Free speech is indispensable but, regrettably, an insufficient predicate for a decent civil society.
Here are the posts and I stand by every word today:
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The more I reflect on my exposure to Russia, which I was privileged to see not through conservative American eyes but through the eyes of my traveling companions, German businesspeople, I believe that the key to understanding Russia is not to examine Marx but to reflect on Dostoevsky.
At the end of the day, Russia is hapless because of pervasive cynicism which dominates the culture. American intellectuals amuse themselves by denigrating American boosterism but this optimism is not confected out of the air, it is rooted in a constitutional system, with a rule of law that is respectable and respected, and a fair market which is reasonably fair. None of this works in Russia.
Boosterism is Pollyanna-ish, it has no place in the reality of Russia but that world is rational only because that is a world of corruption, cronyism, brutality, and quite rational cynicism.
For example, Vladimir Putin is admired not for his virtue but for his Machiavellian cynicism, not so much that he is corrupt but that he is successful at being corrupt. If you hate the system, there is a certain logic in a man who beats system and bends it to his will. If you decry Vladimir Putin as a villain you only betray your naïveté, your fatal detachment from the world of reality. The game is not to reform the system but to exploit it. To believe otherwise is to play the fool.
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About two years ago I participated with a group of German real estate investors in a tour of the real estate market in Moscow. Two anecdotes remain with me and illustrate my sense of the whole situation in Russia, or at least in Moscow.
First, I recall as we were riding through Moscow we passed the statue of Lenin which was pointed out to our group and the Germans had no particular reaction. I asked my seat mate who is a journalist covering our group, "what do you suppose the reaction would be upon seeing a statue of George Bush? "He laughed without responding to the question directly because it required no answer. Lenin is more popular in Germany than George Bush.
On another occasion we were escorted into an old factory area which had been converted into an office complex and looked like something resembling an American shopping center. We were awaiting the arrival of the entrepreneur who had performed this renovation and who was described to us as a man who could get things done in Moscow because he was a former city councilman, in other words, an apparatchik. The representation was made not by inference but explicitly that this man could achieve entrepreneurial miracles in Moscow because he was connected and in fact would bribe the officials.
Our apparatchik was late but eventually the gate opened and three blacked out SUVs came into the courtyard and formed a semi circle around us. Huge men, better described as gorillas, emerged from the vehicles and formed a circle around us sweeping back their coats like Wyatt Earp to reveal very impressive looking firearms at their belts. Only then did Wyatt Earp himself emerge from his SUV and began to address us through an interpreter. He reiterated the pitch: he could do business in Moscow because of his connections.
I said to one on my German colleagues, "how can you be a partner with this man? What do you do in the event of a dispute? He just told us that everything in Russia is corrupt so you get no fair treatment from the courts? Would you hire a bigger gang of thugs to have a shootout to settle your partnership disagreement? No thank you."
Today (2009) Russia is a one trick pony: natural resources, oil and gas, with the bulk of that being shipped to my neighbors here in Germany. By the dictates of geography, Russia enjoys considerable leverage over Europe but her destiny is to resemble the Arab Middle East, rich in oil but poor in every other respect.
No rule of law, no vital capitalism. No real capitalism, no real progress.
If I were compelled to offer up one word to describe the situation in Moscow two years ago it would be, cynicism. It is ubiquitous and I believe it will ultimately do great damage to Russian society. It is almost the ultimate application of what we in America call, the critical theory invented by THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL to undermine resistance to communism. The irony ought not to escape us.
