Why Putin Is Still In Power

In late 2011 the Russian scientist, writer and political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky gave an interview to the Institute of Modern Russia that was headed: Which Will Fall First – the Regime or Russia as a State? In the interview, Piontkovsky predicted the collapse of Vladimir Putin's government, though refused to speculate on how long it would take - it might be a process lasting only a couple of weeks, or it might be a long-drawn-out decline spanning several years. Piontkovsky looked to the spread of people power - the kind of power that was then making itself felt throughout the Middle East in the shape of the Arab Spring. This power had the ability to overcome the rigid structures of the state:

How did it all start in North Africa? In Tunisia, a relatively prosperous country by African standards, a young man set himself on fire because he couldn’t find a job. Putin’s regime has ripened to its end. But the end will come later rather than sooner, because of the already mentioned satiated, lazy, and cowardly elite. Still, today’s macroeconomic indicators place serious time limitations. And with serious budget deficits, ruble devaluation, and double-digit inflation, social outbursts will spontaneously form in various regions. All this will push the elite to a greater sense of courage. Which will fall first – the regime or Russia as a state – will become crystal clear to everyone in about three or four years from now. 

In late 2012, Piontkovsky published an article called Why Putin Will Be Gone in 2013,  in which he predicted that Putinism would fall for the same reason that the Soviet Union fell in 1991. The USSR, he wrote, collapsed "not because of falling oil prices, not because of Gorbachev's 'betrayal', and not because of Reagan's SDI bluff which so terrified the old men in the Kremlin. When in the mid-1980s the communist myth that had created the system finally died in the hearts and minds of ordinary people as well as those of the Soviet nomenklatura, Soviet communism was strategically and psychologically doomed. As Andrei Amalrik had predicted with such genius a quarter of a century earlier." [my tr.]

Likewise, the Putin Myth of the strong man, the "father of the nation", protecting it from the Chechen terrorists who were supposedly blowing up peaceful citizens in their apartment blocks, had run out of steam - Russia's techno-financial elite, Piontkovsky argued, had lost faith in this myth, and without the elite's support the Putin system could not survive.

Of course, Putin is still there, so Piontkovsky's prediction was incorrect - as numerous columnists and observers have not been slow to point out. In an article titled Putin or Russia, published at the very end of 2013, Piontkovsky conceded the point, but insisted that the article's "conceptual carcass" - an outline for a theory of the death of authoritarian regimes and its practical application to contemporary Russia - was still fully backed up by the events that had taken place in Russia during the past year. As a retarding factor, he pointed to the attitude of intellectuals like Leonid Radzihovsky, who for years declared that "Putinism is shit - but it protects us from fascism". This, Piontkovsky argues, is no different from the statement by the Silver Age Russian essayist and philosopher Mikhail Gerzhenzon, who in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution declared in the essay anthology Vekhi that  "so far from dreaming of union with the people we ought to fear the people and bless this government which, with its prisons and bayonets, still protects us from the people's fury."

Now Piontkovsky no longer sees hope that Russia might witness the rise of a popular democratic movement like Ukraine's Euromaidan. Apathy reigns - and, if not yet formally in power, the fascists are very nearly there:

It was not the masses that brought Hitler to power in January 1933, but a deal he made with the elites. And now ask yourself: what do the fascists in Russia need to do in order to take power without winning free elections, but as a result of the internal  evolution of the Putin regime, of a deal made with it by - may one say it - the "elites"? Is their task easier or harder? In my opinion, much easier. In their case they don't have to convince 50 million voters. It will be enough to convince three or four villains of the national leader's inner circle. And they need no convincing.  [my tr.]

The Snowden Puzzle

Published at almost the same time as Edward Lucas's ebook, Catherine A. Fitzpatrick's full-length (200+pp) study of the Snowden case - Privacy for Thee and Not For Me: The Movement for Invincible Personal Encryption, Radical State Transparency, and the Snowden Hack - is now available on Scribd.

In her author's preface, Fitzpatrick likens the case to a Rubik's cube:

Turn the colorful cube one way, and it seems as if Edward, a 29-year-old systems analyst who said he became troubled by secret practices "done in our name", was only concerned about civil rights... Turned in another direction, and it seemed that his coercive action... was in fact presenting Congress and the courts with an undemocratic fait accompli.

Although the author does not claim to provide a solution to the puzzle, her book analyses its many and various pieces in extensively sourced detail, so that others may reach a conclusion for themselves.

The Snowden Disaster

Edward Lucas's newly published ebook The Snowden Operation: Inside the West's Greatest Intelligence Disaster is available from Amazon as a Kindle Single. It gives a clear and concise all-round survey of the Snowden affair, setting it in the historical context of international espionage. In particular, it analyses the particular characteristics of Snowden's disclosures, which the author says

are heavily spun and damaging to American and allied interests in a way that goes far beyond the purported goals of promoting a debate about digital security.

The Great Maidan

Kyiv journalist Vitaly Portnikov again, this time on Radio Liberty, writing about the Yanukovych government's failure to understand the nature of the protest movement that is advancing against it:

The government will simply start to switch police from the east to the country's "difficult" regions, retake the objectives that were seized, continue negotiations from a position of strength ... In the end, there will be no police and Berkut left in the east of the country. And then ...  And then  the capture of administrative buildings in the east will begin. The residents of the eastern and south-eastern regions have no more "love" for the government than people in the western and central ones... 

People are afraid, but when the repressive machine with its batons is evacuated to disperse the people in the central regions, their fear will vanish - together with the Russian "horror stories" about the split of Ukraine. Because the dividing line in the country does not follow a line between east and west, but the line between Yanukovych/authoritarianism and the Ukrainian people. And this lack of understanding on the part of the government in Kiev is its biggest problem: the problem that led to Maidan and is gradually and naturally growing into into a Great Maidan - a Maidan that will soon cover the whole of Ukraine.

The Silence of Russia

In Grani, Vitaly Portnikov writes about what he sees as a breakdown in the centuries-old relationship between the peoples of Ukraine and Russia:

Because the Russians are silent. They are silent when the people they so love to call brothers are being killed, tortured, humiliated, abducted from hospitals; all of it, of course, in the name of order and friendship with Russia, but even so. They are silent when the rallies are broken up. They are silent when the land so close to them is being brought to the precipice of a real war. In the whole vast country only a few dozen people are capable of getting out to the Ukrainian embassy or anywhere else to signal their protest and support.

This is a historic indifference. A new Ukraine may still emerge, but it will never have a mutual understanding with Russia at the level of values.The silence –  not even that of people, but of an entire nation that claims shared roots and a common outlook on the world – will, at the most crucial moment for Ukrainians, create a very real chasm of alienation that will not be so easy to fill in again.

What is happening today between Ukraine and Russia is precisely what once happened between Russia and Poland, or Russia and Finland...

Better Russia

In Slon, Leonid Ragozin takes a long and searching look at the twin identities of Ukraine. In the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine he sees a “Better Russia”:

It’s a more peaceful country with a better climate and less abrasive manners than Russia, a country where Russian military personnel and “northern” oil pensioners still go to live out their days as before, and to where  – as in Cossack times – the Empire’s more freedom-loving, enterprising and talented citizens escape. 

And this alternative Russia, unlike the original, has a chance in our lifetime to become part of a Greater Europe, to achieve its standards of state governance and quality of life. Such a Russia will, more than Ukrainians themselves, be interested in preserving Ukrainian statehood  because this will be the guarantee of its survival and success. If you really need a single, albeit diverse, Ukrainian nation, then it is with the help of such a Russia that it will be built.

