The Polittechnologist: Putin and his Relatives

Putin and his Relatives Polittechnologist%20small.gif By the Polittechnologist The new appointment of a prime minister, seeming so strange to many, actually fits perfectly into the logic of the recent actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Vlad loves himself very much and aspires to live up to his name (“Vladimir” comes from the Ancient Russian “Vladei mirom” – rule the world). He understands that in order to rule, you’ve got to have weapons and armed hirelings. That’s why he travels to the Muslims in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates and brings them weapons as gifts. He thinks they won’t betray him any more, like at one time with the Chechen partisans. Vlad understands that you mustn’t give up the power you have now – nobody’s going to give it back to you. Vlad is afraid he’ll be betrayed and denied access to the cherished suitcase containing the nuclear button. If you’ve got this suitcase, everything else in Russia comes to you automatically – the money, the glory, and the success. But if you let go of it even for a moment, you’ll never be able to get it back again. Take a look at Ivanov and Medvedev – what kind of “successors” are these??? Vlad doesn’t trust them – they’ll take away the button and won’t give it back. Furthermore, they might even release Khodorkovsky from jail in their enthusiasm. This is very bad for Vlad. He locked him up – now he’s got to keep a watch on him. Vlad has come up with a brilliant plan. Bring a third force into the Kremlin – unprepossessing people who even seem to be devoid of any substance at first glance. But they will be loyal to him (so he thinks) to their dying day. Imagine if you’re the director of a furniture factory and suddenly you’re appointed Minister of Defense??? Having gotten your hands on tanks and planes and the largest budget, you’d be ready (by the way, this depends on the person’s individual traits, because a furniture factory director with any decency would have refused such a position) to kiss the backside of your benefactor, because you’re nothing in this world now without him. And what if you were transformed from a collective farm chairman into the prime minister??? I think it will take the Western reader a great deal of time to understand just what a collective farm chairman is. If you can’t, just write and I’ll explain. I’ll keep silent about the details of the gratitude on the part of the former “man of the earth”. But at 66 years of age, it truly will know no bounds. Vlad is surrounding himself with small people who make up for their short-sightedness with a fierce loyalty. People like Zubkov and Serdyukov. He thinks that they, like the Muslims, will not betray him and will help him hold on to power. He’s creating a new “family” around himself. At first I’d thought that his family was Sechin and Ustinov, whose respective children are already living together in marital bliss. Now I’m seeing a new family. Serdyukov (minister of defense) and Zubkov (prime-minister) are also related by marriage. The premier is the father-in-law of our top soldier. The St. Petersburg papers wrote about this several months ago already. And Vlad needs just such a family – loyal and without any ambitions. After all, Vlad’s college buddies might just recall that they had once gotten better grades than him and decide that they deserve better now. But former subordinates who have suddenly been so unexpectedly blessed won’t. Nor will they release Khodorkovsky. So I feel I can say with a great deal of confidence that our President has decided to go for a third term. You’ll see…