| Same Old Story |
3 November 2003
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Putin has Khodorkovsky Arrested -- Tsar, not Commissar
Russia proved last week that the effects of the October Revolution were negligible. After several million deaths, the system in the country remains largely unchained. There is the Tsar, the Boyars and the people. Last week, Tsar Vladimir Putin imprisoned Boyar Mikhail Khodorkovsky while the people wondered why Comrade Lenin ever left Switzerland.
It is a recognizable pattern in Europe, in England, in France and in Russia, the monarch forms an alliance with the population at large to attack the aristocracy's power. To view developments in Russia as anything else is to misunderstand the situation.
Mr. Putin's use of "KGB" methods (after all, he is a former Chekist) in dealing with Mr. Khodorkovsky is a misnomer -- the Tsar's Okhrana were every bit as ruthless. Mr. Khodorkovsky, perhaps the richest man in the country, somehow managed to get legal (if not moral) possession of Yukos, the country's oil company. The dispute is about raw power. To date, Mr. Putin has been very clear about his relationship with the "oligarchs" who own the former Soviet assets -- so long as they don't interfere in politics, they have nothing to worry about.
Money, however, is power that can be quantified. And the urge to use that power is overwhelming. Mr. Khodorkovsky is in jail, not so much because he has done many illegal things (although one doubts any billionaire is without a skeleton in the closet), but rather because he over-stepped the boundary. As a result, Mr. Putin has "frozen" a 44% stake in Yukos -- next step may be expropriation.
Mr. Khodorkovsky won't be the last oligarch to be arrested, either. More will go abroad, as others have already, never to return. Until the power (and that means the money as much as the votes) is more widely spread, the people won't matter much. Plus ça change, plus ça la même chose.
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