April 28, 2008 — Contents

MONDAY APRIL 28 CONTENTS

(1) EDITORIAL: Running on Empty

(2) Kasparov on the Olympics Fraud

(3) Annals of Neo-Soviet Hypocrisy

(4) Russia, Imploding (again)

(5) Holdomor and Genocide

(6) Annals of the Neo-Soviet Crackdown on Journalism

(7) More Sports Humiliation for Russia

NOTE: A newspaper and a human rights group shut down in Russia using the so-called “Anti-Extremism Law.” Think it’s only “local” and the Kremlin is not involved? Then check out #6 above and eat your thoughts. Publius Pundit has all the horrifying details, check it out (and feel free to send in an e-mail comment, Publius is now publishing reader comments as blog posts — you can make the big time!).

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

Most Russians don’t know that sickening feeling of driving on a lonely road and realizing that you are running on empty, about to run out of gas and be stranded all alone. They don’t know it because, with an average wage of $4/hour, they can’t afford to buy a car (Russia does not rank in the top 55 nations of the world in automobiles per capita, Mexico for instance has far more; likewise, Russia is not in the world’s top 50 countries ranked for per capita purchasing power GDP) — and even if they could, the spiking price of gasoline at the pump would preclude them from using it. That’s to say nothing of the horrifying prospect of dealing with corrupt police officials at virtually every intersection, or Russia’s horrific rate of highway fatalities — Russian roads are among the most dangerous in the world.

It’s quite strange, of course, to read that Russians are being oppressed by the rising cost of gasoline, since Russia is a world leader in oil production. One would think that at least one benefit of living in Russia would be cheap gas. But in fact, we’ve previously reported on how Russian oil production is falling off fast. Those who hope that Russia can replenish its production by developing offshore fields may be barking up the wrong oil derrick. The energy industry trade publication Upstream Online (hat tip: Robert Amsterdam) reported on April 18th:

Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed. Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.

UpstreamOnline also reports:

Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked a a worse than predicted 20% fall in second-quarter net profit, blaming lower sales in Europe and higher operating costs. Net profit fell to 113 billion roubles ($4.62 billion), to International Financial Reporting Standards, from 141 billion roubles in the same period last year and below the average of 129 billion roubles in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. Revenue rose 5% to 532 billion roubles, in line with forecasts, but the bottom line was hurt by high operating expenses, which jumped 18% year-on-year to 390 billion roubles. Gazprom’s total long-term borrowings, including affiliates, rose to 1.105 trillion roubles from 806 billion roubles at the end of 2006.

So Russian gas and oil fields are running dry, trillions are needed to refurbish them, and Gazprom is deep in debt, unable to provide such funds. Blogger Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert, who works in the Russian energy sector, adds:

The $2.6 trillion required by Gazprom and Rosneft is only that amount needed to develop Russia’s offshore fields. The onshore developments will need separate funding, as in Upstream Online tells us: “Gazprom Neft, which expects Gazprom to hand over the right to develop all of Gazprom’s 11 oilfields within the next two to three years, has said it plans to invest up to $4 billion per year to 2020, or around $50 billion, to boost output.” $4bn per year is one hell of a lot of money for a single company to invest in oil and gas projects, if not much beside the $62bn per year that they say they are going to have to come up with to develop the offshore fields. Bear this in mind next time you hear about Gazprom investing in trans-saharan pipelines, Libya, and Nigeria. Despite the political rhetoric and talks of the massive potential and influence of Gazprom, it is Russia’s most indebted company. In other words, Gazprom is unlikely to be in much of a position to be financing mega-projects any time soon, and if it is going to sink billions into places like Africa, having never run a major project on home soil let alone in a political minefield like Nigeria, Russians might be waiting a while for their offshore gas receipts.

If the #1 best indicator of the total failure of the Putin administration in Russia is the country’s rapidly declining population (Putin’s policies are wiping out Russians with Hitlerian efficiency), then surely the second-best sign is the decimation of Russia’s energy sector. Russia could, of course, solicit foreign investment to provide the needed sums, but then it would have to share the profits and the control, and it’s currently in the process of enacting legislation to make this illegal out of pure neo-Soviet paranoia. The Kremlin imagines that it can simply bleed the nation white, just as was done in Soviet times, using the funds from oil and gas proceeds not to develop the nation or even the energy sector, but to wage a new cold war with the West. Meanwhile, just as in Soviet times, the energy sector and the people themselves get sicker and sicker until finally there is a massive collapse.

Speaking at Harvard University in November 2006 Martin Dewhirst, an Oxford-trained Russia scholar who during the Cold War mixed lecturing at the University of Glasgow with translation work for Radio Liberty in Munich, said of Putin’s Russia:

“To call it post-Soviet Russia is a little bit premature. Neo-Soviet Russia might be a more appropriate term.” He said he was glad Andrei Sakharov died in 1989. The nuclear physicist who personified anti-Soviet dissent, said Dewhirst, “would have died of a broken heart in the 1990s.” Post-Soviet” does not convey the right perception to either scholars or to a reading public outside Russia, said Dewhirst, who prefers the retrograde power of the term “neo-Soviet.”

Marina Khazanov, who teaches Russian in the Department of Modern Languages at Boston University, disagreed: “If it’s a neo-Soviet regime, there is no hope. And there is hope.” She pointed to “completely free” newspapers still publishing, and to Russian movies and literature free of Soviet-style repression. One must wonder if, two years later, Ms. Khazanov still thinks so, and indeed whether she now worries that she contributed, in her small way, to delaying opposition to the neo-Soviet state, helping it consolidate power.

