The Russia Conundrum

The news from prison was that Lebedev was refusing to cooperate with the investigators and had been involved in an angry confrontation, accusing them of violating his civil rights and using false pretences to keep him in custody. As the stand-off escalated, Lebedev was moved to Moscow’s high-security Matrosskaya Tishina Prison, where he was held in harsh conditions. I was next on the list.

CHAPTER 8

AN ANATOMY OF CORRUPTION

The actions of Putin and his cronies against Yukos were an indication of the criminal nature of the regime he leads, a criminality that has become ever more flagrant in the two decades since. I have no hesitation in saying that Russia today is a mafia state. But I do not want an English-speaking reader to misunderstand what I mean by that. It is a subtle linguistic point, but when a Western person says ‘state’, he or she means all the institutions and state bodies that govern the running of her country. For a Russian speaker, the word ‘state’ means something different. The Russian term for the Western concept of the state would be the judgementally neutral ‘state apparatus’ or the more negatively coloured ‘bureaucracy’. So, when we talk about a mafia state, there is room for misunderstanding between us.

Ordinary Russians, when they are on the receiving end of ill- treatment from dishonest or incompetent local officials, or think of the lack of respect they receive from the healthcare or education systems, may well grumble that ‘the whole state’ is corrupt. But that would be to overstate the case. No one, least of all me, would argue that the whole Russian ‘state apparatus’ – which is manned by something like one or two million people – is a gigantic mafia operation, a sort of Corleone clan expanded to the millionth degree. There is undoubtedly poor governance, corruption and other bad things going on throughout the country. In some places, such as Chechnya or Ulyanovsk, it is quite bad, while in, say, Moscow or Novosibirsk it is less so (I know that might sound surprising, but the Moscow authorities do quite a lot for the people of the city, even if they look after their own interests at the same time). If we talk about the state apparatus as a whole, then I would say it is getting on with things to the best of its ability. Allowing for the shortcomings and inefficiencies endemic in the overall system, it seems to be performing the sort of tasks that are the responsibility of any state apparatus.

It is a very different matter when we come to the top of the state pyramid: to the relatively high ranks of the FSB and the presidential administration, and in particular to Putin’s inner circle. These people rule by whim and coercion. If they take a dislike to someone, if someone won’t knuckle under and do their bidding or, even worse, tries to expose their misdeeds, they get fired, or beaten up, or thrown in jail, or simply eliminated. You don’t even need to fall out with them to be targeted: they can simply take a fancy to your business or your property, or they can destroy you for show, just to demonstrate what they are capable of. And once they have you in their sights, there is no way out. You have no one to turn to, no one to help you – not the law, not the courts, not the media, not your bosses or your neighbours. Your only choice is to give them what they want or the consequences will be dire for you; and not just you – nowadays your family may be victimised, too.

You may ask what interests these Kremlin mafiosi. It’s the same as the regular mafia – they are after your property or your business, as in the case of Bill Browder, the British-American businessman whose Russian company was stolen from him by crooked officials. They will want you to hand over a significant share of your earnings. They will be embroiled in a power conflict with other members of the mafia or their family. They’ll try to force you to collaborate on their projects, such as – crucially – the falsification of election results. Or they will prevent you from using your public position to blow the whistle on their activities, as happened to me, and to the former liberal politician Boris Nemtsov and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, both of whom were eventually assassinated.