A Step At A Time

It was in the middle of October, the last
day of the season at the summer place.
Everything arranged, tidied and closed up.
The taxi boat that was to take care of the transport
from our islet to the mainland
was already approaching the jetty.
Then I heard a nervous pecking from the attic window;
a tit shut in, unable to get out.
So: unlock again, break a pane up there,
release the frightened bird. Ask the boat to wait.
For one short moment I wondered if it would be best
to say nothing to the others, to forget
the alarm signals from the shut-in creature.
Everything was just as usual, no anxiety, routine
that held, rock-solid!
But what sort of solidarity – one chooses.



from Den sextonde månaden (The Sixteenth Month) by Tomas Mikael Bäck
Schildts Förlags Ab, Helsingfors, 2005 (my tr.)

via korrespondent.net, December 31, 17:13

Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov's press secretary Valentin Mondrievsky has announced that Ukraine is ready to pay for Russian gas at the market price from April 2006, Ukrainskі Novini reports.

"We are taking in this proposal (by Russia) and we declare that Ukraine is ready to make the transition to the market price of the gas. But the question of price is a question of negotiations," said Mondrievsky. Fuel and Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov and Aleksei Ivchenko, chairman of the administration of the national joint-stock company "Neftegaz Ukrainy", are continuing negotiations.

CNN has a report beginning

Ukraine warms to Putin gas deal

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine could accept a Russian compromise deal in a dispute over natural gas supply prices, but more talks are needed, a spokesman for the Ukrainian prime minister is reported to have said.

Update: The talks have failed, and according to Gazprom Russian gas supplies to Ukraine will be cut off tomorrow, January 1, the BBC reports.

A Reuters report by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Ron Popeski is here.

Masha Gessen, on the year the courts died in Russia:

The Constitutional Court used to be a wonderful place. Think what you want, but I believe a real city has to possess a few particular elements: good cafes and convenient coffee shops (check), good bookstores (check), and places where you can go see intelligent people say good things. Poetry readings and other literary evenings will do the trick -- and there is plenty of that in Moscow -- but for years I was also a fan of the Constitutional Court. Getting in was reasonably easy, and once there, you could observe a group of very well-educated, intelligent people discussing things that ought to matter to all of us. By the nature of their jobs, they always made reference to the Constitution, which is not a perfect document but is not half-bad as a starting point in any conversation.

Now that conversation is over: The Constitution and its ideals have been declared infinitely mutable.

So is it any wonder that immediately after rendering its decision on governors the Constitutional Court started packing its bags? It seems it will be going to the scrap heap of history -- I mean, the city of St. Petersburg. It is a richly symbolic move. Russia is a country with a single center: Moscow, where all information and all power reside. Moving the Constitutional Court out of Moscow means quite literally moving it out of the loop.

Valery Zorkin acquiesced to the move easily, perhaps indicating that, after more than a decade in the judicial limelight, he is eager to recede into the symbolic shade. That is what the Constitutional Court is doing under his leadership.

That is what the entire judicial system is doing: taking a step back into the space reserved for it in Soviet times -- as a system that selectively enforces selected laws at the pleasure of the state.

May the quest for justice rest in peace.

Read it all.

Writing in Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal on December 23, Leonid Radzikhovsky caused something of a stir when he suggested that the Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov, far from being an advocate of free speech and "pure" aesthetic and moral ideals, was actually a surreptitious defender of fascism.

In his long and persuasive essay, Radzikhovsky reflects on how Bulgakov's reputation and status as an author - he was the object of a quasi-religious cult among young dissident students and intellectuals in the Soviet Union of the late 1960s and 1970s - rested largely on the fact that it was in one of Bulgakov's novels, The Master and Margarita (now to be shown in a screen adaptation on Russian television), that they were able to find extended allusion to the "eternal themes" of Christ, the New Testament and the immortality of the soul. Such a book appeared as a treasure in the stultifying intellectual and political climate of Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

Radzikhovsky argues that one of the novel's principal ideas is that the Devil is really in charge of human destiny. Kant's proof of the existence of God is put to scorn and ridicule, and there is even a conversation where it's suggested that Kant be sent to the GULAG as punishment for his silliness. Bulgakov's sympathies, Radzikhovsky suggests, are really with the Devil. He also puts Bulgakov into the context of the period in which the book was written - the 1930s, and comments that having rejected both the Whites and the Reds during and after the Civil War, Bulgakov found himself in search of the truth. He found it, Radzikhovsky says, in the Strong Man (read Stalin). This was nothing unusual in the world of those days:

For today's politically correct contemporary intellectual, "fascism" is an indivisible (and, to be honest, very abstract) profanity (like "Zionism" for the comrade-patriots). But it was not always so! Intellectuals finally turned away from fascism when it died. But when they knew it by feel, many were not averse to continuing the acquaintance. The intelligentsia was split right at the time of its flowering (the 1920s and 30s). There were antifascists, there were fascists, fascists were all colours of the rainbow... Brown fascism appealed to Heidegger, to Hamsun and Richard Strauss, while Brecht, on the contrary, preferred red. As is well known, Mayakovsky and Ezra Pound, Berdyaev and Ustryalov, all fell sick with fascism.

Razdzikhovsky notes that Bulgakov’s fascism expressed itself in a worship of the strong “hero-executioner”: in his novels there is not a word of criticism in condemnation of the Chekists. “On the contrary, they are always the force which brings order to chaos. The Devil as the creator of the world…”

All this has naturally brought a storm of protest from those who wish to defend Bulgakov from the accusations, and now the journal has even published an article by Alexei Makarkin in which he attempts to refute Radzikhovsky's arguments.

None the less, what Radzikhovksky has written is a serious essay in literary criticism, and it deserves serious consideration. Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal is to be congratulated on opening its columns to such material, which goes far beyond the analysis of purely contemporary political issues in the Russian Federation and tackles matters that concern Russia's moral and spiritual past, and its future.

Via the BBC:

Poland has become the first former Warsaw Pact country to take responsibility for patrolling the air space of the three Baltic states.

Polish pilots took over the rotating Nato mission from the US at a ceremony in northern Lithuania. Seventy Polish air force personnel will serve there.

Poland joined Nato six years ago and it is the first time its pilots will patrol air space bordering Russia.

Four Russian-made MiG-29 jets will be flown during the three-month mission.

The planes have been specially upgraded by Nato to meet the alliance's standards.

Nato member states have taken it in turns to patrol the Baltic skies since the three nations joined the alliance in March last year.

But it is the first time a former Warsaw Pact member has taken over the job and it has caused fears here that the Russians may take advantage of it to test the Polish pilots' skills.

On Sunday, Russia assumes leadership of the G-8 group of industrialized nations. On the same day, it has threatened to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine if it doesn't accept a four-fold price increase. At RFE/RL, Claire Bigg considers the question: Does the Ukraine 'Gas War' cast a shadow over Moscow's G-8 chairmanship?

Russia will spend the year of 2006 at the helm of one of the world's most powerful global alliances. It is a rare opportunity for President Vladimir Putin to boost his country's international standing. As the chair, Russia will host a number of ministerial-level meetings to discuss issues of global concern.

Russia is not a formal member of the G-7 grouping of Japan, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States, as it is not among the world's leading economies.

But Moscow has enjoyed steady economic growth and a rising profile as a major oil-and gas-producing power. Energy policy will be high on the agenda of Russia's G-8 chairmanship.

Moscow's ongoing dispute with Kyiv over the price of Russia's natural gas, therefore, presents a potential problem.

Can Russia present itself as a stable energy provider to Western markets as it engages in an ugly showdown with a former Soviet neighbor?

The Prague Watchdog has an interesting article on the subject of Jordan and Chechnya - An Unquestioned Relationship:

...the experience of the Chechen community in Jordan was very different from that of the ethnic groups in other Middle Eastern states precisely because ethnic communities in other Middle Eastern states were not able to preserve their cultural identity due to nationalist political agendas; whereas the experience of Chechens in Jordan was based on a recognition of difference, rather than an enforced social, political and cultural integration.

The different experience of ethnic groups in the Middle East can, therefore, be used to explain the significant role of Jordanian Chechens in the two Russo-Chechen campaigns in the 1990s. As we have noted it is clear that a substantial support network also existed in other countries such as Turkey, while Jordan played an increasingly important role.

With this in mind, we suggest that the Jordanians who participated in the two Chechen conflicts can be divided as follows: first, into limited numbers of Jordanian Arabs (when compared with other Arab volunteers from Gulf States) who travelled to Chechnya from Afghanistan with the likes of Ibn Khattab. And second, into groups of ethnic Chechens in Jordan, who were motivated by national causes, rather than religion. In the latter case, it is important to note that few if any Chechens were members of Islamist movements before travelling to Chechnya, even though a number did join radical groups such as Jamaat Islamayia whilst in the North Caucasus. In particular, this sheds light on the role of the alleged recruiter Fathi, indicating that he did not try to recruit Chechens from Jordan, but instead relied on his relations with foreign fighters in Afghanistan. This goes some way to indicate how radical Salafist ideas became increasingly influential, particularly after 1995, and how important figures played a role in polarizing the war-ravaged community of Chechnya.

A final point worth noting here is the role of Middle Eastern aid organisations in the two Russo-Chechen campaigns. In fact, a number of well-known aid organisations such as the International Islamic Relief Foundation and Islamic Relief Worldwide were founded in Middle Eastern states, and they offered financial support packages to refuges in, and after, the first Russo-Chechen campaign. It also emerges that some Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia alongside specific named financiers, played an increasingly important role in shaping post-Khasavyurt Chechnya through informal ties and through working closely with aid organisations. Furthermore, it was alleged that assistance was given to some radical groups through both informal and formal links to Middle Eastern benefactors. So much so, that Russia banned the work of many Middle Eastern aid organisations. But, unlike other Middle Eastern aid organisations based in the Persian Gulf, support networks and aid organisations in Jordan have not been banned by the Russian authorities. This indicates that Jordan and its Chechen diaspora have played a different role to that linked to Islamic radicalism in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing.

In Le Monde, Natalie Nougayrède considers the questions about the Beslan hostage crisis which the Russian federal parliamentary commission headed by Alexander Torshin has not answered:

Just after the end of the hostage-taking at the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, from 1st to 3rd September 2004, Vladimir Putin used a phrase of Stalin's to announce new restrictions by the authorities: "If you are weak, you get attacked". Russia, he explained in a television broadcast, had just suffered a terrorist attack because it had shown that it was weak. Mr Putin announced an immediate series of countermeasures whereby politics would come under new control throughout the country, most notably by the removal of the election by universal suffrage of the regional governors. In this sense the drama of Beslan was a decisive moment in the political transformation of Putin's Russia.

For this reason very few observers were expecting that the publication, on Wednesday 28 December, of the preliminary results of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the events would be likely in any way to cast a critical light on the conduct, by the central authorities, of the final stages of the hostage-taking that marked the commencement of the 2004 academic year in North Ossetia - still less to raise the more general question of the policy pursued by the Kremlin in the North Caucasus, where violence is continuing to spread.

Having decided, after some hesitation, to set up the parliamentary commission, the Kremlin was careful to place it under the control of United Russia, the party that supports the President, placing at its head the MP Alexander Torshin. Sixteen months after the opening of the inquiry Mr Torshin presented his report, just three days before the New Year festival which, in Russia, is the best way to ensure that its contents and omissions rapidly get forgotten.

In his conclusions Mr Torshin has exonerated the Russian federal authorities from all responsibility over the tragic outcome of the hostage-taking. He has reserved his only criticisms for the regional police forces of North Ossetia and Ingushetia, declaring that but for their "negligence" and "carelessness" the tragedy "could have been avoided."

"MISTAKES" BY THOSE IN CHARGE OF OPERATIONS

Three hundred and thirty-one people, including 186 children, lost their lives during the attack on School Number 1 by an armed band consisting of Chechen and Ingush fighters. Most of the victims died in the fire that took hold at the moment of the assault by Russian special forces on the third day of the siege.

The report by Mr Torshin acknowledges that the Russian authorities lied about the number of hostages: the school-children, relatives and teachers locked in the gymnasium numbered 1,128, not 354 as announced at the outset. Mr Torshin has identified as solely responsible for this mistake General Valery Andreyev, formerly the head of the Ossetian branch of the FSB (the Russian security service) - but has not considered the question of who gave the orders.

On the more sensitive matters before the commission of inquiry, such as the utilisation by the Russian army of flame-throwers and tanks during their assault, and the cause of the explosions in the gymnasium, where a number of the hostages were burnt alive, Mr Torshin has not examined the actions of the forces of law and order. He has stated that the tanks did not go into action until after 3 p.m. on Saturday 3rd September and that all the hostages had already been evacuated from the school.

This statement is contradicted by a number of witness statements. The report considers that a shot by a Russian sniper fired at one of the terrorists could not have caused the first of the explosions - a conclusion with which witnesses also disagree.

If Mr Torshin's report establishes that there were "mistakes" by those in charge during the conduct of the operations, it is silent on the role played by the FSB's number one, Nikolai Patrushev, Mr Putin's trusted confidant and appointee. On Wednesday a representative of the Committee of Mothers of Beslan, Susanna Dudiyeva, expressed indignation at these omissions, and said the report "leaves the most important questions unanswered." Many Beslan residents say they are convinced that the truth will never come out.

Mr Putin did not make any public statement on Wednesday on Beslan, preferring to express satisfaction at the level of Russian arms exports to other countries.

At the same time that the Kremlin is exerting itself, by the passage of a new law, to restrict the activities of NGOs in Russia, President Putin seeks ways to ensure that neither Beslan nor Chechnya will cast their shadows over the G8 summit which he will host in St Petersburg a few months from now.

Accédez à cet article sur Lemonde.fr

http://www.lemonde.fr/

Translated by Jeremy Putley

(via chechnya-sl)

A further dimension to the Gazprom/Ukraine gas war is opened up in a Reuters story by Dmitry Zhdannikov, dated December 25. It appears that Gazprom is agreeing to buy Central Asian gas that would normally have gone to Ukraine:

Gazprom said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy 30 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan in 2006, up from the previously planned 10 billion in 2005, in a move that pointedly made things worse for Ukraine.

In the first quarter alone, Gazprom would buy 15 bcm, which amounts to almost all Turkmen exports, it said in a statement.

Turkmenistan has been selling 36 bcm to 37 bcm to Ukraine annually. Gazprom's increased purchases of Turkmen gas will reduce the volume available for Ukraine to 14 bcm to 15 bcm.

"This deal gives Gazprom one more trump card in its dispute with Ukraine," said energy analyst Valery Nesterov of brokerage Troika Dialog . "It is crystal clear that given Turkmenistan's flat gas production, the Gazprom deal reduces volumes that are available for direct purchases by Ukraine."

And, in another development, Kommersant newspaper noted on December 28 that

Yesterday, for the first time of gas confrontation with Ukraine, Moscow used an argument that looks like a threat to use force. Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov indicated that reconsideration of agreements about Russian Black Sea Fleet by Ukraine can lead Moscow to review an agreement about borders.

(via Marius)

Reporting on December 27 on the continuing Beslan massacre trial in Vladikavkaz, Caucasian Knot observed that

Earlier today, victims in the Beslan school attack case decided not to leave the Supreme Court of North Ossetia until the key prosecution witness comes to the trial. They changed their mind later though, Radio Liberty says. Now the victims demand that the court should provide guarantees that North Ossetia's ex-president Alexander Dzasokhov will arrive at the trial after all.

Beslan Mothers Committee Chairwoman Susanna Dudiyeva spoke on behalf of the victims at the trial, Interfax reports. She noted that relatives of those killed in Beslan thought that the court delayed decision-making on those issues that interested the victims most, in particular summoning North Ossetia's ex-president Alexander Dzasokhov to the trial as a witness. "We believe that Dzasokhov should be recalled from the Federation Council, we've had enough of Dzasokhov hiding behind his immunity as a Federation Council member," Ms Dudiyeva said.

She also added that the victims had filed an address concerning the inadvisability of Mr Dzasokhov's membership of the upper house of the federal parliament to the North Ossetian legislature and to residents of the republic.

(via chechnya-sl)

México desde fuera is back - recent posts include an assessment of the risk of fascism in Mexico, by comparison with elsewhere in Latin America.

Watching Eldar Ryazanov's Ironiya sud'by (Irony Of Fate, 1975) over the Christmas holiday, I was struck by the degree to which this particular type of dead-pan humour also animates much later productions from this part of the world - in particular the films of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, whose Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without A Past, 2002) clearly owes a debt to Ryazanov's classic. Quite apart from the fact that the plots bear some resemblance to each other, there's also the same emotional ambivalence - the same uncertainty whether to laugh or to cry.

It appears that in spite of the Russian federal prosecutor's report, published on Monday, which found that the authorities made "no mistakes" during last year's Beslan school siege, and was met with outrage by the families of the victims, the federal Duma inquiry does at least admit that the operation to free the hostages was "full of failures".

But the Duma report has still to be published.

It will be recalled that the North Ossetian parliamentary commission's report pointed a finger.

Via Bildt Comments:

Write to Vladimir Putin and tell him what you think about blackmail with gas

GEBURT CHRISTI

Hättest du der Einfalt nicht, wie sollte
dir geschehn, was jetzt die Nacht erhellt?
Sieh, der Gott, der über Völkern grollte,
macht sich mild und kommt in dir zur Welt.

