August 9, 2009 — Contents

Posted on August 7, 2009 | 15 Comments

SUNDAY AUGUST 9 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Sergei Karaganov, Neo-Soviet Cockroach

(2)  Russia’s Bleak Winter Prospects

(3)  Russia’s KGB and Islamic Terror

(4)  Saakashvili Speaks

(5)  Vladimir Putin:  A Decade of Failure

(6)  The Sunday Funnies

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15 responses to “August 9, 2009 — Contents”

  1. elmer | August 7, 2009 at 6:26 pm | Reply

    In case you haven’t seen this – how the oily orthodox mother roosha church cooperated with stalin to destroy Ukrainian Catholics:

    Excerpt below:

    http://www.rferl.org/content/SovietEra_Documents_Shed_Light_On_Suppression_Of_Ukrainian_Catholic_Church/1795023.html

    Patriarch Kirill’s recent high-profile visit to Ukraine was interrupted by an unwanted visitor from the past: Josef Stalin’s ghost.

    A five-decade-old letter from the Soviet Communist Party archives, made available to RFE/RL’s Russian Service this week as Kirill was wrapping up his 10-day visit to Ukraine, illustrates the extent to which the patriarch’s predecessors were involved in Stalin’s efforts to wipe out the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in the 1940s.

    The letter, from then-Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksy I to the head of the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, Georgy Karpov, was dated December 7, 1945, when the Kremlin was consolidating control over territories in heavily Catholic western Ukraine after World War II. Karpov was a colonel in the NKVD, a predecessor to the Soviet KGB.

    In the letter, Aleksy informs Karpov of an “initiative group” that was being formed in Greek-Catholic dioceses in western Ukraine that would pressure clergy to agree to disband their church and convert to Orthodoxy.

    “More than 800 priests have already joined the initiative group, and it is expected that by the New Year the entire clergy will have done so with the exception of a small number of diehards,” Aleksy wrote.

    At the time of the letter, all of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church’s bishops had been either imprisoned or exiled, making the clergy especially vulnerable to pressure as Stalin sought to eradicate the Vatican’s influence.

  2. LES | August 7, 2009 at 8:53 pm | Reply

    Is the Russian Patriarch Being Clever or Too Clever By Half?

    August 07, 2009

    Paul Goble

    Patriarch Kirill’s statement that he is ready to accept dual citizenship in Ukraine because he is a patriarch of more than the Russian Federation, despite the anger it generated among many Ukrainians, may have been the cleverest move of his visit or a misstep that will cost him and the Russian Orthodox Church support from key constituencies at home.

    But perhaps most important and certainly in the minds of some most ominously, the Russian president said that “the pastoral visit of the Patriarch [to Ukraine] can become the basis for ‘a number of practical conclusions,” although, as “Argumenty i fakty” reported in its coverage of this meeting, Medvedev did not explain what those might be. ……………………….

    First, Russia’s “ultra-nationalists” are certainly infuriated by any suggestion that Kirill “loves Ukraine more than Russia” and who wants to make Kyiv rather than Moscow “the ‘Third Rome,’ a completely new idea which for them is completely unacceptable and against which they will speak out. …………………………….

    Second, Kirill has often spoken of the need to restore what he calls “’Orthodox civilization,’” and many are certain to view his proposal to become a citizen of Ukraine as a prelude to his becoming a citizen of Belarus and thus giving him a standing above all the Slavs greater than the Russian president or the Russian prime minister. …………………………..

    http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13910&Itemid=72

  3. Skrugs | August 7, 2009 at 10:15 pm | Reply

    I was trying to familiarize myself with the current political landscape in Russia to assist with some investments I planned on making. I just stumbled on RT as it comes up first when you google “Russia News”. As I read through virtually every section of the site one thing became abundantly clear. Russia is obsessed with the USA. I mean I’ve never seen more pathetic display of low national self esteem in my life. Nevermind the ridiculous RT journalistic conclusion that everything bad that ever happened in Russia was the USA’s fault. I mean I read a lot of foreign press to find investing opportunities. There’s a lot of blame the US sentiment out there in most foreign presses. RT takes it to such a level that I can’t believe they don’t creep themselves out. And the things they take pride in are just as telling. They had an entire article on how to understand Russian woman if your shopping for a bride. Like that’s something their proud of. I found this site while trying to see if anybody else had come to a similar conclusion from RT. Needless to say investing in Russia seems like a bad idea. Anybody know why Russians are so Freaking fascinated with America? I’d love to hear from a Russian especially. Are Russian people that obsessed with the goings on in America? Is that just a Journalistic spin?

