Posted on 03/04/2008 10:12:41 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Who remembers how to use a slide rule? Carbon paper? A telex machine? Such are the halfremembered skills of past decades.
But for Russia-watchers, an equivalent long- dead technique is coming back: Kremlinology.
Until Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the Kremlin in the late Eighties, we used to scrutinise the leaden prose of the misnamed Pravda (Truth) and Izvestiya(News) for a clue to the internal machinations of the Politburo.
Now, outsiders (and Russians themselves) are looking frantically for an explanation of the farcical "hand-over of power" between Vladimir Putin and his hand-picked successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev.
Historically, Western opinion has been easily gulled by a new Russian leader.
We cooed over Khrushchev and goggled at Gorbachev.
Even a few fragments of personal information, skilfully passed on, are enough to create the right impression.
Yuri Andropov, the steely old KGB chief who reigned in the Kremlin from 1982 to 1984, was, supposedly, a lover of jazz and whisky.
That was enough to make people see him as a reformer and moderniser - an illusion eclipsing his true past as "the Butcher of Budapest", who had bloodily put down the heroic Hungarian uprising of 1956.
Now, much the same is happening with Dmitry Medvedev. We are told that he likes Western rock music and wears jeans.
He speaks of his hunger for more economic and political freedoms, denouncing corruption and calling for the rule of law and more "European values".
But we would be insane to accept him at face value. After all, Mr Medvedev is a faithful sidekick to Vladimir Putin, a man who has demolished Russia's political freedoms, media pluralism and the rule of law, and drenched Russia's foreign policy with a dose of Soviet-style xenophobia.
Of course, we have never heard a squeak of protest from Mr Medvedev - until now one of the top figures in government - about the shameful excesses of state power in past years, such as making dissent illegal under a new law banning "extremism" or the legitimisation of assassination of the country's enemies.
And we are not hearing them now. He was asked recently in an "interview" (a paid-for advertisement arranged by his campaign team) what he thought of the treatment of the British Council.
The Russian employees of that organisation had been hauled from their beds in the middle of the night to answer for the "crime" of belonging to a foreign organisation that had, it was alleged, fallen foul of some Russian regulations.
Mr Medvedev could have taken that opportunity to deplore, even mildly, the heavy-handed approach of the Russian authorities. He didn't.
Instead, he repeated the old Soviet-style smear that the British Council is a front for intelligence-gathering.
Does he really think that the British Secret Intelligence Service disguises James Bond as a folk dancer or visiting lecturer in women's studies in order to infiltrate him into Russia?
In the same interview, he described America as a "financial terrorist" for imposing its economic standards on the rest of the world.
But an even more pertinent reason for distrusting Mr Medvedev is his business role as head of Gazprom, Russia's largest company.
In this role, he has shown a marked disdain for transparency and legality.
Indeed, it would be wrong to call Gazprom a "company".
That would suggest an outfit that maximises returns to shareholders by providing a good deal for its customers. Gazprom does nothing of the kind.
It would be better described as the gas division of "Kremlin Inc". It is a ruthless wielder of monopoly power in pursuit of Russia's political objectives.
It bullies neighbouring countries, presenting them with peremptory demands for higher gas prices, backed up with the threat of disconnection.
Gazprom is also remarkably opaque. There is a mysterious middleman firm with the unwieldy name of RosUkrEnergo which siphons off export revenues to the tune of billions of dollars.
No one is able to explain why this outfit needs to exist, or indeed who owns it, or where the money goes - though the finger of suspicion points straight to the Kremlin.
It would have been interesting to ask Mr Medvedev about this - but during his nonchalant election campaign, he found no time to expose himself to questions from foreign media, or from Russia's beleaguered band of truly independent journalists.
Instead, state-controlled television gave him the same fawning treatment as Mr Putin.
Why do Russians put up with all this? One reason is revulsion against the Nineties - when crime was rampant and the economy was in ruins.
The collapse of the Soviet regime had brought none of the promised benefits of capitalism and Russia no longer enjoyed the status of a superpower.
The decade was seen as an era of chaos and national humiliation.
Kremlin propaganda skilfully darkens that memory, adding the slanderous twist that the upheavals were worsened by Western meddling. (The truth is that the West spent billions on supporting Russia in those years; but most of that money was stolen or wasted).
Another reason why the Russians tolerate the present status quo is the soaring oil price.
The Kremlin coffers are awash with cash. Living standards have soared. Suddenly, people are being paid on time.
Yet the bleak truth for Mr Medvedev is that Russia's reforms are still lamentably incomplete.
Oil-fuelled crony capitalism does not bring lasting prosperity.
The real route to lasting progress is in solid, honest public institutions: courts, efficient bureaucrats, a good education system, strong anti-monopoly laws.
Russia not only lacks these, it has the opposite. Whereas the courts used to be merely bribable, they are now a branch of government. The education system is plagued by corruption.
Meanwhile, state bureaucrats shamelessly indulge in what they call "velvet reprivatisation": a euphemism for arbitrarily bankrupting companies and buying them at bargain prices for themselves.
By far the most likely explanation for Mr Medvedev's sudden elevation to the top job is that having smeared opponents as dangerous extremists and used oil wealth to muffle public protest, Russia's rulers have snapped up the lion's share of the country's assets to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
Their priority now is to squirrel the proceeds away abroad.
