Russian Roulette: Russia's Economy in Putin's Era
Vaknin, Sam, 1961-
English
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Below is a summary of Russian Roulette: Russia's Economy in Putin's Era
Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
C O N T E N T S
I. The Security Apparatus
II. The Energy Sector
III. Financial Services
IV. The Russian Devolution - The Regions
V. Agriculture
VI. Russia as a Creditor
VII. Russia's Space Industry
VIII. Russia's Vodka Wars
IX. Let My People Go
X. Fimaco Wouldn't Die
XI. The Chechen Theatre Ticket
XII. Russia's Israeli Oil Bond
XIII. Russia's Idled Spies
XIV. Russia's Middle Class
XV. Russia in 2003
XVI. Russia Straddles the Euro-Atlantic Divide
XVII. Russia's Stealth Diplomacy
XVIII. Russia's Second Empire
XIX. The Author
XX. About "After the Rain"
The Security Apparatus
Shabtai Kalmanovich vanished from London in late 1980's. He resurfaced
in Israel to face trial for espionage. He was convicted and spent years
in an Israeli jail before being repatriated to Russia. He was described
by his captors as a mastermind, in charge of an African KGB station.
In the early 1970's he even served as advisor (on Russian immigration)
to Israel's Iron Lady, Golda Meir. He then moved to do flourishing
business in Africa, in Botswana and then in Sierra Leone, where his
company, LIAT, owned the only bus operator in Freetown. He traded
diamonds, globetrotted flamboyantly with an entourage of dozens of
African chieftains and their mistresses, and fraternized with the
corrupt elite, President Momoh included. In 1986-7 he even collaborated
with IPE, a London based outfit, rumored to have been owned by former
members of the Mossad and other paragons of the Israeli defense
establishment (including virtually all the Israelis implicated in the
ill-fated Iran-Contras affair).
Being a KGB officer was always a lucrative and liberating proposition.
Access to Western goods, travel to exotic destinations, making new (and
influential) friends, mastering foreign languages, and doing some
business on the side (often with one's official "enemies" and
unsupervised slush funds) - were all standard perks even in the 1970's
and 1980's. Thus, when communism was replaced by criminal anarchy, KGB
personnel (as well as mobsters) were the best suited to act as
entrepreneurs in the new environment.
They were well traveled, well connected, well capitalized, polyglot,
possessed of management skills, disciplined, armed to the teeth, and
ruthless. Far from being sidetracked, the security services rode the
gravy train. But never more so than now.
January 2002. Putin's dour gaze pierces from every wall in every
office. His obese ministers often discover a sudden sycophantic
propensity for skiing (a favorite pastime of the athletic President).
The praise heaped on him by the servile media (Putin made sure that no
other kind of media survives) comes uncomfortably close to a Central
Asian personality cult. Yet, Putin is not in control of the machinery
that brought him to the pinnacle of power, under-qualified as he was.
This penumbral apparatus revolves around two pivots: the increasingly
fractured and warlord controlled military and, ever more importantly,
the KGB's successors, mainly the FSB.
A. The Military
Two weeks ago, Russia announced yet another plan to reform its bloated,
inefficient, impoverished, demoralized and corrupt military. Close to
200,000 troops are to go immediately and the same number in the next 3
years. The draft is to be abolished and the army professionalized. At
its current size (officially, 1.2 million servicemen), the armed forces
are severely under-funded. Cases of hunger are not uncommon. Ill (and
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