--- jeff sommers <sommers at apollo.lv> wrote:
> No doubt Putin is much better than Yeltsin. The
> point is too obvious to
> belabor, although economic liberals still pine for
> the latter... But,
> regarding oil revenues, I think it still is being
> stolen, just a different
> group of rewardees loyal to the state...
Of course stuff is still getting stolen -- it's part of the political culture.
Many KGB
> were pissed off that a
> bunch of Jews ran off with the country's patrimony,
> when they wanted to grab
> it for themselves.
This is the Boris Berezovsky argument, which is meant to play on two Western beliefs: The (false) belief that Russian culture is deeply anti-Semitic (in 2005!) and the (false) belief that if you are in the KGB, you must be evil. I have never seen any evidence produced for it other than that the oligarchs are mostly Jewish. Well, they are also mostly bald. Khodorkovsky himself denies that the attack on Yukos has anything to do with his being (half) Jewish. Moreover, there are JEWS IN THE FSB. Primakov himself is Jewish.
Inter-gang warfare. Maybe Chris
> has more insights on
> this.
I think it's pretty obvious what's happening. Putin and the people around him are etatists who want Russia to be a Great Power, and know that that is impossible without a stable economic base.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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