Russia’s Re-Stalinization: Father of Nation or Mass Murerer?

Here’s how the Kremlin argument goes:  Stalin was a complex figure. Granted, he killed and imprisoned many innocent people, but in the process he eliminated a potent Fifth Column. Stalin had to use political terror to protect the world’s first socialist state from foreign agents, class enemies, and supporters of the old regime. He had no choice but to apply terror indiscriminately. Yes, Stalin’s forced industrialization imposed hardship – famine, work quotas, and extreme labor discipline – but his harsh measures toughened the Russian people for a war that was sure to come. The USSR could not have beaten Hitler without the Gulag camps that mined the resources of the godforsaken East and produced the tanks and airplanes that won the war. The death squads of political prisoners sent out into German minefields saved the lives of loyal Russian soldiers. Yes, Stalin did bad things, but he did them for the good of his nation – so goes the argument.



go to Defining Ideas

What the ‘Great Terror’ Taught Autocrats

The instruments of lesser terror are still routinely employed today. Vladimir Putin uses them to stay in power despite a weak economy, rising poverty and rampant corruption. The Kremlin allots state assets, government credits and university deanships to those in favor. Streaks of independence or defiance are punished by charges of corruption, confiscatory taxes and denial of business licenses. Political opponents are disqualified from the ballot, and ordinary protesters are sent to prison or put under house arrest. Anti-riot forces are given free rein to fire on demonstrators. Dissidents who become a real danger can be shot or poisoned. The murderer will never be found, despite an elaborate investigation and court proceeding.

go to Wall Street Journal

What Comes After Kim Jong Un?

Kim’s inner circle would also characterize themselves as holders of Khrushchev’s lucky cards. Like their Soviet and Chinese counterparts, they would retreat to the relative safety of collective rule in his absence. Less fearful of violent overthrow, they would be inclined to make life better for their people and rely less on military adventurism.

go to forbes.com

The Chinese Can't Stage a Decent Show Trial

The trial of the decade — against former party heavyweight, Bo Xilai – has become a disaster for the new Chinese leadership. The charismatic Bo’s forceful assertions of innocence against charges of petty corruption and misuse of office have enlivened his supporters and made his accusers look weak and petty.

Joseph Stalin mastered the political show trial. His first, against sixteen of Lenin’s deputies and Trotsky allies, lasted five days. His second, against seventeen party officials, lasted a week. The third, against the twenty-one members of the “Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites,” lasted almost two weeks in the presence of invited diplomats and journalists.

Stalin orchestrated his show trials as carefully staged rituals. In each, the defendants’ confessions were extracted well before the trial. They dutifully confessed in public court to horrendous crimes of murder, espionage, and treason. Official newsreels showed the repentant traitors begging for mercy. With few exceptions the defendants received the death penalty and were shot within a day or two of the trial. The Soviet press condemned the “mad dogs” in incessant drumbeats of vitriol. Factory workers organized “spontaneous” meetings to demand the supreme penalty. Confused diplomats and journalists, many of whom did not understand Russian, sat in the court room as interpreters whispered in their ears. They concluded that the show trials had exposed real plots against a Soviet Union, which had narrowly averted overthrow by sinister forces from within and without.  What a success for Mr. Stalin!

Stalin would erupt in laughter at the pantywaist show trial of the disgraced party leader, Bo Xilai, currently underway in Beijing. It violates all of Stalin’s rules for a successful show trial.

go to forbes.com 

China Is About To Make A Mistake That May Rival Its One Child Policy

China avoided the world recession that started in 2009. The wise communist party, we are told, ramped up infrastructure spending – unimpeded by the need for licenses, court reviews, or rights of way. The government pumped in just enough infrastructure spending to maintain China’s healthy growth rate.

Skeptics of democracy and free enterprise waxed eloquent about China’s state capitalism, as directed by China’s communist party. We want more of what China is having over here – was the refrain.

