Kleptocrat

Sarah Kendzior, via Twitter:

Trump would rather have his base think of him as a "nationalist" than as a kleptocrat. In reality, Trump's a wealthy white supremacist who partners with international billionaires and crimelords to strip America down for parts and sell it off to the highest bidders. 23 October

Trump does not give a shit about America. His racism is real, but his circle is international. This is not even "America First". It's always been Trump first, America last. Follow the money -- from your pockets into Trump's and then into offshore accounts of him and his backers.

Sarah Kendzior understands authoritarians better than I ever will. But even I can see the sense in these assertions. And the similarities to the end of the Soviet Union are just as obvious: Putin and the Russian kleptocracy did exactly this.

When a government privatizes an asset that it controls, it is selling to a private concern a thing that was created through the collective efforts of the governed. Therefore the proceeds should be distributed evenly among the governed.

This seems especially obvious for a form of government such as communism, that emphasizes collectivism.

But that isn't what happened in Russia. I need to read "Winter is Coming", and to take notes this time, in order to understand what did happen. Where did the oligarchs find the wealth to buy privatized government assets? Did they just steal them, with the aid of the former KGB? Did they somehow depress their perceived value – label them junk or toxic – to get a better deal?

In any case, value that had been created by the Soviet people, collectively, was not distributed evenly among them. The kleptocrats stole that value from the citizenry as a whole, and then took it out of the country in order to secure it. The countries where they secreted it, including Great Britain, Cyprus, Iceland and the United States, turned a blind eye to its origins because they wanted to use it to enrich themselves.

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The following are excerpts from "Kasparov, Garry. Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition." The book does not seem to explain in detail the origins of the Russian oligarchy. It does provide explain how they worked with corrupt leadership, starting with Boris Yeltsin, to strengthen their positions.

The history of left-wing dictatorships transitioning to democracy with market economies is a short collection of horror stories. Communism is like an autoimmune disorder; it doesn’t do the killing itself, but it weakens the system so much that the victim is left helpless and unable to fight off anything else.

Even twenty-five years later, most outbreaks of socialist rhetoric are limited to populist would-be autocrats keen to redistribute wealth to their cronies and with stagnant economies dependent on natural resources.

On reasons why the former Soviet republics were so eager to become former republics:

There was also a power-grab incentive factor in many cases. Regional bureaucrats and party bosses dreamed of being autocrats and realized they would have more power and a greater ability to line their pockets in independent states, even if their economies and regimes remained largely dependent on Moscow.

By 1996, in Kasparov's telling, the oligarchy was already well established. They helped Yeltsin, who had helped them, to win re-election through illegally excessive campaign contributions:

In 1996, Yeltsin had little popular support but he could count on many of the oligarchs whose fortunes he had enabled and the financial backing of the West.

Every day struggling Russians read about the new billionaires being created by cozy deals with the government. You didn’t have to understand how things like privatization vouchers, loans-for-shares, and rigged auctions worked to realize there was a huge scam going on. Worried that reforms might be rolled back by conservatives, Yeltsin’s reform team, led by Yegor Gaidar and Chubais, started selling things off at a frantic pace at absurdly low valuations.

Such sanctioned looting continued under Putin, of course, and continues today. The difference was that in the 1990s Russians could find out about it.

On why Yeltsin and others turned to Putin:

After years of looting and capital flight it was getting harder and harder to scapegoat the West for how badly things were going. Yeltsin’s approval rating was dismal once again, another reason he and his oligarch backers were eager to find a fresh face to show to the frustrated Russian people.

On how the second "generation" of the oligarchy came to prominence through appeasement by Putin:

With no free media, no justice system to worry about, and no competition, Putin’s preferred oligarchs were like vermin whose natural predators had been eradicated. The chosen winners had the full power of the state behind them and the Russian treasury opened wide.