With the current war in Ukraine we can’t just look at the history of both Ukraine and Crimea without taking a look at Russia as well.
Like Ukraine Russian history also goes back thousands of years, going as back as the Principality of Moscow in 1282. It eventually became known as the Russian Empire, which was ruled by various czars until the Bolsheviks ultimately toppled it in 1917 while switching from czarist rule to communism and renaming the new country as the Soviet Union.
On the surface communism in the Soviet Union seemed like the closest thing to utopia. People would be given affordable housing with free healthcare along with reliable access to food and other goods. I’m willing to bet that it really sounded great on paper.
The reality was quite different. While the USSR initially delivered on providing free healthcare, the system rapidly deteriorated in the 1970s due to reduced funding from the central government and increasing bureaucratic and economic inefficiencies. Shortages of consumer goods were routine and hoarding was very common. Housing in urban areas was in such critical short supply that it was common to see two or more families share the same apartment. People would stand in long lines for hours just to buy basic staple foods like milk and eggs. You also risked being sent to prison if you decided to criticize the government on any issue.
At this point I’d like to mention that if you want to read more about how the hopes for a lovely utopian society could be dashed, I highly recommend George Orwell’s Animal Farm. That book is an allegorical tale serving as Orwell’s critique of both the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. It is about how the farm animals rise up against their oppressive human farmer owner only to have the pigs who led the revolution become just like the abusive oppressive human farmer the animals had driven away.
After the Soviet Union fell in 1991 the nation officially dropped communism as the basis of its economy, government, and society. As a result there was a huge vacuum that was created. Keep in mind that historically Russia has always had authoritarian rule dating back to the days of the czars.
That huge vacuum led to corruption stemming from the huge bureaucracy that was in place in the old Soviet Union was still there once the old USSR gave way to the new Russian Federation was still in place. The bureaucracy was frequently corrupt and frequently practiced nepotism. Basically if you were lucky enough to be born into a family of top communist officials you were still set for life after the transition to the Russian Federation happened. And many of those in the bureaucracy who personally benefitted from that bureaucracy wanted to keep it that way.
Along with the corrupt bureaucracy there were arbitrary trade laws that an average layperson couldn’t understand but the bureaucrat who wrote a certain law could interpret it anyway that he or she wanted. Those arbitrary trade laws had an adverse impact on foreign investment because many multinational companies were leery about setting up a business in a country where the rules and regulations were very fluid and depended on the whims of a certain government official.
It didn’t help that then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin chose the least radical of the reform options by not taking on the bureaucracy. Instead he did something called “shock therapy,” which rapidly unleashed market forces as a way of jolting Russia into embracing capitalism. That sudden jolt led to hyperinflation that grew to the point where a candy bar that once cost the equivalent of US$1 had shot up to US$2,000 and totally devastated ordinary Russians.
In addition there was a sudden mass privatization where companies that were once controlled directly by the state were suddenly transferred into private ownership. Russia issued vouchers to Russian citizens where they could be used to buy shares of former state enterprises. A citizen could sell his or her voucher to someone else. Many of the people who decided to buy up vouchers from ordinary citizens were either high-ranking bureaucrats under the old Soviet Union so they knew their way around the system or someone who was connected to those high-ranking bureaucrats.
The end result is that many of these formerly state-owned enterprises fell into the hands of very few people and it led to the rise of the oligarchs who dominate Russia today.
If you were someone who weren’t lucky enough to be born into a high-ranking elite family nor was able to buy enough vouchers in a formerly state-run economy but still wanted to earn enough money to live very well, there was one alternative: the Russian Mafia.
There were organized crime groups dating as far back as the Russian Empire but this current generation of Russian Mafia rose in the aftermath of the both the collapse of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin’s shock therapy.
The rise of the Russian Mafia also led to frequent shootouts on the streets of various Russian cities, as documented in this 1993 New York Times article.
Boris Yeltsin was ultimately replaced by Vladimir Putin who can best be described this way: If Tony Soprano had been the leader of a country instead of being a mob boss who ran a waste management company in New Jersey as a cover for his criminal activities, he would’ve been just like Vladimir Putin.
Under Vladimir Putin’s rule Russia has entered a new phase in its being dominated by the oligarchy and the Russian Mafia. Instead of street gangsterism with frequent shootouts in public the Russian Mafia moved on to state-approved kleptocracy where high-level political power is abused to enable a network of ruling elites to steal public funds for their own private gain using public institutions. The Kremlin does not control organized crime in Russia nor is it controlled by it. Organized crime has prospered under Putin because it goes with the grain of his system, which is based on corruption. This led to a class of incredibly wealthy elites who frequently go on shopping trips outside of Russia and who have purchased lavish mansions in other countries.
One of the few things that the Russian Mafia has provided to ordinary Russians is free health care, which has placated enough people to not call for a crackdown on organized crime.
Putin rules Russia with an iron fist where he has jailed and even murdered perceived enemies. One notorious example is the 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko, who died after drinking a cup of tea that was spiked with polonium.
Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine there has been an increase in the number of Russian elites who have died under mysterious circumstances. There is even a Wikipedia page devoted to this phenomenon. It all goes to show that even if you are an oligarch who have previously showed devotion to Putin, you can still be killed based on his whims.
In other words, if you want to remain an elite in Russia, you have to show loyalty to Putin but Putin does not feel any obligation to show loyalty back to you.
Given the criminal gangster mindset of Vladimir Putin, it’s easy to see why Ukraine is very leery about entering into any kind of peace talks with Putin that would end the war.
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