Category Archives: Oligarchs

Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power” is a throwback to the 1990s when ex-KGBmen turned mafioso, private security, or hired hands to execute nefarious plots.  It is also a showcase of bygone figures.  Once powerful, influential, or at least in the public eye who have since drifted into memory only to be periodically conjured up as partisan weaponry of high politics.  You know the names: Boris Berezovsky, Alex Goldfarb, Aleksandr Litvinenko, and Mikhail Trepashkin.  The latter serves as the hero of Anderson’s tale.  The gatekeeper of a longstanding conspiracy that many Russians know well:  The FSB carried out the apartment bombings on Guryanova St. in Moscow that brought down eight floors and killed ninety-four residents in their beds.

It’s been a while since Trepashkin’s name graced an English language publication.  He’s spent the last several years serving two stints in the clank.  In 2003, he was arrested for ..read more

If history is any indication, a gerontocracy can kill a political system.  The Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states suffered from it.  It currently plagues China.  And the recent protests in Iran certainly point to some kind of generational conflict is coming to a boil.  The failure to ensure the mobility of young people into a government’s power structures only brews disillusionment, frustration, and anger among the next generation.

Soviet Russia understood this well, that is until the bureaucracy ousted Khrushchev and entrenched itself to the point the system went into suspension.  Before the 1960s, Soviet Russia was an archetype of social mobility.  Youth–through institutions like the Komsomol–were the “helper” and “reserve” of the Party. Part of Stalin’s “New Soviet Person” was not just about promoting peasants and workers into positions of power.  Youth also greatly benefited by Stalin’s efforts to rip Russia out of its historical backwardness.  And if ..read more

Up and down. Down and up.  Like all world markets,the Russian MICEX and RTS indexes have been on an endless roller coaster ride.  Both markets didn’t benefit from Monday’s American and European rallies driven by American and European governments throwing capital a life line.  Instead the MICEX and RTS plummeted .  Some of those losses were regained on Tuesday.  The Kremlin solution, like everyone else, is to keep throwing money at the problem. Russia’s banks and big corporations are happily lapping up the monetary milk and honey. However, as most economists note, liquidity may stave off the panic, but it will do little to address the deep structural problems facing world capitalism.

Monday’s calm was short lived as investors began panicking over the global economy’s long term prospects.  Last weekend’s global defibrillator jumped started the markets for one historic day.  On Monday, the US Dow shot up an unprecedented 936 points. ..read more

Moscow’s stock market soared almost 30 percent on Friday thanks to the Russian government announcement it would dump about $130 billion into the sagging market.  Today, it injected more credit into the market just to make sure.  About $24 billion worth at 8.75 percent interest.  The move was to disperse more capital among banks pushed out of the previous trough.   The flood from state coffers attempts to do another thing: isolate the Russian market from the American financial crisis.  A staggering 70 percent of the Russian market is made up of speculative foreign money which explains why Russian stocks did such a nosedive.  As Vladimir Forlov writes in the Moscow Times,

Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reacted in ways that signal a fundamental shift. The government is now seeking to reduce the stock market’s dependence on foreign portfolio investors and to attract more long-term investment from Russia’s institutional investors, including ..read more

Nato declares that relations with Russia can’t go on “business as usual.” Washington keeps demanding that the Russians leave Georgia “now.” Russia rethinks its cooperation with NATO. It is even unmasking a few Georgian spies for good measure.  All of this coincides with three Cold War anniversaries: Russia’s 1998 financial default, the coup against Gorbachev, and Prague Spring. The Cold War is suddenly back in vogue.  The glory days of the past are back!

“Cold War II,” as it’s being called, already has critics’ panties in a bunch as to what to do about Russia.  Containment? Nato enlargement? Missle “defense” against Russia, err, Iran in Eastern Europe? The desperation has resulted in some grasping for some real straws.  A good example, is Chrystia Freeland’s comment, “The oligarchs could be Russia’s best bet,” in today’s Financial Times. She writes,

Russian capitalism – and, more crucially, Russian capitalists – may be our best bet ..read more

Jeffrey Tayler takes up clanology in his article “The Master and Medvedev” in hopes to map the innards of Kremlin Inc (hat tip to James at Robert Amsterdam for pointing to it). Tayler argues that Putin’s anointing of Medvedev as President, who in turn returned the favor by making his patron PM, was a great victory for Putin’s efforts to keep the siloviki at bay. If Putin left power completely, Tayler’s logic goes, he would open season to possible investigations and prosecutions for corruption. Putting Medvedev in power ensured him immunity and more importantly, Tayler adds, “Putin has outsmarted—and possibly imperiled—all those in Sechin’s clan.” But alone Medvedev is too keep to fight the sharks himself, so he needs Putin to have his back ready to pluck one with a harpoon.

All of this sounds plausible and I applaud Tayler for not rehashing the usual Putin as ..read more