20072006

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (III)

Sri Ramakrishna had long wanted to visit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. The title Vidyasagar, meaning "Ocean of Learning", was given him in recognition of his vast erudition. He was known as a great scholar, educator, writer, and philanthropist. His generosity made his name a household word with his countrymen, most of his income being given in charity to widows, orphans, indigent students, and other needy people. Nor was his compassion limited to human beings: he stopped drinking milk for years so that the calves should not be deprived of it, and he would not drive in a carriage for fear of causing discomfort to the horses. He was a man of indomitable spirit, which he showed when he gave up the lucrative position of principal of the Sanskrit College of Calcutta because of a disagreement with the authorities. His whole life was one of utter simplicity. Vidyasagar was very reticent about giving religious instruction to others. He had studied Hindu philosophy. Once, when M. had asked him his opinion of it, Vidyasagar had said, "I think the philosophers have failed to explain what was in their minds." But in his daily life he followed all the rituals of Hindu religion and wore the sacred thread of a brahmin. About God he had once declared: "It is indeed impossible to know Him. What, then, should be our duty? It seems to me that we should live in such a way that, if others followed our example, this very earth would be heaven. Everyone should try to do good to the world."

Visit to Vidyasagar

"Ah! Today, at last, I have come to the ocean. Up till now I have seen only canals, marshes, or a river at the most. But today I am face to face with the sagar, the ocean."
VIDYASAGAR (smiling): "Then please take home some salt water."
MASTER: "Oh, no! Why salt water? You aren't the ocean of ignorance. You are the ocean of vidya, knowledge. You are the ocean of condensed milk."
"Your activities are inspired by sattva. Though they are rajasic, they are influenced by sattva. Compassion springs from sattva. Though work for the good of others belongs to rajas, yet this rajas has sattva for its basis and is not harmful. Suka and other sages cherished compassion in their minds to give people religious instruction, to teach them about God. You are distributing food and learning. That is good too. If these activities are done in a selfless spirit they lead to God. But most people work for fame or to acquire merit. Their activities are not selfless. Besides, you are already a siddha." (Literally, "perfect" or "boiled"; the word is applied both to the perfected soul and to boiled things.)
Sri Ramakrishna's conversation now turned to the Knowledge of Brahman.MASTER: "Brahman is beyond vidya and avidya, knowledge and ignorance. It is beyond maya, the illusion of duality.

"The world consists of the illusory duality of knowledge and ignorance. It contains knowledge and devotion, and also attachment to 'woman and gold; righteousness and unrighteousness; good and evil. But Brahman is unattached to these. Good and evil apply to the jiva, the individual soul, as do righteousness and unrighteousness; but Brahman is not at all affected by them.

"One man may read the Bhagavata by the light of a lamp, and another may commit a forgery by that very light; but the lamp is unaffected. The sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous.
"You may ask, 'How, then, can one explain misery and sin and unhappiness?' The answer is that these apply only to the jiva. Brahman is unaffected by them. There is poison in a snake; but though others may die if bitten by it, the snake itself is not affected by the poison.
"What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is."
"Men often think they have understood Brahman fully. Once an ant went to a hill of sugar. One grain filled its stomach. Taking another grain in its mouth it started homeward. On its way it thought, 'Next time I shall carry home the whole hill.' That is the way shallow minds think. They don't know that Brahman is beyond one's words and thought. However great a man may be, how much can he know of Brahman? Sukadeva and sages like him may have been big ants; but even they could carry at the utmost eight or ten grains of sugar!
"As for what has been said in the Vedas and the Puranas, do you know what it is like? Suppose a man has seen the ocean, and somebody asks him, 'Well, what is the ocean like?' The first man opens his mouth as wide as he can and says: 'What a sight! What tremendous waves and sounds!' The description of Brahman in the sacred books is like that. It is said in the Vedas that Brahman is of the nature of Bliss — It is Satchidananda.
"Suka and other sages stood on the shore of this Ocean of Brahman and saw and touched the water. According to one school of thought they never plunged into it. Those who do, cannot come back to the world again.
"In samadhi one attains the Knowledge of Brahman — one realizes Brahman In that state reasoning stops altogether, and man becomes mute. He has no power to describe the nature of Brahman.
"Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. It wanted to tell others how deep the water was. But this it could never do, for no sooner did it get into the water than it melted. Now who was there to report the ocean's depth?"
A DEVOTEE: "Suppose a man has obtained the Knowledge of Brahman in samadhi. Doesn't he speak any more?"
MASTER: After the vision of Brahman a man becomes silent. He reasons about It as long as he has not realized It. If you heat butter in a pan on the stove, it makes a sizzling sound as long as the water it contains has not dried up. But when no trace of water is left the clarified butter makes no sound. If you put an uncooked cake of flour in that butter it sizzles again. But after the cake is cooked all sound stops. Just so, a man established in samadhi comes down to the relative plane of consciousness in order to teach others, and then he talks about God.
"The bee buzzes as long as it is not sitting on a flower. It becomes silent when it begins to sip the honey. But sometimes, intoxicated with the honey, it buzzes again...man, being totally dependent on food for life, cannot altogether shake off the idea that he is the body. In this state of mind it is not proper for him to say, 'I am He.' When a man does all sorts of worldly things, he should not say, 'I am Brahman.' Those who cannot give up attachment to worldly things, and who find no means to shake off the feeling of 'I', should rather cherish the idea, 'I am God's servant; I am His devotee.' One can also realize God by following the path of devotion.
"The jnani gives up his identification with worldly things, discriminating, 'Not this, not this'. Only then can he realize Brahman. It is like reaching the roof of a house by leaving the steps behind, one by one. But the vijnani, who is more intimately acquainted with Brahman, realizes something more. He realizes that the steps are made of the same materials as the roof: bricks, lime, and brick-dust. That which is realized intuitively as Brahman, through the eliminating process of 'Not this, not this', is then found to have become the universe and all its living beinga, The vijnani sees that the Reality which is nirguna, without attributes, is also saguna, with attributes.
"A man cannot live on the roof a long time. He comes down again. Those who realize Brahman in samadhi come down also and find that it is Brahman that has become the universe and its living beings. In the musical scale there are the notes sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, and ni; but one cannot keep one's voice on 'ni' a long time. The ego does not vanish altogether. The man coming down from samadhi perceives that it is Brahman that has become the ego, the universe, and all living beings. This is known as vijnana.
"The path of knowledge leads to Truth, as does the path that combines knowledge and love. The path of love, too, leads to this goal. The way of love is as true as the way of knowledge. All paths ultimately lead to the same Truth. But as long as God keeps the feeling of ego in us, it is easier to follow the path of love.
"The vijnani sees that Brahman is immovable and actionless, like Mount Sumeru. This universe consists of the three gunas — sattva, rajas, and tamas. They are in Brahman. But Brahman is unattached.
"The vijnani further sees that what is Brahman is the Bhagavan, the Personal God. He who is beyond the three gunas is the Bhagavan, with His six supernatural powers. Living beings, the universe, mind, intelligence, love, renunciation, knowledge — all these are the manifestations of His power. If an aristocrat has neither house nor property, or if he has been forced to sell them, one doesn't call him an aristocrat any more. God is endowed with the six supernatural powers. If He were not, who would obey Him?
"Just see how picturesque this universe is! How many things there are! The sun, moon, and stars; and how many varieties of living beings! — big and small, good and bad, strong and weak — some endowed with more power, some with less."
VIDYASAGAR: "Has He endowed some with more power and others with less?"
MASTER: "As the All-pervading Spirit He exists in all beings, even in the ant. But the manifestations of His Power are different in different beings; otherwise, how can one person put ten to flight, while another can't face even one? And why do all people respect you? Have you grown a pair of horns? You have more compassion and learning. Therefore people honour you and come to pay you their respects. Don't you agree with me?"
Vidyasagar smiled.
The Master continued: "There is nothing in mere scholarship. The object of study is to find means of knowing God and realizing Him. A holy man had a book. When asked what it contained, he opened it and showed that on all the pages were written the words 'Om Rama', and nothing else.
"What is the significance of the Gita? It is what you find by repeating the word ten times. It is then reversed into 'tagi', which means a person who has renounced everything for God. And the lesson of the Gita is: 'O man, renounce everything and seek God alone.' Whether a man is a monk or a householder, he has to shake off all attachment from his mind.
"Why does a vijnani keep an attitude of love toward God? The answer is that 'I-consciousness' persists. It disappears in the state of samadhi, no doubt, but it comes back. In the case of ordinary people the 'I' never disappears. You may cut down the aswattha tree, but the next day sprouts shoot up. "Even after the attainment of Knowledge this 'I-consciousness' comes up, nobody knows from where. You dream of a tiger. Then you awake; but your heart keeps on palpitating! All our suffering is due to this 'I'. The cow cries, 'Hamba!', which means 'I'. That is why it suffers so much. It is yoked to the plough and made to work in rain and sun. Then it may be killed by the butcher. From its hide shoes are made, and also drums, which are mercilessly beaten. Still it does not escape suffering. At last strings are made out of its entrails tor the bows used in carding cotton. Then it no longer says, 'Hamba! Hamba!', 'I! I!', but Tuhu! Tuhu!', Thou! Thou!' Only then are its troubles over. O Lord, I am the servant; Thou art the Master. I am the child; Thou art the Mother.
"Once Rama asked Hanuman, 'How do you look on Me?' And Hanuman replied: 'O Rama, as long as I have the feeling of "I", I see that Thou art the whole and I am a part; Thou art the Master and I am Thy servant. But when, O Rama, I have the knowledge of Truth, then I realize that Thou art I, and I am Thou.'
"Man cannot really help the world. God alone does that — He who has created the sun and the moon, who has put love for their children in parents' hearts, endowed noble souls with compassion, and holy men and devotees with divine love. The man who works for others, without any selfish motive, really does good to himself.

