Paul Goble
Staunton,
November 15 – Igor Eidman, a Russian sociologist who provides commentary for Deutsche Welle, offers a list of 17
features of Vladimir Putin’s system (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5BED1788D239B). It provides a useful checklist, and they are translated
below in full:
1.
Economic System: State-monopoly capitalism based on a
corrupt alliance of the highest bureaucracy and major criminal business.
2.
Political regime: Authoritarianism with elements of
imitation democracy.
3.
Form of Rule: Autocracy.
4.
Ruling ideology: A mix of chauvinism, clericalism, militarism,
xenophobia, and a leader cult.
5.
Ruing social stratum: The nomenklatura (the state
bureaucracy and special services).
6.
The political and economic elites: The highest levels of
the nomenklatura and the oligarchate (criminal big business) connected with it.
7.
The system-forming social practice: Corruption.
8.
The chief economic resource: Natural resources.
9.
The main beneficiary of the economy: The nomenklatura and
the oligarchate.
10.
The main social problem: The enormous gap in incomes
between the privileged minority and the socially defenseless majority of the population.
11.
The goals of domestic policy: The preservation of the rule
of the privileged minority.
12.
The methods of their achievement: Total propaganda and
political repression.
13.
The goals of foreign policy: Expansionism, imperial
revanchism, and annexationism.
14.
The methods of their achievement: Military aggression,
hybrid war, international terrorism, and nuclear blackmail.
15.
The parliament, elections, political parties, the observance
of basic political and economic freedoms and the independence of courts bear an
imitation character.
16.
The closest analogues to Putinism: fascism, Asiatic
etatism, and Latin American caudilloism.
17.
A change of regime: Possible only by a revolution or as a
result of powerful external pressure.
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