Russia replaced the USSR after the most recent collapse. What will replace Russia after the coming one?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

Most Russians don’t know that sickening feeling of driving on a lonely road and realizing that you are running on empty, about to run out of gas and be stranded all alone. They don’t know it because, with an average wage of $4/hour, they can’t afford to buy a car (Russia does not rank in the top 55 nations of the world in automobiles per capita, Mexico for instance has far more; likewise, Russia is not in the world’s top 50 countries ranked for per capita purchasing power GDP) — and even if they could, the spiking price of gasoline at the pump would preclude them from using it. That’s to say nothing of the horrifying prospect of dealing with corrupt police officials at virtually every intersection, or Russia’s horrific rate of highway fatalities — Russian roads are among the most dangerous in the world.

It’s quite strange, of course, to read that Russians are being oppressed by the rising cost of gasoline, since Russia is a world leader in oil production. One would think that at least one benefit of living in Russia would be cheap gas. But in fact, we’ve previously reported on how Russian oil production is falling off fast. Those who hope that Russia can replenish its production by developing offshore fields may be barking up the wrong oil derrick. The energy industry trade publication Upstream Online (hat tip: Robert Amsterdam) reported on April 18th:

Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed. Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.

UpstreamOnline also reports:

Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked a a worse than predicted 20% fall in second-quarter net profit, blaming lower sales in Europe and higher operating costs. Net profit fell to 113 billion roubles ($4.62 billion), to International Financial Reporting Standards, from 141 billion roubles in the same period last year and below the average of 129 billion roubles in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. Revenue rose 5% to 532 billion roubles, in line with forecasts, but the bottom line was hurt by high operating expenses, which jumped 18% year-on-year to 390 billion roubles. Gazprom’s total long-term borrowings, including affiliates, rose to 1.105 trillion roubles from 806 billion roubles at the end of 2006.

So Russian gas and oil fields are running dry, trillions are needed to refurbish them, and Gazprom is deep in debt, unable to provide such funds. Blogger Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert, who works in the Russian energy sector, adds:

The $2.6 trillion required by Gazprom and Rosneft is only that amount needed to develop Russia’s offshore fields. The onshore developments will need separate funding, as in Upstream Online tells us: “Gazprom Neft, which expects Gazprom to hand over the right to develop all of Gazprom’s 11 oilfields within the next two to three years, has said it plans to invest up to $4 billion per year to 2020, or around $50 billion, to boost output.” $4bn per year is one hell of a lot of money for a single company to invest in oil and gas projects, if not much beside the $62bn per year that they say they are going to have to come up with to develop the offshore fields. Bear this in mind next time you hear about Gazprom investing in trans-saharan pipelines, Libya, and Nigeria. Despite the political rhetoric and talks of the massive potential and influence of Gazprom, it is Russia’s most indebted company. In other words, Gazprom is unlikely to be in much of a position to be financing mega-projects any time soon, and if it is going to sink billions into places like Africa, having never run a major project on home soil let alone in a political minefield like Nigeria, Russians might be waiting a while for their offshore gas receipts.

If the #1 best indicator of the total failure of the Putin administration in Russia is the country’s rapidly declining population (Putin’s policies are wiping out Russians with Hitlerian efficiency), then surely the second-best sign is the decimation of Russia’s energy sector. Russia could, of course, solicit foreign investment to provide the needed sums, but then it would have to share the profits and the control, and it’s currently in the process of enacting legislation to make this illegal out of pure neo-Soviet paranoia. The Kremlin imagines that it can simply bleed the nation white, just as was done in Soviet times, using the funds from oil and gas proceeds not to develop the nation or even the energy sector, but to wage a new cold war with the West. Meanwhile, just as in Soviet times, the energy sector and the people themselves get sicker and sicker until finally there is a massive collapse.

Speaking at Harvard University in November 2006 Martin Dewhirst, an Oxford-trained Russia scholar who during the Cold War mixed lecturing at the University of Glasgow with translation work for Radio Liberty in Munich, said of Putin’s Russia:

“To call it post-Soviet Russia is a little bit premature. Neo-Soviet Russia might be a more appropriate term.” He said he was glad Andrei Sakharov died in 1989. The nuclear physicist who personified anti-Soviet dissent, said Dewhirst, “would have died of a broken heart in the 1990s.” Post-Soviet” does not convey the right perception to either scholars or to a reading public outside Russia, said Dewhirst, who prefers the retrograde power of the term “neo-Soviet.”

Marina Khazanov, who teaches Russian in the Department of Modern Languages at Boston University, disagreed: “If it’s a neo-Soviet regime, there is no hope. And there is hope.” She pointed to “completely free” newspapers still publishing, and to Russian movies and literature free of Soviet-style repression. One must wonder if, two years later, Ms. Khazanov still thinks so, and indeed whether she now worries that she contributed, in her small way, to delaying opposition to the neo-Soviet state, helping it consolidate power.

Russia replaced the USSR after the most recent collapse. What will replace Russia after the coming one?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

Most Russians don’t know that sickening feeling of driving on a lonely road and realizing that you are running on empty, about to run out of gas and be stranded all alone. They don’t know it because, with an average wage of $4/hour, they can’t afford to buy a car (Russia does not rank in the top 55 nations of the world in automobiles per capita, Mexico for instance has far more; likewise, Russia is not in the world’s top 50 countries ranked for per capita purchasing power GDP) — and even if they could, the spiking price of gasoline at the pump would preclude them from using it. That’s to say nothing of the horrifying prospect of dealing with corrupt police officials at virtually every intersection, or Russia’s horrific rate of highway fatalities — Russian roads are among the most dangerous in the world.

