Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#192 :: Friday, 25 October 2013

“We don’t see things as they are, but as we are”

#2
www.russiatoday.com
October 25,2013
From megalomaniac to martyr: The media metamorphosis of Mikhail KhodorkovskyTen years ago, leading agencies broke the news of the arrest of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia. The same outlets that had cried foul over the oligarch’s business practices now expressed concern at the authorities’ intervention.

Even to this day the mass media in the west portray Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a dissident and a victim of politics.

But back in the 1990s, the same members of the Fourth Estate presented a different picture of the former oil tycoon – that of a man who used dodgy and elaborate schemes designed to evade taxes and strip his company’s minority shareholders of their profits.

This happened after Western investors started losing money because Mikhail Khodorkovsky diluted the stock, hid the profits and transferred control of his company’s major subsidiaries to offshore havens.

The New York Times called the Yukos Oil Company’s actions “appalling even by Russia’s low standards.” The Washington Post wrote that they were “a major affront to foreign investors.”

“Why isn’t the government stepping in? Why isn’t the Securities Commission, or the Central Bank, acting?” it added.

The attitude suddenly reversed when around the year 2000, Khodorkovsky started working to repair his tainted image abroad. He invited international auditors and began pouring millions of dollars into lobbying in London and Washington.

Khodorkovsky and his staff did an equally large-scale and expensive job in Russia, sponsoring political parties, universities and launching NGOs such as the Open Russia Foundation ­ a nationwide project aimed at upbringing of loyal leaders perceiving the agenda dictated by the Yukos owners.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger became Open Russia’s honorable trustee, securing the international influence of the organization.

And from the bad boy of Russia’s ‘bandit capitalism’, in the eyes of the West, Khodorkovsky transformed quickly into a man the world could do business with.

The ultimate objective of these costly projects was to secure the process of merging Yukos with one of the US oil majors – Exxon or Chevron – granting the foreign companies full access to Russia’s vast resources together with some tried and tested tax-evading schemes.

According to New York economist Michael Hudson, Khodorkovsky also wanted to turn over Russia’s major source of hard currency to foreign companies who would then arrange for the company to be entirely tax-exempt.

“Essentially all of the oil and Russia’s riches would be transferred to Western shareholders; Russia could not afford this,” Hudson concludes.

Now, as the coverage of the story has become more balanced, it appears that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is distancing himself from politics, despite occasionally being depicted as a political martyr.

In his letters and articles written in the prison camp, Khodorkovsky criticized Russia’s current political and economic course, but stopped calling for the replacement of authorities, urging ordinary people to pay more attention to their own fate.

In his latest letter, Khodorkovsky gave the example of the former South African President Nelson Mandela, saying he had managed to overcome the personal grudges and racial prejudices and led the society from civil war to peace and development.

Khodorkovsky also wrote that the opponents of Russia’s current political course must understand the necessity of compromise. Historical experience shows that only when reformers manage to come to accord with conservatives does society manage to overcome crises with minimal losses, he noted.

At the same time the ex-tycoon maintains his innocence and personally blames President Vladimir Putin for his prosecution, claiming Putin used the courts to get rid of a powerful political rival.

Putin has repeatedly rejected that political motives were behind the two Khodorkovsky cases, insisting that the accused had been sentenced for large-scale tax evasion, theft and money laundering.

Khodorkovsky was first found guilty of fraud and tax evasion in 2006 and sentenced to nine years in prison, with the term later reduced to eight years. Also in 2006, he faced new charges of large scale theft of oil and money laundering and in December 2010, he was sentenced to 13.5 years in a penal colony in the second case.

As the second sentence was concurrent with the original one, the time already served was deducted from the new term. In addition, the court agreed with some of the defense arguments during the appeal hearings, further reducing the sentence. Now it is expected that Khodorkovsky will be released in less than one year’s time ­ on August 25, 2014.

It should be noted that Khodorkovsky’s case was considered not only by Russian courts, but also by the European Court of Human Rights. In July this year the ECHR rejected the businessman’s complaint about the political motivation of his jailing, saying the charges against former head of Yukos had a “healthy core.”

“None of the accusations against the applicants [Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev] had concerned their political activities, the applicants were not opposition leaders or public officials, and the acts they stood accused of were not directly related to their participation in political life,” the court stated, admitting, however, that the Russian authorities allowed some procedural violations during the trial.

Even though Khodorkovsky himself prefers not to discuss his future release and plans for life out of prison (according an interview Khodorkovsky’s son Pavel gave recently to the Daily Telegraph) some Russian politicians are already making plans for him.

Of this most notable is the recent revelations from members of the rightist pro-business party Civil Platform, headed by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. After one of the party’s closed congresses reports leaked to the press that Civil Platform planned to invite Khodorkovsky for cooperation.

However one senior party member, once a close ally of Khodorkovsky, doubted the possibility of such an alliance, saying that firstly Khodorkovsky is now emphasizing his loss of interest in politics, and secondly there was a slim chance that once Russia’s richest man would agree to play a support role in someone else’s project.

In addition, there are legal barriers for Khodorkovsky’s participation in politics, at least when it comes for personal political career. Russian law deprives those convicted of serious crimes from the right to be elected to legislative bodies of all levels. The Constitutional Court has recently reviewed this norm and ordered it to be changed, but the latest, as-yet-unapproved draft of amendments still suggests that ex-convicts should be banned from running at polls for 10 years since the day of their release.

 #3
Financial Times
October 25, 2013
Russia: the dwindling employees of the big state
By Luke Smolinski
[Charts here http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/10/24/russia-the-dwindling-employees-of-the-big-state/?#axzz2ijya7XBE]Workers of Russia – go private!

Who wants to work for Putin? Fewer and fewer people, according to Russian statistics.

From 2000 to 2011, the number of people employed by state and municipal authorities has fallen, while the number of private sector workers has risen by a third. This does not necessarily show a decline of big government but it ddoes remove some of its authority, perhaps.

In some ways, the Kremlin has grown more active over the past decade. Government ownership of the oil industry has increased. Russia’s state oil producer Rosneft bought TK-BNP this year in a deal valued at $55bn. It previously acquired the main oil production unit of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos in 2004.

Russia’s state-controlled banking assets have also swelled since 2000.

However, in terms of employment, Russia’s public sector is less dominant today than it was 10 years ago (see below chart). The IMF’s numbers come from Rosstat, the Russian statistics agency. “Other” jobs consist of labour in foreign-owned companies, part-state-owned companies and non-government organisations although NGO jobs are few in Russsia.

A difference in wages partly explains the trend. Before the financial crisis, public sector pay did not keep pace with that in the private sector. More eye-catching is a simultaneous fall in productivity fewer people inn the public sector are doing the same job, less efficiently than when there were more of them. Did all the good workers jump ship to the private sector, where productivity has surged?

Rising commodity prices also put more cash in Russians’ pockets. This created more jobs in retail, services and small-scale construction, says Vladimir Gimpelson, director of the Centre for Labour Market Studies at Russia’s National Research University. More affluent Russians demanded these services.

The shadow economy plays a role here, too. Though not accounted for in the IMF study, it explains why workers have left government pay registers over the last decade. “Employment expansion was driven by the expansioon in informal jobs or free entry jobs beyond state regulation,” Gimpelson says. “This can account for about 50 per cent of the total job growth during the period.”

The cost of setting up a business in Russia is so high that it has driven more folk into the shadows, he says. (Russia ranks 112 out of 185 countries on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index.)

It is important to note, however, that despite the winnowing ranks of Russia’s big state, the bureaucrats have not gone away.

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 #4
Moscow Times/BBC Monitoring
What the Papers Say, Oct. 25, 2013Kommersant

1. Alexander Gabuyev article headlined “Far East gains independence” says that envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev has won his first victory: Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has ordered to empower the Far East Development Ministry with many of the functions of the federal bodies of power; pp 1, 6 (688 words).

2. Yegor Popov article headlined “Car industry to be subsidized under WTO rules” says that the government has come up with a plan aiming to make up for the disposal charge that car making plants will have to pay as of 2014. It will subsidize the production of environmentally friendly cars, energy costs and research; pp 1, 11 (681 words).

3. Khalil Aminov and Yekaterina Gerashchenko article headlined “Hundred billions to one gate” says that the Sports, Tourism and Youth Politics Ministry will be granted the exclusive right to use the money allocated for the construction of stadiums for the 2018 World Football Cup; pp 1, 12 (797 words).

4. Yury Barsukov article headlined “Gazprom to pay in full” says that the government is discussing ways to make the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom pay more taxes; pp 1, 9 (682 words).

5. Kirill Antonov article headlined “Mintimer Shaymiyev not ready to part with presidential title” says that former Tatarstan president Mintimer Shaymiyev has stated that Tatarstan will not observe the federal law under which heads of Russian regions should not be called president as of January 2015; p 2 (595 words).

6. Maxim Ivanov article headlined “Lifelong ban to stand in elections put to figures” says that upon the Constitutional Court’s ruling to cancel a lifelong ban for people with convictions to stand in elections, United Russia deputies have drafted amendments to introduce a 10- and 15-year ban; p 2 (624 words).

7. Taisia Bekbulatova article headlined “Boris Titov offers amnesty to migrants” says that business ombudsman Boris Titov has drafted a proposal on an a migration amnesty which will enable the mass legalization of migrants if they sign labor agreements with employers and register with the tax office; p 3 (487 words).

8. Grigory Tumanov and Vyacheslav Kozlov article headlined “Hooligans of Pechora Sea” says that piracy charges against 30 Greenpeace activists have been replaced with hooliganism charges; p 3 (589 words).

9. Tatyana Grishina and Natalya Ilyina article headlined “Audit Chamber fights against consistency” says that the first report published by the Audit Chamber after Tatyana Golikova became its head, has raised doubts over the current budget policy initiated by former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. A few hours after the report had been published, this part of the report was referred to as a technical mistake and removed from the report; p 6 (736 words).

10. Sergei Strokan article headlined “U.S. and Israel disagree on Iranian nuclear program” says that Washington’s readiness to reach a compromise on the Iranian nuclear program may repel one of its key allies, Tel Aviv, which insists on Iran’s closing its nuclear program completely; p 7 (533 words).

11. Andrei Kolesnikov article headlined “Gracious integration processes” gives an ironic account of the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Minsk and says that the Kazakh president has suggested that the Eurasian Economic Community be eliminated and Syria and Turkey join the Customs Union; p 7 (1,089 words).

12. Pavel Tarasenko article headlined “Term of friendship prolonged for commonwealth” says that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has met his counterparts from the CIS in Minsk ahead of the CIS summit set for today. Experts warn that despite numerous plans for cooperation, the CIS will exist only as long as there is no visa regime between its countries; p 7 (492 words).

Nezavisimaya Gazeta

1. Igor Naumov article headlined “Dmitry Medvedev grows mellow towards state corporations” says that Medvedev has suggested that companies in the Far East should first develop their export potential. The idea of creating a state corporation to facilitate the Far East’s development is becoming increasingly vital, the presidential envoy Yuriy Trutnev said. Experts, however, remain sceptical about the idea; pp 1, 4 (1,000 words).

2. Petr Tverdov article headlined “It turns out that authorities like opposition. But only parliamentary and systemic” wonders why head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov at a meeting with mayors, and head of the president’s directorate for domestic policy Oleg Morozov at a meeting with chairmen of regional electoral commissions have neglected the issue of corruption and called the non-systemic opposition the main threat to the country’s security; pp 1, 3 (1,350 words).

3. Ivan Rodin article headlined “Filter named after Navalny and Khodorkovsky” says that United Russia lawmakers have tabled a bill to replace the ban for people convicted for grave and particularly grave crimes to stand in elections with a restriction of 25 or at least 18 years; pp 1, 3 (704 words).

4. Anton Khodasevich article headlined “Kyrgyz president ignores meeting in Minsk” says that Kyrgyzstan’s leader have not shown up for a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Minsk, which is yet another proof that Moscow’s integration plans are at risk; pp 1, 7 (758 words).

5. Svetlana Gamova article headlined “Dniester region to seal the EU’s border on Dniester” says that the Dniester region authorities have announced that as of Nov. 1 Moldovan law enforcers, who show up in the security zone in the Dniester area, will be detained; pp 1, 7 (725 words).

6. Yevgeny Grigoryev article headlined “American ear in Merkel’s mobile phone” says that Berlin is indignant over the U.S. National Security Agency’s tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone; pp 1, 8 (538 words).

7. Editorial headlined “Interethnic code of silence” comments on Prosecutor-General Yury Chayka’s initiative to introduce administrative responsibility for mass media outlets which publish inadequate information about conflicts, thus contributing to the escalation of ethnic tension. A ban for mass media outlets to mention the nationality of offenders will only fuel xenophobia in society; p 2 (461 words).

8. Yekaterina Trifonova article headlined “Churov concerned over voter turnout” says that head of the Central Elections Commission Vladimir Churov has put forward a range of initiatives aimed at boosting people’s trust in the outcome of elections; p 2 (404 words).

9. Andrei Melnikov report “Imams responsible for those whom they trained” says that the law on responsibility of local officials if ethnic conflicts break out, came into force on Oct. 24 ; p 2 (500 words).

10. Sergei Kulikov article headlined “Entrepreneurs lose confidence” says that businessmen are becoming increasingly sceptical about the prospects of their businesses; p 4 (612 words).

11. Mikhail Sergeiev article headlined “Tatyana Golikova exposes Alexei Kudrin’s secrets” says that the Audit Chamber headed by Tatyana Golikova has published a report which shows the authorities’ policy of increasing the state debt even with surplus budget is inadequate; p 4 (830 words).

12. Article by chairman of the State Duma’s labor and social policy committee Andrei Isayev headlined “Migrants and ethnic issue” where he dwells upon migration and ethnic relations in the country in the light of mass disturbances in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district; p 5 (1,275 words).

13. Kirill Rodionov article headlined “Russia and Ukraine: After empire” looks at Russian-Ukrainian relations over the last decade and says that Russia’s influence on the territory of the former Soviet republics will remain, but change its nature completely; p 5 (1,145 words).

14. Vladimir Mukhin article headlined “‘Careless’ tragic consistency” looks at recent tragic accidents in the Russian army resulting in the death of servicemen due to explosions or negligence and says that the system of security in the army needs updating; p 6 (835 words).

15. Svetlana Gavrilina article headlined “St. Petersburg authorities oust advocates of tolerance to outskirts” says that for the first time in a decade, the St. Petersburg authorities have refused to approve the route for the march against enmity; p 6 (552 words).

16. Darya Tsiryulik article headlined “Bloody winter looms for allies in Afghanistan” says that as Washington and Kabul are negotiating the terms of military assistance after the pullout of NATO forces from Afghanistan, experts predict a rise in the Taliban’s terrorist activities; p 8 (715 words).

17. Yevgenia Novikova article headlined “Netanyahu does not convince Washington” says that despite all its efforts, Tel Aviv has failed to make Washington toughen its demands concerning the Iranian nuclear program, and features Russian experts’ comments; p 8 (832 words).

Vedomosti

1. Vladimir Shtanov article headlined “State to help car industry with subsidies” says that Russian car manufacturers may get multi-billion subsidies from the federal budget as compensation for the cancellation of disposal fee preferences; pp 1, 5 (665 words).

2. Valery Kagachigov and Anastasia Golitsina article headlined “iPhone with limited capabilities” says that iPhones 5c and iPhones 5s will not function in Russia’s LTE frequencies until the Apple company finds the quality of the LTE network in Russia satisfactory; pp 1, 17 (500 words).

3. Editorial headlined “Loss of quality” says that although some 22 percent of Russians are willing to leave the country, only 10-15 percent are serious about the idea. The bad news is that this 10-15 percent is the most economically active and prosperous part of the population; pp 1, 6 (437 words).

4. Article by head of the Centre for Studies of Ideological Processes under the Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Rubtsov headlined “Metaphysics of power: Private interests dictate reforms” comments on recent reforms in culture and science; p 7 (1,148 words).

5. Polina Khimshiashvili article headlined “Cultural recruitment” says that U.S. newspapers have reported that the FBI suspects the head of the Russian centre for culture and science, Yury Zaytsev, of assisting the Russian special services in recruiting U.S. citizens; p 3 (333 words).

6. Editorial headlined “Russia without Yukos” says that the campaign against the Yukos oil company and its co-owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that the authorities started 10 years ago, has resulted in the degradation of the most important state institutes; p 6 (500 words).

7. Lilia Biryukova and Polina Khimshiashvili article headlined “Union of discontent” says that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has accused Russia of politicizing the work of the Eurasian Economic Commission; p 2 (457 words).

8. Anastasia Kornya article headlined “To vote like in the 1990s” says that the Central Electoral Commission has drafted proposals aimed at increasing voter turnout; p 3 (460 words).

9. Ksenia Boletskaya report “Alexei Pivovarov goes to STS” says that YV journalist Alexei Pivovarov has left NTV and has been appointed head of the TV and trans-media projects of STS Media; p 18 (700 words).

Rossiiskaya Gazeta

1. Tatyana Shadrina interview with the new head of the Post of Russia Dmitry Strashnov headlined “Letter to Father Frost” where he speaks about the changes awaiting the postal service; pp 1, 6 (2,000 words).

2. Anna Roze article headlined “Obama listening” says that Berlin has expressed its indignation over the U.S.’s eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone conversations; pp 1, 8 (800 words).

3. Kira Latukhina article headlined “Compromise for three” says that ahead of the summit of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, Russian, Kazakh and Belarusian leaders have met behind closed doors; p 2 (1,100 words).

4. Natalya Kozlova article headlined “Pirates become hooligans” says that piracy charges against Greenpeace activists have been dropped; p 2 (450 words).

5. Valery Vyzhutovich article headlined “Long-standing partnership” looks at the outcome of the international media forum in Yerevan and at Russian-Armenian relations; p 3 (800 words).

6. Sergei Ptichkin article headlined “Glock gun costs fortune” says that the tender for the purchase of the Austrian Glock guns for the Defense Ministry has been suspended; p 7 (900 words).

7. Yevgeny Shestakov article headlined “Cultural exchange of ‘spies'” says that amid escalating surveillance scandals, the U.S. special services are using their trump card: they have accused the head of the Russian centre for culture and science in Washington of recruiting U.S. citizens; p 8 (850 words).

Izvestia

1. Olesya Yelkova report “Rosatom explores Dutch coast” says that the state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom is looking for jurisdiction to attract financing and plans to locate its subsidiary in the Netherlands; pp 1, 6 (700 words).

2. Natalya Bashlykova interview headlined “There should be a balance between security and freedom” with member of the Federation Council Ruslan Gattarov; pp 1-2 (1,200 words).

3. Viktor Loginov report “Communications Ministry invites 200,000 migrants” says that the ministry plans to employ migrants in IT companies in Moscow; pp 1, 4 (650 words).

4. Yury Matsarskiy article headlined “Egypt says goodbye to state of emergency” says that Egypt’s interim president has announced that the state of emergency will be lifted on Nov. 14 and features a Russian expert’s comment; p 7 (560 words).

5. Igor Yavlyansky and Maria Gorkovskaya article headlined “U.S. special services accused of eavesdropping on Angela Merkel” gives highlights of the scandal reeling in Germany over the NSA’s tapping the chancellor’s mobile phone; p 7 (548 words).

Moskovsky Komsomolets

1. Maxim Grigoryev article headlined “Fear and hatred in Volgograd” looks at the aftermath of the bus blast in Volgograd; pp 1, 5 (1,660 words).

2. Yulia Kalinina article headlined “Be more attentive to people” gives a sarcastic account of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to flood-stricken Komsomolsk-na-Amure; pp 1-2 (507 words).

3. Igor Subbotin article headlined “Russian man becomes Caucasus militants’ captive in Syria” says that in a video posted on YouTube a Russian engineer, who has been captured in Syria, asks to exchange him for a certain Saudi Arabian man captured by the Syrian governmental troops; p 2 (368 words).

4. Natalya Rozhkova report “Tolokonnikova transferred to myrrh-streaming icon” says that jailed Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is being transferred from a prison in Mordovia to Chuvashia; p 2 (400 words).

5. Renat Abdullin article headlined “Saudi Arabia stages mild blackmail” looks at possible changes in relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S., and features a Russian expert’s comment; p 3 (383 words).

6. Stanislav Belkovsky article headlined “Khodorkovsky: Live in present” looks back at the arrest of Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Oct. 25 2003, at the reasons and people behind it and prospects for Khodorkovsky; p 3 (1,279 words).

