*This is a really interesting speech here, presumably
obtained by a bug or a smuggled recorder. I wouldn't
call it prime oratory, but it's a fascinating insight
into the mental weltanschauung of a modern
career Kremlinite.
http://www.mosnews.com/interview/2005/07/12/surkov.shtml
http://www.mosnews.com/interview/2005/07/12/surkov.shtml
"We can invent a situation whereby the political class works on rotation. They are in Monte-Carlo, and then they pay flying visits here to receive profits. But this is the way to nowhere.
"In spite of the integrity of Western economics, the French elite is considered as French, and the German as German. I think that while the Russian ruling elite is still an offshore aristocracy, till it understands, maybe not in this generation, that it is, for all that, a national bourgeoisie, we will have nothing good in our country. We will dangle in a critical gap.
"It is because of this gap that we have not yet succeeded in anything. Evidently, the staff issue is close to this problem. If the country does not have a critical mass of top managers, we will result in nothing.
"In this case, we are retarded in our conception of the authorities. Because the notorious power vertical is a primitive interpretation. Today, it is not the vertical that is ruling. The conception that there is a telephone above, the second telephone below, and the third far lower, is stupid. Unfortunately, many of our bureaucrats base themselves on those principles, not feeling and not understanding the current processes. This is a problem of the education and the retarded political culture.
"These are the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia, too, may collapse because of it. But while the Soviet Union crashed kinglike, a catastrophe worth filming, we will decay slowly and everything will finish at this stage.
That is why if a new political class does not grow, there will be nothing.
*Given that Russia is losing population at the brisk clip
of half a million people a year, I'd reckon that smart
Russian-elite offshore money in Monte Carlo is
betting on "nothing."
