A Theory of Trump Kompromat

[kwassa]

A fascinating analysis from Adam Davidson in the New Yorker.

Alena Ledeneva, a professor of politics at University College London and an expert on Russia’s political and business practices, describes kompromat as being more than a single powerful figure weaponizing damning evidence to blackmail a target. She explained that to make sense of kompromat it is essential to understand the weakness of formal legal institutions in Russia and other former Soviet states. Ledeneva argued that wealth and power are distributed through networks of political figures and businesspeople who follow unspoken rules, in an informal hierarchy that she calls sistema, or system. Sistema has a few clear rules—do not defy Putin being the most obvious one—and a toolkit for controlling potentially errant members. It is primarily a system of ambiguity. Each person in sistema wonders where he stands and monitors the relative positions of friends and rivals.

Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the leading political thinkers in Russia, is known to be an adviser to Putin and well connected to the power structure. In a 2016 article in Foreign Affairs, he endorsed Ledeneva’s sistema framework. Many observers imagine Putin to be some all-powerful genius, Pavlovsky wrote, but he “has never managed to build a bureaucratically successful authoritarian state. Instead, he has merely crafted his own version of sistema, a complex practice of decision-making and power management that has long defined Russian politics and society and that will outlast Putin himself. Putin has mastered sistema, but he has not replaced it with ‘Putinism’ or a ‘Putin system.’ Someday, Putin will go. But sistema will stay.”

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If there truly is damaging kompromat on Trump, it could well be in the hands of Trump’s business partners, or even in those of their rivals. Trump’s Georgian partners, for example, have been in direct conflict with other local business networks over a host of crucial deals involving major telecommunications projects in the country. His Azerbaijani partners were tightly linked to Iranians who were also senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The work of Ledeneva and Darden suggests that Trump’s partners and their rivals would likely have gathered any incriminating information they could find on him, knowing that it might one day provide some sort of business leverage—even with no thought that he could someday become the most powerful person on Earth.

https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/a-theory-of-trump-kompromat

[Anon-C]

1. A fascinating piece. Surely we can all understand the optics of the Helsenki Summit

...as participants in this "sistema", and including US Intelligence and Law Enforcement; that Trump is under Putin's protection.

[Gothmog]

2. Putin has a great file on Trump that can be used at any time

[DetlefK]

3. I have read that russian law is intentionally vague and hard to comply with.

Would have to dig up the article.

The analysis was basically that russian law is nice in theory but very hard to 100% comply with, because it's entirely impractical or way too much effort in practice.
Example: The law that's supposed to do no more than shield children from homosexual "propaganda" is in practice so invasive and far-reaching that any content depicting homosexuality in a positive way is banned in Russia.

As such, everybody knowingly or unknowingly cuts a few corners here and there and calls it good enough.

Except, you are now a lawbreaker. And if the russian government wants to find a law you have broken, they will have no problems finding one. And now they have Kompromat on you.