Putin and His Supporters

Stephen White; Ian McAllister

Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 55, No. 3. (May, 2003), pp. 383-399.

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 EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, Carfax Publishing
Vol. 55, NO. 3, 2003, 383-399

Putin and His Supporters

STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

FORMOST OF ITS EXISTENCE, post-communist Russia has been a state in decline. Its
gross domestic product contracted steadily up to the late 1990s, its international
alliances collapsed, and up to a third of its own citizens dropped below the poverty
line. Russia, on World Bank figures, was still the world's twelfth largest economy at
the end of the 1990s, but it had fallen behind the Netherlands and South Korea, and
in economic performance per head of population it was behind countries like
Malaysia, Botswana and South Africa. To newspaper commentators, it seemed as if
the West's derogatory label-an 'Upper Volta with rockets'-was finally coming
true.' The population, meanwhile, was steadily declining, and the state itself was
falling apart as republics and regions took 'as much sovereignty as they could
swallow' and the central authorities found it increasingly difficult to impose their
decisions, or even to collect taxes. Placing these developments within a larger
perspective in his first address as acting president, Vladimir Putin warned there was
a real danger of Russia slipping, not into the second, but into the third rank of world
powers.2
There had been little evidence, over the same period, that Russia's political class
had the will or the means to reverse this apparently inexorable decline. There had
been five prime ministers between March 1998 (when Viktor Chernomyrdin had been
dropped) and August 1999 (when Vladimir Putin, at that time a little-known security
chief, replaced Sergei Stepashin). El'tsin's own health was uncertain, and his standing
had meanwhile plumbed new depths: by the late summer of 1999 he rated just 1.8 on
a ten-point approval scale, and more than two-thirds were prepared to support public
demonstrations calling for his re~ignation.~ For an anxious Kremlin, the only chance
of salvaging their position and perhaps their personal liberty was to provoke public
disorder (an attempt to remove Lenin from the mausoleum, it was thought, might do
the trick4) or at least to find some way of postponing the election that was due by the
summer of 2000. In the event, Putin, already named as El'tsin's chosen successor,
gained rapidly in popularity as a new Chechen war began; for a suspicious minority,
the whole emergency had been contrived by the Kremlin in a cynical bid to boost the
chances of its favoured candidate. Putin's own standing certainly improved dramati-
cally: just 2% saw him as their presidential choice in August 1999, but by the end of
the year he was the choice of 50%, and a still larger number were prepared to give
him their more general approval.'
Putin went on to win a convincing first-round victory in the election, brought
forward to March 2000 after El'tsin's unexpected resignation, and in almost every
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/03/030383-17 O 2003 University of Glasgow
DOI: 10.1080/0966813032000069304
384 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

respect his new administration appeared to have arrested or even reversed Russia's
long and apparently inexorable decline. The population continued to fall-an alarm-
ing trend to which the new president himself drew repeated attention. But economic
growth recovered strongly, and the new administration began to assert Russian
national interests more vigorously in its dealings with the international community.
Above all, it reasserted the power of the central government within Russia itself. The
'anti-terrorist action' in Chechnya was pressed forward; all the republics and regions
were obliged to bring their legislation into line with the federal constitution; and
presidential representatives were appointed to head seven new federal districts. Much
of this recovery, however, depended on the president himself-his formal powers had
become no greater. How secure, entering the later stages of his 4-year term, was
Vladimir Putin? What were the bases of his popular support? And had he developed
a formula of rule that would be sufficient to sustain the 'consolidation' that he
regarded as the main achievement of the first year of his new admini~tration?~

The Putin phenomenon

Putin was certainly 'the people's choice', with a support base that was remarkably
close to a cross-section of the entire society. Post-election surveys indicated that
Putin's supporters were slightly more likely to be female than to be male, but they
were evenly distributed by age, with a slightly disproportionate representation of the
older age-groups (but less so than was the case with Zyuganov's supporters). Putin's
supporters, at the same time, were remarkably evenly distributed across the different
levels of educational achievement, and they included many who had been members
of the CPSU as well as many who had not. Putin supporters were also distributed
across all levels of income, with most support of all from those with earnings that
were closest to the average; and they were evenly distributed in terms of their own
assessment of the economic position of their family, their place of residence and the
country as a whole.7
Not simply were Putin supporters representative of the wider society in their
objective characteristics, they were also representative in their attitudes and values.
Putin supporters, for instance, were overwhelmingly in favour of public order rather
than democracy in the country's current circumstances-but so were the electorate as
a whole. They thought the best chance of uniting the society was around the values
of stability and law and order: so did other electors, in very similar proportions. Putin
supporters found their main source of satisfaction in family life (as did the electorate
as a whole); they were most dissatisfied with the situation in Chechnya, and their
country's economic situation (again, other Russians took the same view). And overall,
they were almost exactly as satisfied or dissatisfied with their own life as the
electorate as a whole. Indeed, there was a great deal of common ground between
Putin's supporters and those of his Communist challenger: both groups were support-
ive of the war in Chechnya, and of state ownership, and of virtually every other issue
that had contributed to the support of either and id ate.^
A year later, many more 'remembered' voting for Putin than had been recorded at
the time. But the evidence of our nationwide survey, fielded in April 2001, continued
to indicate that Putin's support had been drawn from all sections of the electorate
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS

TABLE 1
PREDICTING
VOTING
FOR PUTININ THE MARCH
2000 F'RESIDENT~AL
ELECTION

(logistic regression
estimates)

Estimate (SE)

Gender (male) - 0.18 (0.13)

Age (years) - 0.01 (0.01)
Urban resident 0.03 (0.15)
Education (primary only)
Post-secondary 0.16 (0.15)
Tertiary 0.06 (0.21)
Religion
No religion - 0.32* (0.16)
Regular church attender 0.17 (0.15)
Family income (thousand rubles per month) - 0.04 (0.03)
Employed in labour force 0.08 (0.15)
Good household economic situation - 0.04 (0.08)
Constant 1.39
Pseudo R-squared 0.02

* Statistically significant at p < 0.05, two-tailed.

