From the Wall Street Journal
via the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
Dated Friday February 4
Caligula in Moscow
By Garry Kasparov
Democratic reform in the former Soviet Union has been much in the news lately thanks to the victory of Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine. Citizens took to the streets in the millions to protest and force a new election when his Kremlin-backed opponent tried to steal it the first time around. President George W. Bush came in dead last in the race to congratulate the new Ukrainian president. He waited for his "good friend" Vladimir Putin's own tardy acknowledgment that he had been unsuccessful in undermining Ukrainian democracy as effectively as he is dismantling Russia's.
In Mr. Putin's view, Ukraine provides a dangerous model. He is careful not to make such mistakes as allowing an independent judiciary review election results and letting opposition politicians speak on television. These basics of dictatorship have recently been accompanied by other disturbing scenes on the Russian political scene. In his ongoing battle for total control over every aspect of Russian life, President Putin's weapon of choice has been a justice system that provides anything but justice. An expanding network of judges and district attorneys is being used to persecute the opposition and enrich Putin loyalists. A puppet judiciary has been created to accompany the puppet parliament. To add insult to injury, a man from Putin's St. Petersburg with no judicial experience was just named to the highest arbitration court in the land, a move akin to Caligula's naming a horse to the Senate.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov painted a very attractive picture of Russia to eager potential investors. I would love to live in the country that he described! Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few independent voices in the Russian parliament, presented the opposite view, a rather gloomy portrait that coincides with those of most external analysts. While Mr. Ryzhkov challenged the party line abroad, the Kremlin responded by having the attorney general's office initiate an investigation in his home district of Altai, Siberia. What they are looking for won't be clear until they find it, but they always do.
Remember the December auction of the Yugansk subsidiary of the Yukos oil giant, which was won by the unknown entity "Baikalfinancegroup." As I predicted in these pages, they and their $9.4 billion existed only on paper, leaving the prize under the control of a state-owned energy company run by Mr. Putin's deputy chief of staff. The only surprise is how badly the swindlers are covering up their crime. The government ministers and bankers involved are all giving different stories about where this mysterious money came from and no one can say where it has gone. Just like that, the money supposedly needed to pay the Yukos tax debt has disappeared, which really isn't so hard because it never existed.
Read more.
My apologies for posting from a right wing web site. However, I think the issues of Putin and the future of Russia goes beyond problems anybody may have with free market policies, which Kasparov tends to favor, over social democracy. Putin is no social democrat. Putin, like Bush, is a tyrant who must be removed from power.
Were the sale of Yukos a move to bring a dangerously powerful private economic entity under public control, I might not Kasparov such good fortune on his new endeavor. However, Putin's move was nothing so noble. It was designed punish a Russian oligarch for daring to oppose Putin.
Putin has established himself as the most powerful Russian ruler since Stalin. He runs in elections without fear of effective opposition or criticism from the media. Where presidents of Russia's federated republics were elected after the fall of Communism, Putin is now appointing them. And this to say nothing of Putin's recent and shameless attempt to dictate to the Ukrainian people who there leader would be.
We are witnessing in our time a phenomenon of rulers of free states undermining the liberties enjoyed by citizens. These have come in states that had a long tradition of free institutions, such as Bush's America, or had fledgling free intuitions, such as Putin's Russia. It is a trend that must be reversed and can only be reversed by citizens rising to action.
Bush and Putin represent forms of tyranny bigger than any narrow view of the future. They have no respect for any ideology, any natural or contracted bound that will stand between them and their ill-gotten gains. The defeat of such tyrants is a matter serious enough for the left and sober conservatives to make common cause.
We who follow chess know what kind of man Kasparov is. He is an aggressive fighter who plays to win. He will take tactical risk when he knows his position is superior. He joins the battle well prepared to face his opponent. Putin would be foolish to underestimate him.
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