Soros and YUKOS
While Soros’s largest donation of all time to the Democratic Party is not yet receiving undue attention, the arrest of Russia’s richest man and the Yukos losses continues to be a major story. In less than a month, votes for the State Duma will determine the extent of support for President Putin.
Putin’s political party, United Russia, is running only a few points ahead of the Communist Party. Both are trying to shed the image of being fat cat bureaucrats. Of even greater concern to Putin is the large numbers of young people who are now supporting the Communists. Both major blocs could use the votes of the liberal parties that recently rallied in Moscow in support of their own positions and for the freeing of Khodorkovsky who financed both liberal groups.
Prosecutors will have no problems in finding charges against many Russian tycoons involved in the “quick and dirty” privatization programs under Boris Yeltsin in the mid- 1990s. The theory, developed by the Clinton administration, was that once private property was established, the new owners would fight for democracy against a strong Communist challenge.
When Yeltsin won, by very dubious means, oligarchs were given state jobs and enormous powers. At that time, Condoleezza Rice, who is now national security adviser, wrote that the Clintonistas were overlooking the “looting of the country’s assets by powerful people.” Under Putin, the prosecutors have for four years been building their cases and, again in theory, a rule of law may emerge.
Dateline D.C. is written by a Washington-based British journalist and political observer.