It’s quite strange, of course, to read that Russians are being oppressed by the rising cost of gasoline, since Russia is a world leader in oil production. One would think that at least one benefit of living in Russia would be cheap gas. But in fact, we’ve previously reported on how Russian oil production is falling off fast. Those who hope that Russia can replenish its production by developing offshore fields may be barking up the wrong oil derrick. The energy industry trade publication Upstream Online (hat tip: Robert Amsterdam) reported on April 18th:

Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed. Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.

UpstreamOnline also reports:

Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked a a worse than predicted 20% fall in second-quarter net profit, blaming lower sales in Europe and higher operating costs. Net profit fell to 113 billion roubles ($4.62 billion), to International Financial Reporting Standards, from 141 billion roubles in the same period last year and below the average of 129 billion roubles in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. Revenue rose 5% to 532 billion roubles, in line with forecasts, but the bottom line was hurt by high operating expenses, which jumped 18% year-on-year to 390 billion roubles. Gazprom’s total long-term borrowings, including affiliates, rose to 1.105 trillion roubles from 806 billion roubles at the end of 2006.

So Russian gas and oil fields are running dry, trillions are needed to refurbish them, and Gazprom is deep in debt, unable to provide such funds. Blogger Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert, who works in the Russian energy sector, adds:

The $2.6 trillion required by Gazprom and Rosneft is only that amount needed to develop Russia’s offshore fields. The onshore developments will need separate funding, as in Upstream Online tells us: “Gazprom Neft, which expects Gazprom to hand over the right to develop all of Gazprom’s 11 oilfields within the next two to three years, has said it plans to invest up to $4 billion per year to 2020, or around $50 billion, to boost output.” $4bn per year is one hell of a lot of money for a single company to invest in oil and gas projects, if not much beside the $62bn per year that they say they are going to have to come up with to develop the offshore fields. Bear this in mind next time you hear about Gazprom investing in trans-saharan pipelines, Libya, and Nigeria. Despite the political rhetoric and talks of the massive potential and influence of Gazprom, it is Russia’s most indebted company. In other words, Gazprom is unlikely to be in much of a position to be financing mega-projects any time soon, and if it is going to sink billions into places like Africa, having never run a major project on home soil let alone in a political minefield like Nigeria, Russians might be waiting a while for their offshore gas receipts.

If the #1 best indicator of the total failure of the Putin administration in Russia is the country’s rapidly declining population (Putin’s policies are wiping out Russians with Hitlerian efficiency), then surely the second-best sign is the decimation of Russia’s energy sector. Russia could, of course, solicit foreign investment to provide the needed sums, but then it would have to share the profits and the control, and it’s currently in the process of enacting legislation to make this illegal out of pure neo-Soviet paranoia. The Kremlin imagines that it can simply bleed the nation white, just as was done in Soviet times, using the funds from oil and gas proceeds not to develop the nation or even the energy sector, but to wage a new cold war with the West. Meanwhile, just as in Soviet times, the energy sector and the people themselves get sicker and sicker until finally there is a massive collapse.

Speaking at Harvard University in November 2006 Martin Dewhirst, an Oxford-trained Russia scholar who during the Cold War mixed lecturing at the University of Glasgow with translation work for Radio Liberty in Munich, said of Putin’s Russia:

“To call it post-Soviet Russia is a little bit premature. Neo-Soviet Russia might be a more appropriate term.” He said he was glad Andrei Sakharov died in 1989. The nuclear physicist who personified anti-Soviet dissent, said Dewhirst, “would have died of a broken heart in the 1990s.” Post-Soviet” does not convey the right perception to either scholars or to a reading public outside Russia, said Dewhirst, who prefers the retrograde power of the term “neo-Soviet.”

Marina Khazanov, who teaches Russian in the Department of Modern Languages at Boston University, disagreed: “If it’s a neo-Soviet regime, there is no hope. And there is hope.” She pointed to “completely free” newspapers still publishing, and to Russian movies and literature free of Soviet-style repression. One must wonder if, two years later, Ms. Khazanov still thinks so, and indeed whether she now worries that she contributed, in her small way, to delaying opposition to the neo-Soviet state, helping it consolidate power.

Russia replaced the USSR after the most recent collapse. What will replace Russia after the coming one?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

Most Russians don’t know that sickening feeling of driving on a lonely road and realizing that you are running on empty, about to run out of gas and be stranded all alone. They don’t know it because, with an average wage of $4/hour, they can’t afford to buy a car (Russia does not rank in the top 55 nations of the world in automobiles per capita, Mexico for instance has far more; likewise, Russia is not in the world’s top 50 countries ranked for per capita purchasing power GDP) — and even if they could, the spiking price of gasoline at the pump would preclude them from using it. That’s to say nothing of the horrifying prospect of dealing with corrupt police officials at virtually every intersection, or Russia’s horrific rate of highway fatalities — Russian roads are among the most dangerous in the world.

It’s quite strange, of course, to read that Russians are being oppressed by the rising cost of gasoline, since Russia is a world leader in oil production. One would think that at least one benefit of living in Russia would be cheap gas. But in fact, we’ve previously reported on how Russian oil production is falling off fast. Those who hope that Russia can replenish its production by developing offshore fields may be barking up the wrong oil derrick. The energy industry trade publication Upstream Online (hat tip: Robert Amsterdam) reported on April 18th:

Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed. Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.