Note: Logistic regression estimates showing parameter estimates and

standard errors predicting the probability of voting for Putin, n = 1,583.

Post-secondary and tertiary education are measured against the excluded

category, which is primary education only.

Source: Authors' survey conducted by Russian Research, fieldwork April

2001, n = 2,000 (further details are provided in the Appendix).

(Table 1). The socioeconomic variables that we employ to predict a Putin vote in
March 2000 indeed show that his support was drawn almost at random from a wide
diversity of sources. The ten measures used in the equation in Table 1-ranging from
demographic factors such as age and gender to human capital measures such as
education and income-predict just 2% of the total variation in Putin's electoral
support, with the remaining 98% unexplained. Only one factor was a statistically
significant predictor of whether or not respondents had voted for Putin-not being an
atheist-and even then it was a decidedly weak influence. The absence of an
underlying pattern of socioeconomic support for Putin in the election, beyond this
marginal effect for religion, meant in turn that there was no obvious 'Putin constitu-
ency' on which the new president could depend as he moved to adopt policies that
might not be popular with all of those who had originally supported him.
A widely distributed, almost cross-sectional pattern of support had its counterpart
in the new president's nebulous, all-embracing image. Putin had avoided a commit-
ment to a particular political party, and more than half of those who were asked found
it impossible to place him on the left, right or ~ e n t r eAs
. ~ pollster Yurii Levada put
it, he was a kind of 'mirror in which everyone, communist or democrat, sees what he
wants to see and what he hopes for'.'' In focus groups Putin was described as
intelligent, competent, physically and psychologically healthy, a man who kept
himself to himself, and who was honest and respected abroad. Supporters drew
attention to his toughness, describing him as a 'real muzhik, strong-willed and
386 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

decisive'; women noted the new president's 'manly smile' (as one participant put it,
'we are used to amoeba-like men, but he is something different'). Both supporters and
opponents agreed at the same time that the new president was difficult to assess, as
he had risen to power through a series of appointments and without engaging in
public controversy. Some described him as a 'dark horse', 'an unidentified object' or
even 'a Malevich black square', and there were other references to his cruelty,
cunning and unpredictability.'
Putin's reputation took a number of knocks during his first year of office,
particularly during the Kursk tragedy in August 2000, when he reacted belatedly and
(some thought) inadequately. Reflecting on the first year of his presidency with
Russian journalists, Putin insisted that 'nothing had depended on me' but acknowl-
edged he was 'still very upset' by the incident.'' The Kursk, however, had little effect
on the new president's public standing, nor did the take-over of the commercial
television station NTV in the spring of 2001, a development that appeared to threaten
freedom of speech but in which 'the majority of the population did not see Putin as
being actively involved'.13 Putin, for some analysts, had become a 'teflon president',
who was popular whatever he did.14 The opinion polls put his approval rating at a
stable 70%, which was as high as he had secured at the time of his election (see
Figure 1); in 2001 he was 'man of the year' for the third time in a row, and his

Vote

I Confidence

Note: The question wordings were as follows: (Approval) 'On the whole, do you approve or disapprove of

the performance of Vladimir Putin?'; (Vote) 'If a new presidential election were held next Sunday, for which

candidate would you be most likely to vote?'; (Confidence) 'Name the 5 or 6 politicians who inspire the most

confidence in you.'

Sources: adapted from Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya,

various issues, and www.wciom.ru.

FIGURE 1. MEASURING 2000-03

PUTIN'SSUPPORT,
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS

apparently resolute action during the hostage-taking crisis of October 2002 won
almost universal approval.15Boris El'tsin a few months before the end of his first term
in 1996 had appeared unelectable. Entering the later stages of his first term there
seemed no prospect of a serious challenge to Vladimir Putin in 2004, or at a later date
if his term were extended beyond its constitutional limit.

