In an ironic article squeezed out for a recent issue of Newsweek, Michael Hirsh and Frank Brown ('Back to the U.S.S.R.?,' September 27, 2004) note the recent rightward, anti-democratic shift of the Putin government in Russia.

Using the despicable Beslan tragedy as the excuse, Putin ordered major changes in Russian government structure that dramatically centralizes local and regional authority into his hands. Claiming the need to heighten security and to stave off other separatist inclinations in different parts of the country, Putin has stripped voters of their right to chose local officials and has diminished the right of opposing political parties to challenge edicts handed down from Putin’s appointees. Critics fear Putin is leading Russia back to a one-party state.

Also, according to Hirsh and Brown, following Bush’s lead, Putin may adopt the policy of preemptive strike as a potential way to deal with separatist extremists in Chechnya or who have taken refuge in neighboring Georgia. An expansion of deadly violence in that region would result.

Not just a few observers have noted the similarities in Putin’s new power grab with Bush’s own efforts to consolidate more central authority in the White House. USA PATRIOT Act measures gave the Justice Department dramatic new extra-judicial powers. The creation of the Homeland Security Department centralized the federal level policing and domestic intelligence apparatus. Expanded security and intelligence powers covered with the cloak of 'national security' have allowed tens of thousands of secret detentions and have diminished the rights of suspects to Constitutional protections. Surveillance of political organizations that oppose the administration’s policies has become more widespread. Claims to the right of preemptive war without the necessity of making a plausible case to the public is foremost among these notorious Bush steps increase White House power over new aspects of civil life in the US.

When Colin Powell expressed reservations last week over Putin’s moves, Putin responded by suggesting that his efforts were no different from Bush’s own after 9/11. Powell’s reservations do not seem to be shared by the rest of the Bush administration, however. Bush himself, according to Hirsh and Brown, 'offered only a mild, indirect rebuke,' they say. Others in the administration even took steps to justify Putin’s power grab by claiming that the Russian people are OK with it and that it was important for security. These justifications, incidentally, were the administration’s own rationale for its attacks on civil liberties and its call for heightened racial profiling.

Aside from this convergence of domestic repressive tactics and international imperialist maneuvering by the Putin and Bush regimes, another very compelling item crops up in the Hirsh and Brown article. Only one political group in all of capitalist Russia opposed Putin’s consolidation of near-dictatorial powers: the Communist Party. Hirsh and Brown found this fact ironic as they cling to the traditional Cold War view that the Russian CP – heir to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – in its heyday favored repressive, anti-democratic habits of wielding power.

Lengthy articles and even books could be produced to compare Soviet life with contemporary Russian capitalist life with special attention on political democracy, the standard of living and social welfare, and the USSR, despite its drawbacks in important areas, would win on all three counts.

But what do Bush administration officials say as Putin fights to revive the specter of dictatorship in capitalist Russia? They shrug – and this is the most remarkable feature of Hirsh and Brown’s observations – and say, 'Russia is not a democratic society.'

So much for the simplistic equation of capitalism with democracy.



--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.