Circus Maximus
“The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddle no more and long eagerly for just two things – bread and circuses”.
The phrase ‘Bread and Circuses’ - or Panem et Circenses – was coined by the Roman poet Juvenal, but observers of Russia have applied this to the recent strategy of ‘Tsar’ – or ‘Caesar’ – Vladimir Putin. He has cynically created ‘circuses’ – foreign conflicts that distract and entertain citizens via state television. Usefully they foment a feeling of threat from abroad to justify further repression at home. The concept has been updated from 100 CE, when Roman emperors bought popularity with regular grain handouts. Whereas ancient forms of political legitimacy were based on traditions and leaders’ ‘virtues’ such as heroism and charisma; since Hobbes and Locke it is thought to exist within a form of ‘social contract’.
In modern Western democracies the consent of the people is now conferred through the mechanism of elections, but alternative governance models fear democracy as a threat to the governing elite’s survival. In examples such as Russia, elections are merely a form of theatre, where only ‘systemic’ (Kremlin approved) opposition is allowed. Genuine opposition figures such as Alexei Navalny are imprisoned or worse. This does not solve the problem of legitimacy. Francis Fukuyama in ‘The End of History’ argued that undemocratic countries fail to deliver a sense of individual ‘dignity’ or self-worth to their citizens. How might this explain what we are witnessing from Russia? Is Putin using circuses (entertainment) to distract the masses from the lack of bread (economic prosperity)?
A Lack of Bread
In fast-growing China, people appear largely satisfied, and the regime enjoys widespread legitimacy – for now. In contrast, Putin has failed to deliver material prosperity since returning to the presidency in 2012. During Russia’s reformist period, starting in the mid-1980s, economic policy was oriented towards creating competitive markets, with some success. The average GDP growth rate from 1996 to 2008 was a healthy 4.8%. Since then, productivity gains have faded. From 2009-2013 growth slowed to just 1.2%. It has since averaged just 0.5% - a shortfall of 3% compared with the average of other emerging market economies. An IMF study suggests that even allowing for post-Crimea sanctions and lower oil prices, economic performance has been disappointing.
An explanation for Russia’s ailing economy may be that kleptocracies don’t grow well. The legacy of decades of socialist state-planning followed by asset-stripping in the chaotic 1990s was a dilapidated capital stock which initially responded well to the macro-economic stability of Putin’s first two presidential terms. Corruption flourished, however, and weak property rights provide little security for private investment. The World Bank’s index of the Rule-of-Law encapsulates the problem with the investment environment: Russia’s latest ranking of 101 is on a par with Tanzania (100), and Lebanon (104); the score for a ‘Criminal System free of Government Interference’ is second-lowest in the world.
In prioritising the interests of bureaucrats, regulation has become excessive, stifling competition. Productive efficiency requires creative destruction, but the key individuals in the Russian economy are entrenched in their positions. For example, Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft, Russian’s second largest company, was a close confidante of Putin’s back in the 1990s. Recent policies have only served to weaken living standards further. Household incomes have been sacrificed for higher defence spending – much of which has been lost to corruption – while the ‘Fortress Russia’ strategy created a strong national balance sheet only to see half of these accumulated offshore funds frozen by sanctions – with hindsight a strategic error.
Without ‘Bread’, Putin has resorted to ‘Circuses’ to bolster his regime’s legitimacy. These include the military assault on Georgia; the seizure of Crimea and part of Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014; and armed intervention in Syria. Other offensives in this ‘hybrid war’ include cyber-attacks against Estonia and high-profile foreign assassination attempts. Russian citizens are encouraged by nationalistic propaganda on state-controlled television to regain a collective sense of Fukuyama’s ‘dignity’ from the belief that the rest of the world fears and respects the Russian bear (Putin).
