I had assumed at the outset that I would spend two to four years in jail. It’s not that I was looking forward to it, but I was ready to do that. It turned out to be more than ten. I suppose my assessment of how far the justice system could be perverted was naive. But, even after losing a decade of my life, I continue to believe that freedom, democracy and civil rights cannot be contained by even the harshest of jailors.
CHAPTER 11
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Putin’s anti-Westernism, his wanton confiscation of private property and the corruption that flows from the highest levels of the Kremlin have devastated the prospects for any renewal or progress in the Russian economy. Why would anyone trust a mafia state that appropriates the resources of the nation and seizes the businesses of individuals solely to enrich itself? Why would global investors choose to invest their money in a country run by such a treacherous regime, and why would the Russian people continue to accept the abuses to which their leaders subject them?
The last question is perhaps the easiest to answer. Historically, the iron fist of Russian authoritarianism has crushed expressions of popular discontent, but it has not dispelled the mistrust that attaches to a system of governance which claims all power for itself and refuses to respect the rule of law or the rights of its citizens. I wonder if you can guess who wrote the following – and when it was written:
The fundamental principle of Russian government has always been the autocratic ruler who combines all legislative and executive powers and disposes of all the nation’s resources. There are no limits placed on this principle. When the powers of the ruling authority are unlimited – to such an extent that no rights are left over for the subjects – then such a state exists in slavery and its government is despotic.
It is a description that could accurately be applied to the autocracy of the Communist Party or that of Vladimir Putin, but it was actually written in 1809 by Mikhail Speransky, an adviser to Tsar Alexander I. Speransky lamented that Russia had never been a law-governed country, in words that describe perfectly the state of affairs today.
Under autocratic rule there can be no code of law, for where no rights exist there can be no impartial balance between them … there is nothing but the arbitrary decisions of the ruler, prescribing to the citizens their bounden duties until such time as the autocrat decides to change them. The law is completely dependent on the autocratic will which alone creates it, alone establishes the courts, names the judges and gives them their rules … as the fancy strikes it.
Speransky concluded that the absence of justice, law and protection from capricious authority stifles initiative and progress, with the result that the country remained mired in primitive backwardness. Today, in Putin’s Russia, the law continues to be trampled on and bypassed in favour of the dictatorship of the men who occupy the Kremlin. For them, laws exist merely to cloak despotism in the trappings of legitimacy, a fig leaf for the political coercion that makes the system incapable of constructive evolution.
A country’s legal system should not be the expression of the sole will of the ruler; it should be the consolidated will of civil society as a whole. That is what allows a state to function on the basis of consent, where citizens obey the law because they respect its foundations. Such laws must be built upon unchanging principles, ones not subject to alteration on the whim of the moment, and they must be passed by an independent, freely elected parliament. So long as personalised autocracy remains the only political configuration known in Russia, there is little prospect of progress.
The lack of legal protection for private possessions in the face of a rapacious, grasping state continues to undermine confidence in Russia. ‘What is the use of laws assigning property to private individuals,’ Mikhail Speransky wrote, ‘when property itself has no firm basis in any respect whatsoever? What is the use of civil laws when their tablets can at any time be smashed on the first rock of arbitrary rule? How can finances be set in order in a country with no public confidence in the law!’
Lack of belief in the protection of the law has caused an outflow of capital and people from Russia, a fall in the number of long-term projects financed outside of the state budget, and the insane corruption and embezzlement of state property that eat up more than 10 per cent of GDP.
Under Putin the state has not only neglected to develop the country’s intellectual potential; its predatory policies towards business and its trampling on individual rights have also contributed to a massive flight of human talent, including the cream of Russia’s young entrepreneurs. These are people who need to feel independent and safe in conditions of democracy, so the statist ideology that pervades our country has prompted them to emigrate. You can imagine the harm this has done. If a 25-year-old entrepreneur decides to leave Russia, the country loses millions of dollars in potential revenue back into the economy. And a hundred thousand such entrepreneurs and highly qualified specialists are leaving Russia every year.
Official figures record that 4.5 million people left Russia in the two decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union and experts agree that the real number was much higher. A 2016 report revealed the damage this brain drain has inflicted. The majority of those who emigrated to the West were people with potential who felt unable to develop in their homeland – scholars, college students, entrepreneurs and business leaders. The number of independently wealthy émigrés, including former government officials, families of politicians and members of the financial and bureaucratic elite, has escalated since 2000. The reasons they gave for leaving ranged from low salaries and the lack of funding for science and education to the volatile business environment, widespread corruption, fears for personal safety and business assets, the weakness of public institutions, and a lack of confidence in the law enforcement and judicial systems. The exodus, says the report, not only deprives the country of the most active members of society but condemns the remainder to slower development.
A country as richly endowed with human and material resources but with such a level of national poverty as Russia should be achieving 6 to 7 per cent growth rates. All that is needed is a commitment to legality and business integrity for Russia to attain Canadian standards of living within a decade. Two centuries ago, Mikhail Speransky explained to Tsar Alexander how the deadweight of Russia’s autocratic past could be thrown off and the door opened to a better future. He drew up plans for freely elected local councils, a national parliament and a remarkable draft constitution guaranteeing civil rights and the separation of powers, an end to the police state and freedom of the press. But Alexander refused, and in the third decade of President Vladimir Putin’s rule, the prospects for political reform and economic modernisation are still remote. Trust between Russia and Western governments is at an all-time low. This is bad for the wellbeing of the Russian people, and the safeguarding of their human rights. It tarnishes Russia’s attractiveness as a destination for Western investment. And it carries the risk of political mistakes and gambits that may lead to conflict. As a business leader, I am acutely aware of the way Putin’s leadership stifles economic prosperity. But it is more than that. It has a noxious effect on the moral welfare of the country. It stifles our nation’s present, our people and our future.