A Step At A Time

Masha Gessen, writing about a new Kremlin youth movement:

Imagine for a minute that in some country other than Russia -- say, in the United States, or in Britain -- there appeared a political organization that called itself "Us." Not U.S. as in the United States, not Us as in Us Magazine, but Us as in "us vs. them." Imagine further that this is an organization that supports, and is evidently supported by, the country's current government. Now imagine the hue and cry, the outrage of all the righteous people who argue that an organization that openly divides its own country into those who are "us" and those who are "them" is despicable -- and a government that supports and even inspires the use of the rhetoric of war against its own citizens is criminal.

Welcome to Russia. A group calling itself "Nashi" held its first congress at a resort hotel outside of Moscow on Saturday. The word nashi, which literally means "ours," references Soviet movies about World War II. It's an inspired choice: On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, 1940s patriotism is the only sort that virtually all Russians are willing to own. Nashi is the sort of word that one used in describing a battle scene in one of those movies -- "Nashi just bombed the hell out of them" -- when there could be no question of where the viewer's loyalties lay. Nashi is also the kind of word one can apply to a sports game -- but only, tellingly, when a Russian team is playing a foreign one. In other words, the most accurate translation of Nashi is Us.

The rest of Masha Gessen's article is here

You never believed in the meaning of this world, and you therefore deduced the idea that everything was equivalent and that good and evil could be defined according to one’s wishes. You supposed that in the absence of any human or divine code the only values were those of the animal world – in other words, violence and cunning. Hence you concluded that man was negligible and that his soul could be killed, that in the maddest of histories the only pursuit for the individual was the adventure of power and his only morality, the realism of conquests. And, to tell the truth, I, believing I thought as you did, saw no valid arguments to answer you except a fierce love of justice which, after all, seemed to me as unreasonable as the most violent passion.

Where lay the difference? Simply that you readily accepted despair and I never yielded to it. Simply that you saw the injustice of our condition to the point of being willing to add to it, whereas it seemed to me that man must exalt justice in order to fight against eternal injustice, create happiness in order to protest against the universe of unhappiness. Because you turned your despair into intoxication, because you freed yourself from it by making a principle of it, you were willing to destroy man’s works and to fight him in order to add to his basic misery. Meanwhile, refusing to accept that despair and that tortured world, I merely wanted men to rediscover their solidarity in order to wage war against their revolting fate.

Albert Camus, writing in 1943

More on the situation of Mari people in the Russian Federation, from UNPO
(Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation):

The irony is that Russia has now been caught in its own trap. The Maris say that Russia is abusing their human and cultural rights and they appealed for help to other Finno-Ugric peoples, including Estonians. Russia has constantly accused Estonia in violating the rights of Russian-speaking population. These accusations found no confirmation. All international commissions, including those of EU and OSCE, found no jamming of Russian-speakers.

Cultural rights of Russians in Estonia are better protected than those of Maris in Russia. Estonia has is a round-the-clock public radio programme in Russian, TV news in Russian, a number of Russian private radio stations and a Russian TV station. None of the organisations of minorities in Estonia have ever complained of any infringement of their civil or human rights.

This is a contrast to what takes place in the Russian Federation.

The situation of Mari cultural rights in Russia is pitiful. The TV and radio programmes in Mari language in the autonomous Republic of Mari El are reduced to a minimum. Only brief news on the TV and less that an hour of Mari radio broadcasting have remained.

The Russian propaganda war against the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - is a result of fear that the former colonies give a bad example to others by demonstrating rapid progress in contrast to their fading down under the Moscow rule. However, having raised attention to the issue of human rights by falsely accusing its neighbours, Russia was now accused by its own minority in bad practices of establishing the reign of terror for its minority peoples and eroding their cultures and languages.

The issue of violation of human rights of the Mari minority will now be examined at the European Parliament. Its commission on ethnic minorities and regional languages has included the issue of violation of human rights of Maris in its agenda.

The issues that the Mari minority complains about were touched on by U.S. President George W. Bush at his meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin but without precisely pointing at a specific nation. At the joint press conference following the meeting, the American President stressed:

"Democracies always reflect a country's customs and culture, and I know that. But democracies have certain things in common: they have a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press and a viable political opposition."

APPENDIX - Uninvestigated crimes against journalists and opposition leaders during the presidency in the autonomous Republic of Mari El of Leonid Markelov, a man openly contemptuous of democratic processes:

November 21, 2001: Aleksandr Babaykin, assistant chief editor of the opposition newspaper The Good Neighbors, is brutally killed in the centre of Yoshkar-Ola, the capital city of Mari El.

November 2001: Leonid Plotnikov, assistant chief of department of the publishing house Periodika Mari El, is killed.

November 2001: Aleksei Bakhtin, journalist of the regional newspaper, is killed.

March 12, 2002: Vladimir Maltsev, chief editor of the newspaper The Good Neighbors, is attacked in the evening and caused severe bodily injuries.

March 14, 2002: The door of the Vladimir Maltsev's apartment is poured over with fuel and put on fire by unknown persons.

August 14, 2004: a pogrom is made in the apartment of Valentin Matveyev, a public figure and author of critical articles in The Good Neighbors.

October 4, 2004: masked bandits, armed with weapons and acting in the name of the Department of Criminal Investigations, attack the apartment of an employee of the human rights organization Citizen And Law.

October 2004: journalist Vitaliy Igitov is attacked. Earlier, in personal conversations, Leonid Markelov called Igitov the man who had insulted him most.

January 7, 2005: correspondent of the Radio Liberty / Radio Free Europe Yelena Rogacheva is attacked.

February 7, 2005: Vladimir Kozlov, chief editor of the international Finno-Ugric newspaper Kudo+Kodu, Member of the Consultative Committee of the World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples and leader of the all-Russian movement of Mari people Mer Kanash, is attacked and severely beaten.

APPENDIX: The report of the Moscow-based Mari El Association requesting for international support

The Climax of Political Terror in Mari El 7 February 2005

An unprecedented hunting against the leaders of political opposition in the Republic of Mari El, Russia, has reached its climax. Vladimir Kozlov, chief editor of the international Finno-Ugric newspaper Kudo+Kodu, Member of the Consultative Committee of the World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples and leader of the all-Russian movement of Mari people Mer Kanash, was attacked and severely beaten yesterday.

See also: the Mari Page

ESTONIAN INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Tallinn, Estonia
phone +372 630 7477
fax +372 631 1239
e-mail ininst@nlib.ee


Dear cultural workers, human rights activists and politicians,

May we ask you to join this Appeal by signing it on the Internet page www.ugri.info/mari.

With regards,
Merle Haruoja
General Secretary


___________________________________

APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE MARI PEOPLE

We the representatives and friends of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the world call on the Russian authorities at all levels to take immediate steps to end the attacks on members of the democratic opposition in the Republic of Mari El. We urge international human rights organizations to join us in this cause.

In recent months, the local government of Mari El has done nothing to stop the rising tide of discrimination and attacks against the Mari people, thus creating the impression that it supports or may even be behind them. We note with regret that the authorities have done nothing to identify those who earlier this month attacked Vladimir Kozlov, editor-in-chief of the Finno-Ugric newspaper Kudo+Kodu and head of the all-Russian movement of the Mari people, Mer Kanash, beating him nearly to death.

The Mari people are an important part of the Finno-Ugric world, and this summer they are scheduled to host the next world congress of Finno-Ugric studies. Consequently, it is especially important now that the Russian authorities in Moscow and in Mari El do everything possible to end the abuse of the rights of the Maris.

21st of February 2005


Prof. Paul Goble, USA
Prof. John Hiden, United Kingdom
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Vice-President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament
Dr. Tytti Isohookana-Asunmaa, former Minister of Culture of Finland
Béla Jávorszky, former Ambassador to Finland and Estonia, Hungary
Prof. Kyösti Julku, Finland
Prof. Olavi Korhonen, Sweden
Mart Laar, MP, former Prime Minister of Estonia
Leena Laulajainen, writer, Finland
Dr. Lennart Meri, former President of Estonia
Mart Meri, Editor-in-Chief, Estonia
Pertti Paasio, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland
Prof. János Pusztay, Hungary
Prof. Raimo Raag, Sweden
Kari Rydman, composer, Finland
Prof. Pauli Saukkonen, Finland
Toomas Savi, MEP, former Speaker of the Parliament of Estonia
As. Prof. Tõnu Seilenthal, Estonia
Veljo Tormis, composer, Estonia
Riitta Uosukainen, former Speaker of the Parliament of Finland
Arvo Valton, writer, Chairman of the Association of Finno-Ugric Literatures
Prof. Kalevi Wiik, Finland
NB: OVER 3500 people have signed as of February 28, 2005
************************************************************

(via MAK)

Choosing freedom is not, as we are told, choosing against justice. On the other hand, freedom is chosen today in relation to those who are everywhere suffering and fighting, and this is the only freedom that counts. It is chosen at the same time as justice, and, to tell the truth, henceforth we cannot choose one without the other. If someone takes away your bread, he suppresses your freedom at the same time. But if someone takes away your freedom, you may be sure that your bread is threatened, for it depends no longer on you and your struggle but on the whim of a master. Poverty increases insofar as freedom retreats throughout the world, and vice versa. And if this cruel century has taught us anything at all, it has taught that the economic revolution must be free just as liberation must include the economic. The oppressed want to be liberated not only from their hunger but also from their masters. They are well aware that they will be effectively freed from hunger only when they hold their masters, all their masters, at bay.

Albert Camus, Bread and Freedom (1953), translated by Justin O'Brien.

Prague Watchdog has published my translation of an essay by Arlene Blum, entitled How They Hunted The Chechen Books. From the essay's opening paragraphs:

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings," wrote Heinrich Heine.

The poet’s maxim can be applied with justice to any totalitarian regime. As a matter of fact, these two processes often run parallel, and sometimes the second precedes the first: first the human being is destroyed, and then all traces of his existence, left in printed and written sources, are erased.

In the Soviet period a frightening technique was invented: first total genocide was declared, and then this was followed by “bibliocide” – the mass removal and subsequent destruction of whole editions of books and other national printed material.

An eloquent testimony to this is provided by the contents of the restricted access collections of the major libraries, which were given the name “spetskhran”, and attained colossal dimensions – up to half a million volumes. They mostly contained the books of forbidden authors – those who were declared to be “unpersons” and were subject to “vaporization”, if one recalls the terms used by the civil servants of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel 1984.

The Soviet spetskhrany, like the regime as a whole, were also distinguished by another feature: not only people, but also peoples, were subject to “vaporization”. As a result, all books bearing any relation to such “unnations” must be struck from memory. They were subject to destruction, with the exception of numbered copies left for the restricted access collections of the major book repositories.

I hope you'll take time to read the whole thing.

The PRIMA news agency reports an attack on human rights activists in St Petersburg:

RUSSIA, St. Petersburg. 18 February around 11 p.m. three unidentified men attacked the Memorial Research Centre in St. Petersburg. They brutally beat the duty member of Memorial’s staff Emmanouil Polyakov. A man of advanced years, he sustained serious injuries and may lose both his eyes.

Irina Flighe, director of the Memorial Research Centre told PRIMA-News correspondent that Emmanouil Polyakov remained without medical assistance for 12 hours until he was discovered on 19 February by a member of staff who turned up for work. The nature of his injuries indicates that he had been beaten mainly on the head and more than likely kicked.

The assailants broke into the safes and stole office equipment. Irina Flighe believes that the attackers knew that an elderly man would be on duty that night and that nobody would turn up there on Saturday morning. They also knew the outlay of the Research Centre’s premises, the director suggests.

Irina Flighe noted that this by far was not the first crime against human rights activists in the recent time. 14 August 2003 masked men attacked one of Memorial’s offices in St. Petersburg which also resulted in the theft of office equipment. Then the attackers were identified as they had visited the office earlier without masks to have a look around.

11 December Memorial Research Centre’s executive director Vladimir Shnitke was also attacked by unknown assailants.

19 June, Nikolai Ghirenko, an ethnologist who carried out expert analysis of publications that fuelled interethnic hatred, was killed in St. Petersburg.

Human rights defenders in St. Petersburg have been constantly involved with the issues of interethnic relations, they work to counter xenophobia and nationalism. Recently Memorial Research Centre and Centre for Antifascism headed by Memorial member Yuliy Rybakov announced an antifascist poster competition.

Irina Flighe is certain that their opposition to xenophobia is the most likely reason for the harassment of human rights activists and that the attacks are politically motivated. In the meantime, the authorities are ceaselessly trying to convince the public that such incidents are no more than acts of hooliganism. In the same way they call hooliganism nationalistic and racist crimes, she stressed.


Translated by Olga Sharp
PRIMA-News Agency [2005-02-21-Rus-24]

(Via justice4northcaucasus)

At Prague Watchdog, photos of the Prague rally in commemoration of the deportation of the Chechen people and in support of peace have now been posted.

Among the most telling slogans: "Silence on Evil is Creation of Evil".

The rally was addressed by Vaclav Havel, who said:

"I welcome and endorse your meeting to support resolving the Chechen conflict, based on respect for human dignity, liberty, and basic human rights. The only thing one can do is to continue appealing to the Russian government, stressing over and over again that they not prolong this historically deep-rooted suffering.

However, my appeal is not only directed toward the Russian representatives. I especially challenge the Czech and European politicians to take a clear stance against a government that is not resolving conflicts within its territory through political means, but with methods that no longer belong to developed countries in the 21st century."

A principal feature of The Dragons of Expectation is that it aims above all to examine current errors and distortions of history in so far as they affect our ability to perceive and interpret contemporary political and social phenomena. As the author remarks:

Thomas Jefferson wrote that education should be “chiefly historical”, on the grounds that we should learn the lessons of the past. In his day, “history” may have been partial or have been seen in a rather local perspective, but it was not falsified, and the themes of actuality were generally understood.

It is, for example, true to say that in the period following World War II the political Left of Europe and America was able to maintain credibility largely because of the perception, widely held, and not only on the Left, that the Soviet Communism was somehow less physically lethal and mentally or morally damaging than Nazism. This false perception was the result of “not fully abreacted distortions and even falsifications, and their acceptance by inadequately skeptical Western intellectuals.” The falsification entered into the realm of language, with a proliferation of “fine-founding general words”, the chief among which was “Revolutionary” – especially when referring to the cycle begun in Russia in October 1917.

Although the Bolshevik Revolution has been widely perceived for what it really was – a cynical coup which, in Conquest’s words, brought into being an “atavistic ideocracy”, an “empty sectarian mindset” and a “self-admitted…amorality of action”, the myth that it somehow represented a better alternative to the capitalist order of its time has still managed to vaguely persist in sections of the West’s intelligentsia, which is still hungry for “ideas-and-ideals”. For this unfortunate situation we also have to thank two of the best-known historians of the Revolution – Eric Hobsbawm and E.H. Carr – both of whom have been called “great”, or “good” historians, and each of whom has been regarded “as, to an important degree, the voice of a powerful section of the establishment.” While Carr is the more extreme case, in many ways accepting the Bolshevik Revolution as a “proletarian” overthrow of the bourgeois order, and the basis for a “planned economy”, Hobsbawm, while no longer representing the Revolution as wholly benign, still “holds it to be the crucial and critical event of the twentieth century.” While Conquest admits that there is a good case for such an interpretation, he suggests, rather sardonically, that “it is certainly of importance that [the Revolution] should be understood, and understood correctly.”

Far from being “made by the masses”, as Hobsbawm would have it, the Revolution found it hard to draw support even from its own supposed base: Lenin had great difficulty in getting his own Central Committee to back the seizure of power, “and reports from its own agents in the city districts spoke in most cases of a lack of enthusiasm for the coming revolution – as has been clear since the publication in Moscow of these reports in 1928.” Almost all the “proletarian” circles were pressing for socialist rather than Bolshevik rule, and no “mature” proletariat anywhere succumbed to “Leninism” – “indeed, the more settled section of the Russian working class – the railwaymen, the printers – were totally opposed to the Bolsheviks.”

There was an almost total lack of support even among the Bolsheviks themselves: On November 11, 1917, with Lenin and Trotsky absent, “the Bolshevik Central Committee… unanimously voted in favor of a coalition government.” It was only by playing for time, and waiting until the end of the month, when opposition had begun to fade, that Lenin was able to consolidate his power, create a Bolshevik government by means of political terror, and implement his “regime of the bayonet and the sabre”. There was still massive opposition to his rule, and the widespread strikes and demonstration were ruthlessly put down. In 1918, Lenin was almost overthrown by Social Revolutionaries, and was only saved by the intervention of Latvian regiments (the so-called “Latvian Riflemen”), as the Russian troops remained neutral.

Conquest sees the Western conception of the “proletariat” and its supposed involvement in the October Revolution, as an echo and inheritance from an earlier time – analogous to the idolatry of the “people”, which was the underpinning of the French Revolution and its adherents. Just as in the earlier revolution, the “people” often proved to be rather thin on the ground, so in 1917-18 “the party sought the proletarians in the provinces wherever it could find them.” Conquest quotes a passage from Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago:

In the first days, people like the soldier Panfil Palykh, who without any agitation hated intellectuals, gentry and officers brutally and rabidly, like deadly poison, seemed to be rare finds to the elated left-wing intellectuals and were greatly esteemed. Their total lack of humanity seemed to be a miracle of class-consciousness and their barbarism seemed an example of proletarian firmness and revolutionary instinct. This was what Panfil was famous for. He was in the good books of the partisan chiefs and the party leaders.

Conquest notes how even to this day, in books published by reputable academic presses, one can read sentences such as: “the Bolshevik Party was a product of idealistic, egalitarian and socially progressive strands in the Russian intelligentsia and working class.” He points to the misleading CNN documentary of 1999 (Cold War), which says of Lenin that “his socialist principles were meant to ensure decent education, free health care, common ownership of the land, and fairness for all under the tough guidance of the Bolsheviks.” And Conquest opens a window on the true motivations and attitudes of Lenin himself, who in his comment on the 1891-92 famine in Russia wrote: “psychologically, this talk of feeding the starving masses is nothing but the expression of saccharine-sweet sentimentality characteristic of the intelligentsia”. When Betrand Russell met Lenin when he was in power, he reported that “his guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold.”

See also: Dragons and Democracy
Dragons and Democracy - II
Dragons and Democracy - III
Dragons and Democracy - IV

Jeremy Page reports from Beslan that victims of last September's siege have been found in a rubbish dump:

At first it looked like any other rubbish dump — a few clothes, some old shoes, broken tables and chairs. But when residents of Beslan looked closer at the junk a mile outside their town this week, they made out clumps of hair and shreds of dried skin.

In a flash it dawned on them: Russian authorities had hurriedly cleared out Middle School No 1 after the siege ended on September 3 last year and dumped everything here in an abandoned quarry.

Within an hour of Tuesday’s discovery, relatives of the 331 victims descended on the grim pile to search for traces of their loved ones.

“First they let those bandits kill our children, then they let the dogs eat their bodies,” said Susanna Dudiyeva, head of the Committee of Beslan Mothers, who lost her 12-year-old son in the siege. “Why did they not tell us about it?” she asked The Times. “It should have been examined, then buried or burnt.”

The find is just the latest example of the insensitivity and incompetence with which federal and local authorities handled the terrorist siege and its aftermath. Yet, six months on, no senior official — in Moscow or North Ossetia — has resigned or been sacked.

The Government says that it is waiting for the results of an official investigation, expected next month. But victims’ relatives say that their patience has run out. In January a group of victims’ mothers blocked a major highway for three days, demanding the resignation of President Dzasokhov, the Kremlin-backed leader of North Ossetia. Last week they took their campaign to Moscow, where they issued an open letter to President Putin, again calling for Mr Dzasokhov’s resignation. Leading the campaign are two groups — the Committee of Beslan Mothers and the Committee of Beslan Teachers — founded in the siege’s aftermath to share grief and co-ordinate aid.

In the past two months they have become increasingly politicised, joining forces with families of victims of other terrorist attacks to try to change the culture of unaccountability that pervades the Government.

Not only do they blame Mr Dzasokhov for failing to prevent the 31 Chechen militants from taking 1,100 people hostage, they are still enraged that his spokesman repeatedly lied when he said that there were only 354 hostages and that they were being given food and water. “The Ossetian people have only one future under this President — the cemetery,” said Vissarion Aseyev, a deputy in the North Ossetian parliament who helps to run the Committee of Beslan Teachers. Like many Beslan residents he fears that Mr Dzasokhov will seek Kremlin approval to serve another term or install a successor of his choice. Either way North Ossetians will have no chance to vote him out of office as President Putin abolished elections for regional leaders after the siege. With the tacit support of the Kremlin, the Government has begun a campaign to discredit and intimidate the Beslan mothers

From: "IHF, Joachim Frank"
Date: Fri Feb 25, 2005 5:28 pm
Subject: Moscow: Young Chechen Woman Unfairly Sentenced to Jail Term. IHF Calls for Fair Appeal Proceedings


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Young Chechen Woman Unfairly Sentenced to Jail Term
IHF Calls for Fair Appeal Proceedings

Vienna, 25 February 2005. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) has written an Open Letter to leading Russian judicial, law-enforcement and human rights authorities about the case of Zara Murtazaliyeva (born 1983), who has been convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to a 9-year prison term. Independent observers have recorded that her trial in the Moscow City Court violated international standards of due process and Russian law and that the charges were fabricated.

A copy of the Open Letter is attached.

For more information:

Aaron Rhodes, IHF Executive Director, +43-676-635 66 12 (mobile)
Eliza Moussaeva, IHF Consultant, +43-1-408 88 22-21 (work)
Svetlana Gannushkina, chair of the ˜Civil Assistance" Committee; member of the council of the Human Rights Center ˜Memorial"; member of the Human Rights Commission of the President of the Russian Federation; +7-095-251 53 10 (work) or +7-095-105 91 45 (mobile)
______________________________________________


Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Vyacheslav Lebedev
Via facsimile +7-095-290 19 94
Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Ustinov
Via facsimile +7-095-921 41 86
Ombudsman of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Lukin
Via facsimile +7-095-207 76 30

O P E N L E T T E R

Vienna, 25 February 2005

Dear Sirs,

We kindly ask for your attention to the case of the young Chechen woman Zara Murtazaliyeva (born 1983), who was sentenced on 17 January 2005 to nine years in prison by the Moscow City Court after having been found guilty of charges of preparing to carry out a terrorist attack in Moscow; involving other people in the commitment of a terrorist act; and illegal acquisition and storage of explosive substances.

Murtazaliyeva`s defense lawyers as well as human rights defenders who monitored the trial are convinced that the charges against her have been fabricated. During the trial before the Moscow City Court, the prosecution was unable to give any evidence that would have substantiated any of the charges brought against her.

Background

In September 2003, Zara Murtazaliyeva, a part-time student of the Linguistic University of Pyatigorsk and resident of the Naurskiy district of the Chechen Republic, arrived in Moscow in order to find a job and help her family.

In December 2003, she was stopped on a Moscow street for a routine document check. In the police department where she was brought, the young woman met Said Akhmaev, an ethnic Chechen officer of the Moscow Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (UBOP). A few days later, Akhmaev visited her at her working place and offered her a room in a hostel for free. Shortly after that, Murtazaliyeva moved into this room together with her Russian friends Anna Kulikova and Darya Voronova, both of whom had converted to Islam. Later it was revealed that they were video- and audio-taped during the entire time they lived there, as the room offered by Akhmaev had been bugged with eavesdropping devices.


On 4 March 2003, Murtazaliyeva was stopped by the police again, this time near the metro station "Kitai-gorod", not far from the place where she worked (for an insurance company). She was brought to a Department of Internal Affairs (OVD) office on the other side of the city, at Prospekt Vernadskogo, allegedly to verify her identity. There they checked her documents and took her fingerprints. Then she was asked to wash her hands, which she did, leaving her bag behind her. When she returned into the room, the officers took a briquette with plastic explosives out of her bag. On this basis, the girl was put under arrest and criminal proceedings were instituted against her under Article 222 (storage and transportation of explosives). But no fingerprints were taken from the briquette and the explosives were destroyed during an ˜investigatory experiment".

When the room where the three young women had lived was searched, nothing was found except some photographs made by Murtazaliyeva and her girlfriends. Some of them were intended by the young women to show funny scenes on an escalator in the shopping mall "Okhotny Ryad". These photos were used as "evidence" that they had planned to bomb the underground shopping mall.

On 25 October 2004, the mother of Anna Kulikova, V.M. Kulikova, addressed human rights defender Svetlana Gannushkina and told her about the pressure exerted on her daughter by the investigators. When Kulikova and Voronova were summoned for interrogation, the investigators exerted strong pressure on the two women to testify that Murtazaliyeva had recruited them, involved them in terrorist activities and prepared for a terrorist act. They were warned that if they did not give the necessary testimonies they would be regarded as collaborators, although the information recorded on the cassettes contained only general discussions among the girls about Chechnya, war and Islam.

On 22 December 2004, the hearings started. The case was considered by Judge M.A.Komarova. At the first court session, Kulikova and Voronova retracted the testimonies against Murtazaliyeva given during the pretrial investigation.

Independent court monitors and journalists who attended the trial observed that Judge Komarova was biased against the girl from the beginning and was not interested in supporting the impartiality of the proceedings. She prohibited Murtazaliyeva`s defense lawyers to conduct an audio recording of the trial, thus depriving them of the possibility to make remarks to the contents of the protocols, for example on some missing or incorrectly recorded words or facts. This was done in violation of the criminal procedural code, which states that the agreement of the judge is not required for audio recordings. In addition, the judge denied all petitions of the defense to call additional witnesses to the trial, including Said Akhmaev, officer of the Moscow Directorate for Combating Organized Crime who had offered the free hostel to the three young women.

A Fabricated Case?

The text of the verdict read by Jdge Komarova is in fact a slightly modified indictment, thus entirely based on the prosecutor's version. At all times, Murtazaliyeva maintained her innocence. At the trial she said, "My only fault is that I have been born in this country-- that I have been born Chechen."

Initially, Murtazaliyeva was additionally charged with receiving training as a suicide bomber in a terrorist camp near Baku. However, after the Azerbaijan Embassy sent a protest against such statements to the Russian Foreign Ministry, this charge was dismissed. Another charge - that the then 11-year-old Zara Murtazaliyeva took part in the 1994-1996 war, was also dropped.

After the guilty verdict Murtazaliyeva`s lawyer launched an appeal of the decision by the first instance court within the regulatory 10 days, asking the Supreme Court to cancel the sentence and to send the case to be reviewed. On 10 March 2005 the appeal court (the second chamber) will examine the case in a hearing.

********

The IHF is concerned about all elements showing to the fact justice was not rendered in this case, and that the conviction to a 9-year prison term of a young Chechen woman is apparently based entirely on fabricated charges. We appeal to you to ensure that Murtazaliyeva receives a fair trial in the appeal proceedings.

Sincerely,

Dr. Aaron Rhodes (Executive Director)

Cc Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Alvaro Gil-Robles
Via facsimile +33-3-90 21 50 53



__________________________________________
Joachim Frank, Project Coordinator
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
Wickenburggasse 14/7
A-1080 Vienna
Tel. +43-1-408 88 22 ext. 22
Fax: +43-1-408 88 22 ext. 50
Web: http://www.ihf-hr.org

Let Putin apologize for Hitler-Stalin Pact, writes a Lithuanian historian.

tr. jjk 24-02-2005, last update 24-02-2005 20:53

Commentary by Alvydas Nikzentaitis, Director of the Institute of Lithuanian History, after Wednesday’s statement by the president of Russia that the USSR was forced to sign the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact by the earlier betrayal of the West at Munich.


Alvydas Nikzentaitis*

[passage omitted]

In speaking of World War II and condemning its perpetrator, Germany, the role of the USSR should not be forgotten. The USSR was the state which in a very decisive manner entered the war not on the side of the anti-Hitlerite coalition, but actually on the side of Germany. I have in mind not only the occupation of the Baltic countries, but first and foremost the annexation of the eastern part of Poland. In taking this step, the USSR simply helped Germany to finish off Poland as a state.

Any attempts to compare the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact with the Munich Agreement are almost a crime. In evaluating those two historic agreements, it is necessary to speak not only of their consequences, but also of the goals that guided them. If the Munich Agreement made maximum concessions to Germany, it was because it was assumed that this would prevent the aggressor from starting a world war. But the Soviet-German pact openly spoke of aggression against third countries and the partitioning of Central-Eastern Europe.

What advice could be given to President Putin? First and foremost, to take an example from Germany. And perhaps even from Lithuania? Germany clearly and explicitly apologized for the World War II - specially to Poland. There is also the good example of the former president Algirdas Brazauskas, who apologized in the Knesset for participation of Lithuanians in the Holocaust. Both steps were praiseworthy, well-considered, and very important. If Russia would act as the German chancellor and the president of our country acted sometime ago, I believe that no one would now be giving any thought to the question of whether to go to Moscow for the May 9 celebrations or not.

A sober look at Stalinist crimes, at the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, is needed not so much for ourselves as for Russian society, in which there are still positive opinions about Stalin. A society that is unable to defeat the past always remains on the flank of history. One might wish that President Putin would take this decisive step, thus defeating the Stalinist past.

*The author is a director of the Institute of Lithuanian History. This text is published today, Friday in the Lithuanian daily Lietuvos zinios.


(via Marius - translated from Polish)

As George Bush meets the Russian president in Bratislava today, it might be useful for him to remember the cast of mind and interpretation of history he is about to encounter, face to face:

February 22, 2005
Putin interviewed ahead of Bratislava
BBC Monitoring

In an interview with Slovak journalists ahead of his summit meeting with George Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin said relations with the USA were at an all-time high. He also rebuffed foreign criticism of the development of democracy in Russia, and compared the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to the Munich Agreement between Hitler and Chamberlain. The following is text of the interview as carried by
Russia TV as part of its "Vesti" news bulletin: subheadings have been inserted editorially.

[Presenter of Russia TV's "Vesti" bulletin] Prior to his visit to Slovakia, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin gave an extensive interview to that country's journalists. One key issue on the agenda is the Russian president's meeting with George Bush. The very first question was about Russian-American relations.

[Putin] We are working at meetings and we write to each other various letters and documents. We regularly talk on the telephone. We are in continuous contact, including personal contact and contacts at the level of heads of the main ministries and departments, at the level of heads of the security councils. We and the United States share a large joint workload in the sphere of the economy and in the area of international security, the struggle against terrorism. I think that we will perhaps speak about all these problems again, go back to them. In any case, there are many areas of mutual interest.

Meetings of this kind are always important, not just because they provide an opportunity to take stock of joint work over the previous period but also because they allow us to plan steps for the near future. It is true that the president of the United States has more than once called me a friend of his and I also consider him to be my friend. But we meet [George Bush] to get some work done, all the same. As for the fundamental relationship between Russia and the USA, I agree with the assessment of my American colleagues: it has never been as strong as it is now. The level of trust is very high, as is the level of cooperation on key issues of the modern world.

Foreign democracies not perfect

[Presenter] Recently certain Western politicians have raised the issue of the development of democracy in Russia. This was mentioned during the interview.

[Putin] Fourteen years ago Russia made her choice for democracy. This was not in order to pander to anybody else, but for herself, for our own country and our own citizens. Naturally, the fundamental principle of democracy and the institutions of democracy have to be adapted to the realities of modern Russian life, and to our traditions and history. And we will do this ourselves. In this respect we proceed on the basis that a well-meaning view from outside, even if it is a critical view, will not hinder us but can only help. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that even in the countries with so-called well-developed democracies, there are still plenty of issues and problems. Life goes on, and changes, and permanently presents us with new demands of the present day.

When in friendly conversation we point to certain problems like this in Western countries, as a whole, even obvious things, criticism of an obvious nature, obvious criticism, our partners answer that, well, we understand there is a problem there, but it just worked out that way and we all got used to it, and it would be better not to change anything. You know, there was a politician in Africa, President Bokassa, who was in a habit of eating his political opponents. Well, we are not saying, you know, this is the way it worked and let's not change anything. These are weak arguments. It should always be a bilateral dialogue of people concerned, a dialogue of friends. And we are ready for such a dialogue. But we are against using these problems as an instrument for achieving someone's foreign policy ambitions. Or, for making Russia into something amorphous in political terms in order to manipulate such a large and integral entity in international relations as our country.

Molotov-Ribbentrop pact a response to Munich

[Presenter] In connection with the forthcoming victory anniversary, foreign journalists were interested in Putin's views on attempts to re-write certain pages of the history of the Second World War.

[Putin] As far as those who are trying, or would like to rewrite history and reduce the importance of this event, are concerned, to diminish the part played by the Soviet Union and the Soviet Red Army in the victory over Nazism, we understand what events these attempts are related to. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is often being mentioned. At which, it is said, an agreement was reached between the Soviet Union and Hitlerite Germany, with subsequent annexation of the Baltic territories. What can one say to this? Everything has to be considered in the context of historical events. I would like then to ask you to return to the events of September 1938, when the well-known agreements between Nazi Germany and West European countries were signed in Munich - which later on were referred to as the "Munich pact".

I should also like to remind you that on the part of the Western allies, it was signed by Daladier of France and British Prime Minister Chamberlain. And on the other side, it was signed by Mussolini and personally by Hitler. The Russo-, or Soviet-German document was signed at a much lower level - at the level of foreign ministers - and a year later, in response to the signing by the Western countries of the agreement which today is called the Munich pact. I would also recall, and this would probably have a particular significance for you as Slovaks, that subsequently as a result of the Munich pact, Czechoslovakia was given to Nazi Germany to be ripped to pieces. And the Western partners in a way indicated to Hitler where he should go to satisfy his growing ambitions - to the east. In order to ensure its interests and its security on its western borders, the Soviet Union chose to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Germany.

If we look at the problem that is bubbling up today in this context, it looks entirely different. I would advise the new-found historians, or more precisely, those who want to rewrite history, that before rewriting it and before writing books, they should learn to read them.

(via Marius)

This is the fourth in a series of posts on Robert Conquest's book The Dragons of Expectation.

In the essay “Slouching towards Byzantium”, Conquest takes a look at the present day in the context of the past. Assuming that the enemies of the Western political order have, for the moment, been defeated, or at least contained, he asks, are there any other dangers that augur the possibility of a negative future? His answer is “unfortunately, yes.”

In Europe, far more than in America, the civic order is now under threat from centralizing trends which have their origin in post-Rousseau social and political thought and its implementation in political practice, which while it “liberated” the individual from communal ties, at the same time increased the dependence of individuals on the state. He quotes the conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), who, echoing Tocqueville, pointed to the error involved in this type of thinking: “Centrality of sovereignty does not lead logically to the centralization of administration in public affairs… Decentralization of administration is not merely feasible technically; it is a prime necessity of free culture.”

Unfortunately, Conquest continues, a convergence of interests between managerialist, technocratic conservatives and socialists theoretically committed to the state-centred model of government has led to the emergence of a body such as the European Union, which encourages the growth of “an ever more rigid bureaucracy and an ever more constricted mentality”:

One thinks of the classical world’s decline into Byzantium – and, for example, the closing of the Academy in Athens in 529 A.D. and the earlier abolition of the Olympic Games. It is doubtless unfair to take this well-known instance. And Byzantium was better than most polities of its time. But the mind, outside internecine theology, had by earlier standards fallen low, become desiccated. Instead of Aristotle, for example, we find synodic records described by Edward Gibbon as a mass of “nonsense and falsehood”. Nor was this mental decline offset by the exemplary codification of the law that accompanied it.

Conquest sees the long-term prospect offered by such intrusive and stultifying corporatism as “pink Fascism”:

There is no need of a monolithic party if the effective apparat is in general agreement, and makes the same assumptions. The totalitarian attempt to control all aspects of life was untenable in the long run. A far greater leeway on small matters, even disagreement on tactics, is much more viable.

Indeed, the Byzantium analogy, the essay suggests, may actually be inadequate and possibly even misleading: for “Brussels is not Byzantium”: the EU does not appear to be viable in the longer run. Its basis is the following:

1) It is an attempt, by a stratum that needs, and no longer has, a justificatory “Idea” like “Socialism”, to synthesize one.
2) It is an attempt to build a state from populations that have none of the qualifications for nationhood, neither historical nor ethnic.
3) It is an extravagantly expensive bureaucratic nightmare. In pursuit of a supposed high and even transcendent aim, it pursues a vast over-regulation of human life.
4) It is a project imposed from above, and maintained by misrepresentation.
5) It is divisive of the European culture, omitting the Europes overseas.

With the help of journalist, author and National Review editor David Pryce-Jones, Conquest describes the political and mental stultification induced by the bewildering structure of the EU, “in which there is no link between its institutions and the freedom they are supposed to ensure”:

At the apex are a president and twenty commissioners, appointed to office by national governments in a process invisible to the public. Not elected, they cannot be dismissed. The commission, and its subordinate councils of ministers drawn from national countries, have executive and legislative powers, and some judicial ones as well. These politicians are accountable to nobody but themselves. Here is the only legislative body in the democratic world that meets in secret.

With its “nearly thirty-thousand civil servants, spread over two hundred buildings, with about seven hundred standing committees” the Leviathan that is the EU claims the authority to regulate the lives of its victims, but is unable to regulate itself – the whole organization is riddled with corruption: several billion dollars of official funds go missing every year. The EU also represents connivance between bureaucracy and what Conquest calls “ochlocracy”, or mob rule – its tolerance for mass disruption and street violence is notorious. Examples range from protests on issues such as free railway passes to the large-scale anti-capitalist demonstrations of recent years. In relation to the latter, Conquest draws a parallel here with the National Socialists and Communists of the 1920s and 30s – in 1933 the Communist street fighters mostly went over to the Nazis, “doubtless partly by habit.”

