My readers will have observed that I talk about Georgia a lot when ostensibly talking about Russia. There’s a reason: for two decades Georgia has been the favourite stick with which to beat Russia; for two decades we have been told Moscow is trying to eat Georgia; for two decades Georgia has been the contrast to illustrate what Russia could be if it weren’t so Russian; for two decades Georgia has been painted as the victim of Moscow’s worst impulses; for two decades Westerners have believed everything from Tbilisi and nothing from Moscow. A cornerstone of the anti-Russia edifice indeed and the “mine canary” of Russian intentions.
For two decades Russia has been interpreted through memes; assumptions deemed so true as to need no evidence; assumptions that reveal the facts that prove them; assumptions so resistant to reality that they create reality; assumptions that are non-falsifiable. Of the many memes three important ones are: Moscow wants its empire back; Moscow wants to control energy routes; Moscow hates democracies. Georgia was the perfect demonstration: formerly part of that empire, it had a pipeline route and was a stout democracy. QED. Facts were hammered to fit the memes. I have set the larger argument out in The Fire Below ($10 e-book).
We were told three things about Saakashvili’s Georgia (Shevardnadze, fêted in his day as a great democrat, was immediately forgotten). It was a true democracy improving in all ways, as true democracies should, not least economically; Saakashvili had courageously taken a serious bite at corruption; Georgia was a true ally of the West – worthy indeed of NATO membership and a proud contributor to the War on Terror. These Georgian merits were contrasted with Russian deficiencies: Georgia was a democracy, Russia wasn’t; Georgia was overcoming corruption, Russia was sunk in it; Georgia was an ally, Russia was an enemy, of us but especially of our new Georgian friend. Western media, Western politicians lapped this stuff up.
Direct Line. Putin gave his annual marathon phone-in session a couple
of weeks ago. Far too many questions of the nature “Little Father, my roof
leaks, please repair it”. Two conclusions, I suppose. One is that Russians are most
concerned with mundane issues (a large portion of which seem to involve unresponsive
government structures) The other is that, despite the anti-Russia crowd’s conviction
that he controls everything, Putin spends a lot of time pushing on ropes. There
was a pretty frank explication of disagreements on economic strategy and a
respectful exchange with Kudrin. Those who think these things are staged should
read the exchange with Aleksey Venediktov who challenged Putin on “Stalinist
control methods”. By the way, Venediktov seems to thrive despite the
dark premonitions in this New Yorker piece
from four years ago. Ah well, another prediction gone bad; never mind, no one
remembers, time
for another one.
Opposition. An authorised
opposition march on Moscow pulled 20K or so and passed off without incident. The
anti-Russia mob likes to see the cause of the decline in protests as
machinations of the evil government but a poll
gives better guidance. Levada (no government stooge) asked its respondents
which of 11 opposition leaders they trusted. 65% said “none” (8 points more than
a year ago). None of the 11 got better than 3%. Yavlinskiy and Prokhorov warned
them months ago that they had to come up with something more than mere opposition.
They haven’t.
Corruption. And still more cases opened,
arrests and sentences – too many to keep listing. The
Prosecutor
General told the Duma that recorded corruption crimes were up nearly
25% to 49,513
and that more than 13,500 individuals had been prosecuted. I imagine the number
is up because the pace of investigation has stepped up. Fraud, misappropriation
of budget funds (defence contracts especially) and embezzlement involving abuse
of office predominate: in short, officials are the greatest thieves. There can
be no doubt that an effort much bigger than anything we have seen in twenty
years (ever in Russian history?) is
under way. One may wonder, however, given the slowness with which these sorts
of crimes are investigated and prosecuted, whether the prosecutors have bitten
off more than they can digest.
Electoral system. In the beginning, the Duma’s
450 seats were chosen half by party list and half by single mandate with a 5%
threshold. Then Putin I changed it to all party list and 7% threshold. Putin II
has just sent a bill to the Duma
to change it back to the original. So what was the point of all that? The new
law forbids electoral alliances – obviously another attempt to force
like-minded people to unite. But we have 20 years of observational experience
that Russian liberals refuse to sink their (small policy but large personality)
differences. On a personal note, I was an observer in the 1995 election when
40-some parties ran. The party vote ballot was the size of a newspaper sheet
and few voters had a clue. Are we going back to that?
Adoptions. Putin would have been wiser to have vetoed the
adoption ban and forced parliament to overturn it (Art 107.3): it has become the
latest leitmotif of anti-Russia propagandists and has taken attention away from
the equally absurd Magnitskiy Bill. But here we are. Protests in Moscow, St
Petersburg and some other cities against it on Sunday attracted maybe 20K in
total and have given the opposition something new to object to. There is said
to be a petition calling for its ban and some opposition deputies are going to attempt to have it
overturned in the Duma. And, as always in Russia, it’s far
from clear exactly what the ban affects. However it wasn’t just a reaction
to the Magnitskiy Bill: 19 adopted Russian children (out of about 40,000) have
been done to death by their adopters in the USA (here’s one,
another
and an abuse
trial) and there have been misgivings in Russia for years. (Theusual
“news”
sources
pretend the 19 are the total number of adoptees who have died). Putin
complained that existing treaties are useless for allowing access by consular
officials (federal-state jurisdictions are apparently the problem). So there is
some background here.