Instead of relying on a narrow and sometimes intolerant Ukrainian nationalism, Ragozin thinks, the Euromaidan movement would do better to maximize its appeal to this “other Russia”. After all, he points out, the movement’s most prominent  leader, Vitali Klichko, is a boxer trained in the  Soviet army and with direct experience of the authoritarian and “athletic” mentality typical of the so-called “titushki” who are charged with maintaining support for Yanukovych’s government.  If Klichko could extend his influence to this constituency, and even become its leader, Ragozin believes that

there would be no need for the fighters of the Right Sector, the Molotov cocktails and medieval catapults: the Berkut would take him to the Rada and to Bankova.  

After reading this the only question that occurs to me is whether the influence of Putin and Great Russian chauvinism may not now be more widespread among Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population than Ragozin is prepared to admit.

Learn it by Heart!

Ukraine People's Deputy Inna Bohoslovska says:

I ask everyone to commit this to memory and pass it on to anyone you can. And if doubt starts to erode your strength, remember:

1. This government has put itself outside the law, and is doomed to 100 percent failure. The struggle will last for several months.

2. Everyone can and must contribute to the resistance their own share of decisive actions:

- not pay taxes to the budget, but spend the money on the cause of resistance;

- expel from offices all inspectors without exception;

- not buy any goods produced by the Regionals;

- devote every minute to talking with doubters and persuading them of the inevitability of the collapse of the Regionals, exert all possible means of pressure on the active supporters of the criminals in power.

3 Forbid yourself and those around you any public dissatisfaction with members of the resistance. Each for each. The task - to defeat evil. It cannot be worse. It will only get better. Difficult, but for the Good!

Завчити на пам'ять!
Прошу всіх завчити на пам'ять і передати кому зможете. І якщо сумніви почнуть підточувати Ваші сили, згадуйте:
1. Ця влада поставила себе поза законом і 100 відсотків приречена на поразку. Боротьба буде тривати декілька місяців.
2. Кожен може і повинен привносити в спротив свою частку рішучих дій:
- не платити податки в бюджет, а витрачати ці кошти на справу спротиву;
- виганяти з офісів всіх без винятку перевіряючи;
- не купувати жодних товарів, що виготовляються регіоналами;
- кожну хвилини говорити з тими, хто сумнівається, і переконувати їх в неминучості краху регіоналів, застосовувати всі можливі методи тиску на активних прихильників партії злочинців у владі.
3. Заборонити собі і оточуючим будь-яке публічне невдоволення учасниками спротиву. Кожен -за кожного. Задача – перемогти зло. Гірше не буде. Буде тільки краще. Складно, але до Добра.

http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/bogoslovska/52dfc70e52a4b/

Ukraine: Scenarios

On his LiveJournal blog Ukraine/Russia specialist Andreas Umland asks:

What happens to Europe should its territorially largest country slide towards civil war and a violent break-up? What happens to the current trans-European security architecture, pan-European organizations and all-European law should the Ukrainian state fall apart? What will happen to the already strained political, yet surprisingly intense economic EU-Russia relations when Moscow accepts possible offers from East and South Ukrainian regions to become, like Transnistria, Abkhazia or South Ossetia, Russian protectorates (if not oblasts of the RF)? I hope that these scenarios are currently being discussed in Brussels, Washington, Berlin, Moscow... etc

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is giving signs that Moscow may not wait indefinitely for the answers:

Russia urges EU "not to interfere" in Ukraine. 

Smoke and Mirrors

The unconfirmed reports of the death of Caucasus Emirate leader Doku Umarov, together with the recently-released but unverified statement and video by a Dagestan-based group calling itself "Ansar al-Sunna" (Helpers of Sunna, a name it shares with Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna, a group based in Iraq), and claiming Umarov's sponsorship and guidance in the Volgograd bombings, are increasing the uncertainty about Russia's ability to maintain adequate security at the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics.

Moscow sources have begun to make capital from the rumours, with one commentator pointing to a supposed link with the Syrian conflict and a threat to Russia from Saudi Arabia, which is said to have promised "internal complications" if Russia continues to support Syria's Bashar Assad. The Saudi theme is an old one in Kremlin propaganda, which seeks to lay the blame for atrocities like the Beslan school siege at the door of the West, the CIA, and alleged "Saudi links".

Useful Europeans

The previous post drew a rough parallel between the Western leftist and revolutionary movements of the 1920s and today's left-wing/libertarian alliance of "techno-revolutionaries" who seek to bring down capitalism by information-related means. The analogy can be widened, however: there is another group of dissenters in the West whom Moscow can rely on to create a base of support and a pool of common interests. It's a group that has little in common with left-wing ideas and aspirations, or even with the preoccupations of libertarianism, but is similarly useful. The far-right movements of Europe, with their representation in the European Parliament and their exploitation of the immigration issue, have a role to play not unlike that of the "полезные идиоты" of the inter-war decades.

As Elena Servettaz recently made clear,

Kremlin officials realize that the traditional liberal and conservative parties in Europe are gradually losing ground and that now is the time to cautiously align themselves with new forces—the far-right nationalists. “Some people in political circles in Moscow know that in Europe, and particularly in France, as the new family of far-right parties is gaining momentum, they must get to know them better and test the waters,” says Jean-Yves Camus.

The Euroscepticism of public opinion in France and the U.K. can be harnessed and adapted by nationalist and populist parties to form a Europhobic ideology based on fear of foreigners, "conservative values" and hostility to Islam. In December the Dutch Eurosceptic politician Geert Wilders attended a meeting in Italy which also hosted a United Russia Duma member:

According to Italian media, Viktor Zubarev also addressed the gathering and spoke about ‘values, the family, the nation, a return to religion’ and said that the party shared a lot of ideas with Italy’s Northern League, from immigration to budgetary policies.

In France, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen believes that Russia is "unfairly demonized", and has claimed that an ongoing anti-Russian campaign is being organized "at the highest levels of the European Union with support from the United States".

As Moscow increases its propaganda effort through outlets like RT (Russia Today) and Russia Beyond the Headlines, it's as well to be aware of the possible dangers of its collaboration with right-wing extremist forces in Europe - and to see those dangers in the context of Europe's twentieth-century past.

Putin and the Past

As some observers have recently pointed out, the Putin government's new strategy concerning Europe, the U.S. and the West in general bears some similarities to the tactics that were employed by the fledgling Bolshevik government in the decade that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. While the parallels are still very approximate, I think they do help us to understand where Russia is going at present, and what the future may hold.

When in the initial years of the new regime the hopes of a pan-European revolution failed to materialize, and the attempt to spread Communism by force of arms fairly quickly lost impetus, Soviet Russia fell back on a policy of "peaceful coexistence" with Western capitalism. This did not mean that the Bolsheviks abandoned their goal of world revolution - on the contrary, their aim now was to play off the capitalist nations of the West against one another: to unite with Germany against Poland, to support Britain against France, to befriend nationalist Turkey and to oppose and overcome the growing anti-Bolshevism of the United States.

By the summer of 1920 it was clear that the period of coexistence was likely to be prolonged: this was underlined in particular by the Soviet defeat in the Battle of Warsaw, which crippled the Red Army; by the failure of Western left-wing movements to follow the Bolshevik example, and by the parlous state of the Soviet economy. This situation led to an appraisal of future strategy which had three basic strands: 1) an acknowledgement of the Soviet Union's weakness, which required an extended period of social and military calm, in which the Soviet government would need to advocate international peace and establish friendly relations with capitalist states; 2) an exploitation of the greed of Western capitalists, and an effort to promote and aggravate rivalry between capitalist groups and nations; and 3) a prolonged and far-reaching campaign of propaganda and subversion aimed at encouraging and inspiring revolutionary activity everywhere, both in the developed West and in the colonial and semi-colonial countries of the world. As Lenin put it: "We do not for a moment believe in lasting trade relations with the imperialist powers; what we shall obtain will be simply a breathing space [peredyshka]."

