Robert Amsterdam

From the postscript to “Putin’s Russia”, by Anna Politkovskaya, murdered Saturday in Moscow:

Yes, stability has come to Russia. It is a monstrous stability under which nobody seeks justice in lawcourts which flaunt their subservience and partisanship. Nobody in his or her right mind seeks protection from the institutions entrusted with maintaining law and order, because they are totally corrupt. Lynch law is the order of the day, both in people’s minds and in their actions. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The President himself has set an example by wrecking our major oil company, Yukos, after having jailed its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin considered Khodorkovsky to have slighted him personally, so he retaliated. He not only retaliated against Khodorkovsky himself but went on to seek the total destruction of the goose that laid golden eggs for the coffers of the Russian State. Khodorkovsky and his partners have offered to surrender their shares in Yukos to the government, begging it not to destroy the company. The government has said, “No. We want our pound of flesh.”