UpstreamOnline also reports:

Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked a a worse than predicted 20% fall in second-quarter net profit, blaming lower sales in Europe and higher operating costs. Net profit fell to 113 billion roubles ($4.62 billion), to International Financial Reporting Standards, from 141 billion roubles in the same period last year and below the average of 129 billion roubles in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. Revenue rose 5% to 532 billion roubles, in line with forecasts, but the bottom line was hurt by high operating expenses, which jumped 18% year-on-year to 390 billion roubles. Gazprom’s total long-term borrowings, including affiliates, rose to 1.105 trillion roubles from 806 billion roubles at the end of 2006.

So Russian gas and oil fields are running dry, trillions are needed to refurbish them, and Gazprom is deep in debt, unable to provide such funds. Blogger Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert, who works in the Russian energy sector, adds:

The $2.6 trillion required by Gazprom and Rosneft is only that amount needed to develop Russia’s offshore fields. The onshore developments will need separate funding, as in Upstream Online tells us: “Gazprom Neft, which expects Gazprom to hand over the right to develop all of Gazprom’s 11 oilfields within the next two to three years, has said it plans to invest up to $4 billion per year to 2020, or around $50 billion, to boost output.” $4bn per year is one hell of a lot of money for a single company to invest in oil and gas projects, if not much beside the $62bn per year that they say they are going to have to come up with to develop the offshore fields. Bear this in mind next time you hear about Gazprom investing in trans-saharan pipelines, Libya, and Nigeria. Despite the political rhetoric and talks of the massive potential and influence of Gazprom, it is Russia’s most indebted company. In other words, Gazprom is unlikely to be in much of a position to be financing mega-projects any time soon, and if it is going to sink billions into places like Africa, having never run a major project on home soil let alone in a political minefield like Nigeria, Russians might be waiting a while for their offshore gas receipts.

If the #1 best indicator of the total failure of the Putin administration in Russia is the country’s rapidly declining population (Putin’s policies are wiping out Russians with Hitlerian efficiency), then surely the second-best sign is the decimation of Russia’s energy sector. Russia could, of course, solicit foreign investment to provide the needed sums, but then it would have to share the profits and the control, and it’s currently in the process of enacting legislation to make this illegal out of pure neo-Soviet paranoia. The Kremlin imagines that it can simply bleed the nation white, just as was done in Soviet times, using the funds from oil and gas proceeds not to develop the nation or even the energy sector, but to wage a new cold war with the West. Meanwhile, just as in Soviet times, the energy sector and the people themselves get sicker and sicker until finally there is a massive collapse.

Speaking at Harvard University in November 2006 Martin Dewhirst, an Oxford-trained Russia scholar who during the Cold War mixed lecturing at the University of Glasgow with translation work for Radio Liberty in Munich, said of Putin’s Russia:

“To call it post-Soviet Russia is a little bit premature. Neo-Soviet Russia might be a more appropriate term.” He said he was glad Andrei Sakharov died in 1989. The nuclear physicist who personified anti-Soviet dissent, said Dewhirst, “would have died of a broken heart in the 1990s.” Post-Soviet” does not convey the right perception to either scholars or to a reading public outside Russia, said Dewhirst, who prefers the retrograde power of the term “neo-Soviet.”

Marina Khazanov, who teaches Russian in the Department of Modern Languages at Boston University, disagreed: “If it’s a neo-Soviet regime, there is no hope. And there is hope.” She pointed to “completely free” newspapers still publishing, and to Russian movies and literature free of Soviet-style repression. One must wonder if, two years later, Ms. Khazanov still thinks so, and indeed whether she now worries that she contributed, in her small way, to delaying opposition to the neo-Soviet state, helping it consolidate power.

Russia replaced the USSR after the most recent collapse. What will replace Russia after the coming one?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia, Running on Empty

Most Russians don’t know that sickening feeling of driving on a lonely road and realizing that you are running on empty, about to run out of gas and be stranded all alone. They don’t know it because, with an average wage of $4/hour, they can’t afford to buy a car (Russia does not rank in the top 55 nations of the world in automobiles per capita, Mexico for instance has far more; likewise, Russia is not in the world’s top 50 countries ranked for per capita purchasing power GDP) — and even if they could, the spiking price of gasoline at the pump would preclude them from using it. That’s to say nothing of the horrifying prospect of dealing with corrupt police officials at virtually every intersection, or Russia’s horrific rate of highway fatalities — Russian roads are among the most dangerous in the world.

It’s quite strange, of course, to read that Russians are being oppressed by the rising cost of gasoline, since Russia is a world leader in oil production. One would think that at least one benefit of living in Russia would be cheap gas. But in fact, we’ve previously reported on how Russian oil production is falling off fast. Those who hope that Russia can replenish its production by developing offshore fields may be barking up the wrong oil derrick. The energy industry trade publication Upstream Online (hat tip: Robert Amsterdam) reported on April 18th:

Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed. Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.

UpstreamOnline also reports:

Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked a a worse than predicted 20% fall in second-quarter net profit, blaming lower sales in Europe and higher operating costs. Net profit fell to 113 billion roubles ($4.62 billion), to International Financial Reporting Standards, from 141 billion roubles in the same period last year and below the average of 129 billion roubles in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. Revenue rose 5% to 532 billion roubles, in line with forecasts, but the bottom line was hurt by high operating expenses, which jumped 18% year-on-year to 390 billion roubles. Gazprom’s total long-term borrowings, including affiliates, rose to 1.105 trillion roubles from 806 billion roubles at the end of 2006.