(from "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna", originally recorded in Bengali by M., a disciple of the Master, and translated by Swani Nikhilananda, New York 1942)

(31/12/2006)

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (I)

It was on a Sunday in spring, a few days after Sri Ramakrishna's birthday, that M. met him the first time... Seeing M., the Master said: "So you have come. That's good. Sit down here." He was smiling. He stammered a little when he spoke...

Master and Disciple (M.)

..."And you are a man of knowledge!" M. had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time his conception had been that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false conception. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, ignorance. When Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, "And you are a man of knowledge!", M.'s ego was again badly shocked.
MASTER: "Well, do you believe in God with form or without form?"M., rather surprised, said to himself: "How can one believe in God without form when one believes in God with form? And if one believes in God without form, how can one believe that God has a form? Can these two contradictory ideas be true at the same time? Can a white liquid like milk be black?"
M: "Sir, I like to think of God as formless."
MASTER: "Very good. It is enough to have faith in either aspect. You believe in God without form; that is quite all right. But never for a moment think that this alone is true and all else false. Remember that God with form is just as true as God without form. But hold fast to your own conviction."
The assertion that both are equally true amazed M.; he had never learnt this from his books. Thus his ego received a third blow; but since it was not yet completely crushed, he came forward to argue with the Master a little more.
M: "Sir, suppose one believes in God with form. Certainly He is not the clay image!"
MASTER (interrupting): "But why clay? It is an image of Spirit."
M. could not quite understand the significance of this "image of Spirit".
"But, sir," he said to the Master, "one should explain to those who worship the clay image that it is not God, and that, while worshiping it, they should have God in view and not the clay image. One should not worship clay."
MASTER (sharply): "That's the one hobby of you Calcutta people-giving lectures and bringing others to the light! Nobody ever stops to consider how to get the light himself. Who are you to teach others?
"He who is the Lord of the Universe will teach everyone. He alone teaches us, who has created this universe; who has made the sun and moon, men and beasts, and all other beings; who has provided means for their sustenance; who has given children parents and endowed them with love to bring them up. The Lord has done so many things - will He not show people the way to worship Him? If they need teaching, then He will be the Teacher. He is our Inner Guide.
"Suppose there is an error in worshiping the clay image; doesn't God know that through it He alone is being invoked? He will be pleased with that very worship. Why should you get a headache over it? You had better try for knowledge and devotion yourself."
This time M. felt that his ego was completely crushed. He now said to himself: "Yes, he has spoken the truth. What need is there for me to teach others? Have I known God? Do I really love Him? 'I haven't room enough for myself in my bed, and I am inviting my friend to share it with me!' I know nothing about God, yet I am trying to teach others. What a shame! How foolish I am! This is not mathematics or history or literature, that one can teach it to others. No, this is the deep mystery of God. What he says appeals to me."
This was M.'s first argument with the Master, and happily his last.
MASTER: "You were talking of worshiping the clay image. Even if the image is made of clay, there is need for that sort of worship. God Himself has provided different forms of worship. He who is the Lord of the Universe has arranged all these forms to suit different men in different stages of knowledge.
"The mother cooks different dishes to suit the stomachs of her different children. Suppose she has five children. If there is a fish to cook, she prepares various dishes from it - pilau, pickled fish, fried fish, and so on - to suit their different tastes and powers of digestion.
"Do you understand me?"
M. (humbly): "Yes, sir. How, sir, may we fix our minds on God?"
MASTER: "Repeat God's name and sing His glories, and keep holy company; and now and then visit God's devotees and holy men. The mind cannot dwell on God if it is immersed day and night in worldliness, in worldly duties and responsibilities; it is most necessary to go into solitude now and then and think of God. To fix the mind on God is very difficult, in the beginning, unless one practices meditation in solitude. When a tree is young it should be fenced all around; otherwise it may be destroyed by cattle.
"To meditate, you should withdraw within yourself or retire to a secluded corner or to the forest. And you should always discriminate between the Real and the unreal. God alone is real, the Eternal Substance; all else is unreal, that is, impermanent. By discriminating thus, one should shake off impermanent objects from the mind."
M. (humbly): "How ought we to live in the world?"
MASTER: "Do all your duties, but keep your mind on God. Live with all with wife and children, father and mother, and serve them. Treat them as if they were very dear to you, but know in your heart of hearts that they do not belong to you.
"A maidservant in the house of a rich man performs all the household duties, but her thoughts are fixed on her own home in her native village. She brings up her master's children as if they were her own. She even speaks of them as 'my Rama' or 'my Hari'. But in her own mind she knows very well that they do not belong to her at all.
"The tortoise moves about in the water. But can you guess where her thoughts are? There on the bank, where her eggs are lying. Do all your duties in the world, but keep your mind on God.
"If you enter the world without first cultivating love for God, you will be entangled more and more. You will be overwhelmed with its danger, its grief, its sorrows. And the more you think of worldly things, the more you will be attached to them.
"First rub your hands with oil and then break open the jack-fruit; otherwise they will be smeared with its sticky milk. First secure the oil of divine love, and then set your hands to the duties of the world.
"But one must go into solitude to attain this divine love. To get butter from milk you must let it set into curd in a secluded spot: if it is too much disturbed, milk won't turn into curd. Next, you must put aside all other duties, sit in a quiet spot, and churn the curd. Only then do you get butter.
"Further, by meditating on God in solitude the mind acquires knowledge, dispassion, and devotion. But the very same mind goes downward if it dwells in the world. In the world there is only one thought: 'woman and gold'. 2
"The world is water and the mind - milk. If you pour milk into water they become one; you cannot find the pure milk any more. But turn the milk into curd and churn it into butter. Then, when that butter is placed in water, it will float. So, practise spiritual discipline in solitude and obtain the butter of knowledge and love. Even if you keep that butter in the water of the world the two will not mix. The butter will float.
"Together with this, you must practice discrimination. 'Woman and gold' is impermanent. God is the only Eternal Substance. What does a man get with money? Food, clothes, and a dwelling-place-nothing more. You cannot realize God with its help. Therefore money can never be the goal of life. That is the process of discrimination. Do you understand?"...discrimination about objects. Consider - what is there in money or in a beautiful body? Discriminate and you will find that even the body of a beautiful woman consists of bones, flesh, fat, and other disagreeable things. Why should a man give up God and direct his attention to such things? Why should a man forget God for their sake?"
M: "Is it possible to see God?"
MASTER: "Yes, certainly. Living in solitude now and then, repeating God's name and singing His glories, and discriminating between the Real and the unreal - these are the means to employ to see Him."
M: "Under what conditions does one see God?"
MASTER: "Cry to the Lord with an intensely yearning heart and you will inly see Him. People shed a whole jug of tears for wife and children. They swim in tears for money. But who weeps for God? Cry to Him with real cry."
Continuing, he said: "Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.
"God reveals Himself to a devotee who feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the child's attraction for its mother, and the husband's attraction for the chaste wife. If one feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions, then through it one can attain Him .
"The point is, to love God even as the mother loves her child, the chaste wife her husband, and the worldly man his wealth. Add together these three forces of love, these three powers of attraction, and give it all to God. Then you will certainly see Him.
"It is necessary to pray to Him with a longing heart. The kitten knows only how to call its mother, crying, 'Mew, mew!' It remains satisfied wherever its mother puts it. And the mother cat puts the kitten sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes on the floor, and sometimes on the bed. When it suffers it cries only, 'Mew, mew!' That's all it knows. But as soon as the mother hears this cry, wherever she may be, she comes to the kitten."...

2 The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favorite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan' , or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
Sri Ramakrishna never taught his disciples to hate any woman, or womankind in general. This can be seen clearly by going through all his teachings under this head and judging them collectively. The Master looked on all women as so many images of the Divine Mother of the Universe. He paid the highest homage to womankind by accepting a woman as his guide while practicing the very profound spiritual disciplines of Tantra. His wife, known and revered as the Holy Mother, was his constant companion and first disciple. At the end of his spiritual practice he literally worshiped his wife as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Divine Mother. After his passing away the Holy Mother became the spiritual guide not only of a large number of householders, but also of many monastic members of the Ramakrishna Order.

(from "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna", originally recorded in Bengali by M., a disciple of the Master, and translated by Swani Nikhilananda, New York 1942)

(30/12/2006)

Чтение России (V)

Михаил Соколов: «Стальные всходы»

Уходящий 2006-й явил миру некую завершенность того, что при Владимире Путине вызревало в российской державе.

Год стартовал газовой войной с Украиной, а закончился тяжбой «энергетической империи» с Белоруссией – на развалинах СНГ и Союзного государства.

Год назад «Газпром» (подозрительно дорого) прикупил у Романа Абрамовича обналиченную «Сибнефть», а завершает сезон недружественным приобретением у иностранных инвесторов не без помощи шантажа и потому с явным дисконтом контрольного пакета акций проекта «Сахалин-2».

