December 30, 2003
THE NECESSARY FASCIST INTERVAL:
Putin adds impetus to banking reform (Arkady Ostrovsky, December 30 2003, Financial Times)
Russia's slow-moving banking reform received a boost yesterday when President Vladimir Putin signed into law a long-awaited deposit insurance bill crucial to restoring consumer confidence in private banks.
The bill is one of the most important pieces of banking reform, which has been lagging behind Russia's economic progress since the 1998 financial crisis.
While political correctness requires us to moan about Putin's anti-democratic methods, he continues to restore the foundations of real democracy in Russia for the first time in 85 years. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 30, 2003 8:57 AM
It's obvious that old party hacks are manipulating
the inherent flaws of the democratic process to
bog down reform in key sectors. This seems like
a logical step.
This should be good for Russian markets and in
the long run help liberalize the country.
The idea that sucking up the savings of French bourgeois was equivalent to introducing real democracy (or even faux-democracy) into Russia is pretty funny.
Just exactly what aspects of real democracy were in operation in Russia 85 years ago?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 30, 2003 3:58 PMChristianity, rising standards of living and middle class, functioning legal system, reform-minded upper classes, tilt toward Europeanism...
Posted by: oj at December 30, 2003 5:09 PMOrthodox Christianity, even more obscruantist and antidemocratic than the other kind. Standards of living were not rising for the industrial workers, whose life expectancy was at medieval levels. Witte replaced by Pobedonotsov and the church and the ministry both reasserting the concept of the Autokrator against any devolution of power, although there were some feeble attempts to rationalize adminstration at the local level.
Europe, of course, was not leaning back but cynically expecting Russian peasants to do their dirty work, as in the early 1800s and, later, 1940s. The "Allies" held their noses and tried to justify having Russia in a consortium that was supposedly fighting for democracy or, at least, liberal values.
Everyone agreed to look the other way.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 30, 2003 9:01 PMOdd how fighting along with the Tsar bothers you more than fighting with Stalin on our side.
Posted by: oj at December 30, 2003 9:58 PMCuriously, each time the exploiters of the Russian peasantry were completely bamboozled about what it could do, but from opposite directions.
In 1914, the generals were gloriously happy about the prospect of the "Russian steamroller" solving their problems for them. It steamrollered the Austrians, all right, but was so incompetently led that it couldn't even handle Turks.
Having learned, as they thought, their lessons in 1916, in 1941 the betting in the staff rooms was that the Red Army would collapse in 3 weeks, although the "realists" gave it 6.
Stalinism was less comprehensively incompetent than czarism, but being Russian means never having a nice day.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 31, 2003 5:21 PMOf course, the Brits couldn't "handle" the Turks either. Presumably we should condemn British political structures of the time too?
Posted by: oj at December 31, 2003 5:24 PM