Managing the presidential image

Putin's remarkable public support owed something to the skills of image manage-
ment. One of the relatively novel ways in which he boosted his popular appeal was
by holding 'virtual press conferences'. At the first, a year after his accession, he
answered questions on-line for three different Internet services.16 There was an even
greater public response when the second took place over the main state channels at
the end of 2001; more than two million questions and comments were submitted, a
'dialogue with the country' that was apparently without international precedent.17
Most of the calls dealt with social issues, including pension reform, public sector pay
and communal charges, but there were other, more controversial questions about the
criminalisation of law enforcement and the widespread nature of drug abuse.18
According to the survey evidence, more than half of the population had seen at least
some part of the broadcast, and more than half (54%) were satisfied with the way in
which the president had responded.19
Putin's image was also enhanced by the information that was made available about
his private life and childhood. The president worked out for half an hour every day,20
which was certainly a contrast with his immediate predecessor, and he was the
co-author of a study of the history and theory of judo, although it provided few clues
about his political tactics (it was hardly a revelation that 'a person falls if he loses his
balance and is unable to regain Other accounts began to fill out the future
president's early years, with some emphasis on the qualities that identified him as a
combative, streetwise, somewhat unruly figure. An aunt in Ryazan', for instance, told
Komsomol'skaya pravda about the time little Vova had climbed out onto the ledge of
their fifth-floor apartment, and about the time he had fallen into the river during a
fishing trip-fortunately he could already swim, but it was a 'watery christening'.22
Putin's school contemporaries were more inclined to recall his tendency to become
involved in fights, although they also told the same paper how the future president had
made all the arrangements after the unexpected death of a schoolfriend, and how he
had bought his mother the biggest cake in the shop with his first paycheck.23
Putin's image was further embellished in a series of biographical studies that began
to appear a year or two into his presidency. His German teacher, in her 'recollections
of a future president', remembered Putin as a student of modest attainment who was
one of the last to be admitted into the Pioneers, but who turned out to have a 'sharp
and lively mind, an excellent memory and exceptional curiosity'.24 A more elaborate
study appeared under the name of a Russian journalist, Oleg Blotsky, using the
photographs, personal archives and interview testimony of a supposedly reluctant
president and his wife. The first of a projected three volumes, it strengthened the
impression of a slight but resolute young man who had never hesitated to defend his
position by whatever means were necessary. Putin himself told Blotsky he had been
 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

educated on the street, which was 'just like living in the jungle', but that he had
learned one important lesson, which was that in order to win he 'had to go to the end
in any fight and strike out as if in the last, decisive combat'.25 A second volume,
published later in 2002, underlined the president's tough, even male-chauvinist
character: 'A woman must do everything in the home', he told his wife, and 'You
should not praise a woman, otherwise you will spoil her'. It was no wonder that she
told Blotsky he had 'put [her] to the test throughout [their] life t~gether'.'~
There were even signs of an emerging personality cult. A year after his election,
foundry workers in the Urals were already turning out busts of the new president. Not
far away, weavers were making rugs with the president's face in a golden oval. In
Magnitogorsk the overalls Putin had worn during a visit were on display in the city
m ~ s e u m . ~A' factory in Chelyabinsk had meanwhile begun to produce a watch with
a presidential image on its dial, and a local confectioner was selling a cake with the
same design; a 'Putin bar' had opened elsewhere in the town, selling 'Vertical power'
kebabs and 'When Vova was little' milk shake^.'^ A novel, Prezident, told the thinly
fictionalised story of a 'real muzhik' who had been the only one to return alive from
a dangerous mission in Chechnya; an opera, 'Monika in the Kremlin', was based on
the equally unlikely account of a CIA spy who had been sent to seduce the Russian
president but who turned out to be an FSB double agent and in the end married his
bodyguard.29An all-female band had meanwhile 'taken the airwaves by storm' with
its single 'Someone like Putin' (someone who, among other things, 'doesn't drink'
and 'will not shame me').30 Putin's 50th birthday in September 2002 brought further
tributes: Argumenty i fakty readers wanted to present their president with a samurai
sword, a portable toilet 'so that he can wipe out whoever he wants whenever he
wants', or even 'my love and perhaps a child as well'.31
Matters went even further in the village of Izborsk, outside St Peterburg, where the
presidential motorcade had once made an unscheduled stop. Visitors were offered a
walking tour that included the places 'where Putin bought a cucumber', 'where Putin
took off his jacket and tried water from a spring', and 'where Putin touched a tree and
made a wish'.32In Irkutsk the chair on which Putin had sat during his April 2002 visit
was sold at public auction; in St Petersburg a tree the future president had planted
while a city official was decorated with a commemorative plaque; elsewhere, ski
slopes and churches were being renamed in his honour.33 Court painters had
meanwhile been at work. One showed Putin seated enigmatically below Malevich's
'Black Square';34 another, by Nikas Safronov, showed the president with the whole
country spread out behind him in a pastiche of 'socialist realism, Byzantine osten-
tation and Old Russian heroic' (Figure 2). Yet another portrait, by Aleksandr Okunev,
was in the style of the earliest studies of Lenin, with 'a friendly smile, a thoughtful
expression [and] a fountain pen in his hand'.35 Safronov, art director of an erotic
magazine, had started his work in 1999, convinced Putin would be a future president,
and after March 2000 an 'enormous number of senior officials' ordered a copy for
their own offices (as a sculptor told Argumenty i fakty, things were currently rather
difficult for artists and they 'had to make use of every opportunity').36
The president appeared to enjoy particularly high levels of support among women,
despite early reports that he suffered from a 'lack of ~exuality'.~' Pravda reported a
distressing case from Yaroslavl', where there was a 'new category of patients-
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS 389