Some of the early effects of the new Soviet policy could be seen in movements like the Britain's "Hand Off Russia" movement, which questioned the wisdom of conducting what left-wing circles portrayed as an undeclared war on Russia. As early as February 1920 Britain's Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, gave a speech to Parliament in which he asserted that the best way to restore order in Russia was by means of trade, not military force, and that the key to Western success was "to fight anarchy with abundance".

Today, there are differences - for example, instead of the context of a European war, there are the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But's not hard to detect echoes of the 1920s. There are the same attitudes taken by Western governments - their wait-and-see policies that put the interests of trade and commerce before any confrontation, even of a diplomatic kind, over issues of human rights and political repression. In place of the Western leftist revolutionary movements there are the campaigns by left-wing and libertarian groups conducting information-based attacks that are designed to cause maximum damage to Western military, security and economic interests, and the undisguised links of such campaigns with Russia itself, viz. the defection to Moscow of the spy Edward Snowden. And there are the activities of Western business interests and multinational corporations, which see in Russia a market of almost unlimited potential, and are determined not to let political or humanitarian issues stand in their way.

Ultimately, of course, the relative calm of the "breathing-space" period of the New Economic Policy was overtaken by events - the death of Lenin in 1924 and the intense power struggle that followed, with the ascension of Stalin and his rationalization of Leninist thinking and practice, exemplified in the massive reorganization and expansion of intelligence and secret police to cover almost every aspect of life. The conflicts and contradictions of the West's interaction with Russia - the growth of the perception of the Soviet monolith as an unmistakable, dangerous and unambiguous enemy, and the blindness of  Western opinion-leaders and observers who allowed themselves to be duped about the monolith's real nature - became increasingly pronounced as the 1920s gave way to the 1930s. An open military confrontation with the West might have occurred at any point, but for the special circumstances of European politics, which in the aftermath of 1914-18 were dominated by League of Nations pacifism and the sudden emergence of a National Socialist government in Germany.

What shouldn't be lost sight of, perhaps, is the long-term approach of Russia's political, military and security strategy. Its modern history has now extended for nearly a century, and is dominated by the interests of a powerful police and intelligence elite that has endured and shows no sign of weakening in its avowed purpose of defeating the West's global hegemony.

Return to the Past

The re-criminalizing of "slander" in the draft law No. 3879 adopted by a show of hands in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada today is essentially a return to the law on anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, which was defined as: 

propaganda or agitation with the purpose of undermining or weakening of the Soviet power or with the purpose of committing or incitement to commit particularly grave crimes against the Soviet state (as defined in the law);

the spreading with the same purposes of slanderous fabrications that target the Soviet political and social system;

production, dissemination or storage, for the same purposes, of literature with anti-Soviet content

Writing About the Buildings

In Slon, David Satter is asked for his views on why he was expelled from Russia:

[There are] a large number of journalists who almost every day express opinions that are very critical of the policy of Russia and its leadership. Why were you picked on?

- I can't answer that question. You can find out from the experts. What can I say? I'm the only one who wrote about the buildings (he is referring to the apartment bombings - Slon), the most important question in  post-Soviet history. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe it's something else.

Academy of Questions

In March the 5th Russian Literature Festival – SLOVO 2014 – will be held in London under the auspices of Academia Rossica,  a Russian arts and culture foundation that calls itself an NGO but is in reality a Russian state cultural organization. The organization is headed by Svetlana Adzhubei, a Moscow University arts graduate who is married to the son of Alexei  Adzhubei, Nikita Khrushchev's son in law, and chief editor of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia from 1959 to 1964.

Among the “partners” of  Academia Rossica are the Russkiy Mir Foundation, set up by Vladimir Putin in 2007, the Russian Ministry of Culture, the state-controlled press and media agency Russia Now (an offshoot of the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta) , which also operates on the Internet at the website Russia Beyond the Headlines,  and a number of British cultural and financial organizations, including the British Council and Peter Hambro Mining plc.

In addition to holding Russia-related cultural events throughout the year, Academia Rossica also sponsors two Russian literary translation prizes, and – most notably – serves as a hub and social gathering point for London’s expatriate Russian community.

As the Russian government tightens its control of media and sponsors repressive legislation targeting sexual and ethnic minorities, it seems legitimate to ask whether Academia Rossica plays a part in this process. Government exploitation of cultural outlets and activities for political purposes was widespread during the Soviet era, and this lavishly staged project in a foreign capital looks suspiciously like a reanimation of the genre.

While one can see the advantage to the Kremlin authorities of promoting a positive image of Russia through literature and culture, involving British and other Western publishers and cultural groups, it’s hard to see the purpose of the SLOVO events, which are now extended through a period of several weeks. As the BBC's Alexander Kan pointed out last year:

The abundance of Russian –  or more precisely Russian-speaking – Londoners  makes the festival’s success a foregone conclusion. Cut off from their native roots, people are hungry to hear the living word of the man of letters, remembering the traditional Russian phrases "leaders of opinion" (vlastiteli dum) and "in Russia the poet is more than a poet."

The one or two Britons present – most of them specialists in Russian studies –are lost in the crowd of expatriates and visiting guests. In this sense, the disconnection of the latter with the professional community of publishers, literary agents and booksellers  who make up the main audience of the London Book Fair, is perhaps also undermining the chances of success for the project’s original task—  to promote the Russian word in Britain.

It’s perhaps as well to note that this year’s SLOVO festival is to be held separately from the London Book Fair, about a month earlier, from March 8-23. Even so, the event still holds a distinct air of mystery.

The Russia Watchers

When I started this blog almost ten years ago, I had no earlier experience of blogging: in those days not that many people did. My original plan was to present a kind of informal diary, a conversational, subjective and honest appraisal of current affairs in Britain, Russia, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. I'm embarrassed to read some of my early posts – among other things, they show how hard it was for me to establish a political compass-bearing in the post-9/11 debate about terror, Islamism, U.S.-Russia relations and European security. Yet some of the conflicts I discussed  – the clash, for example, between the views of the anti-jihadist historians Spencer and Pipes and those of Western onlookers concerned about Russia’s abuse of human rights in Chechnya  – are still actual today, and have if anything increased their topicality.

Ten years ago my blog was a collection of the thoughts of a 59-year-old observer of current affairs with an academic training in Russian language, history and literature who also worked in the field of literary translation from Russian and the Nordic languages, including Finnish. My experience of travel in Russia and Eastern Europe, my visits to Estonia during the 1990s and my contacts with members of Estonia’s Pro Patria Union (Isamaaliit), as well as with literary figures there, gave me  – I thought – a way into the discussion about the future of Europe. In particular, I was concerned with the question of Russia’s role vis-à-vis Europe, of whether Russia would finally make the transition to  formal de-Sovietization  and European-style democracy that many hoped for, or whether it would remain tied to its Soviet past -  superficially modern, but inwardly hidebound and backward-looking.  

I soon discovered that airing views on Russia-related topics, even on a tiny, low-traffic blog, was not without its hazards – the presence of a large and seemingly well-organized pro-Kremlin lobby  was conspicuous on the Web even back in 2004. The voicing of any criticism of Russia’s foreign policy, however mild, tended to attract hostile comments in the boxes, and at times these became intolerably shrill.  From my earlier participation on several Internet forums, I was familiar with these attacks , which were nearly always destructive and ad hominem. A particular animus seemed to exist among Russian-speaking posters with a commitment to the new version of Balkan – especially Serbian – nationalism. But I soldiered on, tending to post less and less of my own personal thoughts, and more and more of news items and op-ed commentaries gathered from both Western and Russian-language media. To guard against hacker attacks, I backed up the original Blogger blog with a facsimile version on WordPress. I covered the Beslan school hostage crisis of September 2004 as well as the Ukraine crisis and Orange Revolution of 2004-2005, and later followed this up with translations of related Russian-language documentary material and interviews. However, in late 2005 I began to translate articles for the Prague Watchdog website, which monitored the human rights situation in Chechnya, and in 2007 I started to work with PW more or less full time, as an editor and translator in the site’s English-language section. This meant I had less time to devote to the blog, and in fact it’s only recently that I’ve been able to give it some proper attention again.

