Thursday, 1 December 2011The Guardian published an article by its international commentator David Hearst, titled "Putin Runs Russia Like a Giant Car Boot Sale."
According to Hearst, once a year the Russian government invites a group of scholars and journalists to discuss the destiny of Russia. The last day of group therapy is set aside to meet with the chief himself. Until the last minute, no one knows where and when this meeting will occur. Last year, the group was sent by plane to Sochi, and then by bus to a villa on the Black Sea and back to Moscow. Then, it became clear that all could safely go nowhere. The next morning, Putin himself was in Moscow, at work.
This year's mystery tour took place in the birch forests near Moscow and ended at the equestrian center New Age, at seven in the morning. Putin was half an hour late, and, passing bottles of Armagnac of 1888, invited everyone to try the marinated mushrooms. He was obviously very familiar with the method of their cooking.
The rest of Russia, Hearst writes, is in a little mood for this. After two decades of freedom of speech and movement, Russians are still waiting for a normal life promised to them. Many are already tired. According to a recent survey of five thousand students at Moscow State University, 80 percent of the respondents intend to leave the country.
Rich Russians are also not very patriotic. This year, the outflow of capital has doubled, from 34 to 70 billion dollars. Even if the oil price will reach $125 per barrel the money will flow out of Russia, the edition underlines. These figures state everything you need to know about the country digging in for another 12 years of Putin's rule.
Putinism, Hearst writes in the Guardian, is a selective autocracy similar to a giant car boot sale. “The going rate is $50m for a governorship, $500,000 for a middle-ranking bureaucrat.” And it is not surprising that people who obtain these posts are concerned, above all, with the return of their investment. Yes, there are honest governors, the author writes, but the whole system is rotten. Putin himself does not hide his disdain for the alternative system in which governors are chosen. To emphasize this, he repeatedly tells the story of some governor who ran out through the back door to escape from a dissatisfied crowd.
But, speaking the truth, Putin himself did not know what to do when he was booed, writes David Hearst in the Guardian. And this, according to polls, will happen more often. “Putin's problem is not staying in power. It is leaving it – without all hell breaking lose between rival boyars, and with his personal fortune intact.” Sweeping the path the potential opponents, like Dmitry Medvedev, is child's play for him.
But to be constantly on guard in the heart of the competing branches of the privatized state and to hold a suitcase packed with information about the commercial secrets of his opponents is a much more difficult task. Putin is more afraid of the political opposition, which he cannot control.
Russians do not want another revolution, the author writes. “But they see clearer than any foreign experts how sclerotic Putin's ‘manual guidance’ system of government is. There is no one at the helm. He is truly on his own. A government run like that does not govern. It gets by, by buying people off,” writes David Hearst. Twenty years ago, the equestrian center where Putin met with journalists this year, was a collective farm “Luch Il’yicha.” Now this is the place for the elite. The majority of Russians would like something between these two extremes, concludes David Hearst, author of the article in the Guardian.
The Times published excerpts of the interview given to the newspaper by Boris Nemtsov. The West should react to Vladimir Putin’s return as Russia's president by stating that he is a dictator, the newspaper quotes Nemtsov. Nemtsov also said that U.S. President Barack Obama conducts a far less principled policy toward Russia than his predecessor George W. Bush. "Nobody in Russia believes in the reboot. This is similar to the rhetoric. Bush was more honest in this respect. Maybe he was not as smart as Obama, but with him it all was clear," the newspaper quoted Nemtsov.
According to him, "it is important that the West should defend its values, rather than access to the gas."
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Thursday, 1 December 2011
Translated and revised by Viktoriia Demydova
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