LRant on Litvinenko

Here’s what we know.

Either Russian “President” Vladimir Putin ordered the killing in Britain of defector Alexander Litvinenko by the use of radiactive toxin that could harm many bystanders, in which case he’s too evil to be legitimate, or he was so incompetent that not only did he fail to prevent the killing but he deceived us as to (a) the presence of “rogue elements” in his secret police and (b) the vulnerability of Russian nuclear assets — in other words, too incompetent to be legitimate. Either he knew that dangerous radioactive material had “gone missing” from Russian stores and said nothing, exposing the world to massive dangers, in which case he’s too evil to be legitimate, or he didn’t know, in which case he’s too incompetent. And either way, we know that the Russian people continue to favor him with nosebleed-high approval ratings, which is the ultimate outrage. La Russphobe‘s money is on the “evil” variant. If Putin were just incompetent, then he’d now be falling over himself to help track down the killers, just like the U.S. president in “Dr. Strangelove.” But he isn’t. His reaction to the killing of Anna Politkovskaya says it all: He called her an enemy of the state. Litvinenko was investigating her killing. La Russophobe begins to see precious little difference between bin Laden and Putin. The latter may be a bit more crazed, but the former, being more subtle and with easy access to nukes, may be more dangerous. This blog has been sounding a warning call since April, as so much of the world slumbered.

It’s time to wake up.

And there’s much to struggle against: On Sunday, the New York Times ran an article in which it attempted to minimize the Russian role in the killing. It claimed anybody could buy an off-the-shelf product on the Internet, scrape of the Polonium 210 it contained, and have a radioactive weapon (just an amazing coincidence, LR supposes, that nobody in the whole history of the world ever thought of doing this before). Buried deep in article, the second-to-last paragraph, was the admission: “Still, several experts held out the possibility that close examination of polonium 210 residues from Mr. Litvinenko’s body or from the multiple sites where it has been found around London might reveal nuclear fingerprints that could throw light on the baffling case.” The Times story had hardly gone to press when this “possiblity” was realized and the whole story proven to be airy claptrap. Given the fact that the Times always said the USSR was full of stout-hearted people victimized by a few bad leaders, people who, if only given the chance, would create a stunning socialist democracy, the Times had considerable egg on its face when Putin, a proud KGB spy, was chosen by the people in not one but two elections. Given that it then, to cover itself, told its readers Putin was a “necessary transitional strongman” needed to right Russia’s sinking ship of state, one who should be tolerated as Russia moved towards democracy, it’s understandable that the Times would scurry to continue misleading readers, misdirecting them from its complicity in the rise of dictatorship in Russia.

But it’s not acceptable.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Milestones

La Russophobe is proud to annouce that this is
her 1,000th post

Here are some other recent milestones in the history of our blog:

On November 17, we registered our
25,000th Google hit.

On November 25, we broke into the
top 50,000 blogs in the world
as judged by Technorati (top 0.09% of all blogs in existence).

On November 28, we received our 25,000th visit to the blog. La Russophobe is now averaging 250 visits and 600 page views per day. On Sunday November 27th, taking many referrals from Publius Pundit, we set a new record for most visits and page views in a single day at 580 and 1,218 respectively. The prior week, as news of the Litvinenko killing broke, we averaged nearly 500 visits per day. Before the New Year, we expect to achieve the highest number of published total visits by any English language Russia politics blog in the history of the world. We already have the highest published level of daily traffic ever achieved by such a blog.

On November 29, we recorded our
2,000th profile view.

On December 2nd we celebrated our
eight-month anniversary .

These are remarkable achievements to record in such a short time. You’ve come a long way, LR baby. But you’ve got a long, long way to go.

As we have said before, in a very real sense these are not our achievements but those of you the reader, so you should take pride in them. This blog is an emphatic statement about the value of democracy in Russia not only to Russians themselves but to those in the West who could be victimized by a neo-Soviet dicatorship (like Alexander Litvinenko). La Russophobe thanks you for your continuing support, and a special thanks to all those who have contributed posts and comments to our ongoing struggle against the rise of the Neo-Soviet Union.

