‘Reforms’ That Hark Back to Stalinist Times

Boris N. Yeltsin’s legacy to Vladimir V. Putin--a government, military and police forces that are not accountable to anyone--is now bearing fruit. Rather than leaving behind the prerequisites of democracy, Yeltsin left behind a splendid opportunity for Putin to abuse those institutions and grab equally unaccountable power for himself.

Putin is now building a police state using primarily the police organs of the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, and the army to seize all key power positions in Russia, eliminate dissent and attack both internal and external enemies. New laws and decrees have given the FSB control over electronic and e-mail transmissions in Russia and reinvigorated the FSB’s agent network in general society and its ability to recruit informers in the army. Building on Yeltsin’s neglect in reforming reform the police and army, Putin is taking giant steps to eliminate parliamentary immunity, civil rights and privacy in Russia.

The tax police and FSB have conducted raids on businesses and media outlets deemed critical to Putin and the regime. Critics of the regime, like Media-Most owner Vladimir A. Gusinsky and Radio Liberty reporter Andrei Babitsky, a Chechen war correspondent for U.S.-funded Radio Liberty, have been arrested and harassed. The campaign accelerated immediately after Putin’s anti-Yeltsin State of Russia address, with Putin’s police going after supporters of Yeltsin’s privatization program, including the oligarchs Vagit Alekperov, head of Lukoil; Anatoly B. Chubais, head of the energy giant UES; Vladimir O. Potanin, president of the group that owns Norilsk Nickel; and even media tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky. Equally troubling is the attempt to split the Jewish community, of whom Gusinsky was a leader. Gusinsky’s arrest also raised the equally time-tested anti-Semitic card, always featured in the arsenal of Russian authoritarians.

Putin has launched a police offensive against the devolution of power to the provinces that is an essential prerequisite of democracy and federalism, even if the governors themselves have abused their powers, another legacy of Yeltsin’s lawlessness. The aim is to centralize control over tax revenue and local media and snuff out any hope of true dissent. These moves parallel the creation of new federal judicial agencies to accelerate criminal proceedings against uncooperative politicians and business owners. All these moves to purge internal enemies recall the worst hallmarks of Russian despotism. It is hardly accidental that Putin has glorified the use of informers and even stated his wish that things were as they had been in 1937, the zenith of Stalin’s terror.

The search for enemies at home, however, is only part of Putin’s grand design. Putin believes that Russia faces coordinated internal and external threats. These threats aim to fragment Russia at home and constrain it abroad, and use terrorism--as in Chechnya and elsewhere--against it. These expressions recall the Leninist-Stalinist paranoia of internal enemies and capitalist encirclement.

In response, Putin has launched an offensive to re-integrate all the police and military structures in former Soviet republics under pro-Moscow leaders. Moscow now demands total freedom for its army and police to operate throughout Central Asia and Belarus to oppose terrorism and extremists. This police-military integration and coordination also involves China, where Putin was this week. Beijing is a firm supporter of Putin’s police assault.

Putin’s moves to create a police state are bringing Russia down the most dangerous road imaginable. Indeed, many Western and Russian analysts assert that Putin and the FSB used the corruption of Yeltsin’s family to force him out lest more compromising information be revealed about him and them. Even without this charge, Russian neo-imperialism and its perennial accomplice, a police state, are making a comeback. As Russia approaches government and colonialism by conspiracy, can we really call Putin, as so many have, one of Russia’s leading reformers? And who is served by that description?