What I've discovered, looking round at the English-language Russia-watching blogosphere in 2014, is that in many respects the spectrum of opinion and analysis has hardened to an extent that was probably not the case even five years ago. The more reflective, wide-ranging blogs, like Siberian Light, Scraps of Moscow and Neeka’s Backlog, seem to have changed their character,  becoming either more personal or less frequently updated, while  polemical blogs, like La Russophobe (Dying Russia) and Da Russophile, have become more  strident and prominent. There are some more recent blogs like Catherine Fitzpatrick’s Minding Russia, which break away from the polarized Russia debate and strike out into new territory, looking beyond the surface of Russian life. Above all, however,  there appears to have been a huge increase in the amount of academic blogging, with numerous U.S. college professors and Russian studies “experts” – a relatively new phenomenon, this –  dominating the landscape. While some of these academic blogs are long-established – Sean’s Russia Blog is an example, providing useful, if somewhat cautious background to the  news – others have materialized only in the last few years. The global affairs analyst Mark Galeotti writes a blog called In Moscow’s Shadows about crime and security in Russia. In addition to several titles mainly  concerned with crime, security and the Russian military, Galeotti  has also written a book about  the Chechen wars of 1994-2009 – yet in his posts on North Caucasus-related events like the recent Volgograd bombings he tends to take an almost ahistorical view, concentrating on issues of tactics and security, as well as on the Kremlin’s ongoing narrative, rather than on the roots of the crisis. 

Among the academic bloggers there’s a tendency to take that Kremlin narrative at face value as the expression of policies that  don't differ essentially from those of other governments in the world. The peculiar and unique nature of Russian governance – its connection with irrational, spontaneous forces that lie just under the surface of an apparently normal exterior – does not feature in their analyses. Although they perceive the networks of corruption and manipulation that drive the political process, they do not stop to unravel them in the context of the Russian past. For a group blog like Global Voices Online, Russia is just one more region of the world to be considered like any other – and in fact it is treated more or less in isolation from the rest of the world, in a periodic collection of posts about “RuNet” – the Russian Internet which, again following the Kremlin narrative, is assumed to exist separately from the Internet that functions in the rest of the globe. Whether this inclination to follow, if not the bias, then the structure of Russian official thinking is caused by a reluctance to offend the authorities and a desire to retain visiting rights to the Russian Federation, one can only speculate.

What is lacking in the blogosphere’s coverage of Russia is an all-round picture that includes not only the issues of government, society, security,  business and crime, but also the historical and cultural background, a knowledge of which instantly renders the country and its leaders less opaque. While there are some excellent blogs on Russian literature – Sarah J. Young’s is an example – there appear to be very few that link that literature to an understanding of current events in Russia.  Though not a blog, Radio Liberty’s Russian-language site is the only one I know of that fulfills this function, including, along with its output of news and analysis, features like its series on the work of the great Russian philosopher, historian and cultural anthropologist Alexander Pyatigorsky, including his taped lectures. Something of this kind is badly needed in English. 

Sochi: Stages of Management

As the 1-month countdown to the Sochi Winter Olympics begins, attention is focusing on the political significance of this event not only for Russia itself but also for the rest of the world, whose good will and participation is, theoretically at least, an important part of the proceedings. While the propaganda value of the games for the Russian government in terms of national pride and Putin's personal prestige doesn't need to be underscored, it's perhaps a good idea to take a step back and look at the Sochi games in terms of one or two aspects of the  international situation in which the games are about to go live.  

It hasn't escaped the attention of even the least disputatious Western commentators that -  viewed on the map - the Black Sea coastal resort of Sochi is "not far from Chechnya", and "in a rough neighborhood" (near the North Caucasus). The wisdom of holding an extended high-profile international sporting event in what is essentially a war zone has now and then been questioned by observers with no particular political or ideological ax to grind. But since what is involved, on paper at least,  is a show of international solidarity and Olympic ideals, most have decided to give the Russian authorities the benefit of the doubt. While at the end of 2013 the doubts were increased by the bombings in Volgograd - was this not a warning by terrorists intent on sabotaging the event? - what has slipped from the headlines and many or most of the pre-games analyses is a consideration of other events beyond Russia's borders in which Russia plays an important and well-nigh decisive role.

In March last year Foreign Policy published an article by Brookings Institution analyst Fiona Hill in which she outlined what she saw as the real reason for President Putin's support of Syria's Bashar Assad. It was connected, she wrote, with Putin's fear of the situation in the North Caucasus and Chechnya (expressed in a series of interviews he gave in 2000) as "the continuation of the collapse of the USSR.... If we did not quickly do something to stop it, Russia as a state in its current form would cease to exist":

For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups. In Putin’s view -- one that he stresses repeatedly in meetings with his U.S. and European counterparts -- Syria is the latest battleground in a global, multi-decade struggle between secular states and Sunni Islamism, which first began in Afghanistan with the Taliban, then moved to Chechnya, and has torn a number of Arab countries apart. 

As Hill was not slow to point out, in reality the two conflicts have little in common - while the Chechen wars were mainly localized within the North Caucasus region, with occasional outbreaks of terrorism elsewhere in Russia, in Syria the whole of the country is embroiled in a ferocious civil war, and Assad does not have at his disposal the resources that were available to Putin in his confrontation with Chechnya. He has been unable to eliminate opposition adversaries abroad in the way that Putin did, and - far from being localized - the Syrian conflict has spilled over into the entire Middle East region, threatening its stability. As Hill put it:

Chechnya is in a bad neighborhood, but Syria is in a terrible neighborhood, and the effects of the Syrian conflict cannot be contained in the way that Chechnya’s were.

Undeterred, Putin and the Russian military leadership press on with their obstinate support for the Syrian dictator, thus bringing ever closer the likelihood of the disintegration of a state that is of the greatest geopolitical importance to Russia's own security. The endgame strategy is to blame the whole disaster on the United States, for having supported democratic movements associated with the Arab Spring.

Such is the context in which the Sochi games are now to be held. Clearly, in a state like modern Russia, where the triumph of propaganda is of more importance than diplomacy or attempts at international reconciliation, the scene is set for a large and prominent display of public advocacy and agitprop. With the ramping up of its counter-information channel Russia Today - a Russian-language version is  now being added - and the dismantling of the RIA Novosti agency, Moscow is about to make maximum political capital from the games, forcing Western nations to take a position in what the Russian authorities view as a conflict between "values" - the liberal, tolerance-espousing values of the West, with its respect for gay rights and the freedom of dissenters and minorities, and the uncompromising, conservative fusion of Orthodoxy and Islam that is beginning to emerge as the founding ideology of the Eurasian Union. By linking the Volgograd bombings to the alleged activities of Syrian and North Caucasus extremists, by raising the profile of Doku Umarov and his "Caucasus Emirate", and by issuing reminders about the Boston attacks of last April, Moscow is making sure that, as Western nations prepare to send their athletes to Sochi, their governments are compelled to take sides in a Kremlin-prepared choice of alternatives.

History Lessons

In the aftermath of the Volgograd bombings, most of the commentary in Western media has focused on the likelihood that the explosions were the work of forces controlled by Doku Umarov and his "Caucasus Emirate". In the Interpreter magazine, Andrew Bowen writes that

it is still a safe bet that the bombings can be attributed to the Caucasus Emirate, Russia’s homegrown Islamist insurgency. With that, and the upcoming Olympic Games, in mind, we can analyze the threat and potential for further attacks in the region and in Sochi by attempting to understand who the terrorists are and what they are capable of 

and he says that

Rightly, the Russian authorities consider the threat as high enough to warrant the impressive security efforts. 

