Andrei Illarionov, former Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser / Photo by Echo of Moscow radio station
Andrei Illarionov, former Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser / Photo by Echo of Moscow radio station Russia Has Lost Economic, Political Freedom — Former Putin Aide
Former liberal economic advisor to Vladimir Putin, Andrei Illarionov, believes that Russia has become economically and politically unfree.
“Today Russia is not the country it was six years ago. The country was unsettled, chaotic, impoverished. But it was free. Today Russia has changed. It is richer. And unfree,” Illarionov said in an article published in the newspaper Kommersant and quoted by Interfax on Monday.
Illarionov believes that Russia is no longer “on the crossroads of an historic choice.”
“The crossroads has been passed, the choice has been made. Today we live in a different country,” he said.
“The main thing that we have lost is freedom. The main thing that has changed is the rules of behavior. In the economy, politics, public life, ideology and in foreign affairs. A new state model has arisen and gotten a foothold. The state has become corporatist,” Illarionov said in the article.
The former presidential advisor said that “changes in legislation and restrictions on political activity have devalued citizens’ shares in what can be called The Russian State open joint stock company, and have turned the latter into a closed joint stock company.”
“Ownership of the Russian state has passed into the hands of a corporation that is not controlled by its nominal shareholders — Russian citizens,” he said.
“State companies have themselves been turned into the attack weapons of a corporatist state. Having mastered the main principle of state corporatism — the privatization of profits, the nationalization of losses — they have started large-scale intervention in the private sector.
”Victims of the expansion of corporations include Yuganskneftegaz, Sibneft, Power Machines, Kamov, OMZ, Avtovaz and East-Line,“ he said.
Illarionov said that now any wish of a corporation — from contributing to one project or another to the sale of the company to the ”correct“ buyer — will be carried out. ”Refusing is not an option: the face of Yukos is there for all to see,“ he said.
”Another important principle of the new economic model is selectivity. One company is subjected to the maximum possible (or impossible) tax claims, and another receives exclusive breaks. In one case the sale of shares to foreigners is banned, and in another it receives full state support (and financing in excess of the limits set by domestic legislation). In some cases foreign citizens cannot work in Russian companies ’for reasons of national security,’ and in others they are ceremoniously invited. For one buyer a price is set at one level, and for another — five times higher. Uneven business conditions and economic and political discrimination are being made into an absolute principle. This economic model can be called various things. But it cannot be called free,“ Illarionov said. http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/01/23/illarionov.shtml
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