The dark side is strong in Vladimir Putin's Russia

By: Sarah Mendelson 
July 20, 2001
Reprinted from The Globe and Mail

There are some who argue that business does not care about democracy or human rights. Capital likes, well, profits. But for those looking to invest in Russia, a recent event suggests they ought to care about these matters. After all, capital also likes predictability and order.

An unlikely, and ultimately unstable, conglomeration of pro-Putin business types and anti-Putin political liberals had agreed to hold a media conference -- Freedom of the Press 2001 -- last week in a fancy hotel in Moscow. Russian and Western analysts, pundits and government types had been invited. Yukos Oil and Alpha Bank, big Russian businesses, were footing the tab.

The purpose of the conference differed depending on your affiliation. For the pro-Putin types, it was a chance to say, "See, we care about freedom of the press" (this from the folks that took over NTV, once Russia's most consistently critical television station). For the liberal types (earnest as ever), it was a chance to say, "Let's really talk about the government's position on freedom of information." In short, a bizarre time was going to be had by all.

It was not to be. Both sides forgot about another, increasingly powerful actor in Russian politics. Let's call them, for the sake of clarity, the dark forces. You know these guys from the movies. Russians know them from their past and their present.

These guys come from many different places: the security services, the prosecutor-general's office, the presidential administration, the Ministry of Press, Gazprom (which owns Gazprom Media), the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior. They condone the waging of a war in Chechnya that, if the West bothered to focus on for 30 seconds, would bring tears of shame (for ignoring it) and sorrow (for the suffering), and then action (mediation and money, not the use of force).

So what happened to the conference? Before you can say "independent media," Federal Security Service officers with orders from the prosecutor-general's office barged into the offices of Russia's last important independent radio station, Ekho Moskvy, which was also a sponsor of the conference. Next, a Moscow city court essentially handed the majority ownership of the radio station to Gazprom. Several prominent journalists quit the radio station, and Ekho Moskvy pulled out as a sponsor of the conference. The business guys at Gazprom Media then scrambled to try to keep their conference from disintegrating as Russians and Westerners, like myself, faxed and e-mailed their decisions not to participate in the building of a Potemkin village right there in a Marriott hotel in downtown Moscow.

With egg on their faces and cancellation letters in hand, both Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Union of Right Forces (now more a pro-business party than a pro-democracy one), and Alfred Kokh, director of Gazprom Media, said: "Okay, conference declared officially not happening."

Do I believe that Gazprom Media really wanted to have a conference on the fate of freedom of press in Russia? Yes. But I also believe that both the liberals and the business folks were targeted by the same nasty group: the dark forces.

As a result, liberals and business people interested in the fate of Russia should be spending a little less time yelling at one another and more time asking, "Who are these masked men?" How much support do they have in the Kremlin and on the street? What is President Vladimir Putin's relation to them? Does he run them, or do they run him?

This is not to say there are no fundamental divides between the liberals and the business folks, and it is too bad we didn't have a serious discussion in Moscow with a range of opinions on one of them: What's happening with the press in Russia?

Indeed, critical and independent media are fundamental to Russia's political trajectory. How, after all, do you fight corruption and get good governance without a critical media? But I have heard plenty of Western business people (and a few in government) casually dismiss the rollback of civil liberties and human rights in Mr. Putin's Russia. They argue, along with most Russians, that what makes good sense now is to back the powers-that-be and not be critical of government policies. The logic for the business community on both sides of the Atlantic is that Mr. Putin is pro-business, and what is good for Mr. Putin is good for business. The chaos of the Yeltsin years must be reversed, and if order means the security services have more power, so be it.

This perspective is dangerous and wrong. Instead, the opposite is true: What's good for liberals is good for business. Accountability. Good governance. Rule of law. Capital does not like the random rule of man, where local police feel empowered to barge in and intimidate, and even kill. The Gazprom Media guys, and some of their Western friends, may not be interested in full and open disclosure on a range of issues. But they need to realize that making a deal with the devil is not good business. And it can sure ruin a conference.

Sarah E. Mendelson is an assistant professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and will become a senior fellow next month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.