A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

One of the more distressing aspects of the media's coverage of Russia is its ready acceptance of Russian backsliding into a state of autocracy. This report reminds us that when it comes to examining Russia, one shouldn't be so sanguine about its reversion to what is properly called a "cryptofascist" state system:

As ex-President Putin settles in to his new role as Prime Minister, he has every reason to congratulate himself.

After all, he has not only written the script for his constitutional coup d'etat, but staged the play and given himself the starring role as well.

Of course, he has given a walk-on role to Dmitry Medvedev, his personally anointed successor.

But the transfer of power from Putin to his Little Sir Echo, Medvedev, and the show of military strength with those soldiers and clapped-out missiles in Red Square on Victory Day which followed it last week, made it clear who is really in charge.

No decision of any significance for the Russian people or the rest of us will be made in the foreseeable future without the say - so of Medvedev's unsmiling master.

And what hath the master wrought?

I travelled from cities to towns to villages by road, rail and boat and met a great diversity of people - from St Petersburg glitterati to impoverished potato-pickers, from a witch who charms the sprites of the forest to the mountain herdsmen who worship fire and water, from oilmen to woodcutters.

It was an exhilarating and revelatory experience in a land of extremes. But it was also deeply disturbing.

[. . .]

Putin boasts that since he came into office investment in the Russian economy has increased sevenfold (reaching $82.3 billion in 2007) and that the country's GDP has risen by more than 70 per cent.

Over the same period, average real incomes have more than doubled. But they started from a very low base and they could have done far better.

Nor is this growth thanks either to the Kremlin's leadership or a surge of entrepreneurial energy.

On the contrary, it is almost solely down to Russia's vast reserves of oil and gas.

When Putin came to power, the world price of crude oil was $16 dollars a barrel; it has now soared to more than $120 dollars - and no one knows where or when this bonanza will end.

But this massive flow of funds into the nation's coffers has not been used "to share the proceeds of growth" with the people; to reduce the obscene gulf in income between the rich and poor.

It has not helped to resurrect a health service which is on its knees (and is ranked by the World Health Organisation as 130th out of the 190 countries of the UN), or to rebuild an education system which is so under-funded that the poor have to pay to get their children into a half-decent school or college.

It has not brought gas and running water to the villages where the peasants have been devastated by the collapse of the collectives, or even developed the infrastructure that a 21st century economy needs to compete with the rest of the world.

Russia may be a member of the G8 whose GDP (because of oil) should soon overtake the United Kingdom, but, in many ways, it is more like a Third World country.

To be sure, Putin remains quite popular among Russians. But that in large part stems from the very cryptofascism that buttresses and augments his power. Russians are not exposed to the failures of Putin's regime by a free media. Those who try to point out the (many) shortcomings of the government are persecuted and assassinated, even if they live abroad. Meanwhile, the government--at a time when it is shortchanging the very people it is supposed to serve--involves itself in a whole host of shady side business deals, allowing high government officials like Putin to get rich while the common Russian suffers.

All of these elements are combining to make for what will eventually be an internal powder keg in Russia. Once that powder keg explodes, the world will feel the shock and the aftereffects. Nothing good can come of so massive a disruption in Russian sociopolitical affairs and yet, in this election season, Russia and America's policy towards it have merited barely a mention.

That could well make us negligent as we ignore the many problems in Russia and the ways in which the manifestation of those problems might affect us. We should hope that posterity does not eventually have cause to condemn us for such shortsightedness, but at this point, I am not optimistic that it won't.