Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 10 – The arrest of
Ivan Golunov represents a turning point in Russian affairs, “a media YUKOS”
that “could be the burial salute of the hopes of a generation but perhaps the shot
of the Aurora, Vladimir Pastukhov says. “Everything depends” now on the
reaction of the population to the reaction in the powers that be.
The London-based Russian analyst
says that the case of the investigative journalist has “a deeper subtext than
just human rights. The case is not the latest testing of the multi-layered
Russian bottom but rather a change in the landscape of that bottom,” one that
can affect everything in Russia (mbk-news.appspot.com/sences/politbyuro-ritual/).
Given that the powers that be had to
know in advance that Golunov’s arrest and their handling of it would spark
massive protest in Russia and abroad, it seems clear that those in charge felt
that the situation was so important that it was worth paying the price of the further
loss of reputation to silence this journalist and send a warning to all others,
Pastukhov continues.
That prompts the question “Why?” The analyst says that in his view the case is
not about Golunov and his investigations but rather about a shift in the
political topography at the top of the power vertical. “The Golunov case is a media YUKOS,” he
argues. That is, just as with the YUKOS case, this one even more is “a symbol
of a new era” in Russian political life.
That answer, of course, leads to
another question, not why and why Golunov but “why now?” According to Pastukhov, this case signals the
shift to a new and much harsher and more violent period, one in which “the era
of the Magnitsky case and the YUKOS case will seem vegetarian in contrast.”
What has changed, he argues, “is not so much
the method of administration as its subject. The time when the country was run
by members of the Ozero cooperative is long past. There is no more Ozero. It
has fallen to the bottom” as have others like it. And in their place have come “figures
of a new dimension” and “the country is being run by the ‘Ritual’ Politburo.”
“’Ritual’ is not a funeral bureau
but the highest and last stage of the development of the mafia state,” Pastukhov
suggests. “Oveer the course of 20 years of the existence of this regime, it has
passed through several stages as regards the fusion of power and criminality.”
First, the criminal world bought “the weak power,” then power took control over
the criminal world, and “finally they came together into a certain single and
indivisible form.”
Now it is one which exhibits “at one
and the same time both the characteristics of the state and the features of the
classic mafia.” What is not clear is how far this new phenomenon will last and
who or what will come out on top. But what is clear, Pastukhov insists, is that
today “the state and the mafia are twin brothers.”
“We say state and we mean the mafia;
we say mafia and we have the state in mind.” And that means that in contrast to
what happened with Kholodov, Politkovskaya and Khlebnikov, the new twins won’t
have to shoot from the corner. Their targets can be selected and punished in
public because the mafia state has come into its own and can act like either as
it chooses.
“This means,” Pastukhov says, “the
twilight of ‘the golden age’ of Russian investigative journalism,” not of one
journalist but of an entire class. That makes this case “more serious than we
think and more serious than he thinks. This is not a case but a historical
turning point, one in which “the state is turning away from society to act in the
shadows” like a criminal group.
Depending on how society reacts,
this can be either the beginning of a new wave of repression far greater than
anything seen since Stalin’s time – or it can mark the start of a revolution
that will throw the mafia state into the dustbin of history.
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