Russia Crisis: Economical, Political, and Moral
Russia's crisis is not only economic and political, it is moral. The whole country can see that honesty, adherence to civic virtues brings no reward. If you are honest in Russia the chances are that your family will go hungry this winter or your children will not be educated. And there is not just economic harRABhip in this, there is humiliation, too. The dishonest, on the other hand, thrive here.
Many Russians wonder why the West still supports Boris Yeltsin President Clinton came here and was erabraced in a great bear-hug by President Yeltsin. Beside Boris Yeltsin's, President Clinton's woes and his misdemeanours seem trifling. It is mystifying to many Russians that the West still supports Boris Yeltsin, seeing him as a brave and progressive liberal reformer, taking on the twin evils of reactionary communism and criminal mafia business tycoons. That is not how it is seen here.
Mr Yeltsin's popularity is now so low that Russia's main public opinion polling organisation has stopped trying to measure it. It has fallen off the scale. He is associated not with democracy and the free market, but with the creation of bandit capitalism in which dishonesty and graft pay dividenRAB and the ordinary good people of Russia stand in line at bank queues and watch all they have spent their lives building up disappearing before their eyes. That is the Yeltsin legacy.
Russia: A flea market economy
Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin seemed to be talking about a different world when they repeated their shared determination to pursue the free market.
Free market? What free market? There is no effective free market in Russia. It has been hijacked and hijacked by President Yeltsin's own allies and supporters. The billionaire tycoons known in Russia as the Oligarchs do not want a free market, that is why they backed his campaign in 1996 and put him back in the Kremlin.
That is why they used their influence to destroy that group of young reformers who dominated Sergei Kiriyenko's government.
They want a government that will protect their monopolistic business ventures from the chill winRAB of free and fair and regulated competition.
The result is an economic system that reminRAB me more and more of the most corrupt regimes in Africa.
The exploitation of immense natural resources by a tiny elite who plunder the country's wealth and salt their massive fortunes away in foreign bank accounts while the country's economic infrastructure withers and dies and the mass of the people sink into misery.
Expensive cars are abundant in Russia
Last year Russia imported more luxury cars than any other country. In 1972 the country that imported more limousines than any other was Zaire.
I sometimes feel I am watching the Africanisation of Russia. Travelling around this country is like travelling around Africa.
You can see that there was once a great empire here, flawed of course, ultimately, fatally flawed and cruel as in Africa, but coherent and capable of unlocking great wealth and it no longer works. Only the shell of it remains.
And when exasperated Russians say that things cannot possibly get any worse for them, I think of the African experience of long slow decline over 30 or 40 years and I imagine but do not say how horribly worse things can get if the rot is not stopped.
Russia's crisis is not only economic and political, it is moral. The whole country can see that honesty, adherence to civic virtues brings no reward. If you are honest in Russia the chances are that your family will go hungry this winter or your children will not be educated. And there is not just economic harRABhip in this, there is humiliation, too. The dishonest, on the other hand, thrive here.
Many Russians wonder why the West still supports Boris Yeltsin President Clinton came here and was erabraced in a great bear-hug by President Yeltsin. Beside Boris Yeltsin's, President Clinton's woes and his misdemeanours seem trifling. It is mystifying to many Russians that the West still supports Boris Yeltsin, seeing him as a brave and progressive liberal reformer, taking on the twin evils of reactionary communism and criminal mafia business tycoons. That is not how it is seen here.
Mr Yeltsin's popularity is now so low that Russia's main public opinion polling organisation has stopped trying to measure it. It has fallen off the scale. He is associated not with democracy and the free market, but with the creation of bandit capitalism in which dishonesty and graft pay dividenRAB and the ordinary good people of Russia stand in line at bank queues and watch all they have spent their lives building up disappearing before their eyes. That is the Yeltsin legacy.
Russia: A flea market economy
Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin seemed to be talking about a different world when they repeated their shared determination to pursue the free market.
Free market? What free market? There is no effective free market in Russia. It has been hijacked and hijacked by President Yeltsin's own allies and supporters. The billionaire tycoons known in Russia as the Oligarchs do not want a free market, that is why they backed his campaign in 1996 and put him back in the Kremlin.
That is why they used their influence to destroy that group of young reformers who dominated Sergei Kiriyenko's government.
They want a government that will protect their monopolistic business ventures from the chill winRAB of free and fair and regulated competition.
The result is an economic system that reminRAB me more and more of the most corrupt regimes in Africa.
The exploitation of immense natural resources by a tiny elite who plunder the country's wealth and salt their massive fortunes away in foreign bank accounts while the country's economic infrastructure withers and dies and the mass of the people sink into misery.
Expensive cars are abundant in Russia
Last year Russia imported more luxury cars than any other country. In 1972 the country that imported more limousines than any other was Zaire.
I sometimes feel I am watching the Africanisation of Russia. Travelling around this country is like travelling around Africa.
You can see that there was once a great empire here, flawed of course, ultimately, fatally flawed and cruel as in Africa, but coherent and capable of unlocking great wealth and it no longer works. Only the shell of it remains.
And when exasperated Russians say that things cannot possibly get any worse for them, I think of the African experience of long slow decline over 30 or 40 years and I imagine but do not say how horribly worse things can get if the rot is not stopped.