"he question is: Is President Putin out to destroy his political opponents in an attempt to ensure his continued rule?"

I don't speak Russian, but is that really an open question? At least, in the sense that "destroy" may only mean "be sufficiently reduced in power and hemmed in so as to constitute no serious threat whatsoever."

Or is Boris Berezovsky in prison because of Putin's firm stand against corruption?

Gary,

Excellent question - short answer, "I'm not sure."

So far as I can gleen from Russian language sources, the question is as much a matter of perception as any of the possible answers.

There are a couple of interesting political analyses that openly ask the question in the context that Putin is garnering power while manuevering to keep it. the english translations are not great and I have not devoted myself fully to the Russian texts - but the nuance is that the fear of a return to a single candidate system is real. whether it is justified or not is another matter. I still don't know.

Thanks for the response. From the non-expert position of my desk chair, it looks very much to me like Putin has no particular interest in democracy whatsoever save as a glaze to drop over the surface of Russian society so the appearance is there without any substance that will threaten his decisions.

It looks to me as if Putin is acting as a strongman, seeing himself as fulfilling Russia's need for that at this time, and, moreover, has been quite successful in taking advantage of the genuine desire of many citizens for someone to successfully play that role, after the chaos of the late Gorbachev-through-Yeltsin years, the loss of social security, and the loss of actual security, in the sense of the ongoing gangster and criminal threat, as well as, of course, the resentment at the loss of the Soviet Union, and at so many in the masses having sunk into deep poverty while former government assets were looted by the tycoons.

It seems to me that Putin has done everything he could to encourage those resentments, so as to play himself as the people's savior against all of it, successfully building his own personality cult to a degree that does not, of course, approach anything like a Stalinesque, or even Brezhnevesque, level, but is distinctly significant nonetheless.

Which says to me that he has no intention of leaving power, if not office, any time soon, and will pick his own successor, presumably with more consistency over time than Yeltsin's revolving door of chosen successors, though pleasing the boss from whom all your power flows is always a tricky rope bridge to cross.

And, of course, Putin has successfully moved to diminish all competing centers of power, from the regional governors, to competing parties, to the tycoons, while maintaining firm control over the military and security services (the latter of which he is a child of, of course). And, of course, elminating televsion networks and stations, and other elements in the press powerful enough to challenge him, by bringing them under his control or shutting them down.

Lastly, of course, he played Lucy to the Charlie Brown of the democrats and liberals, holding out the promise of a genuine place in politics to them, while squelching them with dirty tricks in politics, and allowing them to look like they were to blame for the failures of the Yeltsin era.

And now he seems, from here, to be in a pretty secure position, despite the vast number of problems still before Russia in still having insufficient rule of law, insufficient control over crime and corruption, the economic problems, etc. But the Duma is firmly in his pocket, and he is in no danger of falling.

Of course, my view might be entirely superficial, wrongheaded, missing huge significant gaps, and so forth; one can't tell what one's blind spots are, can one?

Bottom line is I tend to take a pessimistic view of both Putin and Russia's prospects for democracy in the foreseeable future. I'm entirely open, however, to hearing how I've got it all wrong.

Gary, don't fret over the quality of your translations: the originals are just as bad, ranging from unfounded/fatuous to propagandist (soviet-style and worse) to ungrammatical and incoherent. The overall quality of Russian media is very low -- even compared with the former, Soviet, standard, to say nothing of what the Western world is more or less used to get from the western media.

What Putin does is steer the country towards a touched-up replica of Czarist (though after-Imperial) Russia by playing on all the unfortunate national habits and customs there. At the same time, it's hard to blame him outright because before his arrival, the country was rapidly slipping into total chaos and banditry; he seems to be restoring some government control (of course, what he's going to use it for is anyone's guess at the moment -- he says one thing and does another.)

I think the most important thing to understand and keep in mind when dealing with Russia is that it remains as before a Byzantine society, that is to say, you can't rely on its media for information directly. You can analyze it in the old sovietological style, that's about it.

PS. If you don't understand something in your translations, ask -- I speak Russian all right.

Boris Berezovsky is not in prison -- he's in the UK, sitting pretty. Putin did chase him out of Russia though.

"Boris Berezovsky is not in prison -- he's in the UK, sitting pretty."

Yes, of course he is. My apologies. I meant "Khodorkovsky," but somehow "Berezovsky" came out.

Hey, I'm just grateful that I can remember how to spell their names correctly, most of the time, without checking.

:-)

I really don't have anything to amplify on what has been said here so far. All of the perceptions raised are supportable.

