Russian Democrat or Autocrat?

Today the Christian Science Monitor's lead editorial, titled Back To The USSR, cautions that "Vladimir Putin's announced changes to better secure Russia in the wake of the Beslan hostage tragedy work more to secure his own power than his country." Well, nothing new here, except the sophistry that Putin is a democrat (small "d").

Fact is that this is an ex-KGB fellow who longs for the good old days of the Politburo, has had his political opponents kidnapped and executed, and otherwise sought to subvert direct presidential and legislative elections in Russia. So the sad irony is that Mikhael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin -- both graduates of the hard-line Soviet school -- were better democrats in the old USSR than the only democratically elected president in the new Russian Federation. As Yeltsin prophectically said in 1995, "We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it."

Putin came to power on a specific pledge to destroy the power of the "oligarch," the mafia gangs that control most Russian business. Yet four years later, behind the smooth facade of a president firmly in control, oligarchs, obstinate regional leaders and corrupt ministers still obstruct efforts at modernization and reform. Now Putin is reversing course on the democratic reforms, first unleashed when Yeltsin stood on that tank in front of the Kremlin in 1991, by which he took power in the first place. Much more like Lenin than Lennon. National Public Radio asks whether Putin is "using incidents of terrorism as a pretext to finish what his opponents say has long been his plan, to become a dictator even as he claims Russia is building a new democracy?" The answer is obvious.

 Posted by glenn