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'.. “Change the elite” is an old Stalinist tactic too.'

Posted by archive 
'..theft on a grand scale, taking advantage of the secrecy provided by Western offshore havens..'

<blockquote>'By the autumn of 1991—after the KGB-led coup in August to overthrow Gorbachev had failed—almost $4 billion belonging to the Party’s “property management department” had already been distributed to hundreds of Party-, Komsomol-, and KGB-managed banks and companies that were swiftly establishing themselves in Russia and abroad. This was an enormous amount of capital in a country that had, at the time, a scarcely functioning economy and hardly any foreign currency reserves at all. In due course, these funds, and the people who managed them, were to become the real foundation for the economy of post-Soviet Russia. Again, this was not robber baron capitalism, or indeed capitalism at all: instead, a small group was enriched by the state and thereby given the means of acquiring its property.

..

This was not the first time this kind of policy had been deployed in Russia: “Change the elite” is an old Stalinist tactic too.

..

..between 2008 and 2012 .. The reassuring presence of Dmitry Medvedev not only inspired Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s “reset” in American foreign policy, but lulled almost everyone in Europe into accepting a gangster state as a difficult but legitimate partner. During the four years of the Medvedev presidency NATO’s military readiness declined further, Western financial institutions became more dependent on Russian money, and Western politicians turned their attention to other matters.

Yet during this same period, as during his own presidency, Putin never abandoned the mafia methods Dawisha has so painstakingly described. Instead, he reshaped Russia’s political system in order to ensure that they could continue. Though Dawisha argues that Putin always intended to recreate an authoritarian, expansionist Russia, one could also argue that an authoritarian, expansionist Russia was the inevitable result of Putin’s need to protect himself, his cronies, and their money.

Either way, no one now doubts that, despite the talk of “reform,” he made no attempt to encourage truly entrepreneurial capitalism inside Russia or to create a legal system that would allow small businesses to grow. Courts became increasingly politicized and markets ever more distorted. Oligarchs and businessmen at all levels who did not play by his rules were destroyed. The most famous victim of Russia’s arbitrary justice was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested in 2003, after which his oil company, Yukos, was liquidated. Yukos’s assets were then transferred to another company, Rosneft, which happened to be owned by another one of Putin’s friends. Khodorkovsky’s arrest was intended as a lesson to others: here is what will happen, even to the richest men, if they step out of line.

..

With the media out of the way, Putin also took on “civil society,” meaning any charitable, educational, or advocacy organizations over which he did not exert direct control. This included the slow suffocation of apolitical groups such as Memorial, the historic human rights organization that has produced internationally admired accounts of the crimes of Stalin, the history of the Gulag, and more generally the history of repression in Russia..

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Using these different sources, the Kremlin began putting out messages designed not necessarily to make Russia look good, but rather to undermine the Western establishment and Western institutions, including the European Union and NATO. Using both money and information, they seek to empower the Western far right, the anti-establishment left, and the international business community all at the same time..

..In an article recently published by The Interpreter, an online publication dedicated to exposing Kremlin disinformation, the journalists Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss argue that
<blockquote>since at least 2008 Kremlin military and intelligence thinkers have been talking about information not in the familiar terms of “persuasion,” “public diplomacy” or even “propaganda,” but in weaponized terms, as a tool to confuse, blackmail, demoralize, subvert and paralyze.</blockquote>
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..after reading Dawisha’s book, and after absorbing the implications of the stories she has so carefully pulled together from so many sources, it is simply not possible to take this argument seriously. 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.'

- Anne Applebaum, How He and His Cronies Stole Russia, December 18, 2014</blockquote>


Context '..block the institutional pipelines that sucked money out of Ukraine and pumped it westward.'

<blockquote>NY Review of Books reports this comment, but won’t print it, By Lucy Komisar, January 15, 2015

Crime of Aggression - '..aggressive war-making is illegal and criminal.'

Soviet Security Services Were Corrupt From the Start - By Paul Goble


'Rule of law emerges from property rights.' - Karen Dawisha ("Putin's Kleptocracy - Who Owns Russia?")

'..the current monetary system, based on credit expansion .. “manic-depressive” behavior..'

The Ethics of Money Production - '..the care of souls.' - 'The point is to return to a universal respect for property rights.'</blockquote>