--- tfast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
>
> However one characterizes: Putin strong man or not
> (I am not sure that is
> really a very useful analytical term), Chris seems
> to be arguing that it is
> Putin's strength which has *improved the freedom*
> (positive and negative) of
> most Russians sans perhaps the oligarchs, corrupt
> regional elites and dirty
> cops.
That is exactly what I am saying. I don't think Andie realizes that Russia in 1999-2000 had virtually no functional state. Nothing was functioning. The state was unable to collect taxes. The provinces were ruled by totally unaccountable criminal-business-political cliques that did not obey the federal center and were sucking their territories dry for their own personal benefit. The was the result of Yeltsin's "take as much soverignity as you can swallow!" directive to the regions, which may sound nifty to naive Western ears, but actually meant "you local elites can do whatever the fuck you want there in BF Nowhere, and I won't stop you, 'cuz I'm too weak." The Russian government (not "Putin," dammit) strengthened the state, reestablished control and whacked the (previously totally unaccountable) regional elites and oligarchs (which is a euthemism for "really big Mafia Dons") forcibly on their heads, arm-twisting them into performing such dreadful deeds as paying taxes. Call 'em crazy, but people like that. Ergo, Putin is highly popular. DUH!
I am not interested in utopian or "radical" visions for Russia. I am interested in the actually existing Russia and Russians and the real possibilities for improving them. No Andie-esque liberal socialist democracy is possible in Russia in the current objective conditions, even if anybody wanted to build it. What Russia needs is further stabilization and further slow progress out of the mess created by the 1990s. Russians are interested in tangible, material improvements in their lives, not ideological programs foreigners lecture them with. They had enough of that in the 1990s.
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