The annual meeting of the Valdai Club last week (October 18–21) was less pompous than usual, and many foreign guests attended virtually; but Russian President Vladimir Putin opted to make a personal appearance, so the mediators of the much-anticipated session were compelled to first undergo a two-week-long quarantine. Putin’s long speech consisted mostly of trivia, and his answers to traditionally deferential questions were verbose and elliptic (Kommersant, October 22). The proposition that the “current model of capitalism […] has run its course” is not only banal but also clashes with Russian fostering of the worst features of this model, like rampant corruption. And the Kremlin leader’s unequivocal rejection of revolutions and of “so-called social progress” is also well documented; so restating such sentiments before the Valdai audience was nothing new (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, October 22). Meanwhile, Putin’s commitment to “healthy” or “reasonable” conservatism is essentially self-serving and signifies a readiness to preserve the antiquated structures of his autocratic regime against the building pressure of a fast-changing world.
Putin’s Valdai Platitudes Obscure Worsening Domestic Situation – Jamestown