Hast du dir ihn größer vorgestellt?

Was ist Größe? Quer durch alle Maße,
die er durchstreicht, geht sein grades Los.
Selbst ein Stern hat keine solche Straße.
Siehst du, diese Könige sind groß,

und sie schleppen dir vor deinen Schoß

Schätze, die sie für die größten halten,
und du staunst vielleicht bei dieser Gift-:
aber schau in deines Tuches Falten,
wie Er jetzt schon alles übertrifft.

Aller Amber, den man weit verschifft,

jeder Goldschmuck und das Luftgewürze
das sich trübend in die Sinne streut:
alles dieses war von rascher Kürze,
und am Ende hat man es bereut.

Aber (du wirst sehen): Er erfreut.



Poem:
Rainer Maria Rilke, Das Marienleben
Duino, January 1912

Painting:
Die Kindheitsgeschichte Christi
Conrad von Soest, active from 1390 to 1425
Dortmund

Britain is currently going through a difficult period of readjustment. A Guardian report notes that

In a private seminar this month a Downing Street policy analyst claimed voters want not just the traditional security of peace and prosperity, but reassurance in the face of relentless social change.

Tony Blair gave a hint of the scale of the problem at his monthly press conference yesterday. When he tries to tackle long term problems "it is a real hassle because people will mis-describe your policy. You get scare stories ... it's difficult but once you have actually done it and got through, if you have improved the situation ... that's leadership," he said.

His senior aide was more candid. Officials believe they are handling an electorate in "a difficult transitional teenage state, unwilling to be governed by its elders, but not yet possessing the capacities, processes or institutions to take responsibility for their own lives". Britons as a result are "a conflicted population getting richer, but not happier, with more money to spend, but not sure what to spend it on, or how to make themselves happy with that expenditure".

Some demands are impossible to reconcile. The No 10 official characterised the problem as: "I want to drive my car, but I don't like global warming. I don't want any more people living in my village, but I want my son and daughter to be able to afford a house."

I must say that in the light of what I observed during a recent spell of jury service in the Crown Court, I'm inclined to agree with some of these perceptions. There is some kind of reality block operating in British society now.

And in spite of the "Britons getting richer" line pushed by the government, the real, glaring problems of social inequality and exclusion, of poverty and ethnic discrimination, are largely swept under the carpet. A Britain that has lost its self-image and sense of identity still tries selectively to cling to safe and reassuring patterns and attitudes of the past, even though that past has long ago disappeared. The result is that the old, traditional British "common sense" has become an empty consensus that's essentially sterile. There's a vacuum waiting to be filled, and that is possibly a dangerous development: not a good omen for the future.

Masha Gessen, on her participation in last Sunday's anti-fascist march in Moscow:

The threat of fascism is an issue engineered by the Kremlin with a transparent dual goal: to siphon liberals' efforts away from protests against President Vladimir Putin, and to provide justification for cracking down on opposition activity -- in the name of fighting fascism. At the same time, the ultranationalist movements launched with the Kremlin's inspiration and support are clearly taking on a life of their own, and should therefore be fought. We step into this trap with our eyes wide open.

So there we have it. Several thousand people spent their Sunday gathering in a parallel physical space to use parallel language to fight a battle that is parallel to the one they really wanted to take on. And the worst part is, they came because they felt they had no choice. That is certainly why I was there -- and why I did not want to be there.

There are times in your life when you feel trapped -- when you truly are trapped, in fact. You have your bearings, you can tell right from wrong, but you still cannot find a way out. That is how the anti-fascist march made me feel. It is how I feel more and more often these days. And it's cold comfort to think that I am far from the only person in this country who feels this way.

See also: Words and Deeds

via chechnya-sl:

Information Centre of the Russia-Chechen Friendship Society

Anna Politkovskaya testifies at the trial of Dmitriyevsky

Nizhny-Novgorod, 21 December 2005
Communiqué no. 1645

The Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and the architect Elena Karmazina, have provided testimony in favour of the defence during the hearing on 21 December in the matter of Dmitriyevsky, who is accused under article 282 CP FR of "acts of inciting hatred or animosity, and attacking the dignity of a person or group, for motives related to the sex, race, nationality, language, origin, religious affiliation or belonging to a social category." The accused faces a possible five years of deprivation of liberty.

Anna Politkovskaya, who has received several national and international prizes for her coverage of events in Chechnya, spoke about the massacre of civilians during the conflict; the crimes of war committed by the representatives of the federal forces; extra-judicial punishments; untargeted artillery and missile bombardments perpetrated by the federal forces, all of which amounted to confirmation of the facts comprising the basis of the charges against Stanislav Dmitriyevsky.

According to her testimony these acts amounted to state terrorism, and as such justified the expression "Russian terrorism" used by Maskhadov, and justified as well the description of the military criminals as "occupiers" and their acts as "atrocities".

Moreover the appeals of Maskhadov and Zakayev published by the accused were directed neither against the Russian people, nor against the Russian machinery of the state, since they were appeals for the commencement of negotiations.

Elena Karmazina, a well-known architect of Nizhny-Novgorod, spoke about the actions of Dmitriyevsky in the field of restoration of Russian monuments, and the protests which he had organised to prevent the demolition of the town's historic monuments.

After the statements of the witnesses, prosecutorial documents were read. The defence for the accused then requested the addition of a series of further documents to the dossier, in particular the guilty verdict of the Qatar tribunal in the case of the Russian agents who benefited from diplomatic immunity and who were responsible for the assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarbayev etc.

The next hearing will be on 18 January 2006.


Editor, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky
Editor responsible for publication, Tatyana Banina

Unofficial translation from French language translation from the original Russian.

See also: Dmitrievsky Trial

Edward Lucas, on the diplomatic gaffe committed by Britain's ambassador to Poland, Charles Crawford:

...what infuriated some Poles was his characterisation of the new member states as ungratefully rude for the fact that Britain, by opening its labour markets, had created “more jobs for Poles in the past year than the Polish Government.”

Ouch. That prompted a storm of protest in Poland, where short-term emigration to Britain is a sensitive subject. Polish physicists may earn good money fixing bathroom taps and laptops for the British middle-classes, but that doesn’t mean that they like it. I sometimes wonder how I would feel if I had to subsidise my work as a journalist at The Economist by spending my holidays picking mushrooms in Poland.

The Polish foreign ministry, unamused, summoned Mr Crawford for a chat.

But Mr Crawford has nothing to apologise for. Indeed, as a British taxpayer, I am rather proud of him. I want my country’s diplomats to have the freedom to be candid and caustic. I’d be even happier if the government listened more and leaked less. But that’s not Mr Crawford’s fault.

See also:
British Humour
British "Humour" - II

Garry Kasparov, on the Schroeder/Gazprom scandal:

One small step for Vladimir Putin, one giant leap for corruption in the West. Just days after being pushed out of office as chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder made sure he wouldn't add to the high rate of unemployment he left behind. Last week he accepted a top post with Russian energy giant Gazprom, the company in charge of a controversial gas pipeline project that he actively supported as chancellor.

The dubious ethicality of this move and the speed with which it was made lead to many obvious questions about whether or not Mr. Schröder abused his office to set up this deal, especially as he was trailing badly in the polls for most of the campaign against Angela Merkel. But the groundwork for his new job was laid out in advance as part of a well-organized operation that brought in capital before personnel.

Mathias Warnig, as head of Russian operations for Dresdner Bank, first brought in a deal to purchase 33% of Gazprombank in August. (Dresdner also helped the Kremlin pick the bones of the Yukos oil company headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now in a Siberian jail.) Accordingly, Mr. Warnig was given a top position at the North European Gas Pipeline Company. Finally everything was ready for the arrival of Mr. Schröder.

The deal keeps everything in the family as Mr. Warnig was a spy for the East German secret police, the Stasi, at the same time Mr. Putin was running agents for the KGB in Dresden. As Mr. Putin himself has said, there is no such thing as a former KGB agent.

In reality this is the lesser story -- that Germany's most powerful politicians and businessmen can be purchased the way a Russian oligarch might buy an aristocratic Bavarian estate to gain entry to high society.

The larger picture is of how Mr. Putin has made the nation's energy resources the center of his ruling clique that has erased the lines between public and private power and assets. Does the state run Gazprom or does Gazprom run the state? Mr. Putin has made a priority of further tightening the unholy bond between his regime's internal and external goals and the company that provides most of the natural gas to Central and Eastern Europe. They are not state-run companies; they are the state.

Gazprom's chairman Dmitry Medvedev was recently named first deputy prime minister while deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin heads the other energy goliath, Rosneft. That's not the only reason Rosneft is unlikely to be investigated for its takeover of Yukos's prime asset Yuganskneftegas in a bogus auction one year ago. Taking La Famiglia literally, Mr. Sechin's daughter is married to Attorney General Vladimir Ustinov's son. Mr. Schröder is not joining a company; he is joining the Putin administration.

Mr. Schröder's country and his Social Democrat Party must censure him for dragging them through the mud on his way to work. For Mr. Schröder's price, Gazprom and Mr. Putin's regime are buying legitimacy in the eyes of the West. By putting the company on the market and stocking its board with prominent foreigners, he is also creating a backup plan in case things don't work out on the home front. After years of dirty dealing, Mr. Putin and his cronies can hardly afford to lose control and risk having their abuses brought to light. So they are attempting to spread both assets and culpability. While they proclaim the need to shield Russia from the evils of Western influence, the KGB are themselves comfortable with capitalist tricks -- in times of uncertainty, diversify your portfolio.

These deals also provide the Kremlin with priceless propaganda fodder. They trumpet their coup abroad and at the same time the state-controlled media will present it as an example of how the West is only after money and oil. Totalitarian regimes everywhere love to tell their citizens that, for all their professed interest in democracy and human rights, Americans and Western Europeans are just as corrupt as their own leaders. It does tremendous damage to the pro-democracy cause in Russia when the former leader of the world's third-largest industrial nation enthusiastically allies himself with authoritarian thugs.

Using energy as a political weapon is a tried and tested tactic, and with big Western names out front Gazprom will act with even more impunity. Having failed to install another Kremlin flunky in Ukraine, Gazprom has now quadrupled gas prices to Russia's neighbor. The latest threat is to cut off winter gas supplies entirely if the Ukrainian administration doesn't bow down to Russia's will. Georgia and the Baltic states are receiving similar treatment: Toe the Kremlin's political line or get ready for a long, chilly winter. Call it the new "cold" war.

While Mr. Schröder's leap was causing small outbursts of indignation, another supplicant headed to Moscow for a job interview. The Russian press is full of rumors that Donald Evans, former U.S. commerce secretary and an old and dear friend of George W. Bush, was offered the position of chairman of Rosneft during recent meetings with Mr. Putin. They are looking to cover their tracks with a big IPO in 2006 and are shopping around for a prestigious front man to calm Western fears. Mr. Evans would formally put the Bush administration's heretofore unspoken presidential seal of approval on the Kremlin's dirty dealings.

This is the latest Kremlin strategy -- to co-opt and hush the Western nations by making them complicit in its crimes. When everyone is guilty, no one is guilty, goes the logic. We have seen the price paid for these see-no-evil policies on civil liberties and in Chechnya. Now Western leaders will also have to resist the calls of their bank accounts, not merely the calls of their conscience.

Oil, gas, politics, intimidation and repression, all are mixed together while one hand seeks to soap the other clean. When Mr. Putin and his friends are swept out and independent courts are established in Russia, Mr. Schröder and other foreigners trying to make a quick ruble may find that oil leaves stains that are terribly difficult to remove. Out, damned spot!

I've been listening to Leon McCawley's wonderful performances of the complete piano music of Hans Gál. Gál, who died in 1987 at the age of 97, was one of the great Austrian composers of the twentieth century, though his career was interrupted and for a time eclipsed by the rise of Nazism in Germany and Austria. I had the good fortune to study piano with him in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the early 1960s, and the lessons I had then have enriched my experience of music throughout my life.

To hear these works now played with such assurance and delicate energy is a revelation. And I'm struck by the words of the composer's grandson, Simon Fox-Gál, who was recording engineer for the new Avie 3-CD collection:

The deeper I get to know Gál's music the more I come to realise that it demands mastery of one of the highest challenges for a human being: balance. This could have been achieved by avoiding any extremes. But a far more powerful approach is to maximise seemingly opposing elements, allowing them to combine as one magnificent whole. Specifically, maximising Gál's emotional intensity on the one hand while bringing out his humour and wit on the other; punctuating contrapuntal intricacies and at the same time drawing out lyrical beauty to the full; emphasizing the extraordinary harmonic twists and turns that are such an important part of Gál's musical language whilst stating the music with directness and simplicity.

In Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal Yevgenia Albats writes about her intention of taking part in the anti-fascist march that is being organized in Moscow tomorrow, December 18, and her reasons for doing so:

To me it seems impossible that in a country which lost a minimum of 27 million lives in the war with the guardians of "the purity of Aryan blood" there should not be enough normal, sober-minded people who understand that it's impossible to grow accustomed to such horrors, that Nazi delirium in the Russian manner cannot be allowed to become the nation's dominant ideology of nation. We cannot allow ourselves to fall ill with historical amnesia. We paid too high a price for victory. And we shall pay too high a price if we allow ourselves to forget.

In the comments that follow her article, there's an interesting discussion among readers, most of whom seem to have little time for "old-fashioned" invocations of World War II memories. Yet the consensus is clear, even in the most critical and nationalistic posts: Russia is facing a situation analogous to that of Germany in the late 1920s and 30s, there is a sharp divide between a privileged minority and a huge disadvantaged majority, with a strong and irrational revanchist climate of feeling among a public that is in search of a strong leader. Racism, founded on hostility to dark-haired people from the Caucasus and elsewhere, is widespread, and the longing for an ethnically "pure", Orthodox and national socialist Russia is not going to die down.

One commenter wonders what he can say to his friend in the United States, a Jewish historian who "loves" the Russians because they freed his parents from Auschwitz.

I tell him, why don't you just make one trip to Russia? No, he won't go. I think he's right in that, he will die in happy ignorance.

Some Western observers have been puzzled by Iranian President Ahmadinejad's palpably outrageous statements concerning Israel and the Holocaust in recent weeks. Yet the matter is probably fairly simple: the President is merely making use of a technique long ago perfected by leaders of totalitarian states in the days of the Cold War, a technique which mainly consists of the taking of extreme positions which can subsequently "criticized" by other powers in the same political axis for the purposes of PR: thus, by making public criticisms of Ahmadinejad's tirades, both China and Russia can appear to be "moderate" and "sensible", thus reassuring a Western political commentariat which often tends to take things at face value.

Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania's first president after the restoration of independence, and now a member of the European Parliament, writing about the Baltic Sea pipeline:

Russia's strategic task is obvious: cutting off Ukraine's gas currently means cutting off much of Europe's gas as well, because some of its biggest gas pipelines pass through Ukraine. By circumventing Ukraine, Poland, and of course, the Baltic countries, the new pipeline promises greater leverage to the Kremlin as it seeks to reassert itself regionally. President Vladimir Putin and his administration of ex-KGB clones will no longer have to worry about Western Europe when deciding how hard to squeeze Russia's postcommunist neighbors.

Should Europe really be providing Putin with this new imperial weapon? Worse, might Russia turn this weapon on an energy-addicted EU? That a German ex-chancellor is going to lead the company that could provide Russia with a means to manipulate the EU economy is testimony to Europe's dangerous complacency in the face of Putin's neoimperialist ambitions.

Certainly Russia's media are aware of Europe's growing dependence on Russian energy. Indeed, they revel in it: after we integrate and increase our common gas business, Russian editorialists write, Europe will keep silent about human rights. Putin expresses this stance in a more oblique way with his commitment to pursuing what he calls an "independent policy." What he means by that is that Russia is to be "independent" of the moral and human rights concerns of the Western democracies.

Perhaps some European leaders really do believe that maintaining the Union's cozy prosperity justifies silencing ourselves on human rights and other issues that annoy the Kremlin. Of course, we may speak up, briefly, about "commercial" matters like the expropriation of Yukos, but if the Kremlin puts a price on our values or criticism of Russian wrongdoing - as in, say, bloodstained Chechnya - Europeans seem willing to shut up rather than face the possibility of higher energy prices, or even a blockade like that now facing Ukraine.

As Putin shuffles his court, subordinating the Duma to his will, the EU's hopes for a growing "Europeanization" of Russia should be abandoned. The Russia that Putin is building has mutated from the post-Soviet hopes of freedom into an oil and gas bulwark for his new model ex-KGB elite. Indeed, Matthias Warnig, the chief executive of the pipeline consortium that Schroeder will chair, is a longtime Putin friend. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Warnig, who heads Dresdner Bank's Russian arm, was an officer in the Stasi, the East German secret police, and met Putin in the late 1980's when the Russian president was based in East Germany as a KGB spy.

That Russians tolerate a government of ex-KGB men, for whom lack of compassion and intolerance of dissent are the norm, reflects their exhaustion from the tumult of the last 20 years. Now the Kremlin seems to think that what is good for ordinary Russians is good for independent nations as well: small and weak countries will be shown no mercy once Russia is given the tools to intimidate, isolate, and threaten them with the prospect of an energy blockade. As a former Head of State of newly independent Lithuania, I frequently endured such threats.