Democracy and free markets indeed make mistakes. No one promised free sailing of steady growth, low unemployment, and the absence of business cycles. Bubbles and busts have been a part of the capitalist system since the Dutch Tulip Bubble of 1637. We can debate the role of government in the U. S. housing bubble and in Europe’s banking and Euro crises, but no proponent of market capitalism has promised a bubble-free, recession-free world.

The proponents of state capitalism and a one party system do make such promises. The Soviet Union promised that “scientific planning” would lead to steady growth, innovation, and the eventual overtaking of the United States. China’s communist leaders laud their “socialism with a Chinese face” in which sober and wise party and state officials can be counted upon to make the correct decisions.

History tells another story.  The most disastrous blunders have been committed by the scientific planners of one party states. Miscalculations and errors of the market system tend to be self-correcting if they are left alone. Even when they are mishandled, the damage is minor compared to the blunders of the state capitalists.

go to forbes.com

Punk Rockers' Lawyers Seek to Prevent Seizure of Children by the State

The judge's verdict in the Pussy Riot case is expected to fall this Friday with prison sentences for the three defendants, accused of  "religious hatred."

The lawyers for the young women are seeking to prevent the seizure of the two young children of band members by state authorities and their transfer to foster homes designated by the state. The picture shows the courageous lawyers (who themselves face potential sanctions) with one of the children.

Putin is following Stalin's example. During his purges, the children of "enemies of the people" were placed in orphanages run by the secret police. They were guaranteed a life of indoctrination and deprivation. The practice of seizing children served as a deterrent for Stalin. It is not beneath Putin to rediscover this Stalinist tactic in  his campaign against dissidents.

A Disturbing Message from a Noted Former Soviet Dissident

I received this message from noted Soviet-era dissident, Yuri Yarim-Agaev. It illustrates the current "party line" of Putin's KGB state. I cite it below with Yuri's permission:. I and Yuri would appreciate comments.

Gentlemen,

I recently watched two movies, which you may find interesting. One is an eight part documentary СССР, крушение (The Collapse of the USSR). Another one, Товарищ Сталин (Comrade Stalin) is a four-part fiction, with a claim to historical truth. (Links attached). Both are very biased and promote the current position of the KGB that it was the guardian of the State, rather than of Communism. The positive characters in the second movie, Stalin and Beria, are “protectors of the state” (государственники); the negative characters, Suslov and Khrushchev, are party ideologues.

There are very disturbing episodes concerning Andrei Sakharov in both of these series. At the end of the second part of СССР, крушение, Philip Bobkov, the former head of the 5th Directorate of the KGB, who was responsible for persecuting dissidents, states that they did not exile Sakharov to Gorky, and that it was Sakharov’s own decision to move there. There are several other outrageous lies in the same episode, none of them challenged by the narrator or rebutted by any other participant.

In Товарищ Сталин, also coincidentaly, at the end of the second part, Beria, who at that time headed the A-bomb project, comes to Stalin. Stalin tells him that he received information that the young scientist Sakharov asked to send him 15,000 political prisoners to complete his experiment, and Beria had not provided them yet. Beria complains that he cannot keep up with Sakharov’s ongoing requests for political prisoners whom he disposes like flies in his experiments.

These two episodes are good reminders that the KGB/FSB hasn’t changed much and continues to pursue its propaganda and active measures. The latter includes disseminating false facts, fabricating documents, and embedding their agents in our ranks. 

Have we forgotten that? Sometimes it seems to me that we have become too complacent and lost our scruples when we give too much validity to the archives only because they come from Soviet secret vaults, when we grant too much credulity to testimonies of former Soviet officials only because they occupied high positions, and when we embrace as our peers people from Russia of very questionable background and views. 

 I do not suggest ignoring documents or testimonies. They can provide us with many important facts--as long as we remember their origin and view them in a more general context.

