
Russia's Crime of the Century - georgecmu
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/20/russia_s_crime_of_the_century
======
fingerprinter
Does anyone really trust Russia? Or China? Or N. Korea? Or most of Africa? Or
any country where the government is sufficiently closed and non-democratic?

Look at how slanted, jaded, corrupt and inept the US gov't has become and we
have much more visibility into those dealings. Not to mention a refresh of
power every so often and bloodless changeovers of power. I can't imagine
living in a place where you actively fear your government...

One thing I always say to myself when I start to really rail on the
US/AU/UK/Can etc is that they are still orders of magnitude better places to
live than Russia, China or other places of the sort.

~~~
ahlatimer
Just because the US/AU/UK/Can are better places to live than Russia, China, N.
Korea, or most of Africa doesn't mean we should allow the stuff Western
governments are pulling to slide. I don't know if the countries that are
orders of magnitude worse than the Western governments were always that way,
but my guess would be that they were, at one point, not so bad, relatively. It
was likely a slow path that led them to decline to the point they have today.
I don't want to see my government go down the same path.

~~~
rtperson
> but my guess would be that they were, at one point, not so bad, relatively.

In the case of Russia, you would be very, very wrong. You'd have to go back to
the Kievan empire of the 13th century to find the last time the place wasn't
an ethical quagmire.

I take your point about holding Western governments to a higher standard -- we
definitely should -- but don't assume all cultures had a similar starting
point. Your average Canadian has never had to deal with the cultural memory of
anything quite so devastating as the Mongol invasion
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27>).

~~~
nopassrecover
"Cultural memory" - is an invasion from around 800 years ago really that
devastating on a daily basis to the people of today?

I'd also beg to differ on your point that Canadians have no ancestry of
invasion - Canadians descend primarily from France and the UK (with a little
German as well), and it would be a tad outrageous to pretend these nations
haven't endured bloody and violent invasions throughout history.

~~~
baguasquirrel
We have Pakistani cab drivers in New York City shuttling Jews around. Don't
you have similar situations in Toronto? That should be evidence enough that we
cannot make claim to the cultural heritage of our ancestor's nations. People
come to the United States and Canada partly to get away from their culture's
biases and heritage.

~~~
lobster_johnson
The US is an outlier, though, New York even more so. More than any city in the
US, NYC can claim to be the epicenter and cradle of the kind of mythical
nation-history-building to which every nation-culture's opportunistic
immigration and subsequent assimilation has contributed to and adopted as
their own.

The very notion of the American dream is codified on New York's main landmark:
"give me your poor huddled masses" etc. The story of America is necessarily
the story of many populations coming together to create something new. The
Irish may have the old country to look back on, for example, but their
original cultural heritage has been superseded by that of America itself.

Russia has no such story; along with its disparate satellites (Ukraine,
Belarus and so on) it has a long history of single peoples mostly staying
still, or emigrating. The idea of a "Russian people" with a common cultural
heritage has been a fairly constant concept for hundreds of years, whereas
"the American people" is a very new one, historically.

------
ra
Remember the first wikileaks cablegate exposes?

 _"Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of
Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound
together to create a "virtual mafia state", according to leaked secret
diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile
rival superpower."_

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-
cables...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-
russia-mafia-kleptocracy)

------
camworld
About 10 years ago I was going to start an adventure travel company in
Krasnoyarsk, but I backed out at the last moment because I was informed that
the local mafia would have extorted me into extinction within a few months
just because I was an American trying to start a business in Siberia. Too bad;
it would have been fun bringing rich Americans into Siberia to spend their
money in a local, depressed economy.