The EU has signed numerous agreements with Russia including one for a "common space" for freedom and justice. The Kremlin is very good at feigning such idealism. Its control of Eastern Europe was always enforced on the basis of "friendship treaties," and the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were "fraternal" missions.

But look how Putin abuses that "common" space: barbaric treatment of Chechens, the businessmen Mikhail Khodorkovsky imprisoned, foreign NGOs hounded, a co-leader of last year's Orange Revolution, Yuliya Tymoshenko, indicted by Russian military prosecutors on trumped-up charges. If Europeans are serious about their common space for human rights and freedoms, they must recognize that those values are not shared by the calculating placemen of Putin's Kremlin.

The same is true of viewing Russia as an ally in the fight against terrorism. Is it really conceivable that the homeland of the "Red Terror" with countless unpunished crimes from the Soviet era, and which bears traces of blood from Lithuania to the Caucasus, will provide reliable help in stopping Iran and North Korea from threatening the world? It seems more likely that the Kremlin's cold minds will merely exploit each crisis as an opportunity to increase their destructive power and influence.

(via chechnya-sl)

The Chinese People's Republic is to fund the construction of a $1.25 billion "multifunctional complex of housing, social, public and business plots" in the southwestern coastal district of St Petersburg, Russia.

From the official literature:

The project supposes an integrated developing of the territory comprising 180 hectares, including land leveling, restoration of Matisov Channel (the object of cultural heritage of 18 century), construction of engineering facilities, creation of the road and street network, green spaces and parks.

The project aims to build more than 1 million square meters of residential houses with well developed social infrastructure: kindergartens, schools, libraries, health centers. The business area includes office spaces, hotels, shopping centers.

«Baltic Pearl» is a new level of the city architectural design and well reasoned urban structure. The main planning principle is focusing on people. For example an elevated pedestrian system is designed to make comfortable communication between buildings.

The period of the project development is 6-8 years. The first stage is planned for completion by 2008.

(via Carl Bildt at Bildt Comments)

Serbian war criminals continue to hide out in the Russian Federation, which seems to be unwilling to locate and extradite them. It's only five years since Yugoslav defence minister Dragoljub Ojdanic was received with full honours in Moscow, a year after he was indicted by Hague prosecutors for war crimes in Kosovo. And since then, Moscow has not exactly been co-operative: though another indictee, ex-Bosnian Serb military policeman Dragan Zelenovic was arrested in late August, he has not yet been extradited to face justice. Another Hague war crimes suspect, Sredoje Lukic, had also apparently been successfully hiding in Russia, before giving himself in September. Now yet another suspect, former Serbian police chief Vlastimir Djordjevic, accused of involvement in large-scale atrocities carried out against Kosovo Albanians in 1999, is apparently still hiding in Russia, where he continues to evade capture.

Today, RIA Novosti notes:

Carla Del Ponte said at the UN Security Council that, in July 2004, the ICTY investigators told Russian partners where former Serbian police General Vlastimir Djordjevic, accused of slaying Serbian Albanians, lived in Moscow.

She said Russia claimed he was not in Moscow. The ICTY received new information on Djordjevic with evidence that he had been living in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, but Moscow again denied his presence in the country. Del Ponte said she wanted Russia to fulfill its obligations and continue to search for the criminal.

(via global-geopolitics)
See also in this blog: Crimes of War

Valery Andreyev, head of the Beslan crisis headquarters during the 2004 siege and hostage-taking, has been giving evidence at the trial of Nurpashi Kulayev, whom the Russian authorities claim is the only terrorist to survive the attack. Andreyev was also in charge of the North Ossetian branch of the FSB at the time, and admitted yesterday that he had given the orders for the federal forces to seize the school. On other questions, however - questions which continue to rouse emotions and divide opinion both in the local community and wider afield - Andreyev was less inclined to take full blame. The Moscow Times has the following:

Andreyev appeared to indirectly confirm that senior FSB officers had overruled him, saying that he had not ordered the use of flamethrowers and tanks in the taking of the school. The use of heavy weaponry is believed to have caused many deaths among the hostages.

"Responsibility for the deployment of tanks and flamethrowers is borne by the head of the [FSB] Center for Special Operations [Alexander] Tikhonov," he said. "This matter was not under my authority."

Andreyev began his testimony by offering condolences to in the courtroom who had lost relatives in the attack. The relatives responded angrily that they did not want his sympathy.

"I feel moral responsibility for what happened," Andreyev said. "All the pain is in my soul."

RFE/RL places emphasis on Andreyev's assertion that the crisis centre that was set up to deal with the school hijacking "remained directionless for nearly 24 hours".

A disturbing new report reveals that domestic violence against women in Russia is presently at crisis level:

According to Amnesty International, 70 percent of married women in Russia have been subjected to physical, psychological, or sexual violence at home.

Official figures show that 9,000 women were killed by their husbands and relatives in Russia in 2003, out of a population of 143 million. Rights groups, however, say this figure could be much higher.

In comparison, rights groups say between 2,000 and 3,500 women die of domestic violence annually in the United States, a country of almost 300 million.

Garry Kasparov, interviewed by Spiegel Online (my tr.):

Kasparov: It's a scandal that Putin is providing Schroeder with legitimacy in this way. From now on Putin can point his finger at the West and say: They are just as corrupt as we are. That’s a typical trick of totalitarian rulers in order to justify the corruption and lack of transparency in their own country.

Spiegel: Schroeder’s defenders in Germany say that the whole affair has nothing to do with Putin. They say that it merely concerns a normal business deal between a private individual and the enterprises Gazprom, E.on and BASF, which own the operating consortium of the pipeline.

Kasparov: Are they joking? Everyone knows that Gazprom is Putin’s personal instrument of power. The company is directed from the Kremlin and will therefore never be transparent. It's not altogether clear whether the Kremlin controls Gazprom or whether it's the other way round. It’s the same people.

According to RIA Novosti, the Russian federal parliamentary commission investigating the terrorist attack on Beslan will present the results of its work on December 28. This was announced by the deputy speaker of the Federation Council (The RF Duma's upper house) Alexander Torshin, who is heading the commission.

There is also a Reuters report today in which an uncompromising Torshin goes on record as saying "it was a mistake to blame anyone other than the rebels loyal to Chechen leader Shamil Basayev who launched the raid." Further hardline statements by Torshin are also noted:

"Why is the public so interested in seeing guilty bureaucrats punished and not in the arrest, say, of the masterminds behind the terrorist act," he told the official daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

"Basayev is still at large and we do not know if he is planning any more outrages."

His comments contradict an investigation by local parliamentarians in the North Ossetia region which concluded last month that the bloodshed was "first and foremost the fault of law-enforcement bodies".

Ossetians have long argued that corrupt officials either ignored or colluded in the rebel group's journey to the school, and then failed to organise an effective response.

Torshin accepted officials would have to answer for failing to stop the raid, but said concentrating on their guilt was bizarre.

"The blame for the most bloody terrorist act in Russia's history lies with the terrorists ... This should not be forgotten," he said. "It's as if on Sept. 1 they came to the school not with guns and explosives but with bunches of flowers. If people talk about those who are guilty these days, people only look for them among the security forces."

His comments chimed with the hard-line approach of President Vladimir Putin who considers the 11-year Chechen war and related raids to be attempts by international terrorists to destabilise Russia, rather than a battle for independence.

After the siege, Putin demanded -- and received -- extra political powers to allow him to stop guerrilla attacks, although he has promised that officials will be punished if they are found guilty by Torshin's probe.

Basayev himself has said the raid was a security services' sting that went wrong after rebels ignored where a Russian agent wanted them to go, and seized the school instead.

From the complete text of Vladimir Putin's address to the recently-elected Chechen parliament:

I recalled unpleasant events linked to international terrorism. I would like to draw your attention to another circumstance, something I did not immediately give thought to myself, though it seems obvious enough. I want to mention it now. Those who are on the other side, fighting for their false ideals, either do not know or have forgotten, and those ordinary people who get used as cannon fodder, who get paid $10 to place a landmine or to fire a machine gun, simply do not know that Russia has always been the most loyal, reliable and consistent defender of the Moslem world’s interests. Russia has always been the best and most reliable partner and ally. In trying to destroy Russia, these people are undermining one of the Moslem world’s main sources of support in the fight for the legitimate rights of the Islamic world on the international stage. But those who organise these activities are probably acting deliberately, consciously aware of the aims they are trying to achieve.

The leaders of the main Islamic countries understand very well this idea that I just expressed. This is why their representatives were present during the referendum on the Constitution of the Republic of Chechnya, during the presidential election and recently during the parliamentary election. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the League of Arab Nations and our other colleagues and friends were all present. And, as you know, the members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference took the unanimous decision to allow Russia to take part in the organisation’s work as an observer on a permanent basis. We will continue our work within this organisation. A delegation of Russian Moslems was in Mecca just recently and discussed issues of developing the Moslem world there together with their brothers. I repeat, Russia will continue this policy in the future.


Я вспоминал о малоприятных вещах, связанных с международным терроризмом. Хочу обратить ваше внимание еще на одно обстоятельство, на которое я и сам не сразу обратил внимание. И, казалось бы, оно лежит на поверхности. И я сейчас хотел об этом сказать вам. Знаете, те, кто на той стороне пытается защищать эти ложные идеалы, либо не знают, либо забыли, либо просто те простые люди, которых используют в качестве пушечного мяса, которые за 10 долларов фугас могут поставить либо пострелять из автоматического оружия, – они просто не знают о том, что Россия всегда была самым верным, надежным и последовательным защитником – защитником интересов исламского мира. Россия всегда была самым лучшим и надежным партнером и союзником. Разрушая Россию, эти люди разрушают одну из основных опор исламского мира в борьбе за их права на международной арене, в борьбе за их легитимные права. Но те, кто организует такую деятельность, делают это наверняка сознательно, с пониманием того, каких целей они хотят добиться.

Кстати говоря, лидеры основных исламских государств то, что я сейчас сказал, прекрасно понимают. Именно поэтому их представители были и на всенародном голосовании по Конституции Чеченской Республики, были на выборах Президента, были сейчас на выборах парламента Чеченской Республики: и Организация Исламская конференция, и Лига арабских государств, и другие наши коллеги и друзья. И, как вы знаете, почти практически единогласно, не почти, а единогласно, было принято решение странами – членами Организации Исламская конференция о том, что Россия начнет работать в этой организации в качестве наблюдателя на постоянной основе. И мы будем дальше продолжать свою деятельность в рамках этой организации. Совсем недавно делегация российских мусульман была в Мекке и обсуждала там проблемы развития мусульманского мира вместе со своими братьями. Повторяю, Россия и дальше будет проводить такую политику.

"I've often thought Putin engaged in using his professional skills in the 'verbovania' (KGB term for recruitment) of west European leaders," writes Edward Lucas in a prefatory comment to his new Economist article on Germany, Russia, and the growing Schroeder/Gazprom scandal. "A few months ago I was having lunch with someone much cleverer than me who assured me that in Schroeder's case it was hard cash that was being used. Even I found that hard to believe. Even after 20 years covering the region I still find this particular incident really shocking."

Read the whole thing.

In the Financial Times, Roger Blitz has written a satirical comment on the remarks made by Britain's ambassador to Poland, Charles Crawford. The comment takes the form of a fictional letter of apology, which ends:

How splendidly quaint that your people have little to no experience of the verbal joshing that we, the French and Germans have traded in the past 40 years, which has done much to cement European co-operation and harmony. So well practised is such bonhomie that every new member of the EU has felt it necessary, indeed vital, to join in. For many diplomats, such friendly banter is one of the perks of the job and in the eyes of our national peoples justifies much of our remuneration.

I salute the respect and politeness with which you conduct yourselves in EU matters and look forward to seeing how long it lasts. In the meantime, your Polish sense of humour will keep me thoroughly entertained for the rest of my posting.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Crawford

Hat tip: Marius

See also: British "Humour"

The Financial Times points out yet another aspect of the energy lever - Russia is in fact threatening to cut gas supplies to Europe as a whole, not just to Ukraine, if Ukraine doesn't agree to the drastic price increase demanded by Gazprom:

Alexander Medvedev, the Gazprom executive in charge of exports, said that if no agreement was reached by the new year, Gazprom would limit the volume of gas crossing the Russia-Ukraine border from January 1 to the amount contracted by its other European customers and excluding any portion for Ukraine.

If Ukraine maintains it has the right to continue taking a portion of the gas as payment for transit, Gazprom would regard that as "unsanctioned removal of gas or, in other words, theft".

"Ukraine would be fully responsible for reduction of supplies to Europe", he said.

Meanwhile:

Last week, a Ukrainian presidential administration official said Russia's naval base in Sevastopol could, in turn, be asked to pay "European" rents.

Russian officials said the base's contract was not negotiable.

Writing in EDM, Pavel K. Baev considers Putin's pro-Islamic speech in Grozny, and draws one or two conclusions:

The deepening crisis in the North Caucasus relates directly to a theme that Putin did not mention at all in Grozny; December 12 also marked the 12th anniversary of the approval of the Russian Constitution. It was the first time that this day was not celebrated as an official holiday, which reflects the widespread indifference to the basic law in Russia (Ezhednevny zhurnal, December 12). Within this law it was possible to start one war against rebellious Chechnya, then make peace with it, and then start another one. This law also did not prevent the cancellation of regional elections and concentration of all authority by the executive power that has so efficiently subdued the parliament and the courts. Only 19% of Russians are aware that the people of Russia are the only source of power and sovereignty in their state according to the Constitution, while 55% are certain that it is the president (Gazeta.ru, December 12). That probably suits Putin just fine, but he should know better. He was in Dresden in 1989 when crowds filled the streets and asserted their right to be called "the people," throwing away the East German police state that was far more organized and efficient than his.

Putin may think that the only issue with the Constitution is the unfortunate need to step down at the end of his second presidential term. In fact, it is his escape clause to retire before the storm that started over Chechnya and is now gathering force across the North Caucasus arrives in Moscow.

See also: A Pillar of the Islamic World

At London's Somerset House there's a new exhibition of Russian pictorialist photography mostly from the 1920s and 30s, featuring the work of Rodchenko, Lissitsky, Ignatovich and others -- artists who in the early years of the Revolution defied the prevailing military ideology and attempted to convey the emotional aspect of reality, and to express individual perceptions and interpretations of events and phenomena. As the exhibition brochure makes clear,

Their subject matter was mostly confined to traditional pictorial themes, i.e. landscapes, nudes, shots of old mansion houses, and unpretentious genre scenes. A brilliant sense of composition and virtuoso technique of execution endeared the pictorialists to organisers of international photo shows and salons. Foreign press devoted much attention to them and, curiously, just like Soviet critics, regarded them as aesthetic opposition to the militant Soviet ideology. For instance, after the Paris salon of 1925 a British photography magazine observed that ‘…whatever their political convictions, the Russians in the shots they sent firmly stand within traditional bounds’.

Pictorialist photographers were vehemently attacked by Soviet critics, who vainly pointed out the right way to Socialist Realism. As one author put it in 1936, ‘…contemporary Soviet reality is such that laughter, joy and smiles are typical features of our new way of life’, so that ‘our life has become really wonderful’.

Photographic debates of the late 1920s were mostly about aesthetics, focusing on the advantages of certain compositions and opportunities offered by different optical devices or printing techniques. However, by the early 1930s aesthetics yielded to ideology. From the late 1920s onwards all spheres of Soviet life, including the art of photography, were haunted by the search for enemies of revolutionary changes. The ‘enemy’ image became a foundation for ideological propaganda. On the one hand it paralysed everyone’s personality with fear, on the other, it aimed to consolidate and inspire the masses in their heroic efforts for the sake of radiant future. Thus pictorialists ended up as ‘enemies’ in photography. They were accused of predilection for the old non-revolutionary world, where bourgeois values reigned supreme and ignored class struggles. Passion for landscapes, old palaces or naked women was condemned as ‘Turgenev’s stuff’ (after the nineteenth-century writer) and ‘political short-sightedness’.

Hat tip: Marius

From RFE/RL:

13 December 2005 -- Gazprom, Russia's natural gas monopoly, is threatening to cut off gas supplies to neighboring Ukraine if a price agreement is not reached by 1 January.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov made the announcement in comments to Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Earlier reports said Gazprom chief Aleksei Miller issued a similar warning in an interview to be broadcast tonight on Russia's English-language television channel, Russia Today.

See also: The Energy Lever and Ukraine

In the New York Times today, a visit to Skype Estonia:

Foreign investors are swooping into Tallinn's tiny airport in search of the next Skype (rhymes with pipe). The company most often mentioned, Playtech, designs software for online gambling services. It is contemplating an initial public offering that bankers say could raise up to $1 billion.

Indeed, there is an outlaw mystique to some of Estonia's ventures, drawn here to Europe's eastern frontier. Whether it is online gambling, Internet voice calls or music file sharing--Skype's founders are also behind the most popular music service, Kazaa--Estonian entrepreneurs are testing the limits of business and law.

And by tapping its scientific legacy from Soviet times and making the best of its vest-pocket size, Estonia is developing an efficient technology industry that generates ingenious products-often dreamed up by a few friends--able to mutate via the Internet into major businesses.

These entrepreneurs grow out of an energetic, youthful society, which has embraced technology as the fastest way to catch up with the West. Eight of 10 Estonians carry cell phones, and even gas stations in Tallinn are equipped with Wi-Fi connections, allowing motorists to visit the Internet after they fill up.

