Post by sciwriter on Dec 30, 2005 0:19:31 GMT -7
In a global economy, decentralization is essential to allow Russia and ex-USSR countries for efficient use of their individual and diverse intellectual, technological, manufacturing creativity and natural resources. Carl:
www.vor.ru/English/Urgent_Issues/program.phtml?act=380
URGENT ISSUES
MODERN RUSSIA NOT SEEKING TO RESTORE USSR
By Yuri Reshetnikov
One frequently asked question posed in the Western media these days is
whether or not Russia is gradually turning into the Soviet Union. The
question has frequently resurfaced at the end of each year.
The latest flare-up of Western media's interest in this matter came with
the resignation of a Kremlin insider - Andrei Illarionov, who has served
as an economic adviser to the Russian President. But his tenure in recent
years had turned publicly rocky and he had become a frequent and memorable
critic of the government policy. So his resignation should not come as a
big surprise. Indeed, how would a White House insider, like Karl Rove,
would have fared, had he started assailing the White House and the
administration policy? He would have been out before he could have managed
to utter his last gasp of criticism.
It should be pointed out bluntly that the Soviet Union is no more and
there's no chance of modern Russia turning into its predecessor. The
notion that Russian democracy is on the wane because of the government's
reforms is no more accurate than the idea that Russia was ever a
democracy. Being as young as it is, Russia could not have achieved
full-fledged democracy in a matter of just more than a decade. It took
nations, such as the United States, Britain, France and others hundreds of
years to achieve a status they are in right now. But Russia is just a
fledgling democracy, which is building it in its own unique way. It is a
multi-cultured, multi-ethnic country, which necessarily has to adjust its
own burgeoning democracy to this nation's specific conditions.
President Putin's move last year to appoint, rather than elect, regional
governors is hardly a major blow to Russian democracy, as it is generally
viewed in the West. Regional governors are appointed in a host of states,
including Ukraine, which is now hailed in the West as a democratic
country.
Elected governors in Russia, viewed in the mid-1990s as guarantors of
Russian federalism and a token of democratic rule and indeed as a hedge
against an all-powerful central state, have acquired a general reputation
as feudal barons who pledged outward loyalty to the sovereign in exchange
for the right to run their fiefdoms with impunity and the way they saw
fit. Since the introduction of elected governors in the mid-90s,
gubernatorial elections across Russia have come to symbolize an unsightly
alliance between money, politics, corruption and, in some cases, hard-core
crime. Incumbent governors, who sought reelection, used unashamedly what
is called in Russia as 'administrative resource'. This is a wide-spread
practice of using the advantages in the media and elsewhere afforded to
incumbents and not to other contenders.
While Western observers now tend to view Russia's record of the 1990ies as
a time of unmitigated progress and hope, when democracy was making great
strides, to most Russians things looked different then and still look
different now. They never mistook the political system of Boris Yeltsin's
Russia for democracy. It looked more like chaos and economic dislocation.
The nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse, while a handful of
fabulously wealthy tycoons wallowed in their riches.
This is now changing and these changes are welcomed by most Russian
citizens. But that's not turning Russia into a defunct USSR.
12/29/2005
www.vor.ru/English/Urgent_Issues/program.phtml?act=380
URGENT ISSUES
MODERN RUSSIA NOT SEEKING TO RESTORE USSR
By Yuri Reshetnikov
One frequently asked question posed in the Western media these days is
whether or not Russia is gradually turning into the Soviet Union. The
question has frequently resurfaced at the end of each year.
The latest flare-up of Western media's interest in this matter came with
the resignation of a Kremlin insider - Andrei Illarionov, who has served
as an economic adviser to the Russian President. But his tenure in recent
years had turned publicly rocky and he had become a frequent and memorable
critic of the government policy. So his resignation should not come as a
big surprise. Indeed, how would a White House insider, like Karl Rove,
would have fared, had he started assailing the White House and the
administration policy? He would have been out before he could have managed
to utter his last gasp of criticism.
It should be pointed out bluntly that the Soviet Union is no more and
there's no chance of modern Russia turning into its predecessor. The
notion that Russian democracy is on the wane because of the government's
reforms is no more accurate than the idea that Russia was ever a
democracy. Being as young as it is, Russia could not have achieved
full-fledged democracy in a matter of just more than a decade. It took
nations, such as the United States, Britain, France and others hundreds of
years to achieve a status they are in right now. But Russia is just a
fledgling democracy, which is building it in its own unique way. It is a
multi-cultured, multi-ethnic country, which necessarily has to adjust its
own burgeoning democracy to this nation's specific conditions.
President Putin's move last year to appoint, rather than elect, regional
governors is hardly a major blow to Russian democracy, as it is generally
viewed in the West. Regional governors are appointed in a host of states,
including Ukraine, which is now hailed in the West as a democratic
country.
Elected governors in Russia, viewed in the mid-1990s as guarantors of
Russian federalism and a token of democratic rule and indeed as a hedge
against an all-powerful central state, have acquired a general reputation
as feudal barons who pledged outward loyalty to the sovereign in exchange
for the right to run their fiefdoms with impunity and the way they saw
fit. Since the introduction of elected governors in the mid-90s,
gubernatorial elections across Russia have come to symbolize an unsightly
alliance between money, politics, corruption and, in some cases, hard-core
crime. Incumbent governors, who sought reelection, used unashamedly what
is called in Russia as 'administrative resource'. This is a wide-spread
practice of using the advantages in the media and elsewhere afforded to
incumbents and not to other contenders.
While Western observers now tend to view Russia's record of the 1990ies as
a time of unmitigated progress and hope, when democracy was making great
strides, to most Russians things looked different then and still look
different now. They never mistook the political system of Boris Yeltsin's
Russia for democracy. It looked more like chaos and economic dislocation.
The nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse, while a handful of
fabulously wealthy tycoons wallowed in their riches.
This is now changing and these changes are welcomed by most Russian
citizens. But that's not turning Russia into a defunct USSR.
12/29/2005
