--- Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I
imagine
Chris Doss finds that his difficulties explaining
Putin to others on
this
list relates to this point - no? And, of course, all
of us are caught
in
terrible conflicting priorities when it comes to
events in the Middle
East.
Paul
---
I think that, in the case of Russia, you really have
(at least) three elites, the interests are largely in
conflict:
1. The so-called oligarchs, who made their fortunes
on crooked deals with the government in the Yeltsin
era and still dominate the megabusinesses. Even though
the word is losing some of the meeting it had when it
was originally coined, back when there were only seven
oligarchs. There are about 40 billionaires in Russia
today. The oligarchs tend to be very pro-Western,
since they have no support base at home (there are
exceptions to this -- Abramovich is allegedly close to
the Kremlin).
2. Post-oligarchic big business, which entered the
game after the oligarchs did, is jealous of their
wealth and sees the oligarchs' control of the economy
as a barrier to their own sucess.
3. The state apparatus, which lives off the two above
elites (rent-seeking) and seeks to direct them to its
own ends -- strengthening the state's control of the
economy and extending its role at home and abroad.
They view the oligarchs as simultaneously a threat to
their own power, a danger to the power of the country
with which they identify, and a real and potential
source of enormous rents.
Currently, I think you have, roughly speaking, an
alliance of groups 2 and 3 against 1. There are
numerous indications that the state is going to either
renationalize oligarchic capital (read: re-Sovietize
the commanding heights of the economy) or divvy that
capital up to loyal members of group 2, or some
combination of the two. That is what the Yukos affair
is all about, IMO, and we will see which strategy teh
Kremlin is taking very very soon, as the process is
reaching its denouement.
This is all complicated further because capitalism is
still something of a novelty, and the worldviews of
the players involved were all formed in the Soviet
era. As near as I can tell, Putin considers the market
economy as something that should serve the state --
capital is a handmaiden of the state, not vice versa.
Business exists in order to fill the federal treasury.
This is a very non-Western view, and I think it has a
lot to do with Putin being in his late 30s when the
USSR collapsed. Putin is not a product of a capitalist
society. As far as I can tell, Putin sees himself as
having been called to save his country, and he is
doing it exactly the way you would expect a patriotic
KGB-man to.
__
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