Such ubiquitous connectivity makes Tallinn's location midway between Stockholm and St. Petersburg seem less remote.

Even the short icebound days play a part, people here say, because they shackle software developers to the warm glow of their computer screens. For the 150 people who work at Skype, Estonia is clearly where the action is.

In a commentary, Transitions Online focuses on Gerhard Schroeder's involvement in the Baltic Sea pipeline project, and doesn't like what it sees:

Schroeder has, in one move, cast doubt on himself, on one of Europe’s major energy deals, on his whole conduct of Germany’s eastern policy, and on his style of policy-making. Were the difficult questions about this deal simply swept aside? Was the decision-making process distorted by a private agenda? Did he allow personal sympathy to determine Germany’s relationship with Russia – and did that influence his attitude to countries with whom Russia has strained relations, countries like Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states (all of whom, as it happens, are affected by this particular deal)?

Britain's ambassador to Poland has put his foot in it. His "humorous" contribution to the debate on the EU budget talks has not found favour in Warsaw:

Shame on you all. Enough is enough.

In a moment I will press the button on this vulgar clock, made cheaply and well in China. It will ring loudly in exactly an hour's time.

At that point I will ask everyone round the table whether they accept our current offer. Yes, or No.

If anyone says No, we end the meeting. The EU will move on to a complete mess of annual budgets. Basically suits us - we'll pay less, and the rebate stays 100% intact. My ratings will go up.

However, despite the rudeness and ingratitude of the new member states as expressed here today, we in London do want to help them So if the Budget deal does end in an hour's time, we will take action alone.

Here's the Reuters report.

In Grozny today for the opening of the new Chechen "parliament", President Vladimir Putin gave a speech in the course of which which he apparently said some things that might seem unexpected. Lenta.ru has the following:

Президент подчеркнул, что "Россия всегда была самым верным, последовательным и надежным защитником интересов исламской религии". "Разрушая Россию, эти люди разрушают одну из основных опор исламского мира", - сказал Путин.

The President emphasized that "Russia has always been the most loyal, consistent and reliable defender of the interests of the Islamic religion." "In destroying Russia, these people [Chechen rebels] are destroying one of the main pillars of the Islamic world", Putin said.

Itar-Tass has a more detailed account of the remarks, translated as follows:

'Russia was always the most faithful, reliable and consistent defender of the interests of the Islamic world. Russia was always the best and most reliable partner and ally. By destroying Russia, these people (terrorists) destroy one of main pillars of the Islamic world in the struggle for rights (of Islamic states) in the international arena, the struggle for their legitimate rights,' Putin said, drawing applause of Chechen parliamentarians."

The complete Russian text of Putin's speech is at present available only to IT subscribers.

In Kommersant, Mikhail Zygar describes a war in which "officers of the combatants met every night to have a drink together. They went away in the morning and opened fire on each other. At night, they got together again to drink for those they had met with the previous night and who they had killed."

Tom Parfitt, the London Telegraph's Moscow correspondent, on a new headache for Gerhard Schroeder:

Opponents of President Vladimir Putin are calling for an investigation into his links with a German banker who was exposed last week as a former East German spy.

Documents uncovered in a Berlin archive revealed that Matthias Warnig, 49, who played a leading role in the controversial forced sell-off of part of the Yukos oil giant, was once an agent of the East German secret police, the Stasi.

On the same day, Reuters reports that

A 24-hour, English-language, state-funded television channel went live from its Moscow studios on Saturday, designed to broadcast news from a Russian perspective around the globe.

At 4 p.m. (1300 GMT) the countdown clock and swirling orange graphics melted away and the anchor welcomed viewers to Russia Today -- "from Russia to the world."

The launch comes amid growing Western criticism of Moscow's attitude to democracy and the rule of law, while Kremlin officials complain the foreign media misrepresent Russia.

It looks as though Poland will have to hold a public investigation into the allegations that there were secret CIA prisons on its territory. This will not be helpful to the future of the Western alliance in its war with the insurgency in Iraq, and will not assist the war on terror. Reuters has a story where

political analyst Radoslaw Markowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences said even if the probe cleared Poland of wrongdoing, the country's reputation could suffer.

"If the investigation finds nothing, I'm not sure we'll be able to get that across through all the media noise," he said.

Poland is one of Washington's leading allies in Europe, where it angered European Union heavyweights Germany and France by sending troops to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Markowski said any revelations of secret prisons could make it harder for Poland to keep troops in Iraq after the tentative January pullout date.

"We've been trying to present our presence in Iraq as purely peacekeeping -- that we're just there to help kids get to school, and find water for the locals, not carrying guns. This would fall apart if the (secret prisons) are proven," he said.

But he and other analysts saw few other ways for Marcinkiewicz to respond to the media storm and to the possibility of growing concern among ordinary Poles.

"After the communist experience, Polish public opinion is extremely sensitive to any attempts at behind-the-scenes dealings that are kept from the public," said Bogdan Mach, sociologist at the private Collegium Civitas.

Update from AP -

Poland to Probe Secret CIA Prisons

The Associated Press, Saturday, December 10, 2005

WARSAW, Poland - Poland's prime minister said Saturday he has ordered an investigation into whether the CIA ran secret prisons for terror suspects in the country - an allegation the government repeatedly has denied.

Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said a "detailed" probe would be conducted to "check if there is any proof that such an event took place in our country. It is necessary to finally close the issue because it could be dangerous to Poland."

Marcinkiewicz's spokesman, Konrad Ciesiolkiewicz, said he did not know who would carry out the investigation.

(via Marius)

A Los Angeles report from Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria:

When Fatima Tekayeva heard that her son was about to be returned to Russia from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she felt an aching fear.

Don't do it, she begged anyone who would listen. It's bad there, yes. It's worse here. Please don't send my son home.

All the same, the scenario unfolded like a scripted nightmare. Rasul Kudayev was put on a plane back to Russia. Soon he was released. He came home to the Caucasus region nothing like the broad-shouldered wrestling champion who had gone off to study Islam with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He could barely walk unaided. His eyes were yellow from hepatitis, his heart fluttered, his head throbbed, family members said. Kudayev would sit up in the kitchen all night, telling his brother how guards at Guantanamo forced him to take medicine that made him sick and left him alternately to freeze and suffocate by opening and closing the ventilation system in a cramped isolation cell. By morning, his stories spent, he would fall asleep.

It ended as Tekayeva feared it would.

On Oct. 23, a truckload of soldiers showed up outside the family's small house and seized Kudayev, accusing him of having participated in an attack by Islamic militants on police and government targets in Nalchik 10 days earlier. Tekayeva threw her body in front of her son's thin frame.

"Handcuffs, what handcuffs?" she wailed. "He's already had enough handcuffs for a lifetime!" But he disappeared into the feared Department 6 organized crime unit of the Kabardino-Balkaria police.

Read it all.

(via chechnya-sl)

Quote of the day: "It would be highly improbable for Americans to be able to hold prisoners in Poland without the Polish media sniffing it out first."

-President Aleksander Kwasniewski

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

It does seem probable, however, that one of the CIA prisons was in the NATO KFOR Camp Bondsteel, in Kosovo.


From Berliner Zeitung, December 9:

Der polnische Jurist Marek Nowicki war Präsident der Internationalen Helsinki-Föderation für Menschenrechte in Wien und Vorsitzender Richter beim Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte in Straßburg; seit sechs Jahren leitet er die zivile UN-Beschwerdestelle im Kosovo. Behauptungen seitens KFOR, es gebe in Camp Bondsteel keine Geheimnisse, seien so lange zweifelhaft, wie auf dem 300 Hektar großen Gelände mit seinen 6 000 US-Soldaten eine Kontrolle durch die Vereinten Nationen nicht möglich sei, sagte Nowicki.

Der UN-Mitarbeiter bestätigte einen Bericht der französischen Zeitung Le Monde vom 25. November. Darin wurde der frühere Menschenrechtsbeauftragte des Europarats, Alvaro Gil Robles, zitiert, der Camp Bondsteel im Herbst 2002 besucht hatte. Robles sagte, er sei von den dortigen Zuständen schockiert gewesen. "Von einem Turm aus sah ich ein Lager, das wie eine Kopie von Guantanamo wirkte, nur kleiner." Zwanzig orange gekleidete Gefangene - Kosovaren, aber offensichtlich auch Araber - hätten in Holzhütten innerhalb eines Stacheldrahtverhaus gehaust, bewacht von US-Soldaten.

Hat tip: Marius

Another angle on the "CIA secret prisons" story, this time from an interview with Larry Johnson, former CIA official, in Gazeta Wyborcza (unofficial translation)

excerpts:

A lesson of Abu Ghraib has been remembered in the CIA: Bush's team cannot be trusted to defend people who were fulfilling its orders. Therefore, the CIA agents have rised an alarm on the issue of secret prisons, so as not to become sacrificial scapegoats - says Larry Johnson*

[passage omitted]

Q: Is this an internal fight of a part of the CIA with its new director, Porter Goss?

On the issue of prisoners in the war on terror Goss blindly supports the White House's position. When I talk with the Agency's employees, every time I hear how they are frustrated with this what is going on there. It's not the reform, but that they are told to keep indefinitely dozens of people without any law procedures, in some black holes all over the world. These employees are afraid that if something happens, the Agency's management will wash its hands and all the blame will be put on those who opened and managed those prisons, and not on those who gave the orders on these issues.

Q: Do we have often leaks from the CIA to the media, when its employees don't agree with politics of the administration?

There are two most frequent reasons for leaks. The first one is a concious attempt to manipulate public opinion. It takes place with the government's consent.

The second one - if there's a heated internal struggle in the Agency with regard to a political line chosen by the management. And these who don't like it, release a leak.

[passage omitted]

*Larry Johnson was a CIA officer in the 80's. In the 90's, he was a deputy director in the fight with terrorism in the US State Department.

On November 28, the London Telegraph published an exclusive report which claimed to "reveal" that Iran is "secretly training Chechen rebels in sophisticated terror techniques to enable them to carry out more effective attacks against Russian forces". It subsequently became clear that the article was most probably an exercise in disinformation by British intelligence services.

A detailed study of such disinformation techniques routinely used in the British press came to light. Its author,a former assistant editor of the Observer newspaper, had earlier published a long article in the British Journalism Review showing that

British journalists – and British journals – are being manipulated by the secret intelligence agencies, and I think we ought to try and put a stop to it.

The manipulation takes three forms. The first is the attempt to recruit journalists to spy on other people, or for spies to go themselves under journalistic “cover”. This occurs today and it has gone on for years. It is dangerous, not only for the journalist concerned, but for other journalists who get tarred with the espionage brush. Farzad Bazoft was a colleague of mine on the London Observer when he was executed by Saddam Hussein for espionage. It did not, in a sense, matter whether he was really a spy or not. Either way, he ended up dead.

The second form of manipulation that worries me is when intelligence officers are allowed to pose as journalists in order to write tendentious articles under false names. Evidence of this only rarely comes to light, but two examples have surfaced recently – mainly because of the whistleblowing activities of a couple of renegade officers – David Shayler from MI5 and Richard Tomlinson from MI6.

The third sort of manipulation is the most insidious – when intelligence agency propaganda stories are planted on willing journalists, who disguise their origin from their readers. There is – or has been until recently – a very active programme by the secret agencies to colour what appears in the British press, called, if publications by various defectors can be believed, “I/Ops”. That is an abbreviation for Information Operations, and I am – unusually – in a position to provide some information about it.

The whole article is well worth reading for the inside background knowledge it gives about the almost institutionalized presence of the British intelligence services in the British press. It also helps to throw new light on some present-day conundrums.

Now that the war on terror is an international effort, and British intelligence co-operates with its "ally", the Russian FSB, is it too much to suppose that the present spate of articles and media reports on the "secret CIA prisons" supposedly located in countries of Eastern Europe - particularly Poland and Romania - and the ABC "revelations" about the "top al-Qaeda figures" allegedly held in Poland, are in some way another manifestation of "I/Ops" - though now on an international scale? As Marius Labentowicz has pointed out: "A question should be asked: - Who's lying here and who's playing all these...political games in the media?"

At the Crimes of War Project, Chris Stephen writes that

The European human rights system is facing a critical test of strength as the Council of Europe prepares to challenge Russia over a series of alleged abuses in Chechnya. Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Russia in three cases from the conflict in Chechnya, and dozens more are currently under consideration. The Council of Europe, which supervises the Court, now faces the problem of ensuring that Russia observes its decisions – not only by paying fines but also by holding genuine investigations into abuses carried out by Russian forces.

The war in Chechnya has seen reports of war crimes and other violations of human rights by Russian forces on a far greater scale than in any other member of the European Court of Human Rights since the court was set up in 1959. Because Russia is not a member of the International Criminal Court, there is no international tribunal that can hear cases against individuals who may be responsible for violations of the laws of war. But the European Court of Human Rights can investigate whether the Russian state is ensuring that the rights of its citizens are respected in the course of this conflict on Russian territory.

Read it all.

(via chechnya-sl)

After the fall of Communism, Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros helped many of the newly restored democracies of Eastern Europe to find their feet again after decades of Soviet occupation. One such country was Lithuania, where Soros spent some 65m dollars on educational, cultural, medical and other projects. Now, however, Edward Lucas notes that

over the past three weeks, detailed attacks on Mr Soros in Respublika, a leading tabloid, have painted him as a malevolent outside meddler in Lithuania's affairs. It is a familiar theme. A series last year asked, "Who rules the world?" (Jews and gays, it concluded).

The new attacks are also aimed at religious and political figures only indirectly connected with the Soros foundation, including the country's pro-western president, Valdas Adamkus. The targets are all disliked by the ruling Labour Party, which, with its allies, has asked Lithuania's security services to investigate the Soros foundation's "financial schemes and networks", on the ground that they "pose a threat to national security" and are "targeted not at consolidating, but dividing, society.

Sorosites stayed aloof at first, but they have now counter-attacked. An open letter signed by many of the country's best-known intellectuals has asked Respublika to stop its "destructive" attacks.

What is going on? Some blame Russia. Soros-funded outfits in other ex-Soviet places, such as Georgia and Ukraine, have come under similar-sounding attacks. "Stoking a fictitious scandal about secret western influence neutralises real fears about Russia," suggests one senior official. Another theory is that the anti-corruption campaigns financed by Mr Soros have been too successful: they have highlighted big kickbacks in the distribution of European Union aid.

Mr Soros is winding down his efforts in the richer parts of the post-communist world, where the "open societies" that he favours seem to be thriving. Perhaps he should hang on a bit in Lithuania.

Update - see also this EDM article by Zaal Anjaparidze on how Georgia's political opposition is taking steps not only against President Saakashvili, but also George Soros:

The anti-Soros movement confirms the increasing polarization of the already extreme Georgian political spectrum and reveals the ongoing clash of basic values that has become particularly visible since the Rose Revolution. Saakashvili's team has dared to shake the seemingly entrenched, archaic belief systems largely inherited from the Soviet past but identified by segments of Georgian society as "national values."

"I regret that I used a Soros grant," lamented Maia Nikolaishvili, a well-known forensic expert and co-founder of the movement. "Is it possible that Georgian society still has not become aware that Soros is the enemy of Georgia and each of us?" she asked.

The anti-Soros movement unites a diverse group of politicians and civic leaders, including followers of former president Eduard Shevardnadze and the former leader of Ajaria, Aslan Abashidze. The anti-Soros movement members seek to protect "national" values against creeping Western values.

Several leaders of the movement, including Nikolaishvili, believe Tbilisi must rebuild its relations with Russia to protest the excessive "Westernization" of Georgia. "Uprooting Soros-ism" in Georgia is viewed one of the tools to accomplish this task. The "Anti-Soros Movement" also plans to oust Saakashvili's government but in a constitutional manner. The anti-Soros group claims that Saakashvili's government places instructions from Soros above the Georgian Constitution.

Britain, as the EU's presidency, recently issued an optimistic statement about the Chechen "elections" held on November 27, despite all the evidence that suggested this was inappropriate. Now Russian and Western rights organizations are making their protests known:

In an open letter to British Foreign Minister Jack Straw dated 7 December, the groups say the assessment "calls the EU's commitment to human rights, democracy, and rule of law into question."

Britain, as EU president, welcomed the 27 November polls as "an important step towards broader representation of a range of views in Chechen society." It also said that "the further strengthening of democratic institutions, as part of an inclusive political process, is essential for the sustainable and peaceful long-term development of Chechnya as well as to peace and stability in the North Caucasus region as a whole."

The rights groups, which include the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Russia's Memorial, say what Britain calls Chechnya's political process "is a tightly-controlled cosmetic measure that has resulted in the establishment of a brutal regime, responsible for systematic and grave human rights abuses." They also say that "the loyalist regime established in Chechnya [by Russia] depends on fear and violence to make up for its lack of legitimacy."

Aaron Rhodes,interviewed today:

RFE/RL: But it really looks as if bodies like the Council of Europe, for example, and even now the European Union, are trying to be more active in establishing human rights standards and democratic standards that roused the OSCE recently.

Rhodes: But at the same time those organizations are operating on different principles. Also, I might add that in the Council of Europe they have some of the same problems.... The Council of Europe, as containing as it does Russia, and a number of other post-Soviet states – they also are blocked from anything doing about serious problems like Chechnya. A lot of the same paradoxes apply.

