EDITORIAL: “Justice” as Putin Defines It

EDITORIAL

“Justice” as Putin Defines It

Just as in Soviet times, it’s clear that the word “justice” means in Russia only what the Kremlin says it means, and nothing more. There is no rule of law in Russia, only the rule of power.

Back in August, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was denied parole following his conviction on hilariously bogus charges of embezzlement and tax fraud.  So be it, you say — in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, they’re tough on crime.  If you want to make an omlette, you have to break some eggs — or, in Russia’s case, crack some skulls.

But what then, dear Putin sycophant, do you say about the strange case of  Yuri Budanov? Sentenced to ten years in 2003 for the barbaric murder of a 18-year-old female Chechen civilian, the Russian army officer was paroled last week after serving only half his short sentence.  One would think Budanov’s crime was just a wee bit more serious than Khodorkovsky’s, wouldn’t one? Even Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s puppet ruler in Chechnya, protested the action, stating:  “Even if he repented, someone convicted for such a brutal and cynical killing of an innocent underage schoolgirl should not be granted parole. Moreover, he deserves a more severe punishment.”  Yet the Kremlin paid no heed.

That is “justice” as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin defines it. Because Putin sees a key difference between Khodorkosky and Budanov:  the former criticized him, while the latter supported him.

EDITORIAL: Russia Through the Ages, Through the Looking Glass

EDITORIAL

Russia Through the Ages, Through the Looking Glass

Russia: A nation desperately in need of medication

The image at left is a poster designed by, of all people, the infamous pro-Kremlin Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.  It depicts a giant upturned galosh orbiting the planet Earth and protecting it from cosmic rain of some kind.  At the top it is headlined:  “Rezinotrest [the Soviet rubber monopoly] protects you from rain and mud.” Below it reads:  “Without galoshes, Europe would sit and weep.”

The blogger at Strange Maps points out that the map depicted on the globe leaves something to be desired:  “Mayakovsky may have been a great poet and graphic designer, but he wasn’t much of a cartographer. The borders of the Soviet Union, highlighted in red, are rendered fairly accurately, but Europe is severely disfigured: an oversized Scandinavian peninsula points toward an expanse of water where most of Western Europe should be. There is no sign of the British Isles either, and the Iberian peninsula is wrong and too big. Iceland is attached to Greenland, and half of China seems to have fallen into the ocean.”

That’s, in fact though, only the least of the bizarre and sickening features of this poster, which clearly shows how consistently Russians have demonstrated their psychotic worldview right down through the ages.

The Stalin Orgy in Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia

Arseny Roginsky, a founder and Chairman of Memorial, Russia’s largest human rights organization, as well as a historian and ex-inmate of the Soviet prison camps, writing on Open Democracy:

State-owned "Russia Today" tells the world Stalin wasn't really so bad after all

The memory of Stalinism in contemporary Russia raises problems which are painful and sensitive. There is a vast amount of pro-Stalinist literature on the bookstalls: fiction, journalism and pseudo-history. In sociological surveys, Stalin invariably features among the first three “most prominent figures of all times”. In the new school history textbooks, Stalinist policy is interpreted in a spirit of justification.

There are also hundreds of crucial volumes of documents, scholarly articles and monographs on Stalinism. The achievements of these historians and archivists is unquestionable. But if they do have any influence on the mass consciousness, it is too weak. The means of disseminating the information have not been there, and nor in recent years has the political will. However, the deepest problem lies in the current state of our national historical memory of Stalinism.

I should explain what I mean here by historical memory, and Stalinism. Historical memory is the retrospective aspect of collective consciousness. It informs our collective identity through our selection of the past we find significant. The past, real or imaginary, is the material with which it works: it sorts through the facts and systemizes them, selecting those which it is prepared to present as belonging to the genealogy of its identity.

A Profile of America’s New Ambassador to Russia

John Beyrle, the new American ambassador to Russia

The New York Times reports (we are interested to hear reader thoughts about this fellow before we speak our own mind):

When John Beyrle, the new American ambassador to Russia, appeared on a Russian radio show shortly after Russia’s five-day war with Georgia, the questions he got were predictably in-your-face. Is it true that the United States is sneaking weapons into Georgia disguised as humanitarian aid? Can you prove that planned American missile defense sites are not aimed at Russia?

