Maxim Trudolubov är journalist på tidningen Vedomosti, Rysslands ledande affärsdagstidning och har i dag i tidningen uttryckt sina åsikter i en intressant artikel om läget i Ryssland och hur ryssarna tänker och känner just nu.... definitivt läsvärt.
By Maxim Trudolubov
> Dec. 7
-- Throngs of voters and protesters are
> sending Russia’s leadership an unmistakable message: The country
> needs to stop being Vladimir Putin’s business project and become
> a nation.
> The reaction to last weekend’s fraud-tainted parliamentary
> elections has been like nothing I have seen since the early
> 1990s. A sanctioned rally in central Moscow attracted as many as
> 10,000 people to protest what they see as a stolen vote. The
> Russian blogosphere and social networks are overflowing with
> eyewitness accounts of fraud at polling stations, including
> cases of hundreds of forged ballots stuffed into boxes. The work
> of independent monitors, many of them young Russians who were
> not interested in politics four years ago, suggests United
> Russia’s dismal 49 percent share of the vote should have been a
> still more dismal 33 percent. That compares with an official 64
> percent in the 2007 elections.
> Opposition parties have promised to take legal action, but
> that is not expected to bring any tangible results. The
> Kremlin’s control over the political system, which includes the
> court system and the electoral commission, will probably remain
> unchallenged for the foreseeable future. What happened is a
> symbolic victory for all those who for the first time identified
> themselves with their country and tried to influence national
> affairs. For the first time in 20 years, voting was cool.
>
> Painful Transition
>
> Where have the Russians been for so long? Well, they have
> been busy. Few societies have ever endured such a painful
> transition from a patronizing totalitarian regime to
> unregulated, cut-throat competition. Like a tsunami, the
> economic liberalization begun 20 years ago wiped out personal
> savings and destroyed jobs, careers and entire professions.
> The economic revolution completely eclipsed the emergence
> of the new political entity, the Russian Federation. All
> political and historical soul-searching stopped. Res privata
> supplanted res publica. People’s values changed. Sociological
> studies show that levels of interpersonal trust collapsed as
> everyone became engrossed in personal survival. By the mid-
> 2000s, Russians felt less connected to their country than
> citizens of any other nation in the world: Researchers led by
> Vladimir Magun of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of
> Sociology found that Russians’ alienation from their polity was
> on a level with that of the Arab population of Israel.
> Individually, Russians have a lot to be proud of. The
> country’s athletes, artists and scientists have gained global
> renown. But the heroic collective spirit of Soviet times is long
> gone. Team victories at international competitions are
> increasingly rare, and Russia’s overall share of the world’s
> scientific citations has been dwindling. The change is not just
> about brain drain. It reflects a major shift from national
> causes to individual success as a dominating value.
> The Putin regime has consistently encouraged people to give
> up their role in public affairs. Independent political parties
> have been marginalized, party-building made prohibitively costly
> and complicated, regional elections canceled, elected governors
> and most mayors replaced with appointed officials. Putin’s
> elite, bearing a strong resemblance to a monarch’s court, has
> learned to use the political system to extract personal wealth,
> which it deploys to consolidate power.
> Outsiders, who include almost all Russians, have been kept
> in check by a combination of luck and policy. Rapid economic
> growth, fueled by high oil prices, has allowed the government to
> mollify the public with regular increases of pensions and wages
> in the large state sector. Some have characterized that live-
> and-let-live truce between an omnipotent elite and the majority
> of the population as a sort of social contract, loyalty in
> exchange for stability.
>
> Incomplete Institutions
>
> Whatever you call it, the deal has bought Putin a lot of
> time at the top of Russian politics, which he has used to stave
> off a transition from the state as master to the state as
> servant. Twenty years after its emergence as an independent
> state, Russia’s institutions remain incomplete. It has markets,
> prices and working fiscal policies, but it lacks law
> enforcement, division of power and independent courts.
> Although that may look like an unfinished project, it can
> also be understood as an accomplished ideal. Call it Putin’s
> project. He has adapted old Soviet structures to control and
> redistribute assets. What outsiders call corruption, Putin sees
> as a system of incentives. The ruling elite does not want a rule
> of law, because life is good without it. You can grab property
> and buy a needed court decision anytime you like. You don’t need
> to worry about parliamentary scrutiny or pesky journalists.
> The project works so well because the global financial
> system allows its beneficiaries -- operators of state-owned
> businesses, oligarchs and government officials -- to keep the
> spoils in other countries that have the courts and property
> rights Russia lacks. That is why most medium and large Russian
> businesses are incorporated abroad. That is why a court battle
> starring two of the country’s best-known businessmen, Boris
> Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, has been unfolding in London,
> not in Moscow.
> The project has even done some good for Russia as a whole.
> It has boosted economic growth and kept the basic administrative
> functions working, and some of the goodies have trickled down.
> But it is not sustainable, and of course it is deeply unjust.
> How, then, can Russia discard Putin’s project and become a
> nation? That is the question at stake as Russians prepare to
> choose their president in March. Putin wants to keep his grip on
> power, but many in Russia seem to have other ideas. For the
> first time in years, national matters have attracted people’s
> attention. Some members of the population have remembered that
> they are also citizens.
> Russia’s national awakening is at a very early stage. For
> now, it’s only a feeling of resentment that loosely unites
> different groups of protesters. It will take a long time and a
> lot of wisdom to get the unfinished project of a lawful and
> prosperous Russia back on track.
