EDITORIAL: There’s Sick, and then there’s Russian Sick

EDITORIAL

There’s Sick, and then there’s Russian Sick

Russia’s ability to surpass itself, week after appalling week, with ever lower levels of vile, nauseating, subhuman conduct is truly breathtaking.

Last week, Echo of Moscow Radio broke the story of how the annual Nashi orgy of xenophobia and aggressive nationalism known as Camp Selinger, a government-funded festival of barbaric outrage, plumbed inconceivable new depths by putting the virtual heads of opposition political leaders on pikes and decorating them as Nazis.

The Kremlin’s youthful thugs did not hesitate to include octogenarian Lyudmila Alexeeva among those so assaulted.

You read that right:  They put an eighty year old woman’s head on a pike and stuck a Nazi hat on her head. She’s a human rights activist. She’s utterly defenseless and frail. And she’s a Nazi.

Russian Nazis on the Warpath

Paul Goble reports:

Those taking part in the Russian March in Moscow yesterday – an officially authorized demonstration which organizers claimed attracted 7,000 people but which observers said included only about 700 – were given written instructions on how to acquire guns so that they would be able to defend what nationalist speakers called “the Russian order.”

Such calls in the increasingly overheated atmosphere of the Russian capital given the availability of guns of all kinds there are inherently provocative and could prompt their opponents among non-Russians to arm themselves in response, provide a justification for the authorities to crack down on the nationalists, or, quite possibly, do both.

And while there is as yet no Russian media reporting that Russian nationalist groups who organized similar marches on the Day of National Unity in dozens of places across the Russian Federation handed out the same advice in the same way, it is very probable that the participants received a similar message in one way or another.

EDITORIAL: Russia’s New Iron Curtain

EDITORIAL

Russia’s New Iron Curtain

Polls appear to illustrate a rise in nationalism in Russia. While only 26 percent of respondents in 1991 said Russia should be for Russians, 54 percent said the same in the recent poll. The two polls also saw a 10 percentage point rise to 47 percent of respondents who said it is natural for Russia to have an empire. Fifty-eight percent of Russians in the new poll agreed that it is a great misfortune that the Soviet Union no longer exists.

— The Moscow Times, November 3, 2009

Last week we carried a report from the New York Times that documented the Putin administration’s efforts to choke off the flow of information from Russian research institutions to the West.  No thinking person could fail to appreciate the disturbing echoes of this pathetic country’s Soviet past, especial when remembering that the nation is ruled by a proud KGB spy.

How long , we cannot help but wonder, will it be before the Putin government slaps the same sort of draconian Iron-Curtain controls on Russian citizens that is is now imposing on information? Not long, we think.

Putin, Dancing with Neo-Nazis

Just say "NO!" to Nazis

Writing on the Open Democracy network Russian journalist Vladimir Tupikin says that the Putin regime is dancing to the tune of the country’s neo-Nazi movement:

On Tuesday 4 August 2009 the St. Petersburg City Court examined the appeal in the case of Alexei Bychin, a young anti-fascist arrested in the summer of last year. According to witnesses, the trial lasted around three minutes and upheld Bychin’s sentence: five years in a maximum security prison. From three to five, as people say in jest. But this time the story isn’t funny at all.

At the beginning of the white nights season in the middle of June 2008, a group of young punk rockers were walking around in the centre of Petersburg. Among them was Alexei Bychin, who had the ironic punk nickname Tolsty (Fatty), because he is thin and small (50 kg, 165 cm). There were girls in the group too.

EDITORIAL: Psycho Russia, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

EDITORIAL

Psycho Russia, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

We simply don’t see how it’s possible to argue that neo-Soviet Russia is governed by anyone except a clan of barbarically ignorant madmen.  Given this reality, it’s impossible to imagine how Russia as we know it can survive.

Vladimir Putin: acting tough, thinking short-term and keeping his country behind the West

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune Business Forum:

Since he came to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin has launched a campaign to recover Russian pride, prestige and influence lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Early on, he decided that Russian’s gas and oil supply would finance both the country’s economic recovery and its return as a global power. Even after stepping aside as president in 2008, Putin continues to make the idea of Russia’s comeback his personal project. His successor, President Dimitry Medvedev, has, by all accounts, identical aims.

