Back in the USSR?
Why was Russian energy entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested Saturday? Bruce P. Jackson may have the answer:
This has been a year in which independent media and major independent business owners in Russia have been put out of business by the strong-arm tactics of the special prosecutor and the newly vigilant Federal Security Service (FSB), the agency that succeeded the KGB. In a climate that progressive Russian business executives compare to the fearful period of the 1950s, Khodorkovsky made the fatal mistake of expressing political opinions and having the temerity to provide financial support to opposition parties.
While this alone is insurrectionary behavior in the increasingly czarist world of President Putin, Khodorkovsky had the additional misfortune of being the last surviving oligarch. For those who have not kept up their Russian, “oligarch” is a term of art for “rich Jews” who made their money in the massive privatization of Soviet assets in the early 1990s. It is still not a good thing to be a successful Jew in historically anti-Semitic Russia.
Since Putin was elected president in 2000, every major figure exiled or arrested for financial crimes has been Jewish. In dollar terms, we are witnessing the largest illegal expropriation of Jewish property in Europe since the Nazi seizures during the 1930s.
There’s more, and it includes looks at Russia’s increasingly dirty dealings in “the near abroad” — the former non-Russian republics of the old USSR. And that’s why the whole thing is today’s Required Reading.
Putin’s game is much deeper than beat-up-the-Jew. Putin is trying to recover control over the Russian economy, and trying to recover the massive amounts of capital that were stolen and shipped abroad in the last years of the Soviet Union and first years of the mess that followed.
Putin is actually trying to put into place a reasonable market economy. He’s done two tremendously important (yet almost unreported) things – made rules for the sale of private land plots, and put in place an adversarial justice system.
These oligarchs made fortunes in the few years after USSR fell. They took price-controlled stuff at home and shipped it abroad, sold it at market prices, and made huge profits. They knew all the tricks because they had worked in the USSR’s black market before the end. And they mostly didn’t bother with taxes. The massive profit lost by the Russian state was damaging, but tolerable.
The trouble really began During Yeltsin’s reelection campaign. Yeltsin needed the oligarchs to stay in office. Many of them had gone on and bought TV stations, newspapers, started up their own political parties, etc. They said to Yeltsin, “what can you give us?” Yeltsin was reelected, and the oligarchs were sold the state industries for pennies on the dollar.
After Yeltsin and before Putin, these guys ran wild. They were virtual states unto themselves. Putin is now systematically banging heads together and trying to establish some revenue for the Russian state.
No, it isn’t fair, and no, I don’t wish a Russian prison cell on them. But I also think it important that Russia at least have enough cohesion to be fully disinvested of its nuclear and biological arsenal.
Is the article correct though that most of the oligarchs that have been robbed from are Jews?
Who better to rob from to help the state, than the Jew bandit capitalists? whose gonna give a shit about them?
Is the article correct though that most of the oligarchs that have been robbed from are Jews?
Who better to rob from to help the state, than the Jew bandit capitalists? whose gonna give a shit about them?
I know at least two of them are Jewish. One, whose name I can not spell but begins with a “b”, was very vocal about the fact that he was Jewish and tried to get Jewish organizations to intervene on his behalf.
As to the claim in the article that all or most of those arrested are Jewish, I hadn’t heard that before. I will look into that as much as I can, but I doubt that it’s true.
I don’t have the means to determine who’s Jewish and who is not.
And, looking at it now, Jackson says: “…every major figure exiled or arrested…” There are those who are currently living abroad who refuse to return to Russia, but no one has been told to get out like that comedian dude. And I wish Jackson would define “major figure.” And I further wish he would define “illegal expropriation”.
Here’s a partial list of those who have run afoul of the law (not necessarily arrested):
Vladimir Kadannikov
Anatoly Chubais (Unified Energy System)
Vagit Alekperov (LUKoil)
Vladimir Potanin (Interros Group, incl. Norilsk Nickel)
Vladimir Gusinsky – actually jailed for a couple days – (Media-Most, Gazprom connection)
Mikhail Fridman (Alfa Group, incl. Tyumen oil co.)
Pyotr Aven (ditto)
Mikhail Khodorkovsky (YUKOS oil)
Boris Berezovsky (who I was trying to remember above) and Roman Abramovich are both Jewish. Berezovsky is in Britain right now, and refusing to come home. I believe there is a Russian warrant for his arrest. Both of these guys were known as part of the “family” when Yeltsin was in power. They had Sibneft oil, half of Russkiy Aluminiy, Aeroflot, ORT television, TV6, LogoVAZ cars, plus banks and who knows what else. In early 2000, Berezovsky publicly bragged about kicking Yeltsin out of office and brining in Putin.
In a ’97 interview, he bragged that he and six other guys controlled over %50 of Russia’s GDP.
Putin is not a boy scout, but neither are these guys. Some of them have so far avoided prosecution because they are in the Duma. Chubais was one of Yeltsin’s many prime ministers, IIRC.
As for Khodorkovsky in particular, his partner Platon Lebedev is currently charged with embezzelment and fraud. There are other Yukos employees charged with murder. That doesn’t make him a criminal, though. Interesting interview with him *here*. Bill Bradley, Tom Lantos, and Spencer Abraham, eh?