RFE/RL: Is it because Russia is blocking both organizations from being effective?

Rhodes: Yes.

Roland Eggleston, commenting in RFE/RL Newsline's Endnote:

Diplomats have told RFE/RL that the draft final document failed to win Russian approval largely due to a paragraph referring to the presence of Russian military forces in Moldova's breakaway province of Transdniester. Russia has yet to withdraw its troops from Transdniester, despite having pledged in the summer of 1999 to do so gradually by the end of 2002. The OSCE hailed that pledge in the declaration adopted at its summit in Istanbul in November 1999.

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns addressed that issue at a news conference on 6 December in Ljubljana. "We regret the continued lack of movement in 2005 on the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Moldova, and we call upon the Russian Federation to use its vast influence in the region to resume and complete that important work," he said. "This would also send an important signal to the separatist regime in Tiraspol that a status quo which they may find convenient will not last forever."

Diplomats said that while Russia had doubts about some of the other 22 paragraphs in the draft Ljubljana document, its veto of that document was sparked by one passage: "The foreign ministers of the OSCE note the lack of movement in 2005 on withdrawal of Russian forces from Moldova. They reaffirmed their shared determination to promote the fulfillment of that commitment as soon as possible."

Earlier that day, Burns had linked Moldova to U.S. approval of new agreement on conventional weapons. The proposed agreement says individual countries have the right to decide whether they want foreign troops on their territory or not. He said both Moldova and Georgia had made clear that they do not want Russian troops on their territory.

Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, the outgoing OSCE chairman in office, concluded that "It is unfortunate that after six years we are still debating the 1999 Istanbul commitments on the withdrawal of Russian forces from Moldova."

See also in this blog: Russia Blocks OSCE Declaration

Here's an interesting blog about Estonia. One recent post:

"british stags UNwanted!!! "

Very popular topic at the moment - more and more places put up that kind of notices on their doors. Seems a bit cruel, but it`s true. Tallinn is a cheap place for brits to celebrate stagparties. I remember when I was working as a waitress. It was unbearable what kind of mess and noise they made. They also think that they can get all the women here. Sorry guys, from where I stand, our local men are far more desired. (With every kind of exceptions ofcourse, sadly)

(via Estland)

From here and there:

- In the Moscow Times, Yulia Latynina writes that the North Ossetian parliamentary report on what happened at Beslan points a finger:

The upshot is that one of the command centers in Beslan set out to eliminate the terrorists, not to free the hostages. For this group, it would have been very convenient if the hostages were removed from the equation. Troops could then move in and wipe out the bad guys, and civilian deaths could be blamed on a miscue by the terrorists.

The simplest way to accomplish this would be to set off the terrorists' own bomb. But here they ran into a little problem: The snipers couldn't get a clear shot at the terrorist with his foot on the detonator.

This problem was resolved with the help of a grenade launcher. Did the feds have the plans for the school? Yes. Did the plans indicate where the basketball hoop was attached to the wall? Yes. Did they know the bomb was hung up in the hoop? Yes.

The snipers needed a clear shot. A soldier with a grenade launcher could fire from the roof of any nearby apartment building.

- RFE/RL reports that

a top Muslim cleric in the Russian Federation has reiterated calls on the Russian government to remove what he says are Orthodox symbols from the national coat of arms. Nafigulla Ashirov, the chief mufti of the Asian part of Russia, says its religious undertones violate the principle of secularity. But Muslim leaders say the issue merely raises broader concerns about what they denounce as the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in state affairs.

- The Washington Post asks:

Is Russia a partner of the United States in the war on terrorism? You wouldn't know it from the bitter campaign Moscow is waging to thwart President Bush's democracy agenda in Muslim Central Asia. Mr. Bush rightly believes that political liberalization in the energy-rich and mostly authoritarian republics that lie north of Iran and Afghanistan is essential to denying al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist movements influence or bases in the region. Yet Moscow insists on portraying U.S. encouragement of free media and free elections as a plot to extend Western influence at Russia's expense. Russian President Vladimir Putin offers a warm embrace to any autocrat who rejects reform.

- And President Putin, after talking with Ukraine’s President Yushchenko, says he is “satisfied with Ukraine’s readiness to amend the gas prices regime”, having yesterday complained that ties with Ukraine were unsatisfactory.

From the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, some fragments of Saturday's Russian NTV programme about the Kiev meeting of countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Gleb Pavlovsky: In Kiev there has taken place the so-called forum of the Democratic Community, in which the president of Ukraine, on the president of Georgia's initiative, is organizing some bloc on the territory of Eastern Europe. In it there are countries that border one of the three seas [he is referring to the Community of Democratic Choice established in Kiev on Friday, although the criterion for its membership was democratic convictions, not any geographic location - Ed.] It’s surpising that Russia is the only country which borders the three seas but she's not in this bloc.

Natalia Vitrenko (the host of this programme – head of the [anti-western] Ukrainian Progressive Socialist Party): It's an old idea of the West, to create this Baltic- Black Sea corridor, the bow that would press Russia. The West appointed to the bloc its puppet presidents Saakashvili, Yushchenko, Adamkus, Kwasniewski was there - and they have really created this block [Poland was represented not by her president, but by Bogdan Borusewicz - speaker of the Senate - Ed.] Our nation has very nicely described this creature with the name of SUKA [bitch] i.e. Saakashvili, Yuschchenko, Kwasniewski, Adamkus. When I my interview to a Polish journalist yesterday, she asked me why such an offending word had been chosen. I replied - what's offensive about it – it’s just an abbreviation of the first letters of their surnames.

Pavlovsky laughs.

Vitrenko: - Well, that's the name people have given it, because that is the purpose of this bloc. Why do they bark at Russia? To cajole the West. Kwasniewski is out of the game, feelings in Poland have changed a bit, and now they want to strenghten the bloc, bringing in other countries.

Pavlovsky: But [the new] president of Poland still has a surname that begins with the letter K, so the abbreviation won't change.

Vitrenko: The abbreviation won't change and neither will the whole purpose of this Commonwealth.

(tr. Marius, my editing)

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/12/7cdc340b-9682-43ee-8345-3aff3c6b4f28.html

Russia Blocks Final OSCE Declaration

OSCE conference in Ljubljana, December 2005
(epa)
Ljubljana, 6 December 2005 (RFE/RL) -- The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) conference ended today without a final declaration because of Russian objections to some of the texts.

The outgoing chairman, Dimitrij Rupel of Slovenia, is expected to issue a chairman's statement later on 6 December that will contain most of the points in the proposed declaration.

Diplomats in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana noted that this is third successive year in which a conference of OSCE foreign ministers has ended without a formal closing document because of Russian objections.

Those attending the conference said Moscow rejected the proposed language on OSCE's human rights division and on several other issues, including the withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova and Georgia.

See also in today's EDM: Moldovan Experts Blast Russia-OSCE Military Plan

Now that the YUKOS case is no longer sub judice, it's perhaps as well for those of us in the West and and in Russia who care about what has happened to Mikhail Khodorkovsky to become acquainted with the views of Khodorkovsky's Canadian lawyer, Robert Amsterdam (left). I've already posted the content of an RFE/RL interview Mr Amsterdam gave in October. Now here is an excerpt from an earlier interview, given on September 23:

Amsterdam: Let's be clear. The Russian criminal courts are problematic historically. The conviction rate in Russian courts is presently over 99 percent, particularly in cases where there are not juries, and [they are] notoriously subject to executive control -- let alone in political cases, where the control is absolutely intense. What we've seen in the Khodorkovskii case is such a complete breach of the rule of law that it is actually difficult for me to even call these courts. This is a show trial without the sophistication of the original show trials of the '20s and '30s.

RFE/RL: Does it reflect the state of the whole court system?

Amsterdam: It certainly reflects very much the state of the criminal system. The use of the cage for prisoners demonstrates a tremendous need for Russia to establish the presumption of innocence. Even though that presumption is contained both in the new [Criminal Procedural Code] and the constitution, it does not exist in fact. Judges clearly see their role as to assist the prosecutors in obtaining a conviction.

RFE/RL: Is there a proper...adversarial process between the prosecutor and the defense?

Amsterdam: No, there isn't. The European Convention of Human Rights term would be "equality of arms," and there is absolutely none. The procuracy has a virtual handmaiden in the judges who work with them. The amount of control the prosecutor is given over the process is immense. In our case, many of our witnesses were not able to testify, while the witnesses for the procurator were being led by the procurator in a way that would be absolutely impossible in a court that was balanced.

RFE/RL: You referred several times to this trial as political. Is there a way, a mechanism, to separate politically motivated trials from strictly business fraud, financial fraud related to a case?

Amsterdam: It's really something that you have to understand is a process that has to be examined from its inception. In the Khodorkovskii case, it wasn't even begun as a criminal investigation. There was no complainant. Essentially it was begun as a propaganda campaign launched by instruments of the state against Khodorkovskii. A black PR campaign. And so from its very beginnings, it didn't even look like a criminal investigation.

RFE/RL: Can you be a little bit more specific please?

Amsterdam: Yes. There was a magazine called "Kompromat," which we believe was paid for by one of the state organs which was dedicated to the destruction of Khodorkovskii's reputation. It came out in April of 2003. I call it "The Law of the Table," which means that what happened, what we were told actually happened, was that in the FSB office there was a directive to get Khodorkovskii, so they took all of the old files, everything relating to Yukos over the last dozen years, put it on a table, and tried to find those files that they could artificially resuscitate. One of the key elements in political cases often is that they normally relate to charges or incidents that are very old. And clearly in our case all of these allegations were -- many of them -- nine or 10 years old. The very Apatit privatization that formed the basis of the charges ended up by the end of the trial having been lost by the procuracy simply on the basis of the statute of limitations.

RFE/RL: In your interviews you have pointed out several times that the Kremlin is afraid of Khodorkovskii. You...referred to the authorities putting riot police in front of the court building, in the street, and intimidating those who came to show their respect and support for Khodorkovskii. And you referred to it as "fear" from the Kremlin. But fear of what?

Amsterdam: Well, essentially, I think you see it in the establishment of [the pro-Kremlin youth movement] Nashi by the Kremlin, the fact that any possible political opposition, let alone someone such as Khodorkovskii who not only has principles but at some point had the money to support those principles. Any individual like that represents a threat. The entire concept under which Mr. Putin is operating is the vertical of power. Any distortion, any movement away from that vertical seems to be crushed. He's doing that with NGOs; [he has] consistently done it with respect to television and certain other media outlets. And Khodorkovskii and Yukos are a prime example of that.

RFE/RL: But I think that Khodorkovskii was mostly involved in building civil society, rather than really strong political parties.

Amsterdam: Yes, but you have to understand that to an individual trained in the KGB, civil society and movements toward a civil society are political acts.

RFE/RL: Let's move to another aspect of the same case. I think, to my mind, it is the most tragic aspect: Svetlana Bakhmina. Are you going to protect her? Are you going to somehow move this case?

Amsterdam: Listen, I don't represent Svetlana. We talk about Svetlana all the time in every capacity we can. She is the most tragic part of the case. She is an admitted hostage. The procuracy has admitted that she is a hostage of the Kremlin. They want the former general counsel back and they are using her as a pawn to get her back. It is a terrible situation.

RFE/RL: Can you describe the state of this case at the moment?

Amsterdam: Allegedly, the procuracy is ready to take it to trial. She has been incarcerated for over nine months. She is a young mother. She was arrested at five in the morning. She was interrogated for 12 hours. She collapsed. She was resuscitated and they put her into a cell. She spent many months not even being able to speak to her children. It is a case that defies the imagination. It is just incredible to me. For essentially at its worst, some sort of economic crime relating to some shares she may have endorsed.

RFE/RL: Why is this case not in court yet?

Amsterdam: I am not her lawyer and I can't tell you that.

RFE/RL: OK, but is it the inability of the authorities to present it in court or...?

Amsterdam: I could only speculate that what she is really there for is a hostage; and when you have a hostage there is not a tremendous amount of speed to be used to bring it to trial. Plus they know it is going to attract a tremendous amount of negative attention.

I've reposted this from the comments section. Jeremy Putley writes:

On the subject of Mr K, here is what I sent to JRL on 9 November. David Johnson declined to publish it on his esteemed Russia List.

I’d like to comment on Ronald Hamilton’s “rebuttal” dated November 5, in which he commented on an article in the Washington Post by Natan Sharansky entitled “Bowing to Russia” (October 27).

I find Mr Hamilton’s essay highly objectionable, in that it asseverates that Khodorkovsky is guilty notwithstanding the eloquent and heartfelt statements of Mr Khodorkovsky’s Canadian lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, previously published in JRL. I was very disappointed to read such statements as “[Khodorkovsky] is guilty as sin of numerous crimes against the state and the people of Russia”, since Mr Hamilton is not a lawyer, but a retired army intelligence officer whose credentials as a legal expert can presumably be no greater than any lay person’s. As to Mr Khodorkovsky’s having broken any law, considering the representations made by Mr Amsterdam, I do not believe that the court could properly have found him guilty in the circumstances.

The exile of Mr Khodorkovsky to a prison in remotest Siberia serves to emphasise that he is, in fact, a political prisoner, following a show trial that was a travesty of justice.

Robert Amsterdam, interviewed by Radio Free Europe in September, said: “What we've seen in the Khodorkovsky case is such a complete breach of the rule of law that it is actually difficult for me to even call these courts. This is a show trial without the sophistication of the original show trials of the '20s and '30s. It is terribly sad to have even witnessed what we've seen, let alone the farce last week of a cassation appeal occurring within eight hours based on a trial record that was incomplete, based on using lawyers that stated they had not properly prepared the case, based on Mr. Khodorkovsky only stating that he had available to him the ability to review one of many episodes that he wanted to address. It was really a pathetic scene in that Moscow courtroom last week.”

It is an offence to decency, considering the travesty that passes for a judicial system in Russia today, that Mr Hamilton can assert Mr Khodorkovsky’s guilt, unsupported by argument or by facts, and I was surprised to find such a view being given an airing by JRL, presumably in a misjudged attempt at “balance.”

As to the means by which the oligarchs acquired their wealth being questionable, I am familiar with the argument that all of the oligarchs are thieves and crooks who should be in prison, regardless of whether they actually broke any enacted laws, because I hear it from certain Russians of my acquaintance, and I am quite ready to believe most Russians think the same.

It’s the case that governments do occasionally, and without proper attention to their duty of care, allow some of the wealth under their control to pass into the hands of a few individuals. An example would be David Lange, the New Zealand prime minister in the 1980s, who announced that if he won the election he would untie the kiwi dollar and let it float. It was child’s play to short the kiwi dollar and make millions, and I observed at close quarters some of the players who did it. Norman Lamont is said to have done something similar in the 1990s with the pound. But the view that those who acquire the wealth distributed with such largesse by politicians ought to go to jail does rather ignore the fact that no laws were broken in the process.

The way to get back some of the assets so unwisely given away is to use the government’s power to enact new laws imposing draconian taxes on wealth and income, possibly including a type of “windfall tax.” This would be electorally popular and would of course not involve the abuse of the justice system to which the Russian government is now addicted.

A final point on Ronald Hamilton’s argument: He says the oligarchs in exile do not return to Russia is “to avoid being tried for their crimes in Russia.” There is a well-known instance of an individual commonly so described having been awarded asylum in the UK because of a well-grounded fear that he would be the victim of political persecution in his own country, were he to be returned to Russia against his will. Presumably this case would fall outside the retired major’s facile slur?

Writing in Bolshoi Gorod, in the aftermath of the Moscow City Duma elections at the weekend, Masha Gessen discusses one of the subtle (or not-so-so subtle, depending on how one looks at it) ways in which the Russian government restricts the public debate of social and political issues – not so much by overt repression, though that is always an option, but rather by interventions in the field of language. Commenting on how in Russia many resonant words – such as “"democracy", "constitution", "patriotism", "motherland", "idealism", "capitalism" – have been discredited and consigned to the scrapheap of history, she points to one which she characterizes as “the magic word” (my quick tr.):

A political scientist, a journalist, three politicians, a lawyer, an NGO worker and a female presenter. Only the magic word "fascism" could make them gather together.

During one such public debate about the march of November 4, when some 5,000 youths paraded through downtown Moscow shouting “Sieg Heil!”, “Heil Hitler!”, and “Russia for the Russians!”, Gessen writes, it was suggested by at least two of the participants that after all fascism is perhaps not a wholly bad thing, that in Latin fascio simply means “a bunch of arrows”, that there is nothing wrong with Russian nationalism, and so on.

So, it's about words. Or, to be more precise, about the word "fascism". The last magic word – the main word of this autumn, which in our city turned out to be a pre-election one. In connection with the threat of fascism in Russia, the Rodina (“motherland”) party, which made the election broadcast whose heroes became the southern tradesman and the watermelon rind, with catchphrases like "they’ve come here in droves", and "let’s clean our city of garbage.”

At the same elections there is an entire party allegedly created in order to fight fascism. It’s called "Free Russia". True, the only antifascist slogan of this party is "Don’t vote for Yabloko (“the apple”) – It’s rotten.". But that is because Yabloko is taking part in the demonstrations together with Eduard Limonov’s National- Bolshevik party, the party which is the main fascist of our time.

