来自2066年的历史答卷：普京给俄罗斯带来灾难

This essay was written in response to Gideon Rachman’s invitation to readers to sit his ‘2066 history exam’. Of 170 entries, the FT is publishing the best five (see panel for the others). This piece addresses the question: Was Vladimir Putin a good or a bad tsar for Russia?

【编者按】本文是应吉迪恩•拉赫曼(Gideon Rachman)邀请读者参加其“2066年的历史考试”而作。英国《金融时报》从收到的170篇作品中选择了最优秀的五篇刊发(FT中文网选择其中三篇发表)。本文要回答的问题是：普京对俄罗斯而言是个好“沙皇”还是坏“沙皇”?本文对未来的描述均为虚构。

When Russia’s first freely elected (more or less) leader, Boris Yeltsin, resigned in 1999, the country’s progress depended upon his successor being more democratic, less corrupt and less drunk. It got one out of three.

当俄罗斯首位大体上通过自由选举产生的领导人鲍里斯•叶利钦(Boris Yeltsin)于1999年辞职时，该国的进步取决于他的继任者比他更加民主，更少腐败，而且不那么醉醺醺。结果只有一点成为现实。

The coldly sober Vladimir Putin created a hybrid regime as a tsar steeped in the oppressive methods of the Soviet era. He formally granted himself the old monarchist title just months before his demise at the paws of an insufficiently doped dancing bear during a tango for the broadcaster RT’s version of Strictly.

清醒得冷冰冰的弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)作为一个沉迷于苏联时代种种压迫手段的沙皇，创建了一个混合政权。就在他去世的几个月之前，他正式授予自己这一旧时君主政体头衔。最后他在“今日俄罗斯”(RT)电视台版本的《舞动奇迹》(Strictly)节目中与一头狗熊跳起探戈，却不料命丧于这头麻醉不够彻底的狗熊爪下。

By falling victim to a failed publicity stunt, Putin did at least avoid the violent overthrow to which many dictators succumb. His iron grip on the security forces and cultivation of cynical apathy among the population ensured that. For much of his rule, he seemed to have restored order to Russia and rebuilt its global influence. But this was largely a Potemkin façade that disguised how deeply he had corroded the country’s institutions and society. His reign left chaos in its wake and was ultimately a disaster for Russia.

沦为一出失败炒作受害者的普京，至少没有像许多独裁者那样被暴力推翻。他对安全部队的铁腕掌控，以及助长民众看破一切的冷漠，确保了他坐稳权位。在他掌权的大部分时间里，他貌似恢复了俄罗斯的秩序，还重建了俄罗斯的全球影响力。但这在很大程度上只是一种“波将金”(Potemkin)假象，掩盖了他对国家机构和社会的深度腐蚀。他的统治在结束后留下种种混乱，最终对俄罗斯是一场灾难。

Russia’s development was being hampered by corruption when Putin came to power. His early campaign to banish some of the worst-offending oligarchs was justified. Sadly, the methods he used were not. The subordination of the courts to the Kremlin crushed the nascent rule of law. This ended the transition to an open society that had begun even before the fall of communism, under Mikhail Gorbachev. Instead, “might is right” was reaffirmed as the governing principle.

普京上台时，俄罗斯的发展被腐败阻碍。他在早期打击了一些违法最严重的寡头，这些行动合乎情理，可惜他采用的方法并不正当。迫使法院听命于克里姆林宫破坏了新生的法治，扼杀了在共产党统治倒台之前、在米哈伊尔•戈尔巴乔夫(Mikhail Gorbachev)时代就已起步的向着开放社会努力的转型。相反，“强权即公理”被再次确立为指导原则。

Rather than returning the deposed oligarchs’ assets to the state or transparent private ownership, Putin made matters worse by redistributing them among his, mostly ex-KGB, cronies. For as long as these modern-day boyars depended on him for access to the trough, he could preserve stability by acting as arbiter between them. But after his death no other member of the ruling elite could assert similar authority, and the squabbling over the spoils descended into gang warfare.

普京没有将落马寡头的资产归还国家或透明的私有产权，而是重新分配给自己的亲信(绝大部分是前克格勃)，这令事态更加糟糕。因为只要这些当代波雅尔(boyars)依靠他捞取好处，他就可通过扮演他们的仲裁人来保持稳定。但在他去世后，统治精英中再无一人能维护类似威信，对利益的哄抢沦为帮派战争。

The subsequent power struggle led to the disclosure of the full extent of his personal corruption. As was suspected when the Panama Papers were released in 2016, the millions of dollars held in the name of his musician friend Sergei Roldugin were confirmed as belonging to the tsar. Documents found by Caucasian demonstrators who over-ran Putin’s palace in Sochi revealed his majority ownership of a Swiss-based commodity trading firm and extensive London property holdings.

