Translated material
European-quality renovation of Russia
Europe will sooner or later figure out how to manage without Russian energy resources. Or at least reduce the degree of dependence on them. But Russia will hardly figure out how to become a developed country suitable for normal life without the basic values of European civilization, which Russian officials perfectly implement in their personal practice and are increasingly rotting in state practice.
Freedom of movement and guarantees of the inviolability of private property, the right to decent work and decent medical care, the desire to own foreign assets and bank accounts - all these gains of Western civilization are very clear to the very “power holders” and “sovereign democrats” who now rule Russia. A special path, “spirituality” and criticism of the West in Russia have always remained a set of words for internal use. The government was our “main European” not only ideologically, it tried and is trying to live according to European quality standards.
The children of our pochvenniki political elite study not in Naryan-Mar or Naro-Fominsk, and not even in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but in London. Our large private and public companies do not hesitate to buy or want to buy Western business assets, because this is the only way they can significantly expand their business and increase capitalization. And our business leaders like to conduct the now fashionable initial public offerings - IPOs - on the London Stock Exchange, and not in Surgut or Ufa. It’s here that they don’t care about reputation, but for doing business outside the homeland, reputation sometimes doesn’t hurt. Again, Western investors serve as at least a little additional protection even for private and state-owned companies that are still in favor in case one part of the government begins, with the help of competent authorities, to take away property from another. This case is very likely in today's Russia.
For now, our elite is helped by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Russians - according to various surveys, from 80 to 90% - have never been abroad or seen Western European countries. They have nothing with which to compare the results of endless Russian experiments on common sense with the results of the long-accomplished victory of this common sense. But the Russian political and business elite, constantly visiting the West, is trying to make Europe in their holiday villages or buying real estate in the most developed countries of the European Union. Sochi, God willing, will become Courchevel in a couple of decades - and only if they give us the 2014 Winter Olympics. But Courchevel will never become the current Sochi.
Some time ago, Russian statesmen set a goal to catch up with the standard of living of Portugal, one of the poorest countries in Western Europe, by 2020. And it’s not a fact that we’ll catch up. Yes, our richest citizens can already rival the fortunes of billionaires from France, Germany, and Great Britain. Yes, Abramovich and Deripaska are richer than the Queen of England. But if the Russian authorities want, any of these billionaires at any moment, without explanation or on trumped-up charges, could end up where Mikhail Khodorkovsky now finds himself. Depending on the Kremlin’s situation, almost any representative of the government itself can repeat Khodorkovsky’s fate.
It is stupid for Russia to pretend that it is smarter or better than Europe and that Europe is not our decree. The same European Union has long been unable to “teach us how to live”; it simply does not have the military and geopolitical resources to hammer home the foundations of Western civilization to Russian officials.
It is the Russian elites themselves who must have enough brains to understand that only free people (and European civilization is valuable primarily because it “produces” free people on an “industrial scale”) are capable of making Russia prosperous, providing it with an innovative breakthrough, preserving science and develop culture. Neither representatives of the special services, who have seized power and property, nor the downtrodden plebs, who are stuffed with xenophobic state propaganda, will ever make Russia a country in which it would be pleasant and convenient to live, in which one could be sincerely proud. They simply don't know how to do it, even if they would like to.
Russia needs European renovation. But she must make the path to European civilization herself, without outside help - by an effort of political will, which is now spent almost exclusively on the banal appropriation of property on an especially large scale under anti-Western and anti-European rhetoric that is absolutely unpromising for the fate of Russia.