The NBP really does have an extremely unfortunate name and symbolism. The organization itself long ago lost any flavour of nationalism, even. But in the matter of the fight against fascism the main thing is not the fascist, but the fight with him. Three entire anti-fascist movements have been created to fight the NBP: "Nashi" (“Ours”), "The Young Guard" and "Free Russia". In the last week of November, in the name of this same fight, our city introduced a ban on all mass events. Usually, such a thing is possible only with the introduction of a state of emergency, but here the stated aim was practically sacred - to avoid a repetition of the march on November 4. The ban, it is true, also affected the demonstration by the activists of fight with AIDS, who wished to thank President Putin for an increase in the financing of the treatment of HIV And it also affected the antifascist march. The organizers of the latter held an illegal picket during which about 40 people were arrested. In the process of breaking up the picket, the Moscow police tore leaflets with the words "Fascism is a mortally dangerous game" from the hands of the protesters, together with Russian flags, trampling both into the ground. When the police start dispersing antifascist pickets, which are forbidden in the name of the fight with fascism, you begin to realize that the last magic word in our language is possibly experiencing its last political season. And you think: that’s too bad, because it feels better when there’s at least one truly frightening word around.

From today's RFE/RL Newsline:

KHODORKOVSKII APPEALS TO EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS... Lawyers for jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovskii said on 2 December that they will fight his transfer to a penal colony in eastern Siberia's Chita Oblast in the European Court of Human Rights, Russian news agencies reported the same day. Karina Moskalenko, one of Khodorkovskii's attorneys, said she and other members of his defense team have discussed the appeal with him during a recent visit to the colony, RIA-Novosti reported. "We have already appealed the illegal custody and we discussed the [possibility for an] appeal of the unjust trial," Moskalenko said. She added that the local prison officials at the colony are not guilty of violating Khodorkovskii's rights. BW

...AS LAWYER ASSAILS PRISON CONDITIONS. Prison officials at the penal colony in Chita Oblast where Khodorkovskii is serving an eight-year term, meanwhile, have toughened the rules with regard to the former Yukos CEO, Russian news agencies reported on 2 December. "After Khodorkovskii arrived at the prison, there have been repeated inspections, the regime has been toughened, and the atmosphere is tense," Khodorkovskii's defense attorney Yurii Shmidt said. As part of his incarceration, Shmidt said Khodorkovskii was required to knit mittens. Shmidt said Khodorkovskii is required to work six hours a day, has access only to local newspapers and is allowed to watch only films on television. "Mikhail [Khodorkovskii] would love to write something new that is bursting from his soul, but he has no information whatsoever," Shmidt said. BW

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns has rejected Russian attacks on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) election observers, saying they are the "gold standard worldwide in election monitoring."

Celeste Wallander, talking to RFE/RL about Moscow and energy leverage:

...But energy -- both oil and natural gas -- provide a different sort of support for Russia's foreign-policy ambitions as a great power -- which is, leverage in political relationships to the extent that oil and natural gas are desirable and even necessary resources for Russia's neighbors and even for partners across the globe. It's a source of potential leverage for Russia in its relationships with specific countries.

RFE/RL: And you mentioned that Russia wants to use this energy leverage to prevent change in neighboring countries, specifically, colored revolutions. In Ukraine, the colored revolution has already happened. Why is Russia suddenly using its leverage after the fact?

Wallander: Although there were free and fair elections in Ukraine last year that resulted in the election of President [Viktor] Yushchenko, who favors policies toward Western integration, toward European integration, and a closer relationship with the United States and more distance from Russia, it is certainly not the case that change can never happen in Ukraine again. Since Ukraine is now establishing itself as a democracy, the next round of elections could well result in a different leadership. For example, in the March 2006 elections, it is entirely possible that former Prime Minister [Viktor] Yanukovych's party will win a plurality, if not a majority of the vote. So, since that election will determine the composition of the new government, particularly the prime minister, it is certainly possible that if Ukrainian citizens were discontented with the results of President Yushchenko's policies and the direction that Ukraine has gone in of late that they could well support former Prime Minister Yanukovych, who has a different set of policies when it comes to dealing with Russia.

RFE/RL: So...[I think] Gazprom is an arm of the Kremlin.... Would you agree with that?

Wallander: I think that certainly since the end of the Soviet Union, Gazprom has been heavily influenced by the Russian government and now, with the Russian government taking, in effect, majority ownership of Gazprom, it is fair to say that Gazprom is an arm of the Kremlin, yes.

From the Moscow Times, confirmation of the signing of a $1 billion arms deal between Russian and Iran:

Russia will deliver up to 30 short-range Tor-M1 air defense systems to Iran between 2006 and 2008, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified defense industry source.

On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry indirectly confirmed the agreement, characterizing the weapons as "exclusively defensive" and in compliance with international agreements.

While they agreed that the tactical Tor-M1 system would pose no threat to Iran's arch-enemies -- Israel and the United States -- defense analysts said the anti-aircraft system would be well-positioned to ward off an air attack on the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which Russia is helping to build. Washington suspects that Iran is using its civilian nuclear program as a guise for developing nuclear weapons.

Nicholas Burns, the visiting U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said on Friday that he had asked the Russian Foreign Ministry for an explanation for the deal.

"For 25 years, Iran has supported terrorists in the Middle East, and that is why we have very bad relations with them. You can understand why we do not support the sales of weapons to such a country," he said in remarks translated into Russian on radio station Ekho Moskvy

But Zbigniew Brzezinski, writing in the Washington Post (ree reg required), disagrees with the analogy between Islamism and Communism that is currently being made by President Bush and others :

By asserting that Islamic extremism, "like the ideology of communism . . . is the great challenge of our new century," Bush is implicitly elevating Osama bin Laden's stature and historic significance to the level of figures such as Lenin, Stalin or Mao. And that suggests, in turn, that the fugitive Saudi dissident hiding in some cave (or perhaps even deceased) has been articulating a doctrine of universal significance. Underlying the president's analogy is the proposition that bin Laden's "jihad" has the potential for dominating the minds and hearts of hundreds of millions of people across national and even religious boundaries. That is quite a compliment to bin Laden, but it isn't justified. The "Islamic" jihad is, at best, a fragmented and limited movement that hardly resonates in most of the world.

Communism, by comparison, undeniably had worldwide appeal. By the 1950s, there was hardly a country in the world without an active communist movement or conspiracy, irrespective of whether the country was predominantly Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist or Confucian. In some countries, such as Russia and China, the communist movement was the largest political formation, dominating intellectual discourse; in democratic countries, such as Italy and France, it vied for political power in open elections.

Moreover, Brzezinski argues:

The analogy to communism may have some short-term political benefit, for it can rekindle the fears of the past while casting the president in the mold of the historic victors of the Cold War, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. But the propagation of fear also has a major downside: It can produce a nation driven by fear, lacking in self-confidence and thus less likely to inspire trust among America's allies, including Muslim ones, whose support is needed for an effective and intelligent response to the terrorist phenomenon.

It is particularly troubling that Bush has also relied heavily in his recent speeches on what to many Muslims is bound to sound like Islamophobic language. His speeches, though occasionally containing disclaimers that he is not speaking of Islam as a whole, have been replete with references to "the murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals," "Islamic radicalism," "militant jihadism," "Islamofascism" or "Islamic Caliphate."

Such phraseology can have unintended consequences. Instead of mobilizing moderate Muslims to stand by our side, the repetitive refrain about Islamic terrorism may not only offend moderate Muslims but could eventually contribute to a perception that the campaign against terrorism is also a campaign against Islam as a whole. They may note that the United States, in condemning IRA terrorism in Northern Ireland or Basque terrorism in Spain, does not describe it as "Catholic terrorism," a phrase that Catholics around the world would likely find offensive.

Bush's recent speeches also stand in sharp contrast to his mid-September address to the United Nations, in which he not only refrained entirely from labeling terrorism in any religious terms but also spoke thoughtfully of social "anger and despair" as contributing to the rise of terrorism. He stressed that the war against terrorism "will not be won by force alone. . . . We must change the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish and recruit." By contrast, Bush recently has dismissed altogether the notion that there could be any "set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed" in order to eliminate the sources of terrorism.

It should be cause for concern to U.S. policymakers that only one major foreign statesman comes close to emulating Bush's rhetorical emphasis on the Islamic aspects of the current terrorist threat, and that is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has deliberately seized upon the theme of Islamic terrorism to justify his relentless war against the Chechens' aspirations for self-determination. That war has the dangerous effect of generating rising tensions with Russia's sizable Muslim population.

It certainly is not in the United States's interest, especially in the Middle East, to prompt a fusion of Muslim political resentments against America with a wider and stronger sense of Islamic religious identity. When the president talks of Iraq as "the central front" in the war against Islamic terrorism, he links Iraqi and Arab anti-American nationalism with outraged Muslim religious feelings, thereby reinforcing the case for bin Laden's claim that the struggle is, indeed, against "the crusaders."

That fusion could endow terrorism with fanatical intensity, compensating for the weakness that it suffers in comparison to the organizational and military threat posed earlier by communism. Indeed, the limitations of al Qaeda and similar organizations could change, especially if the president fails to pursue policies that aim at isolating terrorist groups as well as undercutting their recruitment campaigns.

Unfortunately, the military character of our presence in the Middle East may be helping to bring this change about. Robert A. Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, has analyzed the motivations of contemporary suicide-attackers. He demonstrates that in the majority of cases, the attackers' basic impulse has been hostility toward foreign invaders, and he concluded a recent TV interview by observing that "the longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11."

America would be better served if Bush avoided semantic traps that create uncertainty about our true motives or fuel the worst suspicions regarding U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Neither Islamophobic terminology nor evocations of the victorious struggle with communism help generate a better public understanding of what policies are needed in order to pacify the Middle East and to speed the fading away of terrorism, whose origins lie mostly in that region of the world. Americans need to hear more of what Bush was saying not long ago to the United Nations and less of what he has been propagating lately in the United States.

(via global-geopolitics)

In Sign and Sight , Hans Magnus Enzensberger (tr. Nicholas Grindell) has an essay on Islamism:

A further promise of success lies in the movement's organizational model. Turning its back on the strict centralism of earlier groupings,it has replaced the omniscient and omnipotent central committee with a flexible network: a highly original innovation that is entirely of its time.

Besides this, however, the Islamists are perfectly happy to plunder the arsenal of their predecessors. It is often overlooked that modern terrorism is a European invention of the nineteenth century. Its most important ancestors came from Czarist Russia, but it can also look back on a long history in Western Europe. In recent times, the left-wing terrorism of the 1970s has proved a source of inspiration, with Islamists borrowing many of its symbols and techniques. The style of their announcements, the use of video recordings, the emblematic significance of the Kalashnikov, even the gestures, body language and dress, all this shows how much they have learned from these western role models.

There is also no mistaking other similarities, such as the fixation with written authorities. The place of Marx and Lenin is taken by the Koran, references are made not to Gramsci but to Sayyid Qutb. Instead of the international proletariat, it takes as its revolutionary subject the Umma, and as its avant-garde and self-appointed representative of the masses it takes not The Party but the widely branching conspiratorial network of Islamist fighters. Although the movement can draw on older rhetorical forms which to outsiders may sound high-flown or big-mouthed, it owes many of its idées fixes to its Communist enemy: history obeys rigid laws, victory is inevitable, deviationists and traitors are to be exposed and then, in fine Leninist tradition, bombarded with ritual insults.

(via Normblog)

The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press is faced with closure. An editorial source comments that the Digest is always a couple of weeks behind the times, because it gets the newspapers from Moscow and then has to select what articles to translate. But it's a great research tool, and it's too bad that it may cease publishing. It was founded in 1949 as The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, and for a long time was the only English-language source of Russian news available in the West. At present the publication's only hope now is to find a company to buy it out, but a contributing editor says that it doesn't look promising at this point.

The online version is available to subscribers only, but to give an idea of the journal's scope, here are some entries from the latest issue:

Volume 57, Issue No. 44 November 23, 2005 View Full Issue
HOW THEY BLEW UP A BILLIONAIRE. (By Yelena Suponina. Vremya novostei, Oct. 24, 2005, p. 5. Condensed text:) The UN Security Council will decide tomorrow what to do about Syria. Upheaval threatens that Middle Eastern country of 17 million people. What President Bashar Assad, 40, needs to do is to gain time. His situation is dire but not hopeless. View Full Article
AN ACCUSATION THAT CANNOT BE DENIED. (Kommersant, Oct. 27, 2005, pp. 1, 9. Excerpts from first and condensed text of second of two items:) (By staff correspondent Mikhail Zygar). – The US, Great Britain and France yesterday submitted to the UN Security Council a draft resolution proposing that sanctions be imposed on Syria. . . . View Full Article
IRAN’S PRESIDENT EXPOSES HIS COUNTRY TO ATTACK. (By Ivan Groshkov and Andrei Terekhov. Nezavisimaya gazeta, Oct. 28, 2005, pp. 1, 6. Condensed text:) World diplomacy is still reeling from an unprecedented statement made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian leader’s remark that Israel should be "wiped off the map" has prompted even those who initially tried to defend Tehran against the sharp attacks of the US to now distance themselves from Iran. Moscow openly acknowledged yesterday that Ahmadinejad has strengthened the position of those who say that the Iranian nuclear dossier should be referred to the UN Security Council. . . . View Full Article
SERGEI LAVROV SPEAKS PRO-ARAB WITH JEWS. (By staff correspondent Grigory Asmolov. Kommersant, Oct. 28, 2005, p. 10. Condensed text:) Jerusalem – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov completed a two-day working visit to Israel yesterday. Despite the friendly atmosphere at the talks, the parties failed to come to terms on any of the key problems confronting their bilateral relationship. . . . View Full Article
VETO STAYS IN POCKET. – Moscow Saves Damascus From Economic Sanctions. (By Andrei Zlobin. Vremya novostei, Nov. 1, 2005, p. 2. Condensed text:) The UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution No. 1636 on Syria yesterday. The unanimous vote showed that the members of the Security Council – some of which had been demanding harsh sanctions against Damascus, while others had been warning of the danger that events could follow the "Iraq scenario" – had managed to reach a compromise decision and perhaps to avoid a further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. The resolution calls on Damascus to cooperate fully and unconditionally with the commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, and also to detain all Syrian citizens whom the commission suspects of involvement in the terrorist act. The UN member countries, for their part, must freeze the bank accounts of such individuals and bar them from entering their territories. If Damascus fails to cooperate, the resolution provides for the "possibility of considering further action against Syria." . . . View Full Article
GERMAN GREF OFFERS THE PRIME MINISTER TWO PERCENT. (By Vadim Visloguzov. Kommersant, Oct. 22, 2005, p. 1. Condensed text:) German Gref, the head of the Economic Development Ministry, finally responded yesterday to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov’s assignment to draft a bill reducing the value-added tax. But the minister declined to reduce Russia’s principal tax by five percentage points at once, proposing instead to reduce the VAT to 16% while concurrently eliminating the preferential 10% rate. On the surface, the idea looks like a compromise, but in actuality, it torpedoes the prime minister’s plans for a decisive reduction in the tax burden. . . . View Full Article
PRESIDENT SWITCHES GOVERNMENT TO A DIFFERENT PROGRAM. (By Pyotr Netreba. Kommersant, Oct. 25, 2005, p. 2. Condensed text:) White House officials have decided not to return the medium-term economic development program to the Ministry of Economic Development for yet another reworking. . . . View Full Article
HIGH-RISK FUND. – Commercial Exploitation of Russia’s Scientific Achievements Is Getting Under Way. (By Yevgeny Yasin. Rossiiskaya gazeta, Oct. 25, 2005, p. 5. Excerpts:) I have finally heard something that I’ve been waiting to hear for a long time: The government is seriously considering the creation of a venture-capital fund. The commercial exploitation of the achievements of Russian science is truly a task of paramount importance. . . . View Full Article
IT’S THE TAX AGENCIES THAT SHOULD ANSWER FOR INFLATION. (By Yevgeny Yasin, research director at the Higher School of Economics. Nezavisimaya gazeta, Oct. 27, 2005, p. 2. Condensed text:) Inflation depends on a multitude of factors. Above all, it depends on the amount of money in circulation (the so-called money supply) and the extent to which that supply is in keeping with the demand for money. . . . If the business climate is poor and business activity declines, then demand for money drops and the money supply should also retract accordingly, because if it does not, the result is an excess of money, and that leads to an increase in inflation. View Full Article

December 2nd 2005 · Prague Watchdog

Violence erupts in Chechnya after elections

By Lecha Sadayev

CHECHNYA - Despite some politicians' predictions, the situation in Chechnya has escalated after the Moscow-staged parliamentary elections. According to the Chechen Interior Ministry, the number of offenses sharply increased.

According to a source in the law-enforcement agencies, the bullet-riddled body of a man was found on December 1 in the southern outskirts of Argun. However, it seems he might have actually lived in the nearby town of Shali.

A day before the body of a local woman was found in the settlement of Avtury in the Shalinsky district; local police reported that she had been stabbed.

During the past five days two administrative heads were killed in Chechnya. On the night of November 28, Sultan Delimkhanov, administrative head of the Pamyatoy village in the Shatoysky district, was shot with an automatic. Dmitriy Arnautov, a soldier at the Shatoysky military command post, was arrested on suspicion of murder; criminal proceedings were immediately started.

And on the night of November 30, unknown masked men killed Ibragim Umpashayev, administrative head of the Avtury village, along with his adult son Isa. Both were shot with an automatic in the courtyard of their house. So far the killers have not been identified.

