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>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 an

>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.

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.