While ordinary Chabadniks often describe Vladimir Putin as an evil thug, the Chabad leadership basks in its relationship with him. This contradiction has complex roots.
In the beginning the mainstream Jewish community in post-Soviet Russia was dominated by the Russian Jewish Oligarchs, who are a sort of mutant spinoff of Friedmanite Neoliberals (a gross simplification) and who for the most part became enemies of the Putin's policy of bringing privatized former Soviet state corporations back under governmental control.
Read full story