Corruption. Well, there sure are a lot of
investigations going on and they reaching levels within sight of the top of the
power heap: after all Serdyukov was appointed by Putin who stuck by him for
years against the resistance of the generals. This blog
entry enumerates some of the biggest corruption investigations: it mentions
the Defence Ministry property scandal (the new Minister has just fired another
official, but probably not for that connection); RosTelekom; a former
Agriculture Minister; GLONASS; a big one in St
Petersburg and a swindle in Perm Region. Kommersant estimates the total bill at 57 billion rubles (about US$1.8
billion). And maybe more from the Defence Ministry: there are reported to be 60,000 empty
apartments for military retirees. A fraud case has opened in
Yekaterinburg. Arrests for mistreatment of convicts
and perhaps more
coming after the prison riot in Chelyabinsk last month. Typically, a lot of
Western coverage sticks to its favourite meme – everything in Russia is other
than it seems – and tries to paint this as an internal power struggle (ie
Serdyukov’s father-in-law).
But this is a lot and it’s getting fairly high up. Here’s a website’s list of
the “top
ten” convicted officials. Russia’s high level of corruption stands in the
way of many of the Team’s goals: attracting foreign investment, modernising the
economy, improving infrastructure, pinching pennies. Putin’s speech yesterday (“Hold your
applause, you may not like what is coming”) called corruption “a threat to
national development prospects” and laid
out the next level. While we still haven’t seen someone close to him led
away to prison (but the
investigators aren’t finished with Serdyukov), the tumbrils are in the
neighbourhood. It’s will be long campaign and one that is never completed in anycountry.
The best we can hope is that a big bite will be taken out of it.
Corruption. The OboronServis scandal expands with former Defence
Ministry
official (and, some say,
former Minister Serdyukov’s girlfriend) Yevgeniya Vasilyeva charged with
large-scale fraud and placed under house arrest. A spokesman for the Investigative
Committee said
that companies controlled by the
Ministry had embezzled more US$250 million this year; not, it appeared, just
from this particular swindle. No charges have been laid against Serdyukov but
they may
be coming pending investigation. It is also reported
that the new Minister has so far brought with him 14 senior people from his
previous jobs which suggests that he wants people around him whom he can trust
to be clean. In other investigations a case has been opened
against two military officers in the Far East for embezzling ration money; a former
officer of the Federal Drug Control Service was sentenced to jail
for drug trafficking and an ex-FSB officer was arrested for fraud. We’re
definitely touching the organs of state security here. Stay tuned.
Duumvirate. Levada finds a slow decline in
Putin and Medvedev’s ratings, although each remains at over 50%; on the other
hand VTsIOM finds United Russia is back
to where it was a year ago – just under 50%. Still, by world standards,
pretty high but another indication that Putin’s return might not have been such
a good idea. He was the right man for the job then but is he now? The population
seems to be coming to think not.
Corruption. There are those who believe thatone of the main reasons for Putin’s
re-appearance in the President’s chair was that only he has the political
muscle to really move on Russia’s widespread problem of corruption, especially corruption
at the top. I have always said that we won’t know that the anti-corruption
drive is serious until it takes down someone in an office near Putin’s or
Medvedev’s. Do we start to see this? The OboronServis case is getting bigger.
The case concerns skulduggery with the extensive number of military properties.
Some charges have been laid and the
inquiry has been widened. Last week Putin dismissed Defence
Minister Serdyukov (that’s an office pretty near his) and some
think that there is a connection and there is a hint in Putin’s words that there is
(although, naturally, there are plenty of
other theories too). Sergey
Shoygu, the popular long-time Emergency Services Minister (Governor of
Moscow Region since April) was appointed to replace him. The Chief of the
General Staff and other senior military were also replaced shortly after and
others today.
It’s true that Serdyukov was very unpopular with the generals but Putin had
kept him on nevertheless upon his return. Another possible scandal that may emerge
involves the defence industries which many accuse of being only able to make
ineffective weapons that are also very expensive. On the heels of this comes
another scandal in another important and celebrated enterprise: the Russian GPS
system GLONASS. For some
years it has been promising more than it has delivered and now a case charging
embezzlement has been opened. The chief designer of the
system has just been fired. These are corruption scandals in important and
prestigious parts of the state structure and are therefore much more momentous than
another bent cop discovered somewhere in the sticks. More
coming maybe. I would observe that, in my opinion, the worst corruption in
Russia involves privatisation: public property being transformed into private
gain; both of these fit that category.
Opposition vote. The opposition ran an electronic vote
to choose their… what? – leaders? most popular figures? coordinators? The
results are here (Russian).
The top 5 are Navalniy, Bykov, Kasparov, Sobchak and Yashin. What I find
striking is, in a supposedly computer-savvy broadly-based movement, that only
about 80,000 actually voted out of the 170,000 who registered. One cannot say
that the phenomenon is insignificant, but it does not seem to be so very large
after all.
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