January 7, 2009 — Contents

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 7 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia’s Madmen

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia’s Financial Annus Horribilis

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Annals of the Russian Male Chauvinist Ape

(4)  Madness in Moscow

(5)  Milov on the Opposition

EDITORIAL: Russia’s Madmen

EDITORIAL

Russia’s Madmen

It grows more and more possible to believe that the men who govern Russia are actually, medically, insane.

We reported last week on a high-ranking official in the diplomatic corps — an educator, yet — who argues that America is just about to collapse, breaking up into a number of smaller, weaker regional states.  Russia of course, in his view, is doing just fine.

That idea is crazy enough on its own, but it gets worse — because the Kremlin is not only paranoid, it’s schizophrenic in its paranoia.

To illustrate, refer to the ravings of the commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Force, Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov which we report in full in today’s issue. As the Washington Times states:  “In a stream of press releases and appearances the general described what he called ‘the U.S. concept of an uncontested nuclear first strike’ to destroy all Russian strategic missiles and prevent a counterstrike. “

Breathtaking, isn’t it? And not just because of the stupidity and ignorance of the individual stories. Indeed, not even mostly because of that.

No, the worst thing is the hypocrisy and the inconsistency.

EDITORIAL: 2008, Russia’s Financial Annus Horribilis

EDITORIAL

2008, Russia’s Financial Annus Horribilis

Russia’s RTS dollar-indexed stock market ended 2008 as the worst performing major equities market on the planet, down a breathtaking 72% over the course of the year.  At the start of the year, Russia’s shamelessly profiteering stock brokerage firms had predicted a 50% gain with a year-end value of 3,000.  The market actual closed out 2008 well below 650, less than a quarter of the value they had misled their customers into considering. On more than two dozen occasions, the RTS exchange was simply shut down by government regulators as the only means of preventing total collapse.  It was the market’s worst year in a decade.  The ruble, down 17% on the year and nearly 4% against the dollar on New Year’s Eve alone, also had its worst year of the past 10.  This isn’t just a matter of national prestige:  Russians need a strong ruble to be able to afford to buy all the products they must import because their feeble economy can’t produce them itself. Now, the plunging ruble imposes a dramatic new level of price inflation on the Russian consumer, and inflation was already in double digits before the fall began.

Horrifying as all that was, though, it was only the beginning of the tale of Russia’s financial annus horribilis, only the tip of the iceberg of failure into which Russia’s proud KGB spy ruler has crashed his ship of state.

EDITORIAL: Annals of the Russian Male Chauvinist Ape

EDITORIAL

Annals of the Russian Male Chauvinist Ape

Responding to our editorial last week about the “Name of Russia” online voting that designated Stalin, by a wide margin, as one of Russia’s four most heroic historical figures, a Russian who listed his phoney e-mail as “PutinFromKremlin@kgb.gov” and named himself  only  ”*” had the following comments:

Эй, ты, выжившая из ума старая маразматичка. Прямо как Конди Райз, которой никто не даёт. Сними себе мужика и оттянись хотя бы раз в жизни. Да уж, недоёб – страшная штука.  A мы не на смотринах, кретин, чтобы всякая мразь тут кого-то из нас выбирала.

Translation:  Hey, you mindless slag. You’re the same as Condi Rice, who doesn’t put out for anyone. Hire yourself a toyboy and relax for once in your life. Not getting laid enough is a f**king terrible state to be in.  We’re not at a show where any arsehole can pick one of us….

Let’s be clear:  The purpose of these “comments” (if so they can be called) was, and could only be, to show us how wrong we are in thinking of Russia as a crude and barbaric nation populated by denizens who think of one of the world’s great mass murderers as their hero.

Is this really, in that regard, the best that Russians can do?

Madness in Moscow

The Washington Times* reports:

During this Christmas season most people wish for peace on Earth and goodwill for their fellow man, but not the rulers of Russia.

In a stream of reports from Moscow the leaders and their generals threaten war and boast of their growing military power. Their excuse is the imagined threat that the United States might launch a nuclear attack on Russia. This is paranoia if not outright madness.

Americans are worried about the recession, the security of their jobs and pensions, the decline of the stock market, falling home values and failing industries. There is concern about how to withdraw from Iraq, how to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan, how to face China and how to promote peace in the Middle East. Russia is way down the list of concerns. In fact, few Americans are thinking of Russia at all.