So Russian gas and oil fields are running dry, trillions are needed to refurbish them, and Gazprom is deep in debt, unable to provide such funds. Blogger Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert, who works in the Russian energy sector, adds:

The $2.6 trillion required by Gazprom and Rosneft is only that amount needed to develop Russia’s offshore fields. The onshore developments will need separate funding, as in Upstream Online tells us: “Gazprom Neft, which expects Gazprom to hand over the right to develop all of Gazprom’s 11 oilfields within the next two to three years, has said it plans to invest up to $4 billion per year to 2020, or around $50 billion, to boost output.” $4bn per year is one hell of a lot of money for a single company to invest in oil and gas projects, if not much beside the $62bn per year that they say they are going to have to come up with to develop the offshore fields. Bear this in mind next time you hear about Gazprom investing in trans-saharan pipelines, Libya, and Nigeria. Despite the political rhetoric and talks of the massive potential and influence of Gazprom, it is Russia’s most indebted company. In other words, Gazprom is unlikely to be in much of a position to be financing mega-projects any time soon, and if it is going to sink billions into places like Africa, having never run a major project on home soil let alone in a political minefield like Nigeria, Russians might be waiting a while for their offshore gas receipts.

If the #1 best indicator of the total failure of the Putin administration in Russia is the country’s rapidly declining population (Putin’s policies are wiping out Russians with Hitlerian efficiency), then surely the second-best sign is the decimation of Russia’s energy sector. Russia could, of course, solicit foreign investment to provide the needed sums, but then it would have to share the profits and the control, and it’s currently in the process of enacting legislation to make this illegal out of pure neo-Soviet paranoia. The Kremlin imagines that it can simply bleed the nation white, just as was done in Soviet times, using the funds from oil and gas proceeds not to develop the nation or even the energy sector, but to wage a new cold war with the West. Meanwhile, just as in Soviet times, the energy sector and the people themselves get sicker and sicker until finally there is a massive collapse.

Speaking at Harvard University in November 2006 Martin Dewhirst, an Oxford-trained Russia scholar who during the Cold War mixed lecturing at the University of Glasgow with translation work for Radio Liberty in Munich, said of Putin’s Russia:

“To call it post-Soviet Russia is a little bit premature. Neo-Soviet Russia might be a more appropriate term.” He said he was glad Andrei Sakharov died in 1989. The nuclear physicist who personified anti-Soviet dissent, said Dewhirst, “would have died of a broken heart in the 1990s.” Post-Soviet” does not convey the right perception to either scholars or to a reading public outside Russia, said Dewhirst, who prefers the retrograde power of the term “neo-Soviet.”

Marina Khazanov, who teaches Russian in the Department of Modern Languages at Boston University, disagreed: “If it’s a neo-Soviet regime, there is no hope. And there is hope.” She pointed to “completely free” newspapers still publishing, and to Russian movies and literature free of Soviet-style repression. One must wonder if, two years later, Ms. Khazanov still thinks so, and indeed whether she now worries that she contributed, in her small way, to delaying opposition to the neo-Soviet state, helping it consolidate power.

Russia replaced the USSR after the most recent collapse. What will replace Russia after the coming one?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Kasparov on the Olympics

Garry Kasparov, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The international community is justly concerned about China’s crackdown in Tibet in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. But perhaps some attention could be spared for the suffering of Russians ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to take place in the Russian town of Sochi.

An International Olympic Committee official visited Sochi last week and remarked: “Here you start from nothing.” Jean-Claude Killy went on to say that the complete lack of infrastructure only meant it was “an incredible chance” to build a resort.

The original estimate for the Sochi Games was $12 billion, more than was spent on the last three Winter Olympics combined. Now the organizers are saying $20 billion, and it’s only 2008. This is only the beginning of yet another massive shift of Russian assets from public to private hands – this time under the cover of the Olympic rings.

Three weeks ago, I and other Russian opposition members held a press conference with residents of Sochi. We read aloud from a new law pertaining to the Olympic site. It gives the state the ability to confiscate as much land as it wants in the area, with no possible appeal. With one decision, people will lose their homes and businesses and will have no avenue of protest.

The government announced that it will soon begin to appropriate land, and that the current owners will get a “fair-market price,” which of course will be set by the government. During the IOC’s visit, a group of local protesters tried to unfurl an “SOS” banner and were physically attacked by the police.

President George W. Bush recently visited Vladimir Putin in Sochi and did not object to the Kremlin’s assault on private ownership. Perhaps this is the same “quiet diplomacy” advocated by U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley a few weeks ago, when he was asked about the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. In other words, we are not going to hear this U.S. president say “I am a Tibetan” any time soon.

I have had a painfully close-up view of over seven years of Western quiet diplomacy toward Russia. “Quiet diplomacy” can be roughly translated as, “we’ll cut a deal no matter what.” During this period we have moved from a frail new democracy to a KGB dictatorship. Based on such results, it is long past time to try something noisier.

Despite their bluster over missile defense, Kosovo and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, there are only two things that Mr. Putin and his gang really care about: total control inside of Russia and legitimacy outside of Russia.

Legitimacy in Western eyes is clearly important to Mr. Putin. Otherwise, why not simply change the constitution, or ignore it entirely, and remain as president for a third term? Why did he even bother with the rigged elections?

