La Russophobe's original translator offers the following from essay by Matvey Ganapolskiy (pictured) from the pages of Yezehednevniy Zhurnal on the emergence of a new "national idea" in post-communist Russia. Of course, one very familiar with Russian history might very well say this is merely the rediscovery of Russia's original "national idea," which explains the fact that Russia has made so little progress over the years.

The authorities in Russia are always putting forward ideas which, in their view, might help unify the country. The question, invariably, is to what extent the authorities believe these ideas themselves.

The central idea in the former USSR of happiness through equality collided with shortages of consumer goods which, like advancement in one’s career, were with few exceptions more accessible the higher one rose in the Party hierarchy. It was far from the case that everyone had the chance to buy toilet paper, pineapples or salami. Prosperity was achieved by following a simple saying: “Five minutes of shame, and you’re set for life.” You entered the Party, which did not set before you any realistic goals, but was inspired by the slogan, “Good fortune with us!” Then, following the rules of this strange game, you at last became a fully enfranchised citizen. The threat of shortages and the lure of growth in one’s career, both linked directly to membership in the Party, along with the closed borders, served as restraints against those who might deviate from the Party line. Non-Party members for all practical purposes had no rights.

Sometimes the ideologues of the Soviet Union tried to vary this picture of life, and threw out an appeal to the people. Such as, for example, the call to “Build the BAM!” [TN: The Baikal-Amur Main railroad, completed in 1984.] Television programs showed young people singing songs as they departed to work on BAM, and poets, sitting dachas outside Moscow, composed poems about these young people. On closer examination, the idea of the railroad turned out to be a massive lie – surrounding the railroad for thousands of kilometers was no infrastructure whatsoever. Settlements, where they existed at all, consisted only of the construction workers themselves, who settled in “komfortabilniy” train cars – they were shown on the television as well. The authorities understood that the economy of the country was in decline, that the garden cities along BAM would never be built, but they stubbornly kept laying down the tracks.

They were helped by two circumstances: First, all the Party leaders were already awaiting their pensions. And in a government dacha, with pineapples served on little saucers, even the most ridiculous undertaking seemed not quite so awful. Secondly, no one had ever inquired about past mistakes. And the unclear mumblings of the latest General Secretary about “certain mistakes” that were made by some Party congress long departed from the podium were taken as the inescapable but easy enough tribute paid in the course of a classical ritual. This was just an unwritten part of a social contract between the people and the authorities: the people laughed at the leaders, made up jokes about them, but in essence always participated in the Big Lie. Everyone went to the polls around 8:00 a.m. and voted, never looking at the ballots and not knowing the names of those they voted for. And now, a decade on, many of those who worked on the BAM have long ago died, while others have scattered to their home towns, some now living in the desperate poverty. But in the Russian mass consciousness BAM continues to be the project of the century, from which experience the current ideologues try to wring something useful in this age of the Internet and IPod.

The years of the shortages have passed, the Russian borders are now open and, it seems, the era of the Big Lie has slipped into the past forever. But actually, it has not. Unlimited possibilities have opened up not only for the people, but also, and foremost, for those in power. This is the possibility of privatizing the country.

It may be that Russia really is naturally a monarchy, since in both the recent and the current time the ruling elite have been seriously worried about the necessity of someday having to leave power. So the powers that be exert every effort to ensure that their dachas are not, any longer, in the Moscow suburbs, and that they will not be left with just pineapples. Of course, at stake is not just a bunch of goods in short supply, but the entire wealth of Russia, which the Kremlin rules undividedly, placing at risk along with the old-fashioned ideal of growth in one’s career, our very position as a free country. Having made an example of Khodorkovskiy to show what becomes of those don’t obey, the Kremlin was no doubt surprised by how quickly everyone fell in line by themselves. Poor Bill Gates and Warren Buffet! They still have no idea that the most effective business managers in the world work in the Kremlin, considering how they regularly get onto the boards of directors of the most powerful Russian companies. They must be geniuses, no? Of course not. The Kremlin’s favorites are placed in these companies as a reward, and to serve as the master’s eye. Everyone knows it and takes it as a given.

The Big Lie is once again in big demand. The President says that the government does not want to break up Yukos, already knowing exactly how he will break it up. He speaks of the importance of civil society, but destroys it himself. The Leader of Russia talks about the importance of friendship with the West, but the youth movement that obeys his every word hands out leaflets on the street from which one would infer that America is planning to attack Russia tomorrow. Putin announces that the people will choose the next president, but everyone knows perfectly well that the leader will be the one designated by Putin. He energetically demands that television give time to the opposition, but everyone knows exactly who is on the list of those banned from appearing there. People like, for example, the world chess champion Kasparov, or the radical Eduard Limonov.

Regarding the latter, an anecdote has surfaced: He gave an interview to a popular newspaper, for which the pro-Putin party condemned both the interviewer and publisher. This seems unbelievable, but it is true: the Party, forgetting about the Constitution, was upset that a person who does not like Putin – but who has nonetheless not been convicted of anything, stripped of his rights, or even placed under investigation – can be interviewed.

The most recent initiative is especially elegant: Everyone knows that success in one’s career can be expected only if one enters the “United Russia” party, but the Party has officially proposed the idea of promoting young people into career-track positions. This too is part of the Big Lie. Party officials say that they will promote any talented young person, but people get the clear signal: it is time to join exactly this organization, because exactly this organization will decide whether you have potential for a career. Naturally, as in the era of the Big Lie, none of this is condemned by the people. People in general do not take the actions of the authorities as being in violation of their rights, as an abrogation of the Constitution. For them this is just a signal of what rules they will be playing by today. And this Aesopian language is also part of the Big Lie.

In the end, it matters little by what motives the Kremlin rules, having made the Big Lie an integral part of their policies. What is important is that around the Big Lie they have constructed the entire contemporary life of Russia.

Putin officially does not lead “United Russia”, but everyone knows perfectly well that it is his Party. The country awaits parliamentary elections, but everyone already knows the results. The authorities speak of civil rights, but opposition rallies are ruthlessly suppressed. Big business is nominally independent, but everyone knows who really owns it. Kremlin bureaucrats talk about patriotism, but their children have never served in the army. They instead take top positions in leading banks and business enterprises. Evidently the grounds of the Kremlin emit something that will make you a successful businessman, and not only you but your children as well.

A furniture salesman was appointed the new Minister of Defense, and it was officially announced that he would undergo a crash course to acquaint himself with what an army is and how to lead one. Any normal person would find this amusing, but not a Russian – he understands it: Putin has faith in the new minister. He needs him for some purpose, and it is unimportant what job he has been given. Later he will be moved. But none of these facts are of any particular interest to Russians. The simple people do not think about such things. And the elite understand that The Lie has become an integral part of politics, and they play along according to the rules.