Conquest sees the future of Europe as a bleak one. Above all, it is “the downgrading of the mind, the advance of political stultification” that is the real and enduring trouble – the EU is only a part of the problem, for the same trends can be observed on a global scale. Europe is, however, now the most vulnerable part of the developed world from this point of view. As an example of how countries can be ruined by their rulers, the author points to Argentina, where disaster was triggered by “rulers who became or remained popular by giving their subjects more than the country could afford.” He sees a similar scenario in present-day Germany.

The essay concludes on a warning note: as the section of society that is dependent on the state grows larger and larger, it becomes difficult for elected governments to maintain economic, and even social security:

The downward slope, unless interrupted, can scarcely lead to anything but corporatism. The only probable interruption would be due to the buildup of resentment against the system. That is to say, this etatism may itself produce the catastrophe from which it purports to save us. Let us hope we survive.

See also: Dragons and Democracy
Dragons and Democracy - II
Dragons and Democracy - III

From The Chechen Times - February 23, 2005

Today marks the 61st anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Chechen nation to Central Asia. This deportation fueled the Chechens’ collective sense of historical grievance, and is an important but often forgotten factor behind the ten year standoff between Moscow and the legitimate Chechen leadership. The Chechens have a 300 year history of sporadic resistance against first Tsarist, then Soviet, and now Russian power.

In 1942-43 the German army briefly occupied the north Caucasus, and the collaboration of a small number of Caucasians resulted in the Soviet government’s denunciation of entire nations as traitors and «tools of the Nazi invaders." On 23 February, 1944, the entire Chechen and Ingush population of the region — an estimated 425,000 people — was loaded up in train cars bound for Central Asia. Each family member was permitted to carry 20 kilos of baggage, leaving the rest of their possessions and all of their property behind.

During the journey itself, perhaps half (some estimates are even higher) died, primarily of exposure. The period of exile is considered by Chechens to be an attempt by the Soviet government to wipe out the identity of an entire people. Their property was turned over to Russian «settlers»; buildings and historic sites were destroyed. Chechen gravestones were reportedly used to pave the streets of Grozny.

It was not until Khrushchev’s 1956 de-Stalinization campaign that the Chechens were permitted to return to their homeland. The estimate number of people deported was between 1.4 and 1.7 million.

Such treatment helps to explain Chechens’ embitterment. In a 1991 interview with Radio Liberty, the Chechen emigre political scientist Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov noted that the Chechen push for independence from Russia was simply a «revolt of the children in revenge for the deaths of their fathers and mothers during deportation and exile, [and] a protest of the whole people against the continuing domination of the old structures…." At the same time, Avtorkhanov called upon both sides to prevent the conflict from spiraling into another «Caucasian War."

Four years later, it is obvious that such pleas have fallen on deaf ears. After 250,000 civilian casualties, cities and villages destroyed, people are not surprisingly less than sympathetic to the Chechens on this somber anniversary.

The text of the Latvian government's proposed political declaration has now been published in English on the Latvian Foreign Ministry's website:

Unofficial translation, Latvian draft

POLITICAL DECLARATION
ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELATIONS
BETWEEN THE REPUBLIC OF LATVIA AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

1. The Parties express their readiness to promote wide-ranging co-operation and dialogue targeted at strengthening of mutual trust and understanding between both countries.

2. The Parties stress that the relations between both countries are based on such values as respect for the other Party's state sovereignty, observation of good neighbourly policies and practices, freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and individual freedoms.

3. The Parties confirm the importance of the Peace Treaty of August 11, 1920 signed between Latvia and Russia as a legally binding document, which not only defined the basic principles of relations between both countries, but also facilitated the strengthening of statehoods and international recognition of Latvia and the new Russia. The Parties believe that, regardless of the substantial changes that have taken place in international political realities and the international law after signing this document, the Treaty and the level of understanding as regards reciprocity, mutual respect and justice depicted in it has not lost its validity also today.

4. The Parties condemn the Non–Aggression Agreement signed between the USSR and Germany on August 23, 1939 and its Secret Protocols as part of those processes that led to the beginning of the Second World War, to subjugation of a large part of European nations and to a forceful transformation of the European political map. In this context the Parties take note of the December 24, 1989 decision, taken by the People’s Deputy Congress of the USSR in this regard. The Parties admit that that the signing of such territorially aggressive and illegal treaties represents a categorically condemnable practice, which has no place in the contemporary international relations. The Parties stress that for Latvia, the direct consequences of this Agreement were subsequent occupations by mutually hostile powers and a de facto loss of its statehood, as well as they stress that this tragic situation was further reinforced at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences.

5. It is with deep regret that the Parties commemorate the First and the Second World Wars, the Russian Civil war, nazi crimes and the Holocaust, crimes of international terrorism, as well as Stalinist repressions in Latvia and Russia – the events that have taken millions of lives and are to be evaluated as tragic pages in the history of all the mankind.

6. The Parties believe that negative events in history must not serve as a burden for developing contemporary relations between countries. Experts and representatives of public at large of Latvia and Russia should not cease their efforts in evaluating - objectively and on the basis of true facts – the events of the 20th century, and by doing this – promoting further understanding between both countries. Simultaneously, the Parties are in agreement about the necessity to provide a political and internationally legal assessment of those regimes and ideologies that have been responsible for crimes against humanity – Fascism, National Socialism and Bolshevism, including the Stalinist crimes.

7. The Parties confirm their positions regarding the necessity of strengthening the role of the United Nations Organisation in the international events. The Parties stress the importance of strengthening international co-operation within the framework of the United Nations and its Security Council, particularly in fighting terrorism and in crisis management, and will continue to work closely together within the relevant UN structures un specialised institutions. The Parties share the opinion that the authority of the UNO and its Security Council should be based on their capability to increase their effectiveness in tackling the new challenges of the 21st century. The Parties admit that international action against terrorism should be based on unambiguous norms of the international law, as well as universal and regional agreements.

8. The Parties evaluate positively the changes that have taken place in Europe after the "Cold War". In particular, the Parties value the degree of commitment and solidarity that has, already since the middle of 1980s, united millions of people across Europe – their commitment to defending their ideals of individual freedom and justice and their commitment to implementing the forms of state governance corresponding to those ideals. The dynamic events that have taken place in Eastern Europe over the past fifteen years stand as a vivid testimony to the positive role these ideals have played for Europe as a whole.

9. The Parties confirm the historic role that the enlargements of the European Union and NATO have played in increasing the overall stability in Europe, as well as express their readiness to promote the development of partnership and deepening of co-operation between the European Union and Russia, as well as co-operation within the framework of the NATO–Russia Council. The Parties particularly stress the importance of broadening the political dialogue, strengthening the common fight against international terrorism, non-proliferation activities, peacekeeping and crisis management, arms control and confidence building measures, and commit themselves to advancing theses objectives, including within the frameworks of their institutional membership.

10. The Parties confirm their interest in strengthening bilateral relations and in developing bilateral legally binding basis that should increase co-operation between the countries. To this end, the Parties stress the necessity to sign and ratify those agreements that have already been technically prepared between the two countries.

11. Signing of the Agreement on the State Border between Latvia and Russia was an event of a true European significance and it is bound to become an important investment in the overall European co-operation process, particularly bearing in mind the EU–Russia co-operation in the field of justice and home affairs.

12. The Parties confirm their readiness to seek solutions to the unresolved social and economical issues that have occurred to the residents of both countries after May 4, 1990.

13. The Parties stress the importance of intensifying bilateral practical co-operation, especially in the areas of trade, science and technology, energy and transport, and will pay particular importance to the possibilities for implementing this goal provided by the Latvian–Russian Intergovernmental Commission.

14. The Parties will encourage implementation of joint initiatives in the Baltic Sea area and stress their readiness to develop further sub-regional and cross border co-operation projects.

15. The Parties commit themselves to creating favourable climate for the development of bilateral trade, increase of mutual investments and to the defence of entrepreneurship and private property. Membership of Russia in the World Trade Organisation would be highly beneficial towards reaching these goals.

16. The Parties will pay particular attention to the issues of co-operation in the areas of transit and energy and express their mutual readiness in working together on the Baltic Sea transport and energy infrastructure projects. The Parties stress that joint initiatives in this area should be based on the principles of mutual benefit and free and fair trade practices.

17. The Parties will encourage co-operation on environmental issues, including a long-term monitoring of the sea. Latvia and Russia commit themselves to participation in environmental projects and prevention of ecological crises.

18. The Parties express their interest in strengthening bilateral efforts in the area of home and justice affairs. Such activities should include developing infrastructure of border crossing points, raising the quality of co-operation between border guards, customs services and other relevant structures, including fighting crime and smuggling on the border as well as illegal immigration. The Parties agree that the signing of a bilateral Readmission Treaty would strongly contribute to reaching these goals.

19. The Parties stress the importance of cultural co-operation and express their readiness to facilitate the return to either the Republic of Latvia or the Russian Federation of those cultural values and archive documents that, as a result of historical developments, were relocated and are currently found on the other Party’s territory.

20. The Parties reiterate the role of the international law and international organisations in ensuring and defending the rights of persons belonging to national minorities. The Parties agree to pay particular attention to the preservation and development of the uniqueness and heritage to people belonging to national minorities in both Latvia and Russia.

21. The Parties confirm their legal and moral obligations in fighting all forms of racism, Anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

22. The Parties confirm their commitment to advancing the role of the OSCE in the international and European politics through focusing in particular on solving "frozen conflicts", ensuring free and fair elections and protecting human rights.

23. The Parties stress the role of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) and importance of fulfilling all obligations under the Treaty. The Parties commend all those countries, not yet parties to the Treaty, who have expressed readiness to join it after the adapted Treaty enters into force.

24. The Parties agree to expand co-operation within the framework of the Council of Europe on the basis of the commitments each of the Parties took upon themselves when joining this organisation.

25. The Parties will broaden the practice of consultations on topical international political issues and will continue to co-operate in all international bodies on issues of mutual interest.

Holding a firm belief that the achievement of the goals declared above will facilitate the relations between both countries in the interests of both peoples and in accordance with the new international political realities and will promote the observance of the international law and development of universal and regional agreements,


For the Republic of Latvia

For the Russian Federation

(via scb)

(Continuing an overview of some of the points raised in the essays of Robert Conquest's newly published book The Dragons of Expectation...)

Following his earlier examination of the attitudes of English and European Utopians, Conquest now turns his attention to the aftermath of Utopianism: the “anti-Western, anticapitalist, antipluralist assault took on a new sharpness,” he writes, “recalling the nihilism of the most violent section of the Russian intelligentsia a century and a half ago.” This is the subject of Chapter V – “After Utopia”.

The new Utopianism, if such it can be called, consists mainly of a rejection of reason: while the socialists at least had arguments and a program, the new anticapitalists “seem to have sunk to a lower mental level.” There are roots and precedents and roots for this malaise. Conquest points to the emotionalism of postwar French intellectual life, when “much of the emotional drive had not come so much from a devotion to the proclaimed social transformation as from a hatred for the actual.” It was Camus who pointed out that French intellectuals did not so much adore Stalinism as they “heartily detest part of the French”.

It might be of interest here to look in a little more detail at what Camus said in the interview Conquest refers to – it’s the “Socialism of the Gallows” interview that was published in the French journal Demain in February 1957, after the Soviet invasion of Hungary the previous year. Speaking of the attitude of the French Communist Party, and its newspaper L’Humanité, Camus remarked:

"Expediency for a Communist newspaper perhaps amounts to saying that the whole population of Hungary is fascist except Kadar [the Hungarian Communist leader], his policeman, and his executioners. But the factual truth is that we have seen a revolt of workers, intellectuals, and peasants who wanted national independence and personal freedom. The real fascism, to speak clearly, is the fascism of Kadar and Khrushchev, who methodically crushed a popular revolt, and of the Russian government, which permitted it.

"I confess," Camus went on, "that I don’t understand either the sense of expediency that urged some of our militant progressives, after they had denounced the Soviet intervention in Hungary, to recommend in their congress a unified action with the French Communists, who continually insult the insurgents. Their recommendation came at a time when Hungarians were still being hanged (just yesterday a girl of twenty) and at the very moment when a representative of the French Communist Party declared that, under the same circumstances, he would be willing for the USSR to inflict on France the same treatment it is giving Hungary. Such obsequiousness eventually becomes overwhelming. Can it be that the Communists and progressive militants feel such love for the Russians they have never seen? No, but they feel such a loathing for a part of the French, the part that loathed them enough to be willing to serve the cause of Hitler. If France is to disappear, rest assured that she will die poisoned by these two hatreds."

Conquest develops Camus’s argument in the context of 2004: now, since the fall of Communism, the collapse of alternatives to a pluralist order is generally accepted, but “detestation of it persists – as does (often enough) the lack of, indeed rejection of, any serious attempt to examine the probable defects any feasible alternative might, or would, produce.” Conquest characterizes this new “Western anti-Western mindset” as “negative Utopianism”. Its argument is a primitive one: “’capitalism’, ‘globalism’ – bad.” But, he asks – what is a good nonutopia?

The essay goes on to consider how this destructive mindset, with its concomitant mental distortions and alienation from reality, could have arisen. In essence, Conquest argues, it proceeds from a phenomenon that is not new at all, and has been a characteristic of every literate society from as far back as can be recalled. He invokes the memory of “the scribes who worked on the Book of the Dead (the collection of writings that were placed in tombs as a means of guiding the ancient Egyptian soul on its journey to the afterlife DM), the documentation of the Byzantine synods, the volumes of pretentious drivel that so aroused Erasmus,” and the sub-Marxism of our own time. In his autobiographical memoir Native Realm , the Polish writer who perhaps more than any other resembles Camus, notes how in post-war Warsaw “even more or less disillusioned intellectuals felt at home in the left-wing cafés and never thought to consort with the reactionary peasants and colonels or their representatives.” The same divide, Conquest asserts, can be found elsewhere: less in Britain, but more in America – and most in France.

George Orwell says that the man in the street is at once too sane and too stupid to fall for the fads of the intelligentsia. We might note that the opposite of sane and stupid is insane and intelligent. But insanity itself is a denial of intelligence.

The problem, the essay suggests, is that the educated class which now prevails in Western society has misunderstood and misevaluated history in a way that is in itself historical. Even though, for example, Marxism has been discredited as a method of scientific prediction, in Western intellectual circles there survives a widespread belief that Marxism somehow "for the first time opened up various historical perspectives - or some such rather vaguer pretension." Those who hold such a belief tend to be impervious to both arguments and facts. Conquest likens them to their grandparents, whose beliefs about the USSR led them to accept and support a huge tissue of lies and falsehoods propagated by the Soviet "information agencies". For many of those people the Soviet Union, despite its horrors, remained acceptable or even praiseworthy - at least until 1956, and even beyond. Where more recent developments are concerned, the sub-Marxism now current in academic circles, Conquest argues, has contributed to maintaining this low level of political understanding:

Not only does Marxism, or at any rate a sort of sub-Marxism, still put out shoots in academic spheres that have been inadequately unweeded, but even non-utopian theorizing, attempts to inject rigor into the political systems-analysis, rational choice theory, path dependence - all tend to remove realities from academic work... If a political theory is taken as thoroughly correct, it follows first that your critics are "wrong". (This is a recipe for taking over university departments.)

In the end it may be wondered if argument is possible at all in such a climate of unreality, mental blocking, and denial. In addition to the problems of war and terrorism, Conquest warns: "There is a mind-set to unscramble."

See also: Dragons and Democracy
Dragons and Democracy - II

"As if on purpose, just before his arrival I had a pretty dream (as a matter fact, of a kind I now have hundreds of). I fell asleep -- I think, an hour before his arrival -- and dreamt I was in a room (but not my own). A room larger and higher-ceilinged than my own, better furnished, light; a cupboard, a chest of drawers, a sofa and my bed, large and wide and covered with a green silk quilt. But in this room I observed a horrible creature, some kind of monster. It was like a scorpion, but not a scorpion, more loathsome and far more horrible, precisely because there are no such creatures in nature, and because it had appeared in my room on purpose, and in this there was some kind of secret. I studied it very closely: it was brown and covered with a shell-like skin, a reptile, some four vershoks* long, two fingers thick around the head, tapering off towards the tail, so that the very tip of the tail was no more than a tenth of a vershok thick. At one vershok from the head there stuck out from its body, at an angle of forty-five degrees, two legs, one on each side, each two vershoks in length, so that the whole creature, if looked on from above, presented the aspect of a trident. The head I could not make out, but I saw two feelers, not long, like two strong needles, also brown. There were two similar feelers at the tip of the tail and on the end of each leg, thus eight feelers in all. The creature was running round the room very quickly, supporting itself with its legs and tail, and as it ran both its body and its legs wriggled like little serpents, with extraordinary speed, in spite of the shell, and this was very loathsome to watch. I was dreadfully afraid that it would sting me; they had told me it was poisonous, but what tormented me most was, who had sent it into my room, what did they want to do to me and what was the secret? The creature hid under the chest of drawers or the cupboard, crept away into the corners. I squatted up on a chair and squeezed my legs underneath me. It quickly ran obliquely right across the room and vanished somewhere near my chair. I looked around me in terror, but as I was sitting with my legs tucked underneath me, I hoped it would not climb up onto the chair. Suddenly I heard from behind me, almost next to my head, a kind of crackling rustle; I turned round and saw that the reptile was climbing up the wall and was almost level with my head, even touching my hair with its tail, which was twirling and wriggling with extreme speed. I leapt up, and the creature vanished. I was afraid to lie down on the bed in case it had crawled under the pillow. Into the room came my mother and some friend of hers. They began to try to catch the loathsome thing, but were calmer than I, and not even afraid. But they knew nothing. Suddenly the reptile crawled out again; this time it crawled very quietly and as if with some special intention, wriggling slowly, which was even more repulsive, obliquely across the room again, towards the door. At this point my mother opened the door and called Norma, our dog --an enormous Newfoundland, black and shaggy; she died five years ago. She rushed into the room and stood over the loathsome thing as if rooted to the spot. The reptile stopped too, but still wriggling and clacking the ends of its legs and tail against the floor. Animals are not capable of feeling mystical terror, if I am not mistaken; but at that moment it seemed to me that in Norma's terror there was something apparently very unusual, as if also almost mystical, and that therefore she also had a foreboding, as I did, that there was something very fateful about the beast and that it contained some secret. She slowly backed away from the reptile, which was crawling quietly and cautiously towards her; it apparently intended to rush at her suddenly and sting her. But, in spite of all her terror, Norma looked dreadfully fierce, though she was trembling in every limb. Suddenly she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened her enormous red mouth, adapted herself, found the right position, plucked up her courage and suddenly grabbed the reptile in her teeth. The reptile must have have jerked violently, trying to slip away, for Norma caught it again, in flight this time, and twice took it right into her jaws, still in flight, as though swallowing it. The sheel crackled in her teeth; the creature's tail and legs, sticking out of her jaws, moved with horrible rapidity. Suddenly Norma gave a plaintive yelp: the loathsome thing had managed to sting her tongue. With a yelp and a howl she opened her mouth in pain, and I saw that the chewed-up reptile was still moving across it, emitting from its half-crushed body a large quantity of white fluid, similar to the fluid of a crushed cockroach... At that point I woke up, and the prince came in."

