Whether it was necessary for Prime Minister Putin to give a public flogging, in front of TV cameras, to the head of Mechel, Igor Zyuzin, who was not in attendance because of illness, and then, unperturbed by the fact that it had caused a slump in the stock market, continue the public flogging, is a question that cannot be answered by simply saying that Zyuzin had done something wrong.
I agree that he had, but the vehemence of the attack did not strike me as proportionate. Personal verbal flogging by a high official only makes sense if it is directed at some inveterate evil against which all regular mechanisms are powerless. For example, the head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was charged with tax evasion and with directly threatening important persons who had tried to put a stopper on it, along with bribing Duma deputies. That went hand in hand with charges of exorbitant political ambitions. Besides, Khodorkovsky was Russia's richest capitalist, which lent credence to claims that he was ready to bribe all and sundry.
Even by the wildest flight of imagination nothing similar could be laid at Zyuzin's door. That is why one can't help recalling the proverb about firing cannon at sparrows. Likewise, one can't help feeling some unease: What is the use of hard-won stability if a run-of-the-mill capitalist has to be cut down to size, like in 2003, by such public displays? And whatever happened to the routine methods that should apply in such cases? Remember the scene: "The national leader comes out of the tent. His eyes are shining. His face is terrible. His movements are quick. He is beautiful." An impressive scene, but if you regularly make such an entrance over every small matter, the impact of the gesture may wear off.
One may of course object, first, that we are all only human and are susceptible to fits of bad temper, and Mechel had fiddled with transfer pricing so much that it was only fair to give it a public flogging. Second, the flogging may have been a political ploy. Such gestures used to go down well with the citizens, so why not try it again?
Granted, the possible reasons are temper coupled with political expediency, but in displaying wrath in public one should not forget about the economy. For example, the stock exchange tends to have a knee-jerk reaction to such statements. Shares begin to fall. One can teach business lessons in civic responsibility and other wonderful things, but it is impossible to make it buy securities at the old price in the context of uncertainty created by such thunderous statements. As long as purchase and sale is free, the market agent prefers to wait and see. Given the general economic instability, abrupt actions and even remarks may trigger an undesirable chain reaction.
The capitalist (who is also a market agent) is a nervous animal, and it hardly makes sense to provoke him to panicky conclusions and actions without dire need, and in the event the need was not obvious. For example, the financial authorities are regularly reviled - with good reason - both in this country and in the world. On the one hand, they are fond of optimistic lies, on the other they sometimes have an iron hand in a velvet glove. They take severe measures all the time without extra publicity. Perhaps that is the only way to act. Working with markets professionally they know that the stock exchange is a nervous mechanism; one should watch words carefully and shouldn't always say everything out loud. The restrictions that finance ministers and central bank presidents impose on themselves apply to prime ministers too.
By Maxim Sokolov