Milov on the Opposition

Writing on Radio Free Europe, Vladimir Milov (co-author of the Nemtsov White Paper and a key player in the new “Solidarity” movement) reviews the condition of the Russian opposition going into the new year:

Russia’s recession is turning out to be sharper and more problematic than anticipated. Just three months ago, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was convincing the public that there was no crisis in Russia. But October and November brought declining GDP, industrial output, and fixed investment — none of which were predicted by the government.

The economic downturn has already affected ordinary Russians. About 1 million jobs were lost between August and November, and personal incomes declined. The ruble has lost about 20 percent of its value against the dollar since August, eating into salaries and savings. A sharper devaluation is on the agenda as the value of exports continues to decline with global commodities prices.

January 5, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY JANUARY 5 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  An Iron Firewall Descends Across the Continent

(2)  EDITORIAL:  The Russian Corruption Virus is Spreading

(3)  Zigfeld’s Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post

(4)  Uh-Oh:  Russia Inserts an Ossetia into Ukraine

(5)  Vladivostok as the New Novocherkassk

(6)  The World’s #2 Loser is a Russian

EDITORIAL: An Iron Firewall Descends Across the Continent

EDITORIAL

An Iron Firewall Descends Across the Continent

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

Paul Goble, surely one of the most essential Russia correspondents in the world today (and for that reason surely one of the most endangered), reported on Christmas eve about the escalating efforts of Vladimir Putin’s jack-booted Kremlin to crush Russia’s internet, the last remaining vestige of real information in the country.  What we are seeing before our eyes is the repetition of history, and those both within and outside Russia who will once again stand idly by as an Iron Firewall descends across the contintent richly deserve the brutal suffering they will experience when the monstrosity finally clanks into position.

Citing Russian sources Goble says that, in the wake of the sensational protests against curtailing automobile imports that broke out recently in Vladivostok,  the Kremlin has moved from launching furtive denial-of-service attacks on opposition websites like Grani.ru to a “new and more active role” in which KGB officers “visited the moderators of the ru_auto Internet community and asked that they not post stories about the automobile protests, visits that intimidated some but encouraged others to go public.”

Goble continues:

EDITORIAL: The Russian Corruption Virus is Spreading

EDITORIAL

The Russian Corruption Virus is Spreading

In October 2007, a Russian named Vladimir Kuznetsov appeared in a New York City courtroom and was sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of $73,000 for his role in a massive corruption conspiracy at the United Nations, where he had been the head of the international body’s Committee for Administrative and Budgetary Issues.

Kuznetsov’s bribe-taking was so virulent that the UN took the dramatic step of rescinding his diplomatic immunity and allowing him to be prosecuted in the United States.  Kuznetsov was nabbed when an underling, Alexander Yakovlev, was caught carrying out the scheme and rolled over on his boss, agreeing to testify against him at his trial in return for a reduced sentence.  Kuznetsov established an offshore company in 2000 to hide proceeds he received from an Yakovlev, to the tune of $1 million.  And the bribes were not paid by just any company seeking lucrative UN procurement contracts, but by a Russian company called Volga-Dnepr Airlines.

The Kremlin’s response to this horrifying fraud was predictable.

A Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post

Score another one for our side!  The New-Year’s-Eve edition of the Washington Post newspaper carried a lengthy letter to the editor from LR publisher Kim Zigfeld dealing with the Olga Ivanova fraud we’ve previously documented here on this blog.  The letter has even been translated into Russian and published as well on the popular Russian InoSMI.Ru website, to great sensational effect within the Russian blogosphere (our e-mail box is bulging at the seams with adoration and loathing and there’s also been an influx of Russian-language comments here at the blog, many of which are too obscene for publication; nobody gets a Russian goat like Zigfeld!).  InoSMI deserves kudos for its yeoman work bringing  English content from the Western press to Russian readers, though of course their translations aren’t always perfect.  At long last, the record has been set permanently straight regarding Ivanova’s blindly Russophilic statements about the actions of the Georgian army in Ossetia. Here is the letter:

To the Editor:

On Aug. 15, The Post published an op-ed ["A Free Press? Not This Time."] by Olga Ivanova, a Russian graduate student at Duquesne University who at the time was a Post intern. In it, without attribution to any specific source, Ms. Ivanova wrote this about the war between Georgia and Russia in Ossetia: “Within hours, Georgian troops destroyed Tskhinvali, a city of 100,000, and they killed more than 2,000 civilians.”

