Kenneth Roy Eck’s literary luvvies Jim Swire An…

14.03.12
No. 526

SR’s remarkable growth as an independent magazine is based largely on word of mouth
Here are examples of our journalism:

* SR played a leading role in the successful campaign to save St Margaret of Scotland Hospice

* An SR investigation into Scotland’s care homes revealed the truth about Southern Cross a full year before the company collapsed. We put the facts in the public domain. They were ignored until it was too late

* SR campaigned for greater transparency in Scottish public life and won a landmark judgement from the Scottish information commissioner which has led to a transformation in the information available about executive salaries and pensions in public bodies

*  Having discovered elderly people still living in a near-derelict block of flats in Glasgow, sometimes without a water supply, SR campaigned to have them decently re-housed. With the help of Scotland’s housing minister, Alex Neil, we succeeded

* SR continues to campaign – so far without success – to broaden the range of appointments to national organisations beyond a self-perpetuating elite

Since SR does not accept advertising or sponsorship of any kind, and since the support it receives from its publisher (the Institute of Contemporary Scotland) is limited, SR depends on the generosity of individual supporters through the Friends of the Scottish Review

Click here

The Cafe

Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net

To understand what is

going on in Russia,

just follow the money

Ronnie Smith

In Time magazine’s edition of 20 February, Fareed Zakaria wrote briefly about the paradox that is Vladimir Putin and his performance as Russia’s ‘strongman’ (‘How Oil is Propping Up Putin’). I have a great deal of respect for Mr Zakaria but in his analysis of politics in Russia during the Putin era he, like many others, looks at things from entirely the wrong perspective.

     Russian politics are not ‘political’ as we understand the term, they are corporate in nature and Mr Putin is the CEO. The board of directors of Russia Inc, the real regime of ex-security services officers known as the Siloviki, appointed Mr Putin and supervise his work. They alone are Mr Putin’s constituency and his job is to ensure that they retain their power and their ownership of Russia’s vast mineral resources. Only the Siloviki have the power to hire and fire their CEO and they will ensure by any means that he stays in office for as long as they need him.
     Everything else that western commentators like to see and over-complicate in Russian government, from a strictly political perspective, is simply an interlinking network of smoke and mirrors.
     For example, Mr Zakaria points to a series of essays published in a leading Russian newspaper prior to the presidential election of 4 March. They focus on the importance of institutions of Russian civil society, of the need to ensure that the rule of law is enforced at all levels and throughout the country and of the need for the stranglehold of corruption to be broken. The articles are supposedly authored by Mr Putin himself and this is the paradox that Mr Zakaria struggles to deal with in his Time article because Mr Putin presides over a regime that crushes Russian civil society, obstructs the rule of law where necessary and encourages and uses extensive corruption to reward its supporters.
     You see, Mr Putin certainly did not write these articles. Rather they were produced by political advisors as part of his presidential election campaign and are as much for western consumption as they are for Russia’s electorate. Chief among his advisors is Vladislav Surkov, the man who delivers the smoke and mirrors and creates the impression that a near-normal democratic political system exists in Russia. Mr Putin has been CEO of Russia Inc since 31 December 1999, has just had his position confirmed at the presidential re-elections and seems prepared to continue for another 12 years, or until the Siloviki can find someone else with the required narrow range of skills. During his time in office, whether as president or prime minister, he has protected the interests of his constituents in a number of ways.
     In the early days Mr Putin and his supporters faced a number of challenges from powerful friends of the previous president, Boris Yeltsin. These people had been allowed to buy ownership of Russia’s mineral resources and utilities very cheaply and thus become extremely rich. They are, of course, known as oligarchs and they became legends in the world of international business because of their absurd personal wealth. Some of them had political ambitions and posed a threat to the power of the Siloviki; in particular, men such as Boris Berezhovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
     Mr Putin either destroyed or neutralised each of these threats in the classic Russian way. Mr Berezhovsky is exiled in London in fear of arrest and imprisonment if he returns to Russia or of assassination if his criticisms of the Siloviki become too credible and dangerous; at the moment he remains a risible fantasist. Mr Khodorkovsky is in prison having been convicted of various crimes, secure in the knowledge that new crimes will be unearthed by diligent investigators whenever each current sentence approaches its end. Men such as Roman Abramovich and Oleg Derepaska have agreed to forget any political ambitions they may have had and have been allowed to live very comfortable lives in businesses that do not directly threaten the interests of the regime.
     Note that Mr Berezhovsky and Mr Khodorkovsky remain alive to provide Mr Putin with leading cast members in his narrative of protecting the motherland from traitors and external enemies. They are the ‘black hats’ to Mr Putin’s John Wayne.
     There are others we have not heard of who either simply disappeared or were lost in sundry ‘terrorist attacks’ or plane crashes. In the meantime, Mr Putin has been able to restore most of the assets stolen by the oligarchs to Russia Inc, ensuring his own and the Siloviki’s control of the country.
     Mr Putin has either closed down or taken control of most of the country’s media. A small number of independent companies are allowed to exist but they join the other ‘black hats’ in giving the regime enemies to point to. They also act as a safety valve for the chatter of liberal opinion. Journalists who wander too far ‘off-piste’ are simply killed in sub-contracted operations after which the murderers are never found or convicted.