The answer: the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing out of Russia in the hands of Mr. Putin’s oligarchs need a safe home. London’s capital markets, Swiss banks, real estate, energy companies across Europe – this is where much of the Russian treasury has been going for the past eight years. In order to maintain such a cozy arrangement of mutual enrichment with the West, Russia must maintain a democratic façade.

I used to compare our vanishing democracy to that of countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe. But events have shown how wrong I was to make such comparisons – and how unfair I was being to Hugo Chávez and Robert Mugabe. Venezuela’s Mr. Chávez, little more than an oil-empowered hooligan, actually lost a recent referendum on expanding his powers by 2%. Vladimir Churov of the Russian Central Election Committee would never have stood for such an embarrassment!

Even Mr. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s old-fashioned despot, is too shy to publish victorious results in the latest elections. Perhaps Mr. Churov can be rented out to other would-be dictators who wish to maintain pleasant relations with the champions of democracy in America and the European Union.

After Mr. Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, “won” the Russian presidency last March, the leaders of the free world lined up to congratulate him on, as German chancellor Angela Merkel put it, “a smooth transition of power.” Were phone calls made to celebrate a similar transition in Cuba, when Fidel Castro handed the reins to his brother?

Legitimizing their capital in the West is the Kremlin’s top priority, and those congratulatory phone calls to Mr. Medvedev were worth countless billions of dollars. The last hurdle, transition of power, has been surmounted with barely a word of protest from the leaders of the G-7 nations. The return of Silvio Berlusconi, a self-declared European “advocate” for Mr. Putin and his gang, can only make things worse.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of courage to criticize the rule of Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sounded quite tough criticizing Zimbabwe’s elections. But when it comes to nations like Russia and China, issues of basic human rights suddenly become “complicated.”

I am all for refusing to bless the Chinese show. But at the same time, it’s not fair to suddenly drag the world’s greatest athletes into a battle that politicians should have had the courage to fight. Will Russians have to wait until 2014 to see support for our own struggle for human rights?

Reuters reports:

Russian police clashed on Wednesday with local people opposed to the destruction of their homes under plans for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, during a tour by Olympic inspectors. A resident said police beat some people and detained several others at a local cemetery near the site for the main Olympic venues, during a traditional visit to relatives’ graves ahead of the Russian Orthodox Easter on Sunday. In a statement, police in the Black Sea resort of Sochi denied beating anyone, saying they were only trying to prevent a group of about 100 local residents from disrupting the IOC inspection. Locals in Nizhne-Imeretinskaya Bukhta have been protesting over the Olympic construction plans, which are likely to involve the demolition of some houses in the settlement, but deny they were planning to stage a protest there. “We were at the cemetery. Our village was surrounded by police. There were 200 of them. They did not let anyone in or out. They came to the cemetery and beat people up,” local resident Andrei Korutun told Reuters by telephone. One local official “grabbed my wife, who is pregnant, by the stomach and threw her to the ground,” he said. Police parked buses to conceal the cemetery from the visiting IOC officials, who were about 800 metres (yards) away at the time of the clashes, Korutun said. “We shouted out to them for help, we are sure they would have heard,” he added. Sochi police said in a statement that reports “in some media about a supposed fight between Sochi police officers and Sochi residents, about people being beaten, are not true.” Steps had been taken to ensure public order in line with normal practice in Russia and other countries, it added. Russian Olympic officials say very few homes will be demolished to make way for games venues, and that owners will be properly compensated.

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Annals of Neo-Soviet Hypocrisy

In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post commenting on their April 22 editorial on Georgia which we’ve previously published Natalie Mason Gawdiak, an editor with the Law Library of Congress, states:

It’s nothing less than droll how Russian President Vladimir Putin oscillates [editorial, April 22] between trying to impress the world with the fiction of his and Russia’s supposed urbanity and lashing out with such brutish tactics as the shameless attempts to undermine the political stability of two smaller neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine, knowing that he can blackmail his country’s weak-kneed European gas customers, such as France and Germany, into rejecting even the idea of NATO’s eastern expansion.

Russia would love to be admired on the level of a European civilization, yet Mr. Putin’s actions, like those of the demagogues of old, send Russia’s pretensions of passing for a civilized nation hurtling back to the Stone Age. Likewise, the hesitancy of NATO members in this instance sends a similar message to students concerned with what we like to call “international law”: If your country has lots of oil or gas, you can wear a nice suit over your bearskin loincloth, and you and everyone else can pretend that you really aren’t a caveman who likes to beat up the neighbors with a big club.

This is neo-Soviet hypocrisy laid bare with few words wasted. Indeed, it’s simply breathtaking how Putin can complain about the West viewing Russia as “a little bit barbaric” (as he did for instance to Time magazine) and yet continue to behave like such a caveman in dealing with all of Russia’s neighbors abroad and the entire population of his own country.

The letter has been translated into Russian and published on a Russian website.

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Russia, Imploding (again)

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., and Hans Groth, a Pfizer global health fellow and managing director of Pfizer-Switzerland, together authors of the book Europe’s Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of Health, expose the horror of Russia’s demographic collapse:

Russia is a European country, and its population patterns are unmistakably European in a number of respects, e.g. low birth rates, rising illegitimacy ratios and immigration tensions, and an aging population. But its demographic profile and future prospects differs in two important respects that bode ill for Russia’s long-term economic outlook – to say nothing of the Kremlin’s ambitious goal of becoming the world’s fifth-largest economy by the year 2020.

