About this:
I’ll have such a stockpile of cognac that I could open a shoe-polish factory a cognac shop. Many supporters of the “Medvedev presidency” really loved to argue about it.
There’s hardly anything I can add about the reasons for Putin’s return beyond what I’ve already said a million times. For example, here it is in an interview with Vedomosti from the summer of 2010.
Remaining in power—and only as the country’s actual ruler—is the only real guarantee of freedom and safety for Putin and his family.
On September 24, Putin publicly announced his desire to be the lifelong ruler of our country. That is exactly what happened, and there is no point deceiving ourselves anymore.
Medvedev and the others are playing the role of Santa’s little helpers (albeit with very large salaries).
These guys are planning for a long term. They want to live long, rich, happy lives.
Pantocrine baths in Altai (a Siberian wellness treatment made from deer antlers), magical RUSNANO pills (tiny robots with tiny axes traveling through the leaders’ blood vessels, chopping out cholesterol), and a newborn panda brain sandwich every morning.
All of this is supposed to let the Kremlin’s Oil Tsars live to 150 years old (and keep appearing shirtless in public until the age of 120).
In short, a lot of what Sorokin wrote is being adopted as a program of action.
But the Kremlin crooks propose, and God disposes.
I’m sure events will unfold more in the spirit of another popular tale, the one that ends: “The Tsar ordered himself undressed, crossed himself three times, jumped into the cauldron—and was boiled alive there.”
For objective and obvious reasons, the system of power cannot reform itself, and its only goal will remain enriching itself and creating a comfortable life for those who have sworn loyalty and elbowed aside others who swore the same oath.
But aside from its stockpile of panda-brain sandwiches, the country has many other problems.
Those problems will only get worse.
For example, everyone understands it—and Putin does too—that the judicial system is completely unfit for purpose. But it can’t be changed, because its main function is no longer the fair resolution of disputes, but providing quasi-legal cover for election fraud, bans on mass demonstrations, unjust verdicts in key cases, and so on.
Corruption’s role as the foundation of the Kremlin crooks’ power will grow.
In such a system, what can motivate an official to do good work? Money. The dream of a yacht. “I’ll suffer through being a deputy minister, work like a galley slave: stress, Saturday meetings, irregular hours. But it’ll add up to a house in Spain and tuition at an English private school for the kids.”
The thing is, after two months, both the stress and the Saturday meetings are needed only to make that dream house in Spain a reality. Because there’s another deputy minister who, damn him, is muscling in on the deals and wants that house in Spain for himself.
There will be more work for us, and it will be harder to do. Before, the theoretical prospect of a change at the top imposed at least some restraints. Now there are none at all.
Well then, we’ll keep working.
The universal and only solution to every problem—“allocate this many billion rubles”—is working less and less. In fact, it often does the opposite and only deepens injustice.
Despite all these “Resorts of the North Caucasus” projects with trillion-ruble budgets, what awaits us is an intensification and spread of civil war in the Caucasus. Money being poured in, only to turn before the eyes of the local poor into Porsche Cayennes racing down broken roads, will only increase tensions.
Medvedev’s formal move into the Party of Crooks and Thieves is the best thing that happened. At last, the crooks who present themselves as “liberal-minded politicians with a pragmatic approach” will no longer be able to find excuses for their increasingly tiresome political prostitution, whose only purpose is to grab a little cash.
The line “I’m a member of Medvedev’s team” no longer works.
It’s clear to all of us that for those four years Medvedev was simply standing lookout.
Medvedev’s government will be successful to exactly the same extent that his “fight against corruption”—declared the main political theme and ending in absolutely nothing—was successful.
Not a single even moderately high-profile anti-corruption case.
Even Putin had the “werewolves in uniform” case (a famous Russian anti-corruption scandal involving police officers).
And here they couldn’t even jail a dozen fully exposed cops and tax officials in the “Magnitsky case.”
This will be a government of Mega-Fail.
All sorts of Nashi activists (pro-Kremlin youth movement members) love to use my quote “power in Russia will not change as a result of elections” from an interview with The New Times: there! a call for revolution! overthrowing the government!
No, it is a call to end the chaos and restore constitutional order.
We do not need a tsar. The Russian people made a historic choice and rejected monarchy.
Under the guise of legal procedure, a gang of crooks is imposing on us as tsar a man who is still relatively popular for now, but an impostor all the same.
A corrupt and harmful impostor.
His popularity will pass. Time is on our side. The impostor will end the way such figures in our history have ended before.