They see two factions (of the Russian ruling class, that is ... ). The reformers - westernizers ("thieves"), and the "heirs of Gorbachev" - moderate anti-westernizers and moderate thieves. Putin and the "intelligence community" they see as the second faction. But this second faction in fact is already consolidated around Luzhkov-Primakov-Gusinsky. Stratfor analysis should require Putin to betray the "thieves" (above all Chubais) who advanced him at every step of his career right up to his current job. And there is no good reason to doubt that he is doing - or will do - just that. But this is a far cry from the "intelligence community" acting in its own right, or that it would get very far if it tried to do so. When Fouche´ - the model for all policemen/politicians - tried to rule in his own right it did not last 100 days.
As for the rest of political Russia, the stratfor folk dismiss it as a single rather strange and sinister third force.
> ... the third faction we alluded to
> earlier as the "darker force": Zhirinovsky and the Communists.
This is what the old pro Vyshinsky might have called an "amalgam" - a convenient (but false) combination of quite disparate groups. The vile buffoon Zhirinovsky (a creation of the Yakovlev/Gorbachev era KGB) has of course been the most consistent defender of Yeltsin in the Duma, and has been for almost a year now calling for making the Communist Party (CPRF) illegal.
As for the CPRF, something interesting is going on there. Aleksei Podberezkin, the chairman of the "Spiritual Heritage movement" and ideologue of "state patriotism" and chairman of Zyuganov's half-hearted 1996 election campaign and "social-democrat" and in short about the clearest example of everything that has been anti-marxist and repulsive about the CPRF, has just been expelled from the CPRF as "anti-communist." While experience teaches that there is never any grounds for optimism about Russian events, they sure got that description correct.
john mage