7. Igor Subbotin brief interview with lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who represents the interests of former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, headlined “Snowden still endangered” where he speaks about Snowden’s meeting with his father; p 3 (372 words).

RBK Daily

1. Alexei Kuzmenko report “Onishchenko’s shadow” looks at the reshuffle in the leadership of the Federal Service for Consumer Rights Protection (Rospotrebnadzor); pp 1, 3 (650 words).

Novaya Gazeta

1. Andrei Kolesnikov report “Captured by time” says that former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested 10 years ago today in a move that consollidated Vladimir Putin’s regime ; p 2 (1,400 words).

2. Alexander Mineyev report “Brussels does not understand our guys” says that deputies of the European Parliament are puzzled: why does Moscow place its stake on cruelty in the case of the Greenpeace ship crew’s arrest; p 3 (600 words).

3. Elvira Goryukhina report “Themis. Dead-end case” looks at the Yukos case; pp 11-14 (4,300 words).

Noviye Izvestia

1. Arina Raksina report “Are they planning to replace Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev with Valentina Matviyenko?” looks at Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko’s recent initiatives; p 2 (350 words).

2. Margarita Alekhina report “Two-thirds of Muscovites are in favor of release of Khodorkovsky” looks at a study conducted by the Levada Centre about former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky; p 3 (300 words).

3. Konstantin Nikolayev brief report “Americans suspect Russian man of spying” says that the U.S. authorities suspect head of the Russian culture centre in Washington of spying; p 3 (150 words).

Komsomolskaya Pravda

1. Semen Yelenin report “Did terrorist recruit supporters via recruitment agency in Moscow?” looks at new details about suspected suicide bomber Naida Asiyalova; p 6 (800 words).

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#5
Kremlin denies connection between low voter turnout, bad election dateMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Vyacheslav Volodin, first deputy head of the presidential administration said he disagrees with the fact that a single voting day, the second Sunday of September this year, was the cause of low voter turnout.

“I disagree that September 8 is a day that does not give a high voter turnout,” Volodin said at a meeting with the mayors of cities and city managers on Thursday.

According to information provided by Volodin, voter turnout in the elections to the legislative assemblies held in spring 2006 was 36% against 43% in fall 2013. “These figures speak for themselves,” he said.

Volodin also said there are regions where voter turnout is traditionally low, regardless of the voting date.

“Voter turnout is determined by people involved in the election process. If people think it’s important to stop what they are doing and come to vote to support their candidates, they will come. If candidates speak convincingly with them, if they conduct dialogue,” Volodin said.

At the same time, Volodin believes it is right to discuss a united voting day in the parliament. “These issues should be discussed, including in regional parliaments, and the best decision can be found,” he said.

#6
Kremlin calls candidates’ groundless removal from elections ‘yesterday’s instrument’SNEGIRI, Moscow region. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russian electoral authorities, including the Central Election Commission (CEC), have managed to minimize the number of situations where potential candidates are banned from running in elections for no discernable reason, head of the Russian president’s homeland policy directorate Oleg Morozov said.

“I would like to thank our colleagues from the CEC and you (regional election commissions) for your success in ensuring that the number of bans imposed on different candidates and different political parties seeking to take part in the electoral process was minimal during the September elections,” he said at a nationwide session of the chairpersons of regional election commissions outside Moscow on Thursday.

“By the way, thanks to your efforts, many incorrect decisions were overturned, which sent a signal, including to electoral process participants, that no one will any longer be banned from running in elections for no discernable reason, as had previously occurred,” Morozov said.

“We need to understand that this instrument of “political struggle” belongs to the past. If “we” continue using such techniques, citizens will never forgive us for it. The most important thing we need to understand is that it will not be a victory, it will not be a victory that will be accepted by citizens. They will not respect such a result,” Morozov said.

Most Russians approve of the country’s switch to a mixed electoral system, he added.

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#7
Russians differ on whether Russia has opposition – pollMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Forty percent of the respondents surveyed by the Public Opinion Foundation believe Russia has political opposition, 30% believe it does not, and the others were undecided.

The poll was conducted in 43 regions of Russia in mid October. It surveys 1,500 respondents.

Only 4% of those who believe Russia has political opposition believe it has a big influence on the situation in the state. Eighteen percent believe dissidents do not have a lot of influence on the situation in Russia and 15% believe they have no influence at all.

Twelve percent of the respondents said they believe the number of opposition supporters has recently been increasing, 3% believe it has been decreasing, and 15% believe it has not changed.

Most respondents have named the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party as opposition parties (13% and 10%, respectively), namely, their leaders Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky (9% each). They are followed by Alexei Navalny (8%).

The respondents were divided on the issue of relations between the authorities and the opposition. Eight percent believe the authorities are behaving correctly “by letting the opposition speak, heading its opinion, having dialogue with it.” Another 8% believe the authorities are not behaving correctly, saying that “they are not talking to the opposition, are unjustly convicting opposition activists, imprisoning them and putting them in mental institutions.”

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#8
Most of opposition members want the best for Russia – Kremlin officialSNEGIRI, Moscow region. Oct 24 (Interfax) – The Kremlin has welcomed the parliamentary opposition’s signal indicating its support for national security as a priority and its refusal to back so-called “orange forces”, director of the president’s homeland security directorate Oleg Morozov said.

“We have heard the signal sent by the parliamentary systemic opposition, as it is called today, which really wants the best for the country, which does not support “orange forces”, and which realizes that the country’s security is a priority that mobilizes and unites all political forces. It is a highly important signal that society has heard recently,” he said at a nationwide session of election commission representatives from Russian regions in Snegiri, outside Moscow, on Thursday.

“When all the political parties represented in parliament demonstrate solidarity over the most fundamental and crucial issues that concern the unity of our country and the security of our citizens, it is a very proper and important signal being sent to modern society and its citizens,” Morozov said.

“When there is a part (of the opposition) that is against the country – we know their slogans: “let’s give away the Urals”, “let’s give away the Arctic” – these are the forces that are against the country. And dialogue with them is possible in the form of an argument using the language of law – whether such things can be done, whether it is a call for extremist actions. Let lawyers handle these matters,” he said.

Morozov described such approaches and ideas as destructive.

“Indeed, it is a destructive minority that seeks to ruin the country. The rest (of the Russian opposition), which is a far larger segment of the political system, has internal competition, but they want what is best for the country. It is highly important,” he said.

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#9
Kremlin official says part of Russian opposition ‘against the country’
InterfaxSnegiri (Moscow Region), 24 October: The Kremlin receives in a positive key the signal from the parliamentary opposition, which is calling for giving priority to ensuring the security of the state and does not support “orange forces” (reference to Ukrainian orange revolution which is seen as backed by the West), according to the head of the President’s Directorate for Domestic Policy, Oleg Morozov.

“We hear the signal that is coming from the parliamentary opposition – or the systemic opposition, as it is called nowadays – which is on the country’s side, which does not support orange forces and which understands that the country’s security is a priority that mobilizes and unites all political forces. This is a very important signal, which the society has heard in the recent times,” Morozov announced on Thursday (24 October) at an all-Russian meeting with the chairmen of electoral commissions of the constituent parts of the Russian Federation, which is being held in Snegiri.

“When the political parties in the parliament vote in solidarity on the most fundamental issues that concern the unity of the country and its security – this is a very correct and important signal sent to the modern society, to citizens,” Morozov said.

“At the same time there is a part (of opposition), which is against the country, and we know these statements – ‘let’s give away the Urals’, ‘let’s give away the Arctic’ – these are the ones who are against the country. And a dialogue with them is possible as a debate in terms of the law – whether one is or is not allowed to do things like these and whether these are calls for extremist actions. But let the lawyers answer this question,” he said.

Also, positions and ideas of this kind are of a destructive nature, Morozov stressed.

“This is, indeed, a small and destructive part (of the opposition), which works for the destruction of the country, while the remainder of the political system, which is much larger, is in competition among itself but it is on the country’s side. And this is of fundamental importance,” Morozov said.

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#10
Democracy is bigger lie than Communism – prominent Orthodox priestMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Protopope Dimitry Smirnov, the head of the patriarch’s commission on family and protection of mothers and children, believes that democracy is based on lies.

“It’s just a lie. Communist is also a lie, but Communism has religious features. Communism seems to take a lot from true religions. The Communists have their own teaching, their own “Holy Scripture.” They have their own rituals. They have their martyrs, their have their prophets. They have their heroes. I would say they have their messianic promises,” the priest told the radio station Radonezh.

As for democracy, “people have never had real power anywhere,” the priest said. “Democracy is simply deceit. Because all people are different and it cannot be that one person equals one vote,” the priest said.

The priest believes that all issues are resolved with money in a democratic state and “the transition from monarchy to capitalism was carried out by moneybags for their own benefit.” “In the olden days, if you were a duke you were a duke, regardless of whether you had money or not. Now I decide if you are a duke or not. And if I need to, I buy your daughter, marry her and become a duke too, I take that title. And if you want to become a president? No problem. You want to work in politics? That will cost this much,” Smirnov said.

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#11
Kremlin advises municipal authorities to cooperate with NGOsMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russian presidential chief-of-staff Sergei Ivanov has called on the municipal authorities to cooperate with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) instead of shunning them.

“You should not be afraid of NGOs. Rather, you ought to work together with them,” Ivanov said at a meeting of city mayors and city managers on Thursday.

Practice shows that the municipal authorities are able to function far more effectively if they take advantage of the potential of public movements, citizens’ action groups, socially oriented NGOs and independent experts, he said.

“Certainly, we have different NGOs. But they include a very large number of NGOs that actually do a lot of good,” he added.

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#12
www.russiatoday.com
October 24, 2013
Moscow authorities license 20,000-strong opposition rallyThe Moscow city directorate for security has agreed to a request by opposition groups to hold a 20,000-strong rally in support of the so-called ‘Bolotnaya prisoners’ on October 27.

The head of the directorate, Aleksey Mayorov, told journalists on Thursday that city officials had approved the activists’ application, even though it will require the blockage of several streets in the city center. Mayorov added that despite the high number of participants stated in the request, he personally did not expect that a lot of people would take part in the rally.

A short time earlier, one of the organizers of the event, Pyotr Tsarkov, informed reporters that the Moscow Mayor’s office had licensed the march from Pushkin Square to Turgenev Square along the Boulevard Ring, with a major meeting at the terminal point.

Initially the opposition groups wanted not to stop at Turgenev, but to walk slightly over 1km further on to the Federal Security Service headquarters on Lubyanka Square and lay flowers to the monument to the victims of political repressions, the so-called Solovetsk Stone. This first request was turned down over security concerns, and also because it required changes to the routes of public transport, which the City Transport Directorate rejected.

The rally is officially dedicated to the Bolotnaya Prisoners ­ about two dozen people who were detained after clashes between protesters and police that took place on May 6, 2012, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. Following the riots, law enforcers instigated criminal cases into calls for mass unrest and violence against representatives of law enforcement bodies.

Two of the detained have already been sentenced to 2.5 years and 4.5 years behind bars respectively, and one man has been declared mentally ill and sent to a closed psychiatric ward for compulsory treatment. Eleven people are currently on trial and other separate cases are still in the investigation phase.

It should be noted that the Presidential Council for Human Rights has prepared and submitted to the president a bill on amnesty that, if approved, would cover all Bolotnaya cases. The planned amnesty is connected to the 20th anniversary of the modern Russian Constitution, which will be celebrated on December 12.

President Vladimir Putin said in mid-September that he personally considered it possible to grant amnesty to the Bolotnaya convicts and suspects, but added that this should be done only after the cases pass all legal stages and urged serious consideration in discussing the problem.

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#13
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
October 25, 2013
What awaits Russian science?
The country’s scholars and scientists are outraged by reforms of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Andrey Vaganov, special to RBTH
Andrey Vaganov is the deputy editor-in-chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta.A recently passed law on reforming the Russian Academy of Sciences is aimed at segregating scientific research from academic property management. The government argues the move will free science of an irrelevant burden. Academics, for their part, are convinced the new law will stall scientific progress by making research dependent on bureaucracy.

On June 28, 2013, the Russian government submitted to the State Duma the draft federal law “On the Russian Academy of Sciences, Reorganizing State Academies of Sciences, and Amending Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation.” On Sep. 18, the State Duma passed the bill in its third and final reading. The bill was signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on Sept. 27.

A fairly radical reform is now awaiting Russia’s academic sector, which has been historically associated with the natural sciences.

There are two principal provisions in the new law:

1. “The Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (RAMS), Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (RAAS)… shall be annexed to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) on the commencement date of this Federal Law”;

2. “The organizations previously reporting to RAS, RAMS, RAAS… shall report to a special federal executive body authorized by the Russian government to exercise the functions and powers as the owner of federal property allocated to the aforementioned organizations” (As has already been announced, the executive body in question is the newly formed Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations, or FASO for short).

In other words, the primary goal pursued by the authors of the reform (and there can be no doubt that the relevant political decision was taken by President Putin himself) is to preclude the administration of Russia’s academies from having a say in how budget funds intended for scientific research should be distributed.

We should note that the property mentioned in the law is indeed immense. RAS currently encompasses 436 research institutes and organizations, together employing 48,000 research fellows. RAAS has 198 research institutions and over 300 science services organizations at its disposal. RAMS controls 33 research and educational establishments.

To be completely precise, the Russian academies will not find themselves completely isolated from budget allocation decision-making. However, they will now have to have their budgets assessed and will be made accountable to the special government agency for the money spent on basic science. Most academics treat this as nothing short of bureaucracy barging in on scientific research.

One amendment to the bill proposed by the academic community was turned down at the last moment. The new law introduces a three-year moratorium on electing new members to the reformed Academy of Sciences; however, even before the bill was submitted to parliament on June 28, RAS had announced that the next scheduled round of elections would be held in December 2013.

The Academy then asked the legislators to permit this last round to be held prior to the three-year ban. Unfortunately, parliament declined the motion. One can only feel for the aggrieved potential candidates so close to gaining RAS membership.

The academic community’s scathing criticism of the new law boils down to the following three points:

1) Academies will be robbed of their independence in choosing the priority areas of scientific research;

2) Government officials will never be able to manage academic property effectively; in fact, their ulterior motive is to embezzle that property, primarily the academies’ real estate and land;

3) The way the reform was planned in complete secrecy from the academic community is outrageous.

Shortly before the State Duma passed the bill in its final reading, the Contemporary and Future Science in Russia conference (a public organization uniting RAS scientists, which was set up in the summer of 2013) prepared an urgent address to the academic community, which reads, inter alia:

“On September 17, the Russian State Duma is planning to take an unprecedented decision that will destroy the Russian Academy of Sciences, causing irreparable damage to Russian science and to our country in general. The bill’s version, No. 305828-6, which was submitted by the presidential administration to the Federal Assembly, calls for re-subordinating RAS institutes to a newly created bureaucratic structure that is a priori incapable of handling science…”

In the meantime, a less alarmist portion of the academic community has been busy drafting a statute on FASO. This is where real intensive work is currently being done, although it might not be obvious to the public. The most important provision in the draft statute reads as follows:

“The Agency head shall take any decisions only with the approval of the scientific coordination council.”

The council, for its part, will be manned by “scientists conducting scientific research on a universally recognized international level, including those working abroad; scientific organizations reporting to the Agency; and other scientific organizations.”

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#14
Amnesty will promote civil accord, dialogue between society, authorities – Russian rights activistsMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – The leaders of Russian human rights organizations believe a broad amnesty timed with the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution will help establish effective dialogue between the authorities and civil society.

“Will the authorities find the energy to build relations with civil society again” The best way out of this deadlock would be broad amnesty, which will apply to all people convicted for political cases and everyone who, with a high degree of probability could have fallen victim to punitive justice. These people should, no doubt, include all Yukos case suspects, all Greenpeace activists, and all ‘May 6′ prisoners,” the human rights activists’ statement posted on the website of the Moscow Helsinki group says.

“The number of political prisoners is increasing rapidly. The Pussy Riot case, the Bolotnaya case, the case involving scientists charged with espionage, the Krasnodar environmentalists’ case, and the Arctic Sunrise case show the authorities’ readiness to openly ignore elementary norms of law. Aggression is increasing in society, and the recent ethnic violence are just its first symptoms,” the activists said.

“This broad amnesty is the last opportunity to promote civil accord and real dialogue with the authorities in Russia,” the document, which was signed by Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Lev Ponomaryov, Sergei Kovalyov, Valery Borshchev, Svetlana Gannushkina, Alexander Cherkasov, and other activists, says.

Last week, the human rights council sent proposals to the Russian president on the draft amnesty, which may be announced to mark the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution (December 12).

Vladimir Putin earlier ordered the human rights council to prepare appropriate proposals.

The human rights council said this amnesty may apply to the Bolotnaya case suspects, the Yukos case suspects, and many people convicted for non-violent crimes that did no lead to grave consequences.

Andrei Babushkin, a member of the human rights council, said the amnesty may apply to 200,000 people.

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#15
Forthcoming amnesty stirs up interest to Mikhail Khodorkovsky future lot
By Itar-Tass World Service writer Tamara ZamyatinaMOSCOW, October 24 (Itar-Tass) – Friday marks ten years since the arrest of the former co-owner of the YUKOS oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In this connection and in view of an amnesty to be declared on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution, interest to this person has again flourished in society and among experts.

The Lavada Centre polling agency dedicated one of its opinion polls among Muscovites to this subject. Two thirds of the polled (65 percent) said they would welcome Khodorkovsky’s release.

“It is not typical of me to share popular views but in this case I am joining the majority,” Sergei Karaganov, a department dead at the Higher School of Economics and a member of the presidential human rights council, told Itar-Tass, commenting on the poll’s results.

“The court ruling must be implemented and then Khorodkovsky may be set free,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house with the United Russia party, told Itar-Tass when asked to say what he thought about Khodorkovsky’s future lot.

As many as 32 percent of respondents said they were confident that it was up to President Vladimir Putin to decide whether to amnesty Khodrkovsky or not. Thirty-nine percent said they were sure Khodorkovky would impact the political situation in the country when released.

He is to go at large on August 25, 2014.

Over the past year, Khodorkovsky’s son, Pavel, has grown more optimistic about his father’s chances to be released when his prison term is over. In an interview with the BBC Russian Service he said, “Many things have changed in Russia. Many various things are taking place on Russia’s domestic political arena, and the authorities are preoccupied with other matters. So, I think the time is ripe now.”

He also said that if his father was finally released he would try to talk him to move to the United States, where he himself was living. He said he had not seen his father for ten years and the latter had never seen his granddaughter. Family reunion is what Khodorkovsky Jr. wants most of all. In his words, his father told him he owed much to his family and was not planning to do business any longer.

“I would like to hope that Mikhail Khodorkovsky would be set free,” human rights activist Ella Pamfilova, who leads the nationwide movement Civil Dignity, said on Thursday. “It is highly probable that he would fall under the amnesty on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution.”

Kirill Kabanov, a member of the presidential human rights council, who took part in the elaboration of proposals for the head of state on the forthcoming amnesty, said in an interview with Itar-Tass, “In technical terms, Khodorkovsky might be set free in line with the amnesty concept worked out by the council. But it was our principled position not to politicize this document, so we mentioned no particular names.”

As for his personal position, Kabanov said he believed Khodorkovsky could be amnestied. “I think YUKOS’ former co-owner is not going to get involved in politics, the opposition now has new leaders. But he can do much good to society in the areas of education and charity. Khodorkovsky’s previous projects, such as the School of Future, have proved to be very useful for the ruling United Russia party,” he noted.

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#16
Volgograd Female Suicide Bomber’s Mother, Neighbors, Profile BomberIzvestia
October 22, 2013
Report and interview with mother of Volgograd suicide bomber, Ravzat Asiyalova, conducted by Yelizaveta Mayetnaya and German Petelin: “She Put On the Hijab Three Years Ago, When She Met Her Russian Husband.”

The Volgograd female suicide bomber’s mother, Ravzat Asiyalova, tells Izvestiya that she constantly argued with her daughter over her convictions.

The Dagestani village of Gunib, where suicide bomber Naida Asiyalova is from, is located 170 kilometers from Makhachkala. Asiyalova blew herself up on Monday in a bus in Volgograd. Six other people died along with her, and 32 were injured.

The mother of the female suicide bomber, Ravzat Asiyalova, still lives in Gunib, where she works at the post office. She has three daughters, and Naida was the youngest.

“She is disabled and walks with a heavy limp,” sources in the rural administration told Izvestiya. “We feel sorry for her, for Ravzat. Her little girl never came home anymore after she got involved with the Wahhabites. But the mother is a simple, honest woman, and her other daughters are normal.”

