Putin Outlines Commitment to Democracy

Declaring that his country “has been and will be a major European nation,” President Vladimir V. Putin said Monday that Russia was committed to a democratic course and called for expanding media freedom, protecting private investment and strengthening opposition political parties.

In his annual state of the nation address to parliament, the Russian leader sought to counter criticism that his administration had strayed from democracy and to make a strong commitment to the principles of individual freedom and the rule of law. Critics, however, said he had failed to address a range of policies that increasingly have turned this country away from the democratic values of the West.

“The main political and ideological task is the development of Russia as a free and democratic state,” Putin said, downplaying the idea that Russia had no tradition of freedom and that “our citizens allegedly require constant parental control.”

“I would like to bring those who see it this way back to reality,” the president said, less than a week after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised concerns about the course of Russian democracy during meetings with senior officials in Moscow.

Putin proposed the creation of an independent commission to oversee compliance by the state-owned broadcast media “with the principles of freedom of expression,” and he promised to guarantee opposition politicians access to television -- factors that have been blamed in recent years for the near-disappearance of Western-oriented, pro-business parties from parliament.

The president, widely criticized last year for canceling elections of regional governors in favor of the Kremlin’s appointing officials, proposed boosting the growth of independent parties by appointing governors from the parties that prevailed in regional votes.

“It is the first step toward giving political parties real representation in executive power bodies, after which their strengthening as an institution in the country will go at a faster pace,” said Konstantin V. Simonov, director of the Center for Current Politics in Russia, an independent think tank.

Vladimir Medinsky, a deputy from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, said it could lead the way to a system under which the prime minister and Cabinet, indirectly appointed by the president, would be named by the party that holds a majority in parliament.

The moves come not only amid widening criticism from the West but in the face of popular revolts that have toppled the Kremlin’s authoritarian counterparts in neighboring Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the last 18 months.

Some analysts said Putin’s bow toward democratic reform was an attempt to head off similar impulses in his own land. The president warned that Russia was embracing democracy on its own terms, and implied that street protests aimed at toppling the government would be met with resistance.

“Any extrajudicial methods of fighting for national, religious or other interests contradict the very principles of democracy,” he said. “The state will react to them in a legal but tough manner.”

Opposition parliament Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov said Putin appeared to be echoing the policies of Belarusian President Alexander G. Lukashenko. The Belarusian leader was warmly received in Russia last week after sustaining stinging criticism from Rice, who met with opposition leaders from his country and called Lukashenko’s government “the last true dictatorship in the center of Europe.”

Putin and Lukashenko moved to strengthen an economic and political union between their nations and reportedly to prevent a “Ukraine scenario” from spreading.

Lukashenko has strongly combated opposition protests in his country, dispatching police to arrest and often severely beat demonstration leaders.

“Putin used Lukashenko’s trademark rhetoric: ‘We have our own version of democracy in our country, and please do not pry into our affairs. And those who have a problem with our version of democracy will go to jail,’ ” Ryzhkov said.

“In general, the entire address can be defined as a commodity meant for export and foreign consumption,” Ryzhkov said, comparing it to addresses by former Communist Party leader Leonid I. Brezhnev in the 1970s. “The general secretary talked about peace, detente, disarmament and the rights enjoyed by Soviet people, while at the same time ordinary citizens were being expelled to prison camps, thrown into psychiatric asylums and sent to Afghanistan to fight.”

Simonov said Putin had virtually ignored pensioners, who have been protesting cost increases for government services, and appealed instead to “the younger, more dynamic part of society, trying to convince them that the country has a future.”

Some analysts said Putin was attempting to court the business elite with a proposal to draw a three-year time limit on legal challenges to privatizations, in effect pledging that prosecutions such as the tax claim and fraud case against Yukos Oil Co. will be swept into the past.

“We see every now and again rude violations of the rights of entrepreneurs, and quite often outright racketeering by government bodies,” Putin said.

Stanislav Belkovsky of the National Strategy Council in Moscow said Putin appeared to be offering business leaders “a new pact, hoping that the elites, which from the presidential administration’s point of view are the sources of all revolutions, would abandon attempts at a revolution under the pact.”

But by pledging to maintain the status quo, Putin could be undercutting his administration, Belkovsky said. “The public and society respond that the stability you represent, dear leaders, is stability for several dozen individuals who are the beneficiaries of privatization.

“But for the disintegrating army, [for scientists whose] fundamental research is going to pieces, for the absolute lack of prospects for young people ... this is not stability. It is the stability of moving to a cemetery,” he said.

“And in this sense, Putin today made a resolute step toward a revolution, unwittingly acting as its ideologue.”

However, Paul J. Saunders, executive director of the Nixon Center, said it was too early to say whether Putin was sincere. “Much of it is certainly consistent with things that the U.S. government has been asking for for a long time.... But having heard some of these things before, the key is really going to be what happens next.”