Putin’s attack on a mining company has given Medvedev a chance to show who’s boss, Russian Gazeta.ru news website said last weekend, looking to see a division emerge in the ruling bureaucracy.
Gazeta.ru is a website owned by pro-Kremlin and Gazprom-linked businessman Usmanov, but still often critical of the Putin-led Stalinist bureaucracy.
The report by the political department of Russian Gazeta.ru titled ‘The signal has been given’ expresses hopes for such a split
The report, published on Tuesday, said: ‘Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev has reacted after many days’ silence to the “raid” by the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, on the Mechel company, after which the Russian stock market experienced a lengthy and profound fall.
‘Apparently talking about something else, Medvedev called on “all types of authorities” not to “give nightmares to business” but together create a “normal investment climate.”
‘This is the first public clash between the views of the successor and the mentor.’
Gazeta.ru noted: ‘This most important statement by the president was made in Gagarin in Smolensk Oblast, where a conference on issues of developing small and medium-sized business took place on Thursday.
‘Apart from representatives of the latter, the heads of business associations and government ministers dealing with economic issues, the siloviki also took part in the conference, also the head of the MVD, Rashid Nurgaliyev, and the prosecutor-general, Yuriy Chayka.
(The siloviki is a group that Putin has surrounded himself with, made up mainly of former KGB and Army officers. The MVD is the Ministry for Securing Public Order – News Line)
‘Talking about plans to eliminate administrative barriers in the work of businessmen, Medvedev said an important thing: “Audits and all kinds of raids on commercial constructions have tormented them.
‘ “It is in general necessary for both our law-enforcement bodies and all types of authorities to stop giving nightmares to business.
‘ “In our country signals have a very important significance,” the president continued.
‘ “Consider this signal to have been given. There is the law on this topic, and we will adopt supplementary documents too.
‘ “But the most important thing is that there should be an understanding of what should not be done.”
‘At the same time Medvedev also touched on the question of the responsibility of business.
‘ “On the other hand, business also needs to behave responsibly, both paying taxes and operating in the normal legislative field, not using monstrous optimisation schemes.
‘ “It is understood that no one likes paying taxes. Everyone tries to find a means of optimising them.
‘ “But the way this is done in our country, when optimisation is achieved by a reduction of tax obligations by four or five times, is also unacceptable.
‘ “We need there to be a normal investment climate in our country, and this is a task for absolutely all present, for representatives of the authorities as a whole and for law-enforcement bodies, and for business,” the president continued.
‘Although Medvedev did not once throughout his speech pronounce the name of the Mechel company, which furthermore cannot be numbered among small and medium-sized enterprises, observers unambiguously agreed that the president had finally responded to the prime minister’s recent attacks on Mechel and its main shareholder, Igor Zyuzin.’
The out and out pro-business faction of the bureaucracy went on to attack the former president, now prime minister.
The Gazeta.ru report continued with its comments: ‘Putin’s attacks on Mechel and Zyuzin first sounded exactly a week ago.
‘The prime minister in a very harsh form pointed out to Zyuzin the impossibility of selling coal raw material abroad at prices lower than internal Russian ones and demanded that the hospitalised businessman quickly recover.
‘Putin’s statement immediately caused panic on the (stock) market. After the shares of Mechel itself, the shares of other metallurgists crashed.
‘On Monday the situation was almost repeated. On the Mechel example, Putin subjected to criticism the practice of reduced export price setting, which decreases the taxable base of these enterprises, and this, in its turn, worsens the lives of ordinary Russians.
‘As a result, according to the assessment of experts, the Russian stock market’s total losses from Putin’s statements were $60 billion (according to the assessment of analysts at the BKS investment company, the Russian Trading System market alone has lost around $13.8 billion in capitalisation over the last week).
‘Experts consider that although the president was sharp, he tried all the same not to enter into a conflict with the prime minister. It is known that a few days ago Medvedev and Putin met in the Kremlin.’
The website went on to quote political academics and commentators who are looking to Medvedev to put Putin in his place.
‘Medvedev’s main aim is to reassure the markets. He considered it necessary to defuse the situation and call for nerves to be spared. This is an appeal to all sides of the conflict,’ says political scientist Dmitriy Badovskiy.
Gazeta.ru commented: ‘This is the first public clash between the views of the former and current presidents.’
‘The moment has come when the divergence in values between Putin’s group and Medvedev’s group has clearly manifested itself,’ says Dmitriy Oreshkin, director of the Merkator research group.
The website claimed: ‘Experts inside the country and abroad had counted on and even demanded from Medvedev some sort of reaction to Putin’s actions against Mechel, recalling the story of YUKOS.’
Former Russian Federation government deputy prime minister, Boris Nemtsov, one of Yeltsin’s ‘shock therapist’ advocates for the restoration of capitalism, wrote in an article for Gazeta.ru on Tuesday: ‘A unique opportunity to show who is the president and who is the president’s subordinate has presented itself to Medvedev.
‘It is possible to do this not deliberately, by starting to publicly rebuke Putin.
‘It is possible to invite that same Zyuzin and all the metallurgists, have a chat with them, and give a guarantee that there will be no seizing by raiding of metallurgical companies, and that there will be exclusively anti-monopoly methods of influence within the framework of Russian legislation.’
Expressing the simmering tensions within the bureaucracy, as the class struggle sharpens both within and without Russia, Gazeta.ru said: ‘Statistics are already recording at least a small group of Russians who have seen in Medvedev his own political course, different from Putin’s.
‘Thus, 13% of Levada Centre respondents, asked during a poll about the division of powers inside the tandem of the president and the prime minister, declared that Medvedev is changing the political course of the state.
‘The number of Russians considering Medvedev and Putin equal rulers of the country is also gradually growing. In July 47% gave this assessment to the power tandem.
‘Some experts concede that the prime minister and the president may simply be acting out the combination.
‘This is the implementation of the scheme that the royal tandem armed itself with two months ago: the bad and good investigator. Putin started to “give nightmares” to business, and Medvedev then spoke out as a “supranational force to which, like a court of arbitration, business structures, state monopolies, and bodies of state power can appeal”, considers the head of the Centre for Political Information, Aleksey Mukhin.’
The truth of the matter is that the Stalinist bureaucracy is split and divided.
The emergence of Gorbachev and then Yeltsin was not an accident. It was a confirmation of Trotsky’s theory that the Stalinist bureaucracy would be driven to attempt to restore capitalism.
The only solution to this crisis is the organisation of the working class for a political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy, and the new bourgeoisie that it has spawned, and their replacement by rule through workers, peasants and soldiers soviets.
This will be done as part of the world socialist revolution.