~~~
waterside81
This is the same reason there are next-to-no resorts in southern Italy. The
mob wants a cut, so nobody develops.

~~~
guard-of-terra
However there are a lot of resorts on Sicily. I'm unsure what it tells us.

------
dimakri88
Crimes like this one happen in Russian all the time. The fact, that foreign
businessmen were envolved in this one, makes a big difference. Pretty much
Russia is held in fetters of corruption. There are little things that can be
done in here without bribing a small-time bureaucrat. Mr.Medevedev is feeding
us with useless talk about war on corruption, but if you study his blog
(<http://eng.news.kremlin.ru/>) or the committe for fighting corruption
website (<http://www.com-cor.ru/en>), you won't find a single referance to
some sort of anti-corruption hotline. Many tend to think that problems lie
only in bureaucrats, but I consider that main problem is in Russian people who
are raised over last few centuries to be ignorat of law and their basic
rights. Citizens don't have a slightest clue about what can and should be done
when ran in to any problem. Fighting the raging corruption should be Russian's
greatest and the only concern over next 5-10 years. Justise is only possible
when Mr.Medevedev or sometime Putin are addressed and their Manus Domini
applied. Georgia should be a positive example of how thing could be delt with
a country where 80% of officials are corrupt. It is really dissapointing for
me to read comments like "a terrible influence on this world for the past 200
years. When was the last time anything truly positive came out of that dark,
forgotten corner of the world". I can list some positive things, but I will
probably be considered very subjective by people living outside of Russia. I
hope thing will change, and we won't be thought of as a "threat", but for now,
you are all right, we are a great threat and I am ashamed of it.

~~~
awakeasleep
Could you link to anything about how Georgia dealt with corruption, or point
me towards a good book to read? I've been wondering how countries can 'come
back' from corruption, and I'm getting nowhere.

~~~
dimakri88
Sure, take a look at Georgia's National Anti-Corruption Strategy and Action
Plan ([http://www.u4.no/training/incountry-open/Georgia-
materials/a...](http://www.u4.no/training/incountry-open/Georgia-
materials/anti-corruption-strategy-georgia.pdf)). The document is only about
thirteen pages long, nevertheless, it is very informational. Unfortunatly, I
can't really help you with the books. There're just too many written on the
subject, but perhaps you want to dig a little bit into anti-corruption
policies, that were developed in contries like Sweden and Singapore ( yeah, it
was suprising to learn that Swedes had a huge problem with corruption around
19th century). These countries can be considered pioneers in fighting
corruption.

------
guard-of-terra
My perspective as a someone who was raised and lives in Russia and doesn't
realy remebmer USSR and is of a target demography of news.yc:

I am much less impressed of stories where someone who had a lot of money
killed or harmed rather than of stories where someone "socially unprotected"
killed or harmed.

Reason: That organized crime you all referring to was on the rage in early-
and mid-90s. And they practically killed themself out. If you go to some
cemeteries you would find a _lot_ of expensive monuments to mobsters aged
30-40 yrs. There are much, much less organized crime now (you don't hear about
it even if you know where to listen), partly because some of it legalized,
partly because most of it killed itself. They just could not help it.

Levels of high-profile corruption vary in Russia, but everyone would agree
that real estate is the apex of it. If you got there and got killed, it's like
if you gambled with borrowed money and lost it all and then got your legs
broken. Happens everywhere if one is stupid enough. (rem took the debt-legs
breaking concept from US popular culture).

So while for someone with US/European background this story reads like the
crime of the century, Russians would instead focus more on issues which can
hurt ordinary people more likely (hint: list of issies which can realistically
hurt you in Russia if you're an ordinary person does not include mafia, not at
all).

~~~
Confusion

      (hint: list of issies which can realistically hurt you in
      Russia if you're an ordinary person does not include 
      mafia, not at all)
    

Hint: this kind of behavior affects ordinary Russians very directly, in two
ways.

1) Foreign companies are not investing in Russia because of this behavior.
Billions of dollars and euros could be flowing into Russia, but aren't. Such
investments would reduce unemployment significantly and a normal share of the
money could reach the ordinary Russian.

2) Every ruble extorted from a rich Russian or foreigner by the mafia cannot
trickle down to poor Russians. Corruption cannibalizes an economy. Poor or
unemployed? The corrupt government officials and their henchmen mafia are
directly to blame.

~~~
guard-of-terra
It sure does affect ordinary Russians, but it's hardly a "crime of century".
Real estate involved crime and corruption is old news here. Nothing
particularly interesting or new. The event in question several years old.

I'll try to mirror it: Let's assume we would find an article about how Russian
girl came to USA, was dragged into prostitution, drugged, abused and
eventually killed. This is a terrible story, but you would hardly name it
"Crime of the Century". While it's basically the same thing: come to foreign
country, do unsafe things, get murdered.

It's sad that real estate development in Russia is corruption-ridden violent
disaster, but this fact is neither very new nor very important to average
Russian. Probably not even in top 10. There just _are_ more urgent matters.

