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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 29-Dec-04
Yukos nationalization may set the pattern for Russia in 2005

Web Log - December, 2004

Yukos nationalization may set the pattern for Russia in 2005

There was more high comedy last week, as the Kremlin completed the nationalization of the major assets of oil giant Yukos.

Forced into bankruptcy by the Kremlin, Yukos auctioned off its major asset, a subsidiary called Yuganskneftegas, two weeks ago. The financial world was shocked to learn that the auction was won by the previously unknown Baikal Finance Group, which was evidently a neighborhood liquor store, in a village 100 miles from Moscow.

Well, surprise, surprise! Baikal turns out to be a front for a Kremlin-owned oil company Rosneft. And Rosneft had already been scheduled to merge with Gazprom -- the company that outside observers had expected to win the Yukos auction!

So now we're going to have new oil giant, consisting of Yukos' former subsidiary Yuganskneftegas, combined with Rosneft and Gazprom.

It's pretty obvious that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been planning something like this all along, as soon as he jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky last year for political reasons.

But there's more, oh so much more. Who's going to be in charge of the newly merged oil collossus? None other than Putin's number two man, hard-core security advisor Igor Sechin.

Now get this: Sechin's daughter recently married the son of Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, who is in charge of the case that drove Yukos to bankruptcy!!

So Putin not only managed to nationalize Yukos, but he even kept it all in the family!

This is all really vile stuff, of course, but it shows how skillful Putin is, and how ruthless he is in taking any assets he pleases. As I've previously said, there's little doubt in my mind that he's going to bring the same steely determination to making sure that Ukraine's resources don't slip out of his hands.

When I first wrote about Yukos last July, I said that it appeared that Putin planned to nationalize Yukos, because it looked like he was following the example of Nicolai Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) when he confiscated the immense wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.

The reason that I was right about Putin and Yukos, when other commentators were wrong, is that I used the correct type of historical analogy.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, when you're making any sort of historical comparison, you must compare only to previous periods at the same point in the generational cycle. Thus, Russia is in a crisis period today, and I made a historical comparison to Russia's previous crisis period.

Every day you can see a lot of nonsense on television and in newspapers because journalists, pundits, and high-priced analysts keep comparing America and Iraq today to America and Vietnam in the 1960s. That's why they make one dumb mistake after another in their predictions. America is in a crisis period today, and was in an awakening period in the 1960s; Iraq is in an awakening period today, and Vietnam was in a crisis period in the 1960s. There is absolutely nothing comparable about America today and America in the 1960s.

I've successfully compared America today to America's last crisis period, World War II. For example, that's why I've been predicting with certainty for over two years that there would be no anti-war movement, and there hasn't been one. You can easily see how comparable the two periods are when you realize that America locked up innocent Muslims after 9/11 in exactly the same way that America locked up innocent Japanese during World War II. This is no mere coincidence; it's how nations and societies act during crisis periods.

I've also successfully compared Iraq today to 1960s America -- something that works because those were both awakening periods.

And if you want to know what's going to happen in Iraq, then please, stop comparing it to El Salvador in the 1980s, as I heard several politicians do on this past Sunday morning's news shows.

Instead, compare Iraq today to Iraq's last awakening period, the mid to late 1940s. That's a valid historical comparison to make.

Returning now to Russia and Putin, if you want to do historical comparisons, then the best place is to continue to compare Putin to Lenin in 1917. Lenin's brutal policies are in Russia's blood, and are certainly in Putin's blood. I'm told there's an old Russian saying, "If they don't know what to do - then they do what they know," and that certainly applies here. (29-Dec-04) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 29-Dec-04 Yukos nationalization may set the pattern for Russia in 2005

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 29-Dec-04
Yukos nationalization may set the pattern for Russia in 2005