What it Takes in the Former Soviet Union: Assassination, Theft, Corruption

I've seen multiple references in recent weeks to Richard Ben Cramer's classic account of the 1988 presidential campaign, What It Takes. Inveterate footnote-and-index readers such as myself miss having neither, yet it is a wonderful read, all 1,051 pages of it, narrating in colorful detail what campaign shenanigans were required to win that year. Cramer's descriptions of George H.W. Bush are particularly unforgettable.

Cramer comes to mind because of the latest news out of the former Soviet Union: Another apparent assassination plot, this time between presidential campaigns in Georgia; another stolen election by Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan; and a report that the good times attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin may in fact not be as advertised.

Georgia: In a story published yesterday by The Sunday Times in the U.K., David Leppard, Anna Mikhailova and Mark Franchetti report on a possible assassination plot against Boris Berezovsky's former business partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili. The news peg is a 14-minute audio tape that's surfaced in which a Georgian Interior Ministry official apparently attempts to hire a Chechen killer to off Patarkatsishvili. The killer, according to the paper, is Uvais Akhmadov, "a member of a notorious gang of Chechen brothers who specialised in kidnapping and murder," as the writers put it. There's a snap presidential campaign under way at the moment, and Patarkatsishvili is challenging former president Mikheil Saakashvili. Only, Patarkatsishvili is doing so from London, where he says he fears for his life if he goes home. The thing is, we need not sympathize with Patarkatsishvili as a sort of Goldilocks -- he is a tough businessman with a long career of dealing with some of the former Soviet Union's most unsavory sorts. The important point here is what the report might imply about Saakashvili, Georgia's Columbia University-trained former leader. What has his campaign got up to in order to win election Jan. 5th?

Uzbekistan: My former Baku roommate David Stern at The New York Times reports that Karimov won yesterday's election with a reported 88.1% of the vote. Some people are calling it fraudulent since Karimov shouldn't be running -- he was constitutionally forbidden to seek a new term -- and he allowed no real opponents. In addition, there are the usual forebodings that Uzbekistan is headed for instability either during Karimov's continued rule or after he dies (the only way these fellows leave). I personally have sympathy for the stolen election crowd, but have my doubts on the instability part. Equally undemocratic Turkmenistan, for instance, just went through a transition after a presidential death without a hiccup. There's an argument that Uzbekistan isn't Turkmenistan, meaning that it already has produced a home-grown rebellion based in the Fergana Valley. I personally adhere to the muddle-along theory, meaning that even the apparently least likely states tend to muddle along.

Russia: My former Washington Post colleague Fred Hiatt weighs in today with a tart salvo at Time magazine's selection of Putin as its Person of the Year. Against Putin's unwillingness to face serious electoral competition, Hiatt writes: "Why would a leader of such steely confidence, heroic achievement and massive popularity be so afraid of political competition? Perhaps he will explain at Time's awards banquet." Hahaha, Fred. But Hiatt's central argument is serious, based on paraphrases from a must-read report in the new Foreign Affairs by my former colleagues at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies, Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. This report challenges the prevailing wisdom that, under Putin, crime has fallen, economic activity has improved and corruption lessened. McFaul and Stoner-Weiss detail at length how in fact the opposite is true in all three cases and that, specifically, Russia's economic growth is near the bottom of the 15 former Soviet states. "Whatever the apparent gains of Russia under Putin, they gains would have been greater if democracy had survived," they write.

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