The Russia Conundrum

Navalny’s videos of the luxury lifestyles of the Kremlin elite hit a national nerve. While Putin and co were getting ever richer, the Russian economy was going from bad to worse. Early in his reign, Putin benefited from high prices for Russia’s oil and gas, boosting GDP and lifting living standards. But, instead of using the breathing space to diversify the economy and develop other streams of sustainable revenue, the Kremlin marched blindly on towards the precipice. When global energy prices collapsed in 2014, Russia slid inexorably into recession. Putin’s response was to annex Crimea, a manoeuvre that succeeded in shoring up his domestic poll numbers, but brought Western sanctions and a further, inevitable decline in national prosperity. Putin has stifled market competition by shrinking the private sector and bringing more and more of the economy into the hands of the state or, to be more precise, into the hands of his inner circle. Since 2000, the share of GDP controlled by state-owned (and crony-controlled) firms has risen from 35 per cent to 70 per cent, a deadening influence that has reduced enterprise and innovation. With the exception of the arms industry, Russian goods have become dishearteningly uncompetitive on the world market; technological research and development have dwindled and the much-touted creation of a Russian Silicon Valley at Skolkovo, near Moscow, ended in fiasco. Putin’s promise of 25 million new jobs in the IT field was a farce. ‘Russia,’ goes one popular joke from Soviet times, ‘now boasts of producing the biggest nanochips in the world.’ The Kremlin has subsequently dropped any serious attempt to modernise the economy, with the result that it has been left behind by the developed nations of the West. Russia’s GDP is considerably smaller not only than that of the US, but also of Germany, Britain, France and Italy.

If the definition of a third world kleptocracy is a country where the leaders get fat at the expense of the people and the nation, Putin’s Russia fits the bill.

CHAPTER 12

GULAG

The Kremlin took a rather touching amount of care in picking the labour camp to which I would be assigned. Despite having 766 penal colonies to choose from, and notwithstanding a provision in Russian law that prisoners should serve their term in a facility close to their home town, I was sent to camp IK14/10, 3,000 miles from Moscow, in the Chita region of Siberia. Chita has average temperatures of plus 45°C in summer and minus 45°C in winter. Our prison barracks were built next to the slagheaps of a uranium mine, where radiation levels were high. In Russian prisons, nine out of ten inmates suffer from at least one chronic disease, with one in three displaying symptoms of serious contagious infection. Platon Lebedev, if this were possible, had things even harder, being despatched to a remote prison colony near the town of Kharp in the Arctic Circle, where the distance from Moscow made it almost impossible for his family and legal team to visit him.

For the first few months, while we were awaiting our trial, I was held in remand prison 99/1 in Moscow. For much of the time, there were just three prisoners in a cell that was built for four. The cell was 4 metres by 5 metres, including the toilet area, which was separated with a partition and a curtain, although it didn’t reach up to the ceiling. As well as the toilet bowl, we had a sink with hot and cold water. Our cell was quite new and clean, with a small television, a fridge that was old but usually worked, and a fan. There were four bunks on two levels – like in a train compartment, only made of metal. The window was covered in non-transparent tape, and there were two metal grilles on either side of the glass, with a small ventilating window that we could open. We were taken to have a shower once a week.

There was a kiosk that we could visit once a month. It didn’t have any delicacies, but the essentials were all there – milk, kefir, sour cream, apples, carrots, oranges, etc. We also got parcels from home, but these didn’t help much. The prison authorities inspected everything and didn’t let much through; whatever did get through would be cut up into little pieces. The main thing was that the parcel came from home, which psychologically was very important and counted for a lot.

We were allowed out for exercise once a day for one hour. I used to take walks on the roof of the building, like a cat, because it was the closest to fresh air – but you never got to see the sun because there was a canopy over it. The radio was played all day and that drove me crazy – with pop music and the endless ‘letters from listeners’ that they broadcast. The light was kept on at night, but that’s something you get used to. Jail food is awful. I don’t doubt that the fat and carbohydrate contents match the officially prescribed norms, but the way it is cooked – I don’t even want to think about it.