In the economy

Petrocracy

August 6, 2009 Julia Latynina

God is gas, and Putin is his prophet. Petrocracy is perhaps an accurate definition of the type of public structure in Putin's Russia.

Petrocracy is when the owners of oil and gas are the ruling class, the authorities are used to obtain control over oil and gas and it is believed that all internal and external problems can be solved using oil and gas.

This is not to say that the idea of ​​using hydrocarbons as a lever for power over the world belongs to Vladimir Putin. This lever was used by both the Soviet Union and the Arab countries.

For example, the history of the Italian state oil company ENI as two drops of water resembles the history of Gunvor. ENI was created by the communist Enrique Mattei, who, after the Second World War, was instructed to reform the state oil company of Italian fascists. Mattei instead of destroying the state company, on the contrary, strengthened it. But there was a problem: there was no oil in Italy. Mattei solved this problem by making Soviet oil resolving from the ENI at advantageous for the ENI prices. Eni functioned as Soviet offshore, and the difference went to strengthen the world revolution. Plus, ENI helped developing countries to master their deposits - and so it was until Enrique Mattea crashed on a private plane.

The oil embargo caused a crisis in 1974, and the Soviet Union finished off the drop in oil prices. In a word, in the 20th century, oil was constantly used as geopolitical weapons, but already from the above examples it is clear that the weapon is not absolute. Enrique Mattei earned a lot of money, but Italy never became communist. The oil embargo inflicted a heavy blow to the global economy, but did not force the free world to abandon the support of Israel.

And so, if you look at Putin’s policy, it is noticeable that there are two components in it: rational and irrational.

Rational component

The rational component lies in the fact that the Kremlin analyzed the causes of the death of the USSR and is determined not to step on the same rake.

The USSR collapsed because huge oil money was in vain in high -tech industries. The Kremlin made a conclusion and does not invest in any high technologies. He puts it immediately in villas, yachts and pleasure. In addition, the lack of high technologies in the country leads to the lack of technical intelligentsia, which, as the experience of the USSR of 1991 or the fresh experience of the Iranian presidential election showed, the first to go outside with a protest against the dictatorship.

The USSR collapsed because he got involved in the war in Afghanistan. The Kremlin made a conclusion and gave Chechnya to the mercy of Ramzan Kadyrov.

The USSR collapsed because oil prices went down. The Kremlin concluded and continues to maintain international tension, which, in turn, leads to an increase in prices.

This part of Putin's policy is completely pragmatic and cynical. It will allow Putin to stay in power for an infinitely long time, although at the cost of the subsequent disappearance of Russia from world history.

Irrational motives

Unfortunately or happiness, pragmatism in the Kremlin is not limited. For those who rule Russia, it is important not only to octos Russia through a license bank in a Swiss bank - but also to feel great. They sincerely believe that the restoration of the vertical of power is expressed in an increase in the number of grandmas due to them; The gas pipe in their unbridled dreams appears as a phallic symbol, the Babylonian tower with which they will play Europe. It somehow does not occur to them that the gas as a weapon differs from the tank in that in order for gas to stop being weapons, it is enough not to buy it.

As a result, Russia's foreign policy looks like a series of industrial wars that Russia begins and loses.

Until the time, while Europe perceived Russian gas as a product, there were no problems with its supplies to Europe. However, after 2005, we did everything to prove that for Russia gas is not a product, but a weapon. Well. If this is a weapon, then Europe wanted to protect itself from its use, and this winter the share of Gazprom in European deliveries has doubled, from 32% to 16%.

Russia blocked the gas to Ukraine and stated that Ukraine itself blocked the gas. If the Kremlin thus intended to carry out the hostile absorption of Ukraine or at least its gas networks, then it achieved exactly the opposite effect. Ukraine received loans from the European Union and the IMF that it would never receive, if not for the undisguised threats and pressure from Moscow.

Imagine that Russia would sell Germany a large batch of cement. And at the moment when Germany would negotiate on the purchase of the next party, would say: “You, goats, think that you bought cement? But not, this is not cement, it is explosives, and now you are completely in our power, because when we click on the button, the houses built from this cement will fly into the air. ” The stump is clear that after that, with the sale of the next batch of cement, there would be big problems.

This irrational foreign policy component of Petrocracy is incomprehensible from the point of view of logic. Most likely, the fact is that in most other Petrocratic regimes-whether Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela or even the former USSR-still there is some kind of Erzatz-ideology that explains the reasons for the comparative backwardness of the country and the need to fight the West. In Iran, this is a fundamentalist Islam, in Nigeria it is a denunciation of white people-colonizers, in Venezuela, the exposure of Janka colonialists.

In one Russia, Petrocracy exists in its purest form. Russia, according to Kremlin ideology, was chosen not because it has a scam, a Quran or Marx. Russia was chosen because it has gas. The psychological need to feel yourself by the chosen ones of the gas and deify the process of obtaining grandmas to the offshore account and leads to comic results.

Consequences

We will be frank: Russia in its lifetime knew the regimes of Putinsky’s sustained. It is ridiculous to even compare the times of the Gulag, when Russia itself disappeared from the face of the earth, replaced by concentration camps, security officers, barracks with barbed wire and five -story buildings similar to huts, over time, pierced people wearing Patece Philip with a turbine on his right hand in imitation of Putin and preoccupied smuggles and extortion of bribes even with bribes. China.

Russia survived Nicholas I, Alexander III, Stalin-I would have somehow survived Putin. The problem is different - in former times the brains remained in Russia. They remained even under Stalin, in extreme cases, they went to Siberia, but they did not leave to Los Angeles. In the new global world, brains leave Russia - and, the louder the “ours” shout at Seliger, the faster the brains leave. The current authorities are quite happy with this - unlike Stalin, Putin does not strive for world domination. Why is the Kremlin world domination? Where then to sell gas and where then to import Mercedes? On the contrary, the more brains leave the country, the easier it will be to inspire the remaining that Russia got up from the knees.

In the context of a global economy, this outflow of intelligence is able to ensure the lag of Russia forever. Especially - in the midst of the crisis, which, in fact, is the Kondratyevsky crisis and during which not just whole obsolete production methods will die, but entire countries and regions living in the past.