One of our old jokes used to go: No matter what Russian industry produces, in the end it always turns out a Kalashnikov rifle. It may be that modern Russian industry has learned to produce actual products. But the factory that produces the “national idea”, having sorted through the possibilities of “autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality” and the somewhat more modern “rescuing the people”, has realized that the first set is too archaic, and the second requires it to actually do something, and has instead returned to the reliable old Big Lie, the objective of which is simply gain control over one’s future. Hence, if one understands the “National Idea” to be something that permeates the whole society, unifies it, and defines its motives of conduct, then this is none other than the Big Lie. This is what the Russian uses to adjust his current behavior and construct his vision of the future.

It is hard for a person to see himself from outside himself. Russians laugh about the Big Lie as it exists in North Korea, reject the idea of wearing a lapel pin with a portrait of Kim Chong Il, and are astonished to learn that the beaches of that country are fenced off in barbed wire to keep the grateful people from fleeing their adoring leadership. But participating in the Big Lie does not require one to wear a lapel pin, and the barbed wire in one’s own mind is more effective than the stuff on the Korean beaches.

The main problem with Russia is not the breakup of the country, but the model of morality presented by the authorities. Russian history has almost always urged Russians to live by a lie. And the paternalistic society has readily agreed. But a society is proven healthy exactly by its willingness to oppose the Big Lie. Conformism has no place here. The Big Lie easily transitions into the Big Terror, which has happened in Russian history more than once. And President Putin, with his unlimited power, had the chance to chance to change this sad tradition. But instead he only enriched it. And nothing is likely to change in the next government either.

According to President Putin's State of the Union message, the overwhelming majority of Russians (82%) have no regular access to the Internet (just 25 of 140 million people regularly go online in Putin's Russia). So much for the just-plain-stupid idea that the Internet can offset the loss of Russia's TV and print journalism to Kremlin control!

BBS News reports that frantic Russian human rights campaigners are pleading for foreign intervention to stop the rising tide of authoritarianism in their country.

Germany should support Russian civil society by insisting that President Vladimir Putin take concrete steps to improve human rights in Russia, three leaders of Russian nongovernmental organizations said today in Berlin. The three were invited to Berlin by Human Rights Watch to express their concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in Russia ahead of the EU-Russia summit in May.

At a joint news conference with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the three – Yuri Dzhibladze, president and founder of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights; Oleg Orlov, chair of Memorial, one of Russia's oldest human rights groups; and Tanya Lokshina, chair of DEMOS Center for Information and Research – highlighted the severe human rights violations taking place in Russia today. While they accepted Germany's desire to improve its relationship with Russia, they emphasized the importance of not betraying the principles on which the European Union was founded. The EU will hold "human rights consultations" with Moscow next month, ahead of the May 18 EU-Russia summit.

"All the European countries ought to stand up for Russian civil society, but Germany should be leading the way," said Lokshina of DEMOS. "With the Putin government trying to suppress all dissent, we need you now more than ever."

The three raised concerns that EU members – and in particular Germany, which plays a leading role on Russia in Europe, not only because it holds the current EU presidency but also because of its special relationship with Moscow – were guided too much by economic interests. They focused especially on the EU's desire to secure energy supplies.

"Speaking out on human rights in Russia won't threaten Europe's energy supply but it would really help to curb the government's crackdown," said Memorial's Orlov. "Russian civil society is under attack and we need Germany to speak up."

The excessive violence and force used to break up the recent peaceful political demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg highlight the increasing pressure on civil society in Russia, the human rights defenders said.

"This police violence is just the latest sign of growing government hostility toward peaceful dissent in Russia," said Dzhibladze of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights. "It's part of an effort to silence the political opposition, human rights defenders, and independent media in Russia."

The three human rights defenders stressed that Germany and the other EU members were not promoting human rights as well as they should in dialogue with Russia. The clearest example is Europe's striking failure to respond effectively to the continuing, pervasive impunity for grave human rights violations in Chechnya, the single largest human rights crisis in Europe today. It is the only place in Europe where the civilian population faces systematic torture, often perpetrated in unacknowledged, illegal places of detention, as well as summary executions and forced disappearances.

Despite eight recent rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, which has found Russia responsible for serious abuses in Chechnya, European governments have not put pressure on Russia to take any meaningful steps to curb these atrocities. The Kremlin has the power to rein in its Chechen proxies, responsible for most of these abuses, but instead it supports them unconditionally and blocks investigations into their misconduct, the three human rights defenders said.

"Germany and the rest of Europe should insist that President Putin implements the European Court of Human Rights rulings," said Lokshina. "Moscow should investigate and prosecute atrocities in Chechnya, compensate its victims and make the systemic changes to end torture and other atrocities. But that won't happen without a push from Europe."

Video of Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, addressing the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly about human rights conditions in Russia on April 18 is available online.

Blogger Paul Goble reports on the introduction of the teaching of religion into the schools of the Holy Russian Empire:

More than 800,000 school children in the Russian Federation are now taking courses on religion or religious subjects, an increase of almost 20 percent over last year and one certain to rise even more in the 2007/08 academic year when such courses are slated to be introduced in additional Moscow and Tatarstan schools.

Yesterday, the Social Chamber’s Commission on Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience released data on the number of pupils now taking courses in religion, comparative religion or religious culture in 72 of the 88 regions of the Russian Federation. According to the commission, 700,000 to 800,000 of students in these federation subjects were studying religion in one way or another, a figure 15 to 18 percent higher than last year, and “not fewer” than 20,000 to 30,000” teachers were involved in their instruction. “The overwhelming majority of those studying in government and municpal general education institutions – about 500,000 to 600,000 – are studying courses on Orthodox culture,” Interfax reported. An additional 150,000 to 200,000 pupils are studying Islamic culture. In addition, the Russian news agency said, some 50,000 young people are being instructed in religious studies, 10,000 in the history and culture of Judaism, 10,000 in Buddhist thought, and 10,000 in the traditional faiths of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North.

In almost all parts of the country, the commission reported, courses on offer are those of the religious culture “traditional for these locations: Orthodoxy, Islam or Buddhism.” Moreover, it found that the number of courses in religious culture outnumber those on the philosophy of religions as such” by a factor of ten. The number of pupils studying religion in Russian schools is certain to jump this fall, perhaps by more than the increase from last year to this. That is because schools in Moscow and in Tatarstan will then begin offering such courses . Virtually all such religious courses on offer in Russia today are voluntary rather than required and are defined as cultural and historical rather than theological. But the religious content of many has offended both those committed to a secular society and members of local minorities who fear their children will be converted. Many in leadership positions of Russia’s so-called “traditional” religions – Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism – have pushed hard over the last decade for the inclusion of such courses as part of a broader effort to help Russia’s citizens recover from the depredations of Soviet-era atheism.