The Russian people are fed a daily diet of good news by state-owned or friendly media, concerning Mr Putin and his presidential/prime ministerial colleague, Mr Dimitry Medvedev. When elections approach many independent media are shut down, suspended or increasingly intimidated. In some cases these companies are bought by friends of the regime after which any independent-minded staff are encouraged to find alternative employment.
     For a short time the position of regional governor offered ambitious people the opportunity to obtain and flex some political and economic power. This is how General Alexander Lebedev achieved his brief political leverage with the regime and allowed him enough national coverage to think of a presidential bid. However, Mr Putin understood the threat very quickly and passed legislation resulting in regional governors being appointed directly by the president – him.
     The Russian parliament (Duma) has been dominated by the United Russia Party during the Putin era. United Russia was created after Mr Putin’s appointment to the presidency precisely to support him in the Duma. It is not therefore a political party as we understand it. It simply gives Mr Putin political reach in the country and votes unanimously for everything he wants. In the same way, Mr Putin’s advisors created the related youth movement Nashi, to push Mr Putin’s nationalist agenda on the streets, as forcefully as possible.
     Mr Putin is the movement, he is the ideology, the political raison d’être that assures the Siloviki of the stability necessary for them to maintain their hold on the country’s resources. Neither he nor his supporters present a comprehensive range of public policy in Russia. It’s either him – John Wayne – or the weak and discredited opposition ‘funded and backed by foreign enemies’. That is the only choice offered to Russians at each election since Mr Putin took office.
     Day-to-day business in Russia is a difficult and stressful affair. Russian businessmen simply do not share and, if they find themselves working in partnership, either domestically or with an international company, they will seek to take the whole business by whatever means within three to five years. Ask British Petroleum about their experiences with BP-TNK. To be successful, a businessman in Russia needs a lot of cash to buy favours and a network of good connections that ultimately include a member of the Siloviki to provide protection.
     Without cash for the necessary bribes that allow the quick resolution of government permit and certification problems, the business will never launch. Without the protection of good connections, the business can be closed or simply taken by someone in competition who has better connections. In this case there is no recourse to law because no investigator or judge will go against the senior member of the Siloviki who tops the connection network.
Similarly major business contracts, in every economic sector, are only awarded to those with the appropriate connections and the Siloviki get a percentage of everything.
     Much has been made, in western media, of recent political events in Russia. We have been outraged by United Russia and the regime showing over-confidence by openly rigging the recent parliamentary and presidential elections. There have been loud complaints about Mr Putin returning to the presidency after one term as prime minister and about Mr Medvedev not standing up to him but simply accepting his continued role as the useful side-kick in the prime minister’s office.
     There has been a great deal of enthusiastic support for the hundreds of thousands of Russians seen on the street demonstrating against Mr Putin, without any real understanding of who these demonstrators are and what some of them want (scary doesn’t cover it). There are little green shoots of hope among western commentators waiting for the liberal democratisation of Russia.
     Forget it. In the main Russians are not liberal democrats. Moscow and St Petersburg are not the only places in Russia and life beyond the major cities and centres of economic power, both physically and intellectually, is very hard indeed. Russians fear chaos and love strength above all else and while they do have genuine issues with Mr Putin and his board of directors in the Siloviki, they see no credible or viable alternative among the fractured opponents of the regime. Given any kind of choice at the moment, they would simply vote for another Mr Putin if the current model was unavailable and he would only be unavailable if the Siloviki chose to remove him.
     The regime holds all the cards in Russia and some international cards too, through its corporate foreign ministry at Gazprom. For as long as the world prices of gas and oil remain at levels that favour the regime and they can maintain levels of ridiculous comfort for themselves and their supporters, nothing is going to change in Russia any time soon.
     I’ll say it again, Russia is corporate not political. To understand what is going on there, always follow the money. One example is that Russia does not appear to support the Assad regime in Syria because Mr Putin is a friend of Mr Assad. Russia has a very lucrative arms contract with the Syrian government and the Siloviki want to see it completed with full payment made and to sign other arms contracts with Syria’s few remaining friends.
     The Russian government has no ideological framework. It has no morally or politically-motivated public policy preferences. It’s just business.

Ronnie Smith was born in Largs and now lives in Romania, working as a professional training business consultant and communication coach. He is also a teacher of political science, a political and social commentator and a writer of fiction