The Putin Gamble

...What did they expect after 70 years of Communist misrule—the first 35 absolutely terrifying, the next 35 characterized "only" by social and cultural petrification...

...Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was too closely associated with the thriving capital city, which people in the provinces think—not without some justification—has siphoned off 80 per cent or maybe more of the nation's earnings...

...The latter probably became inevitable years ago, after Yeltsin dismissed the late Galina Starovoitova of St...

...This was not a matter of special virtue but of necessity: There was no coherent program around which a genuine majority could rally...

...Various Russian generals and Interior Ministers received no political credit whatever for their prosecution of the war...

...As a Moscow editor noted recently, Russia still lacks "a newspaper for grownups," like the New York Times or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung...

...The emerging Russia is not (thank God) Plato's republic, but it has come a long way toward the unglamorous "normalcy" its citizens crave...

...For months, focus group discussions reported the same news: Most Russians very much wanted a new president who was younger (many people specified "in his 40s"), healthier, better educated, more cultured, decisive, and above all "professional...

...There is a long way to go...

...The idealized republic of the Federalist Papers or democracy in Louisiana under the Longs and Governor Eddie Edwards...

...Russian Perspectives The Putin Gamble By Anatole Shub It is impossible for anyone to predict with great confidence whether the reign of Vladimir V. Putin as Russia's Number One will be brief or long, successful or unsuccessful, democratic or authoritarian...

...People can say, do or buy practically anything...

...Moreover, none of the splinter Stalinist or fascist parties got as much as 3 per cent of the vote (tops with 2.23 per cent was street-agitator Viktor Anpilov's Communists and Workers of Russia for the USSR...

...He was re-elected after agreeing to a cease-fire that was mostly credited to former General Aleksandr I. Lebed...

...The "outing" of Italian and German Christian Democracy reminds us that corruption is not a uniquely Russian or post-Communist phenomenon...

...Although Putin may think otherwise, the answer is not to be found in Russia's aging military-industrial complex...

...The rapid acceptance of Putin, like the ephemeral popularity of Yevgeny M. Primakov a few months earlier, reflected the deepest popular sentiment, namely: Anybody but Yeltsin...

...How vital these external factors were to West Germany may be seen in the sad condition of the East Germans...

...Putin might have been chosen by a computerto succeed Yeltsin...

...This was a result of the infamous "loans for shares" deal that bankrolled Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996...

...On the other hand, the Independent Television Network (NTV) compares favorably in professionalism with the American and West European networks (some nights NTV is better...

...Bom five months before Stalin died, Putin represents a new generation of Russian politicians...

...It will be interesting to see whether Putin, who knows his way around both St...

...In the past six months, all elements of society agreed that free elections—for the Duma last October and for president in March—were the only acceptable way to resolve political and social tensions...

...Since the mid-19th century, Russian history has been so contrary, from the viewpoint of standard political science categories, that Putin would be considered hugely effective if he could only re-enact the reforms of Alexander II (an independent judiciary, local self-government, private ownership of land...

...But doctors and teachers have joined industrial workers and salespeople in the ranks of the poor and/ or unpaid...

...It is, in many respects, a changed, albeit not really "new," Russia...

...much will depend on his choice of priorities...

...Although polls report broad support for the annihilation of alleged and real Chechen "bandits" and kidnappers, to a large extent Putin is being taken on faith...

...Putin and other Russian leaders must deal not only with many "old" problems but with more contemporary ones, such as how...

...In addition, Berezovsky controls the powerful Public Russian Television network (ORT), as a minority stockholder...

...That is important, but may or may not be decisive...

...The Duma elections themselves appear to have been reasonably fair, even if it was the Kremlin-Berezovsky manipulation of ORT and other media outlets that assured the modest (23 per cent) "victory" for a hastily-assembled "Putin Party...

...Petersburg as his nationalities adviser...

...But waiting in the wings is a younger generation, now 20-35, that seems instinctively to have a greater understanding of market economics, domestic social interactions, and the outside world than their parents or grandparents...

...His attractive TV personality inspires confidence...