First, Russia’s health and mortality situation is vastly worse than Western Europe’s. Life expectancy for Russian men is astonishingly low, well below current levels in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. And trends have been moving in the wrong direction for decades. In 2005, male and female life expectancy at birth in Russia were both lower than they had been 40 years earlier.

Russia’s brutally high levels of mortality, along with anemic fertility levels, fashion a second “exceptional” demographic trend for the country: depopulation. In the 16-plus years since the end of the U.S.S.R., Russia has recorded over 12 million more deaths than births. Net immigration has only partially compensated for this deficit. Consequently, Russia’s population dropped from 148.7 million in 1992 to just over 142 million at the start of this year. Whereas Western Europe faces the prospect of population decline a generation hence, Russia is in the midst of it.

President-elect Dmitry Medvedev envisions a Russia in which births come to exceed deaths by 2014, with positive population growth over the following decade. He has endorsed a new “official demographic concept” with population policies like birth bonuses and other social measures, including in public health, to reverse the decline. Unfortunately, there is not a single example from modern history where pro-natal policies have been able to achieve a sustainable demographic reversal. Outside of Russia, few demographers anticipate depopulation will actually halt over the coming generation. Even the United Nation’s “high” projection envisions a drop of over 10 million between 2005 and 2030.

Russia’s working-age population is set for an even steeper decline. Between 2005 and 2030, Western Europe’s working-age population – aged 15-64 – is projected to shrink by about 7%. In Russia, that figure is 19%. Although Russia’s population is just over a third of Western Europe’s, absolute declines in working-age population promise to be roughly similar in magnitude over the coming decades. On current mortality schedules, seven of eight Swiss men 20 years of age can expect to celebrate their 65th birthday; only three out of seven Russian men can have the same hope.

In and of itself, the sharp falloff in working-age population – together with the rising ratio of older citizens to Russians of working age – frames a serious demographic challenge for the effort to propel economic growth and raise living standards. But the problem is even more acute than these raw numbers might suggest. For Russia’s mortality problem is concentrated in its working-age population.

For over 40 years, Russia has been witness to a truly terrifying upsurge of illness and death precisely among those who ordinarily form the backbone of a modern economy. In 2005, for men between the ages of 27-57, death rates were typically 100% higher than they had been in 1965. As for Russia’s women, their situation might only be described as “good” in comparison to that terrible record for Russian men. Death rates for women aged 26-59 in 2005 were at least 40% higher than in 1965 – and for some ages, death rates were up by 50%, 60%, or even 70%.

The causes of death are clear enough: Skyrocketing mortality from cardiovascular disease and injuries (accidents, poisoning, suicides and homicides). The underlying causes here are harder to pinpoint, but we can mention a number of plausible factors: Poor diet, lack of exercise, heavy smoking, and social stress. Russia’s deadly love affair with the vodka bottle remains legendary, and looks to be another significant factor, with per capita consumption extraordinarily high.

Russia’s “excess mortality” threatens to straitjacket Russian productivity and development. It is true that Russia has enjoyed robust economic growth rates over the past several years, but this has primarily been generated by oil and gas exports. In the modern world economy, a country’s health profile is an essential element of its sustainable economic potential – quite arguably, the key element. How can Russia hope to be a vibrant modern economy with a dwindling and debilitated workforce and a life expectancy which is a full 12 years shorter than in Western Europe? No modern society can expect to enjoy an Irish standard of living on an Indian survival schedule.

If Russia is to arrive in the front ranks of 21st-century economies, the yawning health gap that separates Russians from the rest of Europe and all other industrialized democracies has to be closed. Nothing less than a protracted national struggle may be necessary to achieve this goal.

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Holodomor and Genocide

Writing in the Moscow Times, Georgy Bovt explains the psychotic and malignant manner in which Russia has sought to deny the Ukrainian genocide its former rulers have caused:

This spring marks an anniversary that Russia will not commemorate. In fact, Moscow will make a point of ignoring it, as if the event had never happened. I am speaking of Holodomor, in which millions died of starvation in Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and the Volga region in the spring of 1933. The famine began earlier, but reached its peak during those months. This year is the 75th anniversary of Holodomor, and Kiev will honor its victims as it has done in prior years.

This is far from being just a historical disagreement between Russia and Ukraine. It has spilled into the political arena as well. For example, the delegations from both sides have presented opposing resolutions to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Kiev suggests that Holodomor should be considered an act of genocide against Ukrainians, whereas Moscow proposes honoring all of those who died from starvation in 1932 and 1933 — not only Ukrainians.

The Kremlin argues that genocide is the killing of a population based on their ethnicity, whereas Stalin’s regime annihilated all kinds of people indiscriminately, regardless of their ethnicity.

But if the Kremlin really believed in this argument, it would officially acknowledge that Stalin’s actions constituted mass genocide against all the people of the Soviet Union. But this is highly unlikely. In fact, Russia’s political elite avoid using the word “genocide” at all — even though it is clear the Soviet authorities specifically targeted certain ethnic groups for repression, such as Crimean Tartars, Ingush, Chechens, ethnic Germans of the Volga region.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko first proposed classifying Holodomor as genocide a few months ago, and Moscow immediately objected. Perhaps the Kremlin views it as Ukraine’s underhanded attempt to whip up anti-Russian sentiment at a time when Kiev is attempting gain admittance to NATO and the European Union.

Stalin’s regime deliberately used hunger as a means of forcing peasants, regardless of their ethnicity, onto collective farms. But because Ukraine was the Soviet Union’s breadbasket, the Ukrainian people suffered the most from Stalin’s collectivization policy. From 2 million to 8 million people starved to death from 1932 to 1933. Nobody knows the exact figure because officials simply stopped recording the deaths in many regions.