In the last several years, more and more Russian officials have come to support the offering of such courses, as long as instruction in them is defined as non-theological. Part of the reason for this is because many of these officials either feel the same way their co-religionists do or because they want to curry favor with such groups. At the same time, however, there is another and perhaps more influential factor at work: As advocates of such courses have noted, sociological research suggests that Russians who follow one of the traditional faiths not only tend to have more children and suffer from fewer social pathologies but also seem more inclined to participate in public life (For such studies, see here and here). No one can dispute the importance of the values advanced by most religions for the recovery of Russian society, but using the public schools as the primary means to promote these values at least in the case of the Russian Federation seems fraught with two overwhelming dangers.

On the one hand, the tradition of secularism in Russian society is still relatively weak, and consequently, the introduction of religious courses, however defined in the schools, makes it unlikely that the rising generation of Russians will make the kind of distinction between church and state on which a civil society rests. And on the other, given the diversity of faiths within the Russian Federation and especially the cleavage between Orthodox Christianity and Islam, there is a very real danger that such courses, with the suggestion that local or national officials support this or that faith, will exacerbate divisions in that country rather than help to overcome them.

ITV News reports on the display of neo-Soviet paranoia in Putin's eight state of the nation address:

Foreign money is being used to interfere with Russia's internal affairs, the country's President Vladimir Putin said. Mr Putin said it is being used to boost feelings of hatred and called for tougher laws to stamp out "extremism". In his annual state-of-the-nation address he said: "There is a growing influx of foreign cash used to directly meddle in our domestic affairs. "Some people are not averse to using the dirtiest methods, trying to foment inter-ethnic and religious hatred in our multinational country. "In this respect, I am addressing you with a request to speed up the adoption of amendments to the legislation toughening punishment for extremist actions." Putin is due to step down next year when his second and last four-year term ends. He is widely popular while the economy is fast-growing, propelled by revenues from booming oil exports.

While Putin blames foreign spies for Russia's problems, just like his predecessors in the Politburo, MSNBC reports that those problems continue apace (small rich class just as in the times of the Tsar, sucking the blood out of a giant class of impoverished victims):

It's a big day for Natalia and Alexei Liventsev — they're buying their first car, a Ford Focus, $20,000 up front. But these young Muscovites can afford it. They're part of a booming middle class that makes 15 to 20 times more than their parents did. "Life has definitely improved," says Natalia Liventsev. "There's more stability, more money." Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, much more money. Today's Moscow is the capital of glitz. The number of billionaires here is second only to the U.S. Foreign-made luxury cars now cram the streets. Even in the shadow of what was once the KGB's headquarters, there's a Bentley dealership. "A powerful economy means — first and foremost — allowing people to get rich."

It's a far cry from those days of long lines, empty pockets, and stale bread. Case in point? Moscow's Filippov Bakery — a Soviet landmark — now a trendy coffeeshop. The old pensioners have been replaced by young students, by Russian professionals — people who feel very comfortable coming here and spending $4 or $5 for a cafe latte, or $6 or $7 for a croissant.

But critics warn that Putin's new Russia still suffers from many of the old problems. Endemic alcohol and drug abuse — and poor health care — have reduced life expectancy here to just 59 years for men — lower than Bangladesh. Putin has promised $3 billion on an 'anti-disease' program to buy drugs to fight an HIV/AIDS epidemic, TB and cancer. But reformers like Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal member of parliament, say Russia needs life support. "The Russian population is slowing down very fast," Ryzhkov says. "We are losing about 700,000 every year.

Yet, on Red Square and elsewhere, Russians don't seem all that concerned about such issues. [LR: You could have found just the same attitudes twenty years ago concerning the USSR] "Everyone is buying new cars, new clothes and likes the way things ae right now," says Alexei Kagalov, a commercial artist. One of a wave of new, prosperous Russians, just hoping the good times roll on. [LR: His definition of "everyone" is the same as that used by the Tsar; the average wage in Russia is $2.50 per hour and the minimum wage is $0.25]

(1) SPECIAL FEATURE: Remembering Boris Yeltsin

(a) Part I: Yulia Latynina, Another Original LR Translation

(b) Part II: Zaxi Blog

(c) Part III: Kiselyov's Take

(2) Life in the Secret City

(3) Saints be Praised: Annals of the Holy Russian Empire

La Russophobe's original translator offers the following remembrances of Boris N. Yeltsin from hero journalist Yuliya Latynina, from the pages of Yezhedevniy Zhurnal (an abridged version of this article was also translated for publication in the Moscow Times).

A Great President Has Died

Yuliya Latynina

Yezhednevniy Zhurnal

April 23, 2007

Boris Yeltsin, one of the greatest leaders of Russia, has died. His greatness was not in his being a decisive liberal reformer, like Alexander II; nor in his hacking a window into Europe, like Peter I; nor in his making Russia an enlightened European country, like Catherine II. The greatness of Boris Yeltsin -- the peasant’s son, the Party boss, the ruler, the passionate lover of power – was that he had an inborn sense of freedom.

This sense of freedom, joined with a massive personality, was common in Party bosses – Aleksandr Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze – but completely lacking in the majors and lieutenant colonels of the KGB, who plied their trade in those days from embassy to embassy with red caviar, vodka and little denunciations. Exactly this sense of freedom led Yeltsin to his expulsion in the late 1980’s, and to the barricades in 1991, and never once allowed him to cancel elections, manipulate their results or close television stations.

Everything becomes known by comparison. Yeltsin was accused of corruption. But the most that history will produce against him are a few doubtful case-files of his daughter and son-in-law who headed Aeroflot. By whatever means men like Friedman, Khodorkovskiy and Potanin might have come to own half of Russia, it was not because they shared an office with Yeltsin.

What a contrast with the Russia of today. A Russia in which all of President Putin’s friends, everyone who served with him in the KGB or joined him in the “Ozero” (“Lake”) Cooperative, have received stakes in Russian gas, oil, uranium, military equipment, railroad and other companies. [TN: The “Ozero” Dacha Cooperative, co-founded by Putin in 1996, included many of the highest-level business and criminal figures in Saint Petersburg at that time, including Vladimir Smirnov, Vladimir Yakunin, the brothers Sergey and Andrey Fursenko, Viktor Myachin, Yuriy Kovalchuk and Nikolay Shamalov – all of whom have since been appointed to high-level posts in the Russian government or as heads of government-owned companies. ]

The press fiercely criticized Yeltsin for the Chechen War. The mass media ridiculed the dancing, drunken Yeltsin in Germany, and Yeltsin’s story about the 38 snipers. [TN: In 1996, in connection with the Kizlyar Hospital hostage crisis, Yeltsin on national television gave a rambling, mostly incoherent briefing about the Russian military response, in which he mentioned the use of “38 snipers”.] But for some reason, no journalists were killed in the entryway to their apartments for this, and no television executives were put in jail.