Neighbors say that Ravzat came to see them on the eve of the terrorist act. She had been crying, and talked about Naida.

“It was as if she had a premonition of some kind. She sat here and cried,” says Akhmadulla, a neighbor of the Asiyalovs “She kept talking about Naida and complaining that she never comes to visit and rarely calls. She had been married to a Turk. She found him in Moscow, and that is where she got married. She had gone to Moscow to work seven years ago, and found a job as a salesgirl. (Ravzat) said that her daughter was sick. There was something wrong with her stomach (there were posts on the social networks to the effect that she is ‘decaying alive,’ and they were even collecting money for her treatment. Supposedly, for the last two years she had been living on strong painkillers — Izvestiya).

According to the version of sources close to the investigation, Asiyalova’s illness could have been fabricated, and the money collected through the Internet went for financing the militants. According to information of the special services, she met Dmitriy Skolov on the Internet, and then recruited him. In July of 2012, Sokolov disappeared after taking Arabic language lessons. His parents even looked for him through the broadcast, “Zhdi Menya” (Wait for Me), and appealed to volunteers for help.

In an interview with Izvestiya, Ravzat Asiyalova herself said that she had learned about the terrorist act from reports on the Internet.

“The last time my daughter called me was a month ago,” Ravzat says. “She rarely called, because I always scolded her. She had been married to a Turk, and was normal. Then she divorced him and got married again, this time to a Russian. After that, she put on the hidjab (headscarf worn by Muslim women — translator’s note ) and began praying. But I do not like these hidjabs. I always told her to take it off. And so she did not call, so she would not have to listen to me or get me upset. Because we always had scandals over that hidjab and over her convictions.”

(Correspondent) Her last husband was Dmitriy Sokolov, who was 10 years her junior and who, according to information of the special services, had prepared the explosive device for her?

(Ravzat Asiyalova) Well, what are you saying, how would I know that?! She never told me any such thing. I never saw her last husband. They never came here together.

(Correspondent) Where did she live most recently?

(Ravzat Asiyalova) She told me that she was living in Makhachkala, but she never said specifically what she did, no matter how many times I asked her.

(Correspondent) They write everywhere that Naida had a congenital illness of the mouth, and that you sent her to the Buynakskiy Children;s Home. Is that true?

(Ravzat Asiyalova) Why, what are you saying? Who thought that up? She grew up here, in Gunib, together with her sisters. And she went to Moscow to earn money.

(Correspondent) And what terrible illness did she have, for which money was even being collected for her?

(Ravzat Asiyalova) Her stomach hurt. Because she wanted to lose weight and was always taking weight-loss pills, so she ruined her stomach. I did not hear anything about money, and she did not have anything that horrible. She never told me about that.

(Correspondent) Have you already been questioned by investigators? Will you go to identify the body?

(Ravzat Asiyalova) Yes, I am going to the Investigative Committee in Makhachkala. I do not know anything more. And how could I? I am a simple mother. I do not know whether I will see her or not. Why did she do this? Who will answer that for me now?

The village of Gunib was the last stronghold of the Imam Shamil. Russian forces took it in August of 1859. For the past 15 years, Gunib has been subjected to regular “purges.” The last time it was in the crime reports was three years ago. In August of 2010, five militants were killed there as a result of special operations, including the so-called Emir of Khasavyurt Rayon, Rustam Munikiyev, as well as the organizer of the terrorist acts in the Moscow metro — Magomedali Vagabov. The latter was considered to be a “Shariat judge,” was appointed by Doku Umarov, and was the number two man in the hierarchy of the “eImarat Kavkaz” (Caucasus Emirate) — one of the largest unlawful militant formations in the North Caucasus. Back in 2010, the Supreme Court had banned the activity of this organization for its propaganda of the ideas of “Wahhabism” and “Jihad.”

According to investigative data, Asiyalova was wearing a homemade explosive belt. A passport was found next to the female suicide bomber. Her husband, Dmitriy Sokolov, is listed in reports as an active member of the NBF (National Bolshevik Front), under the nickname of Zhiraf. Asiyalova was known among the militants as Amaturakhman. It has already been determined that Asiyalova did indeed have health problems. She was even preparing documents for court against the Moscow Dental Clinic, where she had contracted an infection. Although ultimately, she did not go to court, but hastily went off to Makhachkala.

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#18
Russian rights rows put pressure on Sochi sponsors
By Keith Weir
October 25, 2013LONDON (Reuters) – With the Winter Olympics in Sochi little more than 100 days away, sponsors face the challenge of getting their message across without falling foul of any consumer backlash against Russia’s human rights record.

International concern over Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law has prompted fears that the public might turn against brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Samsung that help to fund the Olympics in exchange for global marketing rights to use its name and five-ringed symbol.

Host nation Russia’s image abroad has been further dented by its detention last month of 30 Greenpeace activists protesting about oil drilling in Arctic waters, and cases of black football players saying they have been racially abused by Russian fans.

“Sochi potentially is the danger Games,” said Peter Walshe, a global account director of marketing company Millward Brown. “With these major world events, companies are looking for a halo effect for the brand. Sochi is big and high profile but such events are becoming platforms for social and political protest.”

Attempts to divorce the Olympics from their political context have always proved futile but social media now makes it much simpler for protest groups to campaign remotely from a Games.

“Social media has transformed for ever the level of risk that sponsors and athletes take into events,” said Andy Sutherden, global head of sports at public relations firm Hill+Knowlton.

One current online campaign is urging Coca-Cola executives to speak out about the anti-gay propaganda law and put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has staked huge personal prestige on running a successful Games.

SPONSORS ON THE SPOT

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has acknowledged that American sponsors in particular are concerned about the impact of the legislation on the Games to be held in southern Russia from February 7-23.

The law forbids the dissemination of information on homosexuality to minors. Critics cite it as evidence of a growing lack of tolerance for minorities in Russia, while Putin denies it is designed to curb gay rights.

The critics have been given fresh ammunition this week when Manchester City football player Yaya Toure, who is from Ivory Coast, accused CSKA Moscow fans of racial abuse during a Champions League match in the Russian capital.

Toure was quoted on Friday as saying that black players could boycott the 2018 World Cup, which Russia will also host, if it does not tackle racism in the stands. The European football federation UEFA has opened disciplinary proceedings against CSKA Moscow, which has denied Toure’s accusation.

The Olympic movement is partly funded by 10 global sponsors who pay around $100 million each for the marketing rights over a four-year cycle covering a winter and summer Games.

Local organisers in Sochi have also done one-off deals with companies including Germany’s Volkswagen which will be the official car supplier for the Games.

Sponsors have been at pains to stress their support for diversity without getting dragged into direct criticism of Russia.

“We do not condone human rights abuses, intolerance or discrimination of any kind anywhere in the world,” Coca-Cola said in a recent statement. “As a sponsor since 1928, we believe the Olympic Games are a force for good that unite people through a common interest in sports.”

Japan’s Panasonic and South Korea’s Samsung issued similar statements, underlining their belief in the Olympic spirit – the “feelgood” factor generated by major sports events which sponsors want to tap in to.

Sponsors have taken solace from an IOC statement in late July that the anti-gay propaganda legislation would not affect people attending or taking part in the Games.

“We are engaged with the IOC on this important topic and support its recent statement that sport is a human right and the Games should be open to all,” Panasonic said in a statement.

RAMPING UP

The clock is ticking towards Sochi, which will be only 100 days away on October 29 and sponsors are starting to build up their marketing campaigns.

South Korea’s Samsung said this week it would hand out its latest Galaxy smartphone to every competitor in Sochi and feature more than 80 athletes in its promotions.

The Winter Games do not have quite the same commercial appeal as a Summer Games or football World Cup, which can sustain longer running promotional campaigns.

Hill+Knowlton’s Sutherden, who worked with Olympic sponsors Procter & Gamble, Omega and Visa on their London 2012 campaigns, said it was important for companies to time their marketing campaigns to ensure they were fresh as attention focuses on Sochi after Christmas.

Sutherden felt companies should remind Russia that its original aim of hosting the Games, on which it has spent $50 billion, was to project itself on the global stage as a modern and forward-looking nation. “My advice to sponsors would be to re-read the bid campaign book and to help Russia to celebrate what it wants to be remembered for,” he said.

However, he said companies should be aware of the dangers of tying their brands to sports events in countries like Russia and Brazil, which will host the 2014 football World Cup and the summer Olympics in Rio two years later. Brazil was rocked by mass protests over inequality earlier this year when it staged the Confederations Cup, a warm-up for the World Cup.

“Sochi is going to herald en era of increased reputational risk of being associated with high profile sports events.”

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#19
www.opendemocracy.net
October 24, 2013
The indiscreet charm of the Russian cynic
By Mark Lipovetsky
Mark Lipovetsky is a leading Russian literary, film and cultural critic and an associate professor at the University of Colorado at BoulderRussia’s foremost historian of culture reflects on the cultural functions of cynicism in Soviet and post-Soviet society. He ruefully concludes that Russia has yet to escape the Soviet paradigm: the Pussy Rioters, in their demonstrations against official cynicism, were merely the latest incarnation of a familiar character ­ the Soviet trickster.

The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (internet versions of which keep on being blithely republished) defined cynicism thus:

‘from the point of view of society, cynicism stems from two sources.  Firstly, the cynicism of power, characterised by exploitative ruling groups wielding power and achieving their selfish aims in ways that are openly amoral e.g. fascism, the cult of personality etc. Secondly, there are the rebellious ideas and actions (like vandalism) of groups and individuals, who have to endure the yoke of injustice and powerlessness, who suffer from the ideological and moral hypocrisy of the exploiter class, but with no hope of changing the situation and, thus, mired in a spiritual void.

There was an additional sentence to the effect that communist morality is against cynicism in any form.

There are plenty of examples of the ‘cynicism of power’ in the current political situation in Russia. I fear that today’s ‘liberal morality’ will also come down against cynicism in any form.  As a cultural historian, I should like to reflect on the cultural functions of cynicism, which paradoxically both link and divide late- and post-Soviet culture, thus enabling us to see a connection between the cynicism of the authorities and cynical protest.

The outsider

In his book Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: the last Soviet generation (2006), Alexei Yurchak gives a typical example of the contradictions of late Soviet culture: you could at the same time be sitting at a Komsomol meeting, reading Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago under the desk, and voting for any barbarous motion proposed. This, Yurchak suggested, was the essence of the ‘performative shift’ in late socialist culture. By the end of the 70s rhetoric had become completely formalised, and political loyalty reduced to purely ritual gestures, like voting. Meanwhile the intelligentsia carried on their real social and cultural life elsewhere.

Yurchak coins the term ”living vnye’  [outside, beyond] to describe a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, from Leningrad’s ‘Saigon’ intellectual circle [based on the name of a Leningrad café in the 70s], various rock clubs and studios, and a group of theoretical physicists, to such representatives of the artistic underground as ‘Mitki’, the necrorealists, and Moscow conceptualists. Such ways of being an outsider were equally opposed to the authorities and the dissident movement. Their non-conformism was non-political. If anything united these social and cultural forms, then it was styob. This term describes the comic adoption of an official or authoritarian symbol or ritual, the act of hyperidentifying with an authoritarian rhetorical construction in such a way as to undermine it by decontextualising it. Styob was the stock in trade of journalists during perestroika, and in the post-Soviet years it became a convenient kind of conformism. But it was in the huddled kitchens and smoke-filled dens of the 70s and 80s that this style ­ a sort of populist post-modernism ­ was actually born.

This is why the ‘last Soviet generation’ (born in the early 60s) managed the transition to post-Soviet capitalism so smoothly. Why the Komsomol [Rn. communist youth movement] leaders appeared to have been well prepared for the role of oligarch. Why the collapse of the Soviet system, previously unimaginable, came as no great surprise to their contemporaries (only producing nostalgia after the event). In short, Yurchak sees styob and the outsider phenomenon as having prepared for the implosion of the Soviet system and its sudden collapse.

String pulling and the grey economy

Yurchak is mainly concerned with culture.  The analogy to ‘living vnye’ in the economy is blat [Rn. old boy network] or the grey economy. The social stratum this produced was extremely active; it enjoyed the protection (and tacit approbation) of official bureaucracy, which was given to issuing tirades against the masters of the grey economy and the string pullers, but contented itself with only occasionally clamping down on them.

Alyona Ledeneva has studied these phenomena extensively.  She demonstrates that blat and other similar forms of social interaction existed throughout the Soviet period rather than appearing at the time of its decline, as our ‘new left’ friends seem to think.  And, moreover, her analysis shows that the very existence of the Soviet social and economic system was in many ways dependent on these elements, which are outside the system (even subversive!).  It wasn’t only that they gave rank and file citizens access to theoretically ‘guaranteed’, though actually inaccessible, perks and food. They underpinned the functioning of the planned economy.  The ‘tolkachi’ [Rn. literally pushers, who used their connections to help fulfil the quotas at e.g. factories] and the ‘special services’ in big shops etc. exemplified this system.

Cynicism as survival mechanism

As I see it, cynicism is what unites all these phenomena. Not ethically i.e., as a ‘truculent frankness, lack of shame, disregard for morality, decency, for anything generally recognised and respected’, as defined in the Dictionary of Ethics  (Oleg Drobnitsky and Igor Kon, 1975), but in the specifically philosophical sense, as proposed by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in his well-known intellectual bestseller Critique of Cynical Reason (1987). According to this philosopher, the main way in which mass culture made the Enlightenment project its own in the 20th century was through ‘universal diffuse cynicism’. Rejecting Marx’s definition of ideology, Sloterdijk describes cynicism as ‘enlightened false consciousness’. In other words, it is only pretending to be ideologised. Cynicism offers modern man a pseudo-rationalist strategy of socialisation, a means of reconciling personal interests and those of the society (or ideology) by breaking subjectivity down into social masks (or personae), which are unstable andauthentic or false in equal measure.  It is through the constant play of these masks that the cynical self finds its realisation:

‘… the present-day servant of the system can very well do with the right hand what the left hand never allowed. By day, colonizer, at night, colonized; by occupation, valorizer and administrator, during leisure time, valorized and administered; officially a cynical functionary, privately a sensitive soul; at office a giver of orders, ideologically a discussant; outwardly a follower of the reality principle, inwardly a subject oriented towards pleasure; functionally an agent of capital, intentionally a democrat; with respect to the system a functionary of reification, with respect toLebenswelt  (lifeworld), someone who achieves self-realization; objectively a strategist of destruction, subjectively a pacifist; basically someone who triggers catastrophes, in one’s own view, innocence personified <…> This mixture is our moral status quo.’ (Sloterdijk P, Critique of Critical Reason, trans. Michael Eldred, University of Minnesota Press, 1987)

Sloterdijk has little to say about the Soviet experience, because he examines cynicism as a product of modern bourgeois society. He is, however, not as naïve as Bertrand Russell, who wrote:  ‘Young men in Russia are not cynical because they accept, on the whole, the Communist philosophy, and they have a great country full of natural resources, ready to be exploited by the help of intelligence. The young have therefore a career before them, which they feel to be worthwhile. You do not have to consider the ends of life when in the course of creating Utopia you are laying a pipeline, building a railway, or teaching peasants to use Ford tractors simultaneously on a four-mile front. Consequently the Russian youth are vigorous and filled with ardent beliefs.’ (On Youthful Cynicism, 1929)

I think that Slavoj i ek was the first to apply the Sloterdijk model to the Soviet experience, though he only analysed the logic of power.  In his book The Plague of Fantasies (1997) he compares Stalinism with Fascism, saying ‘The paranoiac Nazis really believed in the Jewish conspiracy, while the perverted Stalinists actively devised “counterrevolutionary conspiracies” as a pre-emptive strike. The greatest surprise for the Stalinist investigator was to discover that the subject accused of being a German or American spy really was a spy: in Stalinism proper, confessions counted only in so far as they were false and extorted …’.  And in the book Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (2001) he describes in even more detail ‘a cynical attitude towards the official ideology was what the regime really wanted ­ the greatest catastrophe for the regime would have been its own ideology to be taken seriously, and realized by its subjects.’

Some of i ek’s conclusions chime exactly with historical research into the Soviet experience. Oleg Kharkhordin in his The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (1999), which deals with the Soviet purges and the origins of the idea of personality in the USSR, writes about the results of this process: ‘Their double-faced life is not a painful split forced upon their heretofore unitary self; on the contrary, this split is normal for them because they originate as individuals by the means of split. […] One of the steps in this long development was individual perfection of the mechanism for constant switching between the intimate and the official, a curious kind of unofficial self-training, a process that comes later that the initial stage of dissimilation conceived as “closing off” (pritvorstvo) and one that we may more aptly call dissimilation as “changing faces” (litsemerie) ­ and, we might add, as its summation ­ cynicism.’

In her book Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth Century Russia (2005), the well-known social historian of Stalinism Sheila Fitzpatrick makes no reference to Sloterdijk, but uses many documents from the 1920s and 1930s to demonstrate the constantly shifting logic of class discrimination and how it compelled the man in the Soviet street to manipulate his own identity, Sloterdijk-style, rewriting his autobiography and seeking his place in the official and unofficial systems of social relations.  Operating in the two systems would appear to be an impossibility, their aims and principles being incompatible. But this was the unwritten norm of social survival.

Soviet tricksters

One of Fitzpatrick’s chapters, called ‘The World of Ostap Bender’ [hero of 1920s and 1930s novels by Il’f and Petrov], deals with the many Soviet imposters and swindlers.  She concludes ‘Soviet con men, as virtuosos of self-invention, had their place in the great revolutionary and Stalinist project of reforging the self and society. In a prescriptive sense, to be sure, Bender was scarcely a New Soviet Man­but in a society of Old Pre-Soviet People struggling to reinvent themselves, who was? Bored by the construction of socialism, Bender and his fellow con men were exemplars of self-construction. This makes us look more closely at the building metaphor (stroitel’stvo sotsializma) that was at the heart of the prewar Stalinism. Was impersonation, the tricksters’ specialty, its flip side?’  In other words, it was cynicism, the artistic image of which is Ostap Bender, that embodied the most widespread and, moreover, the most viable model of how to adapt to conditions of Soviet modernity. I am in no way suggesting that all Soviet people were cynics, but I will nevertheless risk the assertion that cynicism was the most popular and attractive model for modern Soviet man.

Fitzpatrick’s interest in tricksters and Ostap Bender, as examples of New Soviet Man, is not fortuitous, but completely logical. The pantheon of brilliant Soviet tricksters was unfailingly popular in official and unofficial, adult and children’s, literature of the Soviet period.  Ostap Bender, Benya Krik [Russian/Jewish gangster in stories by Isaak Babel], Korovyov and Begemot [from Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita], Vasily Tyorkin [peasant soldier created by Alexander Tvardovsky] and a host of names from the cinema. And who, if not tricksters, were the heroes of favourite Soviet jokes, including Chapayev [Vasily, celebrated Red army commander and butt of many jokes] and his batman Petka?  Tricksters (disguised, of course) become the model for many underground phenomena: from Venichka [Moskva ­ Petushki, novel by V. Yerofeyev] to authors who turned their lives into an unending performance such as ‘Abram Tertz’ [pseudonym of writer Andrei Sinyavsky 1925-97], D.A. Prigov [un underground poet and artist, 1940-2007], and the ‘Mitki’].

The trickster played a dual role in Soviet culture. On the one hand, he provided cultural legitimacy to Soviet cynicism, even lending it a symbolic aura. The cynical split- or multi-personality may have been essential to survive and endure enforced participation in the grey economy and society. But, as a rule, this was accompanied by feelings of guilt and shame, compounded by the official Soviet rhetoric which demonised bourgeois conformism and interest in material comforts. The charming and versatile Soviet tricksters removed the feelings of guilt that Soviet readers and spectators might experience, turning the battle for survival into a jolly game with contradictions between Soviet speak and real life. The best example of this is one of the most important Soviet novels, The Master and Margarita, where a gang of tricksters led by the moralist-trickster, Woland confronts and dismantles the hierarchy of Soviet cynics, headed by Pontius Pilate, the ‘eternal’ cynic from the gospels.

This is not by chance ­ the Soviet trickster is the only possible alternative to cynicism. Sloterdijk maintains that cynicism cannot be attacked by any rational or emotional criticism; next to it idealism or morality look simply stupid.  For this reason and to counterbalance cynicism, he puts forward the category ‘kynicism’ (originating, according to him, withDiogenes of Sinope). ‘Cynicism can only be stemmed by kynicism, not by morality. Only a joyful kynicism of ends is never tempted to forget that life has nothing to lose except itself.’

