Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 13 – If conditions
in Russian prisons were significantly improved, Abbas Gallyamov says, such a
development could lead to an improvement in the investment climate because
businessmen, risk takers by their nature, would not be constrained as many are
now by the fear that they could be confined in horrific conditions.
Instead, if conditions in Russian
prisons were better, the former Putin speechwriter and current Moscow
commentator says, business people would see the risk of landing in them as less
threatening and would be prepared to take more risks, something that could lead
to an improvement in the Russian economy (echo.msk.ru/blog/gallyamov_a/2518007-echo/).
Today, Russian
prisons are so awful that businessmen feel an “existential” dread of landing in
them, “but now imagine what would be the case if the businessman was certain
that whatever happened, he would have hot water, a normal toilet, a good
library, daily walks, and that no one would torture or denigrate him, neither
fellow prisoners nor the guards.”
The Kremlin can’t do much about how
the police, the FSB or the investigation committee do their jobs, but it can
easily impose order on the federal penal system. It might not be able to change
things everywhere over night; but it could do so in prisons to which
businessmen in Moscow might be sent.
To bring the Russian prison system
up to world standards could easily become “the main national project, if you
will, the only one that would help enliven the economy of the country,” Gallyamov
says. To that end, he suggests, the Kremlin should name Gref or Kudrin to head
the federal penal system and make that system directly subordinate to the
president.
In that event, the Moscow
commentator argues, Russian businessmen would change the calculations they
make, take more risks, and reap more benefits for themselves and the country --even
if some of them still were to end up behind bars.
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