Today Putin, Tomorrow a Prison Toilet

There is a rather wealthy fellow named Andrei Boiko who co-owns the Burevestnik Yacht Club on the Moscow River. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently paid a visit to the club. Boiko couldn’t have been happier. He showed the prime minister around, saying, “This is mine, and that over there is mine, too.” A week later, Boiko was in jail.

Maybe Putin didn’t like the club members’ opulent lifestyle during the economic crisis. Or maybe someone in Putin’s retinue has his eye on Boiko’s business. Either way, it is a decidedly bad sign when someone lands in jail just seven days after receiving the prime minister as a guest.

A couple of months ago, a kebab house called Anti-Sovietskaya opened up in Moscow. There was nothing so unusual about the name. It just happens to be located opposite the Sovietskaya Hotel, and so that spot — a virtual cult hangout for writers in the 1970s — came to be called the Anti-Sovietskaya. Unfortunately for the restaurant’s owners, however, the new district prefect, Oleg Mitvol, heard about the kebab house with the unpatriotic name. He sent his men over with orders to, “Pull down that sign by 6 o’clock this evening.”

It is just such little pleasantries that make up daily life in Russia. Today you’re sitting next to the prime minister, and tomorrow you’re sitting next to a prison toilet. Today you buy a swanky restaurant and turn it into an affordable kebab house, and tomorrow you’ve got Oleg Mitvol and his minions breathing down your neck.

At the same time, we’ve got President Dmitry Medvedev trying to correct the situation with his article “Go, Russia!” and the suggestion that the government consider a proposal by a blogger named Maxim Kalashnikov to build a prototype city of the future. Kalashnikov is not alone — I can also make a few recommendations to the president on ways to improve conditions in Russia. For example, he could use a fortuneteller to tweak the future and an astrologist to clear the channel between his body and his mind. Or I could toss the president the phone numbers of a couple of people who could put him in direct communication with the star Sirius on any cloudless night of his choosing.

Clever political analysts hurried to interpret the president’s article to mean that a rift had formed between Putin and Medvedev. Forget it. How could there be a rift between the one man who holds all the power in this country firmly in his grasp and his obedient sidekick who never had any power to begin with?

I think Medvedev’s article, like the blogger Kalashnikov’s pipe dream, is the symptom of a completely different illness — the complete and total paralysis of authority in Russia.

Russia has become completely ungovernable. Imagine if Medvedev wanted to issue a weighty command — and not even something really serious like freeing jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky or firing Putin. Consider what would happen if the government decided to reduce customs duties. The smugglers would make sure that the law never passed. Or what would happen if Medvedev decided to oust Mayor Yury Luzhkov? The wheels of government would grind to a halt for a full year. If it took Medvedev four months to name a replacement for the Moscow police chief, imagine how long it would take to find someone to replace Luzhkov.

And when the mechanism of government has stopped working, leaders are forced to busy themselves with the semblance of activity: writing inspirational articles, considering proposals by unknown bloggers and renaming harmless restaurants.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.