 RUSSIA IN FACTS |
|
05 November 2003 01:50
Putin`s clampdown could put prosperity at risk
A clash between arbitrary power and illegitimate wealth. That is the conflict
between Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
estwhile chairman of Yukos. Power will surely win. The question is how it
will use that victory. Will it support a market economy or lead to a new
cycle of predation? Either way, Russia's progress towards what
contemporary westerners regard as normality is to be measured in decades, not
years.
Secure private property is the foundation of both a market economy and
democracy. Parliamentary control emerged in England because the Crown had to
obtain the consent of the propertied to taxation. In time, the suffrage
widened with the circle of those whose consent was necessary. In the Russia
of Peter the Great, however, the state owned everything. When private
property was granted, under Catherine the Great, it took the form of absolute
ownership of the country's principal re
[its people. Inevitably] | | |
|
|
