Terrific London Review of Books piece by Perry Anderson…

Putin’s authority derives, in the first place, from the contrast with the ruler who made him. From a Western standpoint, Yeltsin’s regime was by no means a failure. By ramming through a more sweeping privatisation of industry than any carried out in Eastern Europe, and maintaining a façade of competitive elections, it laid the foundations of a Russian capitalism for the new century. However sodden or buffoonish Yeltsin’s personal conduct, these were solid achievements that secured him unstinting support from the United States, where Clinton, stewing in indignities of his own, was the appropriate leader for mentoring him. As Strobe Talbott characteristically put it, ‘Clinton and Yeltsin bonded. Big time.’ In the eyes of most Russians, on the other hand, Yeltsin’s administration set loose a wave of corruption and criminality; stumbled chaotically from one political crisis to another; presided over an unprecedented decline in living standards and collapse of life expectancy; humiliated the country by obeisance to foreign powers; destroyed the currency and ended in bankruptcy. By 1998, according to official statistics, GDP had fallen over a decade by some 45 per cent; the mortality rate had increased by 50 per cent; government revenues had nearly halved; the crime rate had doubled. It is no surprise that as this misrule drew to a close, Yeltsin’s support among the population was in single figures.

Against this background, any new administration would have been hard put not to do better. Putin, however, had the good luck to arrive in power just as oil prices took off. With export earnings from the energy sector suddenly soaring, economic recovery was rapid and continuous. Since 1999, GDP has grown by 6-7 per cent a year. The budget is now in surplus, with a stabilisation fund of some $80 billion set aside for any downturn in oil prices, and the rouble is convertible. Capitalisation of the stock market stands at 80 per cent of GDP. Foreign debt has been paid down. Reserves top $250 billion. In short, the country has been the largest single beneficiary of the world commodities boom of the early 21st century. For ordinary Russians, this has brought a tangible improvement in living standards. Though average real wages remain very low, less than $400 dollars a month, they have doubled under Putin (personal incomes are nearly two times higher because remuneration is often paid in non-wage form, to avoid some taxes). That increase is the most important basis of his support. To relative prosperity, Putin has added stability. Cabinet convulsions, confrontations with the legislature, lapses into presidential stupor, are things of the past. Administration may not be that much more efficient, but order – at least north of the Caucasus – has been restored. Last but not least, the country is no longer ‘under external management’, as the pointed local phrase puts it. The days when the IMF dictated budgets, and the Foreign Ministry acted as little more than an American consulate, are over. Gone are the campaign managers for re-election of the president, jetting in from California. Freed from foreign debt and diplomatic supervision, Russia is an independent state once again…

The Reformation was sparked by Martin Luther’s revolt against the corrupt sale of ‘indulgences’ by the Catholic church. (An indulgence was the remission by the pope of the punishment in purgatory that was due for sins even after absolution.) The basic idea was that affluent sinners could purchase remission from the church’s salesforce. (See illustration, which shows the business in action.) It was a great racket because, of course, the punters would never know whether the goods were valid or not.

Spool forward a few centuries and we have a new form of indulgence — carbon offsets. Basically, these allow affluent air-travellers to ease their consciences by making contributions to companies which claim to run projects for offsetting carbon dioxide emissions (like planting trees in tropical countries). Since the beneficial effect — if any (there is some controversy about that) — will materialise long after the offsetter has passed away, the offset business looks like a hustler’s dream. Now the Blair government is so concerned about the matter (possibly because Blair recently discovered the political necessity of offsetting his family’s holiday flights) that it proposes to establish a ‘Gold Standard’ for offset schemes.

Just think: if medieval popes had come up with the same wheeze they would have shot Luther’s fox and the Reformation might have fizzled out.

Later: This nonsense may be contagious. It’s being reported that one of Dave Cameron’s policy groups is talking about tradeable fat permits as a way of combatting obesity.

Novelist Zadie Smith had a terrific essay in last Saturday’s Guardian Review. For one so young, she writes with astonishing poise and maturity. Sample:

In preparation for this essay I emailed many writers (under the promise of anonymity) to ask how they judge their own work. One writer, of a naturally analytical and philosophical bent, replied by refining my simple question into a series of more interesting ones:

I’ve often thought it would be fascinating to ask living writers: “Never mind critics, what do you yourself think is wrong with your writing? How did you dream of your book before it was created? What were your best hopes? How have you let yourself down?” A map of disappointments – that would be a revelation.

Map of disappointments – Nabokov would call that a good title for a bad novel. It strikes me as a suitable guide to the land where writers live, a country I imagine as mostly beach, with hopeful writers standing on the shoreline while their perfect novels pile up, over on the opposite coast, out of reach. Thrusting out of the shoreline are hundreds of piers, or “disappointed bridges”, as Joyce called them. Most writers, most of the time, get wet. Why they get wet is of little interest to critics or readers, who can only judge the soggy novel in front of them. But for the people who write novels, what it takes to walk the pier and get to the other side is, to say the least, a matter of some importance. To writers, writing well is not simply a matter of skill, but a question of character. What does it take, after all, to write well? What personal qualities does it require? What personal resources does a bad writer lack? In most areas of human endeavour we are not shy of making these connections between personality and capacity. Why do we never talk about these things when we talk about books?

But in the middle of this remarkably elegant, thoughtful and articulate essay, there is a surprising lapse:

But before we go any further along that track we find TS Eliot, that most distinguished of critic-practitioners, standing in our way. In his famous essay of 1919, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, Eliot decimated the very idea of individual consciousness, of personality, in writing. There was hardly any such thing, he claimed, and what there was, was not interesting. For Eliot the most individual and successful aspects of a writer’s work were precisely those places where his literary ancestors asserted their immortality most vigorously. The poet and his personality were irrelevant, the poetry was everything; and the poetry could only be understood through the glass of literary history. That essay is written in so high church a style, with such imperious authority, that even if all your affective experience as a writer is to the contrary, you are intimidated into believing it.

Smith has fallen into the trap of using ‘decimate’ as a synonym for ‘obliterate’ or ‘destroy’. What it actually means is “removal of a tenth”, the distinctive form of punishment meted out to mutineers in Roman legions. I’m wearily accustomed to journalists misusing the term. But it’s a shock to find someone as erudite as Ms Smith doing it.

Nobody’s perfect, alas. But it’s the only flaw in her lovely essay.

… is back in the UK — working as DFID’s Director of Global Development Effectiveness. Interesting job title. Wonder what it means. Anyway, it’s nice to have him on this side of the pond.