Год назад Грузии только грозили, а сегодня имеретинцы и мингрелы стали первыми среди гонимых «понаехавших здесь» инородцев. В начале года за ролик о привнесенных с Кавказа «арбузных корках» у Дмитрия Рогозина отбирали «Родину», а после погрома, когда слово «Кондопога» стало нарицательным, сам президент Путин к восторгу плебеев заговорил на языке националистов: о «коренном народе».

В январе Россия увидела свою армию, где бойцу – жертве дедов – ампутируют ноги вместе с гениталиями, а в декабре узрела еще и нечто под названием парламент, где трусы даже шепотом не желают упрекнуть Путина за море детских слез Беслана.

В начале прошлого года арестованный к думским выборам 2003 года Михаил Ходорковский уже мотал срок в колонии, а предвыборный 2007-й, после банкротства «ЮКОСа» и перед его распилом, он встретит как подследственный – уже по новому делу.

Как мудро заметил начальник Чукотки: «от тюрьмы, да от сумы не зарекайся». Хочется добавить: и от пули в затылок, и от полония-210 – тоже. Анна Политковская или Александр Литвиненко, недавно еще режим обличавшие, больше правды нам не скажут…

Учение о суверенной демократии тем вот и сильно, что верно, и отнюдь не медленно, овладевает массами.

Народ у экранов грезит величьем восставшей в газовом мареве России и ненавидит назначенных ее врагами. Телезритель уверен, что олигархи – все те же: Абрамович, Березовский, Чубайс. Не видит новых хозяев жизни – из госкомпаний, из личных друзей президента. Обыватель верит, что сам Путин-царь, а не нефтедоллар, поднял жалованья и пенсии, и учится, наконец, покупать.

Учение Суркова, как и теория сверхчеловека или «Красная книжка Мао», освобождает и элиту нефтегазовой державы от безнадежно устаревших для новой путинской аристократии западнических принципов. Кремлевский психотерапевт объяснил: «Винтовка (а ныне вентиль) – рождает власть», так что за газ Запад «полюбит вас и черненькими». Буржуазный либерализм отменен, остается буржуазное потребление. И летят за борт с парохода русской современности: выборность и сменяемость, подотчетность и прозрачность. Зато остается «наше все»: дебет, кредит, бюджет, распил, откат….

…Когда умер Великий Сердар Сапармурат Туркменбаши, подумалось: вот умер диктатор, который забыл о том, что Бог есть, но Он-то человеку Ниязову об этом напомнил.

(первоначально статья опубликована на сайте "Радио Свобода")

(30/12/2006)

Пятница

Revisits the night Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. With an incredible ensemble cast portraying fictionalized characters from a cross-section of America, the film follows 22 individuals who are all at the hotel for different purposes but share the common thread of anticipating Kennedy’s arrival at the primary election night party

Bobby' the Movie Doesn't Show Bobby the Man: Andrew Ferguson
By Andrew Ferguson

The historian Todd Gitlin once wrote that with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, "a promise of redemption not only passed out of American politics, it passed out of ourselves.''

If only!

Gitlin's overcooked sentiment perfectly expresses what another historian, Ronald Steel, calls "The Bobby Myth,'' the gauzy lens through which many -- too many -- Americans view President John F. Kennedy's brother who served as attorney general, New York senator, and, in the epochal year 1968, a pied- piper presidential candidate.

The new movie "Bobby'', directed by Emilio Estevez, proves that the dream will never die, just as Kennedy worshippers have always warned. Yet anyone who surveys Kennedy's career can't help but wonder why.

In fairness to the makers of "Bobby,'' the movie doesn't claim to be an assessment of Kennedy's life. Kennedy himself is seen only fleetingly in fuzzy old film clips.

Instead "Bobby'' tells the story of June 4, 1968, by tracing the humdrum doings of a couple of dozen people at Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel, where Kennedy's campaign was celebrating its victory in the California presidential primary and where, after a triumphant speech, Kennedy was shot.

The truncation makes it easier for the moviemakers to feed off the myth since it passes over the unseemly facts that might subvert Kennedy's status as an icon for progressives, as liberals call themselves these days.

Not a Liberal

He was, for starters, never much of a liberal. His first public job, in the early 1950s, was as assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had already established himself as the country's premier anti-Communist and red-baiter.

When Kennedy, fresh from law school, failed to land a job as McCarthy's chief counsel, he happily took a lesser position on the same committee, so he could continue to serve the cause.

His respect for McCarthy was so abiding he asked the senator to be the godfather of his first child. Even after McCarthy's disgrace, Kennedy declined to criticize his old boss's strong-arm investigative tactics, some of which he later used himself as a Senate counsel charged with exposing corruption in labor unions.

Bobby's early career earned him a reputation for hard work, single-mindedness and unblinking ruthlessness. These qualities made him indispensable to his brother John, especially when John won the presidency. The two made an irresistible good-cop, bad- cop tag team.

"Whereas Jack tried to exert dominance through charm and seduction,'' Steel wrote, "Bobby did it through hostility and aggressiveness.''

He's No Ashcroft

What better qualifications for an attorney general? Yet watching audiences choke back tears during "Bobby,'' you might marvel that so many progressives are horrified by John Ashcroft.

All Ashcroft tried to do was toughen up the Patriot Act. As attorney general, Kennedy set himself bigger tasks.

He struggled to contain the damage from his brother's uncontrollable sexual athleticism, including an affair with the mistress of a Mafia don and another with a possible East German spy. He approved the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr., and oversaw the government's attempts to "eliminate'' Fidel Castro.

"The Kennedy brothers,'' Lyndon Johnson once said, "were running a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.''

Biographers agree that in his last years Bobby Kennedy developed a sensitivity to poverty and race that he earlier lacked. Yet even here his liberalism is pretty sketchy.

Conservative Values

In 1966, by now a senator from New York, Kennedy talked several friendly businessmen into funding a pilot anti-poverty program in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of New York.

The program drew much more from the conservative ideals of private enterprise and individual initiative than from the big- government liberalism of his rival Johnson. California Governor Ronald Reagan, for one, was delighted with Kennedy's approach. "He's talking more and more like me,'' Reagan said approvingly.

Kennedy called for "doing away as much as possible with the welfare system, the handouts and getting people jobs by giving the private sector tax incentives.''

That quote comes from a debate, held a few days before the California primary, with Senator Eugene McCarthy, one of Kennedy's rivals for the Democratic nomination (and no relation to Joe).

McCarthy was a genial man in his later years, but at the mention of Bobby's name he would grimace and say only, "an awful man.''

Last Debate

Part of the reason for McCarthy's distaste was that last debate. When the moderator asked about poverty and race, McCarthy said that the black ghettos should be broken up by dispersing subsidized housing around the country, beyond the inner cities.

Kennedy, on camera, looked horrified, and with his eye trained on the then-all-white suburbs of Los Angeles, he said: "We have 10 million Negroes who are in the ghettos at the present time. . . You say you are going to take 10,000 black people and move them into Orange County. It is just going to be catastrophic.''

McCarthy never quite recovered. Kennedy's distortion made his opponent look like a despoiler of white suburbia, a sentimentalist at best and a radical at worst.

But it worked. This bit of ruthless race-baiting -- "political thuggery,'' as the otherwise worshipful reporter Jules Witcover called it -- frightened enough white suburbanites into voting for Kennedy to hand him the California primary and to send him, in triumphant good humor, into the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel on the evening of June 4, 1968.

(Andrew Ferguson is a Bloomberg News columnist. In 1992, he wrote speeches for President George H.W. Bush. The opinions expressed are his own.)

(29/12/2006)

OSHO: Your morality is not real

OSHO: God is not a Solution - but a Problem

OSHO: Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy.

India: Colourful People of Rajasthan

Magic People, Voodoo People

Does God know You?

Obey Your Fortune

Pain for the Richest Guys in the (Living) Room
by Michael Lewis

Once again the rich have gotten richer in America and everyone else is bitching and moaning about it.

Or so says a recent Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, which set out to examine American opinion of the growing gap between the rich and everyone else.

"The wages of middle class workers are stagnant,'' according to the article on the poll (yawn!) before it allowed a few middle-class Americans, chosen seemingly at random, to complain that the wages of the rich aren't equally stagnant. "We are creating have and have-not classes in this country,'' said Jane Huntley, a 77-year-old elementary school teacher from Brunswick, New York, for example.

Coming on the heels of news that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to dish out $16.5 billion for employee pay -- or roughly 625 grand for every Goldman man, woman and child -- the poll put a fine point on a problem that, at the start of each holiday season, arises vaguely in the Wall Street mind: how to keep the middle class as far away from your bonus money as possible. How, in particular, to defend yourself and your money from the jealous and angry faction within the middle class that, come the holidays, is especially difficult to avoid: your extended family.

Holiday Rules

Herewith, a few handy rules:

Rule #1: Acknowledge that your family has become a distraction. Now that you have made some real money you can see your siblings, cousins, and in-laws in a clearer light. They seem somehow...poorer. Less relevant. Ill-designed for the modern American economy. For instance, their time is so cheap that they can apparently afford to spend it complaining to pollsters about your money.

Armed with this understanding -- that the "issue'' isn't that you have so much, but that they have so much less -- you can move rapidly beyond the guilt you might otherwise feel, and attack a more serious problem: the hope in the hearts of all those related to you by blood or marriage that you intend to share your incredible new wealth with them.

