Rereading my recent Moscow Times columns, I find that their negative tone conveys a wrong impression. Actually, I believe that the decade since Vladimir Putin became prime minister has been Russia’s Golden Age. I’m eager to set the record straight — not only because it is August, often a calamitous month in Russia, but also because troubling signs, ranging from the worsening economic crisis to increasingly brazen political murders, are multiplying.
Over the past 10 years, Russia has prospered. Consumers have not had as wide a choice of goods and services — which they can also afford to buy — since 1913. Oil wealth may not have been divided equitably or used rationally, but money has trickled down, at least in Moscow.
By the standards of the recent past, Russians have been remarkably free. There are no limits on foreign travel, and everyone can maintain contacts with foreigners without fear. Aside from the main television channels, journalists can generally write whatever they wish and criticize and ridicule even topmost officials. There is religious freedom and no ideological line that artists and writers must toe. Access to the Internet remains unrestricted.
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