From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 5/15/2005 5:23 PM

No Greed Without Power
Monday, May 16, 2005
By Yevgenia Albats
The other day, a journalist from a foreign newspaper, whose country has had a long history of military coups, asked me a question about the Mikhail Khodorkovsky case: What is the real motivation of those currently in the Kremlin, and of the chekists in particular, greed or power?

It was a good question, and the answer could define the nation's future for at least a decade to come.

The greed theory suggests that the Yukos-Khodorkovsky case was a one-time affair aimed at constraining the power of money over the state and creating new oligarchs loyal to President Vladimir Putin. Sources close to the Kremlin have reported something that Putin himself has stated. Apparently, Putin believes Russia needs about 24 oligarchs, as opposed to the mere six or so who emerged during Boris Yeltsin's presidency.

If this is the case, after cutting the Yukos giant into pieces and then biting off some other juicy chunks of property -- say, taking the VimpelCom cellular phone company away from Alfa Group -- the new money-hungry Kremlin elite will be satisfied and will not try to cling to power at all costs.

After all, isn't it an extra burden to be responsible for the well-being of the entire nation and thereby lose the personal freedom that money usually gives to the wealthy? It is widely believed that Putin himself is tired of being president and is dreaming about getting his private life back after his term in office expires.

In contrast, the theory of power as the main motivation does not allow for a peaceful and legitimate succession of power in 2008. And to be sure, this model does not take greed out of the equation either. It merely presupposes that holding a high-level office is a must to secure and legitimize property rights.

This is exactly the way things worked in pre-modern Russia, say under Peter the Great. Until the last quarter of the 18th century, acquiring a state office was the most secure, if not the only, way to become wealthy as well as powerful, but it was never the other way around. If a servant of the tsar was accused of misdoings or simply fell out of imperial favor, he was doomed to lose his property, if not his freedom or even his life along with it.

The trajectory of the Khodorkovsky case, which started with his imprisonment, followed by the expropriation of his major assets, will presumably end in a long prison sentence. It seems that we have returned to the 18th-century pattern. That, of course, throws the theory of Putin as Russia's modernizer into doubt and suggests exactly the opposite conclusion, that Putin is an "anti-modernizer," aiming to roll the nation back to the pre-modern era.

Khodorkovsky's story has made it all too clear that neither the law nor world public opinion, nor even the most out-of-reach offshore havens, can secure a person's private property and money in Russia if the state decides to go after him. And to top it all off, the former oligarch seems about to enjoy many long years in a labor camp on quite murky legal grounds, to ensure that there will be no reversal of the deal regarding his major oil assets.

This sets a nasty precedent for the future. Take, for example, Igor Sechin, the all-powerful deputy head of the presidential administration and simultaneously the CEO of the state-owned Rosneft oil company, which acquired Yuganskneftegaz via a shady court proceeding and a nontransparent auction.

Sechin will be forced to risk both the authority of his office and his newly acquired wealth to prevent outsiders from coming to power in 2008. Otherwise, these newcomers may well question his property rights and his privilege of sleeping in his own bed rather than on a prison bunk.

Thus, the power and authority of officials' positions, which serve as insurance for their wealth, are what drives the current Kremlin elite.

And, unlike their predecessors, they have left themselves no choice but to hold on to their office for life. Unless they are ready to share Khodorkovsky's fate. Which they are not.

Yevgenia Albats is professor of political science at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/05/16/006.html