And then: Is it true that your father was a Soviet soldier?

The answer — which Mr. Beyrle (pronounced BY-er-ly) delivered on the air in flawless Russian — has to be one of the more amazing stories to come out of World War II. Yes, during the last desperate months of the war, a starving 21-year-old from Muskegon, Mich., crossed the eastern front by foot and offered his services to a Soviet tank battalion, using the three words of Russian he had learned as a German prisoner of war — Ya Amerikansky tovarishch, or “I am an American comrade!”

A Postcard from the Russian Highway

The Associated Press reports:

No lights. No road signs. Potholes big enough to swallow a farm animal. Going 80 mph through the Russian twilight and still being passed by cars and trucks. Suddenly we zip past a couple with a child strolling down a newly paved stretch of asphalt, separated from us by only a flimsy plastic barrier. My first drive in Russia, with wife and infant daughter, was supposed to be a simple jaunt to see old friends. It turned out to be a crash course in a white-knuckle driving culture.

January 19, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY JANUARY 19 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia is a Barbaric Nation

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Happy New Year, Russia!

(3)  A Russian Speaks out on Aggression Against Ukraine

(4)  Goble on Russian Civil War

NOTE:  We abbreviate the number of items we publish in today’s issue because #4 is a very long three-part post from the pen of Paul Goble covering three aspects of the horrifying specter of Russian disintegration in the wake of its massive economic and political collapse. It’s required reading for all those concerned about Russia’s future and, combined with the devastating facts set forth our pair of editorials, should give pause to anyone in Russia who thinks Vladimir Putin’s rule is good for the country.

EDITORIAL: Russia is a Barbaric Nation

EDITORIAL

Russia is a Barbaric Nation

Last week we reported on the latest “Index of Economic Freedom” published by the prestigious think tank Heritage Foundation.  The report ranked Russia #146 out of 179 nations under study, the bottom 20% of all countries in the world,  and #41 out of 43 nations in its region — the bottom 5% of that group, in a class with Haiti.  It showed that Poland receives 40% more foreign direct investment than Russia per capita because Poland offers investors so much more economic freedom than Russia does.

Freedom House has also recently released its annual review of political freedom, which it calls the “Freedom in the World” report.  Only 42 out of the nearly 200 countries under review are classified as “not free” by Freedom House  (down from 54 in 1978) and Russia — purported member of the G-8 group of democracies — is one of them, and only 23 members of the “unfree” group received scores lower than Russia.  Russia is one of only seven countries out of 28 in its region, Central and Eastern Europe, to receive the “unfree” designation.  Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia and Latvia are all given higher scores for political freedom than Russia.

The shame and humiliation that comes to Russia as a result of scores like these from highly respected international organizations ought to be far too much to bear.  Even without considering Russia’s massive economic collapse of the past six months, with soaring unemployment and inflation and plummeting stock market and currency values, the people of Russia ought to see the need for regime change.  They ought to be able to recognize that being governed by a proud KGB spy has done nothing but to alienate and polarize the entire world against Russia, so that now the civilized world views Russia as a barbaric banana republic.

But they can’t seem to manage this, and that seems to confirm the world’s worst suspicions about them.

EDITORIAL: Happy Holidays, Russia!

EDITORIAL

Happy Holidays, Russia!

A Moscow union official has revealed the shocking fact that unemployment in Moscow doubled over the course of the city’s observance of the 10-day winter holiday that began on New Year’s eve and lasted until Orthodox Christmas earlier this month.  According to the official, Moscow now has nearly 300,000 unemployed workers, up 500% from 60,000 one year ago and 70,000 four months ago, and job vacancies have fallen by 6% in two months.

A Russian Speaks out against Russian Aggression in Ukraine

Frost and War Bosses

Nikita Varenov

Grani.ru

1/7/2009

Translated from the Russian by The Other Russia

There is so much politics in the contractual relationships of Russia, Ukraine and the European Union on the issue of [natural] gas deliveries, that the emerging crisis can’t be understood as an argument between two business entities. Nonetheless, its resolution lies precisely there– there are national laws and international agreements, there are signed contracts. And one needs to read them to understand who is formally correct in the current situation. The different sides will do just that during negotiations this Thursday.