What a contrast with the Russia of today. A Russia in which no one dares to criticize President Putin out loud. And we hear nothing from President Putin himself, because he is not in the habit of reaching out to the people during times of national crisis or other important occasions for the nation.

Yeltsin has been criticized for the breakup of the USSR. This is hard to say, because if the USSR had not broken up peacefully, it would have broken up in the manner of Yugoslavia – in a growing sea of blood in every one of its republics. But under Yeltsin, one way or another, Russia held a central role in the CIS, and was an equal partner in the West. We sometimes had to blush at our drunken president, but we never had to live in terror because of an infantile president.

What a contrast with the policies of President Putin: beginning with presidential wrath at the robbery of some Russian diplomats’ children in Poland, which resulted in the vicious beating of Polish diplomats in Moscow; and ending with a turn of phrase about citizens of “certain nationalities”, which lead to the mass deportation of Georgians. The result of these policies is that we now no longer have any friendly countries on our borders. Yeltsin brought the country into the “Group of Eight”, Putin – to the brink of becoming a pariah state.

Yeltsin made a lot of small mistakes: he inconsistently pursued reforms, stayed with Korzhakov too long, then Berezovskiy. Yeltsin also committed one fundamental mistake: he never reformed the intelligence and security services (siloviki). At first he did not think he needed to. Under Yeltsin, the role of the all-powerful silovik was played by Aleksandr Korzhakov, who opposed holding elections in 1996. This is an iconic story for the siloviki: they did not want the president to be dependent on the people for his power. They wanted the president to be dependent only on them.

So when the elections happened and Yeltsin entered his second term, Korzhakov did everything to spoil the elections – with boxes from under the copy machine. The President sent him into retirement, and a few days later suffered a severe heart attack. But Yeltsin nonetheless made his choice – between being dependent on Korzhakov and being dependent on the people. A few years later, following the arrest of Khodorkovskiy, President Putin would make exactly the opposite choice.

But only around 1998 did Yeltsin realize that while he had only poorly reformed the economy, he had not touched the siloviki at all, and this entire horde of employees of the Prosecutors Office, FSB, MVD, all converted into a corporation with many shareholders, subsidiaries and affiliates, all of these colonels and generals, who supplied the oligarchs with girls or factories, attacked Yeltsin under the slogan, “They stole the country”. A slogan which actually boiled down to: “They stole the country, and didn’t give us anything”.

Yeltsin tried to remedy his situation. At first he appointed as head of his Administration the silovik Bordyuzh, but he did nothing. Then the President appointed as head of the government the silovik Sergey Stepashin, but he decided to just get along with everyone. And then the President appointed as head of the government yet another silovik – Vladimir Putin.

Short indeed was the list of siloviki who might be considered in even small measure liberals.

President Yeltsin loved equally both power and freedom. He knew that newspapers were one thing, history another. He did not want to go down in history as the first dictator of Russia. He did not dole out Russian companies to his cronies, did not poison his enemies with polonium or throw them in prison, did not close opposition television stations or pervert the purpose of elections. For this he was laughed at on the television, and Prosecutor Skuratov, when he wasn’t visiting prostitutes, rummaged around in the files of his daughters. President Putin learned from the mistakes of Yeltsin. No one laughs at President Putin on the television. But the question is what will history say about Putin?

True, President Yeltsin did not create very much. He was not much for economics, caused a default, and did not reform the siloviki. But he was a free man, and he shared that freedom with all of us. Under Yeltsin, for the first time in the 20^th century, a free society appeared in Russia, and this free society remains free to this day, despite the closed television stations, the seized assets and the Chekisti at the head of government.

Even President Putin will not be able to turn this free society into a unitary enterprise and place at its head an old buddy from the “Ozero” cooperative.

The billingual Zaxi blog offers the following reflections on Boris N. Yeltsin:

Boris Yeltsin’s rickety heart finally failed him Monday at the age of 76 – Russia’s misbehaving first president outliving both doctors’ prognoses and the wilted fruit of his democratic revolution by nearly a decade.

Perhaps no other major world figure’s passing was easier on newspaper editors. More or less each has had a Yeltsin death package waiting since 1996 and it may be a shock that none actually made it to print amid the endless rumors of his various critical ailments. Not much happened to the burly man after Russian bankers used US aid funds to rig the media and carry him to a second term in the face of a Communist threat that year. He hid from view as the economy crumbled and his “family” pilfered. Yeltsin passed the baton on to Vladimir Putin amid chaos as Russia’s most blamed and ridiculed figure – a caricature of incompetence whose ultimate goal was to avoid jail. His last policy statements were watched not for content but coherence. One speech ended when Yeltsin nearly tipped over while standing next to Alexander Lukashenko. Another stopped in mid-sentence when Yeltsin clearly had no comprehension of what he was reading.

“What, is that all?” he asked while twisting the little booklet with his speech every which way and looking for more words to read. An aide rushed over to point at the final period. “That’s all,” Yeltsin added apologetically to confused silence. He read the closing sentence fragment one more time and the Kremlin hall scattered into applause once reserved for Brezhnev.

It is telling that both episodes aired on national television news. Yeltsin was reviled so much in part because Russia was still free to witness its leader’s failings while he bumped into Kremlin walls in his boozy haze. He somehow managed to shed both 10 pounds and 10 years once the burden of the presidency lifted.

zaxi met the man for a day in the summer of 1998 when Yeltsin was enjoying a spurt of vigor and his entourage was mulling a rewrite of the Constitution to keep itself in power past 2000. Yeltsin was wheeled out a few hundred miles east to test the waters in Kostroma. The sleepy city’s electricity was fully restored for the occasion that week. Every surface was repainted – except for a road-sign marking the exit from town that had been spray-painted to indicate “An end to Yeltsin.”

He was led into a linen factory to the awe of the apron-wearing ladies inside. One could not contain her excitement and stepped toward Yeltsin with open arms and a shriek of “Boris Nikolayevich.” Yeltsin’s expression convulsed into horror and he backpedaled several steps in fright. He eventually regained his composure to demand curtly why the machines were not all the same size. The quick-witted director replied that some were made to weave children’s clothing. “I guess that’s alright then,” Yeltsin said gruffly.

He later quizzed a quivering man over how many calves were born per 100 cows on his dairy farm. The man whispered 88. Yeltsin asked why not 99. The man started stammering into the television cameras. “Don’t give me your excuses,” Yeltsin said. “I heard those from the Bolsheviks.” The man did not stir for several minutes after Yeltsin’s entourage had spun off.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was not a compassionate tsar.

He ruled – health permitting – with the purpose and intimidation of a Urals construction site boss and Communist apparatchik. Yeltsin bullied his enemies and set potential rivals off against each other by surrounding himself with opposing clans while the country sputtered. He changed governments like dirty socks to avoid blame and eventually left state affairs in his daughter's hands.

