How He and His Cronies Stole Russia (Putin)

New York Review of Books ^ | Anne Applebaum

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

For twenty years now, the Western politicians, journalists, businessmen, and academics who observe and describe the post-Soviet evolution of Russia have almost all followed the same narrative. We begin with the assumption that the Soviet Union ended in 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev handed over power to Boris Yeltsin and Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the Soviet republics became independent states. We continue with an account of the early 1990s, an era of “reform,” when some Russian leaders tried to create a democratic political system and a liberal capitalist economy. We follow the trials and tribulations of the reformers, analyze the attempts at privatization, discuss the ebb and flow of political parties and the growth and decline of an independent media.

Mostly we agree that those reforms failed, and sometimes we blame ourselves for those failures: we gave the wrong advice, we sent naive Harvard economists who should have known better, we didn’t have a Marshall Plan. Sometimes we blame the Russians: the economists didn’t follow our advice, the public was apathetic, President Yeltsin was indecisive, then drunk, then ill. Sometimes we hope that reforms will return, as many believed they might during the short reign of President Dmitry Medvedev.

Whatever their conclusion, almost all of these analysts seek an explanation in the reform process itself, asking whether it was effective, or whether it was flawed, or whether it could have been designed differently. But what if it never mattered at all? What if it made no difference which mistakes were made, which privatization plans were sidetracked, which piece of advice was not followed? What if “reform” was never the most important story of the past twenty years in Russia at all?

[AdmSmith]

Yesterday Russia announced a revised military doctrine, signed by President Vladimir Putin, that names NATO as the Kremlin’s main adversary and clarifies that Russia’s military reserves the right to respond to conventional threats with both nuclear and conventional weapons.

http://20committee.com/2014/12/27/putins-orthodox-jihad/

[AdmSmith]

Since 2000, Russia has been ruled by a revanchist, revisionist elite with origins in the old KGB. This elite had been working its way back to power since the late 1980s, using theft on a grand scale, taking advantage of the secrecy provided by Western offshore havens, and cooperating with organized crime.

Once in power, the new elite sought to maintain control using the same methods that the KGB always used to maintain control: through the manipulation of public emotion, and by undermining the institutions of the West, and the ideals of the West, in any way that it can. Based on its record so far, it has every reason to expect continued success.

AA

[free_life]

I see wetphoenix is banned but his comrades still post here changing the narrative on any thread about Russia or Putin.

[lentulusgracchus]

So they're targeting us..... Why did that not surprise me? What bothers me is that Obozo has got us down under 4900 nuclear weapons of all kinds, which is low enough to invite some sort of attempt at a nuclear smackdown by Putin or, later on, by the Chinese.

I'm afraid that Obama is leading us into a nuclear holocaust out of his hatred for Norman Rockwell's America.

[Ivan Mazepa]

Thanks for the excellent post.

Often people dismiss KGB people as spooks but the article does an excellent job linking them to organized crime. Today, FSB men are “respectable” CEOs running billion dollar companies, but in the wild 1990s, KGB people were involved and were running organized crime groups. One of the most typical images of the 90s KGB man was that of a racketeer - these people had right the skill set (intimidation, self-defense, murder execution etc). If a two-bit criminal like Yanukovich had a billion dollar mansion, one has to wonder what Putin has stashed away.

So when I hear Russians glorifying Putin, a colonel of the KGB, organization which killed countless during USSR, a man who rose through the wild 90s as some kind of moral authority, I’m speechless. He’s sending Muslim mercenaries into Ukraine to kill Christians - but he’s a defender of Christian morality in the face of the decaying west.