An Unwanted Circus
If the invasion of Ukraine was conceived as a ‘Circus Maximus’, designed to distract the Russian people and bolster the legitimacy of the regime, then it will be relatively short-lived. Other explanations have more ominous implications. Perhaps an ailing and isolated Putin, in power for too long, is no longer the rational KGB operative that prioritised pragmatism over ideology or vision. Has the master-tactician swallowed his own rhetoric about Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine being “a single large nation – a triune nation”? Does he really see the elected government in Kiev as the equivalent of ‘Nazis’? If so, the conflict could last for years. Initially the government’s approval rating leapt by twenty percentage points but is the truth that “90% of Russians are against the war” and the other 10% are “morons” as written by the billionaire entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov?
Proponents of the ‘Bread and Circus’ theory must explain the sheer scale of the war in Ukraine. The attempted invasion of a country of forty-four million is surely more than a mere distraction, and the implications of the inevitable escalation in Western sanctions should have stacked any economic cost-benefit analysis against it. This confuses the national interest with the narrow interest of the ruling elites in the continuation of their power. Putin idolises the moderniser Peter the Great (1682-1725) who adopted the Latin title ‘Russorum Imperator’ (Emperor of Russia) but by plunging the country into war, Putin is becoming more like Stalin. Dissenters are jailed and almost all independent media has been closed. A ‘Circus Maximus’ justifies greater repression. While Stalin could at least gain some moral legitimacy from his claim to be motivated by the egalitarian ideology of Marxist-Leninism, under Putin billionaires have the highest ratio of wealth-to-GDP of any country in the world.
The other challenge to the ‘Bread and Circus’ thesis is the question of why such geopolitical adventures are necessary when the Russian population seems quiescent? As more freedoms are chiselled away, dissenters are encouraged to leave the country, and tens of thousands of the best educated have already left the country this year. The problem is that with stagnating living standards, at some point a revolution becomes inevitable in Russia. Recent constitutional changes allow Putin to stay in power until 2036. Despite a national tradition of sacrifice, Russians will not tolerate two more decades of economic stagnation. In 2018 a wave of protests swept the country after the Kremlin tried to raise the pension age. The following year the middle-classes protested after images of ‘Putin’s Palace’ were publicised by Alexei Navalny. Further revelations of the disparity between the grim prospects for ordinary Russians and the opulent wealth of the corrupt elites could easily trigger a ‘colour revolution’ as recently occurred in Belarus. Putin doubtless watched the turmoil in Minsk with unease, and perhaps the Ukraine war betrays the Kremlin’s fear that Russia is less stable than it appears.
An Armistice with Ukraine
Revolutions rarely happen without the connivance of a segment of the elites. Before the war, the Putin Government failed to uphold the most basic Hobbesian obligation – that of preserving life. According to the WTO, during the pandemic Russia had the second highest death rate in the world. Since the war started, the Kremlin has committed major strategic errors. ‘Fortress Russia’ has backfired, the army has blundered, and the impending NATO accession of Finland and Sweden is another major setback for Russia.
In the longer-term, Western sanctions will force Russia into a closer, and necessarily subservient, relationship with China. The discounts demanded by China for purchasing Russian gas and oil are likely to be substantial. Growing dependence on Chinese technology will not be acceptable to the security forces and replacing Western marques such as Mercedes with the Hongqi L5 will not impress the newly impoverished oligarchs. As the realities of this geopolitical cul-de-sac dawn on the Russian elites, an armistice with Ukraine will soon follow. Putin might recall Peter the Great’s objective to, “sever the people from their former Asiatic customs and instruct them how all Christian peoples in Europe comport themselves”.
Some Roman circuses were massive in scale. With crowds of over 250,000, chariot racing at the Circus Maximus had attendance figures rarely surpassed in the history of sports. Emperor Trajan celebrated his conquest of Dacia (now Romania) with blood sports featuring 10,000 gladiators, and the slaughter of over 11,000 animals. Tsar Putin’s latest ‘Special Military Operation’ should be understood as essentially a modern equivalent of these Circuses – a distraction for a jaded populace. As a cynical exercise in shoring-up the regime the adventure has backfired, and will soon end. As Lenin said, “stick out a bayonet. If you meet mush, keep pushing. If you hit steel, withdraw’.