Nearly all of the commentators persist in viewing the recent bombings and their social and political context from a Western perspective. Although the Caucasus Emirate is said to be "homegrown", it is regarded in much the same light as Al Qaeda, while the Russian "authorities" (by which are meant counter terrorist and counter intelligence forces) and their efforts to control the situation are seen as equivalents to security and intelligence services in the West. In other words, the Volgograd bombings are viewed essentially in essentially the same light as terrorist attacks in the West, and the perpetrators are considered to be the equivalent of Islamist groups in London, Madrid or other Western capitals. 

The analyses by observers like Andrew Bowen, Mark Galeotti and others tend to focus heavily on listings of Russia's security preparations for the Olympics, together with a rundown of the assumed structure of the Islamist cells in Dagestan and Ingushetia. with much emphasis on "suicide bombers" and their "psychological preparation". Very many such analyses look ahead to the Sochi Olympics, and link the atrocities to a desire by the Islamists to disrupt the Games. What is almost entirely missing from these articles is any attempt to set the recent events in a historical perspective, and particularly in the context of the long and shadowy relationship between the growth of Islamism in the North Caucasus and the activities of Russia's security services. Although Bowen mentions "the gradual transformation of a Chechen nationalist/independence inspired resistance to a more regional Islamist insurgency", he does not follow this up with a consideration of why the transformation took place, or of the agencies, including the Russian state authorities, that helped to make it possible. In particular, he fails to set the recent bombings in the historical context of other, similar bombings in the past, some of which were attributed by Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya to special operations by Russian secret services.

This lack of historical analysis and awareness is all the more striking as some of the commentators, like Galeotti, have been researching Russian history and security issues since at least the late 1980s. 

The narrative of "suicide bombings" to "disrupt the Olympics" makes good headlines for Western media, but it does not do a great deal to help our understanding of events that go far beyond Sochi and may have much wider repercussions for global politics as a whole. In the context of Volgograd the Syrian conflict, and Russia's support for Bashar al-Assad, is one area that deserves much closer scrutiny. It's time that Western defence correspondents and analysts broadened their approach to such events to include some historical depth, a consciousness of the details of the Chechen conflict, and the story of Chechen independence, for it is there that the roots of the present troubles can be found. In Russia's brutal and mindless suppression of dissent in the North Caucasus, and its attempts to destroy it by every possible means, whether it be military force, propaganda, or subversion, lies the answer to the questions many are raising now.   

Yet Another "Black Widow"?

In connection with today's atrocity in Volgograd the Russian authorities have once again blamed a "black widow". This gendered narrative regularly appears in Russia's state-controlled media. As Amanda Alcott has pointed out: 

The monstrous narratives used to describe black widows have become a lynchpin in Kremlin propaganda... and show the world the Russian portrayal of the ongoing war and security services' operations in the North Caucasus. The narrative is particularly founded in the basic moral superiority of Russian masculinity over femininity, and reinforces the patriarchal power of the Russian government and society by using black widow propaganda as a way to in effect blame femininity for the actions of the black widows, removing any agency, legitimacy or pity associated with their actions and plight. 

Also, as I suggested on this blog in 2010:

- Almost without exception, Western media accepted at face value the official statements by Russia’s FSB and other agencies, including the terminology that was used in them. The existence of a “Black Widows” organization dedicated to obtaining revenge for the deaths of slain Islamist insurgents was also treated in some reports almost as an established fact, even though there is little independent evidence to support it.

- The alleged involvement of female suicide bombers – in particular, the “Black Widows” – was a feature of Russian media coverage and official statements (notably the FSB) following earlier terror attacks in Russia, particularly at Nord-Ost and Beslan. In the past, many commentators both in Russia and abroad drew attention to the fact that the “Black Widows” scenario, with its dramatic and even theatrical elements, does not look particularly convincing on close examination. For one thing, among North Caucasus Islamic insurgents shahid or “martyr” operations are usually carried out by men.

Update December 30: Today's trolleybus blast in Volgograd - the second in 24 hours - was apparently carried out by a male bomber. Some reports say both explosions were the work of male suicide bombers, but others still mention a female guerrilla in connection with the station blast.  

Shake-Up

This lively Al Jazeera @AJStream discussion on Putin's media shake-up makes strikingly clear the current divisions in Russian society and politics and their repercussions for people both inside Russia and outside it, in a unique and unsettling way: the energy and dedication of the AJStream presenters, the muddled and cynical doggedness of the Kremlin propagandist Milonov, the barbed incredulity of Bennetts, the sadly ironic detachment of Rothrock, the outrage and anger of Baronova - it all adds up to a kind of theatre, a symbolic acting out of irresoluble conflicts that may be with us for a long time to come, with unknowable consequences.  

Letter to Khodorkovsky

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I am writing to you from Finland. My name is Polina Zherebtsova. I am a political refugee from Russia. From contemporary Russia, which for many, many years has been ruled by Mr. Putin.

All my life I have kept a diary. And it so happened that I was born in the Caucasus, in the city of Grozny.

When I was nine years old my city was surrounded by a ring of Russian tanks - and houses were turned into ruins and ashes along with their inhabitants. Has your home been shelled by a tank, Mr Khodorkovsky? Mine was. The upper floors of the apartment building were on fire, and children were screaming in unbearable pain: shrapnel tore their bodies.

My grandfather, a veteran of the Second World War, was in the hospital on Pervomayskaya Street, but was killed in the shelling. He was recovering - my mother and I were going to take him home.

We could not bury him for a week. There was fighting.

I know you have been through a lot, have been imprisoned. But tell me - can you imagine how the patients scream when the guns are firing at their hospital or when a jet bomber, invisible and invulnerable to their curses, drops a one-and-a-half ton bomb on them?

We looked for where the snow was cleaner, gathered it up and strained it through cloth so we would drink it. It was not white snow, not at all like the snow I can see just now in Finland. It was dark gray and bitter, because there were burning buildings all around. An oil plant was on fire, and whole neighborhoods of homes were burning. Before they reached living human flesh, the bombs tore up stone and  concrete.

And the houses were full of people, and they had nowhere to run to.

We fell from hunger, lying about in the corners of apartments, half submerged in basements. And the rats huddled against the cold at our feet and squeaked.

The rats slept with me in the hallway on the icy wooden floor, and I didn't chase them away, realizing that even they were suffering from "Russian democracy" Our cats died, unable to withstand the diet of pickled tomatoes we fed them once every few days.

To get at least some food, you had to walk about in other people's basements, where the conquerors had left thin silver threads, and if you stepped on one of those threads you would go straight to heaven.

And do you want to hear how I stood near the concrete slabs under which for three days in the centre of Grozny, choking in the wreckage and cement dust, Russian old folk died?

No one was able to raise the slabs and remove the debris! People wept and prayed, but could not do anything. Those who died under the ruins of their houses did not get a grave in "the land we won." This hell was repeated many times in ten years: as long as the war lasted in the Caucasus, in the Chechen Republic.

In August 1996 rockets from a Russian military post flew into the staircase of our apartment building: our neighbours were blown to pieces. I was eleven years old at the time.

I came out into the front entrance of our building and my feet  sank ankle-deep in blood. Blood dripped from the walls and ceiling, and I could hear the surviving neighbours screaming in terrible agony. Since then, Mr Khodorkovsky, I do not believe Russia's rulers. I do not think that this is the price of conquering the land and preserving its integrity. This was done by "weaklings" - because a strong man will not assert himself at the expense of the lives of women and children.

Essentially they are traitors of their own people.