Stanislav Belkovsky, one of the sharpest independent analysts in Moscow, says: "Medvedev's job is to help stash the privatised stuff safely in the West."
And anyway, don't think that Putin will relinquish control of the state to Mr Medvedev.
The former KGB man will become Prime Minister, and he expects still to wield the real power.
The nameplates on the doors may change, but the political system Mr Putin and his ex-KGB cronies have created will stay: impenetrable to outsiders, impervious to criticism and lubricated with vast sums of money obtained corruptly.
I swear to you; five years ago I had a girl come in to work part time from the college. I led her to the typewriter to type envelopes (much easier in a small office than loading envelopes in printer, wait for others to print, etc...) She says to me “A typewriter! I’ve heard of those!”
I wouldn’t dismiss Putin’s power, but Russia isn’t the Soviet Union anymore either. Unfortunately, the US needs Russian cooperation on many issues and will have to balance that with our desire to spread democracy.
Putin is probably the best ruler Russia has had since Tsar Peter. Ten years ago, Russians were literally starving and Russia was unable to react when a psychopath American president bombed a totally innocent Slavic Orthodox Christian nation for eighty days and nights including Easter Sunday to take a rape allegation against himself off the front pages of American newspapers. None of that kind of **** is happening now.
A total sham, typical of communists/socialists. Why did Putin even bother with the charade? It is totally transparent.
Russia is still unable to react. What have they done? They are going to vigorously protest us in the UN? Oh mercy me, I don’t know if we’ll survive that!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
A dyarchy is a new thing for Russia.
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Yes, it would be, but the general thinking is that it is not a dyarchy. Regardless of surface appearances. Putin is old line KGB, and still believes in absolute power — HIS power. As such, he has the support of the old guard in the Kremlin. Much of what will happen or be decided, will go unseen to the West. But it will be interesting.
Putin picked Medvedev because he knows he can control him. Medvedev won’t turn on Putin like Putin turned on Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who picked Putin to be Russia’s leader. Medvedev is Putin’s Rudolph Hess, his most loyal lackey.
Lucas is off his meds again.
Russia - a rogue state? Actually Britain’s biggest and most favorite weapons customer rogue state is - Saudi Arabia.
“utterly corrupt regime?”
LOL
Was this jerk who wrote this hit piece talking about Bush? That is how they decribed Bush too...now they have a new whipping boy...someone that the leftie secular Brits cannot control.
Go Putin! Go Medvedev!
It’s the liberal effete secular media that has been bashing Bush all these years (and he deserves plenty of that recently but is not getting it from this creepy crowd).
Now that Bush has caved to the Muslim cartel, Putin is the new whipping post.
Face that - ask yourself why - and you are halfway to waking up from your cold war stupor.
Russia was never really a communist nation. It was always a crony monopolistic regime.
They used communism as a sop to the people.
Now they use national pride.
The same thing the crony capitalists use here in the good ole' U S of A.
Bush Sr. picked Bush Jr to run and win.
Bill picked Hillary for NY Senator and now for Pres. And if she wins, she'll likely pick Chelsea for grooming.
So what's the difference with Putin and Medvedev? At least they're not related.
Now they use national pride.
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I guess poisoning dissidents represents “national pride”. If the Soviet Union did not define hard communism, I am not sure what does, or ever did. As far as the USA goes, national pride is something totally foreign to our socialist-dominated Congress. They could care less, as we let foreign invaders defile and invade America, with a Congress and administration that continues to encourage them, feed them, educate them, medicate them.
Sorry, don’t agree with your assessment.
If these are the criteria, the U.S. is in deep trouble.
Carolyn
We’ve all known that Putin was KGB. When President Bush said he looked into his eyes and “saw his soul”, all I could say was “poor George W.”.
Yeah, many of them long for the days of Stalin too.
Free and open elections.
Communism has to do with the ownership of the means of production and other la de da economic theory that has no place in the real world.
It was merely a convenient fiction that was used by the dictators in the Kremlin to keep their people in line despite the great hardships that were forced upon them.
When the "people" own all of the means of production, and the people are controlled by a one party dictatorship you have a textbook monopoly.
The Soviet Union didn't fail because it was communist. It failed because it was an uncompetitive monopoly. For years the west subsidized its ineffeciencies in hopes of staving off World War III. When Reagan finally cut the Soviets from the capitalist teat, they withered almost instantly.
Russia is now in the process of reconstituting its monopoly. Ultimately this one will fail as well, but in the mean time lots of people will once again suffer, and we will once again be threatened by Russia.
Russia will have to threaten us in order to get loan guarantees, favorable trade rules, etc. to compensate for the inefficiencies in their monopolistic system.
Right now they are flush with cash from oil, but that won't always be the case.
Pretending that we killed communism, when it was never really utilized in the real world, and still thrives in the addled minds of liberal economics professors, is not a very helpful myth to hold on to.
What we killed was a Russian mob, which has been reconstituted and will need to be killed off once more at some point in the future.
Yes but Bush also whispers sweet endearments with the chief terrorists in the world - the Saudi royal family.
Give me the Russians any day: they are Christians and fight terror.
Try getting on the ballot for president in all of the states.
Try getting a fair shake from the NYTs.
Try speaking your mind 60 days before and election.
No, I don't see much difference between the two. Putin has 80% approval and its reasonable to me Medvedev gets a 70% coat tail effect.
I thought Bush looked into “Pootie-Pute’s” eyes and could tell he was a devout Chistian........
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