Yet Yeltsin’s stubbornness also made the world into a safer place – permanently changing the map of Europe – and offered Russians their first taste of choice and self-determination.

Yeltsin separated the world into good and evil like a child and let no one convince him otherwise. Communism was a devil that had to be quashed by any and all means possible. A free press was a cherished ally whose existence justified itself. The Soviet economic corpse had to handed to the young for resurrection and the West was a partner whose friendship had been forbidden for so long.

He braved coups and potential death for treason by letting the Soviet republics go their own way and removing nuclear weapons from large swathes of the globe.

And Yeltsin embraced a world that only knew Moscow for its succession of senile geriatrics. He spanked the disbelieving leaders of (West) Germany and Japan with birch tree branches in Siberian banyas. Yeltsin flirted with the Queen of Denmark and once promised Europe in a fit of passion that Russia would no longer point nuclear arms its way.

The fact that Russia had no longer been doing so for a number of years confused matters and briefly put the West on heightened alert. But Yeltsin’s heart was in the right place even if his upbringing prevented him from measuring words or consequences.

And Yeltsin fell into depressions like a child when things did not work out as planned. His need to abandon Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar as the pain of shock therapy took hold left him with no natural alternative to “good” reforms not working. Yeltsin’s decision to shell parliament’s Communists with tanks in 1993 and simultaneous introduction of an autocratic Constitution through a falsified vote left his democratic credential in question.

His resulting policy void and mental anguish was filled by hard drinking old KGB buddies and army generals who eventually tempted Yeltsin into “a small victorious war” in Chechnya aimed at resurrecting his standing. He was struck by his first secret heart attack the week Russian tanks rolled to their fiery graves in Grozny in December 1994.

From then on his power rested in the myth of his larger than life image – a barely walking icon propped up by an increasingly anguished West and abused by ever more savage robber barons that Yeltsin gifted with the Red Directors’ industries in return for support.

“I want this guy to win so bad it hurts,” Bill Clinton said as Yeltsin – suffering another heart attack – lay hidden from public view by a bought-off media days before the 1996 election.

Many reporters later said they would have supported Yeltsin even if their bosses were not now the oligarchs who fought the actual battle for survival. And therein lay the mystery of Yeltsin’s charisma. He nurtured a free media so that it could abuse its privilege in the name of what it saw as a greater cause. His turn from Communism was so radical that it left the country’s economy hostage to the whims of the few who rallied around Yeltsin in its place. And his natural appeal to the people eventually scared and embarrassed a president who intrinsically felt that he had let the nation down.

His mental state was severely impaired by the time Yeltsin left the fate of Russia’s democracy to a KGB man on December 31, 1999.

Thus a shade of Russia’s innocence passed with Yeltsin – but it expired long before his death.

Writing in the Moscow Times, pundit Yevegeny Kiselyov gives his take on Yeltsin:

In London there is an attractive statue of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in a kind of casual style, with the two statesmen cast in bronze and reclining on a bench in a little square separating New Bond Street from Old Bond Street. The British capital also has an "official" monument to the British prime minister and the U.S. president, but I find the one with them on the bench warmer and smile whenever passing it in London.

No doubt a grandiose monument to Russia's first president will be erected in Moscow. But if it were up to me, I would erect another -- a life-size bronze of Yeltsin in his younger days, waiting for a trolleybus at the stop near the Sheraton Hotel on 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Ulitsa.

The stop is across the street from the building where Boris Yeltsin lived when he became the head of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party at the end of 1985. Rumors soon began circulating that the new city chief was doing some surprising things. Capitalizing on the fact that nobody yet knew his face, Yeltsin would study life in Moscow by riding the trolleybuses and visiting the stores, cleaners and repair shops to talk to people about their daily lives.

This is not just some populist legend. Years later, while working on the documentary film "The President of All Russia," I found archival footage from a Western television company that actually showed Yeltsin on a trolleybus speaking with the passengers, walking the streets without bodyguards, entering an ordinary medical clinic, and examining the goods on a store's display counter.

Many of today's jaded politicians might, indeed, dismiss this as primitive populism. They would probably be right. But in the context of a Soviet Union that had yet to begin extricating itself from the stagnation of Leonid Brezhnev's times, it was such an unexpected and fresh approach that it rapidly made Yeltsin popular among Muscovites.

His popularity reached such heights that when, in 1987, Yeltsin fell out with Mikhail Gorbachev, who forced him to resign saying, "I will not let you into politics again," it was only a matter of time before the future president would stage a triumphant return.

Yeltsin was a true political animal in the most positive sense of the word. He had an amazing instinct for what people expected from him in critical situations.

Finding himself in disgrace after the clash with Gorbachev, Yeltsin understood that people were tired of endless talk about perestroika and the return to true socialism. It wasn't enough. The people wanted to go further, to a chance for freedom and the end of communism, and Yeltsin understood it.

In his now-famous last address as president, on New Year's Eve 1999, Yeltsin asked Russians to forgive him for everything he had not managed to accomplish. Those were exactly the words the people had wanted to hear. I am certain that not a single one of his advisers, assistants or speechwriters, all of whom loved him and trembled before him, would have ever dared to pen the words. The words were Yeltsin's.

Being in the limelight did not come easily for him, but he gave it his all while trying to be different from the verbose and endlessly vacillating Gorbachev. I later saw some amazing documentary footage shot by director Alexander Sokrov during Yeltsin's late-1980s period of disgrace. The camera showed him sitting alone on the steps of a dacha, clasping his head in his hands, with his heavy thoughts bringing forth a physical reaction of suffering. It is hard to believe the same person would one day throw back his shoulders, march assuredly across the hall during what turned out to be the last congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, mount the dais and drive home the words of his resignation from the Party like so many nails in its coffin.

In contrast to his successor, President Vladimir Putin, whose ability to remain poised before television cameras might be his greatest strength, Yeltsin was uncomfortable in front of the cameras. His former assistants say that his prep time before broadcasts was long and tortured, and that he nevertheless often felt so unsure of himself that taping would sometimes have to be halted and started again from the beginning. Indeed, when I taped my first one-on-one interview with Yeltsin in 1993, I was surprised at how nervous he was before the interview begun. Once the cameras started rolling, Yeltsin suddenly radiated strength and self-confidence.

His ability to pull himself together and gather his strength in times when resolution was needed was one of his defining qualities. In August 1991, already having been elected the president of the Russian Soviet Republic, it was clear to everyone that this would be the leader of the new country when Yeltsin climbed up on a tank outside the White House to tell the organizers of the putsch that their actions were illegal.

