YELTSIN'S LEGACY
The decision announced on Saturday that Vladimir Putin intends to run again for the Russian presidency, though hardly a surprise sends chills down the spine. It felt as if Russian Democracy for so long in intensive care had finally been pronounced dead. Whilst Putin may be the grave digger of Russian democracy he was handed the spade by Boris Yeltsin. It was the drunken buffoon Yeltsin, with the American ideologues pushing and shoving from the sidelines, who unleashed the disaster of unfettered free market capitalism upon the Russian people leaving them bitter and impoverished, its only ‘achievement’ being the creation of a small coterie of billionaire oligarchs, often, like Putin ex KGB holding Russia’s wealth in the shape of its natural resources, for ever after democracy was always tainted within the Russian imagination with this period of unfettered greed. Putin presented himself as the knight in shining armour come to clean up the mess and put the Oligarchs in their place, from now on democracy would be ‘managed.’
There is an extremely silly even racist presumption that Russian democracy represents an oxymoron, it is a view peddled by the likes of the former British ambassador to the US Mr Anthony Meyer, a man of exceedingly modest achievements who holds himself in very high esteem who recently opined that British relations with Russia should always be cool! Always, what a fatuous statement, of course we should be very wary of being overly cosy toward a Russian administration dominated by Putin.
This is not to belie the reality of Putin’s popularity, those who constantly preach a mantra of order and control often are, however the price paid in the steady erosion of freedom eventually proves corrosive to any society. Democracy, as has to be learned by successive generations, is messy and often uncomfortable, is constantly threatened by those who proselytize for a phony consensus, however the only real consensus is the consensus of the graveyard. Democracy, to paraphrase Churchill, can often feel like the worst possible form of government, until you consider all the alternatives.
There is an extremely silly even racist presumption that Russian democracy represents an oxymoron, it is a view peddled by the likes of the former British ambassador to the US Mr Anthony Meyer, a man of exceedingly modest achievements who holds himself in very high esteem who recently opined that British relations with Russia should always be cool! Always, what a fatuous statement, of course we should be very wary of being overly cosy toward a Russian administration dominated by Putin.
This is not to belie the reality of Putin’s popularity, those who constantly preach a mantra of order and control often are, however the price paid in the steady erosion of freedom eventually proves corrosive to any society. Democracy, as has to be learned by successive generations, is messy and often uncomfortable, is constantly threatened by those who proselytize for a phony consensus, however the only real consensus is the consensus of the graveyard. Democracy, to paraphrase Churchill, can often feel like the worst possible form of government, until you consider all the alternatives.