Colonel Gaddafi's Lesson for Dictators

Joseph Stalin wrote the playbook for dictators. His rules remain as current today as when he developed them in the 1930s. Clearly, Colonel Gaddafi could not follow them in full. If so, he’d be alive today, but some matters were outside of his control. Bashar Assad must be feverishly reviewing Gaddafi’s last months to make sure he does not end up with a bullet to the head himself.

As political scientist Beuno de la Mesquita has shown, dictatorial regimes have long lives. The overthrow of a dictator is actually a rare event. It is even rarer for dictators unconstrained by morality or convention.

to continue reading

Medvedev is “Dizzy From Success”?

Most older Russians know the meaning and context of “dizzy from success.” As collectivization and war against the peasants threatened to get out of hand in 1930, Stalin published his “Dizzy From Success” article in Pravda. In this piece, he criticized local leaders for excesses, which he claimed he did not intend. Encouraged peasants reduced their resistance and began to leave the collective farm. Shortly thereafter Stalin ordered a resumption of terror in the countryside.

In Krasnodar at a campaign rally, Medvedev warned party activists that if they come to  feel superior and complacent: “You get what the classic called 'dizzy with success.'" It is strange, to say the least, to refer to Stalin as “the classic.” Either Dmitry Medvedev is ignorant of Russian history or has decided to take a page from Stalin’s playbook. Let’s hope the answer is ignorance.

Chilling Words: Obama’s Regulators Are Now Punishing Thought Crime

“The law allows companies to shift production for economic reasons, but not to retaliate for past strikes or other worker actions. For us, it’s a motive analysis.”

Lafe Solomon, Acting General Counsel, NLRB

If federal regulators base their actions on “motives,” they have assumed unlimited power. Under this regulatory philosophy, regulatory decisions are based on what is presumed going on inside the heads of businesses as they make their decisions.

It seems that NLRB regulators have determined that Boeing’s “motive” in locating a new plant in South Carolina violated the National Labor Relations Act. In coming to this conclusion, the NLRB had thousands of pages of internal Boeing documents relating to its plant location decisions. In these thousands of pages, a large number of reasons were given for Boeing’s decision. Among them were considerations of supply certainty, labor costs, and tens or hundreds of other factors.

Somehow the NLRB was able to read the minds of Boeing executives and brush aside all other factors as distractions. Boeing’s true “motive” was to retaliate illegally against unions for past strikes. No other motive counted. Boeing had committed a thought crime against its Washington state union.

The Soviet 1936 Constitution also made thought crimes a criminal offense. Any action that “lessened the economic achievements of the Soviet Union” was a potential capital offense. Accordingly, every plane crash, railway accident, or factory breakdown had to be investigated to determine the “motives” of those involved. There was always the fact that something had gone wrong, and to get to the real “truth” investigators had to look into souls of those involved. Perhaps they had the wrong background, had relatives abroad, or circulated among the wrong people. Under Stalin, tens of thousands of innocent managers and engineers were executed for thought crimes. It was safer for prosecutors to conclude that the motives of these managers and engineers were criminal than to miss a few real counter-revolutionaries.

In the NLRB versus Boeing, there is also one fact: Boeing built its new plant in South Carolina. If the NLRB can claim knowledge of Boeing’s “motives,” it is no longer constrained in any way. It can rule that any business decision relating to organized labor was motivated by a thought crime.

If You Love or Hate My Blog, You’ll Love My “Politics, Murder and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin”

Let me engage in some crass advertising, probably in violation of all rules of blogging etiquette. Readers may have noted that I do not worry much about such things.

Although I write on economic and political issues, my real specialty is Russia. My “Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina” tells one of the great love stories and political intrigues of the 20th century. It uses letters, transcripts and eyewitness to tell of Bukharin and Larina’s losing battle to Stalin in their own words. Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is a fictionalized version of Bukharin’s trial. Mine is the true account.

“Politics, Murder and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin is a great buy and a short and easy read.

