Russian politics. The nervous authoritarian

Foreigners have little influence over the Kremlin, but Russians have more than they realise

TWO ancient Russian convictions help to explain what, to many outsiders, can seem the strangely resilient popularity of President Vladimir Putin. The first, optimistic, notion is that, encumbered though he may be with nasty advisers, the "good tsar" always has the welfare of his people at heart. The second, fatalistic, idea is that, in any case, ordinary folk can have little sway over the Kremlin and its caprices.

A recent scandal involving what is among the worst of the depredations inflicted by successive Russian governments on their people--military conscription--has shown both assumptions to be false. Foreign statesmen giving him lectures on democracy make little impression on Mr Putin, but ordinary Russians can.

The scandal concerns Andrei Sychev, a teenaged conscript who on New Year's Eve was tortured for hours by a gang of servicemen at their base in Chelyabinsk. After he was denied medical care for several days, and gangrene spread across his body, doctors amputated Mr Sychev's legs and genitals.

But his case would probably not have caused the stir it has, after it eventually came to light, had Mr Sychev not survived. According to official figures, more than 1,000 Russian servicemen perish every year in non-combat crimes and accidents--more than the number of Americans killed annually in Iraq. Anti-conscription campaigners say the true figure is much higher. The perpetrators of the brutality are often senior conscripts, who force their juniors to beg and steal on their behalf; but the main beneficiaries of the system that permits it are officers. These days, a big conscript army like Russia's has very little military utility, but it is hugely profitable: for the recruitment officials who take bribes from parents desperate to save their sons from fates such as Mr Sychev's, and for the officers who use conscripts to build dachas, and hire them out as day labourers. A reform proposed by the government--to draft more young men, but cut their term of service from two years to one--would create an even more useless army but preserve the lucrative principle of conscription.

The persistence of this travesty ought to be evidence enough that the lives and well-being of its citizens are not the Russian government's top priority. The initial response to the Sychev case was characteristic: it was "nothing serious", said Sergei Ivanov, the defence minister, who is widely tipped to be Mr Putin's successor as president. Mr Ivanov backtracked, however, when it became clear that Mr Sychev's misfortune would not be hushed up as easily as are most other military embarrassments. There were demonstrations, and reports in the often uncritical media, and previously unreported cases of awful mistreatment were publicised. As a result, investigations have been launched, heads have rolled, and new measures to tackle the abuse of conscripts are promised. Both Mr Putin and Mr Ivanov have maintained that depravity in the army reflects the problems of society as a whole. That is a coded way of saying that conscription itself is not to blame. But anger with the system is growing.

What is to be done

Something similar happened in Russia last winter, when the clumsy introduction of welfare reforms brought thousands of ordinary Russians onto the streets across the country. In that case, some of the reforms were hastily diluted or postponed. The lesson of that episode, and of the Sychev affair, is that while Mr Putin's regime, with its firm grip on the courts, the media, parliament and elections, looks unshakeable, like other authoritarian regimes it is also nervous. When the rights of immigrants and other minorities are routinely compromised, in Chechnya or Moscow (see pages 22-24), nobody in Russia takes much notice. But when ordinary, ethnic Russians mobilise to defend their interests, the Kremlin worries, and changes course.

Western diplomats spend a lot of time wondering what they can do to reverse the undemocratic, neo-imperial trend of Mr Putin's Russia. In truth, they can't do much. But the biggest indictment of Mr Putin's regime has been not its meddling foreign policy, but the things it has done to many of its own citizens. If more of them realised that the "good tsar" is not beyond their reach, they might one day have a government more worthy of their faith.

Editorial says that foreigners (including foreign governments) have little influence over the Kremlin, but ordinary Russian citizens have more than they realise.