But a newly formalized gas transport reality isn’t the only result of the current conflict. The European Union, where factories have stopped working, schools have closed, and the heating supply has been interrupted as result of gas shortages, will not forgive one of the sides, it stands to reason. The likelihood that this will be Russia is fairly great.

Russians Gird for Civil War

In a three-part report, the indispensable Paul Goble informs us that as Russian unemployment reaches the “magic” figure of 10% that bodes ill for civil unrest, Russians are arming themselves to the teeth and talking secession and disintegration:

Frightened by the instability the current economic crisis is creating and by the possibility that the powers that be may lose control of the situation, Russians are choosing to arm themselves in unprecedented numbers, with more than one Russian in ten – some 13 million people — across the country now having a lethal weapon in their possession. Those figures, which are included in the “Small Arms Survey-2007” that was prepared by the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies a year ago, are far higher than Russian officials acknowledge but almost certainly are lower than at the present time, according to an online news agency report today.

January 18, 2009 — Contents

SUNDAY JANUARY 18 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Putin’s Russia, Setting Records

(2)  Frolov Exposed as Fraud in Moscow Times Itself

(3)  Russia’s Wheel of History Rolls, Crushes

(4) Putin Shows how to win Enemies and Alienate People

(5)  The Sunday Art Show

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia, Setting Records

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia, Setting Records

74.

That’s a record.  It’s the amount of the Russian people’s money, in billions of dollars, that Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin spent in foreign currency to buy (or “defend”) the Russian ruble in the month of December, 2008.  In other words, to fraudulently alter its true value and hide the Kremlin’s policy failure from the people.  It’s over 15% of all Russia’s foreign exchange cash reserves on hand at the beginning of the month.  Russia had never spent as much in any prior month in its history.

130.

Another record for Putin’s Russia.  It’s the amount, in billions of dollars, that fled from Russia to other countries for investment purposes in 2008.  Never in any prior year in Russian history had that much capital flight occurred in just one year. 

32.23

And yet a third record for Putin.  It was the cost of one U.S. dollar in Russian rubles at the close of trading last Thursday, the highest value the American currency has had in the modern history of the ruble.  It means that now all foreign goods, which Russia depends on for survival, cost more than they ever have before.

That’s only the tip of Vlad Putin’s record-setting iceberg, of course.

Frolov Exposed in Moscow Times’ own Pages

Roman Kupchinsky, a partner in the U.S.-based consulting firm AZEast, writing in the Moscow Times, confirms our editorial last week which condemned the mendacious disinformation campaign of Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov (it’s highly unusual for a newspaper to allow one op-ed columnist to attack another, a humiliating blow for Frolov — the word “disinformation” actually appears in the MT’s headline – and one for which the MT is to be commended):

Did Russia really score a knockout over Ukraine in the second round of the gas fight, as public relations consultant Vladimir Frolov would have us believe in his comment in Tuesday’s issue of The Moscow Times?

The millions of Bulgarians, Serbs, Moldovans and others who sat huddled in their cold homes for a week in temperatures of minus 10 to 15 degrees Celsius don’t care who won the PR contest and probably would laugh bitterly at Frolov’s Komsomol-like glee with the Kremlin’s “victory.”

Russia’s Wheel of History Rolls and Crushes

Irina Yasina, an analyst at the Institute of Transitional Economy, a weekly economic commentator for RIA-Novosti and a representative of the Open Russia Foundation, writing in the Moscow Times:

Owing to the harsh economic situation, it was decided to cut off the light at the end of the tunnel as a temporary measure.” That is but one of the jokes making the rounds these days as the country faces its most severe crisis in a decade.

Having been born in the early 1960s, my generation remembers two crises. The first, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was almost cataclysmic: Nothing was in the shops, the country was in bankruptcy and all savings were lost. The other affected everyone but was less severe: Russia’s 1998 default, which saw a fourfold devaluation of the ruble. Today’s crisis is acute, but there is no sense of an approaching apocalypse.

