MOSCOW: By following Western economic advice - devised in good faith to bring Russia to democracy and prosperity - Yeltsin and Co., true to the national character, created yet another form of dictatorship, with the leader ensconced in the Kremlin utterly indifferent to his subject's well-being. The difference between today's Russia and the old Soviet Union is that the Gulag archipelago of labour camps has been shunted aside in favour of what can only be called a "Gucci archipelago" or a casino camp.
Under communism, Soviet citizens were locked in. Russian citizens under today's sham market economy are locked out: locked out of the normal conditions of life; out of decently paid jobs, or what is even more common, out of paid jobs altogether. Most importantly, they are locked out of hope to overcome the everlasting Russian curse. Former prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin conveyed this dilemma in his usual lethargic way. By privatising state property "we wanted things to be better, but it still ended up ‘like always'."
"Like always," in Russia means a never-ending gulag-type arrangement for the average Russian citizen. The power of the KGB was simply replaced by the power of corrupt private oligarchs and an even more morally bankrupt state apparatus. Nowadays, the well-guarded marble facades of Russia's (often insolvent) banks and businesses have assumed the role in domestic demonology once played by the frightening "Big House" on Lubyanka Square in Moscow where the KGB did its night work.
Before 1991 everyone was overwhelmed by the very real fear of losing your freedom; now people are overwhelmed by the fear of having too much freedom. Those who are not up to the new challenges are dismissed with a shrug as "leftovers from the past" and chucked onto the dustbin of history, a place overflowing with "human refuse" after years of communism. Inequality is said to be inevitable in the process of Russia's Westernisation, and most people accept this. No Western adviser ever suggested, however, that the coming of free markets did not require a rule of law with everyone equal before it, and the development of sensible tax structures that provide for a public safety net.
The distorted markets imposed on Russia by the new oligarchs created by Russia's market "deforms" (I refuse to let such monstrosities parade under the name of reform) has brought the country back full circle. Today the old KGB (Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov was a career denizen of this central institution of the Soviet/Stalinist state, and headed its successor body after communism's collapse) has been given the ruling hand in a last bid to impose some sort of order.
Primakov's battle against corruption, directed primarily against the financial magnate and former minister for relations with the old Soviet nations like Ukraine, Secretary Boris Berezovsky, is sending a clear message: we will punish the guilty and impose discipline on rich and poor alike. (That battle is highly selective. For example, those Central Bank figures who spirited billions of the country's foreign exchange reserves out of Russia to a secret account in the British Channel islands remain strangely immune from worry.)
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But Primakov's so far cautious smack of firm government, weakened by the miserable condition of Russian state finances, might yet fail in tranquilizing today's disillusioned Russian masses. The mushrooming growth of the "Party Against Yids," organized by Duma member General Makashov, as well as frequent marches and demonstrations by fascist groups with ersatz swastika signs and black outfits suggests a hideous resemblance to pre-Nazi Germany in the early 1930s.
The popularity of these "new model" Nazis grows in proportion to the despair incited by unpaid wages, unheated apartments, vanishing supplies of food, and the increasingly ugly and public squabbles around the decrepit occupant of the Kremlin throne. Hungry and poor people are looking with hope at the leather clad, well-trained, and iron-disciplined youth of these street gangs. These roving bands don't appear to spend their time and energy on acquiring money, or receiving concessions, or fighting for high positions. They are starting to ACT.
These black/brown/red brigades don't just promise investigations and some sort of punishment for Russia's privatized oligarchs and their allies in the bureaucratic den of thieves. Their agenda is a no nonsense hanging of the corrupt, a restoration through state subsidies of industrial (for large numbers of people) jobs, paying equal wages to everybody, and stopping crime by clamping down hard on the streets. In short, they seek to establish an iron "poriadok" (order), a magic, soothing, nostalgic notion in today's bankrupt and chaotic Russia.
Within Russia, historically, there are only two forces that would seek to stand against this looming political plague: the intelligentsia and the army. Parts of the intelligentsia, however, men like Berezovsky (who was a renowned mathematician), went into business and politics and discredited themselves. The army leadership, men like General Lebed, did something of the same thing. Murder in the ranks, starvation and suicides in distant army bases, run-away conscripts, even the spectre of soldiers selling out their fellow soldiers to Chechyn kidnappers, have become common in today's Russian military, which now sullenly sees itself as disgraced.
There is a third force still in play, though much cursed, abused, misused but relied upon and hoped for - Western help. On March 23 the Gore-Primakov Commission will hold fresh meetings that could determine whether or not the IMF approve another $4 billion-dollar loan as well as lead to restructuring Russia's debt after the default of last summer. Russia's fate will, in some ways, be decided that day - it will either sink into more chaos and despair, the streets increasingly ruled by brown-black fascist youth, or Russia will receive a little breathing room, maybe its last, to find a viable course, somewhere in between the extreme archipelagos of Gulag and Gucci.