>
> (Maxim Trudolubov is editorial page editor of the newspaper
> Vedomosti, based in Moscow. The opinions expressed are his own.)
By Maxim Trudolubov
> Dec. 7
-- Throngs of voters and protesters are
> sending Russia’s leadership an unmistakable message: The country
> needs to stop being Vladimir Putin’s business project and become
> a nation.
> The reaction to last weekend’s fraud-tainted parliamentary
> elections has been like nothing I have seen since the early
> 1990s. A sanctioned rally in central Moscow attracted as many as
> 10,000 people to protest what they see as a stolen vote. The
> Russian blogosphere and social networks are overflowing with
> eyewitness accounts of fraud at polling stations, including
> cases of hundreds of forged ballots stuffed into boxes. The work
> of independent monitors, many of them young Russians who were
> not interested in politics four years ago, suggests United
> Russia’s dismal 49 percent share of the vote should have been a
> still more dismal 33 percent. That compares with an official 64
> percent in the 2007 elections.
> Opposition parties have promised to take legal action, but
> that is not expected to bring any tangible results. The
> Kremlin’s control over the political system, which includes the
> court system and the electoral commission, will probably remain
> unchallenged for the foreseeable future. What happened is a
> symbolic victory for all those who for the first time identified
> themselves with their country and tried to influence national
> affairs. For the first time in 20 years, voting was cool.
>
> Painful Transition
>
> Where have the Russians been for so long? Well, they have
> been busy. Few societies have ever endured such a painful
> transition from a patronizing totalitarian regime to
> unregulated, cut-throat competition. Like a tsunami, the
> economic liberalization begun 20 years ago wiped out personal
> savings and destroyed jobs, careers and entire professions.
> The economic revolution completely eclipsed the emergence
> of the new political entity, the Russian Federation. All
> political and historical soul-searching stopped. Res privata
> supplanted res publica. People’s values changed. Sociological
> studies show that levels of interpersonal trust collapsed as
> everyone became engrossed in personal survival. By the mid-
> 2000s, Russians felt less connected to their country than
> citizens of any other nation in the world: Researchers led by
> Vladimir Magun of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of
> Sociology found that Russians’ alienation from their polity was
> on a level with that of the Arab population of Israel.
> Individually, Russians have a lot to be proud of. The
> country’s athletes, artists and scientists have gained global
> renown. But the heroic collective spirit of Soviet times is long
> gone. Team victories at international competitions are
> increasingly rare, and Russia’s overall share of the world’s
> scientific citations has been dwindling. The change is not just
> about brain drain. It reflects a major shift from national
> causes to individual success as a dominating value.
> The Putin regime has consistently encouraged people to give
> up their role in public affairs. Independent political parties
> have been marginalized, party-building made prohibitively costly
> and complicated, regional elections canceled, elected governors
> and most mayors replaced with appointed officials. Putin’s
> elite, bearing a strong resemblance to a monarch’s court, has
> learned to use the political system to extract personal wealth,
> which it deploys to consolidate power.
> Outsiders, who include almost all Russians, have been kept
> in check by a combination of luck and policy. Rapid economic
> growth, fueled by high oil prices, has allowed the government to
> mollify the public with regular increases of pensions and wages
> in the large state sector. Some have characterized that live-
> and-let-live truce between an omnipotent elite and the majority
> of the population as a sort of social contract, loyalty in
> exchange for stability.
>
> Incomplete Institutions
>
> Whatever you call it, the deal has bought Putin a lot of
> time at the top of Russian politics, which he has used to stave
> off a transition from the state as master to the state as
> servant. Twenty years after its emergence as an independent
> state, Russia’s institutions remain incomplete. It has markets,
> prices and working fiscal policies, but it lacks law
> enforcement, division of power and independent courts.
> Although that may look like an unfinished project, it can
> also be understood as an accomplished ideal. Call it Putin’s
> project. He has adapted old Soviet structures to control and
> redistribute assets. What outsiders call corruption, Putin sees
> as a system of incentives. The ruling elite does not want a rule
> of law, because life is good without it. You can grab property
> and buy a needed court decision anytime you like. You don’t need
> to worry about parliamentary scrutiny or pesky journalists.
> The project works so well because the global financial
> system allows its beneficiaries -- operators of state-owned
> businesses, oligarchs and government officials -- to keep the
> spoils in other countries that have the courts and property
> rights Russia lacks. That is why most medium and large Russian
> businesses are incorporated abroad. That is why a court battle
> starring two of the country’s best-known businessmen, Boris
> Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, has been unfolding in London,
> not in Moscow.
> The project has even done some good for Russia as a whole.
> It has boosted economic growth and kept the basic administrative
> functions working, and some of the goodies have trickled down.
> But it is not sustainable, and of course it is deeply unjust.
> How, then, can Russia discard Putin’s project and become a
> nation? That is the question at stake as Russians prepare to
> choose their president in March. Putin wants to keep his grip on
> power, but many in Russia seem to have other ideas. For the
> first time in years, national matters have attracted people’s
> attention. Some members of the population have remembered that
> they are also citizens.
> Russia’s national awakening is at a very early stage. For
> now, it’s only a feeling of resentment that loosely unites
> different groups of protesters. It will take a long time and a
> lot of wisdom to get the unfinished project of a lawful and
> prosperous Russia back on track.
>
> (Maxim Trudolubov is editorial page editor of the newspaper
> Vedomosti, based in Moscow. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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