Rússia = Neo-Feudalismo + Corrupção

Excelente análise de Vladislav L. Inozemtsev sobre a política na Rússia: Clearly, this arrangement—economic freedom coupled with political constraint—does not please everyone. To the standard American mind it suggests that something has got to give. This, too, is wrong. Some Russians do give voice to dissatisfaction with the current regime and the widespread abuse of power by police authorities, local officials and oligarchs closely connected with the ruling bureaucracy. Yet the system seems fundamentally solid and durable. Its strength emanates from a basic principle: It is much easier for subjects to solve their problems individually than to challenge national institutions collectively. This is because what Westerners would call corruption is not a scourge of the system but the basic principle of its normal functioning. Corruption in Russia is a form of transactional grease in the absence of any generally accepted and legally codified alternative. Taken together, these transactions well describe a form of neo-feudalism. This should not be terribly surprising to the historically aware, for that was more or less the stage that Russian socio-economic development had reached when it was frozen by more than seventy years of Communist rule. It has now thawed.