Buy it at Amazon where it has a five-star rating:

http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Murder-Love-Stalins-Kremlin/dp/0817910344

The Pulitzers and the NYT’s “Useful Idiot” in Stalin’s Court:

In its Sunday edition, the NYT honored its two Pulitzer-prize winners and printed a hall of fame of past winners. Notably missing was Walter Duranty’s 1932 Pulitzer. Duranty served as NYT’s Moscow correspondent from 1922 to 1936.

Duranty’s dispatches served Stalin well, particularly his denial of the 1932-33 famine, which the Ukrainians today call the Holodomor (murder by hunger). In his own court, Stalin outlawed the word “famine.” Apparently, Duranty did too.

Outraged Ukrainians began demanding the return of Duranty’s Pulitzer in the 1980s. The Pulitzer Board refused them twice. The NYT decided against action in 2003. Their reasons: Duranty did not engage in “deliberate deception,” the NYT did not have the award in its physical possession and had “publicly acknowledged his failures.”

The formerly secret Soviet files now reveal Duranty’s strategic importance to Stalin. We are just scratching the surface of these records, and rumors are floating that Duranty was compromised by Stalin’s secret police.

From these records, we learn that Duranty’s Moscow career was nearly over before it began. On October 27, 1925, the Politburo decreed that he was to be deported “for evil gossip.” Duranty’s “conversation” two days later with “competent organs” saved the day, and his service continued. Stalin’s acceptance of his October 17, 1926 request to conduct an “honest and objective” interview was the beginning of Duranty’s success. After the interview, Stalin’s spies reported that he had impressed Duranty with his “concentrated and almost dark power.”

From that point on, Duranty became the most obliging journalist in Moscow. Duranty had indeed become Stalin’s “useful idiot” as he was called.

In a secret 1936 cable from New York, Stalin’s emissary reported that the “particularly friendly” Duranty, in a speech to bankers, berated America “without reservations,” for its provincialism and lack of appreciation of Russian achievements. Stalin’s man recommended a better apartment for Duranty to tie him to Moscow: “I very much advise that you take this matter seriously. The importance of Duranty for us here is immense. In Moscow, he is grossly undervalued.”

Duranty may not have engaged in “deliberate deception,” but he wore blinders in his cheerleading for Stalin when he wrote:

"Must all of them and their families [richer peasants] be physically abolished? Of course not - they must be 'liquidated' or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor."

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please…, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."

The NYT, in its justification for not taking action against Duranty, argued that Stalin’s propaganda machine was overpowering. Yes, Duranty relied too much on his official handlers, but times were different then.

We still live under a double standard. Imagine if Duranty had been Hitler’s useful idiot, reporting from Theresienstadt that Jews were enjoying daily performances of classical music.

Qadaffi’s “Cease Fire:” What Would Stalin Do?

Republicans sometimes ask: “What would Reagan do? Christians ask: “What would Christ have done in this situation.” Dictators like Qadaffi, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Il Sung could ask the same question of their patron saint: Josif Stalin. Stalin wrote the playbook for dictators – how to grab and hold onto power. In actuality, unconstrained dictators, of the Stalin type like Qadaffi, do not need his advice. They became brutal dictators by being the best specialists in political terror. They intuitively understand what Stalin would have advised.

Qadaffi’s “victory within 48 hours” appears to have been snatched away at the last minute by the remarkable U.N resolution to establish a no fly zone and apply necessary force to save civilians. Qadaffi’s road to survival has unexpectedly become rockier. What would we expect the Qadaffi/Stalin dictator to do next?

First, like Stalin, Qadaffi would be most frightened of the threat of external force. Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact at great cost to head off Hitler’s troops. Qadaffi, likewise, will do anything necessary to head off any foreign intervention. He will promise to abide by a cease fire. He will assure the outside world that he values civilian life, and will do everything necessary to protect his people “who love him” He will continue to hold territory his loyalists occupy and will probe only at the margins – never giving outside forces a reason to act.

