Inside the country, the oligarchs are fighting tooth and nail to fend off the Kremlin's efforts to bolster the so-called power vertical, or executive chain of command. As the oligarchs' real power wanes, their struggle becomes all the more desperate. You can draw an analogy with class warfare, which, as Comrade Stalin taught us, grows ever fiercer as communism draws near. Why are Russia's enemies multiplying? To find the answer to this question, take a look at Dagestan. There is no business in Dagestan apart from the government. Relatives of Dagestani leader Magomedali Magomedov fill all the best positions, and government officials are blown up more frequently than in Chechnya. The mayor of Makhachkala alone has survived 15 assassination attempts, and locals say that all 15 were payback. Dagestan is a multi-ethnic republic where Kumyks, Lezgin and especially the largest ethnic group, the Avars, aren't terribly happy with the favoritism shown by Magomedov to his fellow Dargins. Capitalizing on this situation, the Kremlin summoned the leader of the Avar opposition, the mayor of Khasavyurt, to Moscow last summer and prodded him to hold a protest rally. He complied. Shortly thereafter, Magomedov caught a flight to Moscow and convinced the people who matter that his policies were justified. I'm inclined to think that his arguments were distinctly green in color, though totally unrelated to Islam. The mayor was then summoned once more to Moscow and told to cease and desist. These people aren't just their own worst enemy; they're shooting themselves in the foot. Consider another example. The price of meat is rising, and quotas and bans imposed by the government are partly to blame. Back in September, the price of pork shot up 40 percent because imports from Brazil were banned. On Sept. 13, Brazil registered a case of foot-and-mouth disease in the state of Amazonas. The Agriculture Ministry immediately slapped a ban on Brazilian pork, but import quotas continued to be sold at auction. Someone who knew when the ban would be lifted could clean up. Sure enough, the day before President Vladimir Putin visited South America in November, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev visited Brazil, talks were held and the ban was lifted. It's incorrect to say that Russia is rife with corruption. After all, corruption is when criminal charges are brought against you, you pay someone off and the charges are dropped. Here they bring charges against you, you pay the right people, but a week later the charges are filed again because somebody wants even more. Russia once had laws -- back in the days of Yaroslav the Wise, I believe. Under Yeltsin we had understandings. Now we have neither. What we do have is arbitrary rule. At some point the regime has to explain to people why the price of food is going up, why terrorist attacks are on the rise and why we lost the presidential election in Ukraine. When that time comes, the regime begins to look for enemies. It then emerges that Arab terrorists are to blame for the attacks, and the oligarchs are to blame for rising food prices because they have jacked up the price of gasoline. And Viktor Yushchenko won because he was helped by the CIA. But it seems to me that the CIA, the Arabs and the oligarchs are beside the point. The problem is that the people in the Kremlin are overly fond of the color green though they do not believe in Allah.   Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

 

In the Boris Yeltsin era we lived in a more or less friendly world. Now we seem to be under threat from all sides: Islamist terrorists, international Zionism and U.S. imperialism.