Translated by Mindaugas Kojelis.

www.watchdog.cz

On December 1, the Sakharov Centre in Moscow was host to the premiere of a new four-part documentary film by director and presenter Vladimir Kara-Murza – They Chose Freedom - about the history of the dissident movement in the USSR. The showing of the film was followed by a discussion in which former Soviet dissidents Sergei Kovalev and Alexander Podrabinek took part, together with writer Viktor Shenderovich. The film has a total duration of 90 minutes, was made by the RTV/I “Ekho-TV” company, and is the first such detailed televisual analysis of the subject in Russia.

Participants in the film include Elena Bonner, Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Dremlyug, Alexander Esenin–Volpin, Victor Fainberg, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Naum Korzhavin, Sergei Kovalev , Eduard Kuznetsov, Pavel Litvinov, Yuri Orlov, and Anatoly Sharansky.

They Chose Freedom traces the development of the dissident movement in Russia from the breakthrough of the late 1950s and early 1960s, through the Red Square protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (the four surviving participants of the demonstration discuss their memories, including those of the brutal treatment they received at the hands of the authorities), to the reinforcement of punitive psychiatry (originally introduced in the time of Khrushchev), which after long-delayed protests from the West was followed by the gradual retreat of the authorities during the 1980s. Elena Bonner talks about the exile of her husband, physicist Andrei Sakharov, which she shared with him in the town of Gorky.

For a Western viewer, perhaps the most fascinating part of the series is the final one, where the present-day situation in Russia is discussed. Alexander Podrabinek shows how, while after the collapse of communism in Poland and Czechoslovakia former dissidents actually took power, in Russia everything was different. What took place was not the creation of true democracy, but the manufacture of a fiction, a democratic image, which wasn’t real. Sergei Kovalev considers that the people who helped Yeltsin - Soskovets, Grachev, Lobov, Korzhakov, “and others of that ilk” - were “just a normal Soviet nomenclatura in slightly different surroundings”. Gorbanevskaya expresses the opinon that it’s sad the Russian people should choose a KGB lieutenant colonel as their president, while Kuznetsov refers to Anouilh’s play about Joan of Arc, with its message that only a people that is prepared to fight for freedom is worthy of freedom.

Elena Bonner says that the Yeltsin government did a great disservice to the dissident movement, discrediting it primarily in moral terms. Podrabinek thinks that the Putin government which has replaced it needs above all to have an enemy – just as in Soviet times, when the USSR was “surrounded by enemies”, a useful tactic for creating public support. If the war in Chechnya had not been started, some other war would have been found instead. Kovalev states the view that while the present-day authorities realize the impossibility of resurrecting such Soviet institutions as the Gulag and censorship, they don’t actually need to re-establish them, because of the mass psychology which was created by the Soviet system, and which still prevails in Russia today. One thing the film makes abundantly clear, however, is that that even in today's Russia, a small circle of people can and could change the entire course of the nation's history. Vladimir Bukovsky is pessimistic about Russia’s future, and foresees the breakup of the country.

The four parts of the film can be watched here, here, here and here. (Warning: these are large .asf files, more than 30MB each. Links to smaller, lower-quality versions of the files can be found on the main link at the beginning of this post.)

It’s to be hoped that a version with foreign-language subtitles will be released before long.

(Hat tip: Marius)

From the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, an interview with Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian State Duma's foreign affairs committee, by Tomasz Bielecki. Some of Kosachev's remarks are eerily reminiscent of the European political climate of the 1930s:

30-11-2005, last update 29-11-2005 16:48


"And all one hears from Poles is Katyn, Katyn, Katyn"

”If you’d behaved towards Russia in a friendly way, we could have become partners. But you've been forcing Russia’s hand, and we must react appropriately to that,” says Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's foreign affairs committee, in his interview with GW.

Tomasz Bielecki: How do you view this decision of the Polish Defence Ministry to declassify the documents of the Warsaw Pact?

Konstantin Kosachev: It’s a political provocation. Its goal is to reinforce this false conviction that the Soviet Union and Russia are the main source of the ill fortunes of Poland and modern Europe.

I don't think these documents would have to be classified forever, but they are the property of the former members of the Warsaw Pact, and we should be taking decisions about their declassification together. The ideal solution would be the declassification of NATO documents at the same time. Poland’s unilateral decision causes public opinion to have the impression that the Warsaw Pact was the only aggressor, the only source of threat.

But it wasn't like that?

If we're talking about historical truth, then NATO would also have to declassify its documents. In the conditions of the Cold War these kinds of military games were conducted by both sides. It surprises me that some Polish politicians have decided on such a crude provocation. This will be the next burden in Polish-Russian relations.

The next one after the North Pipeline, which Russia wants to build on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland and the Baltic countries?

Not all projects have to take the interests of all parties into consideration. The construction of the North Pipeline is beneficial for Russia, Germany and the EU. And Poland's objections? Excuse me, Russia will do what she thinks is beneficial for her. If Poland wants that we should take care of it for joint benefit, then she should take great pains to correct her relations with Russia. Why does Moscow have to show good will towards a country which behaves to us as an enemy?

The North Pipeline is a commercial enterprise that will allow Russia to diversify her sources of gas distribution. Economic interests are involved in the pipeline. Russia behaves cleanly and Poland in a dirty way, also because she politicises the issue of gas delivery.

You don't understand that Poland might be afraid of Russia, who for any political reason could turn off her gas tap for us?

History has ordained that Russia has huge fields of oil and gas, and at the same time Poland is a transit country between us and the West. If you’d behaved towards us in a friendly way, we could have become partners in the trading of our natural resources, but you’ve been forcing Russia’s hand, and we have to react appropriately to that. The North Pipeline will be built.

What kind of reaction would you expect from Russia if an American missile base were to be built in Poland?

And what could our reaction be? A very tough one. Russia sees the building of elements of this anti-missile shield near her border as a breach of the global system of nuclear deterrence. If that were to take place, it would be easier to shoot down our missiles and that means that our nuclear potential would be weakened. In those conditions any country would begin to strive to enlarge its power, to overcome its losses and to return to the former balance.

And that means a return to the arms race. The task of military men is to prepare for worst case scenarios, even for a nuclear conflict. It has been understood that according to such pessimist military logic, a country engaging in an endeavour like this shield increases its military risk. But, of course, it’s a sovereign decision of Poland. In my view, it wasn't properly thought out. The shield will be a serious factor in our relations.

What will Russia do about the new elections in Belarus? Is a quarrel brewing with Poland, if she engages in the support of democracy as she did in Ukraine?

If the new Polish government repeats the error of the old government, and announces that Belarus without Russia is better off than Belarus with Russia [an allusion to Aleksander Kwasniewski's statement on Ukraine], then we will react.

Though I wouldn't compare the situation in Belarus and Ukraine. There was a large resistance against the old regime in Kiev, but the authorities in Belarus have enjoyed huge support. I don't idealize Lukashenko, but let's just simply leave the Belarussians to choose. In Russia’s view, involvement by Poland in the internal matters of Belarus is unacceptable and uncivilized. So, if Poland tries to influence her sovereign neighbour in that way during the elections in Belarus, then we will relate to Poland as a country that uses unacceptable and uncivilized methods.

Public support for Lukashenka is the result of his monopoly in the media, and censorship. The mouth of the Belarussian opposition is being gagged. So, can the civilized neighbour remain silent in this situation?

I also want freedom of speech for the Belarussian media. But it's one thing to support the media, and another to appoint to the Belarusian throne candidates who have support from the outside. Russia will reply sharply to that.

What does it mean that Russia’s reply will be "sharp", "decisive", radical"? Will you shut off the gas and cut off the crude oil? Will you introduce bans similar to your embargo on Polish foodstuffs?

We won't send the Army to you. This ban on the import of meat was not political. I have also said that Russia does not want to politicise the issue of deliveries of oil and gas. On the subject of other means which are at Moscow's disposal, I am not going to talk right now.

Central European countries like Poland and Hungary have a feeling that Moscow wants to negotiate with the EU above the heads of its new members, that she wants to reach an understanding with Germany, France or Italy, but not with Poland

I wouldn't compare the situation of Poland with that of Hungary. Hungarians
are preparing to the celebration of their anniversary of 1956 [the Soviet invasion of Hungary], and at the same time they are maintaining normal relations with Russia, but from Poles all one hears is Katyn, Katyn, Katyn. You are giving Katyn the status of the main problem of relations with today’s Russia. In my view Katyn was not genocide, but that tragedy in Volyn [the Volyn massacre], for example, was. In spite of this, there’s not much talk about Volyn in the Polish-Ukrainian relations. That's pure politics.

We don't negotiate with the old Europe above the heads of their new members. Actually, on all issues the Poles send us to Brussels, and don't want any direct talks with us.

It seems that president-elect Lech Kaczynski does want this. He said that he is waiting for Vladimir Putin to come to Warsaw, and after that he will be able to go to Moscow.

That is one of the new Polish president’s first mistakes. Obviously, the order of visits can be discussed, but this is something that is usually done quietly, the world over. I can't speak for the Kremlin, but in my view Kaczynski's declaration has precluded a Polish visit by Putin for a long time. Privately: Public declarations of this kind are not made in order to invite someone, but to repulse the visit.

So, do you expect a further worsening of relations with Russia from the Polish authorities ?

In the near future, yes. I travel to Poland and I know that the Russophobic card is being played there, to divert society’s attention of society from the economic issues. However, I'm an optimist and I trust that pragmatism will win in the Polish Right.

Russophobia in Poland? I have the impression that it's rather Moscow that has been trying in her internal politics to scare Russians with past or invented enemies - the Balts, the Poles.

In my view Polonophobia [antypolonizm] is something of completely marginal importance in Russia.

(tr. by Marius,my minor editing)

There's more than a modicum of disinformation in this Uzbekistan-related article from Moscow News, but there are also some things worth noting. Observe, for example, the close relation that existed - during the 1990s transition from Soviet to Russian Federal power, and the breakup of the Union - between Soviet communism and "radical Islam":

Well, my father was a CPSU regional committee functionary in the city of Andizhan. I never walked to or from school but went in a car. When I finished Grade 10, my father gave me a Model 6 Zhiguli sedan. I have a degree in history from the local university.

I worked at the Russian Communist Youth League (Komsomol) regional committee and then at the regional administration. I engaged in privatization programs and controlled an investment fund. Operations with securities brought as much money in a single day as an ordinary person might not even earn in 10 years.

So how did a Komsomol activist end up in the IMU?

Very easy. An ideological vacuum [that came with the breakup of the Soviet Union] was soon filled. First, they talked at the highest possible level about the need to restore Islamic values and then Muslims were made into enemies. I probably had more money than was good for me - drinking, playing around with girls, you know, leading an unhealthy lifestyle. Then I got sick: a stomach ulcer. One day a friend advised me to live like a good Muslim - stop drinking, start praying. I joined a Koran study group. We met and talked. Someone said there was a madrasa in Chechnya that was open to all those willing to join. I went there in 1998.

There was a training center called Kavkaz (Caucasus), near the village of Avtury, and I was accepted. At first, we studied religion and then took a course of combat training. There were about 50 Uzbeks there. The teachers were Arabs who spoke fluent Russian. It was there that I met Khattab. He was a real soldier and a cheerful guy who liked a good joke. Basayev was just a politician, but a very smart one. After a year of studies, I decided to leave: the local climate was humid and I caught pneumonia. Before leaving, I received instructions to send money to Chechnya to support the Uzbek jamaat. It was also planned to abduct a number of children from rich families in Tashkent, mainly Jewish. They were to be held in Kazakhstan, while ransom would be paid to people based in Chechnya. But after a series of bomb attacks in Tashkent in the winter of 1999, I had to run away. The abductions were carried out by the brothers Yuldashev and Murad Kaziev: We had trained in Chechnya together.

Appeal by the Non-Governmental Organization “Voice of Beslan”

[my tr.]


[ NOVEMBER 30 2005, 17:45 ] VOICE OF BESLAN



To the President of the United States
To the U.S. Congress
To the Presidents of the Member Countries of the European Union
To the European Parliament
To the editorial staffs of all world television companies, information agencies, newspaper and periodical publications which covered the terrorist act committed in Beslan
To all Russian journalists who worked in Beslan from September 1-3 2004


To all who feel sympathy for the victims of the Beslan terrorist act!


We, former hostages who suffered in Beslan’s School No 1, parents of the children who were killed and maimed, appeal to each one of you. We - the citizens of a country which did not protect us during September last year. We - the citizens of a country which is unable to ensure our right to know the circumstances in which 1128 people were taken hostage and through whose fault 331 people died.

One year and three months have passed since the terrorist act. We thank all who have rendered assistance to us and shown charity. But if we had realized what a terrible path lay in prospect for us after the little town of Beslan buried more than 300 people, we would have asked you not to transfer money to us, nor to send us medicine and other humanitarian assistance. We would have asked you for nothing except aid in the investigation of the terrorist act.

After Beslan, this investigation became the purpose of our lives. After Beslan we learned what it is to be the victim of a terrorist act in Russia. We learned of the agonies the victims of the bombings of the apartment blocks in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk are suffering in their search for truth, what an inhuman attitude the law-enforcement agencies and executive authorities have shown to the surviving hostages and the relatives of those who were killed in the "Nord-Ost" theatre, to the relatives of the passengers of the people who perished in those two airliners that exploded in August 2004, and the manner in which the inquiry into the Nazran attack, which took place two months before Beslan, is being conducted.

It is with horror that we must acknowledge: today terrorist acts have become the most efficient political mechanism in Russia. By means of terrorist acts our government solves its political and commercial problems. We rightfully accuse the present regime of Russia of complicity in Russian and world terrorism.

Not one terrorist act perpetrated in Putin’s Russia has been properly investigated. Dozens of serious crimes against the peaceful citizens of our country remained unpunished and anonymous.

We know nothing of who really ordered the Beslan crime. Of just how the organization and realization of a crime of this scale became possible. Why it was not prevented. Who is to blame for this.

We have been asking all these questions for more than year. In response we hear lies.

We are forced to live in a country where the public prosecutor’s office openly lies and commits official crimes, where the officials give false evidence in court, and during the days of mourning the President himself publicly deceives the mothers and the fathers of the killed and maimed children. To tell lies about 354 hostages - this is the choice made by our President. He finds it easier to show that he is badly informed than to punish his friends – the members of the law-enforcement agencies - for their total incompetence and corruption.

We have been forced to search by ourselves for the proofs of the fact that tanks and flamethrowers were used to fire on the Beslan school. We have been forced to prove that the school was fired on when there were there living hostages inside. We have been forced to prove that there were more terrorists, and that many of them are now at liberty. We have been forced to prove that the assault was begun by our soldiers at the very moment when Aslan Maskhadov had agreed to come to Beslan. And our politicians refused to conduct negotiations even to save children. They refused to make use of the possibilities offered by Maskhadov to rescue the hostages. Once again, the principles of Russian authority proved to be more important than human life.

We are guilty of having elected a President who solves his problems with the aid of tanks and flamethrowers and gas whose effects are making the former hostages of "Nord-Ost" give birth to defective children.

But it is not we who are guilty of the fact that the world’s political elite supports our President, who has become the guarantor of criminals.

Yes, the western world is faced by a new threat - terrorism. We do not justify Shamil Basayev, the main Russian terrorist whom they have been “trying to catch” for ten years, and we demand that he be brought to justice. But we would like to obtain the expert advice of the foreign special services: are the Russian law-enforcement agencies doing all that they can in order to eliminate Basayev? Do they want this? Is this task being put before them? How long would it take, let us say, the officers of MOSSAD to eliminate Basayev? And how can Mr. Patrushev [head of the FSB] sit quietly in his armchair while at the same time Basayev is blowing up Russia with impunity?

Yes, the world is threatened by terrorism. But why does America judge Saddam Hussein, while Russia kills Maskadov? Why in Spain does a president who tells lies commit political suicide, while in Russia he runs for a third term? Why in our country do they kill thousands of hostages along with a handful of terrorists, while Mr. Berlusconi pays the ransom for an opposition female journalist? And the President of France does everything he can in order to free French hostages?

Yes, terrorism is a world problem. But if the world goes along the way of infinite cruelty, will not this perhaps be the victory of terrorism? We will become like them. We will become terrorists.

Vladimir Putin thinks that this is the correct way. Terrorist acts in Russia are increasing in number. Terrorist acts in which Russian citizens kill other Russian citizens. None of these terrorist acts has been properly investigated.

We want to do everything we can in order to change this tendency. We want to attain a juridical assessment of the actions of all the participants in the Beslan events. We ask you for help.

We appeal to all who possess information about the Beslan terrorist act. We appeal to the television companies, which are the owners of video materials, and to the journalists, who became direct eyewitnesses of the first explosions which were heard at 13.03 and 13.05 on September 3 and provoked the military operation for the elimination of the terrorists.

We ask that this information be put at our disposal, or that those who possess such information shall appear in court to give testimony on behalf of the victims.

We appeal in particular to the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress. We know that your country has at its disposal surveys of the Beslan school made from satellites on September 1, 2 and 3, 2004. We ask that these surveys be declassified and delivered to the residents of Beslan for presentation at the trial of the accused terrorist Nurpashi Kulayev.