Rule #2: Intend no such thing. Middle-class family members, like Third World countries, need to learn to produce goods and services, and trade honestly with their richer neighbors. The gift-giving season offers the perfect opportunity to send this bracing message.

Resist the urge to impress family members with your purchasing power and instead give them only what they can afford to give you. Avoid luxury goods, for example, or other items redolent of leisure. Choose, instead, gifts that encourage productive labor. Hand tools, say, or cookbooks. Obviously your gift needs to say, "I love you,'' but it also needs to say, "The income gap within the family isn't going to be shrinking from my end.'' Which brings us to?

Embrace the Resentment

Rule #3: Don't fear your family's resentment. Work with it. Get used to it. After all, as the gap between rich and poor widens, your brief encounter with your extended family during the holiday season is just good practice for dealing with future American life. Anyone who is seriously rich, and wants to remain seriously rich, needs to learn how to manage the resentment of the less capable.

Here's your opportunity to acquire these new skills (for free!), in a controlled environment, with middle-class people you know. To make it fun for you, and to fool yourself into believing it's not a huge waste of your incredibly valuable time, pretend that you are a diplomat on a critical mission -- say, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in Mexico, to complain about the sorry state of the peso.

A Sad Truth

Your assignment is to prevent the natives' feelings of resentment from becoming outright hatred. The sad truth about a rich man in a democracy is that he remains vulnerable.

Say your hedge fund goes bust, or some client files a grievance against your firm. Judges and juries alike want to believe they are "objective,'' but the truth is they are horribly biased against the centimillionaire defendant unable to persuade at least a few family members to show up at his trial.

And no one wants to pick up the Wall Street Journal to find, right under the dot portrait rendition of his college yearbook photo, a money quote from his sister. For example: "He swapped the name tags on the presents under the Christmas tree when he was 10, so I don't see why everyone's so surprised he rigged the Treasury bond market.''

To limit this kind of risk, try your best to seem ordinary, like them. This will not be easy.

These people who claim to be your relatives bear the same relationship to you as the early stages of a rocket bear to the capsule. Your bonus just vaulted you into the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans in the only national ranking that matters. You are now looking down not only at the bottom half of America but the bottom half of the top 1 percent of Americans.

Your Disguise

If you try to persuade them with words how little you have been affected by your new ranking, words will fail you. Actions are better.

The key point here is to disguise both your wealth and your (superior) view of the world. This doesn't mean you have to arrive at your aunt's modest home by public transport. It just means that when deciding which new car to drive you should pick the one so expensive that she's never heard of it -- take the Maybach and leave the Porsche.

Once inside, participate politely in conversations but don't encourage them. Feign helpfulness. Ask where the recycling bin is, for instance, or pretend to set the table.

Just as Paulson might pick up a bit of Spanish to persuade the locals he has made an effort, you can learn a bit of "middle class.''

An egalitarian-sounding opinion or two will surprise and delight the most resentful pinkos in your extended family. "I think it's outrageous that the one woman in M&A was given a $3 million bonus when every single guy in the unit got at least $5 million,'' for instance. Or: "Che Guevara would have made a hell of a forex trader.'' Just so it doesn't sound too strained.

None of this is easy. Allowing your natural subordinates these false victories -- indeed, allowing them even to be with you -- will pain you. Just take some solace in the fact that no matter how badly you feel, at least you aren't one of them.

(Michael Lewis, the author, most recently, of The Blind Side, is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The views he expresses are his own.)

(27/12/2006)

Чтение России (IV)

Система для наследника

В 2006 году путинская доктрина власти окончательно оформилась

Уходящий год окончательно оформил траекторию правления Владимира Путина. Прежние колебания уступили место четким тенденциям, которые будет трудно изменить и в следующем политическом цикле. Оформилась логика Системы, которую президент должен сдать "под ключ" своему преемнику.

Проблема самовоспроизводства
Прошедший год политический бомонд провел в обсуждениях вопроса о преемнике. На самом деле гораздо важнее вопрос, сумеет ли Путин предотвратить фрагментацию правящей команды. Сохранить мир среди этого сословия почти невозможно, когда оно вовлечено в битву за ресурсы, а его представители по-разному понимают сценарий-2008. Отставка Владимира Устинова показала, что планы президента не совпадают с амбициями силового клана. Не совпадают задачи Путина и элиты в целом: президент должен затягивать с "родами" наследника как можно дольше, чтобы сохранить позицию демиурга, а элите нужна ясность как можно раньше, и в своем нетерпении она может допустить фальстарт.
Самовоспроизводство власти зависит и от того, сумеет ли Кремль предложить формулу нового лидерства, которая бы отвечала запросу общества. В 1999 году общество дало себя убедить, что ему нужен Стабилизатор. В 2006 году мы видим эксперименты по созданию сразу нескольких конкурирующих запросов – на новую стабильность, на социально ориентированное лидерство и на мобилизацию для борьбы с врагом. Само общество готово поддержать лидера, который стал бы Чистильщиком – начал борьбу с коррупцией. Но такая формула лидерства может оказаться опасной для власти. Это, впрочем, не означает, что она не оформится стихийно.
В любом случае кремлевская команда не должна забывать, что ее ожидает диалектическая развязка: новый лидер может консолидировать свою власть, лишь отрицая предыдущий этап, как это сделал сам Путин. И пока не понятно, кто попадет под поезд отрицания. Но кто бы ни пришел к власти, он будет вынужден решать, что делать с путинским наследством – стабильностью, достигнутой за счет откладывания неприятных решений.

Диалектика насилия
Кремлевская команда проявила изобретательность в создании почти безупречной системы самозащиты с помощью избирательного законодательства, административного ресурса, репрессивных механизмов и взращивания искусственных клонов, которые создают впечатление сохранения свободы и плюрализма. Но "клоноводы" не осознают, что, ликвидируя либеральную альтернативу, они оставляют вакуум, который заполнят более опасные для власти силы, что всесилие власти рождает бессилие, лишая ее информации о происходящем вокруг. И что чем жестче зачистка политической сцены, тем вероятнее появление неожиданных форм самоорганизации общества.
Этот год обогатил нас новым символом – "Кондопога" – и новым политическим понятием – "коренное население". Борьба с мигрантами и первая в новой России этническая чистка – пока только грузин – показала, что наготове механизм мобилизации общества против врага, на роль которого может быть избран любой этнос, страна или политическая сила. При необходимости этот механизм может стать и средством защиты власти, и трамплином к власти. Группировки, начавшие эксперименты с русским национализмом, ввязались в опасную игру. Ибо нет гарантий, что создатели Франкенштейна могут с ним совладать.
Волна заказных убийств 2006 года демонстрирует, что в ситуации, когда суды лишены независимости, правоохранительные органы находятся вне гражданского и политического контроля, а демонстрация силы стала основным средством политики, неизбежно возникновение атмосферы, которая толкает к простым решениям. Но не забудем, что перед логикой простых решений все равны, в том числе и те, кто находится в кругу власти.

Утопия энергетических рантье
В течение года власть, включая и правительственных либералов, убеждала население в успехах российской экономики. На самом деле, оформившийся бюрократический капитализм является разрушительной моделью. Бюрократический капитализм основан на слиянии власти и бизнеса (его выражением является бюрократ-олигарх, одновременно заседающий в президентской администрации и руководстве компании) и отсутствии легитимности частной собственности.
Год одарил нас изобретением концепции "энергетической сверхдержавы". Сама идея вызывает немало вопросов: как можно претендовать на роль "энергетической сверхдержавы", если 75% известных месторождений нефти и газа в России уже в производстве, 60% производственных фондов "Газпрома" устарели, а месторождения выработаны более чем на 60%, если добыча газа стагнирует и к 2015 году его дефицит в стране достигнет 46,6 млрд кубометров?
Развивая эту идею, Владимир Путин предложил Западу в уходящем году концепцию нового миропорядка: Россия допускает западный бизнес к своим недрам, а Запад допускает российские компании в свои экономики, и это партнерство строится на основе долгосрочных контрактов. Но эта инициатива была выдвинута после того, как Кремль продемонстрировал силу энергетического оружия в конфликте с Украиной. Вместо того чтобы доказать, что "Газпром" является добросовестным поставщиком энергии, мы заставили европейцев начать поиски альтернативных источников.

Пояс враждебности
В этом году у России были проблемы с четырьмя соседями – Украиной, Грузией, Белоруссией и Молдавией. При всех отличиях отношений Москвы с этими странами их итоговый вектор один и тот же. Можно лишь поддержать стремление российской власти перевести отношения с соседями на коммерческую основу и отказаться оплачивать их сомнительную лояльность. Но сделав этот шаг, Москва почему-то продолжала считать, что они должны хранить ей верность.
Неспособность нашей элиты просчитать последствия своих шагов ведет к тому, что наши соседи идут на ситуативные компромиссы с Москвой, одновременно активизируя поиск новых полюсов притяжения, а их общественное мнение консолидируется на антироссийской основе. Выворачивание рук, которое использует Москва для захвата их стратегических активов, только ускоряет этот процесс. И не стоит удивляться, когда мы увидим, как Минск (с Лукашенко или без) разогревает белорусский национализм и разворачивается на Запад. Нужно понимать и то, что антигрузинская кампания заставляет другие государства оглядываться вокруг в поисках защиты от возможного кремлевского гнева.