On Dec. 23, an official Russian investigation concluded that in fact only 162 civilians had been killed by Georgian forces and that Tskhinvali had been lightly damaged, not “destroyed.” Ms. Ivanova’s misstatements, at the core of her opinion piece, are deeply troubling.

Uh-Oh: Russia inserts an Ossetia into Ukraine

Paul Goble reports:

The Transcarpathian Rusins (Ruthenians), who are estimated to number more than a million, are calling on Moscow to recognize the independence of Subcarpathian Rus because Kyiv has ignored their demands for autonomy within Ukraine, an appeal that could create yet another “unrecognized” republic in the former Soviet space.  That appeal, which was given prominence two days ago when Petr Getsko, the self-proclaimed prime minister of the self-proclaimed republic, gave an interview to the Russian government newspaper, Rossiiskaya gazeta, in fact has deeper roots.

On the one hand, there has been a resurgence of Ruthenian activism across eastern Europe, with most countries in the region providing some support to what is the fourth largest East Slavic group in the world. And on the other, Kyiv has infuriated many Rusins by refusing to acknowledge them as a separate nation, anger that Moscow has clearly sought to tap into.

The current Ruthenian campaign for greater rights began at the end of October when the Second European Congress of Ruthenians met in Mukachevo and formally demanded that Kyiv grant them the status of an autonomous republic before December 1. If that did not happen, the participants said, they would see national self-determination outside of Ukraine.

Vladivostok as the New Novocherkassk

Hero journalist Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin were quick to react to the street demonstrations against higher tariffs on imported used cars in Vladivostok over the past two weekends. Putin said it was “absolutely inadmissible” to spend money on foreign cars during a time of crisis, and Sechin called the protesters a bunch of “swindlers.”

It is not difficult to see that the situation in Primorye is a repeat of what happened in Novocherkassk in 1962. In this small, one-factory city near Rostov-on-Don, workers were told to increase production while their pay was effectively cut after Moscow’s central planners announced major price increases on staple foods.

Now in the Far East, where salaries had already been dropping, Kremlin leaders will raise the price on imported cars. The impact in Primorye from price hikes on car imports is dangerously similar to what was felt by Novocherkassk residents in 1962, when prices were raised for butter and meat.

The World’s #2 Loser is Russian

Oleg Deripaska wants his mommy

Back in April of last year Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska was riding high, strutting and preening as arrogantly as Vladimir Putin himself, his BFF. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Last week, Forbes magazine reported that Deripaska is the #2 financial loser of 2008, having seen two-thirds of his net worth turn to vapor and now $4 billion in the red.  Forbes states:

March net worth: $28 billion
Current net worth: less than $10 billion

Former metals trader survived Russia’s gangster wars but may not withstand collapsing markets and heavy debts of at least $14 billion. Russia’s one-time richest man recently received a $4.5 billion loan from a state-controlled bank in order to keep his 25% stake in Norilsk Nickel, which faced a margin call by Western banks from which he had borrowed. Other margin calls forced him to divest a $1.5 billion stake in Canadian carmaker Magna International and a $500 million stake in German construction company Hotchief. He’s also selling stake in insurance company Inogsstrakh.

This is the only possible result of playing footsie with the KGB.

January 4, 2009 — Contents

SUNDAY JANUARY 4 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia with 30/30 Vision

(2)  Annals of Russian “Patriotism”

(3)  The Sunday Book Review: USSR Stole H-bomb

(4)  Translation:  The End of Television

(5)  Americans & Russians Study Cold War Together

EDITORIAL: Russia with 30/30 Vision

EDITORIAL

Seeing Russia with 30/30 Vision

Imagine that Larry King had interviewed Vladimir Putin on New Year’s Eve one year ago and suggested to him that one year hence the value of the Russian ruble measured in dollars and the price of a barrel of Russian crude oil would be reflected by the same number, and that number would be “30.”