FIGURE 2. NIKASS.\FRONOV,
VL\I)IMIKPf.'f/r~(2000)

women who are madly in love with President Vladimir Putin'. Lyudmila, in her late
thirties, had started to collect newspaper articles about the president; she soon
accumulated a thick file, which she kept in a locked bedside cabinet. She asked her
husband to turn down the television when Putin was speaking on the radio, and made
no move to feed him two weeks later when he came home starving from work, sitting
'bedazzled' in front of the television as Putin gave an interview (they had such a
390 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

quarrel they stopped speaking to each other for three days). Finally she moved into
the children's room, where she hung a portrait of the president above the bed; but her
husband threw everything on the floor, Lyudmila herself dissolved in tears, and the
only way forward appeared to be a private psychiatrist. Lyudmila's case, he ex-
plained, was 'not unique'; women saw Putin as a 'superhusband, the ideal partner',
who would 'never betray them, and never get dead drunk' (there was hope,
meanwhile, that Lyudmila would 'soon recover').38

Assessing presidential ratings

Putin's approval ratings were certainly high-so high they could even be described
as ' ~ u r k m e n i a n ' .But
~ ~ they were also deceptive. Approval ratings, for a start, were
the highest of all the forms of assessment of the president's performance; and even
then they had fallen from their peak of 80% in January 2000 (see Fig. 1). The national
public opinion institute asks ordinary Russians to identify '5-6 political figures in
whom they have most confidence'. Putin, halfway through the third year of his
presidential term, was in first place with 41%. But once again, this was a fall from
the 49% he had been accorded at the moment he became acting president, and almost
half had no confidence in any of the country's politicians or refused to say.40There
was rather more stability in the proportion that were prepared to vote for the new
president if there were an election 'next Sunday', but fewer were prepared to do so
than had voted for Putin in March 2000, when his support had represented no more
than a third of the entire electorate. These, moreover, were assessments of Putin as
a person, or a political leader; they were not necessarily judgements about his conduct
of the nation's affairs. Public attitudes in this respect were much more qualified.
The national public opinion research centre, for instance, regularly asks a gener-
alised question about government performance: what mark out of ten would respon-
dents give to the president, the prime minister and the parliament? In the third year
of his presidential term Putin rated no more than a cautious 5.9, ahead of the
parliament but not much more than his prime minister (4.4).41In another question,
VTsIOM asked ordinary Russians whether the hopes they had entertained with the
accession of a new president had been fulfilled. Opinion was almost evenly divided:
48% were broadly satisfied, but 46% had been di~appointed.~'And did ordinary
Russians agree with the president, whether or not they gave him their general
approval? Just 17%, according to the surveys, 'completely shared his views and
positions'. The largest proportion (27%) offered more conditional support, depending
on whether he 'continued to promote democratic and market reforms'. Another 18%
supported him 'in the absence of an acceptable alternative'. About 10% disliked Putin
but 'hoped he would be good for Russia', and 12% had never supported him in the
first place.43
Some of the reasons for this public reserve were apparent when ordinary Russians
were asked to evaluate Putin's performance in a number of different policy arenas
(see Table 2). He had been most successful, they thought, in reasserting Russia's
authority in foreign affairs. There was also some agreement that he had been
successful in restoring public order-including the reassertion of federal authority
over the regions, the measures he had taken against the oligarchs, and his attempts to
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS 39 1

TABLE 2

vely Quite Not very Completely

successful successful successful unsuccessful

Russia's international position 9 48 26 8

F'uhlic order 8 42 41 6

Democracy and political freedoms 6 35 38 8

The economy 5 32 51 9

Defeat of Chechen militants 3 22 45 22

A political settlement in Chechnya 4 22 45 21

Note: The question wording was: 'How successfully, in your opinion, has Vladimir Putin coped with

the following problems over the past two years?'

Source: VTsIOM express poll, fieldwork 22-26 March 2002, n = 1,600, used with permission;

corresponding results for March 2001 are available in Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya:

ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny, 2001, 2, p. 87.

reduce the level of serious crime. But there was some concern about political liberties,
reflecting the actions that had been taken against the independent media and the
promotion of Putin's associates from his long service in the KGB to leading positions
within the administration. There was little belief that Putin had been able to raise the
rate of economic growth and restore the living standards of ordinary Russians; and
there was even less belief that he had been successful in defeating the Chechen
insurgency, or in advancing a political solution. It had of course been a large part of
the explanation of his extraordinary rise in public approval that he had appeared to
offer a rapid solution to the problem of Chechen terrorism, if necessary 'wiping them
out in the john'; the hostage-taking crisis of October 2002 suggested that a solution
was as far away as ever and that the heavy loss of life would continue.
Focus groups similarly suggested a gradual erosion of the unconditional support
Putin had enjoyed at the time of his election. Initially, there had been some hope that
the new president would carry out his election promises and show his leadership
potential. But after the 'black August' in which the Kursk had sunk and the Ostankino
television tower had suffered a damaging fire, questions began to emerge, more often
at the subconscious than the conscious level. The war in Chechnya seemed no nearer
to a successful conclusion, the struggle with the oligarchs had been spasmodic, and
changes in the structures of government had failed to produce the results that had
been promised. By the anniversary of his election, focus groups were no longer
willing to 'wait and see'; increasingly there were complaints that Putin had 'already
been a year in power'. Those who had voted for Putin a year earlier were the most
critical: the president had not satisfied their hopes, and they saw little prospect that
he would do so in the near future ('We had expected more of him'). If the president
went on to take unpopular decisions, these were in turn the voters who were most
likely to react n e g a t i ~ e l y . ~ ~
The weekly paper Argumenty i fakty set out a balance sheet at the end of Putin's
first year; it could equally have served as a judgement on the first half of his
presidential term. Much of Chechnya was under federal control-but nearly 3,000 had
died and the local population was firmly hostile. The authority of the Kremlin had
392 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