In 1999, when the "humanitarian corridors" of refugees were shelled, burning people alive in buses, we could not get out of the city. And on October 21 1999  Grozny market was hit by a rocket.  In the afternoon, when thousands of people were crowded there.

It was later announced that this was a "market of terrorists" with whom the the invaders were fighting.

"Terrorists" was the name they gave to the children, the old folk and women who traded vegetables, sweets, bread, cigarettes, newspapers, etc.  And the market was called the "arms market," but I never saw weapons there, although sometimes I would spend a whole day going round all the stalls with a box of stuff.

During the holidays or after school I could not rest - I had to work in order to survive.

I traded in that market place. There were no pensions, no salaries. People did their best to survive. For a year my mother received no salary. It was stolen. And we traded in order to survive and buy bread.

They did not have to start "conquering us", turning our lives into one continuous strip of hell. Our lives were already hard enough without bombs and "Grad" installations. When the rocket hit Grozny market I was three blocks away from the place where it landed. I saw fire from the ground to the sky, and then I heard a deafening explosion.

In my legs there were sixteen fragments of shrapnel.

And what happened to the people who were closer to the rocket? Severed arms, legs, heads, bodies turned to dust.

The children found their mother by her hairpins or the buttons on her jacket...

Did anyone get an apology? Or compensation for this hell? Did anyone?

I got nothing except threats and being told to "shut your mouth", as I was a true witness to these bloody events. Here is the face of the modern Russian government.

Killing, slandering and grabbing. And this is called "conquest"?

In 2000, On January 19, the surviving neighbours and my mother and I were threatened with execution by firing squad.

We were on the edge of a cliff and the soldiers fired over our heads.

Our old granny neighbour fell to her knees, crying:

"What are you doing? We're your people! We're  Russians! Don't shoot!"

The Caucasus is a peculiar region. In it, cultures and ethnicities, ways of life and cuisines, have been interwoven.

Of the forty-eight apartments in our building ten were Chechen and the rest - Russian, Armenian, Gypsy, Azeri, Ingush, Jewish, Polish...

We lived together amicably until the war began. The war swept everything away: life, friendship, love. It destroyed everything.

Surviving in inhuman conditions, people from the Chechen Republic n the other regions of Russia faced and still face the most vile discrimination, persecution and threats.

The authorities have no time for their stories of mass executions and extrajudicial kilings. All, regardless of ethnicity, are classed as "Chechens."

I have come up against this, too.

For about a year I was refused a passport. But you got one in a single day, and were even kindly driven to the gangway of a private jet. Double standards - those are precisely what distinguish despotism from democracy...

I was very sympathetic to you when you were in prison. I considered the sentences you were given unjust, political. Even now I think that you may have been subjected to pressure. But you in your interview you said: "Putin is no weakling. I am ready to fight in order to keep the North Caucasus as part of our country. This is our land, we conquered and won it!"  Consider: now you will have to share responsibility for those war crimes, which in  the Caucasus are not the costs of "conquest", but its essence.

Read my diary.

Read how we were conquered.

How we buried our murdered neighbours under fire, having first covered the graves with branches so that the hungry dogs would not tear the bodies apart.

How thousands of women and children were murdered in the Chechen Republic.

Do you still want integration with such a Russia?

I do not.

And I do not need her citizenship. I am embarrassed by it, like the shameful brand-mark on a slave.


http://grani.ru/blogs/free/entries/222757.html

Traditional Methods

In an article for The Dissident Blog, Tanya Lokshina writes about the ongoing crackdown on civil society that is taking place in Russia, affecting vulnerable minorites including migrants and the gay community. While Lokshina describes the current anti-liberal campaign by the authorities as "unprecedented", there are signs that it may simply be a reversion to type. In the name of a bogus appeal to political and social conservatism the Kremlin is exercising an old and atavistic mode of repression that it understands only too well:

those who dare speak out—be it about their sexual identity or their discontent with governmental policies—are threatened with punishment and blackened in the eyes of society. This is what lies behind the superficially respectable veil of ‘traditional values’ that the Kremlin is throwing over Russia today.

The Two Gentlemen of Russia

On his blog Alexander Goldfarb writes that while he is glad to see an innocent man released from prison, there can be no doubt that Mikhail Khodorkovsky's plea for clemency was written under pressure: 

It says more about Putin than about MBK: not only has Putin kept a man in prison for ten years for nothing, he, the brute, has also forced a confession out of him. 

We should not forget that in the relationship between these these two characters there is much that is personal. In their Shakespearean drama the outcome of the plot still lies ahead. In this situation a plea for clemency in no way amounts to a capitulation. 

When one man sits on the throne, and the other in a dungeon, everything is clear - one is a tyrant, and the other a martyr. When a prisoner dies in a torture chamber or emerges into freedom with head unbowed, not repenting, everything is also clear: the tyrant has lost his authority and is powerless against the power of the spirit. Both of them understand that.

But a confession extracted by force tells us nothing. The final result depends on how MBK conducts himself in future. If, like Galileo who exclaimed:"And yet it moves!", he in some form disavows his confession, does not express thanks to Putin and says something, for example, in defence of the Bolotnaya prisoners or the thousands of businessmen who have been jailed by the lawlessness of the Cheka, then his persecutor will be shamed even further. 

But if he puts his lips to the hand of the man "who granted him freedom", gives us to understand, like Orwell's hero, that the "re-education " has worked and that now "he loves Big Brother ", then Putin will have something on which to congratulate himself. Then he will really have won.

Update: in a new post written after Khodorkovsky's Berlin press conference on December 22, Goldfarb adds:

The key passage in MBK's statement: "I don't want to take a completely open position on many issues. I have won the right not to say what I do not think. That is worth a great deal."

He will not sing Putin's praises. But he has not won the right to say what he thinks of him. Well, one cannot judge him for that, in his position he was entitled to make compromises. But the expectations that he would be a Sakharov or a Mandela have not been realized. 

Kerry Statement on Ukraine

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesperson
For Immediate Release December 10, 2013
2013/1555

Statement by Secretary Kerry

Statement on Events in Ukraine

The United States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest in Kyiv’s Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers, and batons, rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity. This response is neither acceptable nor does it befit a democracy.

Last week in Brussels and Moldova, I underscored publicly the importance of all sides avoiding violence and called on President Yanukovych to fulfill the aspirations of the Ukranian people. We put the government on notice about our concern.

As Vice President Biden made clear to President Yanukovych during their phone call yesterday, respect for democractic principles, including freedom of assembly, is fundamental to the United States’ approach to Ukraine. This is a universal value not just an American one. For weeks, we have called on President Yanukovych and his government to listen to the voices of his people who want peace, justice and a European future. Instead, Ukraine’s leaders appear tonight to have made a very different choice.

We call for utmost restraint. Human life must be protected. Ukrainian authorities bear full responsibility for the security of the Ukrainian people.

As church bells ring tonight amidst the smoke in the streets of Kyiv, the United States stands with the people of Ukraine. They deserve better.

Softly, Softly on Ukraine

For some time now, observers and political analysts watching the developing crisis in Ukraine have been wondering why the United States government has taken such a passive and secondary role in supporting the Ukrainian opposition, and why it has so far failed to put much pressure on President Yanukovych. On Monday, commenting on a Evropeiska Pravda report, Ukraine expert Taras Kuzio tweeted:

Why is current US administration so pathetically weak? US State Dept. asks Russia to go easy on Ukraine. http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/12/9/7005750/ …

In an article for Up Front, Brooking Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer sees the situation like this:

[The U.S.] Congress, a traditionally pro-Ukrainian institution that used to mandate huge sums of assistance funds for Ukraine, now shows considerably less enthusiasm for the country. Notably, some on Capitol Hill have even begun talking about applying sanctions, which would have been unheard of in Congress just a couple of years ago.