Second, like Stalin, Qadaffi understands that the external threat will hearten his domestic enemies, which he now understands are everywhere. Any increase in the external threat must be countered by extreme political repression in territories he holds, especially Tripoli. Like Stalin, he understands that the ensuing bloodbath must be kept as quiet as possible. Western journalists must be kept away at any cost, even if it means killing them. Arrests will take place at night. Neighbors know that if they say anything, they are next.

Third, like Stalin, Qadaffi will upgrade his propaganda efforts, what Stalin called "mobilization." In this case, he lacks Stalin’s advantages of gullible Western intellectuals and journalists who sympathize with his cause of “building socialism.” Qadaffi, who has few remaining friends, will be hard pressed to find his NYT’s Walter Duranty or Guardian reporters to deny the Ukrainian famine or vouch for the veracity of his Moscow Show Trials. Qadaffi does have cash; maybe he can find some mouthpieces who can make his case credibly and make a difference.

Fourth, like Stalin, Qadaffi will shorten the leash on his state security apparatus. His state security officers will receive outrageous benefits and will be given to understand the price of disloyalty. The control of state and security will devolve to his immediate family and most trusted loyalists.

Will Qadaffi survive by employing these tactics? Unless the Western powers are willing to bomb Qadaffi troops that are, by all intents and purposes scrupulously observing a case fire, he has a good chance.

Let’s Face It. Gaddafi Has Won

As the Western powers dither and deliberate, Gaddafi has won. He will stay in power even if we establish no-fly zones or impose sanctions with sharp teeth. Short of actual invasion, Gaddafi will stay in power and will likely pass his power on to his sons when he dies. The Western press will continue to hope as a civil war continues, but its outcome is preordained.

There is a prominent historical pattern which explains why Gaddafi has won. There are virtually no cases of unconstrained dictators being overthrown. An unconstrained dictator is a Stalin, a Kim Il Sung, a Saddam, and a Gaddafi who is willing to take any measure, no matter how brutal or repulsive, to stay in power.

The state security organizations of unconstrained dictators reach even down into neighborhoods and report directly to them; prison or worse is the price even modest dissidents pay; they shoot first, not particularly worrying whether their victim is a threat or not. They make the price of resistance of any kind so high that only a brave few are willing to take the risk. Any potential rival is a dead man.

These brutal measures have served unconstrained dictators well. Stalin in his three decades of rule faced not a single assassination attempt. (There were two attempts on Lenin’s life in the early days of Bolshevik power. He had not yet had time to build his state security network). Father and son, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, ruled North Korea for a half century despite incredible economic failure and deprivation of their people too downtrodden to resist.

The recent events in the Middle East have taught us a new and bitter lesson: Even mass popular uprisings are not enough to topple an unconstrained dictator. We had hoped that popular uprisings would eventually topple the Iranian mullahs, Syria’s Assad, and Kim Il Sung. The Libyan experience proves that they can survive almost an entire nation rising up against them. They do so by killing as many people as necessary and by placing a high price on any form of resistance.

Popular uprisings are, however, sufficient to topple constrained dictators, as Mubarak’s experience in Egypt shows. Earlier the constrained Shah fell to a popular uprising and even the East German dictatorship was unwilling to use force against demonstrators in Leipzig.

The few cases of overthrow of unconstrained dictator take the form of internal coups and invasions. The Romanian dictator Ceausescu was shot dead by his inner circle after being booed by a crowd. Beria, Stalin’s head of state security, was executed by his Kremlin colleagues, when he tried to succeed the deceased Stalin. Hitler committed suicide before Soviet troops reached his bunker.

What signal does past and current history send to constrained dictators? What message does it send to Chavez in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, Hamas in Lebanon, or Assad in Syria? The message is that only the most vicious and brutal dictators survive. There is no payoff from restraint. “Reforms” will do them no good and are to the contrary quite dangerous. They will heed Machiavelli’s advice that the “prince must learn to be less good..

