TIME magazine has published a very interesting profile of Alexander Lebedev and his quest to reform Russia.  Robert Amsterdam is quoted in the excerpt below.

What is not simple is Russia. That quintessentially Russian query –
What is to be done? — continues to bedevil the Kremlin. The country is,
after all, falling apart. The price of oil is down sharply from its
high of $147 a barrel in July 2008. The markets have been badly shaken
by Putin’s attack on steel giant Mechel, the breakup of the oil
conglomerate TNK-BP (during which the Russians none-so-subtly squeezed
out their British partners), and last summer’s war with Georgia. And
then, of course, there’s the global financial crisis, which has hit
Russia particularly hard. On top of all the economic woes, there’s a
shrinking population, a military that remains something of a joke and a
problem with AIDS. Plus, you still can’t (or shouldn’t) drink a glass
of tap water in central Moscow.

All this has aroused Lebedev’s reformist zeal. More than ever, he
says, Russia needs an independent judiciary and legislature, a free
press, real elections, real political parties. The oligarchs, he says,
understand that the system cannot survive forever. They are scared and
looking for handouts. (At the top of the list is Oleg Deripaska, head
of investment firm Basic Element, which has interests in the aluminum,
energy and financial-services sectors among others, and recently
received a $4.5-billion infusion from the state.) “Once they found
themselves in trouble they started this sort of SOS signal, calling on
Putin’s door, ‘Give us the money,’ ” he says. Lebedev says he is not
receiving any government cash, and that the crisis and the bailouts are
only widening the chasm between the “first tier” of people who own (and
run) Russia and everyone else. “The first tier, this is where the
crisis happened. As far as the second tier of the country is concerned,
there could be no crisis because the crisis was there permanently, for
500 years.”

Russia’s problem, Lebedev thinks, is not Putin but the bureaucracy,
which is sprawling and antidemocratic, and stymies reform. “As far as
Putin is concerned, I’m not blaming it on him. I think he doesn’t see
it. These TV channels pocket billions of dollars in exchange for
flattering Putin.” Lebedev has hopes for Medvedev. He was impressed
with the President’s decision to meet with Novaya Gazetta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov and Gorbachev earlier this year, following the killing of yet another Novaya Gazetta
reporter. “Medvedev … said he’s a full supporter of the Gulag
Memorial project,” Lebedev says. (Memorial was the most important
human-rights group to emerge from the perestroika era. For
years it has pushed for a monument in the center of Moscow recalling
the victims of the gulag.) Putin, Lebedev says, would never back
anything that subtracted from the Soviet record. “I think Putin thinks
that this commemoration would spoil the everyday spirit,” Lebedev says.
“Stalin, for them, represents the state, and sometimes you can see
Putin as sort of — in that way.” 

But is Lebedev the reformer he sees himself as, or does he play
another role? “There’s a belief — and this existed in Soviet times –
that allowing a pressure valve of dissent and allowing certain voices
out there is important for legitimacy,” says Robert Amsterdam, a
Canadian attorney in London who has represented Khodorkovsky and
frequently blogs about Russia. “In a strange way, and whether or not
Lebedev is part of this, he may well be seen as a demonstration of the
regime’s legitimacy.” As long as he doesn’t “cross any of these
invisible lines, Lebedev may actually shield the Kremlin from further
criticism,” Amsterdam says.

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

• Grigory Pasko: Journalists Are Fleeing Russia - November 20th, 2009
• Evgeny Lebedev and the Londongrad Blues - November 20th, 2009
• The Obstacle of Pride - November 20th, 2009
• The Iron (Pipeline) Curtain - November 20th, 2009
• Yurgens: A Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is no picnic for Russia - November 20th, 2009