The upshot is that the United States devotes less time and attention to Ukraine than was the case in the past. As a result, the European Union—the institution and individual EU member-states, such as Poland, Lithuania and Sweden—have taken the Western lead during the past several years.

Not having the United States on the frontline is, on balance, not a bad thing. As noted, the foreign policy agenda in Washington is jammed. Moreover, were the United States leading the Western charge, Moscow would regard it is a particularly dangerous geopolitical challenge. That would introduce to the complicated politics that are now playing out in Kyiv a U.S.-Russia competitive dynamic that would hardly be helpful to—and might well complicate—efforts to find a peaceful political solution to the current crisis

This can, however, be seen as a hollow excuse, an attempt to offload the burden of support for Ukraine from the U.S. onto Europe. As one U.S. commenter writes:

I hope our administration does not follow your advice but rather rises to the occasion of meaningfully supporting 46 million people and a nation being robbed of their national wealth. Over a 100,000 people in the US sent in petitions to have the administration take action against the thugs running Ukraine. There are 300,000 people in the streets in just Kiev - the position advocated above has to be a joke.

RIA Novosti Liquidated

With the liquidation of the RIA Novosti news agency and the formation of a Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) agency headed by a virulently pro-Kremlin, anti-Western propagandist, Russia is signalling that its days of "soft" information and news distribution are over. The pretense, and to all appearances it was only ever a pretense - of objectivity and neutrality is finally being removed. As Leonid Ragozin tweeted: ": imagine a fusion of Fox TV & Berlusconi's entertainment channels run by Goebbels. You get the picture."

Moscow's Information War on Ukraine

It looks as though the campaign of disinformation about the current situation in Ukraine is intensifying. As Natalka Zubar, chair of the Maidan Monitoring Information Centre pointed out two days ago,

During the last two years a great number of fake accounts in social networks were created in facebook, twitter and VKontakte, which were mostly sleeping before the beginning of November. Now these accounts are actively creating  white noise, jamming the communication channels and distributing misinformation.

The disinformation is distributed via the social networks and websites created solely for this purpose solely. Unfortunately, lots of misinformation is broadcast by other, even professional media. Most notable samples of misinformation were – the news about the restriction of cash flow by the National Bank of Ukraine and the news that the big number of European VIPs will not attend the OSCE summit in Kyiv.

Government sites are being under DDoS attacks. The access to legislative database of the Ukrainian Parliament and the current crime reports of Ministry of Interior are inaccessible periodically.

The situation in Kyiv is nearing a military state by the level of tensions. The activists on streets and all the citizens who watch the unaccountable and unprofessional media are kept in a state of permanent arousal expecting provocations, they are trying to check the rumors, which mostly appear to be misinformation.

The latest bout of activity in the information war appears to centre on the rumour, reported by British journalist Edward Lucas on Twitter, that Ukraine President Yanukovych has signed a strategic agreement with Putin that would mean Ukraine joining the Moscow-led Customs Union - news obviously designed to stir maximum trouble, and surely a provocation. The Kremlin is now denying that any such secret agreement exists, but Lucas says

To repeat: Yanuk did deal w Putin at Sochi. It included promise to join customs union later (by 2015). But what's a Yanuk promise worth?

In an article headed Panic à la Lucas – Use Your Brain, Liudmila Yamschikova, Content Manager at Maidan Monitoring Information Centre, expresses some skepticism about Lucas's tweets and appeals for a rational approach to the situation, and says:

These tweets are not very typical of a journalist of such a level. The thesis of the "concern of Western governments" alone is worth a smile. After all, governments do not report their concerns to the editor of a news magazine through unnamed sources. Whatever the real reason for these tweets... the reports do not look like a reliable source. 

The Soviet Trace

Writing in svoboda.org, Andrei Piontkovsky assesses the probability of a "Soviet trace" in the assassination of President Kennedy:

Официальная версия комиссии Уоррена – убийца, действовавший в одиночку, – не убеждает ни экспертов, ни, судя по опросам, большинство американцев. Слишком много фактов, начиная с убийства самого Освальда, косвенно указывают, что, скорее всего, он действовал не в одиночку, а был элементом разветвленного заговора. Между тем, полвека попыток независимого расследования убийства Кеннеди десятками конспирологов, ориентированных на версии правоконсервативного заговора, не привели к убедительным результатам. Версия советского следа с первых же дней после трагедии сознательно на уровне идеологического табу отвергалась в США как властью, не заинтересованной в новом острейшем кризисе в отношениях с Советским Союзом, так и леволиберальными media, жаждавшими дискредитировать своих традиционных оппонентов. Тем более что людей, ненавидевших Кеннеди, действительно было много и среди южных расистов, и среди ультраправых консерваторов.

Kyiv, December 1: Questions

In the New Times, Konstantin Shiyan examines some of the uncertainties that divide the opposition in Ukraine: 

В настоящее время оппозиция призывает манифестантов сохранять спокойствие, не поддаваться на провокации и начать монтировать палаточный городок. Ее требования со вчерашнего дня не изменились: отправить в отставку правительство, подвергнуть президента процедуре импичмента, а перед этим - распустить Верховную Раду и объявить начало внеочередных парламентских выборов.

В общем и целом, складыывается впечатление, что у 700-тысячной толпы, которая собралась в центре Киева, сейчас нет единого, готового взять на себя ответственность, лидера. Лидеры трех оппозиционных партий - Арсений Яценюк, Виталий Кличко и Олег Тягнибок - обещают объявить план действий на ближайшие сутки несколько позже.

Митингующие сейчас условно разделились на два лагеря: одни призывают к силовому захвату власти, а другие подчеркивают: это даст властям только законное право на разгон митинга, не более того.

Brodsky Anniversary

It's exactly 50 years since the poet Joseph Brodsky was attacked in the pages of Vechernii Leningrad as "A Pseudo-literary Parasite", in an article that led to his trial, imprisonment and exile.

http://grani.ru/Culture/Literature/m.221170.html

Dead End

Having read the Kindle edition of Peter Savodnik's The Interloper I'm left with a sense of  incompleteness - the book aims to show that Oswald was a far less mysterious personality than most accounts make him out to be, yet in doing so it raises many more questions than it answers.

In particular, the author's analysis of Oswald's inner life seems to lead merely to a confirmation of just how blank and uninteresting that life was. While the study of Oswald's time in the Soviet Union is well researched, it reveals a dead end: although it's clear that while in Belorussia Oswald did come into contact with many representatives of the KGB, and was deeply involved with them, there appears to be no link between this fact and anything that might have led him to assassinate the U.S. President. Indeed, as Inessa Yakhliel, who knew Oswald, has recently pointed out, he "spoke about Kennedy very sympathetically. He said he was the only sensible president. Those were his words."

Savodnik makes much of the ease with which conspiracy theorists have set out to present their own versions of what really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and advances his own "simple" explanation - Oswald was angry about issues in his confused personal life and took it out on the president - as most likely to be near the truth. Yet this eagerness to promote the "lone gunman" theory also has its questionable aspect: for in the same way as the conspiracy theories can be used to promote particular political agendas, so can the supposed absence of a conspiracy.

The Kindle edition of the book contains a number of typographical  glitches, most of which are unconnected with Oswald's own idiosyncratic English spelling (in letter and diary passages quoted frequently in the text). In particular, Russian street names and words are sometimes presented wrongly, as in the often-repeated "Kalinina Ulitsa" for "Ulitsa Kalinina", and there are some odd transliterations that lead, for example, to the Cyrillic letter "у" being rendered as uy. I haven't seen the book's print edition, but hopefully these typos have been ironed out there.