~~~
michaelf
> ... this fact is neither very new nor very important to average Russian.
> Probably not even in top 10. There just are more urgent matters.

Out of curiosity, what are some of the top issues (of governance) that are
important to the average Russian?

~~~
guard-of-terra
Keep in mind it's hard to separate imaginary threats from real threats. The
list is unordered and I try to gather points from different demographics, and
of course I'm biased.

\- Alchoholism and the sorry state of health. There are too many people in
Russia who seem to drink too much. Which kills them slowly, but also increases
crime, decreases health and life expectancy and certainly isn't benefical
economically. Male life expectancy is comparable to poorer African nations.

\- Degrating infrastructure - most of out infrastructure (houses, roads, power
grid, but also schools, hospitals) is inherited from USSR, and it got no love
during 90-s. Presently it is unclear whether it is improving or still
degrating - of course some things are getting done, but some other things
break as well. There are fears that (any) health care or education reforms
detoriate their subjects.

\- Some smaller towns and most of countryside aren't viable economically, some
people leave, most people basically rot there.

\- The combination of declining core population (low birth rate, bad health)
and influx of immigrants from Russian Caucasus and asian CIS countries surely
create some tension.

\- Political system is stuck. It's debatable how bad it is, but it's certainly
non-transparent and not too efficient.

\- Culture and education tank. TV is awful, radio is absolutely horrible.
Soviet high level of cultural involvement mostly vanished, people don't care
about anything. Some okayish films got produced from time to time, there
surely are some bright spots, in bigger cities you can find any leisure you
can possibly imagine, but the average cultural level stinks bad. The church
seems to like the idea of derailing education and promoting obscurantism, and
government just does not care.

The list goes on and on, seriously.

------
njl
This is the sort of case that should be Amnesty International's bread and
butter. They were an amazing organization throughout the 70s and 80s,
insisting that repressive regimes treat dissidents as humans, with dignity.

I think they lost their way after the end of the cold war. I didn't find any
mention of Magnitsky on their website. It's rather depressing.

~~~
alecco
Amnesty International was credited (among other big NGO) of Bradley Manning
moved to a more humane facility with better conditions. They are very active
on many other cases not picked up by mainstream media. They don't discriminate
by color of skin or location.

~~~
ajays
I'm sorry, but you're giving AI too much credit.

There was only 1 reason why Bradley Manning was moved: 2012 election. Obama
knows that as long as Manning was being tortured, this would be a sore
sticking point with his core Democrat supporters. And I speak as one of them,
someone who put in a lot of time and money into getting him elected in 2008.

~~~
brown9-2
I'm not sure I follow this logic - why stick him in solitary confinement or
keep him there for so long if this is the reason why he was moved? Not like
elections in 2012 are news to anyone.

~~~
ajays
Here's how I see it: Manning gets thrown in torture chamber, and Obama doesn't
give a shit. Despite the outcry from top sources[1] , he doesn't care. Then he
announces his candidacy, and as he finally starts talking to his core
supporters (for the $$$), he finds out that people are really bothered by the
Manning case. So he quickly orders the Pentagon to stop torturing him.

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-
manning-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-manning-
legal-scholars-letter) (latest in a long line)

------
sili
Since this story is starting to make an international splash, my prediction is
that there will be another, very public, investigation and trial (ordered by
"the very top"). Putin or Medvedev will give a speech about importance of
fighting corruption. They will convict some front men as scape goats and the
real puppet masters will get a slap on the wrist.

~~~
sliverstorm
I've never known Russian government to bother even doing THAT.

~~~
sili
They do such things occasionally when they can extract good domestic PR out of
it.

~~~
rhizome
Kind of like bankers in the US.

------
hugh3
Well if this is Russia's crime of the century, then that's at least
significant improvement. Russia's crime of _last_ century wound up killing
more like twenty million people, instead of only one.

