized undemocratic practices in Russia in the name of promoting democracy and thus delegitimized their own democracy promotion efforts. 

Keywords: Russia; democracy promotion; backlash; colour revolutions

The Duma election and its results reinforce the prevailing undemocratic trends in Russia. The changes in electoral laws, the election campaign and its biased coverage in the Russian media, the Russian authorities’ hostile attitude towards international election observation and the so-called Putin’s Plan leave very little hope of democratic pluralism developing in Russia anytime soon. Russia’s political system has been built gradually over the years. The system aims at controlling the competition for power and securing the political elite’s interests. The system is characterised by non-transparent and manipulated political processes, misleading doublespeak on democratic norms, and the misuse of soft and hard administrative resources. Putin’s overwhelming popularity does not compensate for the lack of democratic accountability. Likewise, his possible premiership would not strengthen parliamentarism in Russia because the decision is driven by instrumentalism towards political institutions. Instead, it would create a dangerous precedent for an ad hoc separation of power.

The EU has fought against human trafficking diligently since the adaptation of the first anti-trafficking strategy a decade ago. Nevertheless, the European anti-trafficking activity is in danger of turning into inefficient pottering due to two major shortcomings. Its efficiency suffers from tight migration policies and from weak protection of trafficking victims. These fundamental deficiencies also demonstrate that in practice traditional, sovereignty-based security thinking is still prioritised over more ethical considerations.

Finland maintains the idea that Russia and NATO are possible opponents, and this paper analyzes whether this security policy thinking is still adequate, since cooperation between the two is increasing. After providing some historical background, the author discusses possible changes for the Finnish policies and positions towards NATO and Russia.