We define the present-day socioeconomic order as a corporative, oligarchic structure that is still based on Soviet monopolies.“Corporative” means that the government represents above all the interests of narrow corporations, and not the majority of Russia’s citizens. This system is being reproduced on the regional level, and there, depending on the region and its potentials, is building up its own narrowly corporative groups who not only aspire to, but in fact are exercising, political and consequently economic power.

Russia today stands at a fork in its road. The vital question is: which turn will Russia take given that communism is no longer an option - that issue was irreversibly decided in the 1996 election. Russia either stays on its current  path  to  become a corporatist, criminalist, oligarchic, old Latin  American-style  democracy and society; or alternatively, Russia  will take the fork in the road and turn up the   more  difficult, painful road toward a normal Western style democracy and market economy.

In sum, Russian democracy still has a long way to go. True, elections are held, freedoms are respected, parties exist, and the media express divergent views, but such minimum democratic institutions exist in both Latin American and Western democracies. Russia is better off with its imperfect institutions than without them, but they do not yet properly reflect the people's needs and will.

At the end of last week the Yabloko faction adopted an open letter to Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. We thought that it would find its way into the newspapers. Unfortunately, this did not happen. The text was not published, only accounts spiced in this form or the other by journalists' commentaries appeared. I request that Obshchaya Gazeta publish, if possible, the full text so that the President have an opportunity to familiarize himself with it. We are interested in this case in B.N. Yeltsin's response to the appeal to him, not journalists' commentaries. 

``In Russia only an idiot would make predictions,'' he said. ``I've been in politics for 10 years, which is the entire time that politics have existed in Russia. It's exactly because I've been in politics for 10 years that I can say my partners' positions change very often.''

We have a totally authoritarian constitution at the moment -- in other words, a constitution under which all rights and all powers are concentrated in the President.  If he does not focus on certain issues, they remain completely unaddressed.  This decision to put Chernomyrdin forward, it was obvious that this was incorrect because he would not be approved.  Without getting into what this was all thought up for, once it became clear that it would not work, he needed quickly to take other decisions that would not stop him being President, but in the current situation he has simply paralysed the entire political and economic process.  That is a real problem.

I believe Russia needs a different president.  A different president, not Yeltsin, should be elected in a general election.  As for the possibility of President Yeltsin leaving his post early, it is not up to me to make a decision.  This issue should be decided either by the President himself -- and we have heard his reply to this question many times -- or by the citizens, the people of the Russian Federation.

"We support Mr Primakov because he is a solution to Russia's political crisis. But we are not going to keep silent about what is going on inside the cabinet. Corruption can determine who gets what position. My people inside the government tell me you can buy offices for money." 

...Yavlinsky comes at it creatively: "America has a right to missile defense against terrorism, as does Europe, of which Russia is a part." He proposes a non-strategic missile defense in cooperation with NATO, capable of shooting down  fewer than 100 missiles, thereby providing an umbrella against terrorist attack without destabilizing the Russian-American standoff. That would finesse the impasse and ease ratification of Start II's reductions...