    • Gordon | August 7, 2009 at 10:43 pm | Reply

      Putin is a KGB lickspittle from away back. He was nurtured his whole life on hatred for America, anti-Americanism and covetousness for what America has (not to mention secretiveness, xenophobia, state murder and imperialism). His first instinct when taking power was to completely absorb the mass media. Since he’s been in power, anti-Americanism has been the dominant thread in every aspect of state and media life in Russia.

  4. penny | August 8, 2009 at 12:56 am | Reply

    Anybody know why Russians are so Freaking fascinated with America?

    Think about it, Skrugs, it serves the Russian masses to connect with the nostalgic past grandeur of the old USSR in presuming that they are still equal to their old nemesis America. If America is still their worthy nemesis now then they must still be big time global players. It plays well with Russian sheeple who never had a pot to p** in that they owned outright and do not want to feel relegated to history’s graveyard.

    I’m probably one of the most cynical and skeptical posters here regarding the pathetic long suffering Russian blindsided by a creep like Putin, No one, but, a extremely marginal few have clean hands in the rot that is Russia.

    And, my question to you: why would you even consider investing in Russia and enhancing the profits of the siloviki?

    The only Russian response you are ever going to get here is one of the pathetic known trolls that for reasons I’ll never understand gets fed and perpetuated by their kneejerk counterparts that ought to know better.

  5. LES | August 8, 2009 at 3:33 am | Reply

    Patriarch Kirill and political orthodoxy

    Zenon V. Wasyliw is a professor of history at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY.

    According to Zenon Wasyliw, Putin, Medvedev and Kirill are a powerful Russian troika engaged in joint political and religious manipulations.

    This status evolved politically under Russian tsarist expansive imperialism and Soviet control of and collaboration with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. We now live in post-colonial and post-Soviet times that call for an honest acceptance of autocephalous self-governance for Orthodox Christians in Ukraine.

    Patriarch Kirill opposes “political orthodoxy,” yet the Russian Orthodox Church closely collaborates with Russian leaders Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in spreading a Russian nationalist (some say proto-fascist) message in Russia and the “near abroad.”

    Putin, Medvedev and Kirill, a powerful Russian troika, engage in joint political and religious commemorations of the White General Anton Denikin, supporting and echoing Denikin’s denigration of Ukrainians, the political canonization into sainthood of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children, in support of a reactionary Russian imperial ideological foundation of Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Russian Nationality with its legacy of chauvinistic policies and pogroms.

    Many other examples bring to question whether Patriarch Kirill’s visit is a political mission to re-engage a reactionary past of a revived vision of Russian imperial control over Ukraine.

    The Russian Orthodox Church remains silent on many recent and current human rights abuses by the Russian state, such as the suspicious deaths of journalists critical of the government, the assault upon the human rights group Memorial, the censorship and political control of history, among many others.

    Serge Schmemann, son of the famous Orthodox theologian, notes in the April 2009 National Geographic the catastrophically low level of monthly church attendance in Russia, estimated at 10 percent to less than 1 percent.

    Read rest at:

    http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op_ed/46190

  6. joshua | August 8, 2009 at 9:18 am | Reply

    Were the outages on twitter and facebook part of an attempt to silence a Georgian professor from Abkhazia?

    NYT seems to think so.

  7. elmer | August 8, 2009 at 3:40 pm | Reply

    Penny is absolutely right.

    One invests in roosha at one’s own peril, and there have been numerous examples of that.

