h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Putin, the accomplished judo black belt, has handed over to Medvedev.
In H2G2 tradition, please weave references to religion into your answers where possible.

(Medved = Bear)

Thanks for the heads-up, WG! I am listening to the radio in the office, and have been all day. They have reasonably good news bulletins, but haven't seen fit to mention that important fact!


Sorry, can't think of a religious reference off-hand. Shame on me!

I have been writing about that, just a few days ago, but can't find it.

Russian people feel that we in the West don't take them seriously and that we see them as "strange and far away".

That is a real sensitivity.

I agree fully with Germany, that we should be much closer with Russia than so far.
There is not even a "plan", related to Russia and the European Union.

There isn't a thread because it wasn't much of an election. Russia makes a mockery out of democracy.

Anyone who thinks Putin is no longer in power hasn't understood what happened - he's still Prime Minister, the next in line should anything happen to the president. I'm betting something does happen to the president, and that it happens soon.

"I'm betting something does happen to the president, and that it happens soon."

Why bump him off? Putin's pulling all his strings anyway.

Not sure that'll happen.
But the new guy does seem to be (from what you can read between the lines) a bit of a behind the scenes manager and not the up front leader putin is.

I do wonder how in debt to Putin he is for both his political and personal positions within the society. He could be a puppet face as the state does seem to like playing to the impression of democracy and their constitution.

But then again he might be stronger than he appears and have his own internal power base to make things happen. We simply don;t know the internal politics of their relative positions. I mean, Putin was also hand picked from nowehere and he was no puppet. OTOH Medvedev has come out with comments supporting some of the hardline kremlin policies and stances.

I do worry though about Putin's overly aggressive stance and plays to nationalism. The new guy seems to have that to. And to be a bit shy with the truth.

On the British Council issue, for example, he had this to say
"Try registering one of our NGOs in London — a headache is guaranteed"
but as the uk Govt pointed out
"Registering an NGO in London would be quite difficult as the UK does not require NGOs to register"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/18/wrussia118.xml

what's the point of such a comment? Merely to keep up Russian pique and nationalist feeling through a 'hard done by' stance.

We shall see, after all, he could hardly criticise Putin up till now.

Thanks for those interesting posts.

It's true the Russians have a whole bag of chips on their shoulders.

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In large part, IMO, for good reason... They lost 20 million in WW2..

Vicky

Not forgetting the 23 million dead in the Ukrainian genocide and the purges in the 1930s.

Yeah, my mother-in-law's aunt was sent to Siberia.

I read 'Globalisation and its Discontents' last week. Part of it deals with the transformation of the Russian economy from Communism to a market system. It's written by Joseph Stiglitz, nobel laureate economist and former World Bank VP.

What he said was that basically, the West screwed Russia over big time by rushing through the transformation. Without any proper contract laws, or any checks on the rampant corruption, and various other economic policies, $20 bn or so of loans from the IMF went to the Mafia, govt officials, and allowed the present oligarchs to steal vast amounts of Russian infrastructure (like Roman Abramovic owning $13bn of oil firms). On one occasion $300m of IMF loans took a little under 3 hours to leave the country for Swiss and Cypriot bank account. Naturally, the Russian taxpayer repaid the loans.

Part of the reason for the loans was to stop the rouble from collapsing relative to other currencies. The result of the delay of the rouble collapsing (the policies didn't work, natch) was that all the rich Russians had more time to get their money out the country, and at better exchange rates for them, while Russian industry was crippled due to the same exchange rates, as well as the other stuff they had to deal with. Interest rates

The upshot is that Russia doesn't trust the West, partly because the policies failed so badly (Russian life expectancy dipped by about 3 years during the 90s), and partly because the policies the IMF and World Bank came up with are the exact opposite of the policies any Western government would implement.

Putin's successor isn't going to change any policies that Putin implemented. He seems to call him Putin -vy, the suffix being a term of respect that you give your boss. That's probably why nobody brought it up, cos it's not going to change anything.

So was my granny. She was two years old at the time. The part of Poland she came from is now in the Ukraine.

TRiG.

That's interesting Pedro. So the West loans Russia money, Russians steal it and the West gets the blame? Am I missing something? Surely the onus is upon the Russian government to put fraud prevention measures into place?

Not doing too well at weaving in references to religion

Sometimes you do show a certain level of inhumanity in your posts SWL. The West strikes a deal with the illegitimate rulers of a country, whereby they give them a load of money without any controls over how it is spent, knowing full well that the Russian people (not the rulers) will have to pay it back. So yes, the West is to blame if they act so callously and (at best) incompetently and yet still expect to be paid back for it.

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The West gets the blame for not putting any kind of safeguards in place to prevent truly mind-boggling corruption, which included the govt. Russian industry was in crap shape after Communism, as you'd expect. What should have been done was put an infrastructure in place to make sure it could get into better shape. The free-market fundies thought it best just to privatise everything as soon as possible, with truly disatrous consequences. Russian industry is still a joke now, and if they didn't have huge amounts of oil and gas, the country would be falling apart. I don't think any Russians think the West are Russia 'friends' after that, and if that's how free-market democracies work, then you can hardly blame Joe Bloggski for not wanting more of it.

The West don't get blamed for Russian corruption (afaik), it's just that the policies they helped put through were, or should have been, aware of the rampant corruption and ineptitude of the Russian govt, and
made the average Russian about 50% poorer in less than a decade. If the UK economy looks likely to go into a recession, the govt either increases spending or lowers interest rates. Lowering interest rates increases investment and also makes the currency depreciate, meaning exports get a boost. The IMF made Russia cut govt spending while pushing interest rates to over 20%, with the most predictable results. I'm sure that that book said there hasn't been a bigger drop in living standards in peacetime in the 20th century. It was *that* bad.

Still doesn't excuse the present govt's rather questionable behaviour though.

Ooh, I can add "inhuman" to the list?

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Who were the deals done with and in what way were these rulers illegitimate?

Btw, I'm not stirring here and I'm not sticking up for the West, I'm just interested.

I wonder who will be complaining here, when the only place we can get decent amounts of oil from is Russia?

It's all very well we discussing these issues from our comfy civilised warm homes.

Might be a different tune here about our relationship with Russia when we are and impoverished becaause we have no oil?

"Ooh, I can add "inhuman" to the list?"

The point was that you were willing to say that millions of Russians deserved their poverty and ought to be paying all those loan repayments back to us because of something a small group of their leaders decided. Doesn't seem to square with your general dislike of politicians and your doubts about democracy.

"Who were the deals done with and in what way were these rulers illegitimate?"

Yeltsin and Putin I guess - you tell me what you think of those two...

Ok - I take your point. But, Putin is by all accounts popular with Russian people. Shouldn't their ire be directed at him and the thieves?