been reasserted, but it was too soon to say that the new federal districts with their
presidential representatives had proved their effectiveness. Some oligarchs had been
marginalised more than others, and their treatment would hardly encourage future
investors. There had been little progress with economic reform, and any successes
owed more to the world price of oil than Kremlin policy. Tax reform was going
nowhere, and military reform remained largely on paper or (worse) had been
accomplished by the dissolution of those units that were still capable of active service.
Judges had enjoyed a salary rise, but a more general reform of the court system had
scarcely begun. Russia's foreign policy had become more predictable, but Putin's
numerous visits abroad had produced little obvious return.45It was, at best, a mixed
verdict.

A 'Putin party'?
Beyond the ebb and flow of public sentiment lay a much larger question: the extent
to which Putin had been able to construct a coalition of political support that could
sustain a first and then a second term of presidential office. On the survey evidence,
about a quarter of the electorate were consistent Putin supporters and another quarter
consistent opponents, leaving about half of the voting population uncommitted and
unstable in their 10yalties.~~The evenly distributed, cross-sectional nature of Putin's
support also meant that, in the words of a former El'tsin adviser, it was an 'unstable
entity without an ideology, so that it [could not] be relied upon dire~tly'.~'The
medium and longer term would be likely to depend upon the extent to which this fluid
mass of supporters could be constituted as a 'Putin party', one that could sustain a
programme of government that might involve unpopular choices in which the
president could no longer be all things to all men. To what extent had a constituency
of this kind come into existence, as Putin entered the second half of his presidential
term?
The evidence of our survey, fielded in April 2001, and indeed of other inquiries:'
is that support for the Putin presidency continues to draw almost randomly on all
sections of the electorate (see Table 3). As before, Putin supporters are somewhat
more numerous among those with a religious affiliation (although the frequency of
church attendance makes no obvious difference), and they are somewhat less
numerous among those who are not in current employment. But there is otherwise
very little evidence to support the hypothesis that Putin has been drawing his support
disproportionately from the disadvantaged, and indeed the statistical evidence is most
remarkable for the lack of strong effects of this or any other kind. If Putin's support
had indeed been drawn from particular constituencies, such as the poor and elderly,
or from better established urban residents, we would have expected to find that age,
gender, education and income all had strong statistical effects, but they did not.
We also examined the effect of economic attitudes upon Putin's support, focusing
on basic beliefs about the programme of structural reform to which his administration
is formally committed. Just one of the six measures had a statistically significant
impact: those who thought Putin was doing a good job were less likely to believe that
citizens had the right to own large businesses. But the effect was a weak one, net of
other circumstances, and in any case it suggested that the president enjoyed more
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS

TABLE 3
~ O C ~ O E C O N O M IAND
C A~ITUDINAL
SUPPORT
FOR PUTIN

(OLS regression estimates)

B Beta

Gender (male)

Age (years)

Urban resident

Education (primary only)

Post-secondary

Tertiary

Religion

No religion

Regular church attender

Family income (thousand rubles per month)

Employed in labour force

Good household economic situation

Economic attitudes

Money incentive important

People not government responsible for themselves

Competition brings out worst in people

State should provide basic goods

Citizens' right to own land

Citizens' right to run large businesses

Constant

R-squared

** Statistically significant at p < 0.01, * p < 0.05, both two-tailed.

Note: OLS regression estimates showing unstandardised (b) and standardised (beta)

coefficients predicting support for Putin, measured on a scale from 0 (does his job

very badly) to 1 (does his job very well). Post-secondary and tertiary education are

measured against the excluded category, which is primary education only. N = 1,814.

Source: As Table 1.

support among those who opposed his stated policies than among those who
supported them. There were no statistically significant effects of any other kind: Putin
supporters were not, for instance, more likely to favour the private ownership of land,
which was a policy the Kremlin had been trying to push through the Duma, and they
were no more likely to believe that people should provide for their own needs, in line
with the emphasis that was now being placed on individual insurance rather than state
provision. The president may have been attempting to represent himself as an
advocate of the market economy, but there is little evidence in our survey that he has
been able to establish a constituency within the electorate that shares these priorities
and associates them with their support for the incumbent.
The president appears to have had little more success in marshalling a coherent
body of supporters on the basis of their commitment to a stronger, more centralised
state. We might, for instance, have expected Putin supporters to distinguish them-
selves from our other respondents in their views about the role of the president
vis-8-vis parliament, and in their views about political leadership in general. Putin,
after all, has based his public appeal on strong and decisive leadership, and has
promised to move away from the vague, ambiguous policies of the past towards a
'dictatorship of law'. When we examine the pattern of beliefs about the importance
 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

TABLE 4

BELIEFS
ABOUTLEADERSHIP
AND THE POLITICAL
SYSTEM(%)

Presidential vote Putin doing job

Putin Other Well Badly

Importance of strong leader

Strongly agree 36
Agree 31
Hard to say 16
Disagree 12
Strongly disagree 5
Total (%) 100
President or parliament more power
President much more power 42
President more power 26
Equal powers 27
Parliament more power 4
Parliament much more power 1
Total (%) 100
(N) (1,199)