随后的权力斗争导致他本人的腐败被悉数公开。正如2016年巴拿马文件(Panama Papers)公布时人们所怀疑的那样，他的音乐家朋友谢尔盖•罗尔杜金(Sergei Roldugin)名下持有的巨额美元被证实属于这位沙皇。高加索示威者们在攻占普京在索契的宫殿后，发现了大量文件，证实他拥有瑞士一家大宗商品贸易公司的多数股权，还在伦敦拥有大量房地产。

While his own finances were healthy, Putin left Russia fragile economically. Some cosmetic improvements had been made to the big cities during his first decade in power. But he failed to capitalise on a period when oil prices regularly exceeded $100 a barrel. There was no diversification from the dependence on natural resources. Little was invested in the crumbling infrastructure or public services. The widespread poverty this led to in the late 2010s and 2020s era of cheap oil was compounded by the turmoil that followed the tsar’s death.

尽管普京本人的财力十分雄厚，但他给俄罗斯留下了一个脆弱的经济。在他执政的头十年，俄罗斯各大城市在外观上有所改善。但他没能充分利用油价经常超过每桶100美元的这段时期。俄罗斯没有摆脱对自然资源的依赖，实现经济多样化，也没有怎么投资于陈旧的基础设施或公共服务，导致俄罗斯在2010年代后期至2020年代的廉价石油时代陷入普遍贫困，而沙皇普京死后的动荡加剧了这种困境。

Putin left Russia in an equally poor political state. He had avoided anointing a successor because he feared creating a rival power centre. The Duma became a rubber-stamp parliament. And by eliminating all genuine political parties and civil society organisations, he left few mechanisms through which a credible successor could emerge.

普京还给俄罗斯留下了一个同样贫乏的政治生态。他生前不愿指定接班人，唯恐创建一个对立的权力中心。俄罗斯杜马成了橡皮图章议会。他还铲除了所有真正的政党和公民社会组织，以至于没留下什么机制来产生可信的继任者。

Perhaps the worst damage was done by his pioneering of the “post-truth” politics that blighted the world in the first half of the 21st century. Even before Putin, centuries of autocracy had conditioned Russians to have low expectations of their rulers and deep tolerance of their misdeeds. The public’s apathetic cynicism was cultivated by his “political technologists”, such as Vladislav Surkov and Dmitry Kiselyov.

普京造成的最严重伤害或许是他开创的“后真相政治”(post-truth politics)，这种风气在21世纪上半叶害了全世界。即使在普京之前，几个世纪的专制制度已使俄罗斯人习惯于对统治者预期不高，对其不当行为也有较高容忍力。普京的“政治技术专家”苏尔科夫•弗拉季斯拉夫(Vladislav Surkov)和德米特里•基谢廖夫(Dmitry Kiselyov)则助长了民众的这种看破一切的冷漠。

Their strategy focused on convincing people that all politicians were equally dishonest but that the tsar would at least look after Russia’s interests as well as his own. While this approach served Putin well, it was a tragedy for his country. His propagandists erased the concept of objective truth and instead, as they put it, “created realities”. This left the people ill-equipped to exercise reasoned political choice and easy prey for the succession of even worse despots who followed Putin.

他们的策略聚焦于说服人们相信：政客都一样不诚实，但沙皇普京至少会像照料自己一样顾及俄罗斯的利益。这种策略虽然达到了普京的目的，却是俄罗斯的悲剧。他的宣传者抹去了客观真理的概念，代之以他们所称的“创造现实”，导致人们没有能力作出合理政治选择，被普京之后更恶劣的一个又一个独裁者玩弄于股掌之上。

The tsar’s aggressive foreign policy meant Russia’s collapse attracted little sympathy from the outside world. For a time in the late 2010s, he gloried in his revival of Moscow’s global influence through military interventions in Ukraine, Syria and the Baltic states. But the tactic failed when it became clear that the Kremlin had no plan beyond mischief-making to attract US attention and distract the domestic audience from their troubles. Nato’s rapid, forceful military response reversed Russia’s incursions to the alliance’s member states and the west imposed tighter sanctions on Putin’s associates. At home, anger rose over the unrecognised sacrifice of soldiers fighting in unacknowledged wars.

沙皇普京咄咄逼人的外交政策意味着，俄罗斯的崩溃吸引不了外界多少同情。2010年代末的一段时期，通过军事干预乌克兰、叙利亚和波罗的海国家，普京自我陶醉于重振莫斯科的全球影响力。但是，当人们看清克里姆林宫除了捣乱以吸引美国注意力，并分散国内民众对生活困难的关注外，没有任何计划可言时，这一招也随之失败。北约以迅速而坚决的军事回应击退俄罗斯对北约成员国的入侵，西方对普京的同伙施加了更严厉的制裁。在俄罗斯国内，军人们在不被承认的战争中付出不被承认的牺牲，这激怒了民众。

The final collapse of Putin’s attempt to reassert Moscow’s global power came when US President Donald Trump was inspired by a tweet he read about Richard Nixon and struck a surprise grand bargain with China. The world’s two largest powers subsequently dominated global governance and Russia was sidelined by its former Chinese ally.

普京重新确立莫斯科全球强国地位企图的最终失败时刻，是当美国总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)读到一条关于理查德•尼克松(Richard Nixon)的推文时受到启发，与中国达成了一个举世震惊的大妥协。全球两大强国随后联手主导全球治理，俄罗斯被前盟友中国冷落。

History has exposed Putin as a bad tsar who did significant long-term damage to his country’s economy, society and international standing.

历史证明普京是个坏沙皇，对自己国家的经济、社会和国际地位带来重大长期损害。