    Among other things – you have to own a few judges and government officials in order to counteract the rooshan KGB insiders.

    The rooshans want your investment money – as long as it’s convenient for them. But when it’s not – they will simply take everything away from you.

    Here is another example, among many, involving ExxonMobil, with an explanation:

    Annals of Russian "Sportsmanship"

    Also, here is an excellent analysis of 10 years of Putler, and why roosha is the way it is:

    http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090804_enduring_russian_geographic_challenge

    The geographic aspects have been linked to and discussed on this blog previously.

    Perpetual paranoia, perpetual tantrums, and love of misery – that is roosha.

    rooshans love misery – theirs and yours – it makes them happy.

  8. Skrugs | August 8, 2009 at 6:12 pm | Reply

    It was my lack of knowledge that allowed me to consider investing in Russia. I’ve definitely found more than enough reasons why that would be a bad investment just on economic grounds. Thanks for all your comments. It still cracks me up that the tagline for RT is “any story can be another story completely”.

  9. LES | August 9, 2009 at 4:02 pm | Reply

    Eight Reasons Why Some Russians are More than Ready to Acquire Ukrainian Citizenship

    August 08, 2009

    Paul Goble

    Patriarch Kirill’s suggestion that he is ready to acquire dual citizenship in Ukraine has prompted activists of the Russian National-Democratic Movement (RNDM), a nationalist but not statist group, to conduct a survey in regions of the Russian Federation bordering Ukraine on whether they would like to take Ukrainian citizenship.

    While many writers have discussed whether Ukrainian citizens might like to take Russian citizenship, this is one of the very few efforts to determine how Russian citizens might feel about moving in the opposite direction. …………………………

    Fifth, “the conductions for conducting a business [in Ukraine] are more civilized” than they are in Russia. In Russia, the RNDM says, “it is impossible to conduct a legal business” because businessmen must pay off “bandit structures which consist to a large extent of the workers of the MVD, the FSB and the senior officials of the Russian government.”

    Sixth, the level of crime is much lower in Ukraine than it is in Russia.
    ………………………………………

    http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13950&Itemid=72

  11. LES | August 9, 2009 at 9:45 pm | Reply

    Kyiv Patriarchate fears Moscow may restrict independence of Moscow Patriarchate

    7 August, 19:31 | Interfax-Ukraine

    According to him, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) has information that at the Russian Orthodox Church synod meeting during Patriarch Kirill’s visit to Ukraine, they discussed the need to introduce a mechanism of consultations between Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and the Moscow Patriarchate to agree candidates for bishops before their actual appointment by the synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).

    http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/46629

  12. LES | August 13, 2009 at 2:35 pm | Reply

    President Dmitry Medvedev implies that Ukraine must be annexed by roosha.

    Full text of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s official blog about Ukraine

    PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: A few days ago, I sent a letter to the President of Ukraine. It was not an ordinary document, I should say, as it contains a number of complex and unflattering characteristics of the actions by the top political leadership of Ukraine. In my today’s address I would like to explain the reasons behind my step.

    The leadership in Kiev took an openly anti-Russian stand following the military attack launched by the Saakashvili regime against South Ossetia.

    Ukrainian weapons were used to kill civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Russia continues to experience problems caused by a policy aimed at obstructing the operations of its Black Sea Fleet, and this on a daily basis and in violation of the basic agreements between our countries. Sadly, the campaign continues to oust the Russian language from the Ukrainian media, the education, culture and science.

    The Ukrainian leadership’s outwardly smooth-flowing rhetoric fits ill with the overt distortion of complex and difficult episodes in our common history, the tragic events of the great famine in the Soviet Union, and an interpretation of the Great Patriotic War as some kind of confrontation between two totalitarian systems.

    Patriarch Kirill’s recent pastoral visit to Ukraine was also an event of great significance. I had a meeting with the Patriarch following the visit, and he shared his impressions and said many cordial words.

    We both are of one and the same opinion that the two fraternal peoples may not be separated as they share common historical and spiritual heritage.

    READ REST AT:

    http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/46835

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