PARTY LINES: Deterrence, Oligarch-Style

So here we are, six days into the post-Yeltsin era. While the outcome of the March 26 election was no big surprise, it was a historic watershed, a sea-change in Russian politics, etcetera.


Or so we are told. Why, then, do things feel ... well, the same?


There have been, of course, ominous noises emanating from the Kremlin about the oligarchs' days being numbered, the state preparing to lay down the law and so on. Vladislav Surkov, deputy Kremlin chief of staff, even compared Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky this week to "bacteria" living inside a decaying body, hinting they would be the first tycoons to be booted out of the corridors of power.


Pretty scary stuff. Yet at least one member of that oligarchical duo - it's not hard to guess who - is not acting like a man facing imminent eradication.


Shortly before election day, for example, Berezovsky displayed his magnanimous side in an interview with the newspaper Vedomosti, saying that Vladimir Putin, once elected, should be allowed to make his own mistakes - as a learning experience. The tycoon added that Putin's talk about eradicating the oligarchs, while "normal" and "absolutely right," was no more than grist for the electorate. This week, Berezovsky's Nezavisimaya Gazeta published a front-page analysis proclaiming the oligarchs a spent force and even urging Putin to reassert state control over ORT Public Television, which is generally thought to be under Berezovsky's control. One could almost see the tycoon winking.


Berezovsky is not coy when he is in real trouble. Just recall Yevgeny Primakov's tenure as prime minister, when Berezovsky had to flee abroad ahead of an arrest warrant. The tycoon and his media screamed about how Primakov and the Communists were plotting to restore the old system. This was hyperbolic nonsense, of course, but a clear sign that Berezovsky was in trouble. Today, Berezovsky merely says: Sure, Putin might jail me. Meanwhile, the tycoon sits calmly in Moscow.


It seems clear that Berezovsky is not relying only on parliamentary immunity to protect him. Take this week's interview in Kommersant, another Berezovsky property, with a Swiss prosecutor who has been investigating the alleged laundering of bribes from a Swiss construction-engineering firm to Kremlin officials. In connection with that probe, the Swiss authorities earlier this year issued an arrest warrant for Pavel Borodin, the former head of the Kremlin's "property management" department, for money laundering. The investigator told Kommersant that it is "more than possible" that the Swiss authorities will bring charges against other Russian officials.


Who used to work as Borodin's deputy? And who recommended Borodin for the post of Russia-Belarus union state secretary? Putin, of course.


While it's only a theory, a possible reason why the post-Yeltsin era looks and will continue to look very much like the Yeltsin era, is that kompromat - compromising materials - has created a "balance of terror" among the oligarchs and other key power-brokers in Russian politics. If they all have reams of lethal dirt on one another, to be made public should something untoward happen to them - a kind of doomsday device - then it would be irrational to go nuclear. The result is deterrence. This does not, however, preclude low-level skirmishes, the functional equivalent of proxy wars, between the oligarchs through their respective media. In fact, the system is characterized by perpetual low-level warfare under overall strategic stability.


But the system's potential Achilles' heel is the masses. So with the elite now "consolidated," the next step, as Berezovsky told Vedomosti, is to "consolidate society." This requires a unifying myth. The Chechen war was the first step in its creation, and it is interesting in this regard to note how Berezovsky, in his interview, stressed the need to "renew" the Orthodox Church.


The reason why the state is increasing its pressure on some media, including Gusinsky's Media-MOST, is that they refuse to return to myth-making.


Many Western observers seem to assume that there only three possible routes for Russia: toward democracy, corrupt oligarchy or centralized dictatorship. Yet it has been a blend of all three for the last decade or more - without, of course, any rule of law whatsoever. There is no reason why this pattern will not continue, perhaps with the authoritarian element becoming ascendant, as in South Korea under military rule or Serbia today.


Which is why Media-MOST better be packing its own doomsday device.