Here’s some data on La Russophobe’s visitation, for those who may be interested:

Our Growth in Visitation per Month

Our Visitation by Region of the World

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Failure

Global Voices reports on the recent move in the Russian Duma to require women to get their husbands’ consent before obtaining an abortion.

This goes right along with the prior move to impose a tax on families that dare to have no children.

Russians simply cannot solve social problems except by resort to brute force, which means they simply cannot solve them at all. So it has been for time out of mind, and if it so continues it will be the downfall of the nation. At first we heard Putin’s idea of bribing mommies to have children, which sounded strange given the fact that Russians are supposed to be so full of patriotism. Why do they need to be bribed do do what is good for the “Motherland”? Of course, it turned out to be a totally empty idea, not least because impoverished Russia simply doesn’t have the money to fund it when it needs to build ICMBs, pay for universal conscription and a new Cold War. So now it’s back to the brass knucks.

Here we see the neo-Soviet chickens coming home to roost. Russians hoot and crow about the killing of Litvinenko, and look the other way at the killing of Politkovskaya.

They never think that tomorrow, it will be their necks on the block.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Cold War is Not Over

David McDuff at A Step at a Time has a brilliant post summing up the situation we now face:

The Cold War Is Not Over

As the implications of Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning – and now the poisoning of his associate, Mario Scaramella – become increasingly clear, revealing Moscow’s aim of intimidating its critics and silencing those who would support them, additional signs of the Kremlin’s real policies with regard to its neighbours, and the rest of the world, are also becoming more obvious.

Responding to Estonia’s banning of the public display of Nazi and Soviet emblems, and of emblems that derive from them, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov gives the lie to assumptions that today’s Russia has in any sense apologized for the crimes of its Soviet past. Indeed, in his remarks, Lavrov appears fully to endorse not only the Soviet occupation of Estonia, but also the Soviet state itself, together with its negation of democracy, human liberty and the rule of law.

As the RIAN report points out,

The use of Soviet and Nazi symbols will be punished with fines or imprisonment of up to three years, depending on the circumstances.

Lavrov’s response:

“I consider the Estonian government’s latest decision morally disgraceful, and it can engender fabricated political problems now that real problems, including those of the Russian-speaking population, should be resolved there,” Sergei Lavrov said.

————-

Meanwhile, Der Spiegel carries a disturbing report on the funeral of the ex-Stasi chief Markus Wolf, a one-time colleague of Vladimir Putin, who was in charge of the brutal repression of dissent within communist East Germany.

Speaking at the funeral, the Russian ambassador, Vladimir Kotenev, praised Wolf in glowing terms as “one Germany’s best sons”, and as “one of Russia’s best friends in Germany”.

CDU foreign affairs spokesman Willy Wimmer characterized Kotenev’s remarks as “an unbelievable event”, and wrote a letter of protest to Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In Wimmer’s view, Kotenev has revealed Russia’s true attitude towards democratic Germany.

(via ML)

McDuff also posts an open letter calling for a reawakening among conservatives to the presence of the Russian threat: “It’s time for conservatives to take a hard look at their presumptions regarding the Cold War and the “End of History.” If we keep going on as if the only enemy is Islamism, and that past enemies are dead and gone, we will be ill-prepared to defend the West against what may possibly be the greatest onslaught it has ever faced.” The letter refers readers to an essay by Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in Human Events entitled “Why a Poisoned Kremlin Can’t be Trusted.” Weinberger writes:

Poison and politics have been a lethal combination for a long, long time. Most of us remember from our history classes the story of Socrates, forced by Athenian law to drink a cup of hemlock in 399 B.C. And then there was the speculation that Napoleon was poisoned while in exile on the Isle of Elba. We should remember, too, the 1978 killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov by an assassin with an umbrella tip coated with the toxin ricin. Markov, a playwright and satirist was killed in London after broadcasting several accounts of the Communist elite living the high life. Cloak and dagger stuff. Now add in the latest killing in London.

Former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko has been a harsh and vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now he is a late critic who has died from poison: a radioactive substance called polonium-210. That is no ordinary poison and it is no ordinary death. The British Health Protection Agency labeled the affair “an unprecedented event.”