Note: The questions were: 'To what extent do you agree or disagree that a strong leader
can give our country more than any law?' and 'Some people consider that the president
in Russia should have more power than the parliament. Others think the opposite. Which
of the following points of view is closer to your own point of view?'
Source: As Table 1.

of having a strong leader, however, the evidence of our survey is that those who voted
for Putin and who were satisfied with his presidential performance were little different
from other respondents (see Table 4). There was a greater degree of differentiation in
how our respondents viewed the balance between president and parliament, and Putin
supporters were certainly more likely to favour a further strengthening of the
executive branch. But this was the view of all our respondents; it was simply that
Putin supporters took this view somewhat more strongly.
Nor was there much evidence that Putin supporters shared a distinctive set of
political values, which might also have been expected. Despite his background in the
Communist Party and KGB, Putin had served in the reformist administration of
Anatolii Sobchak in Leningrad, and had then been appointed to continue the political
project that had been initiated by Boris El'tsin. In the December 1999 election he had
publicly given his support to Unity and, less directly, to the Union of Right Forces.
The political space that Putin occupies should accordingly be clearly demarcated by
his supporters' commitment to Western-style democracy, a multiparty system and the
parties that most directly support a free market economy. In addition, if the electorate
was beginning to coalesce around a putative 'Putin party', we might have expected
these goals to differentiate Putin supporters more clearly at the second time-point in
the survey-when respondents were asked to give their views about how well Putin
was doing hls job--than at the first time-point, when they were asked to recall their
vote in the 2000 presidential election.
These expectations are tested in Table 5 by showing the proportion of respondents
in each category who chose the specified political option. For example, in the first
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS
395
TABLE 5

POLITICAL
ATTITUDES
BETWEEN PUTINSUPPORTERS
AND OPPONENTS
(%)

Presidential vote Putin doing job

Putin Other (Din Well Badly (Diff)

Best political system

Soviet
System today
Western democracy
Best party system
One Party
Current multiparty
Multiparty, fewer parties
Political orientation
Left
Centre
Right
Best party
Communist
Party supporting market
No Party
(N)

** Differences statistically significant at p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.

Note: Figures show the percentage of respondents choosing each of the three options among each

of the four groups of voters. Respondents reporting that Putin did his job 'badly' or 'very badly' are

combined to form the 'badly' column, those who thought he was doing his job 'well' and 'very well'

are combined for the 'well' column.

Source: As Table 1 .

row, 62% of voters who chose another candidate in the presidential election favoured
the Soviet system, compared with 41% of those who voted for Putin. The difference
column shows the percentage points difference between these two figures, together
with a calculation of their statistical significance. In virtually every case there was
more difference between Putin voters and other voters at the time of the presidential
election in March 2000 than between Putin supporters and other respondents a year
later. This may be partly a reflection of the different nature of the questions--one
asking for a decisive judgement in the form of a vote, the other a broader judgement
of presidential performance-but the differences are nonetheless substantial. For
example, the mean difference in responses between Putin and other voters in 2000
was 17%, but in the evaluation of how well Putin was doing his job a year later the
difference was 8%. In other words, Putin supporters had become less distinctive over
the period since his election, not a more sharply differentiated 'Putin party'.
In general, respondents were more divided in their political orientation and party
choice than in their views about the political system as a whole, and this was
particularly true of responses that related to the presidential vote. For example, a
mean of 27 percentage points differentiated Putin's supporters from those of other
candidates at the time of his election, but no more than 7 points separated them when
it came to evaluating his presidential performance a year later. The most striking
single change was among Communist voters, who had been very heavily committed
to other candidates-including their own-at the time of Putin's election, but who
396 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER

represented a much smaller proportion of those who had been disappointed by his
presidential performance (voters without a party affiliation at all were relatively more
numerous). On the largest questions of all, however, there was much greater
consistency. Putin voters, and his supporters a year later, were at one with other
respondents in identifying the Soviet system as their first choice, ahead of 'Western
democracy' and the system they actually had. And they again were at one in
favouring fewer parties, or only one, rather than the multiparty system that actually
existed. Here as elsewhere, Putin supporters were close to a cross-section of the entire
society.

The perils of presidential popularity

Entering the second half of his presidential term, Vladimir Putin had managed to
retain a level of popular approval that many world leaders might have envied.
According to his immediate associates he took a close interest in his rating, and
maintained an in-house sociological service to provide him with up-to-date reports;
one of the reasons he made so little effort to protect the independent media was that
they might have allowed a potential competitor to establish himself in a way that
could represent a challenge at the 2004 election, when his first term came to an end.49
But 'to govern is to choose', and popularity could be a mixed blessing. Indeed, there
was some evidence that Putin had become-in Yurii Levada's term-'a hostage to his
popularity rating',50 so concerned to maintain his public standing that he avoided any
decision that might alienate even a small section of those who might otherwise have
supported him.
The more he developed a committed constituency, the more Putin could create the
political space within which he could take difficult as well as popular decisions. On
our evidence, however, there was no distinctive body of Putin supporters at the time
of his original election, and a year later there was even less of a dedicated following,
least of all a 'Putin party'. Putin supporters-in either the presidential election or their
subsequent evaluation of his work as president-were in fact an all but perfect
cross-section of the electorate as a whole. They shared its social characteristics, they
were representative of its economic opinions, and they had the same kind of political
beliefs (except for the support they offered Putin himself). The president, for his part,
had studiously avoided any commitment to a political party, even those that defined
themselves by their support for his position. If anything identified Putin supporters it
was a degree of satisfaction with the status quo, for which the president was primarily
responsible; but this was hardly the kind of basis on which a programme of reform
could be conducted, or on which powerful interests could be confronted.
Difficult decisions might, in fact, be impossible to avoid. The economic recovery,
for a start, depended heavily on the world price of oil-which was outside the control
of the Russian government-and the effects of the devaluation of August 1998, which
had made foreign imports more expensive. But the effects of devaluation soon began
to disappear, and there were variations in the world price of oil that, at lower levels,
placed all the government's budgetary assumptions in some jeopardy. Russia was still
a 'pipeline economy',51 dependent on the price of its raw materials on world markets,
and heavily in debt to its foreign competitors, with a repayment schedule that would
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS

reach a peak in the early years of the new decade. Equally, an aging infrastructure
would not hold out indefinitely, as the fire in the Ostankino television tower in the
summer of 2000 and a dam burst in Yakutia in the spring of 2001-the worst for a
hundred years-made clear.
There were further choices ahead in public policy. There was little evidence that
the 'anti-terrorist operation' in Chechnya was achieving the kind of results that would
allow the Kremlin to declare it a success, while human and material losses continued
at a damaging level. The attempt to privatise land-which was already incorporated
in the Russian constitution-provoked public demonstrations led by the Communist
Party, which controlled more than half of Russia's regional governments; and yet it
affected only a small amount of land in urban areas. Any serious attempt to reform
public housing, and in particular to charge realistic prices for domestic services,
would affect every family in the land. Few, in the short or medium term, would be
able to afford private medicine. And few would be able to afford private pensions, at
a time when up to 30% of the population is living below subsistence.
Putin had come to power without a manifesto, and virtually without campaigning.
He was chosen by the El'tsin family as their successor, and his first public action was
to exempt them from prosecution. His rise to power was made possible by the
Chechen war, but it is a war he appears unable to win on terms he would find
acceptable. His high standing in the opinion polls has allowed him to overawe rivals,
including the governors, but it depends heavily on the upturn in the economy, which
in turn depends upon the world price of oil, and has paralysed his judgement. There
is little sign of a 'Putin party', or even a leadership team, leaving the president very
exposed if the public mood changes. Meanwhile there was little evidence of policies
that were likely to achieve a sustained improvement in the spheres of life of most
interest to ordinary Russians: half of them thought the country's economic position
was 'bad' or 'very bad' in the autumn of 2002, and only a quarter thought things were
likely to improve in the near future.52Vladimir Putin had enjoyed an unprecedented
honeymoon-with the Russian electorate. But there was increasing evidence he had
'got stuck half way', and that the second half of his presidential term would be 'more
difficult than the first'; more generally, that a 'regime of personal trust' would not be
sufficient to achieve the kind of qualitative changes that would mark a decisive
departure from the El'tsin i n h e r i t a n ~ e . ~ ~
University of Glasgow
Australian National University
' Kommersant, 21 January 1999, p. 1.Development indicators are taken from World Development
Report 1998/99: Knowledge for Development (New York, World Bank, 1999), pp. 190-191.
Rossiiskaya gazeta, 31 December 1999, p. 4.
Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya (henceforth
Monitoring), 1999, 6 , pp. 61, 64.
Novaya gazeta, 1999, 20, p. 3.
kvestiya, 30 January 2000, p. 3.
Izvestiya, 22 March 2001, p. 1. Several recent studies provide helpful context, including Aleksandr
Rar, Vladimir Putin: 'Nemets' v Kremle (Moscow, Olma-Press, 2002); Roi Medvedev, Vladimir
Putindeistvuyushchiiprezident (Moscow, Vremya, 2002);and in English Richard Rose &Neil Munro,
Elections without Order: Russia's Challenge to Vladimir Putin (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2002);Lilya Shevtsova, Putin's Russia (Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment, 2003); and Dale
R. Herspring (ed.), Putin's Russia: Past Impe$ect, Future Uncertain (Lanham, MD, Rowman &
Littlefield, 2003).
398 STEPHEN WHITE & IAN McALLISTER
'Monitoring, 2000, 4, p. 62.
Monitoring, 2000, 3, pp. 73-74 and 2000,4, pp. 62, 64; for the comparisons between Putin and
Zyuganov supporters see Richard Rose, Neil Munro & Stephen White, 'How Strong is Vladimir Putin's
Support?', Post-Soviet Affairs, 16, 4, October-December 2000, p. 304.
Izvestiya, 9 February 2000, p. 3.
lo Kommersant, 17 March 2000, p. 2.
" Imidzh Vladimira Putina (po rezul'tatarn gruppovykh diskussii), March 2000, accessed at
www.romir.ru/socpolit/election/03 2000/ping.htm.
l 2 Trud, 22 March 2001, p. 5.
l 3 Nezavisimaya gazeta, 16 May 2001, p. 10.
l 4 Kommersant, 7 July 2000, p. 2.
15
Izvestiya, 28 December 2001, p. 4. Putin's conduct during the hostage-taking crisis was rated
'positively' or 'very positively' by 85% (VTsIOM, Spets-vjpusk, 29 October 2002, accessed at
www.wci0m.r~).
l6 Nezavisimaya gazeta, 7 March 2001, p. 3.
" Rossiiskaya gazeta, 25 December 2001, p. 1.
I * Rossiiskaya gazeta, 25 December 2001, p. 2; Trud, 25 December 2001, p. 2.
19
Press-vypusk no. 1, 10 January 2002, accessed at www.wciom.ru.
20 Izvestiya, 14 July 2000, p. 2.
21
Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Shestakov & Aleksandr Peritsky, Dzyudo: istoriya, teoriya, praktika
(Archangel, Izdatel'skii dom, 2000). p. 43.
22 Komsomol'skaya pravda, 2 August 2001, p. 1 1.
23 Komsomol'skaya pravda, 12 March 2001, pp. 3, 7 (fighting) and 26 June 2001, p. 6.

