I recently saw an interesting segment on this whole thing on the News Hour on PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/july-dec03/russia_10-28.htmlPutin's "authoritarian drift"
MARGARET WARNER: Dmitri Simes, as you know Kremlin critics say this arrest was about a lot more than Khodorkovsky's financial dealings and that it was a sort of reflected what former CIA Director Jim Woolsey wrote about a month ago. He described it as Putin's authoritarian drift. Is there something to that?
DIMITRI SIMES: No. In order to have an authoritarian drift you presume democracy. In Russia we have a horrible system of corrupt capitalism and this system since Putin took over was raised on two columns....
MARGARET WARNER: Was what?
DIMITRI SIMES: Was raised on two pillars. One security people close to Putin, people from the former KGB and another group the oligarchs. Neither of them was really committed to democracy. What you see today is these two groups are going after each other and Putin increasingly attacking the oligarchs. One point: The Russian press, the Russian TV have described what has happened to Khodorkovky rather fully. There is certain freedom of the press in Russia at least so far.
MARGARET WARNER: What do you think about that, Professor Goldman, does this disclose his authoritarian bent?
MARSHALL GOLDMAN: I would say he's got the authoritarian bent. I'm a little nervous about it. Actually I would take issue with Dmitri about this. The Russian state television on Saturday really almost hid the fact that Khodorkovky had been arrested. The state channels show almost nothing but Putin on the news programs and later on get into some of these other issues. He's recently in this connection with the attack on Khodorkovky, they raided the offices and seized documents from one of the opposition political parties. There is gradually encroachment on these things. It's not that... here I would agree with Dmitri that Russia was really never a full blossoming democracy but the oligarchs have learned that if they attack Putin, they are indeed in trouble and two of them have already been sent overseas and if you look at the other members of the associates of Khodorkovky, two or three of them have already fled and the rest are trying to become members of the Dumas so they'll have political immunity