...Russians are great complainers—it is a sign of innate modesty: don't boast of your good luck—yet by most standards they are not doing too badly...

...As in Austria, Serbia, South Carolina and elsewhere, the past still has not been fully mastered...

...In Russia, considerable progress had been made by 1913, but then the Great War and Lenin returned Russia to the barbarism of the 17th century...

...That is not to diminish the role of the great West German liberal media in reeducating the millions west of the Elbe...

...People who should know better also seem to be surprised, or profess to be surprised, by the crime and corruption afflicting the confused virtual (cashless) economy of post-Soviet Russia...

...Russia itself in 1913, 1952, 1985, in the euphoria of 1989-91...

...While ordinary people as well as experts agree that Russia has made little or no progress toward the rule of law, and Yeltsin's monarchical 1993 Constitution will have to be revised at some point, democracy has been accepted as the political basis of the country...

...The humane society and efficient economy of the Netherlands, or the simmering class and race conflicts of Latin America...

...But organized crime and corruption have arrived...

...Nobody seems to mind the old statues of Lenin all over the place, while the struggles among corrupt officials, politicians and "entrepreneurs"—many of them waving the flag of "reform"—recall the pages of Gogol's Dead Souls...

...Anatole Shub, a former editor of The New Leader, served as the Washington Post's Moscow correspondent from 1967 to 1969, and since 1988 has visited Russia frequently as a research analyst...

...but thus far NTV only reaches about half of the Russian population...

...is another question: "Compared with whom and what...

...Following a dozen years of Nazism and crushing defeat in World War II, it took Western occupation, the Soviet threat, the Marshall Plan, and the Common Market to qualify (West) Germany as a normal democratic state in the eyes of its own citizens some 20-25 years after the War...

...One could enumerate many other failings of the Yeltsin decade, and one certainly cannot overlook the brutalities of the Chechnya wars...

...In Moscow, NTV has higher ratings than ORT...

...The main vehicle of (not very forceful) social protest, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, held on to its aging clientele...

...Nevertheless, Putin has shown that he has the energy, wit and experience to understand the situation, and to sort out possible tradeoffs...

...the majority of shares still belong to the Russian state...

...It has not changed enough, however, for concerned Westerners and for the Gideon's Army of Russian democrats, including "dissidents" of the Soviet era...

...The subsequent unsolved murder of Starovoitova, an unusually fine person, is as outrageous as the war itself...

...The underlying problem is that Russia cannot yet afford everything its people want and/or feel they deserve...

...In the broader perspective, what is probably most important is that nearly everyone in Russia now takes civil liberties and constitutional processes, however imperfect, for granted...

...Millions of individuals and thousands of businesses hold billions of dollars...

...Nor did Yeltsin...

...There have been no attempts at a coup d'état since 1993, and less and less talk of one since 1996...

...Or all of the above in some measure at different moments...

...The Russian paper that seemed to be approaching Western standards of fairness, Kommersant-Daily, was bought up by the shadowy "oligarch" Boris A. Berezovsky...

...There is some truth in this, but not much...

...his ratings plummeted steadily throughout the first war...

...In rejecting the crazies, the Duma elections rewarded many incumbents and somewhat strengthened liberal and moderate forces...

...The fear and regimentation of Communist times have largely gone, except perhaps in the Armed Forces and in penal institutions...

...The sudden rise and popularity of Putin are often attributed to his "vigor" and "decisiveness" in Chechnya...

...For the average Russian, Putin may be somewhat of a gamble...

...ORT, which reaches nearly every village in Russia, has become a propagandist for the Kremlin administration and Berezovsky's personal interests...

...in a time of rapid globalization, Russia can fit into the international division of labor...

...Primakov was appreciated mainly for starting to pay back wages, but was judged to be too old and infirm...

...Petersburg politics and the so-called law enforcement agencies, will do anything to bring the murderer or murderers to justice...

...The response to the question "where does Russiastand today...

...In Western countries, those issues were resolved decades or centuries ago...

...At the same time, he has been reluctant to elaborate specific programs...

...That is a separate, long and complicated discussion...