-Ippolit, in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (my tr.)

A recent article in the LA Times (subscribers only), headed "Halt, Or I'll Play Vivaldi", suggests that classical music may be effective in combating crime:

According to most reports, it works. Figures from the British capital released in January showed robberies in the subway down by 33%, assaults on staff by 25% and vandalism of trains and stations by 37%. Sources in other locales have reported fewer muggings and drug deals. London authorities now plan to expand the playing of Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel and opera (sung by Pavarotti) from three tube stations to an additional 35.

"Music soothes the savage beast," a Boston variety store owner told the Globe after light classical selections were used to squelch teen loitering near the Forest Hills subway stop. "They're leaving, and I ain't seen no fights." The pops-style music, said one of the teens, "makes you want to go to sleep."

Similarly, Police Det. Dena Kimberlin in West Palm Beach, Fla., recalls that after police there closed a bar in an area infested with drug dealers and began blasting classical music from the roof, "the officers were amazed when at 10 o'clock at night there was not a soul on the corner. We talked to people on the street, and they said, 'We don't like that kind of music.' " Subsequently, she says, her department received requests from other police officials to explain exactly what steps it had taken. Its musical selections were mostly Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

What does it mean that classical music is being used this way? After all, it's more than just a strange, deeply literal updating of the Victorian moralist Matthew Arnold, who saw culture -- "the best which has been thought and said" -- as an inoculation against the "anarchy" of runaway individualism and democracy.

The melodious tube stop also represents a bizarre irony. After decades of the classical music establishment's fighting to attract crowds -- especially young people and what it calls "nontraditional audiences" -- city councils and government ministers are taking exactly the opposite approach: using high culture as a kind of disinfectant.

(via SL)

Continuing a series of posts on Robert Conquest's The Dragons of Expectation...

In a chapter headed “Harpooning some Word-Whales”, Conquest takes a long look at some of the “biggest” words in human activity. These include the reassuring “democracy”, “liberty” and “progress” – to which, Conquest suggests, we are in a sense addicted: the addiction to general words and concepts “tends to produce mind-blockers or reality distorters.” As a reality distorter, the word “democracy” figures high on the list. Conquest calls it “a huge rampaging Kodiak bear of a word”. Tracing the origins of the word back to ancient Greece, he shows how its defects are almost as obvious as its virtues: examples of the former include the sentencing of Socrates; the Athenian assembly voting for the death of all the adult males and the enslavement of all the women and children of Mytilene, then changing its mind and intervening to counterman the order only at the last moment; and the ruin of Athens, which was the result of a vote to send an expedition to Syracuse against sensible advice.

When the concept of democracy was revived in Europe in the eighteenth century, the record was not much better: revolutionary regimes claiming to represent the demos, or people, were really much more concerned with repressing the enemies of the people – while the people themselves were usually conscripted into vast armies which were used to defeat more conventional military forces. Thus “democracy” spread, obtaining its support from a huge peasant base which in the 19th century actually supported such imperial figures as Napoleon III. “Democracy” was also the rationale of the large city mobs which engineered the riots in London during the late eighteenth century, and the Paris coup organized by Napoleon in 1799.

Turning his attention to more recent history, Conquest reflects on the obvious fact that democracy is not the sole or inevitable criterion of social progress. Hitler came to power in 1933 by election, with accompanying mass and militant support. In Eastern Europe after the Second World War, the “revolutions” organized by the Communist Party were effected by means of constitutional intrigues backed by “mass demonstrations” which were really just mobilizations of mass force. Nazis and Fascists liked to describe the political structures they created as “organized, centralized state democracy” (Mussolini): “In Germany there is true democracy, in which the whole nation can freely express its will” (Goebbels). In 1940, Hitler was comparing “German democracy” to the British version. Conquest reflects that in retrospect it is clear that if in 1933 a military coup had prevented Hitler’s election as Chancellor, “the German people, and all other peoples, would have benefited.”

Conquest perceives a double standard at work in definitions of democracy: in the West, the word is used as “the essential definition of Western political culture”, while at the same time it is applied to the rest of the world “in a formal and misleading way”. We are led to support the legitimacy of any regime which has won an electoral victory. But

“democracy” did not develop or become viable in the West until quite a time after a law-and-liberty polity had emerged. Habeas corpus, the jury system, the rule of law were not the products of “democracy” but of a long effort, from medieval times, to curb the power of the English executive. And democracy can only be seen in any positive or laudable sense if it emerges from and is an aspect of the law-and-liberty tradition.

As Conquest points out, “the problem with ‘democratic socialism’ was always that if the country remained democratic its electorate might reject or dilute or hamstring socialism – and what then?”

He continues by posing three essential characteristics of a country commonly called “democratic”:

1)The state is able to operate
2)The plural views in the polity are represented and allowed expression
3)All opinion within the polity accepts the mechanisms, the public rules, over at least a period.

In addition, he suggests, “it seems that the main thing… is not so much the institutions as the habits of mind, which are far more crucial, and above all the acceptance of the traditional rules of the political game.”

Democracy in the Western sense cannot be easily imposed or artificially constructed. What can be worked for, in Conquest’s view, is

the emergence, in former rogue or ideomaniac states, of a beginning, a minimum. The new orders must be nonmilitant, nonexpansionist, nonfanatical. And that goes with, or tends to go with, some level of internal tolerance, of a plural order, with some real prospect of settling into habit or tradition.

And, as an example of how attempts to impose democracy can go disastrously wrong, Conquest gives the instance of the 1917 “February Revolution”, when a liberal, bourgeois government took over from the Tsarist regime:

When the Provisional Government took over in Russia in March 1917, the country had been run by a fairly efficient political and administrative machinery, and the discipline in the army was satisfactory. (It is a myth that “war weariness” was among the major causes of the February Revolution: it was, on the contrary, carried out with the idea that the tsar and his milieu were insufficiently committed to the fight against Germany, and the program of the new government, at first enthusiastically accepted by the soldiery, was designed to make the war a more national one.) But the “liberals” who now took over in the capital and the localities changed all this. In the name of “freedom”, they destroyed the local administrative machinery and replaced it with amateurs; they destroyed the police force and replaced it with nothing; and in the army they permitted “democratic rights” incompatible with discipline.

In short, Conquest concludes, for the establishment of democracy “an effectual state power” is essential.

See also: Dragons and Democracy

An interview with Aleksandr Torshin, head of the Beslan Commission, whose work has now dragged on for five months and still shows no sign of yielding definitive results, throws up some details and speculations, though Torshin's words need to be filtered through the official murk that surrounds them - and they may, in fact, have the purpose of intensifying the murk still further :

Now, who provoked the storming of the school building? The fact is that the storming operation was launched after two explosions were heard there. What were those explosions? Who set them off?

I am becoming more and more certain that they were triggered because the negotiating process had begun. A few days ago, we questioned Aslakhanov (an aide to the RF president. - Ed.), who had been flying to Beslan for direct negotiations with the terrorists. The explosions came the moment his plane landed. I suppose that neither the bandits nor the FSB benefited from the explosions in any way. But someone was interested in them - there is no question about that. We believe that these were certain individuals who were closely watching the course of the Beslan events and did everything to thwart the negotiations. They wanted bloodshed.

What other questions have yet to be answered?

These are questions that hostage victims are putting to us. We look for answers and often find them. These answers, however, are not of much importance for the commission's findings. For instance, people of Beslan insist: The weapons had been brought to the school before the attack, while the commission is hiding the fact. We are hiding nothing! We simply have no evidence to go on. Consider that there were more than 1,200 hostages at the school, and only one 11-year old boy purportedly saw weapons being pulled from under the debris of a smashed wall. What about the others? Give us adults who will say: Yes, we saw it. Give us evidence, give us proof.

What about the reports that Shmel rocket flame-throwers were used in the storming operation - do you have any evidence of this now? The citizens of Beslan are convinced that Spetsnaz officers fired flame-throwers at the school building, starting a fire, thus causing a burning roof to collapse on the hostages.

This is a very difficult question. Yes, on the third day of our work in Beslan, a commission member climbed the roof of a building abutting the school and found several Shmel tubes. Officials from the military prosecutor's office were called in to the scene. A report was filed. The Shmel serial numbers were recorded. This is now a subject of a separate investigation. The problem, however, is that the procedure for inventorying and storaging these weapons is extremely lax so they may never be traced. We are currently searching military depots for any missing Shmels, but so far there have been no results.

What other things have yet to be cleared up?

We would like to know who ordered and masterminded the Beslan attack. Although there were no organizers or masterminds among them, the executants are known; at least 10 gunmen were top-notch professionals. After all, we have never sustained such heavy losses before: 10 Spetsnaz and two Emergency Situations Ministry (MChS) officers were killed. It is more or less clear who the organizers were, but we have no clue about the masterminds themselves.

Do you have a theory?

We have no theory. But here is what I think. Imagine that Dzasokhov (president of North Ossetia. - Ed.), Zyazikov (president of Ingushetia. - Ed.), Aslakhanov, and Dr. Roshal arrive at the school, as the terrorists demand, and all four are killed. What would have happened next? Early elections would have been called in North Ossetia and Ingushetia. Who would have won those elections? I don't know the names, but these would have been hard-line nationalists, at least in North Ossetia. They would have been obsessed with taking revenge on their neighbors. We would have been thrown back to the 1992 situation. Had the Ossetian-Ingush conflict resumed, Chechens would take the Ingush side. I am being urged to disclose the gunmen's ethnicity. This I won't do because I understand that some people would like to finger an enemy and provoke an interethnic conflict.

Marius has commented on my earlier post Examining the Archives, in which I linked to Anne Applebaum's recent Washington Post article about the so-called "lustration" debate currently underway in Poland. He maintains that the matter is not as simple or straightforward as Applebaum - wittingly or unwittingly - suggests.

With regard to your blog post "Examining the Archives" let me add my five cents to it. This list - so called Wildstein List (Bronislaw Wildstein - the journalist of Rzeczpospolita, who allegedly electronically copied this list http://www.listawildsteina.com/ from the IPN's computer in Warsaw's main office) is creating a lot of havoc.

Wildstein's List, although is incomplete, is widely assumed to be an index of names of Poles who spied for the hated Communist authorities prior to the democratic changes of 1989. The Poles dread seeing their name on the list, as they fear they will be associated with this ugly deal of informing on their friends and relatives during those days.

Every day in the Polish media there's talk about this list, the lustration process, and people who are on this are being interviewed. Btw Lithuania has similar problem, someone posts on the web a list of Lithuanians who work in the government and used be KGB officers in reserve. Foreign Minister Valionis already admitted that he used to be a KGB officer in reserve.

However, the list is in fact an index of spies and their victims, often the very same democratic activists who helped bring down the Communist regime.

The confusion between victims and perpetrators that the list creates has caused personal anguish as well as a means by which former and present intelligence officers can conceal their true identity.

It came to the IPN's director havning to apologize for this in the Polish parliament:


Kieres apologizes for the list

Wojciech Czuchnowski 19-02-2005, last update 18-02-2005 21:13

I stand before of you with feeling of guilt - was saying yesterday in the Parliament (Sejm) the chief of IPN, professor Leon Kieres, apologizing to all of those who have problems, because their names have got on this list which was taken from the Institute.

[passage omitted]

Almost all of the political parties (in the Parliament) have been in the agreement that the Institute's error was to mix on the list the names of full time employees secret informants, candidates on agents and persons who were victims of the secret services.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

There's even a rumor going on, that the leaking of these files has been arranged by the conservative right opposition, who is expected to win a landslide victory in elections this year.

Below is an excerpt from interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki , the first non-communist premier in the Polish government


http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/wyborcza/1,34591,2560810.html

Revolution won't solve anything

Conversed Jarosław Kurski 18-02-2005, last updated 18-02-2005 19:17

Q: How do you view this act of Bronislaw Wildstein?

- I don't want to evaluate his motives, because I can't assume right away that he was guided by bad motives, but when I listen to his comments, I don't find in them a bit of of awareness, that in this, what has happened, there's also human injustice, and that it is important. When on all questions regarding this, there's an answer
that our lustration has to be painful for all of us, this is not acceptable for me.

Q: Your critics think that the lustration was needed to be done on the wave of revolution of 1989. And you, as the first non-communist premier had missed this rchance, and therefore we've got this now, what we have now.

Till the end of 1990, during my government's tenure, this word "lustration" hadn't been heard in the public. Nobody remembers this now at all. We've got an ahistorical thinking. Let me recall what we were doing then: putting our hyperinflation down, conversion of our currency (zloty), reform of Balcerowicz, confirmation of recognition by Germany of our Western border, getting out the Soviet troops from Poland. Also, we had the first free municipal-administration and presidential elections. There was no talk about lustration then. Now, after 15 years, a tool of political revolution it's being made from this.

Q: What do you mean?

It's that this lustration, propelled as peoples' revolution, is a way to negate the achievements of the last 15 years. Lustration as a moral guillotine of the III Republic of Poland. It's a waste of everything that we - Polish society - during the last 15 years, have done and what we have achieved.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
It appears that Ms Applebaum is little misinformed on the issue of lustration (her own words: soon after the fall of communism, the ex-dissidents who took control of the Polish government decreed that they would not conduct any form of "lustration," or political vetting, of anybody who came into the new government. Unlike the West Germans, who gave East Germans access to their police files, the new Polish leadership kept the files locked up. Partly they feared the social consequences, partly they wanted to protect their friends, and partly that was the deal they made with the outgoing communists. When some accused them of hiding the truth, they called their opponents "witch-hunters." After a few rounds of name-calling, the argument petered out.)

On the 3rd of June 1992 - speaker of the Polish Parliament Wiesław Chrzanowski signed the lustration bill.

This bill says that all candidates for a post in the government must be "lustrated". That means: they must submit a written statement stating whether they were consciously unofficial employees or officers of the Secret Service between 1945 and 1989. If documents and/or witnesses testify to the fact that the person under investigation lied in his statement, he can no longer run for office for 10 years. They can appeal this decision to the Lustration Court to prove, for example, that their file was fabricated. This bill also provides that any person who was a victim of the communist system (persecuted, put in jail, etc.) may see his or her personal file collated by the secret services.

Ms Applebaum is right that - the specter of the "files" kept haunting Polish politics in last 15 years. There was even a proposal from serious opposition figure already long time ago not open those files or simply to destroy them. They had a valid point, any in Poland can recall that even Walesa was accused to be a "lustration liar" and a former secret service [ SB] agent, code name "Bolek. It was revealed that the the SB had created false documents for years, including
fictitious anonymous information, allegedly authored by Walesa under the code name "Bolek," and payment receipts for his services.

It was shown that these materials were created by a special group in the one of the SB departments with a lot help of Eligiusz Naszkowski - who was the SB agent and in the same time Solidarity leader in the city of Pila. It was he who also wire-tapped the last meeting of Solidarity leaders in the city of Radom, a week before the introduction of martial law on Dec. the 13th of 1981. These fabricated documents were used within Poland and abroad, and were even sent to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in 1982 in an attempt to compromise Walesa's candidacy. They must have had some effect since his candidacy was put off for a year, and the Prize was awarded to Alva Myrdal and Alfonso Garcia Robles, Walesa got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Please read this article:

Struggling with the Past. Poland's controversial lustration trials

http://www.ce-review.org/00/30/rohozinska30.html


To finish this, even I'm confused and don't want to make any judgment about this list. There's name of well-known figure in Poland on it, as secret service informer, code name "Zapalniczka". He's name is Zdzislaw Najder, a dissident, director of the Polish section of the RFE in 1982-1987 - sentenced to death in absentia by the Polish military court, later politician and advisor to the government officials in the Solidarity government. He admitted that in the late '50s he signed a paper to be an informer of secret services for money, allegedly to find out what the service think and know, thinking that he would outsmart them.

The words below are those of former Defence Minister Jan Parys from 1992


http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/193/parys.html

Q: What about Zdzislaw Najder? He was accused of being an agent using the secret name of "Zapalniczka" - [Cigarette Lighter].

Jan Parys: Mr. Najder is my political friend. He is a politician and former director of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe. He was adviser to Prime Minister Olszewski. It is true that he was investigated a number of times during the past twenty-five years by the police, and had to meet with them, but nothing serious has been found about him in the secret police files. It is not true that he was an agent. A lot of people from the Polish opposition had problems with the secret police, but this does not mean that they became agents.

Marius

In FrontPage Magazine, Melanie Phillips comments on the current rise of antisemitism in Britain. Its most recent manifestations have had a fairly high political profile - first, in connection with two prospective Labour party election posters, and now over offensive remarks made to a Jewish Evening Standard journalist by London's mayor:

And this illustrates the far wider issue – that the Left, of which Livingstone is such a shining ornament, has gotten into bed with radical Islamism. Subscribing to its twisted narrative of “oppression,” the British Left routinely libels the Jews of Israel as “the new Nazis,” has breathed life into Muslim Jew-hatred (which itself borrows deeply from Nazi propaganda), and prompted a terrifying increase in anti-Jewish feeling ranging from muttered social prejudice, through public accusations of the “global Jewish conspiracy,” all the way to record levels of physical attacks on Jews, synagogues, and cemeteries.

Tony Blair has been embarrassed by London’s mayor. But this is a chicken that has simply come home to roost. Livingstone was formerly kicked out of the Labour party on account of his extremism. But when it became clear that he was going to win the London mayoral race as an independent candidate and humiliate Labour, Blair readmitted him to the party to ensure that Labour won that election.

Now Livingstone has re-emerged in his true colors. So, too, has the rest of the Labour movement, with posters and articles disgracefully using anti-Jewish stereotypes in order to appease Muslim sentiment, peddling anti-Jewish prejudice.

For Blair’s government, Britain’s 280,000 Jews are now utterly disposable, to be traduced and abused to buy 1.8 million Muslim votes. That is the real embarrassment of the Livingstone affair — to have hung out the dirty washing of the Left, which grovels before prejudice and terror to stay in power.

Last month I discussed a New York Times article by Tina Rosenberg about the difficult process now underway in Poland to determine who was a collaborator under the Communist regime. Now Anne Applebaum has written an account for the Washington Post of a recent visit to Warsaw, where she witnessed

the unexpectedly fierce renewal of a debate that last gripped the country a decade ago. At stake was a list of actual and potential secret police informers, preserved intact from the communist era, discovered in an archive, electronically copied by a journalist, and then somehow posted, in an unverifiable form, on the Internet. Since it appeared the country has been convulsed by an intense, déjà vu frenzy. One acquaintance told me that she walked into her office the morning after the story broke and found everyone silently scanning the list with their doors shut, looking for the names of friends, neighbors or themselves. The list was the most sought-after item on Polish Google. On the day I visited, crowds of people were standing outside the Institute of National Memory, where the files are kept, clamoring to see their files.

She has some interesting conclusions, and draws the Polish experience out into an international, global context:

This Polish experience is hardly unique. Not long ago I spent an evening with a group of young politicians and economists from around the world, all of whom had come to spend a semester at Yale University. I brought up this subject -- how to discuss the undemocratic past in a new democracy -- in a conversation about Russia, where locking up the secret police files has helped former secret police officers return to power. It quickly became clear that almost everyone in the room, whether from South Africa, Chile or Slovakia, had grappled with some version of the problem. So had the Iraqi Kurd. And their conclusions were simple and unanimous: Whether through public debate, trials or parliamentary investigations, the crimes of the past have to be dealt with. In some fashion, justice has to be served if the new democracy is to be perceived as a just society.

