But wasn't Putin originally Berezovsky's boy, and that in the feud between the oligarch is the Kremlin anything but neutral? My understanding, correct me if this isn't so, is that the oligarchs with Kremlin ties are using their connections to pressure their competitors how don't have the same option. Also, do you really think Putin hasn't earned the vilification he's receiving?
- -- Shane
First of all, take anything you read in the eXile with a biiiiig grain of salt.
In reference to another email, I'm sure that a lot of the fawning over Berezovsky and Gusinsky, of all people, by a lot of people in the West has a great deal to do with just plain worship of people with Money. It's also true though that a lot of their audience is composed of people who know nada (or should I say nichevo?) about Russia and so will actually believe, for example, that Gusinsky is in favor of free speech or that Berezovsky is a democrat (he wrote an especially risible open letter to Putin saying that "we entrepreneurs have always been the bastion against encroaching totalitarianism" that had my jaw dropping). It also ties in nicely with US foreign policy propaganda against Russia, like CIA Director Tenet's recent comment that Russia is a grave threat to the US, right alongside Bin Laden. They also know zilch about how the Russian media and society work.
On to other matters -- Putin was a creation of Yeltsin and the oligarchs. Yeltsin wanted a successor who would give him immunity for the legion of crimes he committed while in office (Putin's first act after assuming office, actually). The situation with the oligarchs is more complicated and nobody has unravelled it, Russian politics being the labyrinthine, behind-the-scenes kind of thing they are. My own opinion is that some faction of bureaucrats/oligarchs decided that things as they stood were just becoming too unstable -- the time of Chubais' "primitive accumulation" has largely passed, Thank God, and the big property owners are interested into protecting wealth they've already acquired from up-and-comers and in protecting themselves from each other and further decomposition of the Russian state. To do this kind of thing you need a strong state. And Putin I think is trying to build a strong state, something which (using "strong state" in the good sense of the term), Russia needs desperately. Hard as it may be for libertarian socialist me to admit it, there is NO WAY you can get the regional governers, who are basically glorified feudal lords with a huge amount of power, into line without a strong state. There is NO WAY you can the 50%, at least, of Russian businesses that ridiculously underreport their taxes without a badass, armed Tax Police, unless you think they're going to respond to nicely-worded memos. It is IMPOSSIBLE to fight corruption or capital flight on this scale without a heavily centralized government and top-down command-flow structure. The US adopted quasi-totalitarian methods in both World Wars and it wasn't even directly threatened. Russia is a country on the verge of collapse and the very existence of which is in danger; and people are surprised that they're becoming more authoritarian. The miracle is Putin's not more authoritarian than he already is.
To my great sorrow, the fact of the matter is that a democratic Russia (or democratic anywhere in the CIS) is a virtual impossibility. The reason for this lies largely in the fact that the population of the FSU is overwhelmingly committed to egalitarian and communitarian values and mostly want a heavily state-regulated and largely state-owned economy with some latitude for small-scale private enterprise and a democratic structure (over half of Russians think it is immoral to be rich, by the way). In short, what they want is a perestroikified, glasnostized USSR. However, the Russian ruling class, and the international forced that are interested in Russia, are emphatically not in favor of such a moodel and opposed to the value system underlying it. Russia will not be a democracy because the demos is emphatically antagonistic to the road laid out for it bothe by the Wsahington Consensus and its only privileged class. There is no way it's going to be permitted, either by the Russian government or outside forces, to have a powerful voice. The very idea of "free-market democracy" borders on the absurd in Russia.
Of course Putin is serving the interests of a group of highly priviliged Russian bureaucrats and wealthy citizens; but the best that can be hoped for Russia at present is that the government serve the interests of that segment of the elite that is interested in economic and social stability; and I think that is what he is doing. I will take authoritarian Putin, who actually cares about his approval ratings and actually does try to be improving the economy and stemming capital flight, over the "loot the stae" regime of Yeltsin and his circle of toadies.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal