Russia. The outspoken silenced

Marginalising one of the few liberals left in the Kremlin

MEDIEVAL kings used to keep licensed jesters, whose function was to utter uncomfortable truths. Just so President Vladimir Putin has, since 2000, had at his side Andrei Illarionov, a talented free-market economist, as his top economic adviser. Until this week, he was also Mr Putin's personal representative (“sherpa”) for G8 summit preparations. Now he has been sacked from this second role, and he seems likely to be further marginalised in his first position as well.

Mr Illarionov has never been shy of making provocative comments, not least to foreign journalists. He hates the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which prescribes cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions: he once said that it “can generally be compared to fascism.” In a recent interview with The Economist, he insisted that it was theoretically possible for Russia's GDP to double within ten years, Mr Putin's declared goal, noting that other oil producers had managed it in the past. But he added that, now that Russia had ratified Kyoto (which he calls the worst decision of 2004), it was no longer practically possible. He also said that, whereas in the early Putin years the government's economic policies had contributed positively to growth, they were now contributing negatively. In particular, he criticised the government's long campaign against Yukos, which he praised as the best oil company in Russia.

Last week he took this criticism a stage further, saying that the forced sale of Yukos's oil-producing arm, Yuganskneftegaz, to Rosneft, a state-owned oil firm, constituted “expropriation of private property” and should take the prize for the “swindle of the year”. He added the broader charge that Russia had shifted, regrettably, to “an interventionist model of economic development, with...extremely incompetent intervention in economic life by state officials.” Yet even these comments might have been forgiven by the Kremlin, as they merely enlarge on things the maverick economist has said before.

What was new was Mr Illarionov's verdict on Ukraine. He openly welcomed the orange revolution that has led, eventually, to the election of Victor Yushchenko as Ukraine's president. And he added a warning that Russia might itself be heading for a similar revolution, thanks to what he called the “ongoing destruction...of the whole range of civic institutions”. He cited as examples of this destruction the mass media and Russia's democratic institutions. Even a licensed jester cannot, it seems, be permitted to utter such uncomfortable political truths.

President Putin has marginalised one of the few remaining economic liberals in the Kremlin, Andrei Illarionov.

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