Not like people

At the end of May, a great resonance among the Russian public was caused by an interview with William Browder, head of the investment fund Hermitage Capital - the same fund whose lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died from torture in a Russian prison. The interview is worth reading for anyone who hasn't already done so. This is a very rich text, almost every episode of which provides food for serious thought. In this note, I would like to stop more than such an episode.

Bright talks about the activities of the fund in the late 90s-early 2000s. The main business idea, if you state it simplified, was as follows. The fund became the minority shareholder of large Russian joint -stock companies, such as Gazprom, Sberbank and RAO UES of Russia. In all these structures, management was engaged in the fact that, according to all civilized canons of joint -stock law, it is a theft - he plundered assets and/or the bulk of the profit through all kinds of “opaque” schemes. Hermitage Capital experts investigated all these abuses, betrayed their publicity and sought the legal persecution of the perpetrators. Due to this, shares of companies, incl. belonging to the fund grew. Since the state was the main shareholder of these corporations, theoretically, the activities of the fund were beneficial to it.

Moreover, Browder believed that such activities were consistent with the general political trend of the time to strengthen Russia as a sovereign state. Here's what he says in the interview:

“And I must say that we really accelerated just at the time when Putin came to power. But he became the president of the presidential administration, and not the president of Russia.

In what sense?

He had tens of thousands of employees under his command. But the governors ruled their regions as independent states. The oligarchs paid money to ministers and deputies and considered them their subordinates. The press existed to influence business and politics, not to report events objectively. As a result, Putin’s, and before him, Yeltsin had no power, which should have the head of the sovereign state. I never met Putin, but I think we had common interests: people who stole money from companies, took power away from him. And he responded very positively to our attempts to draw attention to the theft.

What was this positive reaction?

For example, Alexander Voloshin, who was then the head of the presidential administration, called us and invited us to make a report on what we had dug up about RAO UES, which at that moment had a plan to sell all its assets for next to nothing. We told everything, and soon the government agreed to enter into negotiations on restructuring the company with minority shareholders. I believe that we saved the company for all its shareholders, including the state. When we talked about what was happening in Gazprom, we removed Rema Vyakhirev, which lay responsible for the disappearance of ten percent of the assets. It seemed to me that Russia was moving in the right direction.”

Before us is a picture, back in the 90s, which has become a common stamp in journalism and generally in the discourse characteristic of the public. We see “feudalism”, the omnipotence of the “regional barons”, the omnipotence of the oligarchs, the sale of the press ... It is important to note that in this criticism the liberal and democratic community was practically no different from the state, nationalist or socialist public. The differences concerned the strategy of “restoring order”: liberals and democrats wanted to build a Russian state on the model of “civilized countries”. And from this point of view, the activities of Browder and his foundation were, one might say, a model: formal legal norms and publicity were used to introduce civilized norms into the practice of corporate governance and shareholder law. And along the way, Putin and his team, who then acted as moderate statists, turned out to be natural allies.

But then everything went wrong. Here's what Browder says:

“In the period from 1999 to 2003, we succeeded a lot because our interests obviously coincided with the interests of the Putin regime. So I had the best job in the world at the time. I earned a lot, and at the same time I felt that I was making history, changing Russia for the better. And every time our campaign against one of the villains ended in some kind of success, even a small one, we all shouted “Hurray”, and the team spirit in our company was such that it never happens, because rarely does anyone manage to make money and make money at the same time. do good. Unfortunately, this golden period of my career ended - and I did not notice that it had ended - in October 2003, when Khodorkovsky was arrested. He was one of those with whom we fought, and it seemed to me then that this was another step towards solving the problem of corruption.

[…]

I was an anti-oligarch, and I was waiting to see who would be next. I thought it was real justice. But in fact, I believe, all these oligarchs, one after another, went to the president and agreed on how they should now behave so as not to end up in a cage. So from Putin’s enemies they turned into his partners. And I continued to live in my ideal world, thinking that Putin is making Russia better, making it a normal country. And he simply crushed the oligarchs under himself in order to become the most important oligarch.”

So, we see actions that, regardless of the intentions and interests of the actors, seemed to be objectively aimed at the gradual transformation of the Russian state into a “normal and civilized one.” And yet, ultimately, they contributed to the strengthening of a system of public power that is not only not a “normal, civilized state,” but hardly fits the definition of a modern type of state, understood as a “state.”

And this is not the only example.

I think many people remember how in the 90s they criticized the election system that existed at that time at all levels. They reproached her for everything - “black technology”, bribery of voters, rampant yellow press, and non-transparency of financing election campaigns. Again, the democratic and liberal public was indignant at all this no less than others. Most critics, including the most progressive and pro-Western, saw the solution in some form of “tighter control.”

During Putin's presidency, dreams came true - control was tightened. The truth turned out that increased control not only did not make the elections more fair, but actually destroyed them.

Another example is antitrust regulation. In general, it was initially introduced, not least in the order of “importing institutions”: since this exists in civilized countries, it means that we should have it too. (In fairness, it should be noted that Russian antimonopoly regulation was not a simple copy of the Western one, and it has many original features, but this is a subject for another discussion.) In the 90s and early 2000s, antimonopoly regulation was not carried out very actively, which caused great complaints, incl. by many pro-Western supporters of a market economy. Demands were constantly heard from all sides to put an end to the arbitrariness of monopolies, tighten antimonopoly control, etc. After the appointment of Igor Artemyev, previously one of the leaders of the democratic and pro-Western Yabloko party, to the post of head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), the situation changed greatly. FAS has become one of the most “civilized” (i.e., most closely imitating Western standards) departments. At the same time, the activity of the service increased by orders of magnitude, and legislative measures were seriously tightened. As a result, the FAS has become one of the most powerful levers of business pressure from the ruling elite. What is most interesting, under the blow of antimonopoly regulation, it falls not only on the “cereal”, but on the increasing scale of the middle and small business - to make sure of this, it is enough to look at the information published by the FAS about the initiated matters. Moreover, unlike large, especially state -owned companies, small and medium -sized entrepreneurs often do not have sufficient resources to protect themselves in court or by administrative proceedings, i.e. the blow hits the most vulnerable. An example with antimonopoly regulation is especially indicative, because One can hardly doubt the sincerity of the desire of the head of the service and his team to make the business environment in Russia more “civilized.”

Examples can be multiplied, but let's stop and think. In my opinion, there is a certain pattern, a certain stable, repeating model of the development of events. The requirements to introduce “more civilized” rules and institutions or desire to achieve the execution of formally quite “civilized” (i.e., similar to conditionally “Western”) laws and rules after a while (or after a number of “tactes”) lead to the formation of institutions that have nothing to do with neither with Westernic "civilization", nor with the good wishes of supporters of "civilization". Moreover, they are the direct opposite of such “civilization”, the reincarnation of the “scoop” or even some kind of “Asianism”.

But how legitimate is such a generalization? After all, undoubtedly, there are “things” that were, in a sense, borrowed from “civilized countries” and, at the very least, have taken root. For example, free prices for most goods and services.

My hypothesis is that “perversions” like those given above most likely arise in cases where the introduction of “civilized norms” involves one or another tightening of control on the part of public authorities. This is the common feature of three described examples.

If any Westernic “civilizer” idea involves the strengthening of public-vale control, the endowment of public authorities with new powers, etc., then its introduction in Russia will most likely not lead to the expected results. On the contrary, an attempt to realize it will give new tools to “corporations of various service thieves and robbers”, and supporting these measures with naive “civilizers” will only serve this public justification.