Что в итоге?
Отказ от диверсификации экономики, поиск врага, этнический национализм, создание административно-репрессивной машины в целях самовоспроизводства власти, ухудшение отношений с Западом – таковы координаты России в цивилизационном пространстве. Возможно, с планами правящей команды сохранить стабильность, выжить за счет газа, остаться в Кремле, заморозить общество в состоянии полудремы произойдет то, что и с предыдущими ее устремлениями. Но в таком случае возникает важный для нас всех вопрос: кто в 2008 году воспользуется государственной конструкцией, заточенной для "железной руки"?

Лилия Шевцова, Московский центр Карнеги
(статья опубликована в газете "Коммерсант" от 27 декабря 2006г.)

(27/12/2006)

Среда

VII. Глава об Архатах

90

У совершившего странствие, у беспечального, у свободного во всех отношениях, у сбросившего все узы нет лихорадки страсти.

91

Мудрые удаляются; дома для них нет наслаждения. Как лебеди, оставившие свой пруд, покидают они свои жилища.

92

Они не делают запасов, у них правильный взгляд на пищу, их удел - освобождение, лишенное желаний и необусловленное. Их путь, как у птиц в небе, труден для понимания.

93

У него уничтожены желанья, и он не привязан к пище; его удел - освобождение, свободное от деланий и условий. Его стезя, как у птиц в небе, трудна для понимания.

94

Чувства у него спокойны, как кони, обузданные возницей. Он отказался от гордости и лишен желаний. Такому даже боги завидуют.

95

Подобный земле, он не знает смятения; такой добродетельный подобен столпу Индры; он как пруд без грязи. У такого нет сансар.

96

У него спокойная мысль, и слово спокойно и деяние. У такого спокойного и освобожденного - совершенное знание.

97

Человек, который не верует и знает несозданное, разорвал привязанности, положил конец счастью, отказался от желаний, - поистине благороднейший человек.

98

В деревне или в лесу, в долине или на холме, - где бы ни жили Архаты, любая земля там приятна.

99

Приятны леса. Где не радуются прочие люди, возрадуются лишенные страсти, ибо они не ищут чувственных удовольствий.

Дхаммапада

(27/12/2006)

Воскресение

Петр Вайль: «Илья Авербух как национальная идея»

Продолжавшееся почти четыре месяца на глазах миллионов телевизионное шоу «Звезды на льду» закончилось в середине декабря, но подлинный его эпилог правильным постановочным образом состоялся несколько позже – катанием суперзвезд на Красной площади. Где же еще?

Национальная идея, о необходимости которой так долго говорили, которую больше десяти лет назад велели отыскать, но всё как-то не получалось – найдена.
Сказано без всякой натяжки и иронии. Национальной идей может стать что угодно – сегодня одно, завтра другое – вокруг чего добровольно, бескорыстно и воодушевленно способен сплотиться народ.

Действительно, не вокруг же цены за баррель, которая, во-первых, непонятно что, а в-главных, непонятно где? Не вокруг же воинской доблести, с прославлением которой в сто пятидесятый раз объявляется окончание Чеченской бесконечной войны? Не вокруг же выручавшего прежде космоса, далекого и холодного, как всегда, а теперь еще и международного? Есть нелюбовь к инородцам, но такая идея не нравится начальству: с ней неловко соваться в цивилизацию. Одно время была надежда на «Спартак», но он и внутренний чемпионат в последний раз выигрывал пять лет назад.

Спорт все же и выручает в итоге. Правда, сразу неясно было, что это спорт. Купленное по лицензии у англичан, что ли, телевизионное шоу «Звезды на льду» поначалу и воспринималось как представление, которое так славно смотреть расслабленно с дивана. Но участие выдающихся спортсменов, спортивный азарт любимых артистов, серьезная игра в настоящее жюри с присутствием популярных лиц, толково рассчитанные ходы организаторов, а самое главное, насущная потребность не только прихлопывать и подпрыгивать, но при этом еще и радостно гордиться – всё это сделало танцы фигуристов фактором национального самосознания.

Невинное субботнее развлечение ненавязчиво, но уверенно превратилось не просто в состязание, а в выигранное соревнование, убедительную победу. Над кем? Над собой.

Один из призеров, по-актерски изображая простачка, пролепетал в кадре, что хорошо бы, мол, стоя на пьедестале, услышать российский гимн. Да он, по сути, и был сыгран, этот гимн – коль скоро все стоявшие на пьедестале были одеты в красные костюмы с надписью «Россия». Словно, и в самом деле, кого-то иного надо было побеждать, с кем-то бороться. Понятно, с кем бороться, кого побеждать – ту же Россию, только не такую работящую, умелую, дисциплинированную, целеустремленную, красивую, нарядную, торжествующую.

А когда бессменная пара ведущих обнималась с участниками шоу, стало явственно и наглядно, что собралась империя. Та самая, которой давно нет, несмотря на безнадежные припарки СНГ. А тут слились в триумфе украинец, еврейка, татарин, литовка, грузин, русские...

Национальная идея творилась в течение почти четырех месяцев на глазах миллионов. Есть у нее и персонификация – продюсер и тренер, балетмейстер и хореограф, режиссер всенародного праздника, человек с тонким лицом интеллектуального киногероя и нетитульным именем Илья Авербух.

Вне конкуренции – российский Человек года.

Радио Свобода. Колонка обозревателя

(24/12/2006)

Среда

VI. Глава о мудрых

76

Если кто увидит мудреца, указывающего недостатки и упрекающего за них, пусть он следует за таким мудрецом, как за указывающим сокровище. Лучше, а не хуже будет тому, кто следует за таким.

77

Пусть он советует, поучает и удерживает от зла. Он ведь приятен доброму и непротивен злому.

78

Пусть никто не соединяется с плохими друзьями, пусть никто не соединяется с низкими людьми. Привяжитесь к хорошим друзьям, привяжитесь к благородным людям.

79

Вкушающий дхамму живет счастливо; с чистым умом, мудрец всегда восхищается дхаммой, возвещенной Благородством.

80

Строители каналов пускают воду, лучники подчиняют себе стрелу, плотники подчиняют себе дерево, мудрецы смиряют самих себя.

81

Как крепкая скала не может быть сдвинута ветром, та мудрецы непоколебимы среди хулений и похвал.

82

Услышав дхаммы, мудрецы становятся чистыми, как пруд, глубокий, чистый и незамутненный.

83

Добродетельные продолжают свой путь при любых условиях. Благие, даже томясь желанием, не болтают. Тронутые счастьем или же горем, мудрецы не позволяют ни того, ни другого.

84

Ни ради самого себя, ни ради другого не возжелает он ни сына, ни богатства, ни царства. На незаконной стезе не возжелает он себе успеха. Да будет он благороден, мудр и справедлив.

85

Немногие среди людей достигают противоположного берега. Остальные же люди только суетятся на здешнем берегу.

86

Те же люди, которые, действительно, следуют дхамме, когда дхамма хорошо возвещена, достигнут противоположного берега, минуя царство смерти, хотя его и трудно избежать.

87-88

Покинув темную дхамму, пусть мудрец пестует светлую. Уйдя из дома в бездомность, в одиночестве, казалось бы малоподходящем для радости, пусть ищет он удовольствия. Отказавшись от желаний, избавившись от собственности, пусть мудрец очистит от скверны свой ум.

89

Те, чей ум должным образом опирается на начала просветления, отказавшийся от привязанностей, радующийся освобождению, с уничтоженными желаниями, полные блеска, они в этом мире достигли Нирваны.

Дхаммапада

(20/12/2006)

Вторник

Why am I doing what I’m doing?
by Stefan Stern

Eugene O’Kelly was at the top of his game. The 53-year-old chairman and chief executive of KPMG in the US was working hard, supporting a happy family, maintaining a busy social life and making plans for a long, well-earned retirement.

Last May he went for a check-up with a neurologist to investigate a slight facial droop, which he presumed was caused by Bell’s palsy or some other stress-related complaint. A scan revealed he was suffering from terminal brain cancer and had only three months to live.

As Mr O’Kelly explains in Chasing Daylight*, his account, published posthumously, of his final weeks of life, he looked on this news as a kind of blessing. He would have 100 days to make a good death: to say goodbye to colleagues, friends and family, and to plan a future for his wife and children. Like the accountant he was, Mr O’Kelly wanted to close the book on his life and leave his affairs in good order.

The diagnosis also got him thinking about his career and what it had truly meant. “Before my illness, I had considered commitment king among virtues,” he writes. “After I was diagnosed, I came to consider consciousness king among virtues.”

This was no death-bed conversion to sloppy sentimentalism. Mr O’Kelly now believed, like Socrates, that “the unconsidered life is not worth living”. And he felt sorry for colleagues and peers who had not had the chance to reflect more seriously on their lives.

“I lamented that they had not been blessed as I had, with this jolt to life,” he writes. “They had no real motivation or clear timeline to stop what they were so busy at, to step back, to ask what exactly they were doing with their life. Many of them had money; many of them had more money than they needed. Why was it so scary to ask themselves one simple question: why am I doing what I’m doing?”

But of course that is a scary question – because the honest answer may be devastating. Having chosen their career path at an early age, some professionals find themselves at or near the top of their organisations in their mid- to late 40s. With good health and solid finances they may have another 40 years of comfortable living ahead of them.

Money is not the problem. Fulfilment is. Career goals may have been met, but the excitement and pleasure the job once offered are now a distant memory. Worse, there may seem to be no alternative to going on in this way for another 10 or 15 years.