The 19th century wasn't so great either.

------
kore
Based on monetary losses alone, the Yukos incident of some years back
overshadows this by orders of magnitude, with claims that $98 billion was lost
in the liquidation of company assets according to:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos>

The CEO, once the richest person in Russia, is now rotting in prison - many
believing this was due to his public complaints of corruption and his funding
of opposition parties.

~~~
GFischer
Have you read Roman Abramovich's biography? He stole close to that amount,
too.

He started out selling stolen gasoline, then, after a stint in the black
market, he eventually stole a train containing 55 cisterns of diesel fuel !! ,
ended up as friends of the mafia-government, which sold him Gazprom for only
100 million dollars (it is worth billions).

According to Wikipedia, Abramovich later admitted in court that he paid huge
bribes (in billions) to government officials and obtained protection from
gangsters to acquire these and other assets

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Abramovich>

------
sovande
During the Stalin area, the intelligentsia and people with university
education were basically killed off. What happens to a country when you remove
most of the educated and intelligent people from the gene pool?

~~~
varjag
Education is not an inheritable trait.

If anything, the cultural effect of the purges was the most devastating.

~~~
sovande
> Education is not an inheritable trait.

I used the conjunction "educated and intelligent". Intelligent people tend to
gravitate towards education, formal or informal. IQ tests show that university
students score on average 120-130 compared to 100 in the general population.
Removing educated people from the common gen-pool in a closed society may have
an interesting collective effect.

------
awakeasleep
I really don't know how to conceptualize such audacious malfeasance. How do
societies heal wounds like this?

~~~
sili
They come to accept this as a norm. Citizens become jaded and stick to the
rote path that would not make them stand out from the norm. This is a large
problem for Russia's economy.

Putin and Medvedev have been repeating over and over how innovation is
important for Russia's future (I'm not certain how much they believe that
actually); and more ironically how innovation is in Russia's blood and has
defined its whole history. But I don't see many people willing to innovate.
It's not even a problem of stifling bureaucracy, or corrupt officials, or some
mafia extortions. Simply, majority of people are not willing to think outside
the box, or to put any effort to bring their ideas to mass market.

~~~
ibagrak
My wife's radio show on this topic exactly:
[http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/38318922/48746461.htm...](http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/38318922/48746461.html)
(shameful plug). Your points are all valid, but there is more to the "culture
of innovation" in Russia than meets the eye.

------
alecco
It freaks me out the largest mob in the world has the 2nd largest nuke stash
ready to fire. They are out of control:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko)

~~~
gloob
Your first sentence has been true for the better part of a century, now. And -
while the American government is undoubtedly less corrupt and more liberal
than the Russian one - I don't really see the odds of America using nukes
being significantly lower than the odds of Russia using them.

(Also: I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by "out of control" - plenty of
countries engage in extrajudicial killings: Russia, obviously, but also
Israel, Syria, America...)

~~~
alecco
That was a blatant assassination with very expensive (30M) and easily
traceable radioactive material. It was a clear message to dissidents and
western governments.

The assassins even took a British Airways flight to leave a radioactive trail
behind. And the material was identified to come from a specific nuclear plant
in Russia.

I've never heard of anything like this before.

~~~
abcd_f
> I've never heard of anything like this before.

Some reading material for you then :) -

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Assassination>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_umbrella>

~~~
alecco
That's interesting and James Bond novel worthy. But I mean the message and the
ruthlessness of showing off by government agencies.

------
callmeed
_"What I never expected was that the Russian mafia would merge with the
government; its members are now the same officials who are supposed to be
protecting the public."_

Really? I have friends in Russian and Ukraine and from the limited stories I
hear, this seems not too surprising to me.

When corruption and bribery becomes a cultural norm, it takes a long time (or
never) to go away.

------
MrVitaliy
Same ol' Russia. Not much surprise here.

Video report by Hermitage CEO who can no longer visit Russia
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW0AnZLSCcg>

~~~
mtw
hmm for those who do not speak russian [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6ljV-
WfRw&feature=chann...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6ljV-
WfRw&feature=channel_video_title) same video in english

------
strlen
As somebody born in former USSR, this is why Russia will _never_ have a
Silicon Valley. I refuse to ever consider living in (even temporarily),
visiting or doing business either in Russia or with a Russian company in the
United States (how do I know they won't come after my relatives?). When I got
to the United States, I realized that I'd rather sweep the streets in the
United States than be wealthy in Russia.