Another occasion on which Yeltsin impressed me was that unforgettable moment on the eve of the second decisive round of the 1996 presidential elections, when he stepped out of the Kremlin and told journalists he was firing his chief of security and one of his closest and most dedicated colleagues, General Alexander Korzhakov. In the conflict between his chief bodyguard, who advocated canceling the election, which would have violated the Constitution, and his election committee members, who maintained he could win without breaking the law, Yeltsin sided with those who had helped him finish on top in the first round.

While he spoke, Yeltsin's face remained inscrutable -- something that happens when people are grieving deeply. His wife, Naina, later said in an interview, "When Boris Nikolayevich parted ways with [Korzhakov], he felt as if he were losing a family member." After making his announcement, Yeltsin's face quite unexpectedly broke into a smile, and he said, "Why are you standing around? Run quickly and convey the news! I have given you a hot story!"

Today, there is much debate whether Yeltsin was ever really committed to democracy. Winston Churchill used to liken dictatorship to an ocean liner sailing smoothly across the horizon and appearing invulnerable. He would point out, however, that one well-placed torpedo could send it to the bottom without a trace. Democracy, on the other hand, was like a dingy pitching and rolling with every wave. Because it reflected the will of the people, Churchill said, the dingy was damn near unsinkable. You stay afloat in a democracy, but your feet are always in the water.

I don't know if Yeltsin was familiar with the analogy, but I am certain his commitment to democratic principles was nourished by the instincts of a born politician. He felt and understood well what Churchill was talking about: There is no more reliable way to govern than by a democratic system. There is no better way to be treated well by history than to stand on the side of democracy.

Will Yeltsin's death snap the last rope still anchoring Putin's boat to the shore of democracy? Or will the opposite occur? Standing over his predecessor' coffin, will the president of Russia be compelled to confirm his fidelity to democratic principles and to halting the country's prolonged drift in the opposite direction? We may get an idea as early as Thursday, when Putin delivers his annual state-of-the-nation address.

The Beeb reports on how Russia of 2007 is no different than Russia of 1907 -- except the Tsar is known mostly by his last name rather than his first. It all worked out so well that now Russians are going to do it all over again!

Most people in Britain are now familiar with the scruffy, boyish and invariably unshaven features of Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, and Russia's most famous billionaire.

This week we learned that Mr Abramovich is one of a growing list of hyper-rich Russians. According to Forbes magazine Russia now has 60 billionaires. Unlike Mr Abramovich, most of them live in Moscow, which, if I'm not much mistaken, makes the Russian capital home to more billionaires than any other city in the world.
It is quite a change for a place that 15 years ago had no millionaires, let alone billionaires. How exactly these people have got hold of such vast wealth in such a short time is a very good question, and one many ordinary Russians would like answered.

It is one reason why Russia's richest people like to keep their identities and their lifestyles secret.

Secret city

Ever since I arrived in Russia I've heard tall stories of a secret city deep in the forests outside Moscow where the rich indulge their fantasies in sprawling palaces of marble and gold. It sounded like a good story. I didn't expect it to be true, let alone that I'd get an invite.

It came via a rather circuitous route. The sister of one of my colleagues in the BBC Moscow bureau is in the same class as the 18-year-old daughter of one of Russia's richest men.

For some peculiar reason Svetlana, not her real name, thought it would be fun to invite a BBC television crew to film her parents' country cottage.

That's what they call them in Russia: cottage. If that brings to mind white-washed walls, a thatched roof and climbing roses, then forget it.

We had agreed to meet Svetlana at a shopping mall on the edge of Moscow. Up she swept in a purple Maserati sports car. Out jumped her hulking bodyguard, dashing round to open the door for her. I don't know what I was expecting to emerge, a leggy blonde dripping with diamonds and brimming with self confidence I suppose.

Instead, out stepped a diminutive, dark-haired woman, painfully shy, and dressed like a secretary, albeit one who shops at Prada.

Her crew-cut bodyguard looked me up and down, clearly horrified at the prospect of this grubby journalist scuffing the beautiful cream leather interior of Svetlana's Maserati. There was immediate relief when I suggested I follow in the BBC's beaten up old Peugeot.

Different world

The first signs of the secret city were enormous green fences, at least 20 feet (6 metres) high, and topped off with closed circuit cameras.

Then ahead of us at the end of a long forest flanked road a gap appeared in the fence. As the Maserati approached the gate swung opens and we swept through.

Suddenly we plunged out of the forest, and in to a different world. It was a little like a scene from Doctor Who. One minute we were in Russia, the next in Beverly Hills.

On either side of us huge mansions stood in spacious grounds. Some looked vaguely Georgian, others Victorian, one like a Bavarian castle. Vitaly, the BBC driver, turned to me, his face deadpan. "When did we cross the border?" he asked.

Svetlana's "cottage" was a spectacular 3,000 sq m Art Deco pile. How big is that? Big enough for an indoor swimming pool, a cinema, a bowling alley, a ballroom, and the piece de resistance, its own indoor ice rink!

"This is our newest house," Svetlana told me as we walked past a large bronze sphinx in the gardens. "My father's been building it for five years." She wasn't sure how much it had cost, "probably 20 million," she guessed. "So how many other houses do you have?" I asked. "A couple in Moscow, two in the south of France, and one in Corsica," she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She shops in Paris and Milan, where she flies on one of her father's private jets.

Gilded cage

All these toys have not made Svetlana a happy girl. "I live in a gilded cage," she told me. "I have no friends and no freedom." I did feel sorry for her, but only a little. A mile down the road, firmly back in Russia, I went to see Mrs Rima. The 75-year-old showed me around the one-room shack she built with her own hands. She survives on a pension of £60 a month. I asked her what she thinks of the rich people who live behind the high green walls. "They're all thieves," she said. "All that money is stolen from the people." It's a view millions of Russians would agree with. Fifteen years ago everything in Russia was owned by the state. Today a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men.

The Washington Post reports:

Sergei Privalov, a soft-spoken priest who heads the Russian Orthodox Church's Department for Cooperation with the Military, Law Enforcement and the Security Services, is a busy man.

Everyone wants a patron saint.

"It's like a wave we are witnessing," he said. He pulled out a recent letter from the church's patriarch, Alexy II, approving a request from Rus, a special forces police unit long involved in controversial counterterrorism operations in Chechnya, that the legendary 13th-century military commander and saint Alexander Nevsky be named its patron.

Nevsky was already the patron saint of the FSB, Russia's internal security service. Meanwhile, the Strategic Rocket Forces, which oversee Russia's land-based nuclear missiles, have Saint Barbara, the tax police have Saint Anthony, the Border Guards have Saint Ilya Muromets and the Ministry of Interior's troops have Saint Vladimir, among dozens of other examples.

Moribund during the Soviet era, the Orthodox Church has been reborn as a powerful force in Russian life, building congregations across the country. The church has also become increasingly identified with a strand of patriotism that celebrates a strong centralized state and is skeptical of Western notions of democracy, human rights and pluralism. Its most prominent adherent is President Vladimir Putin, whose faith is part of his public persona.

