12 Ibid. Medical care in Russian prisons is generally lamentable, but high-profile prisoners seem to have a particularly bad time. A lawyer for Yukos, Vasily Aleksanyan, contracted HIV and tuberculosis while in prison, lost his sight and got cancer, before he was released thanks to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
13 http://russian-untouchables.com/docs/Alekseyeva-Complaint-Eng29Mar2010.pdf
14 http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/2011/07/russia-blames-medics-for-hermitage-lawyer-death/
15 The video is available on Mr Browder’s website http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/ or at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7yBOEPYJTc
16 A list of all sixty can be found here http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Files.Download&FileStore_id=1744. The criteria for inclusion on the list is that the person signed a document associated with the case.
17 These purported terrorist attacks created a climate of panic in which the then unknown new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, rapidly became the most popular politician in the country thanks to his seemingly tough response. A botched attack on an apartment block in Ryazan turned out to have been the work of the FSB, which explained its actions, deeply unconvincingly, as an anti-terrorist drill. Those brave Russians who have tried to investigate this mysterious affair have ended up dead. See The New Cold War, chapter 2.
2 The Pirate State
1 A thorough and lively account of these and other abuses is in Luke Harding’s Mafia State (Guardian Books, 2011). It also details the persistent harassment campaign mounted against him and his family.
2 World Report 2011: Russia http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011/russia
3 See my article ‘Licence to Loot’, The Economist, 17 September 2011 http://www.economist.com/node/21529021
4 See ‘Frau Fixit: Germany, Central Europe and Russia’ The Economist, 18 November 2010 http://www.economist.com/node/17522476
5 The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev by Daniel Treisman, (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, London, January 2011), published in America by Free Press.
6 ‘Neo-Feudalism Explained’ by Vladimir Inozemtsev, The American Interest, March–April 2011. http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=939
7 http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2010/02/10PARIS170.html
8 http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/10/08LONDON2643.html
9 http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/11/09MOSCOW2749.html_. A similarly worded but slightly different version of the cable can be found at http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09MOSCOW1051
10 http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=10MOSCOW317
11 ‘The Concealed Battle to Run Russia’ by Amy Knight, New York Review of Books, 13 January 2011 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/concealed-battle-run-russia/
12 The New Nobility, The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (Public Affairs Books, 2010). The authors run the www.agentura.ru website, a magpie’s nest of news and analysis, mostly in Russian, all of it well-informed, about the inner workings of the secret state.
13 Ibid. p. ix.
14 Quoted in ibid, p. 5.
15 The draft ‘de-Stalinisation’ programme from the President’s Human Rights Council can be found here http://www.president-sovet.ru/structure/group_5/materials/the_program_of_historical_memory.php
See for example Natsionalnoye primireniye nevozmozhna bez suda i pamyati (National Reconciliation is impossible without a trial and memory) http://www.rg.ru/2011/04/08/repress.html
16 ‘Stalin against Putin’ (unsigned) Vedomosti, 28 April 2011 http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/259344/stalin_protiv_putina
17 ‘Reading Russia: The Siloviki in Charge’ by Andrei Illarionov. Journal of Democracy, Vol. 20, no. 2, April 2009 http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/andrei_illarionov_the_siloviki_in_charge.pdf
18 Inozemtsev, op. cit.
19 ‘The mindset of Russia’s security services’, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, 29 December 2010 http://www.agentura.ru/english/dossier/mindset/
20 An English version can be seen here http://www.viddler.com/explore/Eastculture2009/videos/4/. The script (in English) can be found here. http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/80211155439.htm
21 Soldatov and Borogan, ‘The mindset’.
22 See for example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8244470/Gazprom-held-back-by-its-corrupt-nature.html; http://www.iie.com/ppublications/papers/aslund508.pdf; and http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/data/docs/Viewpoints/Putin%20and%20Gazprom_Nemtsov%20en%20Milov.pdf
23 Mr Navalny’s site is www.navalny.ru; Mr Nemtsov’s is www.nemtsov.ru; Mr Milov’s is http://www.milov.info All are in Russian only at the time of writing.
24 ‘Olga Kryshtanovskaya: Putin vernetsya kak don mafii’ (‘Olga Kryshtanovskaya: Putin returns like a mafia don’) by Andrei Polunin, Svobodnaya pressa, 8 February 2011 http://svpressa.ru/politic/article/38451/
25 ‘Nelzya dopustit, chtobi voini prevratilis v torgovtsev’ (‘We must not allow warriors to become traders’) Kommersant, 9 October 2007 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/812840
26 The episode was well analysed here by the Jamestown Foundation’s Jonas Bernstein, ‘Shvartsman’s Description of Siloviki Business Practices – Truth Or Fiction?’ Eurasia Daily Monitor, 7 December 2007 http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=33224 and in ‘Former Russian Spies Now Prominent in Business’ by Andrew Kramer, New York Times 18 December 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/worldbusiness/18kgb.html