HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

Today “the state” in the strict meaning of the word has ceased to exist in Russia. It’s become an enormous private militarised corporation, solving the problems of its principal shareholders. The whole world now knows about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Private Military Company known as the Wagner Group, and that it represents a miniature version of the whole of the Putin state. The state in Russia doesn’t defend the national interests, but simply serves the interests of the clan that rules it.

From the first days of its existence, this corporation in the guise of a state busied itself with what it regarded as the most important task: the redistribution of property to its main shareholders. This process, that’s been going on for just over 20 years, has brought us to the point where Russia’s fundamental national wealth is now under the control of a very small group of people; probably just a few hundred families. These people represent the backbone of Putin’s infamous vertical of power.

In a matter of years, Russia became the country with the highest concentration of capital. But this capital was tied in with power; if someone lost their access to power, then they inevitably lost their economic influence, too. So every business group that was close to the authorities in Russia became vertically integrated into the whole power structure, especially into the block of the power ministries. It worked the other way round, too. Every area of bureaucracy built up under itself its own business infrastructure. For Putin’s regime, money became simply a function of power.

At the same time, we can speak with confidence about the collective ownership of the ruling clan over the property it controls. Russia’s economy today is run along the principle of the thieves’ “collective fund”. It doesn’t matter who’s registered as the actual owner; what matters is who it’s “understood” to belong to. A perfect illustration of this is the story of the ill-fated palace at Gelendzhik. It was felt necessary to pass ownership from one member of Putin’s circle to another; but everyone knows that it doesn’t belong to any of them.

Putin and his team conducted an extra, secret, privatisation in Russia, by carrying out a secondary seizure of assets in their favour. They achieved this in two ways. First of all, Putin “re-recruited” the vast majority of the old “boyars” – the leaders of the former elite. These were the main shareholders of the financial and industrial groups that emerged in the 1990s. Putin turned them into nothing more than mere asset holders, dependent on his authority. Either they would carry out his orders, or they would lose their property. Next, Putin created a new “nobility” out of his servants; people such as Igor Sechin, Alexey Miller, the Rotenbergs or the Kovalchuks. They were given direct control over part of the state’s assets, as well as the assets seized from obstinate “boyars”.

In time, the difference between “boyars” and “nobility” virtually disappeared, and those titles now have a merely decorative meaning. Nowadays, nearly everyone who has a large fortune in Russia is fully and directly beholden to the ruling political clan, is an integral part of it, and de facto  merely the holder of property that actually belongs to the clan as a whole.

This mafia-type property structure is completely incompatible with any pretence at building any kind of normal state system in Russia, at the basis of which should lie the principle of justice. It prevents the construction of any such system, and would destroy the efforts of any government, even if these efforts were completely sincere.

The longer this goes on, the more this parasitic system of collective ownership of property by the ruling clan is turning into an unbearable weight on society. This carbuncle that’s preventing the country’s development has to be removed, in the interests of Russian society and in the interests of Russia’s future. Many people understand this now. It’s discussed in kitchens, and in the smoking rooms of universities. It’s the obvious political imperative of our time, even if for now it’s hidden from view.

As soon as society wakes up, the first thing the people will demand from any temporary government is that they destroy the property held by this criminal gang that’s running the Russian state. And whether it wants to or not, the government will be obliged to do this. But how can it be accomplished without repeating the mistakes of those who carried out the privatisations of the ‘nineties? After all, maybe they wanted things to turn out better?