The church's increasingly close relationship with the state and the adoption of Orthodox symbols by public entities have unsettled followers of some of Russia's other traditional religions, particularly its large Muslim population.

Some critics contend that Orthodoxy is becoming a state religion by sleight, through such steps as making the teaching of Orthodox culture mandatory in some regions this school year. The move violates the separation of church and state required by the Russian constitution.

"In our multinational and multi-faith state, we cannot say one religion has priority," said Nafigulla Ashirov, co-chairman of Russia's Council of Muftis. "Unfortunately, the Orthodox have a strong lobby in all powerful state structures. The Russian army is one example. Its main task is to defend the motherland and all of its citizens, but it is being turned into a narrow religious army.

"What I mean," he continued, "is that there are many units in the army who have gotten these patron saints and special prayers and icons, and they are building chapels. For Muslims, it is not comfortable to serve in a unit with a religious coloring. And that is destabilizing."

Representatives of Judaism and Buddhism, Russia's two other officially recognized faiths, have been largely silent on the issue.

As well as patron saints, agencies often adopt special Christian prayers and have dedicated chapels for their employees. The FSB, for instance, has a church in central Moscow, and its prayer to Saint Alexander Nevsky asks that he help the agency defeat "all visible and invisible enemies."

The Defense Ministry, the FSB and other agencies declined to discuss the issue and referred queries to the Orthodox Church.

Privalov said that he saw no constitutional issues and that the church was merely trying to facilitate private devotion for the country's soldiers, security officers and other civil servants who often face serious stress in their jobs.

"The church is separated from the state, and for the church that's the best situation," he said. "When the church is allowed to do what it can for Christians, but within the framework of the law, and when the state does not interfere, that's ideal."

Professions of faith, beginning with Putin's, have become commonplace among Russia's ruling elite. And Orthodoxy is increasingly seen, by both the church and the state, as a critical ingredient in the formation of a cohesive national identity.

"The role of the president, of course, is huge," Privalov said. "But even if the president had not been devout, I think we would witness the same changes."

Stripped of its communist ideology, the military, in particular, appears to be cultivating a new esprit de corps through Orthodoxy. The church, in response, has recognized that the armed forces need appropriate heroes. One of the most recent figures it canonized was Fyodor Ushakov, an 18th-century naval commander.

"He was canonized not because of saintly traits but because he was very patriotic and because of his service as a military commander," said Alexander Kyrlezhev, a lecturer in religious studies at the presidential Academy of State Service in Moscow. "The church said Admiral Ushakov had not lost a single battle. That was a signal."

The navy quickly adopted Ushakov as its second patron saint.

"The church's position is that Orthodoxy is not just the majority confession but a state-forming tradition," Kyrlezhev said. "The church claims it has privileges, not from the legal point of view, but from a historical, cultural point of view."

For units such as the Interior Ministry troops, the adoption of an Orthodox saint represented both a nod to history and a response to its current needs.

In a letter to the church, the troops asked for Saint Vladimir, who expanded Russia's early borders, because he "would be of great significance in training young soldiers and raising their morale. ''

(1) Another Original LR Translation: Illarionov Speaks

(2) Annals of Neo-Soviet Cold War Tactics: The London Conference Boycott

(3) Russia's Broken Heart

(4) Russia's Nigella Speaks

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In the past, Russia has been likened to an African nation with Atlantic magazine's famous "Zaire with permafrost" moniker. The analogy is a compelling one, more so with each day that passes. Now, leading Russian dissident Andrei Illarionov (pictured), made available in English through the efforts of LR's illustrious and industrious original translator (of "Spare Organs" and "Commissars of the Internet" fame), declares Russia to be on the road to Zimbabwe status. The world is lucky to have a pair of hard-working translators making this material, which might otherwise never see the light of day in English, made available to the non-Russian-speaking world (that is, virtually everybody on the planet). Following is Der Spiegel's recent interview with Illarionov:

Approaching Zimbabwe

Andrei Illarionov

16 April 2007

Yezhednevniy Zhurnal

In Russia a new model has been formed for the government, economic and socio-political order – the Power Model (silovaya model’). It is a model distinct from any seen in our country before, including at the beginning of this century or in the 70 years of Communist power. While much as been said and written about the separate elements of this system, its treatment as a whole has been lacking.

What are the basic characteristics of the Power Model? In this model, the entire body of state power has been taken over by a group called the “siloviki”, which includes not only the “siloviki” themselves [TN: generally understood to be current and former intelligence officers], but also intelligence service collaborators, members of the Corporation of Intelligence Service Collaborators (Korporatsiya Sotrudniki Spets-Sluzhb) – the KSSS. [TN: A play on the initials of the late Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or KPSS.]

As in any corporation, members of the KSSS have both individual and group interests. For example, on issues surrounding the ownership of one or another asset seized by the Corporation, ferocious arguments take place between its members. But the intensity of conflict within the Corporation is much weaker than between the Corporation and the rest of society.

Because the Corporation preserves the traditions, hierarchies, skills and habits of the intelligence services, its members show a certain degree of obedience, loyalty to one another, and discipline. There are both formal and informal means of enforcing these norms. There is, for example, something like an “omerta” [TN: Mafia term for a code of silence]. Violators of the code of conduct are subject to the harshest forms of punishment, including the highest form.

Members of the Corporation exude a sense of being the “masters of the country” and superior to other citizens who are not members of the Corporation. Members of the Corporation are given instruments conferring power over others – membership “perks”, such as the right to carry and use weapons.

The Corporation has seized key government agencies – the Tax Service, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Parliament, and the government-controlled mass media – which are now used to advance the interests of KSSS members. Through these agencies, every significant resource of the country – security/intelligence, political, economic, informational and financial – is being monopolized in the hands of Corporation members.

The legal order, previously much in doubt, is now being destroyed completely and replaced by new “rules of the game”, the main one being “selective enforcement of the law.” KSSS members have been placed above the law. The ideology of KSSS is “Nashism” (“ours-ism”), the selective application of rights.

In economics, the efforts of the KSSS are focused on strengthening and advancing quasi-governmental monopolies (governmental in form, privatized in essence, but not formally under the control of any governmental agency), the main purpose of which is the privatization of profits and the nationalization of losses. A strong government-private partnership gathers revenues in order to force nominally private businesses to fulfill the demands of the Corporation. Members of the KSSS exercise control over the primary financial flows. The highest reward conferred by the Corporation is appointment of members to positions on the boards of directors of government- and quasi-government-owned companies. This principle holds for all members of the Corporation, whether they are citizens of Russia or former Chancellors of a foreign country.

The traditions, habits and modus operandi characteristic of the intelligence services are being spread by the Corporation to all levels of Russian society. Secrecy and informational asymmetry are being imposed on the entire country.