Can you imagine the sort of haughty, condescending smirk that would have been reflected on Putin’s countenance at the foolish American’s idiotic ravings?

The ruble crashes through the 30:$1 barrier

Yet as we go to press, both the ruble and the price of Russian oil are closing fast on that very number — and some would say they won’t stop there for long as they plunge even further into the gloom.  As we reported earlier this week, the ruble experienced its largest one-day drop in value in recent memory to start the week last Monday, and in the currency markets was less than one ruble from the 30-ruble psychological barrier on Tuesday morning, while Russia’s Urals Blend crude oil was selling for just over $32 per barrel.  The ruble is already trading on the streets of Moscow at more than 30 to the dollar.

Responding to this catastrophic collapse, Russian “Prime Minister” Putin recently advised journalists as follows:

Annals of Russian Patriotism

U.S. News & World Report reports on Russian military service and displays of patriotism:

Misha, a subdued, blond 21-year-old, recently sat in the run-down Moscow office of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, an advocacy group that offers advice to soldiers and men of draft age. After ignoring a draft summons, police had come to his mother’s apartment to seize Misha, who declined to give his surname for fear of reprisals, and cart him off to a conscription office, from where he’d be sent to his barracks, possibly somewhere distant like Siberia or the Far North. He wasn’t home.

Tatyana Znachkova, the teacherlike head of the committee in Moscow, advised him to hide at his grandmother’s. She also told Misha’s mother, as she has told thousands of other mothers, how to deflect the police without making them think he was dodging the draft, a criminal offense. “You say, ‘Oh, how unlucky! He sent a text just yesterday saying he was spending the night at his girlfriend’s.’ “

The Sunday Book Review: USSR Stole, did not Invent, the H-bomb

In yet another ignominy for Soviet history, a new book reveals that Russia did not develop its own H-bomb but merely stole the technology from the U.S. So much for Soviet science! The New York Times reports:

A defining moment of the cold war came in 1955 when Moscow detonated its first hydrogen bomb — a weapon roughly a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs and ideal for obliterating large cities.  The bomb ended the American monopoly and posed a lethal danger. So Washington dealt far more gingerly with Moscow, beginning a tense era dominated by fear of mutual annihilation.

Now, a new book says Moscow acquired the secret of the hydrogen bomb not from its own scientists but from an atomic spy at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico. Historians call its case sketchy but worthy of investigation, saying the book, “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation,” by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, adds to a growing number of riddles about who invented the Soviet H-bomb a half century ago.

The End of Russian Television?

The End of Television

by Kirill Rogov

Novaya Gazeta

December 23, 2008

Translated from the Russian by Other Russia

In recent years the Russian population has, on the whole, demonstrated very high levels of trust in the central television channels and very high levels of complaisance in embracing the world view offered by these channels.

In general terms, this view has consisted of three main elements. In one part appeared marginalized liberals, American imperialists, British spies, Georgian militarists, Islamic terrorists and other vermin hostile to the average Russian’s prosperity. Shown in another part were signs of the steady improvement in this very same Russian’s prosperity and the universal indications of Russia’s rebirth as a whole. The third part was devoted to portraying the life and toils of Vladimir Putin, who was protecting those who belonged to the second part from the persons of the first, who were threatening their peace and future well-being. The image of the light side of the moon convinced those citizens whose affairs went well during this period that their personal successes were not accidental or transient, but part of the common future outlined by the man at the helm. The image of the dark side of the moon convinced those whose affairs were not going so well that the world is even worse and more dangerous than the dark, dreary corners and eternal smoke of their native Uryupinsk’s heating plants, a backwater from which there was no escape.

Americans and Russians Study the Cold War Together

The Bergen Record reports:

Glasnost is alive and well in Ramapo College in Mahwah, where an undergraduate course in the Cold War pairs American and Russian students who communicate in real-time via videoconferencing. The Russian students all speak English, and in each class the students look at U.S. and Soviet accounts of events and issues that shaped global relations after World War II.

The Cold War, of course, is purely history to the young students. Most, if not all, of them were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the students are still steeped in their respective society’s outlooks and that can make for some spirited debate. “We did the Cuban Missile Crisis and one Russian student said it was clear that Russia had won,” recalled Ramapo Professor Tom Heed. “My students went absolutely apoplectic; they literally erupted from their seats.”