Saturday, March 2, 2019

Putin ‘Beyond Doubt’ a Direct Continuation of Yeltsin, Pastukhov Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 2 – Many Russians draw a sharp contrast between Boris Yeltsin and the wild 1990s and Vladimir Putin and the stability, albeit repressive, which followed, but “beyond doubt,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, Putin represents a direct continuation of Yeltsin and the problems of the early 2000s were a direct outgrowth of the problems of the decade before.

            Speaking on Ekho Moskvy’s “The Year 2019” program, the London-based Russian scholar says that “all that we call the problems of the 2000s are only a mechanical continuation of the problems of the 1990s and that the key points which formed our present-day reality are 1991, 1993, and 1996” (echo.msk.ru/programs/year2019/2378631-echo/).

                “What took place in 1999-2000,” Pastukhhov continues, “was an outcome already predetermined by those decisions, by the decisions of the early and mid-1990s.”  It is simply not true that a group of security offers fell from “another planet” and “seized our beautiful country” and changed its direction. To think that is “very superficial.” 

            Worse, such a failure of understanding means that Russians do not recognize that “the entire political class which did not foresee these events” must be held accountable for what has happened, he says.

            According to Pastukhov, “Putin beyond doubt is a continuation of Yeltsin” even in the way he has denounced his predecessor but not changed what he did.  “In essence, Putin has not touched a single one of Yeltsin’s holly cows,” although it is true that under him the political class has widened to include security officers and some of the older members have been cast out.

            But the core of that elite, the London-based analyst says, remains the same as the one which emerged “out of the turbulent movement of the 1990s.”  And that highlights something else that is often neglected: “the real revolution in Russia occurred in 1989 … from any point of view,” given that it was in that year that “the new economy arose.” 

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