It's worth remembering those conclusions this week, as Iraq forms a new government, and it's worth remembering them in general, as we analyze what has happened there over the past two years. It is certainly possible that "de-Baathification" -- the removal of Saddam Hussein's officials from power -- went too far and too deep. It's also possible that Iraq might have been worse off in the long run if it hadn't happened at all. Either way, if Hussein's crimes are not discussed now, and if the Baathist archives, many still in the possession of the CIA, are not made accessible to Iraqis, they will continue to haunt Iraqi public life. Whether in Central Europe, southern Africa or the Middle East, the more information that is made public about the past, the less the past can be used to influence the politics of the present.

(Via BH)

Now that I've finished reading Robert Conquest’s The Dragons of Expectation - Reality and Delusion in the Course of History , I find that it’s hard to characterize the book in a single sentence or paragraph: it’s a miscellany, an anthology of essays which approach the subject of the modern world from many different angles, some of which emerge from the contemplation of the twentieth century, and others which reach forward into the shadows of an unknown, but dimly surmised future. The book’s epigraph, from which its title is drawn, is a quotation from a translation by the 19th century poet Thomas Wright of a verse of the Old Icelandic poem known as the Sólarljóð (Song of the Sun):

Vestan sá ek fljuga
Vánar dreka,
ok féll á glævalds götu;
vængi þeir skóku,
svá víða þótti mér
springa hauðr ok himinn.

(From the west I saw fly
the dragons of expectation,
and open the way of the fire-powerful;
they beat their wings,
so that everywhere it appeared to me
that earth and heaven burst.)

Expectation of disaster, Conquest suggests in a note at the beginning, is something that has characterized Western thinking in the past century, and continues to do so: “For quite apart from the worst perspective, it seems clear that something in the nature of otherworldly “expectations” has seized the minds of many in the West and elsewhere – with misleading thought about what faces us, much of it bred and projected from unreal obsessions about the still-living past.”

Conquest sets himself the task of exploring and examining some of the “myths and manias” of that past, and of the present that follows it. His inquiring gaze is sharpened by an awareness of perspectives other than those of the Western world: in an early chapter discussing Western acceptance of social and political categories, he quotes Vaclav Havel, speaking some years before the collapse of Communism, on the subject of the perennial Western conflict between “socialism” and “capitalism”. “I admit,” Havel said, “that it gives me a sense of emerging from the depths of the last century. It seems to me that these thoroughly ideological and many times mystified categories have long since been beside the point.”

Quoting the Polish dissident Adam Michnik, Conquest also shows how the concepts of “Left” and “Right” really belong to the late eighteenth century, when they first emerged, and when they had social and moral relevance – by the second half of the twentieth century these concepts no longer had much meaning for the majority of people in Poland and other countries ruled by Communism: they were “abstract divisions from another epoch”. He points to the book by the Bulgarian dissident, Zhelyu Zhelev, who later became president of Bulgaria, and whose book Fascism, which was published and then suppressed in the early 1980s, illustrated the similarities between the totalitarian ideologies of “Left” and “Right”. Those similarities have been illustrated in our own time by an observer such s Walter Laqueur, who in a Partisan Review article of 2002 presented quotations from representatives of some of the most extreme American right groups -- the American Nazi Party, the White Aryan Resistance, the Missouri Militia and the National Alliance, in which they expressed their clear support for "the brave Arab bombers of September 11." Another example is the former Baader-Meinhof member Horst Mahler, once on the extreme left but now on the extreme right, who congratulated the bombers, as also did the Italian Red Brigades.

The discussion moves on to consider the history of socialism in Europe. Conquest focuses particular attention on figures such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb, whose unthinking acceptance of Soviet dogma and statistics in the 1920s and 30s also eventually led them to an acceptance of class war, of which they had never approved, and thus to a virtual collaboration with totalitarian repression. He contrasts the Webbs with the figure of George Orwell, who was unyielding in his opposition to what he called the “renegade Liberals” -- those who held that “defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought”, as he put it in the preface to Animal Farm.

Looking forward fifty years or so from the time of the Webbs and Orwell, to 1984, Conquest concludes that by then “the Webbite side had won. But this was only part of the old left-wing appeal. The ‘cranks’ had at least not been, or not yet been, dictatorship material. But the utopian or sub-utopian mindset pervaded or indoctrinated part of the intellectual semi-educated class. Over the past half century, Western minds that were diverted by the socialist idea largely abandoned it as a serious program. However, the minds of a generation of the educated are not restructured as easily and completely as that. The thought patterns are, often enough, still set in the direction of state control, thought to represent this with anything like the old sublimity is a hard challenge.”

The problem of our time, Conquest suggests, is not so much “the abuse of general ideas” as “an at first barely formulated inhaling of an atmosphere of hostility to envisaged unrighteousness and to those seen as its perpetrators.” This vague and abstract, or semi-abstract, sense of righteousness has its own language and vocabulary, and leads to a state of mental unreality.

In future posts, I’ll look at some more of the essays from this varied collection. In particular, I’d like to consider Conquest’s always illuminating insights into Soviet history, and the history of the Western intelligentsia’s involvement with “left-wing” ideas.


See also here.

http://www.gazeta.ru/2005/02/01/oa_146860.shtml

Yushchenko was poisoned by Russian technology

[A report on an experiment by Russian scientists published in the FEBS (Federation of European Biochemical Societies) Letters Journal in April 1999 gives a detailed formula on how to increase the toxicity of dioxin thousands of times, while making the detection of the poison almost impossible. Estonian scientist Endel Lippmaa described to Gazeta.Ru how this compound could influence the health of the Ukrainian President.]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 16 2005 5:55PM
Yushchenko confident clues will be found to his poisoning

LVIV. Feb 16 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said the ongoing investigation into his poisoning inspires hope that it will be solved.

He told a news conference in Lviv that he had recently discussed the case with Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun, who had received additional materials from Switzerland about the poison and its effects. "I'm the only person in the world to have been poisoned with it through food. Experts will identify this poison, establish the laboratory which made it and find out how this toxic substance was delivered to Ukraine," Yushchenko said.

He said he had been informed about recordings of conversations in Russian special services about his poisoning, and about political expert Gleb Pavlovsky's possible involvement in it.

Feb 16 2005 3:10PM

Pavlovsky dismisses reports on Yushchenko poisoning

MOSCOW. Feb 16 (Interfax) - Effectiveolicy Foundation President Gleb Pavlovsky has denied reports that he was involved in the poisoning of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

"This was a primitive, false report, which I reject completely," he
told Interfax on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Ukraine's Channel 5 television said that tape recordings had been submitted to the Prosecutor General of a telephone conversation between Russian special service officers, which said that Pavlovsky's had proposed poisoning Yushchenko.

"This is a fairly minor lie for a TV channel working in the field of propaganda and counter-propaganda," he said.

Pavlovsky said that unconfirmed reports indicate that "certain circles in Ukraine regard the allegations in the Channel 5 story as a response to the pending criminal case in Russia against [Prime Minister] Yulia Tymoshenko."

(Via Marius)

From an Itar-Tass report of 15 February:

MP says Russian relations with Latvia worse than with any other country

At the moment, there is no country in the world with which Russia has worse relations than it does with Latvia. This view was expressed today in an interview with the ITAR-TASS correspondent by chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev.

"This isn't Russia's choice, it's Latvia's," he stressed. He said "calls to normalize relations have not been heeded by the Latvian side". "We can see this in the example of the campaign of provocation unleashed in Latvia in connection with the approach of the 60th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War [World War II]," the MP said. Kosachev said the international affairs committee is closely following the situation in Latvia. "We have already adopted an appropriate committee statement on the provocation inherent in the Latvian leadership's comments about Russia," he added. It would seem, the deputy said, that this is the Latvian side's attempt to have the Latvian president's invitation to attend 60th victory celebrations cancelled. "I think, however, that the Latvian president should come to Moscow," the MP said. "The leaders of the Baltic countries must realize that their political drive to review the results of World War II are totally at odds with the prevailing mood in today's Europe."

Kosachev expressed confidence that "if the provocation doesn't stop, in March or at the latest in April, the issue of Russian-Latvian relations will come up for debate in the State Duma".

(via MAK)

Akhmed Zakayev, Aslan Maskhadov's special envoy, has published an article about Bush's visit to Europe in the International Herald Tribune. An excerpt:

The only way to prevent catastrophic deterioration in the Caucasus is to press Russia for a political settlement with the responsible and moderate leadership of the Chechen Republic. In a last ditch effort to persuade the world of that, Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's ousted elected president, recently issued a unilateral cease-fire, which will last for one month. This gesture is a response to the call of the Soldiers' Mothers, who we know are speaking for the Russian people: Yes, we heard you, we are ready for peace, we want to stop fighting and talk, with all options open.
.
It is significant that the radical wing of the fighters, which is controlled by Shamil Basayev, accepted the cease-fire. Basayev had taken responsibility for many terrorist attacks, including the horrific raids on the school in Beslan and the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. We do not control Basayev; we condemned his methods, but we were powerlesss to stop him. Yet we know why he decided to silence his guns and hold his suicide squads - because he knows that the Chechen people want to give peace a chance. This may be the last chance. But as long as the cease-fire holds, it demonstrates that Maskhadov can deliver peace, even though he does not control the militants in war.
.
This is a unique opportunity, perhaps the last, to break the vicious circle of hatred, death and destruction. If it is lost, the responsibility for the escalation of the conflict, further radicalization of the Caucasus and the inevitable increase of terrorism will go to those who persist in the failed policy of appeasing Putin. Bush should realize that his hands-off policy on Chechnya does not increase security but only breeds terror.

Richard Holbrooke, who was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the Clinton administration, has an article in the Washington Post (free registration) about the upcoming May 9 "celebrations" in Moscow, and their implications for Russia's neighbours. An excerpt:

Valdas Adamkus has a problem. The 79-year-old president of Lithuania has been invited -- personally, persistently, even threateningly -- by Russian President Vladimir Putin to an event that he really, really doesn't think he should attend: the May 9 celebrations in Moscow marking the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Adolf Hitler. It's a real A-list affair: President Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Silvio Berlusconi, the presidents of other former Soviet republics, and a cast of thousands.

But Adamkus does not view May 9, 1945, as a day of liberation for his tiny country and its Baltic neighbors. "On that day we traded Hitler for Stalin, and we should not celebrate it," he tells visitors. Most Lithuanians, proud of their central role in breaking up the Soviet Union in 1991, agree. But Putin seems almost desperate to have all the former Soviet republics honor Russia on May 9; he has even used his most potent threat, hinting that if Adamkus does not go, it could affect Russia's shipments of oil and gas.

Of course, as U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Steve Mull has said, it does not matter to the United States whether Adamkus attends. What makes this more than a social problem is that it is symptomatic of a disturbing trend in Russian behavior toward the area where the Soviet Union once reigned supreme. And it poses to the Bush administration a dilemma far greater than the one Adamkus faces.

I am neither predicting nor advocating a return to the bad old Cold War days. Those are, thank God, gone forever. Russia, although much-diminished, is now an important and legitimate part of the international system. The new security architecture of Europe, worked out in the Clinton and Bush administrations with Boris Yeltsin and Putin, is no longer about containing Russia but about including it, and it has produced some historic achievements and cooperation.

But the continuation of those productive policies is endangered by events over the past year that the West can no longer ignore. Putin is rattled by the growing independence of some of the former Soviet republics, most notably Georgia and Ukraine. But his inept meddling, which failed to prevent democratic popular uprisings last year in both countries, has only weakened him.

As they say - read it all.

(via MAK)

Novaya Gazeta has published an interview with former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev.

My quick tr.:

Novaya Gazeta No. 11 14 February 2005

Ruslan Aushev:
The War Is Leaving Us Behind
If we don’t reach a settlement with Maskhadov now, he will be replaced by people who only know how to wage war


Ruslan Sultanovich! Is a moratorium on military operations declared by Maskhadov currently in force in Chechnya?

It is very difficult to give an unambiguous answer to that question. After all, what you are asking is: does Maskhadov control the forces of resistance in Chechnya, or doesn’t he? I think that’s a secondary question. First one must assess Maskhadov’s call for negotiations. And assess it from the perspective of the world’s experience. If the Basques in Spain suddenly called for negotiations, or if the Iraqis said to the American government: we are declaring a moratorium and will stop attacking your troops – do you think the Spaniards or the Americans would be indignant, as our military and politicians are? I mean, look how the world is applauding what is taking place on the negotiating table in the Middle East!

And yet the question of Maskhadov’s real influence is very important…

I will put it this way. A few years ago Maskhadov was influential within the confines of Chechnya. Now his influence extends to the whole of the North Caucasus, as throughout the entire Caucasus an organized resistance to the policy of the Federal Center is spreading. And for those people who are coming out against that policy, it’s Maskhadov who is the symbol. He was, he is, and he will be.

What if one imagines the improbable: for the sake of peaceful aims Maskhadov meets the Kremlin’s principal demand. Surrenders. What would happen then?

In the first place, he will never surrender. One shouldn’t humiliate Maskhadov with the assertion that he doesn’t control anything. Yes, there are many groupings there which act autonomously for up to six months or so. But the general tendency is that all those field commanders recognize Maskhadov, Here’s a comparison for you. Even with the extremely low five percent rating Boris Yeltsin had in the middle of his presidency, no one ever called his power and authority into doubt. If we want peace in the Caucasus, in the Caucasus, that is, and not only in Chechnya, then negotiations must be opened with the armed resistance. There is no solution that involves force, there is an idea which can only be fought with an idea, not with an army, tanks and planes. Maskhadov, I repeat, is a symbol of that idea.

For whom are negotiations disadvantageous?

For those who talk of negotiations as of something shameful, unacceptable and unproductive. Those who try to frighten people with recent history – the Khasavyurt agreements. To me, as a direct participant in those events, it’s obvious that Khasavyurt is being mythologized and dealt with in the wrong way. Those were FORCED actions. We (yes, we!) were driven into a corner. In the first place, the guerrillas entered Grozny and blocked off the Federal forces, Pulikovsky even wanted to bomb both his own men and others. Then, at the request of Alexander Lebed, I flew to see Maskhadov and Yandarbiyev and tried to get them to withdraw the guerrillas, and I only just succeeded. In the second place, Yeltsin and Co. had elections coming up. .. The time when our military men said that negotiations were treason, that would not allow them to settle the Chechen question by means of force, has passed. Since 1999 no one has restrained our military men, and the political message has been unambiguously one of force. And what do we see? Have they got anywhere close to a settlement of the Caucasus problem? Negotiations are also disadvantageous to the Chechen leadership. In general, we are wasting time, when each day, each month are important. We don’t have any time left. The war is leaving us behind, and the question is who will bring the detonator to the Caucasus.

Are influential personalities similar to Maskhadov and Basayev appearing among the armed resistance?

Nature abhors a vacuum. Who had ever heard of Movsar Barayev? Or Ruslan Khuchbarov?

They are not just executors…

Well yes, the executors… I talked in Beslan with that ‘executor’ Khuchbarov. I saw his eyes, heard what he was saying. He’s a representative of the idea, he knew perfectly well what he was going to do and why he was going to do it. He’s not just a robot, an automaton… Even if Maskhadov and Basayev give themselves up, their place will be taken by the Khuchbarovs and Barayevs. The generation that grew up during the war fanatically believes in an idea and only knows how to wage war It will be a million times harder to conduct negotiations with them. It’s not for nothing that Kazantsev ordered the male population of Chechnya aged 10-60 to be arrested and detained… And also: it’s wrong to picture the Khuchbarovs and Barayevs as savages. There are many of them, they fight and struggle all their lives, they are politicians, they have behind them a young, aggressive ideology, they are informed, technologically armed, and they are growing.

Ruslan Sultanovich! How do you react to the awarding to Zyazikov of the Order “For Services to the Fatherland” – after Beslan?

With calm. The President of Russia knows better than I do the services for which he hands out awards…

But the President of Ingushetia has one obvious “service” before all Russia – cowardice…

I have promised myself not to speak on the subject of the new Ingush leadership. I want to add that for the whole Afghan War about seventy of us got the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union. In Russia already two hundred people have become Heroes. For what?

Yelena Milashina

14.02.2005

In Chechen Society, an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski:

A realistic settlement would need to isolate extremists on both sides, while strengthening the moderates who see no profit or glory in continued bloodshed. Unfortunately, the Russian authorities have wrongly attempted to discredit Maskhadov's influence, despite his symbolic significance to a majority of Chechens. A ceasefire agreement reached with Maskhadov's approval would undercut the fundamentalist Islamic extremists. A majority of Russians would be relieved by the war's peaceful end. And a legitimate peace would end the enormous human, financial, and moral cost of the war.

In contrast, Putin's political reforms will certainly centralize power, but they will not create a solution to the situation in Chechnya or to the instability throughout the North Caucasus.

From an AFP report of February 14, 2005:

WARSAW, Feb 14 (AFP) - Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis on Monday urged Moscow to explain its interpretation of key events during World War II which impacted negatively on the Baltic states, to allow Latvia and Russia to "have a common vision" of history.

"We would like to achieve a common understanding with Russia about the history of the Second World War, and learn exactly how Moscow interprets the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact," Kalvitis said during a visit to Poland at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Marek Belka.

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact in 1939, leaving Hitler free to invade Poland and Stalin to enter Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. They agreed to split Poland between them, with Germany occupying the west of the country and Soviet Russia the east.

Soviet forces occupied the Baltic states in June 1940 but were driven out by the Germans a year later. The Red Army retook the Baltics in 1944 and reincorporated the three countries into the Soviet Union.

Latvia and Poland "have a common understanding of the history of the war. We share an understanding of the influence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on Baltic countries, which, of course, was negative," Kalvitis said.

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Poland's Aleksander Kwasniewski would go to Moscow to attend ceremonies on May 9 to mark the victory of the Soviet Red Army over Nazi Germany, said Belka.

"But that does not mean that our opinion about the Yalta Treaty or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact has changed," he said.

He also played down a statement made at the weekend by the Russian foreign ministry, condemning "attempts by Poland and other countries to corrupt the results of the Yalta conference".

In February 1945, the Soviet Union, Britain and United States confirmed, among other issues, after talks in Yalta in the Crimea, that eastern Poland was to remain part of the Soviet Union after Nazi Germany had been routed. The foreign ministry in Moscow said that Poland has pointedly kept quiet about the fact that it gained territory in the west and north at the expense of Germany under the terms of the Yalta accord, and that the country's gains far outstripped its losses. "It would be highly inappropriate to lend too much importance to the bizarre statements made by Russia, such as those concerning Yalta," said Belka.