Kynicism can be regarded as a joyful and non-pragmatic aspect of cynicism, displayed with magnificent artistry by the best loved Soviet tricksters. Their roguery and tricks are not aimed at achieving any of life’s obvious goals (on the contrary ­ Ostap’s life loses any meaning when he gets his million) but a way of being free in circumstances which do not offer freedom.  This jolly, I would even say life-enhancing, cynicism could also explain the legendary charms of such cultural figures as Faina Ranyevskaya [actress 1896-1984, famous for her aphorisms] and Nikita Bogoslovsky [composer 1913-2004], Mikhail Svetlov [Soviet/Russian poet 1903-64] and Nikolai Erdman [dramatist and screenwriter 1900-70], Viktor Shklovsky [one of the fathers of Formalism in literary criticism 1893-1984] and Valentin Katayev [Soviet writer 1897-1986].

If we permit ourselves to extrapolate, then ­ developing this logic ­ it is not so difficult to surmise that the real alternative to systemic Soviet cynicism (the cynicism of power) is to be found in blat, the grey economy and in those late-Soviet phenomena described by Yurchak ­ styob, the culture of the outsider and indifference to politics in any of its manifestations, be they Soviet or anti-Soviet.

Post-Soviet cynicism

Post-Soviet developments would appear to have wrought considerable changes in these ideas.  For a start, the phenomenon of Soviet cynicism described above became the cultural and social mainstream in the 90s, so the gap between societal moralistic rhetoric and the realities of life finally closed. But this didn’t make things any easier. The move into the social and cultural foreground of ostentatious, but by no means altruistic, cynics such as the late [oligarch] Boris Berezovsky and the immortal Vladimir Zhirinovsky spoilt the charm of the Soviet cynic. Which is why the various attempts at remaking Soviet trickster classics in the 90s and 00s were total flops: Vladimir Bortko’s massively pretentious The Master and Margarita TV series and Oleg Menshikov’s monumentally narcissistic performance as Ostap Bender in Yuliana Shilkina’sadaptation of The Golden Calf.

If one accepts this, it becomes clear why post-Soviet capitalism is as little like modern-day capitalism as it is like socialism.  A sort of negative convergence has taken place. Blat should disappear when ‘anything can be bought’, but, as Ledeneva has shown, post-Soviet, quasi-capitalist relations reproduce the Soviet blat matrix ­ and not just in the ‘wild 90s’. It reached its peak in Putin’s Russia. Her research shows that what we might call ‘Soviet blat capitalism’ has devoured the whole social and economic system.

In the light of this evolution of Soviet cynicism, Putin’s ‘neo-traditionalist twist’, described in such detail by Vladimir Dubin and Lev Gudkov, acquires special meaning, though presented as an alternative to cynicism. This political discourse is itself openly cynical. The conservative mythologies on offer are primitivising and reductionist. They appear to represent a liberation from ambiguity and ambivalence (the ‘single history textbook’). But they are formalised and empty (i.e. cynical) displays of the monolith that is ‘unity with the people’. The enforced introduction of ‘moral values’ by means of prohibitions, court verdicts and plain and simple pogroms…all this is familiar to historians. In the context of the Weimar Republic, Sloterdijk sees projects like these as having played their part in the establishment of Hitler’s political regime. This brings us back to the late Soviet performative shift described by Yurchak.

I do not share the popular view that we are once again entering a period of totalitarianism.  I think it’s the other way round: we are dealing with the cynicism peculiar to a government, which is presenting itself as ‘fighting cynicism’ in order to conceal its own (though actually it’s not that bothered).  But the very cynicism of those ‘doing battle with cynicism’ is the direct descendant of Soviet cynicism. It is significant that the super-spy Stirlitz, so hugely popular in the 1960s and after, has become the main symbol of Putinist social morality.  He’s the epitome of late Soviet cynicism: although he manages to conceal his knavery (he’s a spy, after all), it comes out in the jokes about him.

And (probably) the most important…

As you will remember, it was the open, unconcealed cynicism of the government that provoked the protests of autumn 2011 ­ spring 2012. Until that moment the post-Soviet chatterati had resigned themselves to the level of cynicism which had become the cultural and political norm. They put up with it as best they could (cf. Sloterdijk) ‘though it left an aftertaste of elegant regret’. However, after the past and future president made that memorable statement about the job swap, people’s revulsion for such cynicism overrode their instinct for self-preservation. Interestingly and unexpectedly, the humour characterising that protest reverted to the old tradition of kynicism, which had fallen into disuse. Its lack of respect for authority and its power translated the ‘cynicism of power’ into the earthy language of everyday.

This process came to a head with the performative protest of Pussy Riot and their ensuing trial, which not only brought back the political power of the trickster image, but endowed it with new features. Female tricksters are extremely rare in Russian culture ­ Marilyn Jurich calls them ‘trickstars’ ­ which is what produced the split in the chattering classes.  This also served as a powerful demonstration that the main political problems are to be found in the cultural sphere: issues of gender and gender repression, religion and its relationship to the state and to society, cultural dissidence and the overall understanding of culture, both as a canon and a system of prohibitions or as a contradictory process and expansion of the limits of liberty. Nor can it be said of the Pussy Rioters, as it could of Soviet tricksters, that they reconcile us to the generally accepted cynicism, while endowing it with a sheen of artistic brilliance. On the contrary, they deprived cynicism of its glamour, which is why the reaction to them was so violent and so cruel.

The Pussy Riot protest was the act of a trickster (kynicism), resisting state cynicism. The fact that it had such a powerful effect shows that ‘large-scale aggressive demonstrations of cynical audacity’ (Sloterdijk) can serve to enlighten, as well as shock. But, for all its difference from Soviet times, the current situation still represents a stand-off between cynics and tricksters (kynics). This can only be bad news. If the Pussy Riot balaclavas are made from the same material as Ostap Bender’s naval cap, this means we are still living in the same ­Soviet ­ paradigm.  This paradigm is upheld by an invisible foundation of cynicism as a philosophy. This is the philosophy which unites the government and most of society; the gamekeepers and the poachers, the underground and the elite.

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#20
Vestnik Kavkaza/Komsomolskaya Pravda
http://vestnikkavkaza.net
Russia living in feudalism
By Andrei KonchalovskyIn March last year director Andrei Konchalovsky, known for his criticism of modern Russia, published in “Komsomolskaya Pravda” his article “Russia living in feudalism”. Recent events in Russia have made it since then even more relevant.

Modern Middle Ages

Presidential elections were held, and there were lots of comments about this. The elections have shown that the majority of Russians at the moment do not see any leader but Putin . It is usually said that the people are always right because they know better. I also have some hopes of changing government policy, and I hope that the government will realize that no new schools, hospitals, local government or the most advanced nanotechnology can help Russia cope with the medieval relationships between people. Feudalism nests here in every closet, worn-out boot, under the seat of an armored Bentley and in a gold Rolex on a sleek hand! And a man at the wheel of a Rolls Royce would treat his wife in the great tradition of the XIV century.

But, so far, neither the Kremlin nor most Russians realize what kind of society we live in. So I would like to find out how many centuries we have been lagging behind Europe. We cannot escape from Europe – we are not China or India, because in Russia there is Eastern Christianity ­ even though it has almost not been developed since the V century ­ which is still a European religion .

Coming to Europe, we are always surprised at the fact that the streets are clean, the people are polite, they do not throw trash out of the windows, vodka is not fake, etc.; and coming home, at first we notice all the ugliness, but we are quickly drawn into the normal life into which we were born.

It is very difficult to understand why “we” are not like “them” , and we look for an explanation in bad bosses, in the 70 years of Soviet power, even in the wrong president. And it is important that we are not the only nation to ask ourselves some questions like these. Many thinking people in Africa and in the Muslim world are trying to find the answer to this riddle. And no one suspects that the answer is surprising – in my opinion, the fact that Russia, like a number of other countries in Africa and the East, is living in a different historical dimension, or rather, in the Middle Ages. Naturally, we do not know and do not notice it, because it is impossible to objectively assess the entourage impact from inside. It is always easier to understand others than yourself.

I am convinced that different civilizations develop at different speeds .

I repeat, it is not easy to understand this! This is like the medieval man who could not imagine that at the very moment when he wakes up on the other side of the planet a billion people go to bed; so it is difficult for us to see the difference in the levels of the historical development of peoples.

The difference in time zones can be felt instantly using aircraft and flying to another part of the world, because the time difference causes physical discomfort – jet lag disorder: a person suffers from a headache, falls asleep at the wrong time, and so on, and we need some time to adjust to another hour of the day. So, in relation to the difference in the levels of development of the various nations I would use the term “historical jetlag”.

External signs of modernity which are available around the world – Coca -Cola, McDonald’s, Mercedes, jeans, rap and Harry Potter ­ are deceptive, because they do not change the established core values that define the behaviour of a person of a particular culture. In Saudi Arabia, an unfaithful wife can be decapitated, while her husband in his Brioni costume drives his Bentley in London!

And today, when I hear someone saying jokingly: “These are the Middle Ages” – I seriously see this as the truth.

From the oprichnina to bureaucracy

Let’s understand what determines the Middle Ages and why my assertion that Russia is living in feudalism is fair.

Feudalism (feudum is an allotment) is a European social system in medieval Europe; it had two main classes – feudal lords (landowners) and farmers working on the land and paying rent to the landowner. There was also a layer of armoured knights, serving people who defended the landlord from strangers’ raids, capture, and parasitised on by the same farmers.

This feudalism in Russia did not exist, as there were no feudal lords who could limit the power of the prince, and the princes were entirely dependent on the Grand Duke. And instead of the knights there was the prince’s retinue, which, like the knights, were fed through dues from the farmers. Like in Russia, there were no conditions for the emergence of an independent bourgeoisie, serving people existing at the expense of the worker did not meet any opposition. Ivan the Terrible had guardsmen, officials, judges, governors ­ parasitical classes which existed until the reforms of Alexander II. Of course, I am oversimplifying the historical process for you. Later, during the Soviet era, a new form of parasitism – the party bureaucracy ­ appeared, and robbery in the Soviet Union was carried out with the mediation of the state.

With perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union the people that received, for the first time in their life, unlimited freedom, used it in their own way and began to quickly return to their natural culture. Russian medieval traditions were revived in all their glory! Look around you ­ there are criminals everywhere raiding and killing for refusas to pay tribute or share assets! There are unfair courts and a pervasive willingness to break the law by any representative of the government.

It is useless to resist: there is no one to complain – the judges are deaf! There is Kushchyovskaya across the country – even slavery has been revived! What is this if not feudalism?

Why is this so? Every era produces basic values and concepts that guide the people in their daily lives. We have these values formed in the Middle Ages, and since then they have not changed.

I will speak about only four concepts, which, in my opinion, are the main ones.

Attitude to wealth

How do we relate to wealth? Do we rejoice when we see that our neighbour has become rich? Unfortunately, on the contrary: “He just stole or cheated – we would like to take away his wealth and divide equally!” – this thought is itching somewhere in the cerebellum. Although this hatred can be fair as regards our officials, we feel hostility to all successful people all over Russia. In feudal consciousness, the elevation of the neighbour is perceived as a threat to our own well-being.

American anthropologist George Foster describes this as follows: “…the farmer considers the surrounding reality as a place where all things necessary for life (land, money, health, friendship and love, social status and power) exist only in limited quantities and always in short supply … In a typical farmer (i.e. the feudal one) society people are firmly convinced that the individual or family can prosper only at the expense of others. Remember the saying: “My neighbour’s cow died ­ it’s not much, but it’s nice!”

So the idea of redistribution of wealth is the basis of the feudal-communal consciousness. Its appearance is understandable.

In those days wealth was measured by the amount of earthly possessions (“feud” in Latin is a piece of land ). Land exists in a constant amount on the planet, so land can only be reallocated. The feudal attitude to money, the same as to land, which can only be redistributed, gave rise to the conclusion that “the enrichment of the other is always at my expense.”

But in the XIV century, there is a new class – the bourgeoisie, which is not connected to the land and can be enriched by its skills, trade, crafts. The concept of wealth is beginning to change. The better you work, the more you get. You can be independent of the feudal lord, the Duke and the King himself! There is a new understanding of wealth – as a permanent value incremented as a result of widespread human efforts! It was a revolution in consciousness, which put an end to the era of feudalism.

The affluent bourgeois class – artisans and merchants – began to demand greater autonomy and create cities independent of the ruler.

In Russia, the emergence of cities with self-management was cruelly interrupted – a new class of Pskov and Novgorod trying to protect its independence was drowned in blood by Ivan the Terrible.

The Russian drama is that the bourgeoisie could not appear here until the beginning of the XX century, and the people in its main mass professed the values of the feudal clan system. With the victory of the Bolsheviks, the fledgling bourgeoisie was ruthlessly eradicated. This is understandable: the bourgeoisie is the main enemy of the Bolsheviks, because it would not give up its political rights!

As a result, we still perceive the rise of a neighbour as a threat to our well-being. Hence, there is the envy and the desire to throw shit at everyone who is more successful than us. That’s what I show in the film “Speckled Hen”, which the “defenders” of the Russian people do not like! But life many times confirmed the correctness of my analysis – the fate of those successful farmers who were forced to lose everything and go away by envious slackers.

In Russia, a person cannot be proud of his wealth. Even if he got it through honest work, he quickly tries to hide it behind the tall fence from the view of outsiders. Have not you noticed that after perestroika Russia has become the country with the highest fences?

In bourgeois society, wealth does not cause such hatred, and high fences cannot be built simply by law. It is not a surprise that the Baltic republics which had never fully surrendered to Russian “invaders”, in Soviet times were for us “little Europe”, where there were no high fences…

The degree of confidence

Think about whom you personally believe. And how many people believe you? In Russia no one believes anyone! Saying “Look around you and see if someone kicks around you” is the most striking proof of this. We do not trust the sales assistant in the store, our boss at work, the traffic police officer, the law, judges, the media, the government. The elections are a vivid example of the mutual distrust of the people and the state, and, like in the market, we are trying to notice others’ cheating . Where in Europe have you seen that? Low levels of trust are yet another sign of feudalism.

Many of you do not believe me, and everyone is thinking: “What is he criticising? It nust advantageous for him … or has he some ulterior motive?”

The lower the level of trust is, the more likely it is that those in power are forced to seek centralisation, manual control and, in the end authoritarianism, to influence the execution of orders.

In a feudal society the circle of trust is limited to family and close friends. Isn’t this somewhat familiar?

All that is outside the family causes complete indifference to the problems of “strangers” or even hostility. At a low level of confidence there is the medieval concept of “nepotism” – the appointment of relatives and cronies to all possible winning positions. “The Family” as a concept was revived once in the 1990s, do you remember it? It was enough to say this word, and everyone knew which family was meant.

In today’s world, the transfer of inheritance to a family is a legitimate phenomenon, but the transfer of government benefits and government posts to children is excluded!

What is going on in the countries with a feudal morality ? All places near large streams of budget money are occupied by children and relatives of their mighty parents, and, of course, there cannot be any talk of social mobility!

In the capitalist countries there is a very wide circle of trust. The higher the confidence in society is, the more effective it is, the faster we solve all the problems ranging from a bank loan and ending with government decisions. This is due to the high degree of responsibility of each individual. Actually, we turn to another value.

Personal responsibility, strict internal discipline

Blogger denalipark writes:

“1. Why in the subway stations are there tall cones to block the path of free-riding people jumping through the turnstiles ?

2. Why do we have all the exits from the stations blocked by fences? Who flees from the supervisors?

3. Who pays a bribe for breaking the rules and then yells that the police are to blame?

4. How many of you drive a car with a fake driver’s license?

5. How many of you receive a salary in an envelope and do not pay taxes?

6. How many of you are trading with diplomas and other documents in the subway? And how many are buying them then to use when applying for a job?

7. Who works in industries that produce food which may be poisonous?

8. Who works in stores selling these products even though they are past their sell-by date?

9. Who, being even a small boss, begins to take bribes?

10. Finally, where are these officials, about which you complain, from? Are they from Mars? Does Putin appoint them all and give them instructions? Did the Americans misdirect them here? No, they went with you to the same schools, graduated from your universities, had a drink with you…”

Well said!

The answer to all these questions is as follows: Russian history has not brought people a sense of personal responsibility!

Irresponsibility is preserved in us from the time of serfdom, in which the slave land farmer is not responsible for anything, and God, the owner and the bad weather are responsible for it.

The Orthodox rite of repentance, atonement and forgiveness of sins, too, contributed to human depravity – a new sin is allowed , and it can always be redeemed in the future.

A non-rigid and vague ethical code is a sign of a feudal consciousness.

Rigid social responsibilities and rules that cannot be broken were forcibly cultivated in the Europeans during the emergence of capitalism. It was a difficult and painful process – the education of a citizen – and we should go through it if we want to grow and develop as a modern nation.

“I can break it, but do not want to do this” – that is the principle of a responsible person.

Attitude to labour

What can the attitude to labour of a slave who knows that half, if not more, will be taken away by service people, something will be paid as dues, and he will only be able feed and make the next crop, be? What can the attitude to work of the farmer who does not know what the harvest in such volatile climate as the central part of Russia be? But he needs to feed the children, it is necessary. Therefore, for the feudal-grower who does not work on his own land, labour is a burden, a necessary evil, but the real fun can only be achieved away from work .

Isn’t this familiar? The majority of Russians today treat their work in this way.

But there is also a different attitude toward work. It can be a joy and satisfaction

– If you know that your product can be sold at your price;

– If you know that the quality of your product depends on your talent and skills;

– If you know that you can spend the money on your own or put it in the bank.

All these concepts are not available in feudal rights, as they arise in the minds of artisans and merchants with the development of the bourgeoisie.

And here I do not see that the government has done anything to protect the owner from the small horde of parasites among “service people”, like five hundred years ago.

Epilogue

I’m waiting for a revelation. I have not listed all the values that guide a modern man, but even this is enough to understand which outdated values prevent us from becoming a modern society. And the people are not to blame ­ it was not in their power to change the geographical and historical context in which consciousness and culture evolved, it was just fate! We have a very talented, kind and patient people, but the lack of certain principles in our code of ethics contributes to the manifestation of the worst features – selfishness, indifference and total distrust and eventually permanent readiness for aggression, which makes the philistine life very difficult and bitter. And, importantly, most people do not even know what could be otherwise.

The assimilation of new ethical guidelines is a task of colossal difficulty! Even if one of us decides to live today in a different way, he will immediately face the feudal consciousness outside of his house – the tram, shop or court. And at once one realizes that most of the Russian population has hardly changed in its fundamental characteristics for many centuries .

But do not lose hope. Indeed, in Europe the transition from feudal to bourgeois consciousness lasted for several centuries and was accompanied by bloody wars and conflicts within nations! I am convinced that at the present level of analytical psychology, anthropology, cultural studies the state is capable of overcoming this gap for one generation and raise in a man a modern understanding of his responsibilities in society. What is needed is political will.

I’m waiting for open recognition by the leader of the nation to the whole world that Russia could not yet get rid of the feudal psychology and that the state is ready to use all its resources and power – the school, the law, the television and the press – to introduce into the consciousness of the masses a new system of values. Open recognition to the whole world would be the first step towards the modernization of the national consciousness and free education of the Russian people .

I know, again, I will hear a lot of outraged cries, that, say, I do not like the Russian people; this is a delusional accusation! Loving the motherland does not mean that we have to recognize its non-existent merits; we just have to see and forgive its current shortcomings .

I do not see anything wrong in the fact that we are still in the elementary school of the civilising process. For me, an elementary school student is no worse than a university student, and sometimes he is even better. In this sense, I argue after Lev Gumilev that we are still a young nation. We simply still have to pass graduation exams before going to university…

I’m waiting for a revelation from Vladimir Putin and I do not know whether I’ll see it. Well… we will continue to live by our rules, not noticing anything ­ we have lived in such a way for a thousand years!

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 #21
Russia Economy Stagnates, Growth Needs to Surge in 4Q to Reach 1.8% for 2013
By Alexander Kolyandr
Dow Jones
October 25, 2013MOSCOW–Russia’s economy continued to stagnate in the third quarter and needs to expand more than twice as fast in the fourth quarter to reach the 2013 growth forecast, the deputy economy minister said Friday.

Andrei Klepach told reporters that the third quarter failed to turn around flagging economic growth, but there is still a hope that the last three months of the year will bring some recovery.

Russia is on track to post the weakest growth since the crisis of 2008-2009, mainly due to fizzling investment activity and poor global demand for Russian exports.

