Putin's Circus Lions Are Hungry -- and Angry

Putin's Circus Lions Are Hungry -- and Angry
02 March 2009
Putin's Circus Lions Are Hungry -- and Angry

(Source Moscow Times, by Dmitry Oreshkin)
For most countries of the world, the global crisis is strictly economic. But Russia is experiencing two crises simultaneously -- economic and political.
Economic downturns, including the current one, come and go, but Russia's political crisis will never go away. This is because Russia's political model has always been deeply grounded in the myth of monism: one monolithic state, one party, one ideology, one national leader and one people. Those who lived during the Soviet period remember the ubiquitous overblown slogans of "the unity of all Soviet nationalities" or "the unified Soviet nation."
Russia under Vladimir Putin's leadership is doomed by historical inertia and tradition to continue the Soviet monistic model. United Russia is Putin's modern version of the Soviet Union's "United U.S.S.R." -- that is, the Communist Party. Nonetheless, United Russia is not as unified as Putin would like. There is the United Russia faction loyal to State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, and there is the one loyal to Mayor Yury Luzhkov. Luzhkov rigidly controls the party's membership in Moscow and won't let any federal functionaries get within a mile of holding power.
Of course, you don't have to look very hard to see how empty the concept of a "unified people" really is. A large percentage of the Russian population don't hide their opposition to being "unified" or placed on the same level as the people from the Caucasus. This leads to the country's social schizophrenia. On one hand, Russians passionately supported the Russia-Georgia war to protect their "fellow citizens" in South Ossetia, in accordance with myths of a unified, monolithic superpower. But on the other hand, if they happen to meet one of their repatriated fellow citizens at any one of Moscow's street markets, they are quick to complain that the capital is being invaded by the "dark-skinned scum" from the Caucasus. Read Article...
The article Part I and II is also on the well informed blog 'La Russophobe', http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/part-i-putins-russia-is-collapsing/

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/374919.htm