Reading Russia: The Rules of Survival
In an attempt to explain the Russian Revolution to Lady Ottoline Morrell, British philosopher Bertrand Russell once remarked that Bolshevik despotism, appalling though it was, seemed the right sort of government for Russia. “If you ask yourself how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters should be governed, you will understand,” was his not-sosubtle point. In explaining the recent resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia, most political theorists have abstained from referring to Dostoevsky’s novels or Russia’s authoritarian political culture. They have a better explanation. It was not “soul,” it was “oil.” The “oil curse” has replaced the “soul curse” as the most popular explanation for Russia’s current state of affairs. High oil prices have been blamed for democracy’s failure and Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of authoritarian rule. The facts fit. During Putin’s time as president from 2000 to 2008, Russian oil and gas companies earned in excess of US$650 billion more from their exports than they had in the previous eight years under Yeltsin. The breakneck pace of economic growth gave Putin a free hand politically, and he used it without compunction to entrench the power of himself and his circle, unhindered by weak and shallowrooted democratic institutions. Thus Putin’s Russia was conceptualized as a classic “petrostate”— strong and weak at the same time, brutally confident yet potentially vulnerable, and hostile to democracy. This picture of Putin’s Russia as an authoritarian oil state attracts many Western analysts because it seems to carry a promise that falling oil prices will bring regime change. What Russian liberals prayed for was economic crisis and cheap oil. Putin’s regime, they reasoned, may remain unchallenged as long as it can hand out petrodollars and improve the material well-being of the people, but
Rus United
As president, Vladimir Putin has set about the rebuilding of Russia's statehood in an effort to replace the weak, feudalistic state inherited by Boris Yeltsin with a mercantilist state-nation.
The Human Rights Act and Parliamentary Democracy
The Human Rights Act 1998 is the culmination of an aggressive campaign for the incorporation into domestic law of the European Convention on Human Rights, a campaign in which the judges joined forces with other political activists. Variously described as 'brilliant';' 'a masterly exposition of the parliamentary draftsman's art';2 and even 'a thing of intellectual beauty',3 the Act has also been greeted as an 'ingenious compromise' between the 'maximalists' and 'minimalists', the former supporting a judicial power to invalidate legislation, as is the case in Canada.4 But although it is purported to reconcile in 'subtle' form the protection of human rights with the sovereignty of Parliament (a claim even more credible after an important but unsung Commons amendment), the Act also represents an unprecedented transfer of political power from the executive and legislature to the judiciary, and a fundamental re-structuring of our 'political constitution'.s As such it is unquestionably the most significant formal redistribution of political power in this country since 1911,6 and perhaps since 1688 when the Bill of Rights proclaimed loudly that proceedings in Parliament ought not to be questioned or impeached in any court or any other place. In the words of Baroness Williams of Crosby, we have crossed our 'constitutional Rubicon',7 at least to the extent that the courts may now declare a statute incompatible with Convention rights. The enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998 was marked by an unusually high quality of debate, particularly in the House of Lords, with powerful performances by the Lord Chancellor and Lord Lester of Herne Hill. The performance of the latter on one occasion was too much for Lord Campbell of Alloway, unaccustomed it seems to cerebral rather than ceremonial contributions in their Lordships' House. Lord Campbell was heard to protest (in a manner dubbed 'offensive' by Lord Ackner)8 about 'these escoteric lectures on law at this time of night', having 'never heard anything like this after dinner' in the 18 years he had been in the Lords.9 He had better get used to it: the law and the lawyers are about to dominate all the debates, at all times of the day and night, before and after every meal time. Indeed in the Second Reading Debate on this Bill in the House of Lords 'full of