Big week

The week from October 9 to October 15, 2006 will almost certainly find a few lines in the textbook of modern Russian history.

Partly because in that multi-valued week the Kremlin’s anti-Georgian campaign reached its logical conclusion. A citizen of the Russian Federation, 19-year-old Anna Chakvetadze, won the Tennis Cup of this very Kremlin. It is good (and for some, perhaps, bad) that Anna Chakvetadze was not sent to her historical homeland in a timely manner by the cargo board of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. They probably didn’t have time, because the tax-free Tseretelis and Chkhartishvilis took away too many law enforcement forces.

But the main event of our short-lived modernity occurred during the latest German adventures of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Having met with Bundeschancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden-Munich, Putin unexpectedly found out that his whole idea with an “energy empire” (translated from neo-Kremlin into Russian, a raw materials colony of industrially and post-industrially developed countries) turned out to be a bluff. “The Land of Holy Wonders,” strange old Europe, which absolutely does not understand its raw material happiness, refused to get hooked on the Shtokman gas needle. It was made clear to the supreme persecutor of the Georgians that he was no emperor, emanating from the windy harmony of the luminaries, but simply a merchant of gaseous goods, with whom the buyers of this product would deal according to the full severity of the laws of the market place and time. Therefore, Germany will unite not with Putin for the sake of distributing his internal odorous fuel, but quite the opposite - with France, in order to jointly put pressure on the seller and force him to make concessions. The worst thing is that these barbaric Europeans will openly and powerfully look for completely different sellers and transiters of gas and oil, and have already found them - throughout the perimeter of the post-imperial Russian Federation, frightened by Putin’s gangster escapades.

What follows from this? Here's what.

1. The business plan of Rossiya CJSC, developed by Putin and Co., envisaged the accelerated transformation of our country into a Eurasian Nigeria through a corruption conspiracy with the benevolent Germans and a decisive cutting off with a laser razor. The Occam of all superfluous Russian entities (science, technology, war, love, revolution, art, mind, honor and conscience) collapsed. Neither hasty time, nor a specific style of thinking, nor – most importantly – the system of deep personal interests of the leader will allow him to formulate something alternative in the remaining year and a half of his full power. And the ruling Putin elite is not able to carry on the shoulders of the camp a complex project that goes beyond the logic of “quickly get it out of the ground and push it before it’s too late.” This means, like any self-respecting top manager, Putin must leave. Preferably ahead of schedule to make way for new management with a qualitatively different business plan.

2. Until the end of last week, the ruling elite of our half-nameless State of Ru knew exactly how it would legitimize itself in the West. This skinny West so needs fat natural gas, diluted with a black substance called Urals, that it will allow the collective gas seller to rise above both morality and laws, and a kind of Abramovich tripled in all directions to enter directly into the Euro-living room on the very master’s mat. And no one will ask where this money comes from, and how many national-state corpses lie behind this, and where, by the way, the country has gone, you bastards.

Now we need a new doctrine of legitimation. And the only thing left for this ruling corporation to avoid going straight from March 2008 to the Alpine court detention center is to hold fair and frank presidential elections. In other words, transfer power in Russia with dignity and pride.

If in our transition country there is still someone who considers himself an opposition, that is, who wants to cancel the course towards a raw material dump and come to power in order to come to power, this someone cannot help but:

- correctly assess the results of the just ended Big Week;

- start acting based on points 1 and 2 above.