“I have been in radiation sciences for 30-odd years and I am not aware of any (other) such incident” stated Roger Cox, director of the agency’s center for radiation, chemicals and environmental hazards.”

There can be little doubt that Litvinenko ran afoul of Russians still involved with the spy apparatus that is a part of their government. He alleged that he had been targeted by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service because of his outspoken views concerning the death of another Putin critic, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in October and whose death is still listed as unsolved.

Was Putin, himself the former head of the KGB, directly involved? Did he give the order to his government’s secret police to do the deed? In a death-bed statement, Litvinenko accused Putin—who he called “barbaric and ruthless” of ordering his poisoning. The Russian leader took the unprecedented path of actually responding to the accusation. Predictably, of course, he denied any involvement.

“A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this,” he said. “However,” he continued, “it’s extremely regrettable that such a death is being used for political provocation.” Putin strongly denied any connection to the death with his government. He pledged cooperation in the investigations which are just now commencing concerning the former KGB agent’s death.

Former agent Litvinenko was far from a saint himself, however, and British authorities have not ruled out completely the fact that the agent may have committed suicide in this bizarre manner just to bring increased attention and hostility down upon the Kremlin. Certainly that is the line now being pushed by the Russian Communist-run news media. However, that does seem to be quite a stretch considering the horrible and painful deterioration of the body and the acute agony of the slow death that occurs from this method of poisoning.

What then are we to make of this incident? It can hardly be just a random death that happened under bizarre circumstances. Litvinenko was on the trail of a suspicious death and he had vocalized often his feelings that he was being watched and that the Russians were very unhappy with him and his continued statements that Putin is not the gentle leader he tries to appear to be.

Despite all the hype to the contrary, Mikhail Gorbachev did not usher in a new era of democracy into the former Soviet Union. Simply wearing sharp looking suits and “acting western” does not necessarily change one’s basic ideology. In my view, the Soviet attitudes and desires for world domination have never changed. They just wised up to public perceptions and played upon the media, but nothing in their basic governmental structure has really changed. Now they call themselves Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), but the people are still oppressed and basic freedoms except for the governmental elite are routinely squashed.

In the early 1990s there were many privatization deals especially involving Russian oil and other energy sources. Opportunities for Russian industrialists and individual tycoons appeared to emerge, but the truth is that modern Russia is no democracy, nor any bastion of human freedoms. President Putin is about as much of a president as were the dictators Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. After the apparent move toward a Western democracy, it was not long before the Russian government decided that private ownership and the profits to individuals that accompanied them were not a formula for restoring power to the Russian state. So much then for democracy. The Russians wanted back what had been lost to certain intelligent and/or lucky individual investors.

Soon, Soviet multi-millionaires, even billionaires, found themselves either under arrest, dead, forced into exile, or sent to gulags in Siberia, stripped of their power and riches almost as quickly as they had obtained them. When Litvinenko, as a KGB agent (and also as an agent for the successor agency, the Federal Security Bureau, or FSB), went public in 1999 with the story that he had refused a direct order to kill the exiled Russian billionaire, Boris Berezovsky, he was thrown in jail for nine months on the charge of abuse of office and was then deported. He took up residence in London, where he was granted asylum in 2000, and continued his public blasts at his former bosses.

Who can say now who is telling the truth and who is not? One thing though that is for certain is that we can trust the Communists to continue being Communists, awash in intrigue, power grabs and a steady secret desire that has never changed: to rule the world and suppress America and all that she stands for. The proof is in the poisoned political atmosphere that can be easily seen in Russia and their “Commonwealth” today.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Russia He Lost

Writing in the New Statesman (hat tip: Sharp & Sound), Artemy Troitsky (pictured, left) describes “The Russia I lost.” Troitsky is known as Russia’s “first Rock & Roll DJ” who later became a Russian TV producer and is the author of several volumes of Russian rock music history. The New Statesman refers to him as “Russia’s best-known cultural journalist.” He once said: “John, Paul, George and Ringo have done more for the fall of Communism than any other Western institution.”