Moscow continues to refuse to withdraw Russian military bases from Georgia, advancing new conditions, such as the redesignation of the bases as "anti-terrorist centers". Vladimir Socor notes that

the conditions have grown in number and in brazenness, compared to what Moscow had demanded at the preceding rounds of negotiations. The escalation of conditions is probably also designed and timed to dissuade U.S. President George W. Bush from raising this issue with due emphasis at his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Socor concludes:

Attending the negotiations, Giorgi Bokeria, who is a close political ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, remarked that Georgia must extricate itself from this hopeless process, stop using the 1999 OSCE Istanbul commitments [repudiated by Moscow] as the main Georgian argument, and demand instead the withdrawal of Russian troops on the basis of Georgia's national sovereignty and international law. Bokeria's observation is the only good result of this round in a negotiating process that has long ago become farcical. This observation points the way forward for Georgia.

Nick Paton Walsh, writing from the Chechen capital:

A chaotic form of martial law remains in place, as at least four groups of armed men vie for power in the city. Federal troops retain a limited presence in daily life, keeping a distance from the local pro-Moscow Chechen police, a broad sweep of men - mostly former separatist fighters - who prop up the regime of president Alu Alkhanov. Then there are the Kadyrovtsi - the thousands-strong private army once loyal to late president Akhmed Kadyrov, assassinated in May. His son, the brutish and volatile Ramzan, has increasingly failed to command the respect of his father's entourage - and some factions are now pursuing their own ideas, relying on kidnapping and extortion to fund themselves.

Days after two airliners were simultaneously blown up by militants over Russia, and days before the republic would be asked to elect Alkhanov, Tuta Batayeva stood in the modest courtyard of her home and showed me the holes left by the bullets fired by militants fleeing a clash with local police. One went through her son, Isa, 43, killing him, then through her gate, then her fridge.

"We don't know who is good or bad any more. They all look the same and nobody protects us," she said. "And whoever you vote for, they still ensure the killing goes on." It is the twisted consequence of Moscow's decision to hand control over to loyal Chechens: a simple loathing of the occupation force has been replaced by fear of men in masks who act with impunity.

It looks as though presidential elections will take place in Poland in late summer or early fall, and among the most promising candidates is Professor Zbigniew Religa. Marius has translated a few excerpts from a long interview with Religa which recently appeared in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita (my minor editing).


I WON'T LET ANYONE TIE MY HANDS

[passage omitted]

Q: Do you have any positive models in politics?

A fine figure in Poland's history is Ignacy Paderewski [the pianist, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the newly independent Poland of 1919]

Q: What connects you both are those skillful hands...

(Laughter) I think a pianist needs nimble fingers even more than a surgeon. I won't mention Pilsudski, because he's an obvious model. Adenauer - for sure. I'm a huge advocate of Poland’s being in the [European] Union, so Robert Schuman. A person I'm very impressed by is de Gaulle. What he did for France is an example of the activity of a noble-minded and steadfast man. Among the American politicians, because of his attitude in respect to Poland - Reagan, and because of my sentimental considerations.

Q: And for his tough way of conducting politics?

Yes, also for that. And because he was explicit. For his skill in defending what he thought was important. For his bravery in going against... Also Wilson.

Q: Present-day Polish politicians?

I've always said that history doesn't put just anyone on monuments. I think Walesa has a right to his monuments. I would put one up for him, even now.


Q: Because of what kind of Solidarity leader he was, or because of what kind of president he was?

Because of what he did for Poland’s freedom.

Q: There’s not much to argue with there, but what is your view of his presidency?

I won't say a bad word about Walesa. I have no grounds for doing so. He also did a lot of good when he was president. It was he who got the Russian army out of Poland. On the other hand, those re-shuffles of his cabinet, the political infighting that was played out during his time, gave a bad picture of what was going on in the
country then.

Q: Was he a political trouble-maker?

That's a strong statement. That kind of description will never be heard from my lips.

[passage omitted]

Q: Which style of conducting the presidency is closer to you, Walesa's or Kwasniewski's?

For me, Walesa is an unequaled example of a fighter for Poland's freedom. However, President Kwasniewski’s style of conducting politics is closer to me.

[passage omitted]

Q: How do you evaluate our present policy towards Russia?

The Russian side bears more guilt for the less than optimal relations that have existed between Russia and Poland. We haven’t made any moves that are anti-Russian. Though there could had been a lesser or greater wish to maintain contacts, depending on who was in power.

Q: A problem in our relations with Russia is our struggle not to be dependent. And even that could be interpreted as action "against".

We couldn't have acted any differently. European values must not be sacrificed for plain economic benefits. Sometimes I have an impression, that Schroeder and Chirac act like that. Their position on Chechnya has been very bad. There are no reasons why our relations with Russia should be poor. The more so, as I know many splendid people from Russia.

Q: From where do you know them?

From my professional contacts. These are superb people, but they're crazy on the issue of power status: Russia has to be a super-power.

Q: And this pursuit of it is probably getting stronger and stronger?

Yes, they've been trying to rebuild what was lost after the collapse [of the Soviet Union], and that is dangerous. It needs to be opposed, while at the same time we try to have good relations with Russia.

Q: Where would you go on your first foreign visit?

There's only one country in which I could live, besides Poland. It’s
are the United States.

[passage omitted]


Q: Have you ever belonged to the PZPR (Polish United Worker's Party, communist party in Poland M.L.)?No, I haven't.

Q: The past of the PRL (PRL - Polish People's Republic M.L) is not important today, when judging people?

The question of whether one was or wasn't a secretary of PZPR doesn't matter today at all, all that matters is what the person was doing then. Whether one likes it or not, the matter is not so simple.

Q: What moments in Poland’s recent history were important for you? What did August '80 ( the first workers' strikes M.L.) and December '81 mean for you? ( martial law introduced on Dec. 13th M.L.)

In 1980 I established Solidarity in our health services, in the Wolski Hospital. I was very involved in it. This was euphoria, happiness, something fantastic.

Q: And the 13th of December?

A tragedy. I remember this day vividly.

Q: Are Jaruzelski and Kiszczak (Minister of Interior M.L.) criminals or men of honour?

Jaruzelski is a tragic figure.

Q: And not a cynical one?

No. I think the possibility of Russian intervention was huge in 1981.

Q: Documents tell today something different.

I'm telling you about my feeling then. If the historians prove that there was no such threat, than I'll withdraw my opinion of Jaruzelski - as a tragic figure of Polish history.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Zbigniew Religa, 66, completed his studies at the Medical Academy in Warsaw. Worked in Warsaw’s Wolski Hospital, obtaining specialization in surgery, internship in 1973 in New York and in 1975 in Detroit in heart-surgery. Professor of the Silesian Medical Academy in 1990, in 1997-1999 its dean. In 2001 director of the Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw. Co-founder of the Centrum Party.

I've just received a copy of Robert Conquest's latest book, The Dragons of Expectation - Reality and Delusion in the Course of History (Norton, 2005), and hope to be writing about it here soon. For an earlier discussion of Conquest's Reflections on a Ravaged Century, see here, here, here, and here

It's an unusual and interesting idea :

Pesaro, 16 November 2003 - The visit to Italy of Umar Khanbiev, Health Minister of the Chechen government of Aslan Maskhadov and Member of the General Council of the Transnational Radical Party, ended yesterday with two public meetings in the Marches, the first in Fano and the second in Pesaro. The meetings were organised by several local Catholic groups, co-ordinated by Francesco Montanari (Associazione Fuoritempo) and the Radical activist Matteo Anniballi. Speakers at the meetings included Sergio Franceschetti of the IPSIA (Istituto Pace Sviluppo Innovazione delle Acli), the Radical MEPs Olivier Dupuis and Benedetto della Vedova, and Carmelo Palma, Radical Member of the Regional Council of Piedmont.

Presenting the volume “Chechnya: nella morsa dell’impero” (Guerini e Associati), Olivier Dupuis explained that the internationalisation of the Chechen question and the proposal for an interim United Nations administration in Chechnya should also be seen in the context of the evolution of the European institutions, and of the prospect of EU membership for the Caucasian states, especially Georgia, Azerbaijan and also, as soon as it becomes possible, Chechnya. Without the anchor provided by the EU, continued Dupuis, these countries - as the serious situation in Georgia has already demonstrated - have no real chance of withstanding the policies of pressure and “re-Russification” pursued in an increasingly menacing manner by the Putin administration.

After a moving reconstruction of the siege of Grozny in 2000 and 2001, Umar Khanbiev underlined that the Peace Plan of the Chechen government in favour of the establishment of an interim United Nations administration in Chechnya already effectively constitutes a compromise on the part of the Chechens, giving up the demand for immediate independence and entrusting the process to international negotiations conducted under the aegis of the United Nations. On the subject of the recent elections, claimed by the Kremlin to be a democratic “confirmation” of the pro-Russian Kadirov, Khanbiev denounced the arbitrary and purely “scenographic” nature of a vote which respected neither the Russian nor the Chechen constitution, which was not recognised or validated by the international community, and which simply confirmed the military rule of the Russian forces of occupation.

(via chechnya-sl)

From Eesti Ringvaade/Estonian Review Volume 15 No 5 January 31-February 6, 2005

Feb 02 - Estonian European MP Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the first Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, together with four colleagues nominated Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and the Ukrainian people for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

Their letter to the Nobel Foundation says that the orange revolution in Ukraine led by Yushchenko consolidated democracy and brought freedom to thousands of people. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the Ukrainian President would be a sign that Ukraine is becoming a modern, democratic European state, the signatories of the letter find.

They said that peaceful, consistent and successful opposition to autocracy, put up by Yushchenko and tens of thousands of Ukrainians, provided a clear signal to the world that democracy will eventually prevail over undemocratic forces.

"...the war, despite its burden and risks, continues to be useful to the Kremlin for achieving various external and internal political goals, and as such, constitutes an integral part of Putin’s political project. One recent illustration of this conclusion was the “window of opportunity” (in the words of Kremlin’s insiders) created by the terrorist attack in Beslan for advancing the long-discussed proposal on discontinuing the pattern of regional elections and establishing the practice of appointing governors by presidential decree. By generating deadly terrorism, the stagnant war in Chechnya also creates legitimacy for tighter central control over political processes and suppressing dissent as the fifth column. In this perspective, the straightforward question: “What would it take to achieve peace in Chechnya?” has a simple answer: “It would take a different Russia.”"

- Pavel K. Baev

Observed online: in one forum, posters from the Baltic states excoriate Ephraim Zuroff, the Nazi-hunter who has made it his business to investigate war criminals in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. In another forum, posters from Israel write in support of Putin's campaign of repression against Chechen fighters. In yet another forum, East European posters attack Israel for its policy on the Palestinians and the territories. Posters from the Baltic states express their resentment when comparisons are made between the situation of their countries and the situation of Israel. In another place, someone points out how Putin voices his support for President Bush and the War on Terror while Moscow quietly arranges the sale of missiles to Syria. And so it goes...

The policy memos and papers of the recent PONARS (Project on New Approaches to Russian Security) conference held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC on February 4 are now available online. Among the topics discussed are:

"A Sense of His Soul": The Relation between Presidents Putin and Bush (James Richter)
Why Did Russia Welcome a Republican Victory? (Mikhail Rykhtik)
Russia Between "Old" and "New" Europe: New Policy Articulations (Andrey S. Makarychev)
"Juicy Morsels": Putin's Beslan Address and the Construction of the New Russian Identity (Sergei Medvedev)
Putin's War in Chechnya: Who steers the course? (Pavel K. Baev)
Is Russia's New Belarus Policy Emerging? (Arkady Moshes)

A survey of some of the papers can be read at EDM.

Writing in EDM, Vladimir Socor presents an analysis of the recent marathon press conference by Kremlin spokesman Gleb Pavlovsky, who on February 3 announced a major redefinition of Russia's policy in the "post-Soviet space". Socor notes that

Pavlovsky warned at the outset: "One should be aware that, at least until the end of President Putin's tenure and probably until the end of the presidency of his immediate successors, Russia's foreign policy priority will be to turn Russia into a 21st century world power. This despite the fact that we are presently a weak regional power with a weak commodity-based economy."

Socor diagnoses three essential strands in the new Russian policy:

1) Belarus represents an optimal model of integration with Russia, whereby the regime's ultimate political reliability will override other issues. "We are totally satisfied with the level of our relations with Belarus. Russia will clearly distinguish between certain characteristics of a political regime in a neighboring country and its observance of allied commitments. Belarus is a model ally."

2) As a major departure from Russian policy since 1992, Moscow reserves the right from now on to pursue its goals by establishing relations with political forces, opposition as well as governing, in post-Soviet countries. "Russia will certainly interact with the entire political spectrum in the neighboring [sic] countries, both official and opposition, including nongovernmental organizations, democratic organizations, and in-system political groups," other than the "extremist, radical, or underground groups." "The president of our partner country or ally country, while preserving the role of our central interlocutor, will not be regarded by Russia as the one and only representative of the society." Moscow intends to use its NGOs as well as its government agencies to link up with political forces in post-Soviet countries...

3) Russia does not accept the proposition that Euro-Atlantic integration provides a shelter against Russian influence in post-Soviet countries. "Russia will become a world power again, and will have a global area of interests. Now, however . . . there are certain countries where we have our interests. Even the admission of some of these countries to the European Union and NATO does not mean that they fall out of the area of our interests. The Baltic states are certainly within this area of interests, particularly on such issues as transit or the status of the Russian language and Russian community. We will certainly use their accession to the new organizations in order to intensify monitoring of what concerns our interests and to influence these countries."

This stated goal transcends the Baltic states as such, reflecting more far-reaching ambitions to corrode NATO's and the EU's political cohesion by extracting concessions at the expense of Baltic states on the issues that Pavlovsky named. The tactic at this stage consists of trying to introduce those issues on the agenda of Russia's discussions with the EU, NATO, and some major West European capitals. Any success in doing so would encourage Moscow to expand the range of internal EU and NATO issues on which Moscow seeks to obtain a voice.

See also in this blog: The "Kwasniewski Doctrine"

Music-related posts have been rare on this blog in recent months, so I thought I'd write a little about something that has been preoccupying me for a while now - namely, the slightly controversial subject of solo transcription.

Last summer at the Guildhall Summer School in London, I attended a week-long workshop and seminar given by the jazz violist Tanya Kalmanovitch, which focused on transcribing as a route to internalizing the structural and harmonic principles of jazz improvisation for string players. Tanya recently delivered a paper on the same subject at the IAJE Conference held last month at Long Beach, California. Her approach is primarily an instrumental one - in her view, the task of the student is to learn to transcribe directly to the fingerboard. Describing her own early experience, she tells of how she

dutifully set about notating Miles Davis’ solo on “So What”, but the sheets of neat, Juilliard trained, hand-written manuscript I quickly produced left me no better equipped to improvise on the tune. Some years – and many questions – later I was able to gather a systematic approach to imitating, understanding and mastering the language of jazz. This approach to transcription is the key to all the lessons in the jazz library.

She goes on:

When we talk about “transcription” we usually think about the act of notating an improvised solo. I’d like to challenge you to think about transcription in a different way. In the method I will outline here, notation will be one of the last things you do with a solo. Before you set pen to manuscript paper, you’ll be memorizing, singing and finally playing the solo on your instrument. Learning to construct swinging eighth note lines with good voice leading over changes takes discipline and persistence. Transcription, done thoroughly, rewards the student with a full toolkit to approach any kind of improvised music performance. As the great saxophonist David Liebman advocates, ”Playing bebop necessitates instrumental technique, theoretical knowledge, a good fluent rhythmic feel and training of the ear. It is the calisthenics of jazz improvisation no matter what idiom.”

Over the past six months or so I've been following the second level of a course in jazz eartraining and harmony at a London music college, and in my practical study I've been applying Tanya Kalmanovitch's approach in conjunction with the exercises in rhythmic and harmonic structure we've been doing in the class. So far, I feel it has worked successfully for me: by following the three-part emphasis on time feel, voice leading and vocabulary-building, I've been able to mesh the studies in chord and interval recognition with practical instrumental work in such a way that now, when he have actually begun to examine solos in the class, I feel I have a fairly solid background from which to develop, and one that's related to my own instruments - violin and viola.

Although in the class we have been studying improvised lines of a more advanced type - for example, the Charlie Parker alto sax solos on "Now's the Time" and "Blues for Alice" - I found that the earlier work I'd done, for example, on more straightforward lines of the kind Tanya suggests for practice, such as Lester Young's solo on "Body and Soul" and Hank Mobley's solo in "Hank's Other Soul", helped me to get to grips with the often more convoluted, though always melodic, outlines of the Parker material. In particular, also, the II-V and other progression studies we had done in class helped me with the harmonic analysis of the actual played solos on these recordings. At the moment, I'm transcribing Miles Davis's solo on "Surrey With the Fringe On Top" in the 1956 quintet recording with John Coltrane, and using the procedure recommended by Tanya, i.e. no manuscript paper at first, but simply time feel and singing, followed by phrase-by-phrase learning of the solo directly on the fingerboard. I have to confess that in order to do this I've been using a piece of computer software that's been extremely helpful - it's the Amazing Slow Downer, which enables me to slow the track right down, without altering the pitch, and to loop sections of the solo so I can really find out what is going on. The Miles Davis solo is deceptively simple: in fact, it isn't simple at all, but contains numerous delays and fluttered notes that are quite difficult to notate, but which can be reproduced imitatively after close listening. Eventually I'll try to write out both head and solo on music paper, but first I want to learn to play the lines by memory and ear alone.

It's a fascinating task, and one that is potentially limitless - the amount of musical information that can be learned from even one track is astonishing. Incidentally, the use of transcribing techniques in the learning of improvisation seems to be catching on: in the current issue of the Jazz Education Journal, Dr Carl W. Knox has an article on the subject which stresses the imitation of "every nuance of sound, pitch, articulation, and inflection" in the learning of recorded solos.

Norman Geras writes in the current issue of Dissent magazine about The Reductions of the Left. From his reflective essay's conclusion:

I have written about the political dispositions of a significant segment of the left, some of it of Marxist persuasion or formation, and some of it not, although the latter also socialist and sharing with the Marxist part the same tendencies to practical reductionism and deficiency of moral imagination that I have here set out. I would suggest also, however, that within the international "peace" movement, as it flatters itself to be, there is an even wider constituency, not only not Marxist but not recognizably socialist either - liberals, radicals, greens, anarchists, and other progressives of one kind and another - which exhibits variants of the same double tendency I have diagnosed: on the one hand, the practical reductionism by which the wrongs of the world are lightly referred back to their alleged causes, whether in U.S. foreign policy, or economic hardship, or grievance, or whatever; on the other hand, a disinclination or refusal to acknowledge in their full magnitude and moral significance the political evils for which other states, organizations, and movements are responsible.

This wider constituency has not been my subject here, and I will not attempt to account for it at length. I offer merely this conjecture. There is a looser, progressivist, and (so to say) "sociologizing" variant of the themes I have focused on above, whereby wrongdoing in the world, and much worse than wrongdoing, has nearly always to be seen as somehow redeemable by reference to background social conditions-which may then be taken as alleviating the scale of the wrongs, or the worse-than-wrongs, in question. (I say "nearly" always, because the forever blameworthy are excluded from this explanatory indulgence.) You only have to attend for a few weeks to the left-liberal press and the traffic on the opinion and letters pages there in order to find this wider constituency, most of it unattached to Marxist doctrine of any kind, yet very attached to the thematic couple that has been the subject of this essay. There is, of course, another way of characterizing its outlook. It is Manichaean: everything bad in the world drains away from one side of it toward the other.