Yet the crisis will be severe, not only because prices for the major Russian export commodities have plummeted, but also because the government, which believed in its boundless force and wisdom, now seems inadequately prepared for the challenges the country faces. Yes, Russia has enormous gold and currency reserves, but they are being depleted fast. They will not last for long while being spent — mostly in defense of the ruble — at the current pace.

Putins Teaches World how to Lose Friends and Alienate People

The Times of London reports:

Vladimir Putin’s handling of the gas row is folly. He has found an efficient way of converting Russia’s supposed zone of influence into a zone of countries that mistrust or loathe Russia, and are urgently looking for ways to reduce their dependence on it. If Russia has alienated even Bulgaria, its staunchest supporter within the European Union – but this week its bitter critic – then it really has problems.

The basic judgment in the row has remained the same from the start. Russia and Ukraine are both wrong, but Russia is more so. “It is not our problem. It is the problem of the transit country and they must solve it,” the Russian Prime Minister told the leaders of Slovakia, Bulgaria and Moldova, countries badly hit by the gas stoppages and suffering particularly cold winters.

The Sunday Art Show

Care to guess who painted this?

Hint:  Josef Stalin also wrote romantic poetry.

January 16, 2008 — Contents

FRIDAY JANUARY 16 CONTENTS

(1)  Another Original LR Translation:  Milov on the Gas War

(2)  EDITORIAL:  More Pathetic Lies from Vladimir Frolov

(3)  EDITORIAL:  The Perils of Putinomics

(4)  Russia:  Land of the Slaves, Home of the Craven

(5)  Military Spending is no Solution for Putin’s Russia

(6)  Kasparov on Russian Mayhem in the Middle East

NOTE:  All hail the mighty commenter! We’ve just published our 13,000th comment on this blog, and to mark the occasion note that one of our favorite bloggers, The Streetwise  Professor, recently put up a post about Ukraine that was inspired by a comment from our beloved regular and prolific commenter “Elmer.”  Nice work, Elmer!  Commenters often play a larger role in producing blog content than some realize, as witness our recent editorial on suicide in Russia, also inspired by a comment.

Another Original LR Translation: Milov on the Gas War

Vladimir Milov

A note from the translator: Russians can get clear information from a few remaining sources in their country. For example, here is an article by one of my favourite politicians, Vladimir Milov, published recently in one such brave source – Novaya Gazeta. In fact, I like this paper so much that I have bought subscriptions to it for a number of friends and acquaintances around Russia. This leads me to two hopes: 1) that my money (not much, really!) isn’t wasted and that they get the paper to the end of the year since I imagine it could be closed down at any moment by the neo-nazis in the Kremlin and b) that being the recipient of such a paper doesn’t get them arrested by those same N-N in the K under the vicious new legislation constantly being brought in to control the Russia’s unfortunate populace.

Pipe Cleaners

Vladimir Milov

Novaya Gazeta

11 January 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

This now yearly gas skirmish suits both the Russian and the Ukrainian élites because it moves the gas into no man’s land and increases profits at both ends of the pipe while allowing both parties to blame the political problems on each other.

Can a Gas War be Avoided?

I have come to the conclusion that Gazprom intended all along to cut off the flow of gas into the Ukraine.

EDITORIAL: More Shameless Lies from Neo-Soviet Stooge Vladimir Frolov

EDITORIAL

More Shameless Lies from Vladimir Frolov

Writing in his latest Moscow Times column about the recent gas war between Russia and Ukraine, Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov wrote: “It looks like Russia won this one for sure.”

It’s hard to know where to begin listing the fatally dishonest flaws in this assertion (just plug his name into the search engine in our sidebar if you are unfamiliar with his litany of past lies). The aggressive manner in which these neo-Soviet freaks seek to bury the truth, prevent Russia from reforming and ultimately destroy the country in the same manner that the USSR was destroyed is deeply disturbing, to say the least, especially since he works with the Kremlin on its PR propaganda and spends most of the column praising the effectiveness of that propaganda.   The Moscow Times routinely allows Russian businessmen with close Kremlin ties to write op-ed columns that are more like undisclosed advertisements, and this practice is utterly deplorable.