The ideology of the KSSS is the ideology of the fortress, under siege by outside enemies and undermined by traitors and apostates from within. The primary means used by the KSSS for resolving governmental and social problems is force, unrestrained by the rules of law, tradition or morals, and completely absent of any experience, ability or desire to reach solutions by negotiating between competing interests. The relative success of the KSSS is also in large part dependent upon personal bonds with several leaders of countries in the West and East.

Initial results from the implementation of the Power Model in Russia indicate an inexorably deepening catastrophe. The key indicator of the effectiveness of any government is the security of its citizens. The number of serious crimes against persons – murder, robbery, assault, rape – per 100,000 residents in Russia is today over twice as high as it was in 1998, a year when the country suffered its most devastating financial crisis ever, accompanied by a significant depression and decline in the standard of living, but when the Siloviki were not in power.

In rate of economic growth between the periods 1999-2000 and 2004-2006, Russia fell from third to 13^th place among the countries of the former USSR. And this despite the price of oil increasing by five times over the same period.

The Power Model of governance is not capable of securing the same tempo of growth as observed in other countries of the former USSR, including those that have neither oil nor gas. The Power Model does not strengthen the government – it destroys the very institutions of government and society. And the Power Model does not strengthen the diplomatic position of Russia – it leads to her isolation.

The change in the external world’s attitude Russia can be summed up by the following comparative progression. At the beginning of the 1990’s, the prevailing view of Russia was as a “large Poland”, albeit somewhat poorer and less developed. In order to follow the Polish path and approach the standard of living of developed countries, it was expected that Russia would require 10-15 years more than Poland.

Toward the end of the 1990’s, this view had to undergo some revision. It became clear that Russia was not Poland. It would be more accurate to compare it to Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia or Bosnia. And hence the building of quality institutions would take not 10-15 years, but more like 20-30.

Toward the middle of the current decade it became obvious that even a comparison with the Balkan countries would be inaccurate. In both the level of institutional degradation and the direction of movement, it would be more accurate to compare modern Russia with countries such as Venezuela and Iran.

In more recent years, however, it is becoming clear that even comparison with Venezuela and Iran would be incorrect. Russia now appears to be at an even lower level of institutional development, at the level of just a very few African countries. From the point of view of international comparison, we are somewhere between Nigeria and Zimbabwe, quickly approaching specifically Zimbabwe.

The rule of the “siloviki” has not meant an increase in the security of the Russian people. On the contrary, the siloviki in power are increasing the level of danger for our people in the most everyday sense of the word. In today’s Russia there is no more important cause than changing the current socio-political and economic order.

There are possibilities for changing the situation. But they are not lying on the surface. As concerns the KSSS itself, it is not demonstrating any kind of capability for transformation. The dynamic of the past seven years has shown that the rate of degradation in the institutions of the Russian state is increasing. A change in the regime from outside is also unacceptable. There remains only Russian society itself, the Russian people. Before us, before all of Russian society, stands the non-trivial challenge of changing the model by whatever means we have.

[TN: In the discussion forum that accompanied the above article in Yezhednevniy Zhurnal a reader noted that a longer version of this article had appeared on another forum, of the information portal Dom Druzey (House of Friends). That posting, dated April 2nd, in turn credited the home page of the daily Kommersant, but I was unable to locate the article on that website. Interestingly, the longer version, written prior to recent the protest actions in Moscow, did not contain the last paragraph of the above version.]

From the pages of Der Spiegel:

Former Putin Advisor Discusses Brutality Against Russian Opposition

Andrei Illarionov, 45, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Cato Institute and former chief economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, discusses the reasons for the Kremlin's brutal treatment of the political opposition and the West's attitudes toward Moscow.

SPIEGEL: We see the same images in the news almost every weekend: The powerful state has its police officers converge with clubs on small groups of protestors. Given his popularity, does President Vladimir Putin really need this?

Illarionov: Those in power deliberately use violence to intimidate. They want to break the people's will to resist and act independently, and to do so they are constantly raising the level of aggression. Unlike the mass terror under Hitler, Stalin and Mao, we in Russia are currently experiencing a campaign of terror against individuals and groups.

SPIEGEL: Who is conducting it?

Illarionov: Employees of the intelligence agencies. These people now occupy more than 70 percent of all top positions in the state machinery. The destruction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company, the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the polonium poisoning of former agent Alexander Litvinenko -- the goal in each of these cases is to keep society in a state of constant fear. That makes it easier to control the people. This is the only reason the state-controlled media are allowed to report at length on these cases. It contributes to the climate of fear.

SPIEGEL: Who decided to deal with the protestors so harshly, the president or his advisors?

Illarionov: It certainly didn't happen at the level of Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev alone. It's hard to imagine that such decisions were made without the knowledge of our country's top leadership.

SPIEGEL: There is no evidence whatsoever of any threat to the government. The economy is growing by upwards of six percent, and Russians are traveling abroad on vacation and buying cars. Why doesn't the Kremlin simply accept peaceful demonstrations?

Illarionov: Our rulers act according to a different logic. Putin himself said, and he was probably right, that there are no former intelligence agents. They were specifically trained to hunt down enemies. And if there are none, then they create them.

SPIEGEL: Is Russia a dictatorship?

Illarionov: Russia is certainly no longer a free country. We are moving in the direction of Zimbabwe.

SPIEGEL: Now you're exaggerating.

Illarionov: No. All our democratic institutions are also being dismantled. We suffer from the Zimbabwean disease. This is why Russia is becoming more isolated diplomatically, and why economic growth is slowing. In a comparison with the 15 former Soviet republics, Russia is now third to last when it comes to economic growth.

SPIEGEL: Western companies value the stability Putin has brought to the country. Should they stop investing in Russia?

Illarionov: That's their decision. They'll have to evaluate the political risk themselves.

SPIEGEL: Boris Gryzlov, the president of the Russian parliament, has praised the police, with their grandmother-beating tactics, for having "done everything right." He is scheduled to meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the leaders of Germany's major political parties in Berlin on Monday and Tuesday.

Illarionov: It is not my place to make recommendations to German members of parliament. If Gryzlov is justifying violence against the opposition, then he is approving what our criminal code refers to as banditry. It was not the demonstrators but the police officers that behaved like bandits. The police, with the blessing of those in power, acted like a terrorist group.

SPIEGEL: You served under Putin as liaison to the G8 for five years. Should the West exclude Russia from the group of key industrialized nations for its abuses of democracy?

Illarionov: One cannot overestimate the options the West has available with which it can apply pressure on Russia.

SPIEGEL: Will Putin enter a third term next March, despite the fact that it would not be sanctioned under the constitution?

Illarionov: Putin has often said that he will not do this. But there are people around him who are urging him to do so. They are taking many steps to ensure that he will feel compelled to stay.