Russian Democracy!

A brief insight ........

I have always wanted to talk to a young Russian and find out why there is such unequivocal support for Mr Putin. My opportunity came whilst staying at a beach resort hotel in Indonesia.

We were in the bar enjoying our happy hour drinks overlooking the sea and got into conversation with a 33 year old young Russian business executive and his wife. He was from the north near the White Sea. He looked very English but she was from much further south, a pretty Slavic girl. Quite soon, my wife & Egor's wife left us to our conversation of of politics and democracy.

His English was quite good, having spent two years at Newcastle University. He was a sales manager working for a very large coal company responsible for dealing with eastern Europe and some western companies like EDF. He asked me to be quite frank about my questions so I asked him, “why does he, and so many young Russians support Putin when so many of us in the west fear his motives and his tactics?” I said that I had been to Latvia some years ago and had heard about Mr Putin being an ex KGB colonel and that the Latvians feared him very much.

He dismissed the Latvian view, saying that people in power in Latvia were not democratic and that the country was just being controlled by a few powerful businessmen.

I asked him about what will happen in the future. He clearly accepted that Medvedev was a caretaker president whilst Putin still held the power and that Putin would return to power in four years' time. When I queried the tactics being employed against the opposition parties in Russia he just simply answered that in the presidential elections in the USA 4 years ago that Al Gore got more votes than George Bush, but did not win. I tried to explain that the vote was very close and the Electoral College system could lead to anomalies in such cases. He didn't seem to be prepared to discuss the intimidation of opposition leaders and journalists in Russia and that this was very undemocratic.

I queried him on the apparent control of the press by Mr Putin and he simply answered by saying that the BBC was a mouthpiece for the British government and that Russia didn't get a fair hearing.

We parted good friends but the conversation certainly troubled me. For instance, Egor at one point said that Mr Putin was the best leader that they had had for a hundred years and he was the best leader in the world, by far.

Ho hum! What hope is there for real democracy?

(PS: I have kept his real name confidential)