Something else to keep eyes on - Roman Abramovich. He is a Berezovski protege' and probably only second in riches to Khordokovski. Through Berezovski, he is also a member of the Yeltsin oligarchy. He owns a lot of Rusoil (if I remember right) and RusAl (aluminum) and a bunch of mining interests as well as the Chelsea football team (good place to put an egg).

I am wondering if ew see Rusoil and RusAl deprivatized sometime in the near future.

It's "Sibneft" actually ("Siberian oil".) He's a good buddy of Putin's and isn't threatened in any way. At least, apparently. He's never made any anti-Putin noises or funded political opposition.

Putin has to some extent been forced to deal with problems he inherited, not the least of which is that virtually the only people with experience in "capitalism" when communism collapsed were black marketeers and the Russian mafia (and there was a large overlap between those two).

Privatisation became a monstrous free-for-all. Russian doesn't really have any words to express "private" or "efficient" (of for that matter, the colour "orange"). So 'We're going to privatise this government agency to make it more efficient' has some serious conceptual problems from the beginning.

The shadowy figures known as the oligarchs profited mightily from the early days of privatisation and represent a serious threat to /any/ democratic leader. Boris Yeltsin was up to his eyeballs with these folks, so they got along fine. You can make the case that Putin has correctly recognise a significant threat to
Russia's halting steps in the directions of a free-market democracy.

Most people don't recognise the magnitude of his challenge. The closest thing Russia has ever had to 'democracy' was 12th and 13th Century Novgorod, with hotly contested elections of princes. Democracy was undone by the boyars, who were almost the exact equivalent of today's oligarchs -- profitting enormously from trade activities and using their wealth to seize political power ... in order to increase their wealth.

By the 15th Century Novgorod was still an oligarchic republic of sorts, and constituted the final barrier to consolidation of autocratic power in Moscow. Novgorod was crushed by Moscow in 1471. The spirit of limited self-rule lingered until the reign of Ivan Groznyi in mid 16th Century.

Most educated Russians are well aware of this history and the role played by the oligarchs of 14th Century Novgorod in strangling popular democracy. In this context Putin's moves against the 21st Century boyars is both understandable and very bold. It may yet cost him his life.

Na Zdrovie !

"It may yet cost him his life."

Very well could. I think the benefit to Putin is his close association with and bringing to power the top echelons of the security services.

Putin has also put Russia in a bit of a position to flex financial muscle internationally, as well, with the YUKOS issue. He is playing this like a violin in my book. Whether it is well tuned is another matter.

Warum,

You said:"He's a good buddy of Putin's and isn't threatened in any way. At least, apparently."

I was unaware of his ties to Putin. Thanks for the info. I find it interesting that he is regarded as a (at least peripherally) member of Yeltsin's oligarchy at the same time. I'll have to dig more - this could be more interesting than it appears on the surface. I wonder if Abramovich is "playing the middle" and having the last laugh while the the others do the manuevering.

And:"He's never made any anti-Putin noises or funded political opposition."

Good point. Even as a regional leader, it appears he is not overtly political, at least in the sense of trying to bolster opposition to Putin as Khordokovski did.

As Boney M used to say: "Ooohh those Russians!"

Bart, a good, insightful post. Just a few comments:

> Russian doesn't really have any words to express
> "private" or "efficient" (of for that matter, the
> colour "orange").
You sure? ;-)

> You can make the case that Putin has correctly
> recognise a significant threat to Russia's halting
> steps in the directions of a free-market democracy.
The problem is that while you may, it wouldn't be the only, or even the first guess. Also, there's an assumption here, that there's a unavoidable link betwee market and democracy. Yet, that does not appear to be the case: you can very well have market w/o democracy -- as is evidenced by the experience of nearly all of the East Asia; the industrialized part, I mean, of course: Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) But that's an aside.

I think a much better case can be made that Putin and whoever's behind him simply seek to (1) re-redistribute the already-redistributed (they'd missed the first "round") and, (2) to gain political control of the country (w/o any strings attached -- "democracy", "free market" etc.) The Chinese have market w/o any shade of democracy, and I think the Russians (speaking synechdocically here :-), meaning the ruling elite) regret not having taken this route right from the get go.

> The closest thing Russia has ever had to 'democracy'
> was 12th and 13th Century Novgorod,
What do you think of the 1890-1914 period? I think it may qualify here better than the 14th centurly Novgorod; would you agree?