Russian gross domestic product grew 1.2% in the third quarter, the same pace as in the preceding quarter. To reach the projected 1.8% growth for the whole of 2013 the economy has to grow by no less than 3% on the year in the fourth quarter, Mr. Klepach said.

He said the economy ministry has lowered its annual growth estimate for July to 1.5% and to 1.1% for August from 1.8% and 1.6%, respectively. The growth estimate for the first nine months of 2013 was revised lower to 1.3% from 1.5%.

In September, GDP grew only 1% on the year, pressured by a month-on-month drop in capital investment along with a decline in the retail and construction sectors, Mr. Klepach said.

The economy ministry expects that still strong growth in salaries should boost the retail sector in the fourth quarter of this year. Investment should also stage a better performance, as well as the chemical, retail and healthcare sectors, Mr. Klepach said.

The slowdown across the economy was accompanied by capital outflow, which isn’t expected to decelerate in the last quarter of 2013. In September alone, Russia lost $3.5 billion in net capital outflow, Mr. Klepach said. The central bank expects net capital outflow to reach $62 billion this year, exceeding 2012 net outflow of $56.8 billion.

Despite the dire economic growth pattern, the central bank is unlikely to cut interest rates to prop up the economy through cheaper lending, Mr. Klepach said.

The central bank has repeatedly said that it will ease monetary policy only when it sees that inflationary expectations are waning and the actual annual inflation rate reaches its target range of between 5% and 6%.

According to economy ministry calculations, annual inflation should be 6% in October, down from 6.1% in September.

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 #22
Business ombudsman Boris Titov proposes amnesty for migrantsMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russian business ombudsman Boris Titov said that the one-time migration amnesty that he has proposed would allow legalization of labor in the migration market and would bring 74 billion rubles to the treasury.

“We propose a one-time amnesty for those who already are working in Russia on the condition of concluding a labor agreement and getting a tax identification number as a taxpayer,” Titov told reporters on October 23.

Labor agreements concluded should not exceed three years, Titov said. Those who will be amnestied should be insured from migration risks, he said. “According to the preliminary estimates, such insurance could cost employer around 30,000 rubles a year,” the ombudsman said.

According to Titov, such an amnesty could be potentially applied to about 5 million migrants – 3 million of those who have a work patent and 2 million with work permits.

Those who accept the conditions of the migration amnesty will be issued a migration card valid for the duration of their employment contract.

According to the proposals drafted by the administration of the business ombudsman, all foreign citizens and their family members, wives and children below 18 years old, can be amnestied upon showing a valid labor agreement with the wages of at least 7,000 rubles per month per person. Thus, in order to legalize a family of five, a migrant should show a labor agreement with the income of at least 35,000 rubles.

The amnesty does not apply to foreigners with convictions in Russia and other countries and foreigners, who were held administratively liable in Russia over three times within three years under articles related to the migration law.

It is proposed that all foreign citizens living in Russia illegally will be allowed to return to their homeland without any measures being taken on them, except for people who have a pending criminal cases.

The amnesty applies solely to foreigners who entered Russia legally.

About 11 million illegal migrant workers are in Russia and about 45% of them can be amnestied, the explanatory note regarding the economic viability of the amnesty said. The expected cost of legalizing a migrant is 15,000 rubles thus a one-time income is estimated at 74 billion rubles.

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#23
Moscow Times
October 25, 2013
Gazprom Completes First Solo Offshore Project
By Anatoly MedetskyGazprom has started to operate the first offshore field that it has developed on its own, in a test of its power to perform the challenging task without foreign partners.

Sitting off the Pacific island of Sakhalin, the Kirinskoye field will feed natural gas to Asia, as demand from Europe ­ Gazprom’s key market ­ remains uncertain.

Gazprom has bought control in another Sakhalin offshore project, which had taken off thanks to Shell and Japanese companies, but has never gone it alone to extract gas from under the seabed.

“In this particular project, Gazprom wanted to demonstrate that it can do it itself, and it has achieved that,” said Ian Thom, the lead analysts for Russian upstream research at industry consultant Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh.

Gazprom previously partnered with France’s Total and Norway’s Statoil for the project to develop the remarkably bigger Shtokman field, which lies under much more frigid Arctic waters at a substantially greater depth and distance from the shore. The expensive effort has fallen by the wayside because of a glut on the market.

Launched Wednesday, Kirinskoye is 28 kilometers from the coast, while Shtokman is 550 kilometers offshore.

Kirinskoye is under 90 meters of water, compared to at least 320 meters for Shtokman.

The challenge of developing Kirinskoye would not be too daunting for any major international energy company, but it does not belittle Gazprom’s success, said Maxim Moshkov, an oil and gas analyst at investment bank UBS.

“In the case of Gazprom, it is really an achievement,” he said. “From the global perspective, it is nothing extraordinary.”

Gas from Kirinskoye will go into the pipeline that connects Sakhalin and the Pacific port of Vladivostok on the mainland, to the south of the island.

Gazprom said a large portion of the gas would wind up near Vladivostok where the company intends to build a plant that would make liquefied natural gas, or LNG, by freezing it to a very low temperature. Tankers can carry such gas to customers by sea, which would reduce the company’s reliance on less flexible sales through pipelines.

The show of some offshore prowess probably does not mean that Gazprom will now turn its nose up at foreign partners.

“I do not think that this is now going to be extrapolated to everything offshore,” Thom said. “But where Gazprom can handle this by itself it may wish to do so.”

The company is also going it alone at another of its offshore fields, Prirazlomnoye in the Arctic, where Greenpeace scaled a drilling rig in protest recently. Gazprom is hoping to start production there by the end of the year.

In another first for Gazprom at Kirinskoye, it used a subsea drilling rig to extract the gas, a technology that makes work more resilient to harsh weather.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov was traveling and unavailable for comment Thursday. In a statement about the field’s launch, Gazprom singled out the subsea technology as a first in Russia.

The launch of Kirinskoye could give more confidence about gas supplies for the future Vladivostok LNG plant to foreign companies that are considering joining the project, Thom said. Gazprom has said it is looking to cede a 49 percent stake of the venture.

The field’s projected 5.5-billion cubic meter annual output, however, will not be enough to keep the plant running, Thom said. The plant would initially produce 5 million metric tons of LNG a year and could add second and third phases of the same capacity later on.

Gazprom is working to bring online another, much larger field off Sakhalin, Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, to supply the plant. Exploration there is still ongoing.

Thom expressed doubt that Gazprom would be able to open the Vladivostok LNG plant in 2018 as scheduled. Typically, construction of a plant like this takes five years, he said.

But Gazprom has not yet proved that Yuzhno-Kirinskoye will provide enough gas for the plant, named partners, done basic engineering work or secured any sales deals.

Sourcing gas from the other large field, Chayandinskoye in the Sakha republic, would require construction of an expensive pipeline. Gazprom has said it will build the link only if it can also use it to sell gas from the field to China. But talks on a deal with China have long stumbled over price. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller reiterated Thursday that the price talks should be concluded by the end of the year.

The Far East Development Fund, a subsidiary of Vneshekonombank, is ineffective and must be reformed, said Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnyev, who is also President Vladimir Putin’s representative to the Far East region.

Trutnyev made the comment Thursday following a meeting in Komsomolsk-on-Amur concerning the region’s development that was chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

“We think it is necessary to create new development institutions designed to attract investment in the region and participate in investment projects,” Trutnyev said, Itar-Tass reported.

“We will not succeed using only budget funds,” Trutnyev added. “We need to make a financial lever so that every budget ruble put in the fund attracts another five, eight, or 10 more rubles of investment.”

Trutnyev also said he would fire any bureaucrat that hindered investment in the Far East.

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 #24
Financial Times
October 24, 2013
Russian puzzle proves hard to crack
By Charles CloverThere are number of things that do not add up about Krinum, a company based in the West Siberian village of Barsovo that, according to its registration documents, is a provider of janitorial services.

First, there is the address, obtained from the corporate register, which leads to an industrial warehouse park called “Surgut Furniture”. The guard has no record of the company.

Then there is the matter of its balance sheet ­ Rbs35bn, or $1.1bn, in long-term assets as of December 31, 2012, according to figures it must supply to Russia’s state statistics agency every year. Not bad, given that it is a cleaning company and does not appear to physically exist.

Another piece of the puzzle makes Krinum’s true purpose clearer ­ its director, Olga Pustovalova, has the same name as the chief accountant at Surgutneftegaz, the oil company based half an hour from Barsovo in the town of Surgut. Ms Pustovalova, reached by phone, confirmed that she was also the director of Krinum but declined to answer questions.

Krinum and 22 other similar enterprises, trusts and organisations located in and around Surgut are the key to a puzzle that has bedevilled analysts for a decade ­ who owns Russia’s fourth-largest oil company?

The only clues that they are holding Surgutneftegaz shares are that the company officers are Surgutneftegaz employees, and the value of the assets on their balance sheets ­ which must be reported every year to Rosstat, the state statistics agency ­ is closely correlated with the share price of Surgutneftegaz, according to Ildar Davletshin, an expert on Russia’s oil and gas sector at Renaissance Capital.

Mr Davletshin estimated in research published last year that as much as 75 per cent of the company was held in this manner. “I don’t think there is any doubt about where the shares are,” he said.

Even Surgut’s mayor, Dmitry Popov, said flatly he did not have any information on who owned the company that pays 70 per cent of his city’s budget. The company’s ownership structure is like “a military secret” which he believes is designed to fend off hostile takeovers, he said.

The famously secretive Surgutneftegaz has never publicly cleared the air over who owns its shares or why they appear to be held in a complicated circular structure ­ like an Escher drawing in which each company owns another, which in turn owns another in the chain.

The last time the leadership had to field the question publicly was in 2008 when Vladimir Bogdanov, the company’s reclusive chairman, told an investor conference in Surgut that he himself did not know who owned the majority of the company’s shares. His shareholding was less than 2 per cent, he explained, which does not entitle him to access to the share register. While strictly true, his answer was considered incomplete as company officers appear to control a large number of shares indirectly, and could potentially gain access to such information for him.

‘Red director’ Bogdanov sticks to old ways

Vladimir Bogdanov and his wife’s attendance at the Philharmonic Hall in the town of Surgut earlier this month was a rare public appearance for a man rarely seen in person.

“Whenever he turns up for something its an event,” said Vladimir Bedekh, who runs Astra Media, a public relations firm in Surgut. “We don’t see him out in public very often.”

Mr Bogdanov, chairman of Surgutneftegaz, with an aristocratic bearing and blunt oilman’s delivery style, is famously publicity shy and according to acquaintances much more at home in an oilfield than he is in the hurly-burly of public corporate life.

Vladimir Milov, a deputy energy minister until 2002, said the opaque and circular share ownership may well be designed to camouflage politically exposed shareholders, perhaps even in the upper reaches of the Kremlin. “The ownership of Surgut is the number one top secret of the Russian oil industry,” he said.

In Surgut, the oil town which dates from the first West Siberian oil discoveries in the 1960s, residents are protective of Mr Bogdanov, who they treat like a hometown hero. His company employs many of the city’s residents and funds most of its budget.

Few are inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. Taras Samborskii, the general director of Sia Press, a local newspaper company, attributes the company’s secrecy to Mr Bogdanov’s quirky personality. “He is pathologically shy,” he said.

Among other unusual characteristics, Surgutneftegaz has accumulated roughly $30bn in cash, while dividends have been disappointing to analysts.

The company has also made a few curious investments ­ like repairing a nuclear submarine base in Kamchatka, for which President Vladimir Putin thanked them in a newspaper article about defence policy in 2012.

“Just as a lot of state companies behave like private companies, so Surgutneftegaz is a private company which behaves like a state company,” said Mr Samborskii.

Given the transparency problems, the company’s share price barely takes into account the value of the massive cash deposits on their balance sheet, let alone the oil, say analysts.

The company’s lack of transparency in 2009 torpedoed Surgutneftegaz’s purchase of a 21 per cent stake in the Hungarian oil refiner MOL, which refused to register the oil company as a shareholder without further information on its ownership. Surgutneftegaz sold the shares in 2011 for a profit.

Artur Rokhlin, partner at the Moscow law firm Yust, said there could be three reasons for the circular ownership structure, in which the company appears to own the structures that own the company: keeping control concentrated with management, a defence strategy against hostile takeovers, or a strategy for concealing the true owners of the oil company.

It seems likely that all three reasons could be at play. The tangled ownership is a legacy issue that goes back to 1994-96 when Surgutneftegaz was privatised. While other companies such as Yukos and TNK fell into the hands of bankers and oligarchs, Surgutneftegaz was one of the few that stayed under the control of its “workers’ collective” headed by Mr Bogdanov, who has been at the company for 33 years. But since then new owners may have appeared on the scene.

Surgutneftegaz’s history, for example, shows a tight relationship with a circle of businessmen who came to prominence at the time that Mr Putin became president in 2000, and who have seen their fortunes rise to dizzying heights under his leadership. The company has been unusually loyal to interests associated with one man ­ Gennady Timchenko.

From the time it was privatised until 2003, Surgutneftegaz sold much of its production through Kinex, an oil trading company owned by a group of businessmen including Mr Timchenko. In 2003, when Mr Timchenko fell out with his partners in Kinex, Surgutneftegaz ended contracts with Kinex and began trading through Mr Timchenko’s new company, Gunvor, which went on to become the third-largest trading company in the world, helped by its relationships with Surgutneftegaz and Rosneft.

Mr Timchenko has said that his success in getting access to Surgut’s oil was due to his hard work and business savvy. “Who spent all their days and nights in Surgut? Who planted their liver there? I did!” he told Forbes magazine’s Russian edition in October 2012, using the Russian expression for drinking copious amounts of alcohol. But one bank analyst who declined to be named said the kind of loyalty displayed by Surgutneftegaz towards Mr Timchenko’s trading companies was unusual. “Such gifts are generally reserved for shareholders” said the analyst.

Mr Timchenko denies owning a large holding in the company, and Stuart Leasor, a spokesman for Mr Timchenko, told the Financial Times that the businessman owns less than 0.01 per cent of Surgut shares.

One UK shareholder activist, Bill Browder, discovered in 2005 how difficult it is to reveal the ultimate beneficiaries of the shares.

Buying a Surgutneftegaz minority stake, he went to court to get more information about the large portion of shares held in opaque structures, which at the time were reported on the balance sheet of the company, and sought to have these cancelled as treasury shares.  But he was expelled from Russia five days before his case against Surgutneftegaz was scheduled to be heard by the country’s constitutional court.

The question of ownership was raised once again in earnest in April this year when Surgutneftegaz published its first financial results audited to international standards in 10 years, following a presidential decree requiring all Russian companies to do so.

The results showed something odd ­ $15bn worth of shares, roughly 40 per cent of Surgut’s ownership, which had been on the company’s balance sheet in 2002, the last time it was audited to IFRS standards, had vanished.

“The only explanation for the disappearance of these shares is that they were sold, but to whom, and for what money, no one knows, and there have been no announcements,” said one analyst who declined to be named.

During the presentation of the accounts that month, analysts were given a chance to ask Surgutneftegaz’s management about the shares. “They said this is something which they are not required by law to disclose,” he recalled.

Lawyers say, however, that Surgutneftegaz is narrowly within the law, if the shares were indeed transferred to new owners.  As long as the transfer of the shares did not take place in blocks larger than 5 per cent at any one time, there was no reporting requirement nor board decision necessary. “In a strictly legal sense, they are within the law,” said lawyer Anatoly Yushin of the firm AST Legal in Moscow “However from a standpoint of global best practice and norms, they are clearly not.”

Reaction by the market has been muted. One analyst summed up the misgivings of investors when faced with the puzzle of Surgutneftegaz’s ownership: “Someone should sue, but then look what happened to Browder”.

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 #25
Bloomberg
October 25, 2013
Obama Joins Putin War as Syria Jihadists Stalk Olympics
By Ilya Arkhipov and Henry MeyerPresident Vladimir Putin is turning to Barack Obama for help protecting the costliest Winter Games ever from attacks by Islamic extremists, including hundreds of battle-hardened jihadists now fighting in Syria.

About 400 Russian nationals, mainly from the North Caucasus, are currently battling President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria and their return poses a “big threat,” according to Sergei Smirnov, deputy director of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the Soviet KGB.

“Many of our compatriots are fighting on the side of al-Qaeda in Syria,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who’s in charge of preparations for the Feb. 7-23 event, said in an interview in Moscow on Oct. 21. “We understand this is a global threat and we can only prevent it through joint efforts.”

As Russia prepares to seal off Sochi, a Black Sea resort of 345,000 people, it’s reaching out to the U.S. and about 80 other nations for help identifying potential threats from abroad, Alexei Lavrishchev, a senior FSB official, said Oct. 2.

At the top of the list are the Russian militants in Syria, whose numbers may be triple what the FSB is saying publicly, according to the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies in Moscow, which expects a third of those fighters to return home.

“Their experience and exposure to al-Qaeda groups represent a real danger,” Elena Suponina, who runs the institutes’s Middle East and Central Asia Center, said by phone. “The Russian security services are very worried about this.”

Suicide Bomber

Russian forces are battling almost daily attacks by extremists in the North Caucasus. One of the poorest regions of the country, it stretches from just east of Sochi across Chechnya to Dagestan on the Caspian. More than 1,000 civilians, militants and law-enforcement officials have been killed in bombings and firefights in the region since the start of 2012, according to Caucasian Knot, a Moscow-based research group.

A female suicide bomber from Dagestan killed six people on a bus on Oct. 21 in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, less than 700 kilometers (430 miles) from Sochi and about 430 kilometers from the border with Dagestan.

“Attacks such as that illustrate the ability of regional militants to undertake attacks outside the North Caucasus,” Matthew Clements, chief analyst for Russia at IHS Country Risk in London, said in an e-mailed note. “This is important in the context of the nearby February 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.”

Boston Attack

Putin and Obama agreed to intensify security cooperation for the Games after two ethnic Chechen brothers allegedly detonated a homemade bomb at the Boston Marathon in April that killed three people and injured more than 260. Dozens of U.S. investigators were dispatched to Dagestan, where the brothers once lived, to probe their potential links to international terrorist groups.

Prime Minister David Cameron also agreed to restore relations between British and Russian security services, which were frozen after the 2006 assassination in London of dissident Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, according to Kozak.

There have been attacks at previous Olympics. Eleven members of the Israeli team were killed after being taken hostage by Palestinian militants at the 1972 Games in Munich, and the Atlanta event in 1996 was marred when a bomb planted by an anti-abortionist killed two people and wounded more than 100.

“Cooperation with colleagues from law-enforcement agencies is pivotal,” Putin said in an interview with the Associated Press and Russia’s Channel One television last month. “We have relevant arrangements with the U.S. — the FBI and other special services, and European partners.”

Team USA

The U.S. State Department will send an undisclosed number of Diplomatic Security agents to Sochi to help ensure the safety of thousands of American athletes and corporate sponsors, the embassy in Moscow said.

“With host-nation approval, we deploy field liaison officers at designated venues to liaise with the venue security and Team USA,” the embassy said in an e-mailed statement, without being more specific.

Russia is spending about 1.52 trillion rubles ($48 billion) to host its first Winter Olympics, including on security, according to Olympstroy, the state company overseeing preparations. London spent less than a third of that on the 2012 Summer Games.

About 30,000 police officers and soldiers will be deployed in and around Sochi for the contest, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told reporters in Washington in May after meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. That’s about the same number the U.K. used in London.

Sophisticated Chechens

The security services will have “100 percent” control over the Olympic zone, making it “impossible” to infiltrate and conduct a terrorist attack, Nikolai Kovalyov, a former head of the FSB, said by phone.

While a successful attack on one of the main venues is unlikely, softer targets such as transport facilities elsewhere in Russia or side events organized by Olympic sponsors may be vulnerable, said Tina Soria, a security scholar at the Royal United Services Institute.

“We have seen that the Chechen groups are quite sophisticated and they have mounted attacks in the past, so there is a possibility of attacks against airports and train or subway stations,” Soria said by phone from London.

Just down the coast from Sochi, in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, Russian forces last May said they seized a weapons cache that Islamic militants were planning to use in attacks before and during the Games. The arms included shoulder-fired missiles, mortars and explosives, according to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee in Moscow.

‘Satanic Dances’

In July, Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, who’s claimed responsibility for at least three of Russia’s deadliest terror attacks, called on jihadists to target the Sochi Olympics.

“Do your utmost to derail these satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors,” Umarov said in a video released over the Internet.

Umarov claimed responsibility for organizing the January 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport that killed 37 people. The self-styled emir of a pan-North Caucasus Islamic state also said he planned the attacks on the capital’s subway system by female suicide bombers in March 2010 that killed 40 people and the November 2009 bombing of the Nevsky Express train between Moscow and St. Petersburg that killed 28.

Syria Exodus

Another ethnic Chechen, who goes by the name Abu Omar al-Shishani, leads a jihadist group fighting in Syria called Jaish Al Muhajireen wal Ansar that includes many fellow Chechens, according to Suponina of the Institute of Strategic Studies. The group helped mastermind an attack on villages populated by Assad’s Alawite minority in August in which 190 civilians were killed and more than 200 taken hostage, according to Human Rights Watch.

Officials in Dagestan, which emerged as the most violent region in the North Caucasus after Russian forces fought two wars in neighboring Chechnya, started to notice an exodus of fighters to Syria earlier this year, according to regional Security Council chief Magomed Baachilov.

“Young people just go, they get into a car and drive to the airport, fly via Moscow to an Arab state and from there reach Syria,” Baachilov said by phone. “We’re not involved in this Syrian conflict but we’re concerned that our citizens can create problems for us once they return.”

‘Explosive Area’

More than 3,000 fighters from Russia and other former Soviet republics may have joined the Syrian opposition forces, RIA Novosti said, citing the Middle Eastern country’s state-appointed Sunni Muslim mufti, Ahmad Hassoun, during a visit to Moscow today.

Even after the exodus, there are still a dozen major militant groups in Dagestan with hundreds of members and accomplices, some of whom are busy planning attacks on the Olympics, Andrei Konin, the senior FSB official in the region, told officials in the local capital Makhachkala on Oct. 11.

Even so, the International Olympic Committee said it’s confident Russia will be able to ensure security in Sochi and host the Games without a major incident.

“Security at the Games is the responsibility of the local authorities, and we have no doubt that the Russians will be up to the task,” the IOC’s press service said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Still, if the threat wasn’t real, Putin wouldn’t have reached out to Obama and Cameron for all the intelligence help he could get, said Yury Kobaladze, a retired official at the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR.

“If a terrorist attack happens, this will be a catastrophe, especially given the fact that the Games are being held in such an explosive area,” Kobaladze said.

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#26
The Voice of Russia
http://voiceofrussia.com
October 25, 2013
West vs. Russia: informational Cold War
By Igor Siletsky”Russia’s heavy hand pressures neighbors”, “The situation in Russia is close to revolution”, “Putin grapples with non-governmental organizations”, “Moscow should give second thought to methods of its foreign policy”. These are several captions of recent articles in western media. An anti-Russian informational assembly line was put into action after a diplomatic victory over the Syrian situation won by Russia. This informational assembly line has never stopped though as the mass media Cold War hasn’t ceased even for a day, experts believe.

Information warfare is the concept as old as the world itself. Even ancient authors told about refined campaigns with the help of which politicians at the time tried to demoralize their adversaries.

The contemporary Russia, covering one eights of the Earth’s land area and having the second-strongest army in the world, has to fight even through mass media. Among Russia’s main adversaries are Western powers, with the US and UK in particular. Anti-Russian campaigning consists in trying to convince Russians that ideas advantageous to the West are right. Some of these ideas are straightforwardly full of lies and even ridiculous while others tend to distort facts. Such enemy ideas are introduced by their constant repetition through various information channels. The message is quite clear: Russia is bad with its revenge seeking President-tyrant, incompetent government and crippled economy, and so forth. The West, is, on the contrary, much more developed and civilized. There is more freedom, order, money and kindness there. Western goods are automatically better and politicians are smarter and more honest.

If in battles between the world’s powers real cannons, for the most part, keep silent, informational cannonade doesn’t stop ever. And it’s obvious that Russia and the EU are in the Cold War. The battlefield is quite large: the situation in Syria, countries not able to choose between the EU and the Customs Union, and disagreements in understanding of democratic liberties, Alexei Kuzmin, an international Grandmaster and political scientist, says.

“Making a comparison with chess, political steps can be likened to strategic maneuvers and mass media attacks to tactical moves on a chess board. One of the main chess postulates says: “Tactics is in the service of strategy”. It means one should make tactical moves according to a well-thought-out line of strategy. Western Cold War commanders are well aware of that, so a certain discord between rather moderate actions of countries’ leaders and a hostile media campaign should be deceiving nobody. They are the links of a strategic plan suggested by Washington strategists and partly supported by European players,” he adds.

From time to time, thanks to successful tactical moves, it’s possible to make up for serious miscalculations made during a chess game. No wonder that after a failed attempt to carry out military intervention in Syria which was prevented by Moscow, western mass media hailed criticism on Russia.

A psychological aspect in chess is considered to be one of the most important. A battle of characters begins when rivals shake hands before the game and continues during the game itself and the subsequent press conference. The main goal of speaking in front of journalists is to convince your rival that they have no choice to win the game, tournament or world championship.

So it’s understandable why after a Russian diplomatic triumph in Syria western mass media recalled traditional schemes of pressure, Vladislav Grachev, an International Grandmaster and analyst, believes.

“Russian efforts to establish the Eurasian Customs Union are no other than a gambit, i.e. an a priori futile move. A diplomatic scandal with the Netherlands is a come-back to the old KGB practice of intimidation. Disagreements with the EU are an attempt of blackmailing and so on. Bashar Asad is an incarnated evil and people opposing him are fighters for freedom. Brussels and Washington preach only the good and universal values. It’s obvious they try to convince Russian politicians how unnatural and senseless is to defend your interests against an already reached world consensus,” he claims.

Amid the choir of anti-Russian voices, it’s possible to make out unbiased opinions. For instance, Roberto Toscano, a famous expert with the Italian La Stampa newspaper says that Putin’s political victory in the Syrian chemical weapons disarmament isn’t a single case. These events are the result of Russia’s consistent political strategy. And how can Russia get back its authority and to what extent is this intention compatible with interests of Europe or Italy, Toscano asks. And answers immediately ­ the Russian leader is ambitious but doesn’t have megalomania. Putin knows that diplomacy is the only way for his country to defend its interests and improve its reputation.

In brief, everybody decides for themselves whether to believe or not in words of western mass media “recognized experts”. Our analysts remind that the rival’s violent attacks after the game prove that things are going pretty well outside a chessboard.

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#27
Russia Says Snowden Leaks Won’t Hurt US TiesMINSK, October 25 (RIA Novosti) ­ Leaks by former US security contractor Edward Snowden regarding US intelligence-gathering on Russia will have no impact on relations between Moscow and Washington, Russia’s foreign minister said Friday.

Sergei Lavrov said issues regarding Snowden were not high on Russia’s international diplomatic agenda.

Emerging allegations that US intelligence operative have spied on the phones of dozens of world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have in recent days drawn widespread anger.

Lavrov said in the capital of Belarus, Minsk, that Snowden’s revelations would not harm US-Russia relations, however, and said “contacts [between the two countries] will never stop.”

“We have formed our position on Snowden and said everything,” he said.

The Washington Post cited US officials this week as saying Snowden had tens of thousands of documents, including those containing sensitive material about collection programs against countries like Iran, Russia and China.

Snowden, who is facing espionage charges in the United States, has been granted temporary asylum in Russia.

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#28
Christian Science Monitor
October 24, 2013
Not ‘pirates,’ but ‘hooligans’: Russia reduces charges against Greenpeace crew
But the organization is remaining defiant, calling the new charges over the September oil-rig incident ‘ridiculous.’
By Fred Weir, CorrespondentMoscow – Greenpeace gave a defiant retort to Russian authorities who said 30 activists jailed after a high-seas Arctic oil rig protest would face lesser criminal charges, saying new charges of “hooliganism” were even more ridiculous than piracy.

The incident last month, captured in a dramatic video, and Russian prosecutors’ announcement they would charge the activists with piracy sparked a diplomatic standoff with The Netherlands, where the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise is flagged. It also focused new attention on the Kremlin’s policies to drill for oil and gas in the fragile Arctic.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced the group of 30 people ­ which include 28 activists hailing from 18 countries, plus two freelance journalists ­ would stand trial instead for “hooliganism.” That is a standard criminal charge in Russia that carries a maximum seven-year prison sentence.

Anton Beneslavsky, a Greenpeace-Russia lawyer, said Thursday that the Kremlin should drop the charges altogether, because hooliganism, under Russian law, means some kind of negligence toward social order committed with violence. The activists arrested were trying to board an oil rig owned by the state-owned corporation Gazprom-Neft to hang a protest banner.

“No weapons, no violence, and no activist boarded the platform. And all this took place in Russia’s exclusive economic zone, but in international waters. So international law should apply here. It’s clearly nothing to do with hooliganism, since Russian social order wasn’t in the least affected,” Mr. Beneslavsky says. “At least piracy had some validity, since the oil platform might be considered Russian territory. But this new charge is even more ridiculous.”

In its statement, the Investigative Committee gave an unusual explanation for why the stiffer charges of piracy were filed in the first place, suggesting the activists’ refusal to cooperate with authorities was the motivation.

“The refusal of the accused to provide testimony compelled authorities to carefully check all possible versions of what their motives may have been, including seizure of the platform with commercial intentions, terrorism, or carrying out illegal scientific work and espionage,” the statement said.

The committee has also hinted that some of the Arctic Sunrise crew might yet face more serious charges, including possible drug offenses.

The affair has triggered an escalating dispute, with Moscow accusing The Hague of allowing the Dutch-flagged Greenpeace ship to stage “illegal provocations” in Russia’s Arctic zone of economic influence.

For its part, the Netherlands turned this week to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to adjudicate what it regards as Russia’s unlawful seizure of a Dutch ship on the high seas.

Russia’s position is that its zone of economic interests is subject to Russian sovereignty, and therefore its border guards had every right to seize the ship and arrest its crew. Holland argues that the action occurred in international waters, and Russian law does not apply.

It’s exactly the kind of case the Tribunal was established to resolve. But in a statement Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry insisted that Moscow was “open to the settlement” of the case, but would not take part in the Tribunal’s deliberations or recognize any ruling, despite being a signatory to the United Nations treaty that established the Tribunal.

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#29
Window on Eurasia: Kremlin’s Use of ‘Internal Enemies’ Hurting Moscow’s Ties with Neighbors, ‘Vedomosti’ Warns
Paul GobleStaunton, October 24 ­ The Kremlin’s continuing propaganda effort to portray Central Asian and Caucasian immigrants has not been effective within the Russian Federation, but it has had a serious and negative impact on Moscow’s relations with countries in those regions with which it would like to have good relations, according to the editors of “Vedomosti.”
In strikingly blunt language, the editors of that paper say today that “the poor internal situation of the stat,e” ­ and particularly its handling of immigration issues ­ “is leading to a situation in which Russia’s relations with its foreign partners are getting worse” (vedomosti.ru/opinion/news/17872611/vrag-u-vorot).
Indeed, the editors say, it now appears that “Russia is doing everything in order to become the image of the enemy for an ever greater number of countries.”
After the Biryulevo clashes, Moscow’s handling of the immigration issue led to some of the sharpest exchanges ever between the Russian capital and Baku, compromising President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to promote better bilateral ties. On that clash, see mir24.tv/news/politics/8241321, islamsng.com/aze/news/7329, regnum.ru/news/polit/1721106.html, argumenti.ru/world/2013/10/291616, vz.ru/news/2013/10/17/655434.html, haqqin.az/news/11387, pravda.ru/world/formerussr/other/18-10-2013/1178702-politics-0/ and interfax.ru/world/news.asp?id=335732&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed.
But the “Vedomosti” editors focus on another part of the foreign fall out from Biryulevo.  The Kyrgyzstan foreign ministry has officially expressed concern about Moscow’s violation of consular procedure regarding those of its citizens who were detained there at the time of the recent clashes.
According to the Moscow newspaper, “the Central Asian allies of Russia” may become even more angry because of suggestions that immigrants from that region are uniquely criminal and should be excluded from the Russian Federation, either by the imposition of visas or other means.
President Vladimir Putin, the paper notes, has opposed such steps even as he has insisted that Russian laws be equally enforced, but his words have been largely drowned out by other Russian politicians and commentators who have adopted a harshly anti-Central Asian and anti-Caucasian attitude.
While the center may be right that “local authorities” are guilty of the rise of ethnic tensions in Russian cities, “Vedomosti” continues, “senior bureaucrats and federal politicians for the last six months have been using the migration issue politically,” both because of the Moscow mayoral election and the worsening economic situation in the country.
“For a long time,” the paper says, the government has presented as “the image of the enemy either abstract Americans” or those from neighboring countries who are sending their milk or wine into Russia.  “But in this year, the theme of ‘harmful immigrants’ has become the centerpiece of the public rhetoric of the authorities.”
Such rhetoric may win dividends at home, although it has not done much in that regard so far, the editors say.  But it is having a serious and negative impact on Russia’s relations with countries that it hopes will remain its partners and participate in its broader integration efforts. Indeed, they say, Russia’s “anti-immigrant policies” are undermining those possibilities.
And unfortunately, “Vedomosti” concludes, there are other steps that Moscow is taking, including its “struggle with homosexuals, ecological activists, and foreign agents among NGOs” that are having similarly negative consequences on prospects for Russia’s relations with Europe and the United States.
Such a lead article is not unprecedented, and some may read it as little more than an effort to support Putin in his opposition to the introduction of visas for Central Asian gastarbeiters, something Russian oligarchs and other business interests are very much opposed to as well.
But the “Vedomosti” commentary goes far beyond that specific case and suggests that Moscow’s current domestic policies are having deleterious consequences for the country internationally, something that is certainly true but not something that an unsigned editorial in a central Moscow paper is often prepared to point out.
That this article has appeared at all thus suggests that there is an intense debate about this within the Russian leadership or that there will soon be one, as many Russian nationalists may now see that the ways in which they are pursuing domestic goals are undercutting any chance that they can achieve foreign ones.

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#30
Russia ‘open to close interaction’ with other Customs Union, Common Economic Space statesMINSK. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russia is “open to close interaction with its partners” in the Customs Union and Common Economic space, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

“There is hardly anyone left who has any doubt that regional integration is the most effective means of making maximum use of internal resources of growth and raising competitiveness in global markets. Together we are stronger, it is easier for us to react to global challenges,” Putin said at a meeting in Minsk of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council.

“Since our last meeting in Astana we have made significant progress on some key points of the integration agenda, we have mapped out our further moves in making use of the potential of the Customs Union and Common Economic Space, and legal base for the Customs Union and Common Economic Space is being codified. Let me point out that it is the basis for the future Eurasian Economic Union,” Putin said.

“I believe that it is important that the treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union should set long-term goals for our interaction. The new quality of integration should be reflected in it. It must be written down clearly that we will pursue coordinated policies in key spheres of economic regulation,” he said.

He insisted that the Eurasian Economic Union ensure maximum freedom of movement for goods, services and money, and merge member countries’ electricity grids and transportation networks and telecommunications networks. “I am convinced that such rapprochement will create an extremely favorable environment for our economies and for development,” he said.

“During its three years of existence, the Customs Union has proved effective, and our countries have built an extensive market in a CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) space with a population of 170 million. Cooperation in industry, primarily in the engineering sector, is becoming closer. Our exports are steadily increasing in range and are increasingly diversified in structure. Trade between the Customs Union and external markets has reached $604 billion for the first eight months of this year,” the president said.

In a global environment marked by slower growth, the three countries’ macroeconomic statistics are quite acceptable, he said. Trade within the Customs Union and Common Economic Space excluding energy trade increased 2% for the same eight months, Putin said.

“The Customs Union states have been unable to evade impacts made by the crisis, but we cannot overcome them without deepening our integration, reforming our common market of goods and services, and improving our ways of doing business. Russia uses precisely this logic and is open to close interaction with its partners,” Putin said.

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#32
Putin: Ukraine cannot be simultaneously EU associated member, Customs Union memberMINSK. Oct 25 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed once again that Ukraine cannot be simultaneously an EU associated member and a Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union member.

Speaking to journalists in Minsk on Friday, Putin pointed out that the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU says that all possible integration associations Ukraine would wish to join in the future must fully comply with the agreements between Ukraine and the EU.

“But there are virtually no such provisions, say, within the Customs Union framework, but on the contrary, everything goes against what Ukraine is agreeing upon with the European Union,” Putin said.

“Therefore, there are no discrepancies in what I said [earlier at a press conference],” Putin said.

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#33
We won’t close market for Ukrainian goods but no more benefits – PutinMOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russia will not close its market for goods from Ukraine if the latter signs an association with the European Union, but Ukrainian products will no longer enjoy benefits, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

There is a free-trade zone in the CIS of which both Russia and Ukraine are participants, he said at a press conference in Minsk on Thursday.

“We reserve the right to use the sixth protocol to the Free-Trade Agreement in order to protect our market. This does not mean that we will ban imports of Ukrainian goods to our market, this means that these goods will not enjoy benefits as part of the free-trade zone,” Putin said.

“Ukrainian goods will be in the same position as goods from other countries of the world that are WTO members,” he said.

“We are ready to protect our market,” Putin said, adding that he agreed with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to hold consultations ahead of Ukraine’s signing an assoaictiona agreement with the EU.

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#34
Moscow Times
October 25, 2013
Putin Has Last Crack at Yanukovych’s EU Dream
By Alexander PaninTurkey is interested in joining the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and India also wants closer ties with the organization, President Vladimir Putin said at the EurAsian Economic Community summit in Minsk on Thursday.

But some political analysts saw the summit in Minsk, which for the first time gathered all the state leaders of the former CIS countries, as the last opportunity for Putin to convince his Ukrainian counterpart Victor Yanukovych that joining the Customs Union is a better idea than integrating with Europe.

This view was partly fueled by Putin’s presidential aide Yury Ushakov, who said earlier this week that Vladimir Putin and Victor Yanukovych would discuss Ukraine’s plans to associate with the European Union at the summit.

Earlier this year Ukraine said it was ready to conclude a landmark agreement on trade association with the EU, planned to be signed at the Eastern Partnership summit in Lithuania next month.

Russia has made every possible attempt to stop that from happening, taking measures ranging from offers of a discount on gas prices to a temporary ban on Ukrainian imports.

But a Ukraine government source said Yanukovych was driven more by his own political agenda than the economic interests of the country.

Power is what Yanukovych is really after, a source in the Ukrainian government told The Moscow Times. The source asked to remain anonymous because he did not have permission to talk to the press.

And integration with the EU will get him much needed support in the upcoming presidential elections in 2015, he added.

Ukraine is split between a pro-Russian and pro-European electorate. According to the source, with the EU agreement there is a clear goal to get people’s votes from central and western parts of the country, which are looking towards Europe.

“This scenario may lead to a loss of support from other, pro-Russian areas of the country, but the problem could be dealt with administrative levers ­ by strangling rival political movements there,” the source in the government said.

Putin did not mention Ukraine in his speech at the summit, but a meeting with Yanukovych did take place. No results were reported.

Vladimir Fesenko, the head of Penta, a Ukrainian political think tank, said Putin might make Yanukovych some interesting offers on energy, or offer financial or political support during their meeting, Business FM radio reported.

But others deemed this course of events unlikely, saying that Ukraine had burned all the bridges behind it on the way to Europe.

“Russia has already offered Kiev maximum preferences for joining the Customs Union and was ready to yield on absolutely every issue except radically low gas prices,” said Sergei Miheyev, general director of the Center of Political Environment think tank.

Ukraine has always wanted to have its cake and eat it too ­ to be a part of Europe and have good relations with Russia ­ but geopolitics do not work that way, political analysts said.

“Both the EU and Russia do not want this combination and demand a choice from Ukraine,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, chief editor of “Russia in Global Affairs” magazine.

This is a political decision, which at some point could have been reversed but is impossible now that Russia has shown Ukraine how high the risks of signing a trade agreement with Europe are for its economy, he said.

Russia’s temporary ban on Ukrainian imports made a retreat for Yanukovych “politically impossible,” Lukyanov said.

At the same time, analysts and businessmen both in Russia and Ukraine said that European integration would not bring any substantial benefits for the country’s economy.

Repeatedly cited in news reports, Vyacheslav Boguslayev, the head of Motor Sich, a leading aircraft engine producer based in Ukraine, said the country might lose its industry this way.

An agreement with the EU would fetter the technology of locally produced goods because Europe has its own production standards and supports only the standards adopted in Western countries, the executive said. This would mean that an aircraft engine made in Ukraine would need a European certificate but will not get it due to different production processes.

“A trade association with Europe will kill our high-tech industry and only repair centers will remain,” Boguslayev said.

A trade agreement with Europe would also mean that locally made goods would enter into direct competition with imported products.

“Nothing good will come out of the integration for the Ukrainian economy, and they say this in Kiev as well as in Moscow. Even the Europeans do not see a big gain for Ukraine from the agreement,” Miheyev said.

“It looks like Yanukovych is playing a game of his own, which has nothing to do with the Russian relationship or even Ukrainian interests,” he said.

But even if the trade agreement is signed, it will not start working immediately. It will have to be first ratified by all EU members and by Ukraine itself ­ a process that can take years to complete.

“The major risk for Ukraine, in this regard, is to have its products banned from export to Russia as the result of another political decision and to have European markets closed due to the ratification procedure,” the source in the Ukraine government said.

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 #35
Russia offers Ukraine far more than European Union
By ITAR-TASS World Service writer Tamara ZamyatinaMOSCOW, October 24 (Itar-Tass) – Should Kiev put its signature to an association agreement with the European Union, the economic relations between Ukraine and Russia will be unable to follow their usual course, the deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s international affairs committee, Andrei Klimov, told ITAR-TASS in an interview on Thursday.

“We, the Russian side, have been telling our Ukrainian colleagues that the moment it signs the agreement with the EU Kiev will change its legal stance towards Russia and the Customs Union, because both Russia and the Customs Union will be faced with the need for reconsidering a number of issues in relations with Kiev, for introducing special rules to control the flow of goods and services across the Russian-Ukrainian border. This would be harmful to Ukraine first and foremost,” Klimov believes.

In his opinion, “Moscow’s revision of a number of positions in bilateral relations with Kiev will by no means be addressed to the people of Ukraine or further political consideration with a neighbouring country.”

Kiev’s intention to sign an association agreement with the European Union is fraught with major economic and political consequences for Ukraine, the dean of the world economics and world politics department at the Higher School of Economics, Sergei Karaganov, told ITAR-TASS.

Karaganov, the honorary president of the Foreign and Defence Policy Council, believes that in case the association agreement is concluded, Ukraine should brace for further degradation of its economic and political system, because the Ukrainian elite is unable to make a conscious choice and draft its own development plan it would be able to press for in the European Union.

The analyst is certain that the choice in favour of the EU is not a choice for Ukraine at all, because Kiev will derive no benefits from its associated membership. “Ukraine will remain in a state of great uncertainty, because the country’s political elite is reluctant and unable to begin a fundamental upgrade of its country,” Karaganov said.

“After the ink dries up on the agreement with the EU in Vilnius on November 28 Ukraine will have to reconcile itself with Russia’s forced measures to protect its internal market and its foreign policy interests,” Karaganov believes.

At the same time in his opinion he hopes that after a brief rapprochement with Europe Ukraine will set eyes on cooperation with Russia again, as soon as it develops the awareness its agreement with the European Union is fictitious.

Asked by ITAR-TASS if the Ukrainian politicians’ lack of decision might lead to the establishment of external administration in Ukraine, Karaganov replied such a possibility looked very slim to him.

“Nobody will offer external administration. Those days are gone never to return. Whereas in the 1990s global players were strong enough to offer external administration services to some CIS member-states, now, after the string of world crises no country is strong enough to do that. In that sense the West is no longer what it used to be.”

The director of the Institute of Political Studies, Public Chamber member Sergei Markov told ITAR-TASS that when it offered Ukraine the status of an associated member, “the European Union hoped it would turn the country into a transit corridor for its tax-free goods to flood the Russian market.” In that case, Markov believes “Ukraine would have a chance of becoming a double transiter – to move Russian oil and gas to Europe and EU goods to Russia on very favourable terms.

“This has not happened, because Russia took a very firm stance – either admission to the Customs Union or the agreement with the EU. Now this project is absolutely disadvantageous to Ukraine, because by virtue of many EU restrictions it will be able to export no more than two percent of its products to the European markets,” Markov said.

He sees only one winner who will receive indisputable gains from Ukraine’s associated EU membership – Warsaw. “It is not accidental that a Polish citizen, Jan Tombinski, is the European Union’s ambassador in Kiev. Poland has been pressing for very disadvantageous terms of Ukraine’s membership of the EU in order to tighten its grip on Ukraine as much as possible.”

“The people of Ukraine are disillusioned with the authorities – with Kuchma, with the “orange” team and their current blue-and-white successors (the Party of Regions). They are pretty close to saying good-bye to part of their country’s economic sovereignty without bothering to find out the gist of the 1,000-page text of the agreement of Ukraine’s association with the European Union.

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#36
Business New Europe
October 25, 2013
Political struggle to follow Georgian presidential election
Molly Corso in TbilisiWith Georgians headed to the polls on October 27, it appears clear that Giorgi Margvelashvili will be the country’s next president. However, second place is nearly as important in this race, with the other candidates needing to draw support for the bitter political fight that will follow the vote.

Georgia’s presidential election is expected to reinforce the position of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, whose candidate Margvelashvili, is the clear frontrunner. The election will see the departure of Georgia’s long-standing President Mikheil Saakashvili and Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, who says he will stand down after the poll, but both have indicated they will continue to wield their influence on Georgia’s political scene.

On the surface, the presidential election bears little resemblance to last year’s highly charged parliamentary vote: with no dynamic personalities leading the race, the presidential election appears to be little more than a nationwide vote of confidence for Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream coalition.

The election also marks the end of Georgia’s tenure as a super-presidential system, and whoever wins the vote will step into office in a parliamentary system with vastly reduced authority. The real power, based on the constitutional amendment that will come into effect following the polls, is to be split between the parliament and the prime minister.

Ostensibly there are three front runners in the race ­ Ivanishvili’s advisor and former university rector Giorgi Margvelashvili, former parliamentary speaker Davit Bakradze representing Saakashvili’s United National Movement party, and Nino Burjanadze, a former Saakashvili ally turned opposition politician. In reality, however, with just days before the vote, Margvelashvili has a strong lead and is expected to cruise to victory in the first round.

That scenario ­ a clean win for Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition ­ is a necessity for the prime minister. Ivanishvili, a billionaire who came to power in a surprise victory during last year’s parliamentary elections, needs an undisputed win for his team so he can step down from power next month and hand power to an as-yet-unknown successor.

That hand-off, Ivanishvili has pledged, will move the country firmly from the realm of personality-driven politics to one of institutions and stability. But to make that happen, the Georgian Dream candidate needs a strong victory, to give the government (and Ivanishvili) a clear mandate to move forward.

Both the PM and Margvelashvili have made their potential win into such a priority that if he fails to clear the 50% threshold in the first round, Margvelashvili has promised to drop out. Pollsters and the prime minister have vowed that will not happen.

Second place

In Georgia, however – especially in politics and particularly over the past year – things rarely go as planned. Even if Margvelashvili breezes to victory on Sunday, there is little sign the Georgian Dream coalition will be safe from political conflict post-election.

In an impassioned speech to students on October 24, Saakashvili vowed to keep up the fight even after he leaves the presidency. Drawing comparisons between Ivanishvili and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the outgoing president vowed his team is “not finishing our struggle.”

For Saakashvili’s party, as well as any other political hopefuls, garnering a respectable result during the October 27 vote is an important harbinger of their political weight moving forward. Second place is vitally important in this race. Even if neither candidate can garner enough votes to force a second round, the support they receive is vital to push them forward to Georgia’s next election ­ the vote for local governments in 2014.

Both Bakradze and Burjanadze have been trailing Margvelashvili in the polls for months. Margvelashvili, a former education minister with little personal political standing, has benefited from his close relationship to the prime minister, but Burjanadze, who has campaigned largely on the promise to jail Saakashvili and his inner circle for crimes allegedly committed after the Rose Revolution, has been creeping up in the polls.

Ivanishvili has dismissed the country’s opposition in general ­ and Saakashvili in particular ­ as irrelevant for Georgia’s future. The president, he has repeatedly warned, could even face questioning after he leaves office.

There is little sign, however, that either Burjanadze or Saakashvili are listening. Burjanadze, a former parliamentary speaker, who twice served as interim president, has vowed protests if she does not win on October 27, which has broadly been interpreted as a promise to renew the street demonstrations that were once a regular feature of Georgian political life. Saakashvili, who came to power in a revolution sparked by such demonstrations, also appears to be gearing up for a political battle.

While he may be leaving public office, the outgoing president has made it clear he is not leaving politics. “[T]he ideological struggle is underway within [the country] to determine Georgian identity … Ivanishvili said he wants [a] society which he can rule from backstage, from above. I want [a] society which will be free and which will rule itself,” Saakashvilii has said, according Civil.ge “This struggle has started for these upcoming elections, but will continue after these elections. Everything is still ahead.”

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#37
RFE/RL
October 24, 2013
Mikheil Saakashvili’s Polarizing Legacy
By Claire BiggFew leaders have been as polarizing as Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s outgoing president.

To some, he is the hero of the “Rose Revolution,” the man who stamped out corruption and raised the country’s international profile.

Others see him as an authoritarian leader who cracked down on dissent, persecuted his rivals, and thrust the small Caucasus country into a disastrous war with Russia.

As Saakashvili prepares to step down after two presidential terms, Georgians remain deeply divided over his legacy.

He is widely credited with sweeping away corruption and launching a raft of historic reforms aimed at transforming Georgia into a modern, Western-style nation.

His own democratic credentials, however, are in tatters, underscoring the paradoxes that have marked his decade-long tenure.

Thomas de Waal, a South Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Center in Washington, said that Saakashvili attempted “a kind of modernization from above” that was done without engaging society.

“There was an idea that ‘We are pushing through an enlightened, Westernizing, modernizing regime, and we are going to use all method available, including quite abusive methods, to achieve the end,'” he said.

In 2003, as the young Saakashvili led mass protests against President Eduard Shevardnadze’s regime following a parliamentary election widely seen as rigged, his pledges to shake off Soviet-era hangovers and steer the country toward the West struck a deep chord with Georgians.

Eager for change, they overwhelmingly cast their ballots for the young opposition leader in the wake of the Rose Revolution, ushering him to power in a January 2004 election with more than 96 percent of the vote.

But many of those who backed him then are now bitterly disappointed. These include some of his closest political allies and many of those in the West who once hailed him as a beacon for democratic change in the region.

Saakashvili’s breakneck crusade to modernize Georgia has certainly yielded mixed results.

Anti-Corruption Success

His success in rooting out corruption and red tape, rampant under Shevardnadze, is seen as one of his proudest achievements.

He ruthlessly sacked politicians, officials, and police accused of shady practices. To further discourage bribe-taking, he also dramatically raised the salaries of state employees.

“Under Shevarnadze, state salaries were so small as to be symbolic, and public servants and policemen had to use their position to obtain money by other means,” said Ghia Nodia, a Georgian political analyst. “I think the main result of Saakashvili’s reform is that public servants and law-enforcement officers depend on their salaries.”

A poll published earlier this month by Gallup showed that 25 percent of Georgians viewed corruption as widespread in their government in 2012, down from 52 percent in 2007.

The study put Georgia on par with Norway and far ahead of many Western countries.

Saakashvili is also praised for vastly improving the quality of public services and upgrading the country’s creaky infrastructure.

“The success has been in state-building,” said Carnegie Center’s de Waal. “[It has been] in building a viable state that provides public services, that is free of petty corruption, where the bureaucracy works, which has built infrastructure [and] roads.”

At the same time, Saakashvili’s government took important steps to overhaul its economy, combatting crippling tax evasion, lowering barriers to opening a business, and courting foreign investors.

The gross domestic product per capita more than doubled during his presidency. Georgia now ranks as the world’s ninth-best country in terms of ease of doing business, according to the World Bank.

Despite these advances, poverty has only marginally receded, with close to a quarter of Georgia’s population still living in poverty. At around 15 percent, unemployment also remains a major issue.

Critics also denounce a lack of transparency with regard to the wealth of top officials, including Saakashvili himself. They accuse the president of giving police a free hand in fighting corruption, allowing suspects to be severely mistreated.

In education, too, Saakashvili’s reforms have had limited success.

“There were some very important improvements, especially at the university-education level, which was cleaned of corruption. The system of university admission, especially, was extremely corrupt. But there is still strong disappointment about the quality of education,” said Nodia, who served as education and science minister in 2008. “It increased at the university level but not at the [primary- and secondary-] school level. School-level education is still low-quality, and not enough resources were dedicated to improving it.”

Saakashvili is also under fire for stifling the media, even though his government decriminalized libel and pushed legislation safeguarding free speech.

Justice Problems

But most of the criticism leveled against Saakashvili centers on the country’s justice system, which remains woefully unreformed.

The vast majority of court cases end up in plea bargains, with only a fraction leading to acquittals.

Georgia’s prison population has soared in the past decade amid accusations that he used the courts to punish his opponents.

The case of murdered banker Sandro Girgvliani, in particular, raised serious doubt in Georgia about Saakashvili’s commitment to a strong, independent judiciary.

Girgvliani was stabbed and left to die on the outskirts of Tbilisi in January 2006 after reportedly getting into a dispute in a restaurant where a top Interior Ministry official was celebrating his birthday with friends and colleagues — including the wife of then-Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili.

Four police officers were swiftly sentenced to prison for carrying out the attack, but critics alleged a massive government cover-up.

Saakashvili stood firmly by Merabishvili — whom prosecutors now accuse of paying each of the four officers $100,000 to take the blame ­ and eventually pardoned the four sentenced police.

The Girgvliani affair alienated many of Saakashvili’s supporters and marked a turning point in his presidency.

In November 2007, Saakashvili violently broke up antigovernment protests and declared a state of emergency that restricted public gatherings and broadcasts. The crackdown drew international condemnation.

Less than a year later, Georgia fought and lost a war with Russia over breakaway South Ossetia.

The barrage of damaging revelations that have emerged in recent years — including graphic videos that showed prisoners being raped by guards ­ has further swelled the ranks of detractors, who believe Saakashvili betrayed the democratic ideals of the Rose Revolution.

De Waal said the list of grievances against Saakashvili is long.

“[These include] an extremely punitive and abusive criminal justice, law-and-order system, which ended up with the highest per capita prison population in Europe ­ even higher than in Russia ­ in which torture became absolutely routine,” de Waal said. “Almost zero acquittal cases in criminal trials, mass surveillance, telephone tapping, and a lot of pressure put on businessmen, including intimidation, so they contribute to government projects.”

Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition won the parliamentary elections in a landslide last October, sealing Saakashvili’s political downfall.

The outgoing president still takes credit for instituting massive changes in Georgia, many of them positive.

But after a humbling final year as president, he appears ready to own up to his failures.

He told the United Nations last month in his farewell speech that “in our rush to impose a new reality, against the background of internal and external threats, we have cut corners and certainly made mistakes, went sometimes too far and other times not far enough. I acknowledge fully my responsibility in all the shortcomings.”

Saakashvili said he was aware that some of his reforms had come at “a very high cost” and extended his sympathy to all those who felt wronged by his “radical methods.”

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#38
Financial Times
October 25, 2013
One day in the life of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
By Neil Buckley
Neil Buckley is the FT’s eastern Europe editor and former Moscow bureau chief.The last time I interviewed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I came away fearing for his life. Russia’s one-time richest man was standing in the defendant’s cage in a Siberian courtroom. He had been on hunger strike for nine days and looked gaunt, his skin sallow under the harsh strip lights.

It was February 2008 and we were in Chita, a frigid outpost on the Trans-Siberian Railway 3,800 miles from Moscow. Once Khodorkovsky had been a regular at Davos, a visitor to the White House, his fortune estimated by Forbes at $15bn. Now he was in effect a political prisoner, sentenced in 2005 to eight years for fraud and tax evasion; Yukos, the oil company of which he was chief executive and biggest shareholder, had been seized and sold off. Most Russians had few illusions about the real reason: he had dared to cross President Vladimir Putin. So, like some 19th-century revolutionary, Khodorkovsky was banished to Siberia.

Now he was in court again for a pre-trial hearing linked to new, faintly surreal, charges that could extend his term for years. Prosecutors accused him of embezzling $27bn of Yukos revenues alleging, in essence, he had stolen its entiree oil output over several years. Khodorkovsky was refusing food in support of Vasily Alexanyan, one of two dozen other Yukos executives also in jail. Alexanyan, terminally ill with cancer and complications of Aids, claimed authorities were withholding treatment unless he testified against his ex-boss.

There still seemed faint hopes of change. A young lawyer, Dmitry Medvedev, had been handpicked to succeed Putin as president at elections a few weeks later (Putin, barred by the constitution from serving more than two consecutive terms, would become prime minister). Medvedev had pledged to tackle what he called Russia’s “legal nihilism”.

The three judges left the court to confer. I held a microphone to the bars of the cage and expecting guards to intervene any momment managed to conduct one of the few face-to-face interviews since Khodorkovsky’s 2005 conviction. I asked him about Medvedev’s chances of restoring the rule of law.

“Tradition, and the state of people’s minds, and the lack of forces that could support any movement towards the rule of law ­ everything’s against him,” said Khodorkovsky, his reedy voice sometimes faltering. “So, may God grant him strength. All we can do is hope.”

Khodorkovsky was right. Today, Putin is back as president, pro-democracy protests that flared in winter 2011 have waned; Medvedev is yesterday’s man. Khodorkovsky is still in jail, found guilty of the new charges in 2010. Aleksanyan died in 2011, two years after being released from jail. The rule of law in Russia seems in many ways weaker than ever.

Has ever a businessman experienced such a dizzying ascent to fortune, then such a headlong plunge from grace?

Khodorkovsky used money from setting up a small business in Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika era to found a bank, Menatep, which benefited from big deposits of Russian government budget funds. The profits helped buy a stake in Yukos in the infamous “loans-for-shares” privatisations of 1995, when the businessmen who would become oligarchs loaned money to a near-bankrupt government and were allowed to buy state assets at knock-down prices. Within years, the couple of hundred million dollars he spent gaining control of Yukos had become billions.

Khodorkovsky was the first oligarch to realise the way to real wealth was not by simply selling oil but by adopting western governance standards to boost the Yukos share price. He was the first, too, to reinvent himself, like the US robber barons a century earlier, as a philanthropist, launching the non-profit Open Russia Foundation to run educational projects.

His fallout with Putin had many causes. Khodorkovsky dared to confront the president with a thinly veiled allegation of top-level corruption in a televised meeting in February 2003. He tried to build a private oil pipeline to China, contravening state policy. He engaged in aggressive lobbying against increases in oil taxes. He negotiated to sell a stake in Yukos to America’s ExxonMobil. He was simply too independent. He refused to take his place in the matrix of competing interests and clans, of state and private oligarchs, held in check not by rule of law but, as Russians say, po ponyatiyam, “by understandings” with Putin as arbiter.

As a prisoner of conscience, Khodorkovsky is a flawed figure. He used dubious schemes to squeeze minority shareholders out of Yukos; investors who tangled with him are still vitriolic. His philanthropy was motivated partly by a desire for share price-boosting respectability.

But never underestimate the redemptive power of a prison term in the Russian psyche. Russians don’t necessarily feel Khodorkovsky is an innocent man. Yet they feel he has suffered enough. Back in 2008, I felt Dostoyevskyan echoes in the tale of the wealthy businessman who clashed with an over-mighty tsar, then purged his soul in the camps. This summer Russia’s most respected pollster, the Levada Centre, found one-third of Russians supported his early release; only one in six was against. Some 60 per cent thought the real reason he was still in jail was either because freeing him “could cause problems for those who expropriated Yukos”, or “because he criticises the government” or because “high-level state officials are personally hostile” to him.

Freedom may, finally, be in sight. Khodorkovsky’s second sentence ends next year and, though a third set of charges to keep him behind bars even longer cannot be ruled out, time to launch them is short. Russia may, too, not want the negative publicity as it prepares to host next February’s $50bn Winter Olympics in Sochi. His family are quietly hopeful he will be coming home.

But with the 10th anniversary of his arrest on October 25 2003 approaching, I contacted his legal team this summer about a written interview from the Segezha prison colony where Khodorkovsky is now held in the forests of Karelia in northwest Russia. Two sets of answers popped, weeks later, into my email inbox. The voice from inside the modern-day Gulag, frank and thoughtful, was unmistakably his. I asked him first to describe a typical day in what Russians call “the zone”.

[FT] Can you describe a typical day?

[Khodorkovsky] A long, long, ring of a bell and the night orderly’s bone-chilling roar, “Everybody up!” Another day begins. Another pointless day out of the thousands I’ve already spent, first in prison, and now here in the general regime [low security] colony 100km from the Finnish border.

Young men, 18 to 30 thhe main population of “the zone” leap quickly from ttheir bunks. The inspector can come in immediately after the bell, and if someone’s too slow he’ll end up in solitary. I too get up. I’ve not been asleep for some time already anyway. It’s a habit. Half an hour to an hour before reveille is a time when I can be alone with my thoughts, undisturbed. There won’t be another opportunity like that for the rest of the day.

Ten minutes to shave and wash with cold water, exercises and then the first “formation”. For breakfast. Quite a few more times today we’ll have to fall into formation. The canteen is nearby but our walk there is long and slow. That’s “how it’s done”. Breakfast is filling and unappetising ­ porridge, bread. Ten minutes and then off to work.

Again we fall into formation, again a funeral procession, only now to the checkpoint. A body search. The workshop. An empty, huge, cold hangar that has certainly seen better days. We occupy a small corner, where we assemble paper folders. A machine would do this work better but you need to have something to keep the prisoners busy. We get paid $10-$15 a month, “cash in hand”. You can spend it once a week in the local commissary, where that much can get you 1kg-2kg of candy, or four tins of food, or five packs of cigarettes. There’s really not much else. Though they do have apples on occasion. I like apples

The bell “formatioon”, a search, lunch. Fifteen minutes. Balanda [a thin gruel] and potatoes. Filling, but it’s best not to look at what you’re eating. You might get upset. And do I need that? I’ve had my refuelling, what more do I want?

Formation, search, the workshop. Folders. The bell. The end of the work day.

Formation, search, the barrack. You can watch TV for an hour. I read or write. Nobody bothers me. The bell, formation, supper. Potatoes, bread.

Formation, the barrack. If my lawyers don’t come, I watch the news on the only available channel, and read surrounded by a hundred more inmates. You can have a snack, if you still have anything left from the package your family are allowed to forward to you once every two months. And so passes the day. There are 10 years behind me, and another year still ahead. A long bell and the roar, “Lights out!”

[FT] What are conditions like at the camp?

We have “barracks-style” imprisonment the dormitory isn’t divided up into lockeed cells. One barrack block holds 100-150 people. It’s warm. Rooms inside have ordinary doors without locks.

In our room there are 20 people; the floor area is maybe 30-40 square metres. Right now the occupancy rate in the camp isn’t high, so most of us (including myself) sleep on the lower bunk. The walls are painted but you can wallpaper them if you so desire. The floors are wooden. This is Karelia; there’s plenty of wood.

The barracks have ordinary windows. The view is of the neighbouring barrack and the wall between us, topped with barbed wire. There’s a room with a TV and kettles. There are 10 barracks in “the zone”. Besides these, there’s a canteen, a school, office facilities, rooms for longer visits, and an industrial zone with workshops the hangars. Beyond the ffence, there’s forest. You can see the smokestacks of the cellulose plant.

The number of books you can have among your things is restricted 10 pieces together with magazines. There’s a library buut there’s no good literature there, and they don’t allow me to pass books on to it. Lawyers order books for me. They take a month to arrive, and then they lie in the storehouse, and I can exchange what I have read once a week. Of course, such a regime doesn’t allow you to work with reference books. “E-readers” are banned, as are computers.

[FT] Can you communicate with the outside?

There are three ways: telephone calls (up to 15 minutes once a week); letters (they take 7-10 days to get to the lawyers); and orally through my lawyers (but there is official video and unoffficial audio recording of our meetings).

Four long visits (of three days each) and six visits of four hours through a glass partition are permitted per year. I get visited by my wife, children and parents but few here are as lucky as me. During the longer visits, you have to spend the whole time in a not very large room or in the kitchen in the common area. This is very difficult for people who have come in from “the outside”. And what can you say about travelling over a thousand kilometres for the sake of four hours through glass? But compared with Chita, which my people had to travel 6,500km to reach, this isn’t bad at all. Except my parents are not getting any younger

Officially, the laundry room in the bathhouse washes things once a week. In a general heap, from socks to undershirts to work clothes. If you want to launder your things in a normal way, you need to get creative. But the problem is then there’s no place to dry them. There’s a communal shower room, where you can bathe once a week. If you work at a dirty production facility, they allow you to take additional showers, after your shift.

The colony has its own pigsty, so they do give you the 30-40 grams of meat or lard you’re “entitled” to, adding it to the soup or porridge. You get vegetables besides potatoes and boiled cabbage pe perhaps 10 times a year (cucumbers, onions things that grow in greennhouses).

In the morning there are compulsory exercises for 10 minutes. I always do them; otherwise I’ll certainly strain my back at work. After work we’re allowed to play sport for half an hour to an hour. I usually don’t have the energy but the younger ones play volleyball or “pump themselves up”.

We get regular medical examinations, especially for tuberculosis. Everything else exceptt when a person appears to have been beaten is of little concern too anybody. You need medical attention? Knock yourself out trying to get it. They’ll send you to the prison service regional hospital a ppretty sad sight. But if they suspect you have tuberculosis, they send you off to a tuberculosis zone. I’ve not been there but I’ve heard horror stories.

The weather’s better here than in Krasnokamensk [the Siberian camp where Khodorkovsky was held from 2005 to 2007]. Over there, it was minus 45C in winter and plus 45C in summer, open steppe right to the horizon. Here it’s Finnish weather: minus 20C or 30C in winter, up to plus 25C in summer.

[FT] How do inmates treat a former billionaire businessman?

The attitude towards me has changed somewhat over these 10 years. In prison they respect age (I’m now older than most people here) and term (10 years is a lot). Of course, renown is important, things you can boast about to your acquaintances (“I served time with such-and-such a person!”).

Everybody’s past is different here, and is rarely discussed. People are more likely to be interested in hearing about a “different life”. And, of course, any substantial fact oopposition to the powers-that-be, non-admission of guilt. This allows those around to talk without fearing possible denunciation.

But in general, it’s not difficult for me to find a common language with anyone, besides those I hold in deep contempt. There are people like that here but not many. I’m unable to conceal this feeling, but to overcome my attitude towards rapists, for example, is hard. Although they are people too, of course

There are informers here, as in any zone. But this is classified a “red” zone, a model zone, so there’s a particularly large number of informers. There are sometimes whole queues lined up to see the prison staff. What do they tell them about? About minor violations, as a rule. Real or imaginary. Someone was talking while in formation, someone refused to do clean-up, someone was smoking at an inappropriate time, things like that.

Ratting is a useful thing: you can get some kind of privilege, such as permission to wear “outside” [civilian] shoes, you can increase your “authority” among the prisoners and even extort various things. But there are risks as well, since someone can also rat on you, they can beat you up during a staging [transport between institutions] or even kill you. Such things do happen, albeit rarely.

I’ve not observed any kind of particular cruelty in the camps and the prisons. If anything, it’s less dangerous here than on the outside, since people usually don’t drink and don’t have access to drugs.

Nobody needs problems. But they do happen (since many people here are the kind who don’t think with their heads), when people receive the command to “punish”; it’s not important whether it comes from their colleagues or from the administration. For privileges or some miserable pittance of a reward. The consequences can be very serious. I’ve observed it more than once. Otherwise, in ordinary camp life, people are all sufficiently restrained. Although, as in any male collective, there are clashes. But without cruelty. Just throwing a few punches around.

The administration employees, as opposed to the guards, are right among the prisoners, on the camp territory and unarmed. There are only truncheons and handcuffs. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen them used in my presence.

In this model camp, the employees come to work sober. In Krasnokamensk, and in other camps as well, the situation is different. They speak politely with adults here. With me they even use the Russian formal “you” “Vy”. With younger people it dependsnds, but boorishness and humiliating treatment are a rarity. In general, if you want to stand up for your dignity, you have got to be ready to fight and to suffer losses. Just like everywhere else.

[FT] How had prison life changed Khodorkovsky? He told me it had made him more restrained, slower to rush to conclusions. He was more tolerant of human weaknesses and mistakes (a quality some Yukos employees say he lacked in his go-getting heyday) but quicker to cut people off “if they cross the line”. (In prison, “softness is not understood and not excused.”) I asked him more about his life.

[FT] What can you read in the camp?

I find it important not to lose ties with the reality beyond the fence. Every day I try to read 100-200 pages of informational materials sent by my lawyers, the many newspapers and magazines to which I subscribe. As a rule, I manage. I’m a fast reader. But then very little time is left for all other literature. It was easier in prison. It was there I began to delve into history and philosophy. And also, for recreation, I read historical fantasy. An absolutely wonderful genre, in my view.

[FT] Do you fear the authorities will bring a third set of charges against you? And how do you cope mentally with not knowing exactly when you will leave prison? Do you suffer bouts of depression?

I know there are those trying to convince Vladimir Putin to do this; if the “command” is given, there’ll be a “case” and a conviction. The storyline the prosecution presents hardly matters. I personally don’t fear prison. I’ve become accustomed to it. I do fear for my family, my parents, my children.

In 2007, when I received the completely nonsensical charge of having stolen all of Yukos’s oil, I forced myself to come to terms with the notion of endless imprisonment. When President Putin declared in 2012 that I would get out after having sat out this term, it was hard to believe him.

So now, if he “changes his mind”, this will be tough for me, of course, but it’s not going to drive me to depression. I’m not the only Russian prisoner who’s had to learn to live with uncertainty about the time of his release.

[FT] You told a Russian journalist that if you’d known 10 years ago what would happen to you, you would have killed yourself. Were you serious? You could have left Russia before you were arrested

[She] asked me not about the arrest, for which I was prepared, and not even about imprisonment, but about if I’d known everything straight away: about the death of Vasily Alexanyan, the hostages [arrests of Yukos employees to put pressure on senior executives on trial], the forced emigrations. About the demolition of the company, the demolition of my illusions about the judiciary, about the powers-that-be (and I did have them), and so on. I wasn’t prepared for that kind of knowledge then. Everything’s different now. Perhaps the prison experience has helped me survive the sense of personal responsibility. Had I left the country, I would have “eaten myself alive”.

[FT] What was the hardest of all those things to bear?

When you are getting your fingers smashed with a hammer, which one hurts the most? Perhaps the first one. But more likely it comes in waves: it seems you’ve got used to it, and then suddenly the pain comes again. But after five years the acuteness of perception declines. No question.

How do you feel about the economist Sergei Guriev, who participated in an experts’ report that criticised the second case against you, and felt compelled to flee Russia this year?

I consider the situation with Sergei Guriev to be typical of Russia’s way of “applying the law”. But that doesn’t make it any less revolting. The Yukos chief counsel, Vasily Alexanyan (Guriev made reference to him), did indeed pay first with his health and freedom, and then with his life, for refusing to bear false witness. Such offers, backed by threats of unlawful persecution, were made to many who worked at Yukos, including foreign citizens. I personally read one such interrogation record.

[FT] These were striking statements from a man who in his months sitting in defendants’ cages seemed to possess extraordinary inner calm. I switched track, to ask about Russia’s system, and the nascent Russian opposition, including Alexei Navalny, the charismatic protest leader. Last month Navalny finished second in elections for Moscow mayor but, like Khodorkovsky, was convicted this summer of dubious embezzlement charges.

[FT For you, what is Putinism?

Putinism is authoritarian state capitalism based around one leader. It’s an attempt to control society and the state apparatus through kompromat [“dirt” about a person used to keep them in line], and through arbitrary law enforcement. It’s the consistent annihilation of the substance of independent state and civic institutions. It’s an attempt to run a huge country in “manual mode”. That’s no way to build a modern country.

[FT] What do you say to those who suggest the roots of Putinism lie in the 1990s; that the way the “oligarchs” abused the political and judicial system in part paved the way for today’s system?

It’s hard to speak to naive people who believe in myths by the name of [Boris] Berezovsky [one of the most flamboyant 1990s oligarchs, who later fled Russia and died this year]. The “oligarchs” had significant influence only in Berezovsky’s head and in myths created by him.

The so-called oligarchs never had a fraction of the power over the judicial and law enforcement system that Putin’s circle has today. Even if we take just the economy and compare, for example, Yukos and Rosneft [the state-controlled oil giant that bought many Yukos assets], the scale of their influence on the state apparatus is incomparable.

Until the beginning of the 2000s we were building a democratic state, with all its early-stage shortcomings. The US in the 1930s to the 1950s provides some very similar examples. From 2001 on and esppecially after the Yukos affair began an analogy to early fascist SSpain is closer: “To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law.” The fork in the road is obvious.

[FT] But didn’t the fact that a few people made billions in the 1990s while most people’s living standards plunged contribute to popular disillusionment with “democracy” and “capitalism” that persists to today?

The origins of the Putin regime can be found in 1993, when the Chechen war started, when separation of powers was eliminated and the president received dictatorial powers. It was at this moment that we made a mistake.

In those years I spent a lot of time out in the regions; I worked side by side with ordinary workers on drilling rigs and in the oil fields; at times we even ate “from the same pot”. For them, the question of who owned the business was not relevant. And in general, for residents of a small town the difference between me and [President Boris] Yeltsin was not very significant we were all just “the bosses”.

What really worried them was whether these “bosses” could guarantee a job and a salary, whether they knew how to talk to people, to listen and to hear. Even in terms of consumption, nobody compared themselves with the “oligarchs” in faraway Moscow only with local entrepreneurs, thhose who lived nearby, in the flat or house next door. Despite all the aggressive propaganda about social discord, I never had any problems in my relations with people.

That doesn’t mean that privatisation could not have been conducted more fairly, in the interests of a greater number of citizens. It definitely could and should have been. However, when we offered to correct the situation through a compensatory tax, it turned out that the powers-that-be were interested in maintaining the antagonism. Our project was buried.

The idea of capitalism in Russia is alive and well today but, as for liberal democracy, they have indeed made a bogeyman out of it, ascribing to it all the costs of poor-quality authoritarian governance. Explaining this to people will take a lot of work on our part.

[FT] How do you answer Russians who, initially at least, used to say “Khodorkovsky got what he deserved”?

It’s hard to feel sorry for a rich person. This is hardly something unique to Russians. But it’s hard to convince people that what you “deserve” needs to be established by an independent court, and not by envious people and a flunky of your opponents. It’s gradually getting through to people that complete lawlessness towards a powerful person will turn into even greater and wider-scale lawlessness in relation to ordinary people. Not for nothing has a fair judiciary now come to the forefront of society’s demands.

[FT] Do you believe Russia’s “managed” democracy could evolve into something more “real”? Or will it require a new revolution?

I’d like to believe in the path of reforms. There are people in Putin’s circle who are attempting to get a civic dialogue going, as we can see from Moscow and Yekaterinburg [where opposition candidates were allowed to participate in mayoral elections in September]. But the siloviki [hardliners around Vladimir Putin] are more influential for now.

Putin doesn’t have much time left five to 10 years, maximum. AAny powerful crisis, given the current state of state institutions and dialogue with society, could result in the bounds of the current system being breached.

[FT] How do you believe the next handover of power will occur?

Of course I’d like it if Vladimir Putin were to gradually divide presidential power between an honestly elected parliament, an independent judiciary and a coalition government, and a new president became a compromise figure, not an authoritarian one, the guarantor of citizens’ rights. The likelihood that events will develop that way is sadly not high. More realistic, after Putin leaves, is a brief period of rule by the new “heir”, and then an inevitable political crisis and a “relaunch” of how the country is run, a shift to a constituent assembly.

[FT] We’ve seen a clampdown on opposition and civil society since Putin returned as president. Will people just submit, or will it lead eventually to a new explosion?

It’s possible ­ though not very likely that Vladimir Putin will keep the sccrews tightened until the end of his rule [another presidential term could take him to 2024] though I think he’ll leave earlier than that. However, as the quality of the administrative class declines, the protest potential that has already built up and this tendency is growing among thee youth makes a political crisis practically inevitable. The purging” of the political “field”, the curtailing of social mobility, the ageing of Putin and his entourage, the inner circle’s way of running things by arbitrating constant conflicts between them, the refusal to engage in dialogue with society, all create a powerful breeding ground for politicians and radicals from outside the current system.

[FT] To what extent do you think the protests since winter 2011 reflect a clash of generations between the Soviet and “post-Soviet” generation?

I’d say the division is different between people who feel fully ddependent on the state or its bureaucracy, and independent people, ready to take responsibility for their own fate. Of course there’s more of a feeling of independence in the post-Soviet generation but there’s nevertheless no clear dividing line. Most likely it’s a question of individual personality traits. The main thing I like about the “dissenters” is their sense of their own self-worth, which sometimes comes to a person only in later years. And this is remarkable!

[FT] Despite his conviction, do you believe Alexei Navalny could be a future Russian leader?

There’s no doubt Alexei Navalny has the ambitions and charisma of a leader. However, if he wants to base himself on the independently thinking part of society, then as well as building up management experience, he’ll definitely have to demonstrate he refuses simply to perpetuate authoritarian-type leadership. But that’s not at all easy.

Still, I think the path to being [Putin’s] “heir” is closed to him. He’s a stranger to today’s elite. Will Navalny be able to will hhe want to offer a version of democratic leadership? Assuming the ssituation develops peacefully, his political prospects depend on the answer to that question.

[FT] Do you mean you’re concerned about Navalny’s nationalist links? Could rule by Navalny lead to nationalism?

I consider Alexei Navalny a fairly reasonable person, so I don’t expect nationalism or chauvinism from him. But at the same time, turning away from strong-man rule demands a lot more ideological fortitude. Many supporters of any popular Russian politician long to see in him a strong-man leader. And what happens is unlimited presidential powers and yet another round of authoritarianism.

[FT] Navalny, unlike Khodorkovsky, recently had his five-year jail term commuted to a suspended sentence that nonetheless bars him from public office. But since Putin’s return as president last year, the ex-Yukos boss has been joined by other “political” prisoners including members of the punk band Pussy Riot, and protesters who clashed with police last year. I asked him finally what the west could do and what he wwould do when he got out.

[FT] How can Europe and the US usefully respond to what’s happening in Russia?

I’m convinced the current regime’s legitimacy in many ways rests upon its recognition by the west. I think the west should recognise only state institutions that really do exist, and clearly renounce simulacra like the dependent courts and the pseudo-parliament. But in conversations with the president, his administration, state corporaations it’s imperative to strive for recognition of all Eurropean values, or at least a part, as the basis for co-operation. Otherwise, as experience has shown, peaceful coexistence on our continent will not last long.

[FT] What will you do once you’re released? You’ve said you don’t plan to go into politics, or back into business. But if people asked you, would you consider a political role?

I know how strongly the powers-that-be fear my release, which is why I’m not making any plans. My priorities are my family, parents, children. Returning to business is of no interest to me, and I’m not attracted to government service, fighting for the votes of a paternalistically attuned electorate and political intrigues. I’m prepared to stand up for the interests of self-dependent people who possess a sense of their own self-worth. I understand them, and they understand me. Unfortunately, there are not that many real citizens in Russia for now but there will certainly be more. For this reason I’ll continue to be engaged in civic activity.

[FT] Do you think Russians would now accept you in a political role?

I know many of those I spoke about above will support my efforts in the struggle for human dignity and a law-based state. Some don’t like parts of my past, the fact I worked in the Komsomol, the Communist youth league, or that I participated in privatisation, or fought on Yeltsin’s side. But now we’re together, and this is the only truly important thing.

[FT] Russia’s economic growth is slowing sharply. Is business confidence being damaged by the political situation?

The blow to business people’s confidence in the protection of the law has found reflection in the constant outflow of capital and people, in a fall in the number of long-term projects not financed out of the state budget, and in the insane embezzlement of state property and corruption that are already eating up more than 10 per cent of GDP.

I think that with another approach, a country as endowed with raw materials as we are and with our low by European measurees level of consumption and quality of infrastructure could show noot 2 per cent but 6 to 7 per cent growth rates for another decade or two, and attain Canadian quality-of-life indicators. (Canada is comparable in its natural and climatic conditions and population density.)

[FT] Some people say Russia’s history, culture and Orthodox religion mean it can never become a western-style democracy

It’s hard for me to agree. Russia really for the past 400 years has had an absolute monarchy, although with fairly powerful local self-government that was not destroyed until Stalin, in the transition to totalitarian practices. Until that moment, the territory of today’s Russia was inseparably connected with the west and was going along the same path albeit with something of a time-lag and in its own paarticular way. From all appearances, nothing has changed today.

To watch Neil Buckley’s 2008 interview with Khodorkovsky from 2008 go to ft.com/putinsrussia

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