A Libyan civil war will likely follow the pattern of the Russian civil war. In this civil war, there were almost a half million executions, as the Red Army and the Cheka carried out Lenin’s Red Terror. The White forces were divided and more timid (except the Cossacks, who matched the Reds in brutality). The interventionist forces used only half measures and pulled out with their tales between their legs. Tribal enmity will likely keep a Libyan war going for a while but the outcome is not in question.

If history shows that palace coups are the most likely way to topple an unconstrained dictator, should US policy aim at promoting an insider conspiracy among Gaddafi's lieutenants? I am sure that Gaddafi has organized his state security to prevent just that. The odds of an outsider successfully organizing a palace coup are about zero. Even if a palace coup worked, the result would likely be a new leader slightly less bad than Gaddafi.

Kaddafi and His Ilk Are Not Crazy: Are Dictators Predictable?

As Kaddafi machine guns demonstrators, we are told these are acts of an insane man. We must be careful what we say or do because the criminally insane are erratic and unpredictable. Using such logic, the U.S. was among the last to call for his ouster. Examples of insanity are his public rants, the ordering of the bombing of Pan Am 103 (for which he thought he would never be caught), the ludicrous philosophizing in his Green book, the pitching of his tent in New Jersey, and his refusal to ride elevators. Other dictators are pictured in the same way: Iran’s ruling mullahs are religious fanatics; Stalin was a psychotic paranoid.

Insanity is the easiest explanation of dictatorial atrocities for Western minds to fathom. That “criminally insane” dictators follow a common pattern, transcending time and place, argues however that they share a common goal and use the same instruments and practices to achieve it. Just as we can explain business behavior through the profit motive, so can we understand and even predict dictatorial behavior by analyzing how they generate and use political power. If their actions consistently promote the paramount goal of power, their actions are completely “rational,” no matter how morally repugnant or obscene. Rational behavior can be analyzed; insane behavior cannot.

None of these dictators was offered power on a silver platter. They “had to earn it” as a famous brokerage house commercial used to say. Kaddafi gained power as a young military officer by skillfully outmaneuvering rivals and manipulating one tribe against another. Iran’s ruling mullahs won a fierce and bloody power struggle in which a large number of the ruling elite were assassinated. Stalin was the victor in one of the bloodiest succession struggles in history against better know and seemingly superior rivals. Kaddafi, Iran’s ruling mullahs, and Stalin won because they were better at accumulating and using power than their rivals. These were not accidental victories. They held on to power by skillfully playing one rival against the other and using ideology, propaganda, patronage, and religion to their advantage.

There is a growing theoretical literature that provides systematic insights into the behavior of dictators. It assumes, quite unobjectionably, that dictators aim to accumulate sufficient political power to hold on to power. They “produce” power by combining loyalty and repression (the carrot and the stick). They keep the secret police or army in check by appointing relatives or incriminated associates as its head and by removing intermediate links between operatives and the dictator. Some results are non-intuitive, such as the greater stability of dictatorships (due to the incumbent’s immense advantages) and the fact that a rational dictator will kill innocent people (a practice often used as proof of insanity).

Democratic rulers must offer platforms that please the median voter, thus the scramble to the middle in elections. Dictators can offer their platform and then “eliminate” (by jail, execution, disenfranchisement, or exile) those who disagree with it.

Public demonstrations reflect general disaffection with the dictator’s “platform.” The dictator can respond by “reforms” that move his platform closer to the public’s, by ramping up repression, or by a combination of the two. In general, public demonstrations threaten to weaken the dictator’s power below the threshold necessary to stay in power. The dictator must do something to prevent this from happening.

The response of “constrained” (Mubarak) and “unconstrained” (Iran and Kaddafi) rulers has been strikingly different in the Middle East. The former have unsuccessfully used limited repression, concessions and material rewards in a vain effort to boost their political power. The morally-unconstrained have used as much repression as necessary while offering targeted material incentives (such as increased army pay and according to recent reports handing out cash). This strategy will likely work in Iran but fail in Libya.