In Soviet times, to challenge the state was to risk one’s freedom and one’s life. But is it any different now in the new world of oligarchs and opulence? Here, Russia’s best-known cultural journalist, Artemy Troitsky, fears for his country’s future

At least in Brezhnev’s time you knew where you stood. We had no illusions. Public life was black and white. Censorship was overwhelming. Journalists wrote under instruction and according to the social and political orders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Now, in the new Russia of sushi bars and oligarchs, the situation is more shameful and rotten than it was then. The attempted assassination of Alexander Litvinenko might not be all that it seems, and yet it does fit a pattern. It follows only a few weeks after the murder of my good friend, the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya. There have since been other, less publicised, cases. Another investigative reporter, Fatima Tlisova, was poisoned two weeks ago in north Caucasus; on 18 November the former head of security in Chechnya, who had fallen out with the region’s prime minister, was gunned down in the centre of Moscow in broad daylight by Chechen and Russian police. And then this . . . the mysterious poisoning of Litvinenko (in a sushi restaurant, naturally), but this time in the centre of Russia’s second city, London.

Litvinenko, a one-time colonel in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, was part of the inner team of Boris Berezovsky – Russia’s most notorious oligarch, media tycoon and the most prominent member of the infamous “Yeltsin family”. Ironically, it was Berezovsky who first suggested to Yeltsin that the then unknown ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin should succeed him as president. Bad Vlad, however, has shown no gratitude towards his sponsor and promoter, and got rid of Berezovsky shortly after being enthroned, forcing him to emigrate and seek political asylum in swinging London. This is where Litvinenko came into the story, fleeing to Britain after announcing that he had been instructed to assassinate Berezovsky. Even though the revelation did not sound particularly convincing, Berezovsky has long been considered, inside and outside Russia, to be Putin’s most powerful enemy.

And what a “model” enemy Berezovsky is: spooky-looking, neurotic, bad-mannered, possessing all the qualities of a classic vaudeville villain or James Bond adversary – and Jewish on top of that! Still, I have little doubt that there is some kind of secret protocol between Putin and Berezovsky, allowing the latter to make scary statements about taking the Kremlin by force (for the benefit of state propaganda), while enjoying the cosmopolitan life of a paper tiger.

Somehow, then, I don’t think the poisoning of Litvinenko, a mere pawn in Berezovsky’s game, is linked to any dangerous disclosures. I tend to agree with those who suggest that this was, most probably, an act of revenge by the FSB – an organisation that considers punishing traitors a basic principle. No matter how exotic or pragmatic the motivation was behind the attempt to finish off another dissident, one important conclusion must be made: it is too early (or too late) to write off the cold war as last century’s joke, retreating into obscurity in the face of the al-Qaeda threat.

Democracy is on the retreat in Russia, from the nationalistic rhetoric and sub-superpower gestures of its leaders to the energy threats of Gazprom, to the millions poured into European soccer clubs. Now, instead of black and white, we have different shades of grey. In the media, self-censorship is in vogue. Journalists know what is good for them to write, and what is not. In an increasingly materialist society, they depend on the authorities’ goodwill to keep them in their luxury lifestyles. They deliver the goods, convincing themselves that Putin – in the face of threats from afar – is the lesser of evils.

As for myself, half a year ago I stopped posting difficult items on my website, Diversant Daily, feeling tired and uninspired. Or was it fear? Unlike Politkovskaya, I have never been attacked and have not received death threats. Instead, I would receive friendly advice. “Art, you’re the leading music critic in the country. Why don’t you stick to what you do best and drop this hopeless political criticism?” My response was always, “I’ll do what I want.” As a result, I found myself blacklisted, like some time ago when I was invited to a celebrity edition of Russia’s equivalent of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? I agreed, the producers were thrilled – after all, who wouldn’t want to donate a million roubles to an orphanage? But hours before recording, I was told that the bosses had changed their minds and considered me “not the right person”.

