Poetic Justice Comes Gusinsky's Way

Russian Journal ^ | 28 August 03

[RussianConservative]

Self-exiled oligarch, former media mogul and sometime jailbird Vladimir Gusinsky may have faded from the headlines since Media-MOST was wrested from his grip. But, to his most-probable dismay, he has not dropped out of the Kremlin's gunsights or, it seems, those of the Greek police. For the third time, Gusinsky is in custody and may, finally, be extradited to Russia to face charges of fraud.

During the whole brouhaha over the Gazprom-leveraged seizing of Media-MOST by the state, a lot of rhetoric was seen in the Western and domestic liberal press about the dark "totalitarian" era supposedly being built by President Vladimir Putin.

At that time, Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky were at times almost hailed as valiant defenders of free speech and the human spirit against the heavy hand of the FSB (why is it, as an aside, that the people most hated in Russia are generally the most loved abroad?). This is despite the fact that the media companies owned by both companies had existed for one purpose and one purpose only: To act as propaganda outlets for oligarchic capital, Pravdas for the new privatized Russian Politburo.

The fact of the matter is that Gusinsky — like the rest of the oligarchs — is not exactly a model businessman or pillar of the community. It is he and the people like him that both contributed to Russia's collapse during the 1990s and cynically made a bundle of it. He should not be lauded, and it is hard to feel saddened when one thinks of his current situation. Jail is, after all, where a lot of Russia's corporate elite probably should be.

Yes, we know, this is justice of a selective sort. Gusinsky was almost certainly targeted for his anti-Kremlin stance and to get the state electronic media back under direct or indirect government control, official denials notwithstanding.

We also wouldn't like to make a bet that blind justice will ever be the reason for prosecuting a member of Russia's oligarchic pantheon. "Justice," in Russia, almost always has ulterior motives, and there is enough kompromat lying around to make a case against just about anybody.

It will be quite some time, if ever, before Russia acquires anything like a rule of law instead of a "legal system" that is mostly orchestrated by the state and laws that are more things to be enforced than excuses to punish people you don't like. Gusinsky should know that well; it was through links to the government and manipulations of those very laws that Russia's super-rich got their billions, after all.

It is sweet irony to see the very thing that built Gusinsky up finally taking him back down.