It must be a dismal prospect. No wonder so many bosses prefer to keep their heads down and carry on as though all is well. But pursuing an ultimately meaningless career saps the will to live. It destroys family life. Eventual retirement looms not as a release but as a daunting life sentence.

These concerns are more pressing than ever. As the former Harvard academic and author Shoshana Zuboff points out, the mid-life crisis is a relatively recent development in human history. The simultaneous increase in affluence and life expectancy has confronted us with a new challenge: to find meaning in our lives over a greatly extended period.

Perhaps the word “career” is part of the problem. The writer Charles Handy believes we need to think differently about how we approach the business of earning our living over the course of five decades.

Instead of one career, we can have several lives, he says. We should experiment, move on, not consider the corporation as a kind of parent or safe-house. People who have had only one life tend to be rather boring, Prof Handy adds. How much would you look forward to sitting next to a retired company lifer at dinner?

The first step to dealing with this mid-life crisis is to understand whether you are “inner directed” or “outer directed”. Outer-directed people conform to other people’s notions of what is right and admirable. They want to impress peers, but do not derive lasting satisfaction from this.

Inner-directed people, on the other hand, work to satisfy their own desires, and measure themselves by their own values. They can be successful in their own terms, even if this defies the conventional wisdom.

But, as Mr O’Kelly writes, the harried executive finds little or no time to conduct this sort of analysis. The very busy-ness of business militates against reflection.

Since 1993 Prof Zuboff has been running an intensive two-week programme called Odyssey, which is designed to promote precisely this kind of personal, inner debate. Prof Zuboff asks her participants, who are joined by their spouses for the second week, to think rigorously about what motivates and inspires them.

Attitudes are also changing outside the seminar room. The new wave of twenty-something job applicants have wholly different expectations – and demands. Even blue-chip recruiters are being challenged to explain what sort of “work-life balance” they will offer to their new employees. How flexibly can people work? Will sabbaticals or career-breaks be available?

A recent “campus brochure” for PwC in the US showed a young man cart­wheeling on a beach, beside the slogan: “Your life. You can bring it with you”.

Of course, some employers will be more reluctant to change – such as the world-famous investment bank, whose proud boast to new recruits is: “You won’t know your children. But you’ll get to know your grandchildren really well.”

*Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life, by Eugene O’Kelly, McGraw-Hill

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

(19/12/2006)

Понедельник

Don’t call me manager
by Stefan Stern

Roy Keane is not really sure how much he is enjoying this management lark. The former hard-man of the Manchester United midfield became manager of Sunderland football club towards the end of August. But as Christmas draws near he has confessed on a fans’ website that he is finding it all a pretty thankless task.

“To tell the truth, I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy it – and managers I have spoken to say it only gets worse,” he said. “You’re just constantly on the go. When you win a game you’re happy, but you have no real time to reflect on it, straight away you start thinking about the next match and what you could do to improve on your last performance.”

Keane was echoing the views of fellow international Thierry Henry, who told this paper a few days ago: “I don’t know about being a manager, because I don’t know if I would like to be under that kind of pressure after I finish playing.”

It is not just elite performers from the world of football who balk at the idea of becoming a manager. Some high-flying young executives seem a bit queasy too. When 50 executive MBA students at a leading international business school were asked recently what word they would use to describe themselves, they opted for labels such as “catalyst”, “change-agent”, “consultant” and “leader”. None of them wanted to be thought of as a “manager”.

Where does this distaste for the “m” word come from? Perhaps the job title has been devalued by being applied to an ever greater number of people – “we are all managers now”. But maybe the word has simply become tainted and is seen as a proxy for that other dreaded and derided phenomenon, bureaucracy.

When some of our catalysts and change-agents were pressed on what they understood by the term manager, they said it conjured up for them an image of a person who was probably not terribly imaginative or bright. One declared that a manager was someone who was “bossy, weak and insecure, who tries to intimidate people and does not contribute to the bottom line”.

Chris Grey, professor at the UK’s Judge Business School in Cambridge, was not surprised to be offered this kind of response from his cohort of EMBA students.

Last year Prof Grey published a highly entertaining polemic entitled A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Organisations. This slim volume more than lives up to its title. And in the space of 140 pages he explores (among other things) why management has such an image problem.

Prof Grey paints a convincing picture of the modern, efficient corporation, where managers have become distanced from the people they are supposed to be managing. The project-based nature of work can lead to the regular chopping and reshaping of teams, with managers moving on before they have to deal with the consequences of what they have just been doing. The “high potential” boss departs, without having to clear up his own mess. “This in itself is a recipe for irresponsibility,” he writes. Dealing with the unintended consequences of previous actions becomes the main activity of the new team leader. Outsourcing puts even more distance into the already semi-detached relationship.

And in an environment where anybody with any sense (and ambition) will expend a good deal of energy in self-promotion, an unreal world is created where managers regularly claim to have found “solutions” that can be delivered
after a “simple reorganisation”. But employees tend to realise when they are about to become the latest in the growing line of victims of a manager’s ego. Hence the cynicism and distrust of managers and management. And hence the students’ wish to be seen as almost anything but a manager.

Prof Grey characterises this destructive world in an imagined bed-time dialogue between a manager and his son:

Child: What do you do all day, Dad?

Dad: Well, I, sort of, exploit people.

Child: How do you mean?

Dad: Well, you know, I dehumanise them by making them work as hard as I can for as little money as possible.

Child: Oh.

Whatever the reality, we have certainly come a long way from the happy, confident world in which Peter Drucker could write, as he did in The Practice of Management (1955): “Management will remain a basic and dominant institution, perhaps so long as Western Civilisation itself survives.”

Resilient organisations, Prof Grey believes, are ones where there is a stronger, healthier bond between managers and those that are being managed. To rebuild that bond managers need to be able to take pride in what they do. But that means moving away from the “Velcro” model of corporate life – here today, gone tomorrow – and taking more seriously the fundamentally human task of managing people.

So in 2007, why not eschew the fads, the gimmicks, the God-awful PowerPoint presentations, the jargon and all the rest of that dishonest management bullshit? Join me in my campaign to get Back to Basics. And mark the wise words of Alan Curbishley, the newly appointed manager of West Ham United football club: “The managers who’ve been around a long time don’t wear head-sets, they don’t have three-way communication with people all round the stadium, they’re football managers and they manage, they try to get the best out of their players and that’s what I’m going to be about.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

(18/12/2006)

Чтение России (III)

What Does Putin Want?

by Leon Aron

Leon Aron is the resident scholar and director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (2000). A collection of his essays, Russia's Revolution, will be published by AEI Press next January.

“Is Russia Going Backward?” That was the question posed by the title of an article that I completed in late August 2004 and published in the October 2004 COMMENTARY. My qualified answer was no. Having supported Russia’s democratic, free-market revolution at every critical juncture during more than a decade of upheaval—from the election of Boris Yeltsin as president of what was still Soviet Russia in June 1991 and the rejection of the hard-line coup two months later, to the referendum in March 1993, Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996, and the toppling of the Communist-led plurality in the Duma in 1999—the Russian people, I argued, were not turning their backs on the reforms they had stoically sustained. They were simply ready at last for the new Russian state to be strong enough to help them.

The answer to their wishes was Vladimir Putin (as well as skyrocketing oil revenues). Putin, who became President of Russia in 2000, seemed to embody the hope of combining liberty and order, democracy and prosperity. Young, athletic, hard-working, intelligent, reportedly a teetotaler, he was the opposite in many respects of the by-then exhausted, very sick, and sometimes embarrassingly incoherent Yeltsin. With an astute politician’s sense for his country’s mood, Putin appeared to grasp the duality of its mandate to him. While deploring the things that most Russians detested about the 1990’s—the vulgarity and corruption of the newly enriched “oligarchs,” the arbitrariness of provincial governors, the erosion of law and order, and the delays in the payment of salaries and pensions to millions of current and retired state employees—he also recognized the achievements of the post-Soviet era. In his annual “state-of-Russia” addresses to the Duma and the nation, he extolled the virtues of democracy, the free market, and private initiative.

Nor did Putin just pay lip service to this core legacy of the revolution. As I wrote two years ago, his actions, by and large, had continued to affirm the national consensus: elections as the only legitimate way of choosing leaders, private property as the central fact of the economy, and a foreign policy based on Russia as a non-belligerent, non-imperial nation-state, something it had never been before. These were the factors that I weighed against the more troubling aspects of Putin’s presidency, particularly his campaign to reassert the power of the state and to extend its control over the media and society at large. In the end, the case I made was for vigilance but not full-scale alarm, for concern but not yet disappointment.

By now, however, it has become evident that Putin is taking Russia in a direction not only unmistakably different from the one pursued by Yeltsin but, in many regards, its opposite. For the United States no less than for the Russian people, this turn of events carries profoundly unsettling implications. Not only is the survival of Russian democracy at stake, but so too is Russia’s reliability as a key oil producer and as an actor in the world.