For unconstrained dictators such as Kaddafi, there are eventually diminishing returns to repression. At some point, more and more segments of the population understand that they themselves are at risk and withdraw their loyalty. As the loyalty of the neutral or even loyal population collapses, the regime falls below the threshold necessary to stay in power and the dictator is overthrown. This is Kaddafi’s likely impending fate.

Notes: Research conducted in the Hoover Institution Soviet State and Party Archives over the past decade has aimed at applying the theory of dictatorship to the Stalin period. For those interested in our results, see: Paul Gregory, Terror by Quota (Yale –Hoover, 2009), Paul Gregory and Norman Naimark (eds.), The Lost Politburo Transcripts (Yale-Hoover, 2008), Paul Gregory and Valery Lazarev eds., The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (Hoover, 2003); and Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev, Funding Loyalty (Yale-Hoover, forthcoming). The theory of dictatorship has been developed, among others, by Ronald Wintrobe, Bruce Bueno de la Mesquita, James Robinson and Daron Ademoglu.

Stalin-Putin Justice: The Bukharin-Khodorkovsky Cases

Dec, 12: Vladimir Putin's reply when asked on a national TV call in show about the upcoming Khodorkovsyky verdict: "Thieves should remain in jail."


When the history of Russian justice is written fifty years from now, two landmark court cases will stand out: The death sentence of Nikolai Bukharin in his Moscow show trial of March 1938 and the second prison sentence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky expected December 27, 2010. Both processes teach the same object lesson: anyone who crosses the Kremlin will be punished without mercy. There will be no protection in the courts for the innocent, and the guilty verdict and sentence will be already predetermined behind the Kremlin walls. It also does not matter how preposterous or ludicrous the charges.

Vladimir Putin was born in 1952, only one year before Stalin’s death. But Stalin’s system of justice was institutionalized and survived Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet Union, for use by apt pupils such as Putin. We have intimate knowledge of Stalin’s use of the courts from his many telegrams ordering arrests and trials and dictating the sentence, such as his 1937 authorization to try a group of bakers in open court “with participation of prosecutor and defense, sentence all to death, and publish results in the press.” We lack such records for the Putin regime. We doubt that its sentences are dictated in writing. A safer approach is “telephone justice” whereby the judge is given the sentence by phone.

The weak link in Stalin-Putin justice occurs when the court proceeding is open and the defendant realizes the verdict is set in stone and there is nothing to lose. Nikolai Bukharin was Stalin’s last standing political rival when he was brought before the court accused of murder, assassination plots (including Stalin’s) and espionage for Germany in March of 1938. He had been worked over since his arrest in February. His “confession” was read before the court. In Stalin’s time, death sentences were carried out immediately; Bukharin understood that he had little to lose if he retracted his confession in his final statement. Here is part of what he said in his final statement before Stalin personally censored it for publication in the trial transcripts:

I declare myself politically responsible for the totality of crimes committed by the “Rightist-Trotskyite bloc.” I accept responsibility even for those crimes about which I did not know or about which I did not have the slightest idea. I deny most of all the prosecutor’s charge of belonging to the group, sitting on the court bench with me, because such a group never existed, and it is clear that such a non-existent group cannot be, contrary to the prosecutors’ conclusion, created by the orders of foreign intelligence.

Bukharin’s retraction of his confession sent the judge and prosecutor into a frenzy. They knew that failure could put them in the dock along with Bukharin. They quickly moved to silence him.

Khodorkovsky today stands accused of the ludicrous charge of stealing virtually all of the oil produced by his Yukos oil company. Brave expert witnesses have testified that such a crime was impossible, but Khodorkovsky, like Bukharin, faces an inevitable guilty verdict on December 27. At least he does not face shooting as did Bukharin. Like Bukharin, Khodorkovsky used his “final statement to the court” to tell the audience, including the foreign press, that his conviction has been ordered by the Kremlin and what it means for the justice system. I attach (with some deletions) his eloquent final statement to the court:

I can recall October 2003. My last day as a free man. Several weeks after my arrest, I was informed that president Putin had decided: I was going to have to “slurp gruel” for 8 years. It was hard to believe that back then. Seven years have gone by already since that day. Seven years – quite a long stretch of time, and all the more so – when you’ve spent it in jail. All of us have had time to reassess and rethink many things. Judging by the prosecutors’ presentation: “give them 14 years” and “spit on previous court decisions”, over these years they have begun to fear me more, and to respect the law – even less.