'
24 Vera Gurevich, Vospominaniya o budushchem prezidente (Moscow, Mezhdunarodnye otno-
sheni a, 2001), pp. 10, 12 and 9 respectively.
Oleg Blotsky, Vladimir Putin: istoriya zhizni, vol. 1 (Moscow. Mezhdunamdnye otnosheniya,
2002), pp. 59,61,216. A memoir of Putin's wife appeared at about the same time: Iren Pitch, Pikantnaya
druzhba: moya podruga Lyudmila Putina, ee sem'ya i drugie tovarishchi (Moscow, Zakharov, 2002).
26 Oleg Blotsky, Vladimir Putin. Doroga k vlasti. Kniga vtoraya (Moscow, Osmos-Press, 2002).
The second volume appeared at a low, fixed price thanks to the financial support of a Russian
businessman. Blotsky hmself announced that there might eventually be not three, but four or more
volumes altogether (Knizhnoe obozrenie, 30 September 2002, p. 5).
27 Obshchaya gazeta, 24 May 2001, p. 7.
28
Argumenty i fakry, 2001,49, p. 5; The Guardian, 29 June 2002, p. 16 (the bar was later closed
down: Izvestiya, 28 September 2002, p. 1).
29 See respectively Aleksandr Ol'bik, Prezident: Roman (Donetsk, Stalker, 2002); and The
Guardian, 18 September 2002, p. 14.
30 R F E m Newsline, 26 August 2002; the group and their director were featured in Ogonek, 2002,
40, pg. 28-29. ,

Argumenty z fakty, 2002,40, p. 4.

32 The Guardian, 12 March 2001, p. 14.

::
33 Izvestiya, 29 June 2002, p. 3 (Irkutsk); The Guardian, 12 March 2001, p. 14.
Izvestiya, 26 July 2002, p. 3.
Rossiiskii kto est' kto, 2002, 2, p. 46.
36Argumentyi fakty, 2001, 49, p. 5.
37 Kommersant-vlast', 7 March 2000, p. 6.
38 'In bed with President Putin', 20 September 2001, accessed at www.english.pravda.ru/fudZ001/
09L?O/I5789.html.
39 Nezavisimaya gazeta, 28 December 2001, p. 2.
40 Monitoring, 2002, 6, p. 61.
41
Monitoring, 2002, 5, p. 71.
42 VTsIOM data, April 2002, accessed at w c i 0 m . r ~ .
43 Ibid., May 2002.
Monitoring, 2001, 2, pp. 22-23.
45
Argumenty i fakty, 2001, 3, p. 4.
4 6 ~ r g u m e n tiyfakty, 2001, 3, p. 13.
47 Georgii Satarov in Rossiiskaya gazeta, 16 June 2001, p. 3.
48 According to ROMIR, for instance, Putin's support in February 2001 'almost completely
coincide[d] with the structure of the Russian population', which was a 'unique phenomenon in the
contemporary Russian political process' (E. I. Bashkirova & N. V. Laidinen, 'Prezident: fenomen
obshchestvennoi podderzhki', Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 2001, 9, p. 30).
 PUTIN AND HIS SUPPORTERS

49 Private conversations with officials from the presidential administration, April 2001. For a more
detailed account see Margot Light & Stephen White, 'Wild Theories', The World Today, 57,7, July 2001,
pp. 10-12.
50 Vremya novostei, 13 July 2001, p. 11.
51 Izvestiya, 2 March 2001, p. 5.

52 Monitoring, 2002, 16, p. 61.

53 Nezavisimuya gazeta, 26 March 2002, p. 2.

Appendix
Our survey was undertaken by Russian Research of London and Moscow under the direction
of Igor Galin, funded by grant R223133 from the UK Economic and Social Research Council
to Sarah Oates, Stephen White and John Dunn of the University of Glasgow. The fieldwork
took place between 10 and 26 April 2001, using 110 sampling points and 209 interviewers. The
survey sample was representative of the urban and rural over 18 population of the Russian
Federation ( n = 2,000), with control quotas for sex, age and education. The sample was
designed using the multistage proportional representation method with random route as the
method of selecting households and the 'last birthday' approach as the method of selecting
respondents within households. Interviews were conducted face to face in respondents' homes.
Local fieldwork supervisors conducted a 20% sample control of each interviewer's question-
naires, and 10% of interviews in the main cities were checked in the presence of a supervisor.
Thanks are due to Martin Dewhirst, Peter Duncan, Derek Hutcheson, Tania Konn, Alexei
Levinson, Margot Light and Clelia Rontoyanni for their assistance.