The ideology behind the Putin restoration rests in the first place on a distinct interpretation of recent Russian history. When Putin came into office, the fall of the Soviet Union and the reforms of the late 1980’s and 90’s were generally accepted as the consequences of a free, if imperfectly implemented, choice of the Russian people. Today, that crucial decade-and-a-half is seen in a very different light. Many key policies from that time are now viewed as shameful mistakes, deeply harmful to the country’s interests and committed by leaders who were at best naïve and weak, at worst venal and perfidious—if not, in fact, participants in a vast plot perpetrated by outsiders intent on weakening the Soviet (and then Russian) state. As Putin himself famously declared, the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

Key postulates of Russian national political culture—so magnificently and, many of us thought, permanently banished by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin—have now returned in force. It is once again respectable to say that the glory of Russia is the state, that what is good for the state is necessarily good for the country, and that the strengthening of the state is society’s primary objective. Hence, the state functionary (naturally conceived as a model of enlightenment, probity, and public spirit) is today considered a far more effective agent of progress than a free press (so sensationalist and profit-seeking), the voter (so uneducated and fickle), the judge (a bribe-taker), or, heaven forbid, the private entrepreneur.

In a 2005 book, Will Democracy Take in Russia?, Yevgeny Yasin—one of the earliest and most influential theorists of the Russian economic revolution, the mentor of those who led it, and minister of the economy between 1994 and 1997—has described the difference between the 1990’s and today as a clash between two starkly alternative visions of progress. The strategy followed by Yeltsin, he observes, was “modernization from below.” Its engine was private initiative, with big business in the lead, and minimal limitations on civil liberties and political rights. Putin, by contrast, is dedicated to “modernization from above,” with the state as the most powerful actor, the agenda-setter in economic matters as well as in politics.

This has many precedents in Russian history, of course. Epitomized most clearly by Peter the Great and Stalin, “modernization from above” has been pursued, mutatis mutandis, by virtually all Russian leaders, the two most notable exceptions being Czar Alexander II (1855-1881) and Boris Yeltsin. Today, as during previous eras, the implementation of this policy has been accompanied by the loosening of restraints on the state so that it can better mold society to its ends. The executive once again dominates the legislature and the judiciary. Moscow’s control has been re-asserted over formerly self-governing provinces. The national mass media, especially television, also largely bow to the Kremlin. The police, the security services, and servile courts have become policy tools.

The gradual accumulation of executive power under Putin abruptly accelerated in September 2004 after Chechnya-based terrorists seized a school in the south Russian town of Beslan. In a botched operation, the school was stormed by Russian troops; more than 300 people, most of them children, were killed in the resulting carnage. Just days later, Putin announced political “reforms” ostensibly designed to help protect Russia against the dark forces behind the Chechen rebels.

The docile Duma quickly rubber-stamped Putin’s “proposals.” Under them, the election of provincial governors was replaced by “nomination”—in effect, appointment by the Kremlin. Where heretofore half of the deputies in the Duma had been elected by simple local majorities, now the entire Duma would be chosen from national party lists. At the same time, the threshold for parties seeking to enter the legislature was raised from 5 to 7 percent of the national vote; party blocs, which had helped smaller groups win office, were prohibited.

The effect of these “reforms” has been, as intended, to limit and control political competition. At the local and national level, running for office is now far more expensive and cumbersome than hitherto. More important, it is vulnerable as never before to interference from state and federal authorities, who can manufacture dozens of bureaucratic rationales for striking from the ballot virtually any political party or movement the Kremlin deems dangerous. Similar techniques are now being used to stifle the local activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) like Human Rights Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy.

A similar reversal has occurred in the economic realm. Among the signal accomplishments of the 1990’s was the forging of market institutions from the detritus of the Soviet system. Private property was reintroduced after an absence of almost seven decades, and price controls on most items were eliminated. Russians had been used to spending hours each day in food lines; those now disappeared, along with the once ubiquitous shortages in basic material goods.

The key to these achievements, to cite Yasin again, was the “separation of state power and property”—that is, the wresting of most of the economy from the grip of the bureaucracy. For Russia, where political power had for centuries been virtually synonymous with control over (or outright possession of) the economy under czars or the Communist party, this was a bold departure from the “patrimonial” system.

The Putin restoration has brought about a partial return to the national model. Yasin rightly calls it the “revenge of the bureaucracy.” Since 2002, the Kremlin has put a gradual freeze on liberalizing reforms while committing itself to a (similarly gradual) retaking of the “commanding heights” of the economy. This trend has been especially noteworthy in the oil and gas industry, the sector that matters most to the United States and to the rest of the developed world.

In the late USSR, oil production had beautifully embodied the point of the old Soviet joke that, after 70 years of socialism in Africa, the Sahara would have run out of sand. By the 1980’s, many experts were predicting that the Soviet Union, despite its enormous reserves, would become a net importer of oil. When new, private owners—many of them Kremlin-connected entrepreneurs who had won rigged auctions—took possession of the fields in the mid-1990’s, they found a sullen work force that had often gone unpaid for months, along with worn-out and antiquated equipment.

The economic revolutionaries in Moscow who presided over the privatization of the Russian oil industry had no illusions about these independent owners, but clearly preferred them to the bureaucratic nomenklatura, who, as it were, had nearly run the oil industry back into the ground. As the privatization “czar” Anatoly Chubais reportedly said of Russia’s new oil barons: “One does not steal from oneself.”

Few economic quips have been vindicated faster or more vividly. Despite “expert” warnings, parroted ad nauseam by American newspaper columnists, to the effect that the new owners would quickly strip their assets and flee abroad with the loot, between 1999 and 2004 the young tycoons (all of whom, to be sure, became fabulously rich) invested an estimated 88 percent of their profits, some $26 billion, in modern technology and new exploration. Gradually, the top oil firms also became more transparent, disclosing their asset and management structures and adopting Western accounting practices. Trillions of rubles were paid in taxes to the state and, for the first time in post-Soviet history, to shareholders. More important, during those six years, private oil production increased by 47 percent, as compared with 14 percent in the state-owned sector.

Then came the re-nationalization of the oil industry. It started with an assault on Yukos, Russia’s largest private company, through a series of blatantly manipulated trials that began in 2004. In one instance, a judge ruled for the prosecution after spending only three days “examining” several hundred volumes of tax materials. In another, Yukos was assessed for tax liabilities that exceeded its income for the period in question. In 2005, Mikhail Khodorkovsky—the company’s founder and, at the time, Russia’s richest man—ended two years of incarceration to begin a nine-year sentence in a prison camp in eastern Siberia, on the Chinese border, three thousand miles from Moscow.

Yukos was bankrupted. Its largest production unit was quickly sold to a front company that, in a matter of days, resold it to Rosneft, a stagnant, poorly managed state-owned firm controlled by Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant and deputy chief of staff, who had taken over as chairman of the board in 2004, the same year Yukos was put on trial. Today Rosneft is the second-largest oil company in Russia; yet even after robbing Yukos, it is weighed down by debts of over $11 billion.

Late in 2005, Sibneft, another leading private oil company, was bought by the state-controlled natural-gas monopoly Gazprom, which is chaired by another of Putin’s top aides, the former Kremlin chief of staff and today first deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. Deeply in debt, and notoriously one of the country’s worst-managed companies, Gazprom has increased production by only 2 to 3 percent a year since 2000, despite booming natural-gas prices. It is widely assumed that one of the firm’s key functions is to serve as a piggy-bank for the Kremlin, which can take from it hundreds of millions of dollars for all manner of political and economic “projects” without a trace of accountability.

Putin’s statist ideology has also been felt by the main foreign investors in Russia’s oil sector. This past fall, the Kremlin halted or threatened to halt operations by Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, France’s Total, and the Russian-British TNK-BP. Notwithstanding official explanations for this move—from environmental violations to cost overruns to disappointing output—it is an open secret in Moscow that the government’s prime motive is to pressure the companies into either surrendering a share of production to the state or handing back their development licenses.

In its relentless extension of state ownership or control, the Kremlin has vetoed private funding for desperately needed new pipeline construction, despite the inability of Transneft, the state monopoly, to maintain the existing infrastructure, much less to lay new pipes. The administration also now appears to be examining its next target for nationalization. Lukoil, the country’s largest remaining private oil company, was recently charged with “improper utilization” of some two dozen licenses and threatened with cancellation of its development rights.

By shifting ownership so decisively to state-run companies, with their wastefulness and shabby yields, the Putin restoration has squandered the impressive gains achieved by privatization. It also now runs the serious risk of scaring off badly needed investment. With the most likely sources of innovation and productivity inside Russia expropriated or cowed, foreign oil “majors” have begun to think twice about putting billions of dollars into projects in the country’s far north and east, where most of its oil and gas are located. In jeopardy is Russia’s future as a dependable, long-term supplier to the world market.

In 2005, for the first time since 1999, Russian oil exports decreased in absolute terms. Thinking only of the short term, as most restorationist regimes have always done, the Kremlin has begun to poison the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Recent changes in Russian foreign policy have stemmed from the same change in ideology. In establishing a generally pro-Western profile, Gorbachev and Yeltsin had emphasized shared interests; they were inspired by the idea of finding “a path to the common European home” and a place for Russia in the “civilized world.” Such goals are dismissed now as the rhetoric of weakness, concessions brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union. No longer is the integration of Russia into the family of Western capitalist democracies held to be a goal, even a distant one.

This is not to suggest that Putin has sought to re-create Soviet foreign policy outright. Despite the muscular rhetoric emanating from the Kremlin, Russia is not a “revisionist” power like the Soviet Union or present-day China. It is not intent on reshaping in its favor the regional or global balance of forces. In the geopolitical competition, Moscow may complain about the score, but it is unlikely to take the risks associated with changing the rules of the game.