I took this with humour and self-irony. I try to convince myself that I have stopped writing about politics, not out of fear but because the subject is no longer interesting. I am not sure. What I do know is this: it is demoralising to write the same things over and again, to no effect. It is demoralising to realise that among Russia’s silent majority Putin is genuinely popular and there seems no way of waking these people up. Most depressing, however, is that the so-called democracies of the west are turning a blind eye. One day, messrs Blair and Bush, the Germans and the Italians, will regret that.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Yesenin Speaks Russia’s Eternal Truth

“The Back Streets of Moscow”

The farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

I’m in love with this overdone city,
Though it’s dirty and falling apart;
It reminds me of stories at bedtime,
And the street sounds hurt my heart.

I go out for a fix after midnight,
And the fix that I’m after is fame,
So I head for a bar in the back streets
Where everyone knows my name.

It’s noisy and dirty and drunken,
But nobody there drinks alone —
The bartenders buy me a vodka,
And the hookers cry at my poems.

My heart beats faster and faster,
And I say to the drunk by the door —
“I’m like you, my life’s a disaster,
And I can’t go home any more.”

Oh the farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

Sergei Yesenin
(Translated from the Russian by Paul Schmidt)
(From page 87 of the December 4, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Yesenin Speaks Russia’s Eternal Truth

“The Back Streets of Moscow”

The farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

I’m in love with this overdone city,
Though it’s dirty and falling apart;
It reminds me of stories at bedtime,
And the street sounds hurt my heart.

I go out for a fix after midnight,
And the fix that I’m after is fame,
So I head for a bar in the back streets
Where everyone knows my name.

It’s noisy and dirty and drunken,
But nobody there drinks alone —
The bartenders buy me a vodka,
And the hookers cry at my poems.

My heart beats faster and faster,
And I say to the drunk by the door —
“I’m like you, my life’s a disaster,
And I can’t go home any more.”

Oh the farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

Sergei Yesenin
(Translated from the Russian by Paul Schmidt)
(From page 87 of the December 4, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Yesenin Speaks Russia’s Eternal Truth

“The Back Streets of Moscow”

The farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

I’m in love with this overdone city,
Though it’s dirty and falling apart;
It reminds me of stories at bedtime,
And the street sounds hurt my heart.

I go out for a fix after midnight,
And the fix that I’m after is fame,
So I head for a bar in the back streets
Where everyone knows my name.

It’s noisy and dirty and drunken,
But nobody there drinks alone —
The bartenders buy me a vodka,
And the hookers cry at my poems.

My heart beats faster and faster,
And I say to the drunk by the door —
“I’m like you, my life’s a disaster,
And I can’t go home any more.”

Oh the farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

Sergei Yesenin
(Translated from the Russian by Paul Schmidt)
(From page 87 of the December 4, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Yesenin Speaks Russia’s Eternal Truth

“The Back Streets of Moscow”

The farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

I’m in love with this overdone city,
Though it’s dirty and falling apart;
It reminds me of stories at bedtime,
And the street sounds hurt my heart.

I go out for a fix after midnight,
And the fix that I’m after is fame,
So I head for a bar in the back streets
Where everyone knows my name.

It’s noisy and dirty and drunken,
But nobody there drinks alone —
The bartenders buy me a vodka,
And the hookers cry at my poems.

My heart beats faster and faster,
And I say to the drunk by the door —
“I’m like you, my life’s a disaster,
And I can’t go home any more.”

Oh the farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

Sergei Yesenin
(Translated from the Russian by Paul Schmidt)
(From page 87 of the December 4, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Yesenin Speaks Russia’s Eternal Truth

“The Back Streets of Moscow”

The farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

I’m in love with this overdone city,
Though it’s dirty and falling apart;
It reminds me of stories at bedtime,
And the street sounds hurt my heart.

I go out for a fix after midnight,
And the fix that I’m after is fame,
So I head for a bar in the back streets
Where everyone knows my name.

It’s noisy and dirty and drunken,
But nobody there drinks alone —
The bartenders buy me a vodka,
And the hookers cry at my poems.

My heart beats faster and faster,
And I say to the drunk by the door —
“I’m like you, my life’s a disaster,
And I can’t go home any more.”

Oh the farmhouse is lonely without me
And my old dog is gone from the door
God sent me to die in the back streets
And I can’t go home anymore.

Sergei Yesenin
(Translated from the Russian by Paul Schmidt)
(From page 87 of the December 4, 2006 issue of the New Yorker)

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !