Included Files
SELECTIVE CAPITALISM AND KLEPTOCRACY
NOTES
- The author first used these terms in “Russian ‘Hard Power’ Changes the Balance in the Caucasus,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), August 12, 2008, http://www.rferl .org/content/Russia_Changes_Balance_In_Caucasus/1190395.html.
- Corruption is to be understood here not in the sense of a deviation from well-established formal rules, but rather as the informal rule to which observance of formal rules is, in fact, the exception.
- Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Russia 147 out of 180 countries, capping an eight-year downward trend. The organization noted that the “phenomenon of corruption . . . seriously undermines the very statehood of Russia.” Also in 2008, Russian prosecutor Aleksandr Bastrykin estimated that corrupt officials extract some $120 billion a year from the national budget, a figure that comes to nearly a third of the country’s 2008 budget of $376 billion.
- Stanislav Belkovsky, a Russian political analyst with wide-ranging ties and opaque loyalties, told Die Welt in 2007 that Vladimir Putin amassed a fortune of more than $40 billion during his tenure as president. Putin publicly shrugged off the allegations, but the Kremlin never took any action against Belkovsky.
- One example of a public spat is the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the expropriation of Yukos in 2003–05. Another is the open letter Viktor Cherkesov published in Kommersant in October 2007, criticizing the business activities of former KGB officers. The letter was widely viewed as the public manifestation of a long-running private feud between various Kremlin clans.
- Managed democracy is an unfortunate term, as it fails to convey the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the system that results from the “management” of the electoral process.
- This paragraph is adapted from the author’s testimony before a hearing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Kyrgyzstan’s Revolution: Causes and Consequences) on April 7, 2005. See http://csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail& ContentRecord_id=341&Region_id=0&Issue_id=0&ContentType=H,B&ContentRecord Type=H&CFID=18849146&CFTOKEN=53.
- For a useful study of decorative democracy in the post-Soviet world, see Andrew Wilson’s Virtual Politics (Yale University Press, 2005), which provides an overview of how elites “fake democracy.”
- The author noted the emergence of this paradoxical paradigm in an October 3, 2002, article for RFE/RL: “Is there a touch of the postmodern in all this free play of decontextualized symbols? Or is it just conceptual chaos? Vladimir Nabokov’s description of an emigre couple in his novel Pnin hints at one possible answer: ‘Only another Russian could understand the reactionary and Sovietophile blend presented by the pseudo-colorful Komarovs, for whom an ideal Russia consisted of the Red Army, an anointed monarch, collective farms, anthroposophy, the Russian Church and the Hydro-Electric Dam. . . .’ Although some of Nabokov’s terms have not stood the test of time (anthroposophy is not much in evidence these days), the peculiar cocktail he mixes for the Komarovs seems increasingly popular in Moscow. The intriguing question is why so many find it not merely palatable, but potent.” (http://archive.rferl.org/newsline/2002/10/031002.asp#5-not)
- United Russia, program adopted by the party’s 7th Congress (December 17, 22008), http:// edinros.er.ru/er/rubr.shtml?110100, accessed April 26, 2009.
- “The Kremlin” here is shorthand for the primary stakeholders in the existing system, from the presidential administration to the various influence groups that control key assets.
- Estimates of the amount of support Yanukovich received vary. Anders Aslund, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment in October 2004, put Yanukovich’s election war chest at a whopping $600 million, with a significant portion coming from the Kremlin and affiliated donors. See http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=727&prog=zgp. The Heritage Foundation’s Ariel Cohen stated in November 2004 that “the Kremlin has poured unprecedented resources into the election campaign—at least $200 million from sympathetic Russian and Ukrainian businessmen.” See http://www.heritage.org/research/russiaandeurasia/em949.cfm.
- See RFE/RL Newsline, October 18, 2004, http://archive.rferl.org/newsline/2004/10/2-TCA/tca-181004.asp.
- Vladimir Socor, “Russian Oil Supplies to Lithuania Cut Off,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 3, no. 150 (August 3, 2006), http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=31939.
- See “When Success and Image Don’t Mesh,” Moscow Times, June 27, 2008.
- See “Venezuela Reaffirms Future Arms Purchases from Russia,” RIA Novosti, November 7, 2008, http://en.rian.ru/world/20081107/118181084.html.
- The bizarre fruits of this particular diplomatic initiative ripened after the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 and the subsequent South Ossetian declaration of independence, which was recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
- The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR) canceled planned missions to monitor Russia’s December 2007 parliamentary election and March 2008 presidential election, citing excessive restrictions.
- See Daniel Kimmage, “SCO—Shoring Up the Post-Soviet Status Quo,” RFE/RL, July 8, 2005, http://www.rferl.org/Content/Article/1059771.html, and “Does the Road to Shanghai Go Through Tehran?” RFE/RL, June 12, 2006, http://www.rferl.org/content/article/ 1069086.html.
June 4 2009 EVENT
On June 4, 2009, a high level conference in Washington DC launched the "Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians" study.
IN THE NEWS
MEDIA
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