EDITORIAL: The Perils of Putinomics

EDITORIAL

The Perils of Putinomics

The Organization for Cooperation and Development has concluded that, by a wide margin, the Putin’s Russia has the worst-performing large economy on the planet. Things are getting worse for Vladimir Putin not just by the day, but by the minute as the price of oil continues in freefall.

Russia: Land of the Slaves and Home of the Craven

The Heritage Foundation has just released the results of its 2009 Index of Economic Freedom.

Russia ranks #146 out of 179 nations under study, the bottom 20% of all countries in the world,  and #41 out of 43 nations in its region — the bottom 5% of that group.  Russia’s score on the index of 50.8, ten points below the world average, is virtually indistinguishable from that of Haiti, and well behind such nations as Djibouti and Syria.

Only 33 countries on the planet are less economically free than Russia, yet it holds a seat on the G-8.  Go figure.  The lowest of the G-8 other than Russia was Italy at #76. India is 123rd, Brazil 105th. Georgia is 32nd and the highest former Soviet republic  is Estonia at 13th.  Plainly, Russia is totally unqualified for G-8 membership.

Poland, for instance, scored a 60.3,  placing it 82nd on the list, the upper half of the world, and 35th in its group, eight places ahead of Russia.  Poland posted $13.9 billion in net foreign direct investment, or $365 per capita. With nearly quadruple Poland’s population and vast oil reserves that Poland lacks, Russia had only $28.7 billion in net FDI or a puny $205 per capita, over 40% less than Poland.

HF’s commentary on Russia’s results tells the tale:

Military Spending is no Solution for Putin’s Russia

Defense policy expert Alexander Golts, writing in the Moscow Times:

For the past 10 years, I have heard numerous arguments why the government should be making huge investments into the country’s military industrial complex and why this should be a top national priority.

The first argument has been that our armed forces should be equipped with only domestically produced weapons that will be unmatched by anything produced in the West.

The second reason to have the government fund a large military industrial complex is to drive scientific and technical progress and provide the country with innovative technologies.

The third — and most ambitious — argument for a large defense industry was articulated by Vladislav Putilin, deputy head of the government’s military industrial commission: “Considering the country’s difficult economic situation, the state’s defense orders are seen as a way to aid the real economy and overcome the problems we are all facing.” Apparently, Putilin was taking a page from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s playbook when he pulled the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. It is well known that the United States became a leader of world production only after it focused on manufacturing military equipment during World War II.

Kasparov on Russian Mahem in the Middle East

Garry Kasparov, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Those looking for a bright side in the global economic meltdown are fond of invoking the old line about finding opportunity in a crisis. But also keep in mind that there are those who will incite a new crisis to escape or distract from the current one. This is the scenario looming in Russia as the Kremlin faces increasing pressure on multiple fronts.

Russia and its fellow petrodictatorships are in dire need of a way to ratchet up global tensions to inflate the sagging price of oil. Petrodictators, after all, need petrodollars to stay in power. The war in Gaza and the otherwise inexplicable skirmish with Ukraine over natural gas have helped the Kremlin in this regard, but $50 a barrel isn’t going to be nearly enough. It will have to reach at least $100 and it will have to happen soon.

January 14, 2008 — Contents

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 15 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Putinomics Ravages Russia

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Exposing Russian Hate

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Suicide is Painless

(4)  Another Barbaric Race Murder in Putin’s Russia

(5)  Russia Shows the World how . . . to Commit Serial Murder

(6)  Annals of Shamapova

EDITORIAL: Putinomics Ravages Russia

EDITORIAL

Putinomics Ravages Russia

The dollar is soaring against the ruble

The Russian economy came back online last Sunday after a ludicrous period of more than a week in drunken hibernation, and the results were not pretty. The ruble promptly crashed through the 30:1 psychological barrier against the dollar, with dollar closing up 1.5 rubles at 30.5 by the end of the day. It was the 13th time in 8 weeks that the Russian government has been forced to allow the ruble to slide and the second time in that period it has been compelled to allow a plunge of more than one percent, something it usually does all it can to avoid.  The dollar has soared against the ruble by 7 rubles since late summer, nearly 30% deflation for the ruble and representing a concomitant rise in the price of foreign goods in Russian markets.

Things were, amazingly, even worse than they appeared.