How Putin and his Cronies Stole Russia
alice malice
alicewmalice at gmail.com
Sat Dec 20 07:44:05 CST 2014
For twenty years now, the Western politicians, journalists,
businessmen, and academics who observe and describe the post-Soviet
evolution of Russia have almost all followed the same narrative. We
begin with the assumption that the Soviet Union ended in 1991, when
Mikhail Gorbachev handed over power to Boris Yeltsin and Russia,
Ukraine, and the rest of the Soviet republics became independent
states. We continue with an account of the early 1990s, an era of
“reform,” when some Russian leaders tried to create a democratic
political system and a liberal capitalist economy. We follow the
trials and tribulations of the reformers, analyze the attempts at
privatization, discuss the ebb and flow of political parties and the
growth and decline of an independent media.
Mostly we agree that those reforms failed, and sometimes we blame
ourselves for those failures: we gave the wrong advice, we sent naive
Harvard economists who should have known better, we didn’t have a
Marshall Plan. Sometimes we blame the Russians: the economists didn’t
follow our advice, the public was apathetic, President Yeltsin was
indecisive, then drunk, then ill. Sometimes we hope that reforms will
return, as many believed they might during the short reign of
President Dmitry Medvedev.
Whatever their conclusion, almost all of these analysts seek an
explanation in the reform process itself, asking whether it was
effective, or whether it was flawed, or whether it could have been
designed differently. But what if it never mattered at all? What if it
made no difference which mistakes were made, which privatization plans
were sidetracked, which piece of advice was not followed? What if
“reform” was never the most important story of the past twenty years
in Russia at all?
[...]
Instead of seeing Russian politics as an inchoate democratic system
being pulled down by history, accidental autocrats, popular inertia,
bureaucratic incompetence, or poor Western advice, I conclude that
from the beginning Putin and his circle sought to create an
authoritarian regime ruled by a close-knit cabal…who used democracy
for decoration rather than direction.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/18/how-he-and-his-cronies-stole-russia/?insrc=whc
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