Rule of law (vs. rule by decree), freedom are deeply engrained in American and
ersatz-British (UK, but also Canada, Australia, Ireland, etc...) ethos. A
pupil on a school yard, when confronted by a teacher screams "it's a free
country, you can't make me". People feel entitled (I am using it in a
dictionary definition, in the positive sense of the word) to freedom, to human
rights.

This isn't the same way in Russia: elders would frequently tell me "the place
for people who want freedom is in jail". Philosophy was taught in an entirely
different way in university: my parents were surprised when I told them that
Plato and Hegel (who taught that real freedom is the right to submit to an
absolutist state) were considered fascist by my (American) professors. Their
anti-democratic (in the greater sense of the word, which encompasses not just
elections but also concepts of minority rights, free speech and the like),
anti-freedom theories were taught as being more "advanced" than philosophies
of Locke and Kant.

To be fair, there are many abhorrent and brutal ideas in the American ethos as
well, but they're token compared to the Russian/Soviet ethos: compare for
example, Russian behaviour in Chechnya with US behaviour in Iraq or Israeli
behaviour in Palestine. As another example, it's shameful that United States
is even publicly debating torture, but in Russia torture isn't an abstract
debate about "ticking time-bombs": it's something that you _expect_ to happen
to you if you're arrested. I remember a neighbour recounting how, when he was
found publicly drunk, the police patrol put him on the trunk of the car and
struck his liver and kidneys with a truncheon to teach him a "lesson".

United States, Canada and England are blessed, historically. Russia had been
occupied by Mongols, ruled by tyrannical czars (who styled themselves after
Mongol Khans and Byzantine Emperors), ruled by the worst tyrant known to man
(with an intercession of Nazi Germany rule, during which heavy racist
propaganda was further imprinted into the popular ethos). You can't expect
this backdrop to produce an environment in which the next Google will be built
(there's a reason Sergey Brin didn't stay in Russia to build it!).

~~~
SergeyHack
> (there's a reason Sergey Brin didn't stay in Russia to build it!). "Brin
> immigrated to the United States from Russia at the age of six."
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin>

------
NSMeta
_When I opened my law firm, Firestone Duncan, in Moscow in 1993, I was aware
of the dangers of doing business in Russia. The stories about "mafia" groups
of tracksuited thugs extorting businesses were well known to me. What I never
expected was that the Russian mafia would merge with the government; its
members are now the same officials who are supposed to be protecting the
public._

As far as I know, in 90s mafia had the strongest influence on government's
decisions in Russia. Then again, it might have really became _the_ government.
I'm too young to remember and moved from the Soviet Union some time ago.

------
captain_mars
A similar case:

Defiance, or: How to Succeed in Business While Being Targeted by the FBI, the
KGB, the Department of Homeland Security, the INS and the Mafia Hit Men

<http://defiancethebook.com/>

------
AlbertoE
230 million and a couple of murders is chump change. US wastes that much money
and lives for no reason every day in piece of shit countries.

------
dalenkruse
If you want to read more about this kind of thing happening in Russia, I
recommend the book "Putin's Labyrinth" by Steve Levine.

------
known
You call it corruption. They call it lobbying.

------
elvirs
for those of you who speaks russian here is a short documentary about the
issue <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8SmQ6dxlyM>

------
eurohacker
dont see why political hitpieces should be on hacker news sites,

considering that U.S. itself is currently torturing the Wikileaks
whistleblower Bradley Manning in prison who exposed the fraud and war crimes
of U.S. at the much greater international scale

so that Germany is protesting the inhumane prison conditions of Manning

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42571392/ns/world_news-europe/>

leave politics aside would be a good idea ..

~~~
kurokikaze
This "hitpiece" can be of interest to those who doing / wants to do business
in Russia. This is a story about business climate in country, not only about
one person's death.