> Most educated Russians are well aware of this history
> and the role played by the oligarchs of 14th Century
> Novgorod in strangling popular democracy.
I doubt it. On two counts: (1) I don't think there's every been anything like popular democracy in Russia, and (2) whether true or not, people are not well-aware of their history. History has always been the first victiim of state ideology in Russia; what people "know" tends to be agitprop rather than history, and finally, very little is known about early Russia (say, till 15 century) while the later records are unreliable (inauthentic, cooked-up, etc. etc.) Historiography in Russia really followed the German model, and that means the 19 century.

> In this context Putin's moves against the 21st Century
> boyars is both understandable and very bold. It may yet
> cost him his life.
It may, but not necessarily because of democracy and free-market. Mafiosi kill one another w/o high ideals attached. If one were to stop speculating (which is hard to do, of course) and ask oneself, what do I really know? one will discover that Putin is a gray blur in the political radar screen; nothing is known of him other than a handful of facts -- that he was installed by BAB, for example; and that he used to be a small-time KGB bureaucrat whose rise to where he's now remains unexplained and completetly incomprehensible.

Joel,

> I was unaware of his ties to Putin. Thanks for the
> info. I find it interesting that he is regarded as a
>(at least peripherally) member of Yeltsin's oligarchy at
> the same time
I think, there's no clear separation line between the "Yeltsin" oligarchy and any other oligarchy. Putin only took down Berezovsky, Gusinsky, and now, Khodorkovsky. The rest act submissive and are (therefore?) well and alive. Which is well within the Russian historical pattern.

I mean, P is hardly a white knight in shining armour tilting at the Evil Oligarchy for the democracy's sake. So long as they recognize him as the boss, he's obviously got nothing against oligarchs; he has eliminated that little democracy that did surface in 1990s -- for what reason we can't be sure; the only security he seems to care about is -- again, well within tradition -- the state security, while what happens in society at large seems to be at least of no concern (witness the murder of journalists.)

He does prefer to maintain a democratic pretense (a very thin one), but nothing for real; that he probably does in order to remain, at least superficially, in good odour with the West, and that I think, mostly because they'e weak at the moment. But peruse Russian boards, and you'll see signs of concerted effort at very much old-style antiwestern, anti-US propaganda. In fact, it's worse today. Who does it? Not the common Joe, you can be sure... P says all the right words, and then does something else. Objectively, at the moment Russia is a rather lawless one-party state with a dictatorial executive, wholly subservient judiciary, and a fake legislature.

The Yukos thing is a boneheaded, short-sighted disaster. Watch as capital flies out of Russia.

Warum -- not to pick nits, but the only word I know that even comes close to "efficient" is действенный which has more the meaning of the French "efficace" -- efficacious -- in that it gets the job done, but without any particular economy of effort, money, or whatever.

"Private" is even worse, and I think you have to make do with частный (chaste, modest, sort of) or конфиденциальность (confidentiality, discreetness). Somebody who's more fluent in Russian than I, help me out here, as mine is about 30 years old. They may have developed new words (much as English did with 'privatise') to express the concepts.

What do you think of the 1890-1914 period? I think it may qualify here better than the 14th century Novgorod; would you agree?

As for the 14th century, maybe--maybe not, however generally, earlier, definitely No.

At the beginning of the 12th century the citizens of Novgorod held a series of mass assemblies--and don't forget that the population at this time was only several thousand--to determine the who and how of city governance. By 1136 they ran the hereditary prince out of town and held regular elections for a generation until the counter-coup attempt in 1169, which they deci
sively defeated.

I think most reasonably well-educated Russians are aware of this history, and Putin is no intellectual slouch. The average Russian is at least as unaware of that nation's history as the average American is of ours.

The late 19th century period in Russia is all that ever passed for a Renaissance in that country, formal serfdom (a functional definition of the Middle Ages if ever there were one) having been abolished only in 1861 or so.

An additional force at play in all this is Russia's pervasive xenophobia. In that regard there is an interesting discussion to be had comparing Putin to either Peter the Great or Catherine the Great.

Not nearly as politically important as everything else here, but interesting nonetheless: http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/10/wruss10.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/10/ixworld.html for death in Russia's Alcatraz.

Bart:

For "efficient" I'd use "effektivyj" (sorry, I can't get russian fonts to work on this page for some reason -- what encoding did you use?) Now, admittedly, the etymology of this word derives from "effective" -- which is not the same as "efficient", however, it is a borrowed word and while etymology stays, semantics does frequently shift a bit: "effektivnyj" can be used for all three useages (efficient, effective, and efficacious) the exact meaning being dependent on and derived from the use context (btw, "dejstennyj", while also good, is a tad closer to "effective", though both words can be used -- the former is originally russian, the latter, a foreign borrowing; kinda like "needed" and "necessary" in the English context.)

"Chastnyj" is correct (it doesn't mean chaste or modest; it means exactly what "private" means; you could also use a directly-borrowed "privatnyj", though it's archaic and hardly ever used these days.) "To privatize" will simply be "privatizirovat' " (not a recent borrowing, I think.)

"Orange" of course will be "oranzhevyj" (adj, masculine singular nominative.) You can look up words on http://ftp.vpcit.ru/cgi-bin/dict/bobo/word .

On democracy -- no, I wasn't making an analogy with the 14 century :-), I was talking about the current cituation. Whatever the case may be, democracy is rarely (I'm simply cautious; one could say never) an initial form of government in a society; usually, I think, we will find that it starts with monarchy, then develops into oligarchy of some sort (republic), and only then, perhaps, into democracy. Novgorod (oringinally Holmgard) was established by Scandinavians (Swedes really, a.k.a. Varangians, a.k.a. Varjagi a.k.a. Vikings) and it was never democratic. It started as a sort of loose principality, then, as you say, they cut their princes down to size -- while still hiring them as military force though (Alexandre Nevsky was such a hired prince) -- so, yes, it was a republic, but an oligarchic one, kinda like in Venice. I would imagine that they could slowly develop in the democratic direction, but like you say, Ivan III wiped them out at the end of the 15 century, before they could get there; and a hundred years later, Ivan IV, with his usual genocidal brutality, finished the job. So, strictly speaking, Russia has never known democracy; the only thing relatively close would be perhaps found in old cossak societies (before they were absorbed in the state, that is) or village communes -- but both of these were local and insignificant; the Russian state since the 15 century has always been a patrimonial autocracy; before that it was mostly (except Novgorod) a bunch of smaller-scale patrimonial autocracies.

I don't know anything of Putin's intellectual might, and knowing very well what his background most likely was, I think it's overstated. I mean education: he may very well be an intelligent person, it's is possible, of course. But not a scholar, iow. Neither was he a high-rank KGB'ist (those could indeed be well educated.)

You mentioned Peter -- there's an interesting thing that does, I think, invite certain parallels -- he once said, we need the West for a decade or so only, to grab their technology; then we can shut the door again. This is a very old dilemma of Russian ruling classes: on one hand, they are afraid of losing the patrimony (Russia, that is) and therefore try to keep to themselves, yet on the other hand, such isolation, though safe in terms of possession, has always resulted in falling back technologically (i.e. militarily) and becoming vulnerable to the West's war methods. Then they were forced to "reform" (always top down, btw., taking care to avoid any devolution of political power.)

That pattern has been repeated over and over again. The reforms you've mentioned (1860s) were triggered by the defeat at the hands of the British and the French in the Crimean war of 1854. Peter's reforms were necessitated by the defeats in the war with Sweden. And the recent "perstroika" is very similar in that respect. If they somehow could keep up with the West militarily, they'd never bother with reform -- there's no internal, natural, permanent drive to it: it's an eternal stop-and-go kinda thing; since time immemorial they had exported raw materials -- some time, furs, wax, and slaves; today, oil and gas -- and imported luxuries and arms. So long as some kind of serf economy (communism being a kind of it) would bear this, there was no need for reform.

What I'm getting to is that they don't need any democracy, they need technology and some kind of working economy (not necessarily a free-market one; in fact, they probably specifically don't want it, preferring some kind of state capitalism) that can support it. That they renounced communism means little (communism was fundamentally dead by the early 30s; even Trotsky admitted that; by the 80s, it was no more than a rotten throughout pretense); what took place in the 1990s was more of a reshuffling of elites, while the fundamentals and motivations remain the same as they have always been.

Colt: there's something wrong with your link :-). The text is correct, but the link itself is not.

Btw, Joel, "Zdravstvuite" is plural (or polite, but to a person -- a "you" vs "thou" kinda thing); "Zdravstvuy, Russia" would probably be better. :-)

Warum,

When the title was suggested, I battled with that for a few minutes. I decided to keep it this way because (hopefully) more than one of you will read it and I am (most of the time, fingers crossed) a polite kind of guy. I am still considered a youngster by many, so the respectful tone will please my Babushka Dranoff - who I know is watching everything I do. :)

Babushka's always right! Therefore I cease and desist :-)

i totally agree w/ this thing! soooo interesting!

This is sooooo cool, u can post things on here!