Nobody is seriously waiting for an admission of guilt from me. It is hardly likely that somebody today would believe me if I were to say that I really did steal all the oil produced by my company. But neither does anybody believe that an acquittal in the YUKOS case is possible in a Moscow court.

I remember the end of the last decade and the beginning of the current one. By then I was 35. We were building the best oil company in Russia. We were putting up sports complexes and cultural centers, laying roads, and resurveying and developing dozens of new fields. In short, – we were doing all those things that Rosneft, which has taken possession of Yukos, is so proud of today. We felt hope that the period of convulsions and unrest – was behind us at last, and that, in the conditions of stability that had been achieved with great effort and sacrifice, we would be able to peacefully build ourselves a new life, a great country.

With the coming of a new President (and more than two years have already passed since that time), hope appeared once again for many of my fellow citizens too. Hope that Russia would yet become a modern country with a developed civil society. Free from the arbitrary behavior of officials, free from corruption, free from unfairness and lawlessness. It is clear that this can not happen all by itself, or in one day. But to pretend that we are developing, while in actuality, – we are merely standing in one place or sliding backwards, even if it is behind the cloak of noble conservatism, – is no longer possible. Impossible and simply dangerous for the country.

I am ashamed to see how certain persons – in the past, respected by me – are attempting to justify unchecked bureaucratic behavior and lawlessness. They exchange their reputation for a life of ease, privileges and handouts. It makes me proud to know that even after 7 years of persecutions, not a single one of the thousands of YUKOS employees has agreed to become a false witness, to sell their soul and conscience. Dozens of people have personally experienced threats, have been cut off from family, and have been thrown in jail. Some have been tortured. But, even after losing their health and years of their lives, people have still kept the thing they deemed to be most important, – human dignity.

I think all of us understand perfectly well – the significance of this trial extends far beyond the scope of my fate, and even the fates of all those who have guiltlessly suffered in the course of the sweeping massacre of YUKOS, those I found myself unable to protect, but about whom I remember every day.
Let us ask ourselves: what must be going through the head of the entrepreneur, the high-level organizer of production, or simply any ordinary educated, creative person, looking today at this trial and knowing that its result is absolutely predictable?

The obvious conclusion a thinking person can make is chilling in its stark simplicity: the power bureaucracy can do anything. There is no right of private property ownership. A person who collides with “the system” has no rights whatsoever. Even though they are enshrined in the law, rights are not protected by the courts. Because the courts are either also afraid, or are themselves a part of “the system”. Who is going to modernize the economy? Prosecutors? Policemen? Chekists? We already tried such a modernization – it did not work.

A country that tolerates a situation where the power bureaucracy holds tens and even hundreds of thousands of talented entrepreneurs, managers, and ordinary people in jail in its own interests, instead of and together with criminals, – this is a sick country. I will not be exaggerating if I say that millions of eyes throughout all of Russia and throughout the whole world are watching for the outcome of this trial. They are watching with the hope that Russia will after all become a country of freedom and of the law, where the law will be above the bureaucratic official.
Where supporting opposition parties will cease being a cause for reprisals.
Where the special services will protect the people and the law, and not the bureaucracy from the people and the law. Where human rights will no longer depend on the mood of the tsar. Good or evil.

I am not at all an ideal person, but I am – a person with an idea. For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail, and I do not want to die there. But if I have to – I will not hesitate. The things I believe in are worth dying for. I think I have proven this. And you opponents? What do you believe in? That the bosses are always right? Do you believe in money? In the impunity of “the system”?