We also appeal to the European Union and the European Parliament, whose members have publicly voiced their intention of conducting an international investigation of the Beslan terrorist act. We cannot demand, but we request support for our efforts to investigate the terrible crime which took away the lives of our close ones.


NGO "Voice of Beslan". November 30 2005

From time to time there are significant and apparently increasing discrepancies between English-language and Russian-language newswire reports that emanate from the Russian Federation. This was obvious in the Interfax accounts of remarks by Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller, who visited Moscow for talks in the middle of last month, on November 14. While the Russian-language report - giving a more or less complete of Meller's Izvestia interview - talked frankly about the issues that still surround Katyn and their implication for Russian-Polish relations, the English-language report amounted to little more than an oblique precis of what Meller actually said. His remarks were also presented in selective fashion, and rearranged from their original sequence and out of their original context.

When asked about Katyn, Meller prefaced his remarks as follows:

- Чудовищные преступления в Катыни, Медном, Харькове оставили большую травму в душе польского народа. Эта большая травма стала уже частью коллективной памяти народа. Люди, расстрелянные Сталиным в Катыни, были цветом польского офицерства, цветом польской интеллигенции.

"The monstrous crimes in Katyn, Mednoye and Kharkov left a major trauma in the Polish nation's soul. This major trauma has by now become a part of the nation's collective memory. The people shot by Stalin at Katyn were the flower of the Polish officer corps, the flower of the Polish intelligentsia."

In the English-language version of the report, this paragraph is missing, and an extra paragraph, which was not in Meller's remarks, has been inserted:

Over 4,000 Polish officers detained by the Soviet Union in 1939 were shot in Katyn outside Smolensk in spring 1940. In 1990 Moscow admitted that the Soviet Union's secret police, the NKVD, were involved in the execution of the Polish officers.

Also last month, on a matter of internal censorship: Yabloko officials were were quoted by the Ekho Moskvy radio station as saying that the paper had edited a promotional text by them and had removed passages where the authors called the current Russian leadership “authoritarian and clannish”.

(via Marius)

Edward Lucas, on Poland's recent declassification of Warsaw Pact files:

The émigré who has now become Poland's new defence minister is making waves again. He has declassified his country's Warsaw Pact files, handing them over to the national archives. But the international reaction to this reflects another caricature of Poland, no less offensive, and much more dangerous.

There were plenty of snide remarks about Sikorski's move, but the Financial Times will serve as an example. It wrote that Poland "risked inflaming tensions with Russia" and was "prepared to incur Moscow's wrath". Leaving aside the mixed metaphor (a tendon can be inflamed, but not a tension) this seems a perverse spin on the affair.

Russia has made no public protest about the opening of the archives. Nor, according to Sikorski, has it complained privately. So Western opinion is annoyed not because Poland is picking a fight with Russia, but because it is doing something that might just possibly at some point annoy the Kremlin - with the subtext that this would always be the wrong thing to do.

That's a strange way of looking at things and one that is increasingly prevalent in Western capitals. Poland and the Baltic states are seen as faraway places with incomprehensible habits, values and grudges, bent on disrupting the important business of getting lots of cheap oil and gas from that nice Mr Putin. If Russia hadn't thought about complaining about the declassification before, it certainly has every opportunity to do so now.

It doesn't really matter what is in the archives; Soviet plans for nuclear war, plus the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia will probably be the most interesting. Other countries - such as the former East Germany - have already declassified their bits of the files.

The point is that the new Polish government is serious about wanting to clean up the remains of the country's Communist past. It is doing so promptly, to a deafening lack of applause in the West. I find that baffling. Imagine if a former Nazi-occupied country - France for example - still had a large pro-Nazi party that had managed to block the release of the Wehrmacht's wartime archives there. How cross everyone would be about it, and how glad if a strongly anti-Nazi party came to power pledging to open the German military files (and the Gestapo ones too, for that matter). That, roughly, is what has happened in Poland.

The real reason why bien-pensant Western opinion-formers hate this sort of thing is that it sabotages the cosy, sloppy, moral equivalence that marked their thinking during the Cold War years. If you are confronted with incontrovertible evidence that the Soviet Union was both a monstrous dictatorship and an aggressive imperialist power, it becomes much harder to maintain that "the USA and the USSR were as bad as each other".

The fact is that if it wasn't for America, Western Europe would have had a hard job withstanding Soviet belligerence. Patriots like Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski - NATO's top spy in Communist-ruled Poland - knew that, which is why for a decade they risked torture and death to work secretly for the West. But that part of history is something that many people whose freedom he helped preserve would much rather forget, if they ever knew it in the first place.

See also in this blog: When East Met West
Annihilation Plan
Annihilation Plan - II

Writing in the PONARS Policy Memo series, available at CSIS (pdf format), Georgi Derluguian of Northwestern University has an interesting analysis of the prospects for social and political change in the North Caucasus:

A specter is haunting Eurasia: the specter of revolution. Ironically, this time Washington stands accused of promoting subversion while Moscow emerges as the headquarters of counterrevolution and conservative order. Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, overlooked Abkhazia, and the terrible outbreak in Uzbekistan. On all sides experts are guessing: where next?

Rather than advancing informed guesses, let us consider the social processes driving this wave of rebellions and try to answer the question: how immune is Putin’s Russia? Specifically, what stands behind the extremely contradictory signals emerging from the ever troublesome North Caucasus? Is it international terrorism (a nefarious foreign import), the resurgence of Islamic identity (a deeply internal factor), the second attempt (after 1989) at national liberation and democratization, or, perhaps, the dangerous erosion of governance which can produce black holes, as in Somalia or Congo?

Some of Derluguian's conclusions are not exactly reassuring to those in the West who would like to take a simplified view of the recent and current upheavals in Central Asia and Eastern Europe:

The Andijon rebellion became the first really grim instance of failure in what until then had been a miraculous succession of triumphs over impotent despots. In retrospect, it might prove to be a turning point. The incumbents in other post-Soviet states saw the writing on the wall, but now they also saw the uses of the ultimate argument of kings: military violence. Moreover, they obtained proof that, in the new threatening situation, Moscow and (at least as significantly) Beijing were willing to become closer and more lenient patrons than Washington or Europe.

Prevalent opinion in Moscow today is that there are several weighty reasons to ponder the fate of Central Asian rulers. The troubling situation in the Russian North Caucasus is perhaps the main among them. However serious, what is really causing the subterranean roar which threatens to engulf in rebellious tremors the whole region from the fractious and inherently violent Dagestan to the hitherto placid Adyghea?

Back in the desperate year of 1992, Boris Yeltsin’s emerging regime overcame its liberal prejudices and struck a deal with the regional communist-era prefects. The immediate goal was to keep isolated the example of Chechnya, the first ethnic republic in Russia to overthrow the old regime in a true revolution in 1991. Yeltsin thus obtained a set of very loyal clients among the presidents of the North Caucasus republics, while these former communist officials obtained a new lease on a fairly comfortable life. Today, however, this lease is expiring, as the patronage machines of the North Caucasus are looking increasingly top-heavy and unstable.

The process that threatens to overthrow the North Caucasus regimes is a species of the revolutionary sequences that occurred in Georgia and Ukraine. Aging patrons have been purging and constraining the younger and ambitious members of the elite. But neopatrimonial machines can no longer restrain all those contenders who would like to expedite the generation succession and direct it to their own benefit. This sentiment among the junior upwardly-mobile members of the elite can tap into the analogous frustrations of young small entrepreneurs, junior intellectuals, and the young unemployed. Together, they might form a classical revolutionary bloc.

But here parallels with Georgia and Ukraine end. This is not, however,because of Islam. Azerbaijan, a historically Muslim country, seems nonetheless to be following in Georgia’s wake (if only the Azerbaijani opposition ever manages to coordinate their campaign). Moreover, the Republic of North Ossetia is predominantly Orthodox Christian, which makes little difference to the emergence of revolutionary potential.

The republics of the North Caucasus also differ from Georgia and Ukraine in that they are shielded by Russia’s sovereignty. Therefore, the potential rebel elites prefer to seek non-political venues for their aspirations. They would not dare appeal to the West or openly defy the incumbents who enjoy Moscow’s support. The resulting lack of leadership is a substantial obstacle to revolution. However, this condition applies to Russia as a whole and is what makes Russian society look so apathetic.

What, then, sets the North Caucasus apart in its revolutionary potential? The major structural factor is the expansive demography of the region, which stands in stark contrast to the population decline in the rest of Russia. Proportionately, there are many more young men in the Caucasus (and in Central Asia) whose frustrations at the closure of economic opportunities can be directed against corrupt neopatrimonial figures who embody this closure. Put simply, Russia looks apathetic because the majority of its population does not consist of people likely to build barricades, while in the North Caucasus potential revolutionaries are numerous. In addition, the local culture provides them access to guns, as well as to models for action, in which Islam does indeed play a role.

Derluguian asks if perhaps the "season's colour" is green:

Revolutionary contention in the North Caucasus might not look like revolution, let alone such cheerful and bloodless revolutions as those witnessed in Tbilisi and Kyiv. The turmoil which is spreading across this region consists of desperate and bewildering protests (like the mothers’ movement in North Ossetia’s traumatized town of Beslan), bizarre outbreaks of elite family feuds (which engulfed Karachai-Cherkessia after the president’s son-in-law murdered several business partners in what appeared to be an ownership dispute), the clashes that are reported as terrorist bombing attacks on police, and counterstrikes on terrorists, as in Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan. Yet, the process of these disparate events is really the same erosion of neopatrimonial power that elsewhere resulted in the color revolutions.

Moscow is trying to hold back the threatening wave by all means at its disposal: military, propagandistic, and diplomatic. The most recent tactical move was to repatriate as newly appointed presidents of their native republics a set of relatively young and successful business managers who would be vigorous and independent of local corrupt networks. After Adyghea’s millionaire President Hazret Sovmen, the new president of Kabardino-Balkaria Arsen Kanokov was sent to rule.We might yet see proven the rumor that Moscow is seriously considering the former head of St. Petersburg’s Baltika brewery Teimuraz Bolloyev as president of North Ossetia. The strategy of such preemptive appointments, intended to invigorate, if not replace, entrenched networks of political control and stave off rebellions in the North Caucasus republics, is the brainchild of the Russian proconsul in the North Caucasus, Dmitri Kozak. Kozak is a rare bureaucrat who is widely considered competent; for once, the quality of Russian decisionmaking seems beyond reproach. Yet there is a stringent limit to what he can do. Neither Kozak nor Vladimir Putin himself seem capable of reining in or even just cosmetically civilizing the most outrageous example of neopatrimonial rulership: the inherited sultanism of thuggish Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya.

If the past record of counterrevolutionary plans is any guidance, one should not place large bets on Kozak and his reformers-designate. Neopatrimonial machines are bound to produce their own undoing, sooner or later. But any revolution is a collapse of the existing power structure.Whether anything more stable can emerge depends on the nature of social coalitions in support of successor regimes. In the North Caucasus, the outlook does not seem encouraging.

Russia, aided and abetted by one or two other countries, is successfully destroying the OSCE's credibility as a security actor, writes Vladimir Socor in EDM:

On November 29, the OSCE's Joint Consultative Group convened to discuss the drafting of its report to the OSCE's year-end conference regarding implementation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and Russia's Istanbul Commitments on force withdrawal from the southern flank. The JCG includes the 30 countries signatory to the CFE Treaty (of which the Istanbul Commitments are an integral part), officially referred to as the "CFE community." Its annual report takes the form of a letter to the OSCE's Chairmanship for presentation to the organization's year-end conference, summing up CFE- and Istanbul-related developments during the year. Russia presses for ratification of the 1999-adapted CFE treaty, but refuses to be held accountable on the Istanbul Commitments, although the two form twin parts of one and the same set of 1999 Istanbul documents.

Belarus is the current holder of the JCG's chair, which rotates on a fortnightly basis among the "CFE community's" countries. Traditionally, the JCG's chairing country in late November forwards the report letter to the year-end OSCE conference, after coordinating it with all JCG parties. In this case, Belarus used its position to help Russia block the drafting and sending of that report.

In the November 29 meeting, Spain, on NATO's behalf, proposed that the report letter be drafted and duly forwarded to the year-end conference. The United States took the floor in support of that proposal. However, the Belarusian chairman rejected the proposal on the grounds that there would be no consensus on the document. Russia weighed in to confirm that there would be no consensus, clearly warning that Russia would use its veto power if necessary.

The debate turned farcical when the Russian delegation added the argument that the overall agenda is "too busy" to accommodate discussion on the JCG report prior to the year-end OSCE conference. When the United States meekly suggested that, perhaps, a time slot might be found for that purpose during the year-end conference in Slovenia, the Russian side predicted with sovereign confidence that there would be "even less time" there.

Moscow has found several helpers in this cover up. In 2003, just before the year-end Maastricht conference, Armenia happened to hold the JCG's rotating chair, and it blocked the sending of the report letter without further ado. Armenia acted partly out of self-interest, as it holds a reputedly large arsenal of Russian-supplied heavy weaponry in excess of CFE Treaty limitations. Forward-deployed mainly in areas seized from Azerbaijan, this arsenal escapes OSCE or other international verification and forms one part of the problem coyly designated by the OSCE as "unaccounted-for treaty-limited equipment."

Last year, Luxembourg chaired the JCG just prior to the OSCE's year-end Sofia conference, and it made unnecessary for Russia to use the veto. Luxembourg cited its lawyers' advice that the JCG chair should not draft and coordinate the report letter if there was no consensus within JCG on the document. With Russia poised to block the procedure in the first place, the Luxembourg chair declined to initiate the report letter to the year-end conference. At that time, Luxembourg was one of two appendages (the other was Belgium) to the "Berlin-Paris axis" that was accommodating Moscow on a number of European and international security issues

Read it all.

Another report I've translated for the Prague Watchdog, this time one by Umalt Chadayev, who says that the results of the parliamentary elections in Chechnya were as predicted:

CHECHNYA - The Chechen parliamentary elections organized by the Moscow-backed authorities have passed off without sensation. Almost all the predictions of observers were confirmed. The Chechen parliament has become "Kadyrovite".

As expected, victory in the elections went to "United Russia", which received an absolute majority of seats in the parliament. The parliament is now composed exclusively of this pro-Kremlin party plus the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS), each of which, if we are to believe the preliminary data of the Chechen Central Electoral Commission, received 11% of the vote, while "United Russia" was supported by more than 61% of voters.

Human rights workers dispute electoral commission’s data

In spite of the fact that the majority of Chechen citizens ignored the November 27 elections, the authorities declared them to have "taken place". Moreover, the Chechen electoral commission spoke of "the high activity of citizens during the day of voting" and said the turnout exceeded 60%.

Particular emphasis is being placed on the fact that no complaints by observers reached the electoral commission, and that voting took place in a situation of calm. However, journalists and representatives of NGOs who visited the electoral districts say that the reverse is true.

"According to the observations of our staff who monitored the situation at the polling stations in Grozny, there was no ‘high activity’ of citizens during the day of voting", says a representative of the "Memorial" human rights centre.

"At practically all the polling stations the turnout during the first half of the day, which is the time when most citizens usually go to cast their vote, was only 5-10%. In the villages these numbers might be higher, say 20-25%, because the candidates who were standing there were supported by neighbours, relatives and friends."

Meanwhile the Chechen leadership and the representatives of the electoral commission announced that 25% of voters had already participated in the elections by noon on November 27. High-ranking officials asserted that the elections were "open, democratic and transparent".

"What kind of democracy can one speak of if the names of many of the future deputies were known a minimum of twenty-four hours in advance? Thus, for example, as early as November 26 we received information that in constitutency No. 7 of Kurchaloy District, where Ayshat Israpilova and Salman Zakriyev were standing as candidates for election to the Republic’s Council (the upper house), Zakriyev "would get in", since he is Ramzan Kadyrov’s brother-in-law," says the worker of "Memorial".

"In the adjacent constituency of the same district, where three candidates were standing for election – Arbi Esembayev, Adam Khamidov and Aslanbek Aydamirov – the person supposed to be elected was Aydamirov, who is the brother of Kadyrov’s wife," he says.

"That is precisely what happened. Already on the evening of November 28 it became known that these two candidates [Zakriyev and Aydamirov] had been ‘elected’ as deputies."

This time the elections were held without refugees

The Chechen refugees who live in temporary accommodation on the territory of Ingushetia, and who according to different estimates comprise from 23,000 to 40,000 people, were not involved in the voting this time.

While during the referendum on the republic’s constitution (in 2003) ballot boxes were provided in the refugee camps, and during the elections of presidents Akhmad Kadyrov and Alu Alkhanov (in 2003 and 2004 respectively) special buses were laid on to take the refugees to the polling stations in Chechnya, this time the authorities simply ignored the forced migrants.

"No one is really interested in our opinion," considers 44-year-old Aslambek Sardalov. "The authorities only remember us when they need to conduct some routine loud-mouthed campaign about ‘the voluntary return of refugees to the motherland’, or ask the international community for the next tranche of aid for the needy refugees, which seldom ever reaches us."

"This time they [the Chechen authorities] didn’t even consider it necessary to make it look as though the conditions had been created for the refugees to take part in the elections. Even though I don’t think people would travel to this ‘event’, nevertheless... Actually, for us it was no secret that the results of these elections were determined in advance, and that this parliament will be composed only of people whom the ‘Kadyrov team’ has appointed."