A lecturer said Monday that Russia’s politics is defined by three moral failings: corruption, an undemocratic mentality and a lack of democratic safeguards – and that undemocratic mentality has led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths.

“It’s reverting to the traditional Russian mentality to not view the individual, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end,” said David Satter, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

The government, he said, had little regard for the lives of civilians.

“The most chilling, in my view, example of the mentality is the school that was seized by terrorists in Beslan. In the fighting that followed, more than 300 people were killed, and the majority of them were children, and most of them were burned alive,” Satter said.

He said the Russians opened fire, using flame-throwers and grenades in a hallway filled with hostages.

“I don’t think there’s a single civilized country that would open fire on a hall full of hostages, particularly children under these circumstances,” Satter said. “What we have is a situation in which the instability of Russia is compounded by the fact that the regime is not afraid to use the most brutal means possible to suppress threats to its power.”

Satter said the circumstances of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power spotlighted a Soviet mentality of the government.

“I think that we’re all aware that Russia has elected a new president, Dmitri Medvedev, a longtime associate of Vladimir Putin, but events surrounding the election of this new president are very puzzling,” Satter said.

Satter said the elections were suspicious because of Medvedev’s close ties to Putin and because Putin’s United Russia party controlled media coverage of the elections. After Putin endorsed Medvedev for president, Medvedev promised to appoint Putin prime minister if he was elected.

“Putin has been responsible for Medvedev’s career. Medvedev hails from the same milieu in St. Petersburg where Putin is from. The assumption is that Medvedev is a figurehead,” Satter said.

Satter said Russia’s parliamentary elections confused people because Putin’s name was at the top of the ballot for the United Russia party. Some saw Putin’s name as a simple endorsement of the party, but Putin used the vote to say the people of Russia wanted him to be “leader of the nation.”

“There’s nothing in the Russian Constitution for a leader of the nation. It provides for a president and a prime minister, but not for a leader of the nation. But the press made it clear that the election of United Russia, with Putin at the head of the list, made him the national leader,” Satter said.

Satter said the press was controlled by United Russia party officials, who typically do not have to campaign to stay in power.

“It’s a very strange party. They don’t seem to have any political positions; they certainly don’t debate their political positions,” he said. “They have control over what are called administrative resources [including meeting rooms, automobiles and the press].”

Satter said Putin’s and United Russia’s political maneuvering was an outgrowth of the unstable morality of Russian culture.

“Russia has three problems with moral character,” Satter said.

One of these problems, he said, is the lack of respect for individuals, as illustrated earlier; another is corruption, which has been tolerated because a spike in oil revenue meant there was more money to go around.

“In 1998, oil was selling for $9 a barrel; recently, it reached $110 a barrel. Under those circumstances, the windfall profits of Russia, which fell upon the regime like manna from heaven, amounted, during Putin’s regime, to something like $500 billion, a profit that is solely attributed to the price of oil,” Satter said.

He said almost all of the corruption in Russia is based on payoffs to government officials because huge amounts of wealth are funneled through the government.

“[Another] moral factor is a regime which has systematically eliminated the normal safeguards of a democratic society such as a free press, nongovernment organizations, a functioning parliament, an independent judiciary, an independent prosecutor service, independent business. It doesn’t have the means of settling disputes,” Satter said.

He said one of the reasons Putin has been so popular is his ability to settle disputes between government factions.

“That has been the key to his success [and] that’s why so many people wanted to keep him for a third term. But now a new factor has been added – a new person in higher authority – how will the system function now,” Satter said.

Satter said the moral problems he identified were the reason there was no great hope for a democratic future in Russia.

“Only when the individual is recognized for its value can we hope to see a change in Russia’s political and social dynamic and new hope for the future. In the meantime, we face a country that is fundamentally unstable in its nature,” Satter said.