A symposium at FrontPage Magazine has Jamie Glazov hosting a discussion between John Radzilowski, John Swails and Rachel Ehrenfeld on the subject of Ukraine and World War IV. Dr Radzilowski has some cogent arguments to set against the skepticism of some sections of the American Right concerning Ukraine's "trustworthiness" as an ally in the War on Terror, given the Ukrainian government's decision to withdraw troops from Iraq - thus supposedly currying favour with "Old" Europe. The Orange Revolution has further ramifications, which are not always obvious from a U.S. perspective. In particular, Radzilowski notes:

The notion that Ukraine or its new president-elect are now the darlings of the EU is almost laughable. The EU would have completely ignored this crisis had it not been for the new accession states--Poland and Lithuania in particular. The EU has completely ignored the abuses of the crypto-Stalinist regime in neighboring Belarus for years. The last thing EU bigwigs want is another "eastern entanglement" especially one that will cause any unpleasantness with Russia. The European left is furious with the Poles and Lithuanians for dragging the EU into Ukraine. On January 5, the Spanish Socialist President of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, in a closed-door session of the Forum for New Economics in Madrid bitterly denounced the new members as agents of "U.S. influence." This hardly sounds like a love-feast in the making.

The EU faces a huge dilemma with regard to Ukraine. It can hardly bar Ukraine from any consideration of future membership while offering Turkey a path to full membership. Yet the inclusion of a huge country of 48 million would alter the EU almost beyond recognition and hugely complicate relations with Russia. There is serious concern about the present set of new members--whether they can be fully integrated, whether they are too pro-American or too free-market oriented. The prospect of Ukraine as a potential member will be rather terrifying to the Eurocrats and the French leadership.

The head of the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] knows which deputy carried the poison for Yushchenko

www.PRAVDA..com.ua, 4.02.2005, 22:13

The newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs Yuri Lutsenko considers that solving the crime against Victor Yushchenko is "totally attainable".

"It's known who transported this poison through the border, which deputy escorted it, which official brought it to the place where that crime was commited, and who mixed it into the food" - stated Lutsenko in his interview for the journalists on Friday.

He emphasized that "there will be a thorough investigation" of this crime.

Lutsenko did not give any date of the announcement of the solution of this crime, stating that at first, it must be presented to the Cabinet of Ministers

Source: Interfax-Ukraine
(Marius's tr.)

Putin and Wiesenthal - commentary by Leopold Unger

Leopold Unger 31-01-2005, last update 31-01-2005 18:22

From Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw:

http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/swiat/1,34181,2522106.html

96 years old, 60 years in action, 3,000 Nazi criminals on file, 1000 in prison. "The Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal doesn't go to the office any more, doesn't host any guests, doesn't even leave his house. Simon Wiesenthal has a right to be tired, and to say to theworld: "Leave me alone".

He has made an exception. After a long hesitation, he broke his silence. Over the grave called Auschwitz, which is one of the five camps built by Hitler camps (but historically the most important one) - a path he followed through the war.

He said that Auschwitz is a holy, symbolic place of genocide of the Jews, but also a symbol of the fate of humankind - the proof that neither the Holocaust nor anti-Semitism should became an exclusively Jewish "subject". What will be next? Nazism and communism, the old thinker asserts, have done so much damage that for humankind to grow up, to get rid off this poison, to develop an immunity to ideologies of this kind, several generations are needed.

While Wiesenthal mourned, Putin agreed with him. If Wiesenthal had listened to the Russian president's speech at Auschwitz, he would have found traces of this poison. Putin has done a real piece of jugglery here. A double one. As he spoke to the world from the biggest Jewish cemetery he never once used the words "Jew" and "Holocaust". And he achieved something that nobody before him has done it - nor previously, nor during the commemoration in Auschwitz - he brought to the mourning psalms his dirty politics, he made his deals. He compared Nazism to terrorism, he abused human speech, falsified the mood of the moment, he desecrated the mourning. Terrorism, like Nazism, is of course, and here Putin is right, "dangerous and perfidious". But against terrorism - and this what Putin "dangerously and perfidiously" passed over in silence, we had and have the military power of the state, a huge potential to counter-strike at it, and support, although not always the same one, of public opinion.

There are examples in the Americans chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan, the Israelis liquidating the chief of Hamas, and his own Russians, wiping out terrorists and, in passing, also "ordinary" Chechens. The Nazis however, with the world's indifference, murdered, gassed, and burned defenceless Jews. One can understand Putin being upset by the Chechen cloud over Russia, but to use the world's mourning and cemetery commemoration for playing political games and justification for shameful suppression of a small nation is not appropriate for the leader of a large country. There is a war going on in Chechnya; in Auschwitz it was a Holocaust. Those are not the same things.

Wiesenthal didn’t hear Putin, but he came to the correct conclusion: humankind has learned nothing. Auschwitz is a memento. Freedom is not a gift from gods, it must be won anew, through subsequent generations, Only the unfalsified and non-misused memory of Auschwitz will be able to save our humankind from a repetition of this tragedy. Only this memory will not allow our consciences to be put to sleep: only it will see to it that no criminal will be able to sleep peacefully.

I don't know if Wiesenthal would like to say something more to the world, if he would like to leave to the world some moral testament. But what Simon Wiesenthal said, on the day of commemoration in Auschwitz, in his tired voice, possibly in his last words, is enough of a testament. And when the flames illuminated the railroad of the Jewish ramp, Wiesenthal, in the front of all the freezing VIP's, put down these words, instead of a candle, at the foot of the monument in Auschwitz.

(translation by Marius, my editing)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------


LEOPOLD UNGER, born in 1922 in Lvov (now in Ukraine). Survived the war in Romania. Till 1969 worked for the Polish newspaper Zycie Warszawy,was forced to emigrate when the anti-Semitic campaign was unleashed by the Polish communist party and government authorities against Jewish intellectuals in Poland in 1968, worked for the Belgian daily Le Soir. Was a regular collaborator to the Polish dissident publishing house Kultura in Paris and Radio Free Europe, regularly published his commentaries in the International Herald Tribune. Since 1990, a columnist for the main Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

Mark McDonald at the Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting article about the chances of an Orange-style pro-democracy revolution in Russia (free registration):

They printed flyers, worked the Internet, and got several hundred students to join an antigovernment march last weekend through the bitterly cold streets of St. Petersburg.

They also stirred the interest of some threatening-looking men who left no doubt about their ties to the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. The men told the students that they should change the group's name, and strongly suggested that they shouldn't openly criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin or the war in Chechnya.

"We shall definitely keep our name," chief organizer Mikhail Obozov said in a late-night interview in the cafe of a small hotel. "But for now, for the sake of the preservation of the movement, we might not directly mention Putin or Chechnya.

"We didn't really set ourselves up to attack the president. We just want to protect students' rights."

In the longer term, Walking Without Putin would like to use Ukraine as its political model in Russia. Its young organizers were mesmerized by the pro-democracy protests in Kiev in recent months.

But importing such a revolution to Russia would be difficult, political experts say. The Russian police and security services are widely feared, and the Kremlin controls virtually every lever of power, from the legislature, the courts and the regional governments to the election process and national TV channels.

Witness Obozov, 20, a slight, soft-spoken engineering student, son of a kindergarten teacher and a factory worker. He was sure he'd been tailed to his interview with me, and several times he lowered his voice to a whisper when speaking of the president.

Obozov said Walking Without Putin - the name is a wordplay on Walking Together, a pro-Putin youth group - isn't opposed to Putin personally. He does believe, however, that the president is "the embodiment of the building of a totalitarian state."

"We're also not very happy that he has connections with the secret services, that he was raised by them." (Putin, a St. Petersburg native, is a former KGB spy who also briefly headed the agency. Many of his closest aides in the Kremlin are former members of the security services.)

Young people and university students were instrumental in dislodging authoritarian governments in a number of former Soviet republics and satellites. Most recently, youth groups helped engineer the pro-democracy Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

But that trend has yet to emerge in Russia, where Walking Together is the only youth group of any size or political impact. A straitlaced organization that clearly has ties to the Kremlin, its members idolize Putin and wear T-shirts bearing his picture at their rallies.

The group want to remain independent of Russia's political parties, and

for now, the group has no hip T-shirts, no catchy slogans, not even a signature color, although organizers have debated what hue their incipient revolution might take. Navy blue is the current favorite.

Said Obozov: "It seems to have a reference to freedom."

The Sunday Times (UK) has published a profile of Norman Geras, whose normblog presents the views of a political observer whose position can't be defined in traditional terms of "left" and "right".

Eric the Unread has some astute comments on the Sunday Times piece, its tone and implications. I particularly agree with him in his endorsement of Oliver Kamm's warning that

The problem...is the increasing popularity of 'neoconservatism' as a catch-all category for those whose political views defy neat categorisation.

The full list of Yulia Tymoshenko's cabinet, with background details, has been published. The information is in an eleven-page web document - those who don't read Russian will need to use an online translator.

An excerpt from "Press Conference with Effective Policy Fund President Gleb Pavlovsky" February 3, 2005

http://www.fednews.ru

Gleb Pavlovsky:

During the election in Ukraine, the leader of one of the EU countries, Mr. Kwasniewski, offered a political formula that sums up [what] will be rejected in Russia officially by the majority of political forces. It can be called the Kwasniewski doctrine. His formula is as follows: it is better Ukraine without Russia than Ukraine with Russia. This concept is as anti-Russian as it is anti-European. This concept is based on the assumption that Europe will build a wall, a new line of confrontation, and countries will be asked to take sides.

We assess this doctrine as a concept designed to impose restrictions on Russia and throw it back. I emphasize once again that an attempt by any country in Europe, in the East or West, strong or weak, to encourage the doctrine of Russia's recoil will certainly create a conflict in relations with this country. This must be clearly understood. Not to say that it's stupid, it's an attempt to apply to the large number of problems associated with the consolidation of Europe some artificial geopolitical scheme that does not reflect any relevant tasks. This must be ruled out. We will closely monitor the behavior of countries with regard to this doctrine. We have noticed attempts by some Baltic countries to play this game. We will object to this, and we will reject this. By the way, another thing that has yet to be clarified is the area of Russia's interests. Some time in the future Russia will become a world power again, and it will have a global area of interests. However it is not so now. Now our area of interests is not global and does not cover the entire world.

There are a number of countries where we have our interests. And the admission of some of these countries to the EU or even NATO will not mean that they will fall out of the area of our interests. The Baltic countries are certainly within this area of interests, particularly on such issues as transit or the position with regard to the Russian language and the Russian community, the status of the Russian community in the Baltic countries. This situation will not change depending on what unions those countries join. We will certainly use their accession to new organizations to intensify monitoring of what concerns our interests and to influence them. Their EU membership has not reduced, on the contrary, it increased Russia's influence on the situation in the Baltic states. Such a paradox. In this sense, we perfectly realize this.

With the gradual approach of May 9 and the Moscow "celebrations", at scb the discussions continue... more or less as they have done for the past ten years or more. Some of the posters are new, but most, including yours truly, are not. For all its undeniable eccentricities (they can be seen as lovable ones), the group has served as a valuable meeting-point for views not only on specifically Baltics-related issues, but also on the whole question of Russia and its relation to Western Europe, and indeed the West in general. There is also some discussion of political and military strategic issues, which even include such topics as the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

From today's RFE/RL Newsline:

UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT CONFIRMS TYMOSHENKO AS PRIME MINISTER... The 450-seat Verkhovna Rada on 4 February approved Yuliya Tymoshenko as Ukraine's new prime minister with 373 votes in favor, Channel 5 reported. To comply with the constitution, Tymoshenko immediately gave up her parliamentary mandate to assume her new job. JM

...AND PRESIDENT APPOINTS NEW CABINET. Shortly after the confirmation of Tymoshenko as prime minister in the Verkhovna Rada hall, President Viktor Yushchenko signed decrees appointing a new cabinet of ministers, Channel 5 reported. The cabinet includes Anatoliy Kinakh as first deputy prime minister; Oleh Rybachuk and Mykola Tomenko as deputy prime ministers; Yuriy Lutsenko as interior minister; Serhiy Teryokhin as economy minister; Borys Tarasyuk as foreign minister; and Anatoliy Hrytsenko as defense minister. JM

UKRAINIAN PREMIER-DESIGNATE PRESENTS GOVERNMENT PROGRAM IN PARLIAMENT. Prior to the vote approving her as prime minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko addressed the Verkhovna Rada on 4 February, presenting the "Toward the People" program that she wants to implement with her new cabinet, Channel 5 reported. The program includes no economic indicators or operational time frames but outlines a general vision of reforms to boost the welfare of Ukrainians, meet European standards in state institutions, and create a civil society. Tymoshenko appealed to the lawmakers to vote on the program shortly after her anticipated approval as prime minister and the announcement of the composition of a new cabinet of ministers by President Viktor Yushchenko. The approval of a cabinet's program protects the prime minister from being dismissed by a parliamentary vote of no confidence during the following year. JM

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT PLEDGES TO RUN HONEST GOVERNMENT. Ahead of a parliamentary debate on the approval of Tymoshenko as prime minister on 4 February, President Yushchenko told the Verkhovna Rada that the country's new government will neither "steal" nor give or accept bribes, Channel 5 reported. "We will conduct a transparent, honest, and responsible policy," Yushchenko said, stressing that there will be "nationwide monitoring" of governmental officials on a monthly basis. He also promised to conduct honest privatization. "Those properties that were stolen will be returned to the state, starting with the Kryvorizhstal [metallurgical giant]," Yushchenko said. He called on the lawmakers to endorse his nomination of Tymoshenko as the new prime minister. "I trust her and I believe that she will be able to organize the work of a national government. I trust her as millions of people [in Ukraine] trust her," Yushchenko said. JM

UKRAINIAN LAWMAKERS CONTINUE TO REGROUP. Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn announced on 4 February that one deputy left the Social Democratic Party-united (SDPU-o) parliamentary caucus while two others joined the Socialist Party caucus, Interfax reported. Lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada have been regrouping for the past several weeks, eroding the caucuses that supported former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's cabinet, most notably the SDPU-o faction led by Viktor Medvedchuk and the Ukraine's Regions faction representing the Party of Regions headed by Yanukovych. The biggest beneficiary of these moves is the People's Agrarian Party led by Lytvyn, whose caucus has almost doubled in the past two months. On the morning of 4 February the array of forces in the Verkhovna Rada was as follows: Our Ukraine -- 101 deputies; the Communist Party -- 59; Ukraine's Regions -- 54; the People's Agrarian Party -- 33; SDPU-o -- 23; the Socialist Party -- 24; United Ukraine -- 22; the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc -- 19; Democratic Ukraine -- 16; Soyuz -- 15; Industrialists and Entrepreneurs/People's Will -- 15; Democratic Initiatives -- 14; Center -- 12; and People's Democratic Party-Republic -- 10 deputies. JM

Yulia Tymoshenko is Ukraine's new Prime Minister. Voting was:

Our Ukraine (Nasha Ukraina) faction - 99
Communists faction - 3
Regions of Ukraine (Regiony Ukrajiny) - 46
People's Agrarian Party of Ukraine faction - 33
Socialist Party of Ukraine faction – 24
Social-Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) faction - 18
United Ukraine (Yedyna Ukraina) Party faction - 22
Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc faction - 17
Democratic Ukraine group - 16
Union (Soyuz) group - 15
Freedom of the People (Volya Narodu) group - 13
Democratic Initiatives group - 14
Center (Tsentr) group – 12
Popular Democratic Party and Republic (Respublika) group faction - 9
Extrafactional MPs - 32

There were no "against" votes.

(continued)

And so, towards the latter part of December, with somewhat mixed feelings, I decided to cut short my visit (I’d originally planned to stay for six months) and head back to England. A visit to L.P.’s office brought a sympathetic reaction from her, and an official piece of paper signed by her that said I was ending my stazhirovka (study trip) early po semeynym prichinam ("for domestic reasons").

It may seem from what I’ve written in this series of posts that these were months of unrelieved gloom – but that wasn’t the case at all. In many cases, the effort of adapting to the new and unfamiliar surroundings acted as a stimulus, and there was a definite thrill in actually managing to navigate the often labyrinthine complexities of Soviet bureaucracy and Soviet byt, or everyday life. There were also definite perks in being a student at MGU – for one thing, one got free or heavily discounted tickets for music recitals and concerts at the Bolshoi Zal (Main Hall) of the Moscow Conservatoire, and during those months I attended some remarkable recitals, including one by the great pianist Stanislav Neuhaus (the son of Heinrich Neuhaus), and another by Mstislav Rostropovich, with whom a Scottish cellist friend, also on a British Council scholarship, was studying.

It was also possible to build a large collection of classical discs featuring Russian performers by visiting the Melodiya store, where one could buy a very wide range of monaural recordings for next to nothing. The procedure was to buy the records, and then ship them home to Britain, a process that was usually rather time-consuming and involved having the discs specially packed in hardboard cases that were secured with metal tacks. While it was sad to note the indifference felt by most Soviet students to these recordings – what most of them wanted, understandably, was Western rock music, then almost unobtainable, and a top black market item – I felt some satisfaction as I put together a collection of Soviet classical recordings that would be hard to replicate back home in Britain. I also managed to purchase a large amount of classical sheet music of works almost impossible to obtain in England at that time: they included a beautifully edited two-volume collection of Medtner’s early piano music, as well as his Sonatnaya triada, and violin works by Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, and other 20th century Soviet composers.

In addition, I was able to build up my library of classical Russian literature, in the first instance by visiting the Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga bookstore in town, which from time to time had sales of small-tirazh Soviet editions of works by 19th century authors – one had to get an inside “tip-off” as to when the tirazh would be put on sale, then dash down to the bookstore and get into the queue: sometimes the books were sold out almost instantly, for normally the bookstore stocked only row after row of works on diamat (“dialectical materialism”), the works of Marx and Lenin, and so on. Apart from Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, there were the bukinisty, or second-hand bookstores, and I also managed to arrange a private exchange of Western books for rare pre-revolutionary editions of books by Russian symbolist and post-symbolist poets like Balmont and Kuzmin. It was illegal to take these books out of the Soviet Union without a special certificate, but I managed to smuggle them through the customs without incident.