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MOSCOW: By following Western economic advice - devised in good faith to bring Russia to democracy and prosperity - Yeltsin and Co., true to the national character, created yet another form of dictatorship, with the leader ensconced in the Kremlin utterly indifferent to his subject's well-being. The difference between today's Russia and the old Soviet Union is that the Gulag archipelago of labour camps has been shunted aside in favour of what can only be called a "Gucci archipelago" or a casino camp.
Under communism, Soviet citizens were locked in. Russian citizens under today's sham market economy are locked out: locked out of the normal conditions of life; out of decently paid jobs, or what is even more common, out of paid jobs altogether. Most importantly, they are locked out of hope to overcome the everlasting Russian curse. Former prime minister Victor Chernomyrdin conveyed this dilemma in his usual lethargic way. By privatising state property "we wanted things to be better, but it still ended up ‘like always'."
"Like always," in Russia means a never-ending gulag-type arrangement for the average Russian citizen. The power of the KGB was simply replaced by the power of corrupt private oligarchs and an even more morally bankrupt state apparatus. Nowadays, the well-guarded marble facades of Russia's (often insolvent) banks and businesses have assumed the role in domestic demonology once played by the frightening "Big House" on Lubyanka Square in Moscow where the KGB did its night work.
Before 1991 everyone was overwhelmed by the very real fear of losing your freedom; now people are overwhelmed by the fear of having too much freedom. Those who are not up to the new challenges are dismissed with a shrug as "leftovers from the past" and chucked onto the dustbin of history, a place overflowing with "human refuse" after years of communism. Inequality is said to be inevitable in the process of Russia's Westernisation, and most people accept this. No Western adviser ever suggested, however, that the coming of free markets did not require a rule of law with everyone equal before it, and the development of sensible tax structures that provide for a public safety net.
The distorted markets imposed on Russia by the new oligarchs created by Russia's market "deforms" (I refuse to let such monstrosities parade under the name of reform) has brought the country back full circle. Today the old KGB (Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov was a career denizen of this central institution of the Soviet/Stalinist state, and headed its successor body after communism's collapse) has been given the ruling hand in a last bid to impose some sort of order.
Primakov's battle against corruption, directed primarily against the financial magnate and former minister for relations with the old Soviet nations like Ukraine, Secretary Boris Berezovsky, is sending a clear message: we will punish the guilty and impose discipline on rich and poor alike. (That battle is highly selective. For example, those Central Bank figures who spirited billions of the country's foreign exchange reserves out of Russia to a secret account in the British Channel islands remain strangely immune from worry.)
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But Primakov's so far cautious smack of firm government, weakened by the miserable condition of Russian state finances, might yet fail in tranquilizing today's disillusioned Russian masses. The mushrooming growth of the "Party Against Yids," organized by Duma member General Makashov, as well as frequent marches and demonstrations by fascist groups with ersatz swastika signs and black outfits suggests a hideous resemblance to pre-Nazi Germany in the early 1930s.
The popularity of these "new model" Nazis grows in proportion to the despair incited by unpaid wages, unheated apartments, vanishing supplies of food, and the increasingly ugly and public squabbles around the decrepit occupant of the Kremlin throne. Hungry and poor people are looking with hope at the leather clad, well-trained, and iron-disciplined youth of these street gangs. These roving bands don't appear to spend their time and energy on acquiring money, or receiving concessions, or fighting for high positions. They are starting to ACT.
These black/brown/red brigades don't just promise investigations and some sort of punishment for Russia's privatized oligarchs and their allies in the bureaucratic den of thieves. Their agenda is a no nonsense hanging of the corrupt, a restoration through state subsidies of industrial (for large numbers of people) jobs, paying equal wages to everybody, and stopping crime by clamping down hard on the streets. In short, they seek to establish an iron "poriadok" (order), a magic, soothing, nostalgic notion in today's bankrupt and chaotic Russia.
Within Russia, historically, there are only two forces that would seek to stand against this looming political plague: the intelligentsia and the army. Parts of the intelligentsia, however, men like Berezovsky (who was a renowned mathematician), went into business and politics and discredited themselves. The army leadership, men like General Lebed, did something of the same thing. Murder in the ranks, starvation and suicides in distant army bases, run-away conscripts, even the spectre of soldiers selling out their fellow soldiers to Chechyn kidnappers, have become common in today's Russian military, which now sullenly sees itself as disgraced.
There is a third force still in play, though much cursed, abused, misused but relied upon and hoped for - Western help. On March 23 the Gore-Primakov Commission will hold fresh meetings that could determine whether or not the IMF approve another $4 billion-dollar loan as well as lead to restructuring Russia's debt after the default of last summer. Russia's fate will, in some ways, be decided that day - it will either sink into more chaos and despair, the streets increasingly ruled by brown-black fascist youth, or Russia will receive a little breathing room, maybe its last, to find a viable course, somewhere in between the extreme archipelagos of Gulag and Gucci.