It began with what was a naturally poor harvest in 1932. But in 1932 and 1933, Stalin’s commissars were sent out to the villages. When residents resisted the forced relocation to collective farms, party officials seized every bit of food they could find — including seeds. They also destroyed livestock, even cats and dogs, and trampled all edible plants growing near the villages. The authorities who were charged with enforcing Stalin’s forced collectivization at the local level purposely deprived the villagers of food and even seized their farming tools to prevent them from growing more. The Kremlin claimed that these were necessary “educational” measures.

During the entire Soviet era, there was never any serious attempt to investigate the brutal and inhumane methods used in the forced collectivization project. It was actually U.S. historian Robert Conquest who, in 1986, wrote the most authoritative work on the subject, “The Harvest of Sorrow.”

Even 16 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has still been no serious Russian investigation into Stalin’s forced collectivization or Holodomor. On the contrary, the Kremlin, through its various media outlets, has tended to cast Stalin in a positive light during the past few years.

In my opinion, this explains Moscow’s opposition to Yushchenko’s effort to bring up the Holodomor issue. The problem is not so much that Ukraine is trying to create a standoff with Russia, but that the Kremlin has not completely severed itself from Stalin’s legacy.

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Annals of the Neo-Soviet Crackdown on Journalism

The Daily Mail reports (hat tip: Reader Penny):

Russian MPs voted yesterday for further media censorship in response to a newspaper report that Vladimir Putin had divorced his wife to marry a gymnast. The Duma, or parliament, voted 339-1 in favour of allowing the authorities to suspend and close down Press and television outlets deemed guilty of libel. Defined as “dissemination of deliberately false information damaging individual honour and dignity”, libel is now subject to the same sanctions as the promotion of terrorism, extremism and racial hatred.

Moscowsky Korrespondent claimed in its pages earlier this month that Mr Putin, 55, had divorced his wife Lyudmila in order to marry Alina Kabayeva, 24. The president, who steps down on May 7 to become prime minister, denied the allegation. Miss Kabayeva won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics and is widely regarded as one of Russia’s most beautiful women. The gymnast is often seen on talk and reality television shows and is now a Duma member for a pro-Kremlin party. Korrespondent, which is a tabloid, was shut down on Wednesday after Moscow authorities banned its distribution.

The media bill passed by the Duma will go to the upper house for approval and then to Mr Putin for him to sign it into law. MPs rejected the first draft of the bill in January but approved a revised version submitted after Korrespondent ran its story. Mr Putin’s critics say he has presided over a steady rollback of post-Soviet media and political freedoms. All the major national television networks have come under the control of the Kremlin or its allies and the print media has experienced growing pressure from Government officials.

Other Russia has more.

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More Sports Humiliation for Russia

A massive, totally humiliating shut-out against Russia. Ouch. In Russia. Double ouch! In ice hockey. Triple ouch! The glory of Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues unabated. The Vancouver Sun reports:

Brayden Schenn could barely believe his ears. What started as a pro-Russian crowd was boisterously backing the Canadians by the end of Wednesday’s final at the under-18 world hockey championship.

Canada blasted the host team 8-0 at Tatneft Arena in Kazan, Russia.

“The Russian fans, near the end of the game, started cheering for us when we were scoring,” said Schenn, a Saskatoon-born-centre with the Canadian team,” I don’t think the Russian players appreciated that, so they were trying to stick up for themselves. But we held our own. That’s what we do.”

The Canadians fell 4-2 to Russia during the preliminary round, but emphatically avenged that loss Wednesday. Schenn scored his first goal of the tournament during Canada’s five-goal first period. His forechecking forced a turnover and then the crafty centre deked to his backhand and beat Russian goaltender Alexander Pechurskiy. Schenn added an assist on Canada’s seventh goal, an even-strength tally by Brandon McMillan with 3:39 left in the second. “Right after McMillan’s goal, they started cheering for us. We were surprised and shocked,” said Schenn. “Having 10,000 Russians cheer for you is definitely a good feeling.”

Regina Pats sniper Jordan Eberle netted a pair of goals for Canada. Taylor Hall, Tyler Cuma, Corey Trivino and Nicolas Deschamps also scored. Canadian goaltender Jake Allen stopped 29 shots to earn his second shutout of the tournament.

Schenn is the second member of his family to win a world hockey title this year. His brother Luke, an 18-year-old defenceman with the Kelowna Rockets, helped Canada win the world junior championship in January. The elder Schenn previously helped Canada win the 2006 junior World Cup and the 2007 Super Series against Russia.

“I’m sure there’s always room for more gold in the Schenn household,” Brayden said with a laugh. “Being able to match [Luke] with a gold medal is a great feeling. He deserves a lot of the credit because he’s helped me out a lot throughout the year.”

Brayden Schenn made a name for himself with the Brandon Wheat Kings this season. He led all Western Hockey League rookies with 71 points in 72 games. He was also one of only four 1991-born players to crack Canada’s roster, which won its first under-18 world title since 2005.

“Getting to play in this tournament as an underager is really going to help me,” said Schenn. “It’s a great honour to play for Canada and win a gold medal.”

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April 27, 2008 — Contents

SUNDAY APRIL 27 CONTENTS

(1) The Sunday Photos: Postcards from Chechnya

(2) The Sunday Sabbatical

(3) The Sunday Book Review

(4) The Sunday Persecution

(5) The Sunday Funnies

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !