3 ms·

This functional bureaucracy is 100% compromised by the parallel power structure, "Putin's Vertical". Pretty much everyone employed by the state, from school te

This functional bureaucracy is 100% compromised by the parallel power structure, "Putin's Vertical". Pretty much everyone employed by the state, from school teachers who en masse rig elections to the judges who do FSB's/president office bidding, have to be assumed irredeemable. Russia didn't to the "lustrations" that Poland, Czechia, East Germany and some other countries did, and the Hydra survived.

cyberax 2y ago
> This functional bureaucracy is 100% compromised by the parallel power structure, "Putin's Vertical". Nope, it actually works well within it. I'm talking about the bureaucracy that ensures that the water is running, people can get driving licenses, register real estate deals, etc. All the "boring" stuff that keeps the country working. > Russia didn't to the "lustrations" that Poland, Czechia, East Germany and some other countries did, and the Hydra survived. Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. Want an example? Iraq. The US Army purged all the BAATH members from the new government, replacing them with new people who were inexperienced in day-to-day administration. And then all those exceedingly nice and newly-jobless ex-BAATH-ists went and formed the core of ISIS. Historically, lustrations worked well only in smaller countries where everyone knew everyone through one or two handshakes, and that still had people who remembered living in a functional democracy.
- jojobas 2y ago
  >I'm talking about the bureaucracy that ensures that the water is running, people can get driving licenses, register real estate deals, etc. Maybe utilities and some other functions that are not related to how Putin enacts his political control can be spared. Not gutting the machine that does - and that's courts, the entire FSB, whole departments of the MVD, large swaths of the education system and regional governments, really need to be gutted and replaced by new people, old ones only allowed back after thorough examination of their track record. >Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. This is an opinion, and it's not supported by facts. Poland is not that small, more than 1/4 the population of Russia, and their lustrations worked very well. No living person there had any memory of democracy at the time they happened. >Want an example? Iraq. The US Army purged all the BAATH members from the new government, replacing them with new people who were inexperienced in day-to-day administration. And then all those exceedingly nice and newly-jobless ex-BAATH-ists went and formed the core of ISIS. Way to conflate civic lustrations with a war, and by total destruction by a superpower onslaught at that.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > Not gutting the machine that does - and that's courts, the entire FSB, whole departments of the MVD The FSB _itself_ needs to be split and de-powered. There should never be a state organization with this amount of power. However, people who were working there should not just be blindly purged. This way you end up with the Iraq scenario. From the practical standpoint, FSB also contains border guards, law enforcement departments, counter-terrorism, etc. They are all needed in a normal state. Instead, there should be _personal_ prosecutions of people responsible for political persecution and for the illegal foreign operations that started the war. This is probably far less than 10000 people. > Poland is not that small, more than 1/4 the population of Russia, and their lustrations worked very well. Their version was pretty mild, and even then had problems with false documents used to libel even Lech Walesa. > No living person there had any memory of democracy at the time they happened. Poland was occupied in 1939, so people who were 20 at that time were 70 by 1990. > Way to conflate civic lustrations with a war, and by total destruction by a superpower onslaught at that. That's another argument: you probably won't even _have_ a chance to do a massive purge (never mind if it's a good idea or not). But reforms are a possibility.
    - jojobas 2y ago
      Yeah, cause de-powering and splitting the OG KGB totally worked. Personal prosecutions by the compromised prosecutors and courts won't work either. The war is only the tip of the iceberg, an external manifestation of absolute corruption.
- aguaviva 2y ago
  Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. I don't see one can look at recent history and come to support this view. The lustrations in the former Warsaw Pact countries, and denazification (such as it was) in Germany after WW2 seem to have worked well enough, and to have been crucial enablers of the process of democratic transition in these countries (having had very little history of democracy as such until that point). If anything West Germany suffered from not being sufficiently robust in its denazification process until far too late. Of course, such purges should never be simply imposed from the outside, on the heals of an invasion which should have never happened anyway, which is the key reason why de-Ba'athification failed so miserably in Iraq.

cyberax 2y ago

> This functional bureaucracy is 100% compromised by the parallel power structure, "Putin's Vertical". Nope, it actually works well within it. I'm talking about the bureaucracy that ensures that the water is running, people can get driving licenses, register real estate deals, etc. All the "boring" stuff that keeps the country working. > Russia didn't to the "lustrations" that Poland, Czechia, East Germany and some other countries did, and the Hydra survived. Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. Want an example? Iraq. The US Army purged all the BAATH members from the new government, replacing them with new people who were inexperienced in day-to-day administration. And then all those exceedingly nice and newly-jobless ex-BAATH-ists went and formed the core of ISIS. Historically, lustrations worked well only in smaller countries where everyone knew everyone through one or two handshakes, and that still had people who remembered living in a functional democracy.

jojobas 2y ago
>I'm talking about the bureaucracy that ensures that the water is running, people can get driving licenses, register real estate deals, etc. Maybe utilities and some other functions that are not related to how Putin enacts his political control can be spared. Not gutting the machine that does - and that's courts, the entire FSB, whole departments of the MVD, large swaths of the education system and regional governments, really need to be gutted and replaced by new people, old ones only allowed back after thorough examination of their track record. >Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. This is an opinion, and it's not supported by facts. Poland is not that small, more than 1/4 the population of Russia, and their lustrations worked very well. No living person there had any memory of democracy at the time they happened. >Want an example? Iraq. The US Army purged all the BAATH members from the new government, replacing them with new people who were inexperienced in day-to-day administration. And then all those exceedingly nice and newly-jobless ex-BAATH-ists went and formed the core of ISIS. Way to conflate civic lustrations with a war, and by total destruction by a superpower onslaught at that.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > Not gutting the machine that does - and that's courts, the entire FSB, whole departments of the MVD The FSB _itself_ needs to be split and de-powered. There should never be a state organization with this amount of power. However, people who were working there should not just be blindly purged. This way you end up with the Iraq scenario. From the practical standpoint, FSB also contains border guards, law enforcement departments, counter-terrorism, etc. They are all needed in a normal state. Instead, there should be _personal_ prosecutions of people responsible for political persecution and for the illegal foreign operations that started the war. This is probably far less than 10000 people. > Poland is not that small, more than 1/4 the population of Russia, and their lustrations worked very well. Their version was pretty mild, and even then had problems with false documents used to libel even Lech Walesa. > No living person there had any memory of democracy at the time they happened. Poland was occupied in 1939, so people who were 20 at that time were 70 by 1990. > Way to conflate civic lustrations with a war, and by total destruction by a superpower onslaught at that. That's another argument: you probably won't even _have_ a chance to do a massive purge (never mind if it's a good idea or not). But reforms are a possibility.
  - jojobas 2y ago
    Yeah, cause de-powering and splitting the OG KGB totally worked. Personal prosecutions by the compromised prosecutors and courts won't work either. The war is only the tip of the iceberg, an external manifestation of absolute corruption.
aguaviva 2y ago
Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. I don't see one can look at recent history and come to support this view. The lustrations in the former Warsaw Pact countries, and denazification (such as it was) in Germany after WW2 seem to have worked well enough, and to have been crucial enablers of the process of democratic transition in these countries (having had very little history of democracy as such until that point). If anything West Germany suffered from not being sufficiently robust in its denazification process until far too late. Of course, such purges should never be simply imposed from the outside, on the heals of an invasion which should have never happened anyway, which is the key reason why de-Ba'athification failed so miserably in Iraq.