The cover story in the Russian Weekly New Times gives a well-constructed overview of how Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his cronies have “divided up the country” to create an all-powerful “Russia, Inc.” that controls 10 to 15 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. Yevgeniya Albats and Anatoliy Yermolin write that the process begun after the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 has continued through a series of hostile takeovers, questionable auctions and security service intimidations, as huge industries have returned to state control.
Essentially, a vertically integrated holding company has been created in the country’s expanses – it has its own credit organizations that provide working capital, its own cash factories that pump oil and gas from the land, its own pipeline systems, its own transport of all possible kinds, its own structures that ensure security and weapons for it, its own communications, its own social amenities, its own services, including media services, and its own instruments of political control.
Putin’s strategy was to completely control the political process, remove Yeltsin-era elites from government and replace them with loyalists and audit to death the private companies created in the aftermath of the fall of Soviet Union.
With the Yeltsin-era business leaders out of the picture and his own cronies in place, wresting control of major industries – finance, energy, military and infrastructure – became possible.
The full article, in Russian, is available here.
