September 1, 2010 — Contents

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 1 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL: Три четверти россиян хотели бы покинуть Россию

(2)  EDITORIAL:  The Shameless Fraud called Putin

(3)  Update on Russian Butchery of Soldiers

(4)  Russians don’t Emigrate because they Might have to Obey the Law

(5)  CARTOON:  Medvedev, and Counting

NOTE:  Springtime for Stalin!  Russia Today gets an Emmy nomination, and Kim Zigfeld gets a migraine.  She has all the details in her latest installment of her Russia column over at Pajamas Media.

NOTE:  Wordpress has kindly provided us with a new facility for inserting links and tags into our posts for informational purposes so as to better disseminate our content.  We are beta testing this system, our links are in bold and the computer-generated links are in plain type.

EDITORIAL: Три четверти россиян хотели бы покинуть Россию

EDITORIAL

Три четверти россиян хотели бы покинуть Россию

You read that right:  “Three-quarters of all Russians would like to leave Russia.”

That’s according to a poll commissioned by the Russian version of Monster.com, namely Superjob.ru, as reported by Vedemosti (Russian-language link) the Russian version of the Wall Street Journal.  Another confirming poll by rival firm HeadHunter shows the same figure, three-quarters of all Russians, would prefer to work abroad.

Of course, that’s if they had the chance.

EDITORIAL: The Shameless Fraud called Putin

EDITORIAL

The Shameless Fraud called Putin

Mr Putin repeatedly praised the quality of the Lada car he was driving, giving valuable free publicity to the car’s struggling Russian manufacturer Avtovaz. However, he admitted he would not be personally driving the vehicle for the entire journey and would sometimes travel in his convoy of expensive foreign-made Jeeps.

Vladimir Putin was off on another one of his utterly absurd publicity stunts last week, this time driving a thousand miles across Russia in a Lada to prove how great the car is and encourage his fellow citizens to purchase one, while at the same time showing his own mettle as a he-man destined to rule Russia for life.

Except that Putin wasn’t driving a Russian Lada most of the time; most of the time, he was riding in an American-made Jeep.

Russian Butchery of Soldiers: An Update

Back in June, we translated from the pages of Novaya Gazeta a story about Russian soldiers having their organs harvested and sold for profit.  Now, the Moscow Times updates the story:

It’s been more than seven years since the border guards, a unit of the Federal Security Service, returned Alma Bukharbayeva’s teenage son in a sealed casket.

Marat Burtubayev, 18, was serving with his unit in the Khabarovsk region, near the Chinese border, for his required two years of military service. He was eight months into his service when commanders said the young recruit hanged himself in January 2003.

But what they did not explain — and what Bukharbayeva has been trying to learn ever since — is what happened to her son’s internal organs.

Russians don’t Emigrate because they Fear being Required to Obey the Law

Paul Goble reports that, in contrast to the poll data we discuss in our led editorial, the Kremlin’s own polls show nobody wants to leave Russia.  But Goble thinks he knows one reason why at least some Russians want to stay:  They know they’d be required to obey the law if they lived in a civilized country.

In addition to all the normal constraints – inertia, language knowledge, and uncertainty about other places – Russians today choose not to leave their country for work abroad because they consider it “abnormal to live according to the letter and spirit of the law” as Western countries require, according to VTsIOM director Valery Fedorov.

Speaking to a Novosibirsk forum “Strategy 2020″, Fedorov, the general director of the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, said that Russians at the present time “rarely consider emigration abroad as a key to the resolution of their personal problems.”

According to his organization’s data, the VTsIOM pollster said, far fewer Russians are interested in moving abroad than “20, 15 or even 10 years ago.” Even those who are having problems “where they were born and grew up,” he continued, have many reasons for deciding against such a step.

CARTOON: Medvedev, and Counting

At the top is the word: “President.”

Source:  Ellustrator.