In the West’s View, Putin Very Well Could Be the Businessman’s Special

MOSCOW — Just days before Russian voters are expected to elect a dour autocrat as president, many Westerners share a surprising conviction: A little authoritarianism might be just what Russia needs.

Of course, that’s not precisely the way they--or the man likely to be voted president Sunday, Vladimir V. Putin--are putting it.

“No one wants to use the word ‘authoritarian’ because it doesn’t go over well,” says Alan Rousso, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “Instead, the language Putin is using and everyone else is using is ‘strong state.’ ”

A strong state is one that can collect taxes, enforce laws, safeguard nuclear stockpiles and manage the economy--all things that everyone agrees Russia needs. And on this score, nearly everything Putin has said and done since he became acting president Dec. 31 matches up with what the West wants.

“He’s sending all the right signals,” says Z. Blake Marshall, executive vice president of the U.S.-Russia Business Council. “Looking at all the evidence, you can build a picture that is quite promising and suggests better days are ahead.”

In fact, Putin’s economic agenda reads like a foreign investor’s wish list: simplifying the tax code, legalizing land ownership, enforcing shareholder rights, stemming capital flight. And unlike former President Boris N. Yeltsin, Putin seems to have the clout with lawmakers to make those wishes come true.

The other major area of direct concern to the West is nuclear safety. Putin has already increased contacts with U.S. officials regarding programs to safeguard nuclear weapons and other materials, and he has signaled support for progress concerning arms control.

“Under Putin, they seem to be taking these issues as seriously or more seriously than ever,” said a U.S. diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity.

What no one knows, perhaps even the likely president, is whether, under Putin, a “strong” Russia would also be a repressive Russia.

So far, that’s what signs point to. Putin launched a violent war against the separatist republic of Chechnya that has killed thousands of civilians, and he has made little effort to investigate human rights abuses allegedly committed by Russian troops. He has even jailed journalists who report the views of Chechen leaders, seeing the writers not as presenting the other side but as “betraying” Russia.

“It’s already clear that his instincts aren’t democratic,” Rousso says. “He thinks that when people act in the interests of the state, their rights should be protected. But when they don’t serve the state, their rights shouldn’t be protected.”

And who determines the state’s interests?

“Putin, of course,” Rousso says. “This shouldn’t give us a tremendous amount of confidence.”

As a result, Putin has put Western leaders in a bind. How should they react if he does all the right things for them but violates the human rights of some Russians?

“In terms of the bilateral relationship, he’s doing many things right,” the U.S. diplomat said. “There are groups who’d like us to make human rights the litmus test. But if we do that, we’ll sacrifice productive programs for a lost cause.”

The upshot is that Western governments have high hopes for Putin but for the most part are expressing them quietly.

Foreign investors, on the other hand, are practically chortling. They predict an economic boom and expect Putin to impose a little law and a lot of order on his country’s promising but unruly economic system.

“I am personally telling our clients that the time to get in is now,” says Bruce Bean--a partner with the law firm of Clifford Chance Punder--who advises foreign investors.

In the last year, Russia’s economy has risen from the ashes of the 1998 financial crisis. The country’s gross domestic product grew an estimated 3% in 1999, a massive improvement over the nearly 5% it fell in 1998. The stock market--in effect comatose after the financial crisis--has roared back to life, tripling the Russian Trading System index in 12 months. With prices for oil and other natural resources high, the nation chalked up a trade surplus of more than $30 billion last year.

“Russia is no longer dangerous for investors,” says James Fenkner, a strategist with the Troika Dialog brokerage firm. “Putin is coming into a beautiful situation. First he inherited the presidency. Now he’s inheriting an economic boom.”

Moreover, the change in the Kremlin is expected only to accelerate the gains.

“You need a new face,” Fenkner says. “There was too much damage done in the past. And in this sense, Putin is the best face we could have, because he’s not linked to the past.”

In this light, President Clinton’s description of Putin last month seems uncannily on the mark: “I think that the United States can do business with this man.”

In Russia these days, speculation about the future tends to take off from two cases--China and Chile--where developing market capitalism took precedence over developing democracy. Even Russian liberals express more admiration for former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s economic record than concern about his human rights record.

In fact, after nine years of Yeltsin’s volatile leadership, what Russians and Westerners appear to crave above all else is political stability.

“We are confident that Putin will get in, and we believe he will bring stability,” says Chris Lacey, head of General Motors’ regional division here. “Whether it becomes more authoritarian, the important thing is what he does to legislation. We all need to know what the rules of the game are. What we can’t have is a situation where the rules are changing all the time.”

Lacey says a deal is “imminent” under which GM would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a Russian auto maker. Putin wants to nearly double the scale of such direct foreign investment, to $5 billion, by the end of the year.

“With a couple of bold moves this spring, that’s possible,” says Marshall of the U.S.-Russia Business Council.

Could an authoritarian Putin eventually become a problem for the West? Marshall says that point would come if tough measures, such as jailing dissidents and censoring the media, started to be seen as signs of the state’s weakness rather than its strength.

“Authoritarianism is a problem when it compromises political stability,” Marshall says. “Actions like that detract from predictability.”

But until that point, the West is likely to sit by quietly--albeit uncomfortably--if Putin delivers on his promises in the fields of national security and economic reform, even if he also restricts individual freedoms.

“Let’s not be naive. That may happen,” the Carnegie Center’s Rousso says. “Russia absolutely needs a stronger state than the one it has now in order to take on the kinds of problems Putin is talking about. The question is how far he is willing to take it.”