I’d met quite a few Russians during my stay – in particular, there were Tolya and Aida: they had links with dissident painters and sculptors, whose studios we visited. I was always struck by the intensity and passion with which Russians discussed art and literature – it was quite unlike anything I had ever come across in the West. There was a genuine hunger for information about life in the West – even “dissident” Russians had many strange preconceptions about it, which was inevitable given the almost total block on such factual matter in the official media, and the lack of knowledge of West European languages: most Russians we met knew practically no English, for example. The British Council, in conjunction with the BBC Russian Service, published a monthly magazine in the Russian language (as far as I remember, it was called "Angliya") about aspects of life in the U.K., and we were encouraged to give copies of this publication to Russian friends and contacts, who invariably thought that it was “just more propaganda” (though this was really a polite way of telling us that they’d get into trouble for reading and possessing such things). In general, the political climate in the Soviet Union climate at that time was such that it was almost impossible to strike up real and lasting friendships with ordinary Soviet citizens. The degree of suspicion and fear was palpable: even on an informal night out, there was always the possibility of being followed and spied on, and I witnessed this on several occasions. It was also generally impossible to discuss Soviet politics, even with those Russians who considered themselves “freethinking”: the reality of eavesdropping and surveillance was everywhere. Only in the more than slightly Dostoyevskian atmosphere of Viktor’s room back at MGU did I ever witness political discussions that were completely uninhibited: but then the participants were often working hand-in-hand with the authorities, and “provocation” was the watchword of the hour.

A small group of colleagues accompanied three of us - another two of the British students were also going home for Christmas – to Belorussky Vokzal, where we boarded the train to Ostend: I remember the snowy expanses sliding past for a seeming eternity in the dark, the wide-gauge carriage with its provodnitsa and samovar, the whole of the early part of that journey reminiscent of something out of Tolstoy or Turgenev. Later, after the gauge-change, and the interminable Soviet customs examination at the Polish border, the stretch towards East and West Berlin began, the modern world started to return, the Soviet “commercial delegates” returned to their compartments, drawing the blinds and curtains, and the scene outside the windows took on a bright, familiar look that was comforting and reassuring. I had to admit that I was glad to be back in the West again.

In a future series, I’d like to discuss the second study visit I made to Moscow in 1969-70. It was a rather different experience altogether, for reasons that I’ll try to outline.

See also: Going Back
Going Back-II
Going Back-III
Going Back-IV
Going Back-V
Going Back-VI
Going Back-VII
Going Back-VIII
Going Back-IX
Going Back-X

Norman Geras has posted the long-awaited results of the normblog not quite top hundred greatest songs of rock 'n' roll.

I don't think any of my (highly personal) choices made it to the list - but hey, the Stones are up there in the lead, and that's got to be ok.

Some comments received via email during the week.

From Moscow, a reader writes:

Your serial posts on studying in the USSR in the 60s were very interesting to me. By the time I got there, the ice was beginning to melt, & my overall experience was not as frosty as yours. I guess in regard to the debates that go on between you & Holman on scb, I'd be in the middle somewhere. One thing I find rather startling is the prevailing negative attitude to Russia visible in much of the material on your blog. Some of it is on point, but some of it isn't. For instance, I found the piece by Albats that you posted quite ridiculous. For the record, I've never had any trouble registering my visa here (& while requiring you to register your visa may be a bureaucratic pain, it's not a human rights violation). I also have dark hair & have yet to be beaten up.

While I agree that Putin is probably an authoritarian at heart, he is also a realist who understands that the kind of control that existed in the USSR is impossible now. What's more, Russians are connected to the outside world, & to independent sources of information, in a way they have never been before, & it would be virtually impossible to close that window now. As for freedom of expression: In October I was in St. Petersburg, & stopped at a newsstand outside Gostiny Dvor. There were papers ranging from communist to fascist, all being sold openly. In Soviet times, this whole display would have lasted about 5 minutes before the KGB closed it down. In short, there's a difference between presenting critical information about Russia (& Lord knows there's plenty to criticize here) and the reflexive Russia-bashing I see in so much of the Western press.

And from Adelaide, Australia, another reader's comments:

I think that our views on that fascinating and annoying people would be similar, but I am curious – now that the Kremlin is raising the drawbridge somewhat, will you ever be able to go back? I have not publicised my views like you have yours (on the ‘net) but I was mesmerised by recent events in Ukraina...

I have continued watching events in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately the decisive electoral victory of Yushenko is (in my view) definitely not the end of that story – there will be no “living happily ever after” there, and that is because of a combination of Putin and features of the Russian culture which produced him and which he reflects.

Putin is an imperialist, a continuation of their long line of imperialistic rulers. He has not changed aspects of his Soviet mind-set and will not change. Before the first and second elections he manipulated outrageously and arrogantly the electoral process of what he refuses to recognise as an independent state. Then he most belatedly “congratulated” Yushenko on his final victory, saying that he hoped that Yushenko would not appoint any “anti-Russian” ministers to the new Govt. That is Putin-speak for asserting a veto over the choice of Ministers in another country. The recent news that Yulia Timoshenko (persona non grata in the Kremlin because she is nationalistic and not pro-Russian) was appointed PM in Kiev was followed at once by the announcement that the prosecution of her by Russia for some bribery charge from 1996 (talk about the irony in that - Russia is one of the most bribery-ridden countries in the world) would be continued and so she would be arrested should she dare to set foot in Russia. Putin’s abuse of the Russian “legal” procedures is notorious – Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003 on similar charges of economic misbehaviour and is still in pre-trial detention, with no trial date in sight. But again this sort of thing is traditional as the infamous and nauseating Vyshinsky show-trials of the 1930s remind us.

Servility, acceptance of cruel mistreatment and a fierce nationalistic pride are too deeply ingrained in Russian Culture for there to be any realistic hope of imminent change. Putin has shown in Chechnya that he will not stop. So the Ukrainians are in for a long, long struggle against determined and persistent and unscrupulous adversaries bolstered by oil revenues. No wonder they are as anxious now to enter the EU and NATO as the three Baltic countries were, and for the same reasons. The Poles understand the Ukrainian predicament all too well and have incurred Putin’s wrath and his tame media’s invective by supporting Yushenko.

We don’t know how lucky we are!

(continued)

I think that during this first extended stay in Moscow I was less conscious of the political aspects of the reality that surrounded me – I was 22, and had spent a lot of my time studying the Russian literature and society of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The purported aim of my visit was, after all, to gather materials for my dissertation on the poet Annensky, who had died in 1909. So my view of my surroundings was inevitably affected by this distortion of time, and I tended to see the manifestations of the dissident world more as an observer rather than as an active participant. I think that in general this was also true of most of the British group – indeed, some of us were even mildly sympathetic to the Soviet system, I think, having naively brought with us the idea that it was somehow related to the “benign” face of Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. Most of these people were in for a rude shock, though there were some who persisted in their rose-tinted vision. Also, there was simply the difficulty of getting any research done at all, so huge were the segments of time expended on performing the most rudimentary tasks, such as shopping for food (the stolovaya diet soon became unbearable, or arranging essential interviews with one’s director of studies.

The strangeness and massiveness of the university environment and also of the urban environment in Moscow itself led to a certain degree of alienation, which in turn prompted many of us to withdraw into private rituals. After a morning and early afternoon session at the Library, for example, a few of us would often repair to one of the large hotels in the vicinity – usually the National or the Moskva – for “lunch”. I put the word in quotes, as it was really the Russian obed. For the equivalent of about six dollars, one could eat a perfectly decent four-course meal with Soviet champagne in the vast and almost deserted tourist restaurant of the National, looking out at the snowy square. In the restaurant it was warm and comfortable, and I think we saw it as a kind of escape from the travails of Zone V, where there weren’t even the basic prerequisites of comfort – not even a laundry that was anywhere within reasonable walking distance: clothes were generally washed in the shower, with soap powder brought from the embassy store. So there we sat, while the snow fell outside, and the light began to fail, and we passed the hours in pleasant conversation. It was really a kind of withdrawal.

Occasionally there were parties at the home of the assistant cultural attaché, which gave an illusion of being back in Britain again, and on Sundays, with a friend – she was also researching Russian literature - I sometimes visited the small social club run by the pastor at the American Embassy. This enthusiastic ecclesiastical worker was known as “the hippy priest”, and that was no exaggeration: at his gatherings one could easily have thought one was in Berkeley – and indeed, Viktor, with his two Finnish girlfriends, felt quite happily at home in those part-psychedelic, part-Hockneyesque surroundings, listening to the music of the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys and the Beatles.

In order - we could only assume - to undermine the sense of group solidarity among the British contingent, in mid-November the "local" KGB on floors 8 and 9 of Zone V decided to launch a blackmail operation against our group's leader, or starosta. At around 2am one morning he was awoken by a group of Russian-speaking students who forced their way into his room and "compromised" him - i.e. stripped him naked, made him make obscene gestures, pose with another naked male, and took photographs which they threatened to send to his parents back in England. Next morning, after an urgent telephone consultation with the British cultural attache, which was no doubt tapped, he had to flee on foot to the British Embassy with his deputy, where he was instructed to remain for the next six weeks, before being quietly flown out of Moscow back to the U.K.

Another inconvenience was the sense of distance from home. Letters from Britain had to be addressed c/o the embassy on Maurice Thorez Embankment, and once every three days we took it in turns to call in there and pick up the mail for the group. Then it had to be distributed around the rooms, with one or two of us playing the role of “postman”. These letters were very important to us, I remember – and indeed, the letters I was getting from D., my girlfriend, who had now moved to Cambridge, began to make me feel I might want to return to see her sooner rather than later. By now it was December 1967.

(to be continued)

See also: Going Back
Going Back-II
Going Back-III
Going Back-IV
Going Back-V
Going Back-VI
Going Back-VII
Going Back-VIII
Going Back-IX

(continued)

Writing this now, nearly forty years later, I’m conscious that much has changed in the world and in Moscow since those slightly eerie days of the mid-Cold War. Back then, the mere sight of anything “Western” - nye nash - on a Moscow street was enough to arouse suspicion, and alert the ubiquitous enforcers of order and discipline as well as those who sought to elude them. If one wore jeans, one was likely to be asked to sell them; if one was discovered to be carrying a bag full of Kellogg’s cornflakes boxes, Kit-Kat biscuits, cartons of sterilized milk and jars of Nescafe (shopping was often done for several members of the group), one was likely to get a similar request, or even simply have the things taken away by an officious "citizen". At GUM (the large universal department store) or along Gorky Street, it was usual to be approached by touts trying to conduct the illegal exchange of Western currency for rubles. There was therefore quite a strong motivation to remain anonymous and nondescript – being conspicuously Western was not such a good idea. The American postgraduates in the hostels really took this to heart, and most of them went out and bought Soviet clothes, which they wore on a permanent basis, trying to mingle with the “natives”. The Brits, on the other hand, tended to preserve their Britishness, and dressed accordingly. Perhaps because the fashion sense of British “scholars” was somewhat restrained – understated, might be a better word for it – Brits didn’t stick out quite so much on the streets as Americans did, and so we were generally tolerated as generic inostrantsy (foreigners), who could have come from almost anywhere in the outside world.

I think that by the third or fourth week following our arrival in the Soviet world, many of us in the group began to feel, if not actually homesick, then at least disoriented. Insomnia was a common complaint, and on visits to one another’s rooms we noticed that some people really did seem to having difficulty in adjusting: one group member had even begun to paper the walls of his rooms with the wrappers of Mars chocolate bars he had bought at the Embassy store.

At this stage, we were only vaguely aware of the tensions that lurked beneath the apparently calm and controlled surface of the Brezhnev-Kosygin regime. I was beginning to get to know Viktor, my block neighbour, and had met one or two of the somewhat ghostly though always meticulously polite figures who visited his room, sometimes for hours on end – I could hear them talking through the wall, and from time to time was invited in to share the vodka and incredibly heated conversation, which nearly always seemed to be about articles in Grani or Posev (two emigré journals), with mention of VSKhSON, Ogurtsov, and other “controversial” subjects. Such subjects were, of course, related to the extreme wing of the Soviet dissident movement. On the other hand, some of Viktor's visitors appeared not to be dissidents at all, but were rather from the other side - i.e. the KGB, which had a "cell" attached to the Komsomol in Zone V. For a while, I wondered about Viktor. But later, after we'd become friends, I changed my view.

One morning, while shopping at GUM with a friend, I witnessed something I hadn’t seen before: from a point on the second tier of the balconies around the store, a young woman suddenly threw a bunch of leaflets into the air, and there was a brief flash of metal as she chained herself to the railings. The leaflets fell among the crowd of shoppers below. No one picked them up. Suddenly, I heard two or three voices chanting what later turned to have been slogans. Then the young woman was gone, and the chanting stopped. It was all over within about a minute. The demonstrators were removed by police, and the crowds went on with their shopping as if nothing had happened.

(to be continued)


See also: Going Back
Going Back-II
Going Back-III
Going Back-IV
Going Back-V
Going Back-VI
Going Back-VII
Going Back-VIII

An interesting article at by Richard M. Langworth at the Churchill Centre, on Churchill and the Baltics:

Winston S. Churchill played a varied and crucial role in the bittersweet Baltic story. Ostensibly, after World War I, he was opposed to small national movements among the peoples of Europe. "What was needed," he wrote, "was federation and larger groupings." But a far more important objective, in his view, was to rid the world of Lenin, and he easily warmed to what he called "the foul baboonery of Bolshevism." On 31 December 1918, Churchill urged Allied intervention upon the Imperial War Cabinet: "Bolshevism in Russia represents a mere fraction of the population, and would be exposed and swept away by a general election held under Allied auspices."

The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, viewed Churchill's antipathies with a jaundiced eye. Winston, Lloyd George wrote, "had no doubt

a genuine distaste for Communism. He was horrified, as we all were, at the savage murder of the Czar, the Czarina and their helpless children. His ducal blood revolted against the wholesale elimination of Grand Dukes in Russia. [I believed] that under the impulse of this brilliant Minister, we were gradually being drawn into war with Russia.'

Yet Great Britain had been the first nation to take a practical interest in the independence struggle of the Baltic peoples, which began in the wake of the Russian collapse and revolution of 1917. British statesmen had realized that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had advanced sufficiently to form independent nations, controlling their own destinies. All three Baltic States had declared independence by the end of 1918.

At the same time, if the Bolsheviks were to be overthrown, Britain looked to a Russian republic with its prewar boundaries intact. Foreign secretary Lord Balfour thus took a middle course, extending defacto, but not dejure, recognition to Estonia on 3 May 1918, and to Latvia on Armistice Day, 11 November.

Independence and recognition were not, however, won without bloodshed, nor without Allied military intervention. Churchill, writing later, gave a sympathetic view toward the struggles of the small countries. "Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

found themselves in a peculiarly unhappy position. They were close neighbours on the East to Petrograd and Kronstadt, the nurseries of Bolshevism; on the West to the birthplace and stamping-ground of those Prussian landowners who had proved themselves to be the most rigid element in the German system and one of the most formidable. During the winter of 1918 and the early summer of 1919 the Baltic States were subjected alternately to the rigours of Prussian and Bolshevik domination .. . In these circumstances it is not surprising that the independence of Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania existed for the time being only in the aspirations of their inhabitants and the sympathies of allied and associated Powers."

In order to support the three republics, or at least keep them out of Lenin's bloody grasp, the Allies used German troops as a surrogate army. Under the terms of the Armistice, the Germans were to withdraw gradually, leaving the republics to set up their governments. Britain also lent sea power through operation "Red Trek," a naval squadron under Rear-Admiral Alexander Sinclair. In December 1918, Sinclair sallied into Estonian and Latvian ports, sending in troops and supplies, and promising to attack the Bolsheviks "as far as my guns can reach." Latvian prime minister Karlis Ulmanis, a patriot returned from exile (he had studied agriculture in the United States), sent the first of many appeals for support to London on 3 December.

The account and analysis are fascinating, and well worth a read.

(via Leopoldo)

(continued)

After the initial period of settling in was over, we began to approach the official purpose of our visit – scholarly research. In order to get started with this, it was necessary to visit Zone A, and the so-called Inotdel (an abbreviation of Inostrannyi otdel, or Foreign Department) of the University, and make an appointment to see the supervisor, a youngish woman called Lidiya Prokofyevna. Lidiya Prokofyevna, or “L.P.” as we soon began to call her, was in charge of all the foreign "philology" (arts and humanities) students in the building and its environs. Her office was therefore often very busy, and the time spent waiting outside it for one’s appointment, which was sometimes delayed by up to two hours or more, could be considerable. When one did gain access to the inner sanctum, one began to realize why these delays occurred. To begin with, L.P. would fix you with her somewhat steely, but none the less friendly gaze, through thick glasses, and ask you questions about your zayavlenie, or application for research and archive facilities. When she had learned what she wanted to know, she would pick up the telephone and call the relevant authorities – however, the people at the other end of the line usually seemed to be busy or absent: the phone would go and ringing and ringing, and L.P. would sit there looking at you through her glasses. She might then briefly change the subject to the questions of how you were faring in Zone V, or who your group leader was, or some such topic, but would then revert to silent waiting, as the phone at the other end of the line continued to ring and ring. Sometimes this process of waiting went on for ten minutes or more – then she would call another number, with the same result, and so on. Eventually the required information would come through, and L.P. would issue instructions about the appointment with the archive director, librarian or other official. I think most of us found these sessions in L.P.’s office something of a Kafkaesque joke – and what made the joke even funnier was that L.P. seemed to share an awareness of the absurdity of the situation. Eventually one day, the leader (or starosta) of our group and his deputy brought her flowers and chocolates, which finally seemed to break the ice.

Like several others, I finally arranged to do my research in the First Reading Room (Pervyi zal) of the Lenin Library, and made an application to use the archives at TsGALI (Central State Archive of Literature and Art). Each morning we would set off on the trolleybus from the main entrance to the Leninskie Gory Metro station, put our 5-copeck coin in the slot and pass through the turnstile, descending the moving staircase to the trains below. In some ways, this felt not unlike using the London Tube, except for the absence of commercial advertising, and the constant presence of political slogans. The trip was quite a quick one, and had only four stops – Sportivnaya, Frunzenskaya, Park Kultury and Biblioteka Lenina (Lenin Library) itself.

At the library, it was necessary to leave one’s topcoat and briefcase at the garderob (cloakroom), and woe betide anyone whose coat didn’t have a strong, unbroken cloth tab for hanging up – the cloakroom attendants would refuse to accept it. The First Reading Room was reserved for high Party officials and foreign scholars, Thinking about it, we soon realized that this was probably a deliberate strategy on the part of the authorities, in order to give a decent impression to foreign visitors. For the Second Reading Room and the General Reading Room were not nearly as quiet and spacious, and the scramble for books at the issue desk looked like something out of Gogol’s plays. In the First Reading Room, one was likely to spot the aged Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, who seemed to spend quite a lot of time there. There were lesser Party officials, too – and us, the foreign students, who must have seemed rather out of place.

I spent the days researching aspects of Silver Age literature, with the original issues of Apollon, Vesy and other literary journals of the early 20th century. Such publications were carefully kept for use by Soviet academics and foreign scholars – they were not listed in the general catalogue, but only in the special catalogue housed in the First Reading Room. There was a sense of incongruity, which increased with time, as one studied these pre-revolutionary editions, with their beautiful hand-crafted bindings and illustrations, and from time to time glanced out at the unmistakably Soviet reality of the roof- and streetscape that lay beyond the windows.

(to be continued)

See also: Going Back
Going Back-II
Going Back-III
Going Back-IV
Going Back-V
Going Back-VI
Going Back-VII