Kremlin Dilemma

On October 24, Russia's Kremlin-friendly politician LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky went on television, where he shouted and ranted about the North Caucasus, apparently calling for barbed wire to be placed around the region, for the fertility of ethnic North Caucasians to be suppressed, and for an increase in the military presence and level of surveillance in the area. His comments received wide support from viewers, by a ratio of three-and-a-half to one over those of his opponents on the show.

Zhirinovsky's high-profile intervention came in the context of the suicide bombing in Volgograd,  the riots in Biryulyovo, and the recent ethnic pogroms in several of Russia's cities.

Writing in North Caucasus Weekly, Jamestown analyst Valery Dzutsev commented that

the controversy surrounding Zhirinovsky’s latest comments may not end up being as beneficial to the political players as initially assumed—emotions within society are running high, and the politicians might be forced to actually take some decisive steps beyond simply making a show of their indignation. The Kremlin does not seem to have a good way out. If Moscow reprimands Zhirinovsky, thereby supporting the North Caucasians, it will face a backlash from ethnic Russians. If Moscow does not react to Zhirinovsky’s tirade, it will disappoint the North Caucasians and undermine the positions of the governors in the region. Since the Russian government cannot afford to offend ethnic Russians, the North Caucasians are likely to bear the brunt of ethnic-Russian resentment. This is likely to result in ever greater levels of distrust between non-ethnic-Russian North Caucasians and ethnic Russians, while the governments in the republics of the North Caucasus will have to adopt much more nationalistic stances in order to retain some credibility among their constituents.

Later, on November 12, Caucasian Knot reported Zhirinovsky as saying that his comments had been misunderstood:

"I regret that part of our society  got a negative impression. I spoke only about combating terrorism," Vladimir Zhirinovsky said at a plenary session of the State Duma.

The LDPR leader also stressed that he meant "to take measures if terror acts were committed", "Interfax" reports.

As far as the statements about birth control were concerned, then, according to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, he was talking about international practice, and did not make them with regard to the Russian  Federation.

The LDPR leader expressed his regret about the situation.

Foreign policy of the People's Alliance

From the program of the unregistered People's Alliance Party ("Народный Альянс") , which holds its Congress in Moscow today: 

Russia will pursue an independent foreign policy based on mutual cooperation, not confrontation. Our country will benefit from its unique territorial position, neighbouring the majority of the major players in world politics and economics: Europe, China , Japan and the United States.

We are confident that the strategic interests of Russia in the world today are very similar to those of developed Western countries, in particular with regard to reducing tension in the world, the fight against international terrorism, and the ensuring of freedom of trade. It is with them that Russia will develop equal partnerships and alliances. At the same time Russia refuses to support regimes that are built on lies, violence and suppression of democracy in their countries.

For historical reasons the post-Soviet countries have closer cultural and linguistic ties. This must and will be used for the development of Russian-Eurasian commercial and economic integration in market relations, in so far as it will contribute to the mutual benefit of our countries. Russia will support the countries of the former Soviet Union and the movement for democracy and civil liberties, while avoiding crude political or military interference in the affairs of neighbouring countries.

Nazi Russia

It is sad to admit that in the 21st century there are no mechanisms in the country or the international community to stop the country's rapid slide into the abyss of violence. In the recent past, it seemed that the country was heading "back to the U.S.S.R.," but now the situation is more reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, when gangs of storm troopers ruled the streets, beating up and killing Jews and others with impunity.

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-kremlin-storm-troopers/489306.html#ixzz2kKMixTgJ 
The Moscow Times 

NATO plans bigger exercises

Reuters reports that

NATO plans to sharply increase the size of its exercises in Europe in coming years to ensure allies keep working smoothly together despite winding down combat operations in Afghanistan, senior NATO commanders said on Thursday.

More than 40,000 soldiers may take part in war games planned for Spain and Portugal in 2015, according to U.S. Army Lieutenant-General Frederick Hodges, NATO's land forces commander.

SKOLKAN - 2

One aspect of the upcoming "Steadfast Jazz" NATO military exercise, to be held  from 2-9 November, that may give pause for thought is that in it parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway are deemed to be enemy territory, an article in Finland's Hufvudstadsbladet explains. 

According to Svenska Dagbladet, 

Sweden and Finland have been cut into fictional states that previously belonged to a fictional empire, Skolkan. These former Skolkan countries are independent and economically developed but are also marked by corruption, paranoia and a desire to expand.

Three of the six countries (Torrike in central Sweden, Bothnia in western Finland and the new island Lindsey in the Norwegian Sea) are hostile and threaten NATO.

The fourth country, Framland in eastern Norrland, is NATO-friendly, while the fifth, Arnland in southernmost Sweden is a failed state. The sixth country, Otso, in eastern Finland is a neutral buffer state against Russia.

The NATO countries are the same as in reality, except that northern Norway has been added to with a part of Sweden - western Lapland.

Russia and Belarus to the east are not involved in the game but are classified as neutral.

SKOLKAN

In a response to Zapad 2013, the Russian/Belarusian Baltic Sea military exercises in which land, sea and air forces took part in a simulated confrontation with NATO  forces, in November NATO will hold its Steadfast Jazz exercise, which is based on the so-called SKOLKAN scenario. This will likewise focus on the Baltic Sea region, and will feature the defence of a NATO member. An article on the NATO website gives some information:

The change in how NATO trains is one of the most significant organisational modifications for the Alliance in the last 25 years. In addition to revisiting the challenges associated with conducting operations in and from the sovereign territory of NATO Nations and how imperative it is to partner with host-nation governments and military forces, SKOLKAN also allows for the integration of emerging challenges such as cyber defence, ballistic missile defence and energy security into a complex training environment.

Arctic 30: Moscow takes command

Reading Wednesday's intervention by Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin in the case of the  30 environmental activists now facing altered, though still disproportionate, charges of "hooliganism" as a sign that Moscow is now fully in command, an op ed article in Helsingin Sanomat concludes that "the whole incident has now become highly political, and before long a political solution to it will be sought."

OMON and Pogrom

In The Interpreter, Catherine Fitzpatrick describes and analyzes the Biryulyovo riots: 

Thousands of people can be seen in the videos pouring through the streets, chanting “Russia for Russians, Moscow for Muscovites” and “Close the Warehouse!” – which they see as a “hotbed of crime”.

Eventually, overnight the OMON restored order, as Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe reported, arriving with numerous buses and detaining hundreds of mainly young men in the crowd, many of whom resisted strenuously and continued to chant nationalist slogans as women jeered at police and told them to arrest the murderer instead. As of this writing, Moscow police released most of the 380 detained after “prophylactic discussions” and had opened at least 70 cases on administrative charges of “hooliganism” or vandalism, vesti.ru reported.

Political abuse of psychiatry returns to Russia

Mikhail Kosenko, who has already spent a year in a remand prison awaiting trial and is accused of using violence against an OMON policeman during the May 2012 Bolotnaya Square demonstration - even though the policeman in question does not remember the incident and denies that Kosenko hurt him - has been sentenced by a Moscow court to indefinite forced psychiatric treatment.

http://grani.ru/tags/may6/m.219864.html

http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25130154.html

More details here, from Joshua Yaffa in the New Yorker.

Chechnya or Bust

In his blog, Berlin-based U.S.-Swiss-Korean journalist Lucian Kim presents a remarkable series of reports on contemporary life and conditions in the North Caucasus - in particular notes and photographs from a journey to Chechnya. He writes:

Before the Boston Marathon bombing, few people had heard of Dagestan. Two years earlier, in April 2011, I traveled to the Russian province and its neighbors Chechnya and Ingushetia. I wanted to see for myself a region that most Russians associate with bandits and Islamic terrorists. And I was dead-set on tracking down Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed warlord who holds Chechnya in an iron grip.

The whole of the blog is well worth reading and studying.

Hat tip: Nina Ivanovna - @ninaivanovna -  on Twitter