Nor is Russia willing to commit the resources needed to sustain any such endeavor—unlike China, for instance, whose defense appropriations have grown annually by double-digit percentages over the past twenty years. Even in today’s Russia, flush with petrodollars, the share of the GDP devoted to defense—just 2.9 percent in 2005—is at least ten times smaller than during the days of the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, although Russian foreign policy today is supremely pragmatic, it is conducted in a way that points to looming trouble. Putin has tried to win the greatest possible freedom of action for Russia by positioning the country above the international fray. To achieve this maneuverability, he has refused to bind himself to formerly important tenets like “democracy,” “human rights,” and “Western civilization,” rejecting alliances based on these precepts in favor of “working directly,” one on one, with a range of countries, many of them very unsavory. Without regard to the substantive merits of individual cases, Moscow is seeking to arrogate to itself a crucial role in today’s international process, collecting the attendant dividends as it goes along.

A chief element in this realpolitik has been the Kremlin’s readiness to leverage key Russian assets in the form of conventional arms, nuclear technology, and energy resources. Thus, Moscow saw its delivery of tactical air-defense missiles to Syria in 2005 as a means of restoring its influence in the Middle East. Similarly, earlier this year the Kremlin played host to the leaders of Hamas in an attempt at diplomatic arbitrage, hoping to obtain concessions (like the recognition of Israel’s right to exist) and to emerge thereby as an indispensable mediator between East and West.

The locus classicus of Putin’s new foreign strategy has been, of course, Moscow’s relations with Tehran. Russia has almost finished the Islamic Republic’s $1-billion nuclear power plant at Bushehr, and continues to oppose any effective sanctions aimed at forcing the regime to halt its march toward nuclear enrichment (a march that Moscow staunchly defends as the “peaceful development of nuclear energy”). Despite insistent requests by Washington, Russia has also resumed arms sales to Tehran, suspended by Yeltsin in 1995. The most recent deal, signed in December 2005, will provide mobile air-defense missile systems, MIG fighter jets, Su-24 bombers, T-72 tanks, and patrol boats.

With the country’s gold and currency reserves approaching $300 billion, Moscow’s motive in cultivating Iran is not primarily financial; the controversial agreements are worth just a few billion dollars. Nor is Putin driven by ideological opposition to American “imperialism” or to the American alliance with Israel. Indeed, last April a Russian rocket, launched from a cosmodrome in the Far East, carried into orbit an Israeli spy satellite that undoubtedly will be used to monitor Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear program.

Instead, for the Kremlin, Iran presents another opportunity for advancing the overarching objective of enhancing Russia’s role in the world. As one leading Russian expert has put it, the situation presents “a unique and historic chance to return to the world arena once again as a key player and as a reborn superpower.” The longer Moscow can postpone the moment when it will have to choose sides between Iran and the West, the higher it will be able to bid up the value of its diplomatic support.

A preview of things to come was on display in Russia’s handling of the U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution in the wake of North Korea’s recent nuclear test. At the twelfth hour, Moscow’s representative managed both to dilute several key sanctions and, in a quid pro quo, to win American support for a resolution censuring Georgia, with which Russia is in an increasingly ugly spat.

At a different moment in world politics, Putin’s gamesmanship might not have caused serious complications in Russia’s relations with the United States. After all, Washington eventually accustomed itself to the cold-war diplomacy of France, which tried to compensate for the loss of its superpower status after World War II by practicing a similar policy of arbitrage in its dealings with the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But the times are different—and so too are the guiding principles of the White House under George W. Bush.

For the Bush administration, few things have been more crucial to determining a country’s place in U.S. foreign policy than the character of its internal politics. In the fall of 2001, as Washington assessed its situation after the attacks of 9/11, Russia still looked like a potential friend: a country with a range of personal and social freedoms, a genuine democratic opposition, and a steady stream of free-market reforms. The moment seemed right for a long-term strategic partnership, perhaps even an alliance.

Yet America’s current foreign policy, which sees the promotion of liberty and democracy as the key strategic means of ensuring U.S. security, cannot but be at odds with the Kremlin’s post-imperial restoration, the essence of which is political and economic re-centralization at home and an omnivorous realpolitik abroad. Even on the territory of the former Soviet Union, where under different circumstances the U.S. might have been more inclined to indulge Russian interests, Moscow has found itself at loggerheads with Washington.

Reformist governments in Georgia and Ukraine, which embodied the Bush administration’s push for democracy and liberalization, have been viewed by the Kremlin as inherently anti-Russian. (Profoundly cynical, as restorationist regimes usually are, the Kremlin appears incapable of imagining a mass popular protest that is not engineered and paid for “from outside.”) At the same time, Russia’s support for repressive regimes in Belarus and Uzbekistan has inevitably caused serious friction with the United States. Though a new cold war is hardly afoot, the tension is palpable and growing, and is unlikely to be relaxed any time soon.

Russians have not been the first people—nor will they be the last—to be tempted to exchange a measure of liberty for the promise of stability, prosperity, or national glory. (Recall Tocqueville’s lament over the “mistakes and misjudgments which led Frenchmen to abandon their original ideal and, turning their backs on freedom, to acquiesce in an equality of servitude under the master of all Europe,” Napoleon.) So when Putin declared that “order, stability, and the implementation of the economic policy must not become the price [paid for] democratic procedures,” millions of his countrymen agreed. Many have continued to support him in forging and maintaining “managed democracy,” as the Kremlin ideologists have labeled the restoration.

Yet in the end the price may prove too high. Even as salaries and inflation-adjusted incomes have continued to grow—thus forming the mainstays of Putin’s popularity—the Russian economy as a whole has failed even to keep up with the rising prices of oil and gas. From an average rate of growth of almost 7 percent between 2000 and 2004, the GDP expanded by just 5.5 percent in 2005. Yevgeny Yasin suggests that this downturn be studied as “a textbook case of how a state’s pressure can damage a national economy.”

The Kremlin’s intimidation of Russia’s wealthy elite has also translated into far less political accountability. Without substantial private capital, neither serious political competition nor free mass media can exist in today’s Russia. Opposition parties are forced to choose: either toe the Kremlin line (thus gaining a presence in the Duma) or find themselves in the political wilderness, excluded from the national debate.

One entirely predictable consequence of Russian society’s weakened control of government has been corruption so brazen, so pervasive, and involving sums so huge that it makes the graft of the 1990’s look like child’s play. In a recent World Bank survey, more Russian enterprises now report having to pay bribes to licensing authorities, tax services, militias, and courts than in 2002—a trend opposite to the one in virtually every other post-Communist nation.

At the same time, Russian politics has become more brittle. Without elected intermediaries at the local level, or a responsible national opposition, the center of political gravity has shifted to the very top. If popular dissatisfaction escalates—as the result, say, of a sharp drop in oil prices, a major terrorist act, or some spectacular public blunder—there will be no one to blame but the Kremlin. Having been devised to strengthen the Russian state, Putin’s post-imperial restoration runs the risk of dramatically destabilizing it.

Russia’s recent history is a reminder that modern capitalist democracy has two fundamental requirements. The first is that citizens be able to tolerate the perennial antagonisms and uncertainties inherent in free political contests and free-market competition. The second is that they trust themselves to manage and contain such unruly collisions. Even mature democracies occasionally strain to meet these demands. In younger and poorer republics, they are tested every day. Post-Soviet Russia has been tried in both respects and, with the help of Vladimir Putin, found wanting.

By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, seven decades of totalitarian rule had largely extirpated civil society in Russia. Local networks no longer existed for inculcating the habits of personal and civic responsibility. Professional and religious associations—the preparatory schools for democratic participation on the national level—did not exist. The result was a moral void. When the ancien régime fell, together with its state-enforced system of sanctions and rewards, the breakdown was complete.

Thus, contrary to many finger-wagging critics of post-Communist Russia, the real choice for Russians in the 1990’s was never between a “good,” “clean” liberal-democratic capitalism (which, these same critics alleged, Russians did not know how to build or had deliberately spurned) and the vulgar, corrupt kind that Marx called “primitive capitalism.” Rather, it was a choice between the latter and a return to state control of the economy and politics.

One might usefully see this as a choice between a jungle occupied by several large predators (a/k/a “oligarchs”) and one ruled by a single all-powerful beast. In the first case, the predators are mostly concerned with challenging one another, leaving space for smaller animals to develop and grow. In the second, the king of the jungle imposes a semblance of order while gradually destroying most of the rest of the fauna.

Throughout the 1990’s, Russians opted for economic and political liberty, no matter how unattractively incarnated. But once the threat of a Communist revival receded, so too did their tolerance for conflict, disorder, and inequality, along with their faith in the promise of self-rule. As Isaiah Berlin wrote years ago: “Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture or human happiness or quiet conscience.” When liberty failed quickly to bring about sufficient quantities of those other desirable things, Russia was ready to give the beast a chance.

Russians have yet to accept what might be called the Magna Carta rule: that when barons, tycoons, moguls, and “oligarchs” are secure in their own liberty and property, they increase, almost despite themselves, the probability of liberty, property, and fairness for all. Democracy is full of such paradoxes. Learning to live with them requires wisdom, strength, and—above all—time. Unfortunately, there is no telling when Russians will again see that a measure of chaos is the price of freedom, and that no one will relieve them of the burden of responsibility for themselves and their country without exacting a cost they will bitterly rue having agreed to pay. (initially published in "Commentary, Volume 122, Number 5)

(16/12/2006)