The Horror of Russian Nationalism, Unbound

The New York Times continues its series of articles published in the paper and translated into Russian on a ZheZhe blog, collecting comments in Russian which it then translates back into English. The latest installment exposes the phenomenon of nationalism in Putin’s neo-Soviet Russia, exploding the myth that Putins’ KGB regime lacks ideology.  Some hopeful Russian comments are digested following the text. Perhaps the most telling and typical is this neo-Soviet rationalization:

You gentlemen are interested in “Stalin” secrets. Why so? So many years have passed. If The New York Times was able to dig into the archives of the American secret services and the role of F.B.I. and C.I.A. in the organization of President Kennedy’s assassination, this interest would be understandable. However, there is one guess. A program of active (secret) propagandist operations has been put in motion on the Web. One more “Orange Revolution” is required, this time in Moscow. And human rights in the U.S.S.R. (Russia) and Stalin repressions are nothing but a smoke screen to cover a secret operation. Undoubtedly.

Another poor ignorant soul writes:  “The word ‘nationalism’ is not applicable to Russia at all (at least on the state level, on the level of everyday life, there is no more nationalism than in any other state).” A third claims:  “No matter how much mud they sling at Stalin his accomplishments are so obvious that all this propaganda hullabaloo does not impress anybody.” And so it goes in the wretched quagmire that is neo-Soviet Russia.

TOMSK, RUSSIA. For years, the earth in this Siberian city had been giving up clues: a scrap of clothing, a fragment of bone, a skull with a bullet hole. And so a historian named Boris P. Trenin made a plea to officials. Would they let him examine secret archives to confirm that there was a mass grave here from Stalin’s purges? Would they help him tell the story of the thousands of innocent people who were said to have been carted from a prison to a ravine, shot in the head and tossed over?

The answer was no, and Mr. Trenin understood what many historians in Russia have come to realize: Under Vladimir V. Putin, the attitude toward the past has changed. The archives that Mr. Trenin was seeking, stored on the fourth floor of a building in Tomsk, in boxes stamped “K.G.B. of the U.S.S.R.,” would remain sealed. The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governing of the country. In seeking to restore Russia’s standing, Mr. Putin and other officials have stoked a nationalism that glorifies Soviet triumphs while playing down or even whitewashing the system’s horrors.

As a result, across Russia, many archives detailing killings, persecution and other such acts committed by the Soviet authorities have become increasingly off limits. The role of the security services seems especially delicate, perhaps because Mr. Putin is a former K.G.B. officer who ran the agency’s successor, the F.S.B., in the late 1990s.

Luzhkov, Nationalist Russian Lunatic

The New York Times offers yet another story about Putin’s Russia which it has translated and published on a Russian ZheZhe blog, where it has also translated Russian comments on the story. This time, lunatic Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is the topic.  One Russia commenter stated: “It’s painful to read this story. It’s even more painful to read the comments. In the story we are revealed as barbarians, in the comments we reveal ourselves.”

On a clearing in this disputed city, where enemy homes were bulldozed after the conflict in August, Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov promised this month to build a new neighborhood for the South Ossetian separatists here. Grinning widely before a boisterous crowd, which hailed him as a liberator, Mayor Luzhkov said he would spend more than $100 million on houses, schools and shopping centers. “We are celebrating a great victory — a victory for freedom and independence,” he declared. The pledge was notable for its cost — a sizable sum in this impoverished breakaway enclave of 70,000 — but also because Mr. Luzhkov is the mayor of Moscow, not Tskhinvali. The money is to come from Moscow’s city budget.

Russia’s Real Enemies

Paul Goble reports that some Russians understand who Russia’s real enemies really are:

Russian patriotism and Russian nationalism are generally treated as synonyms or at least as mutually reinforcing phenomena, both in nearly all cases equally at odds with political democracy and economic liberalism and thus anathema both to Russian reformers and to others who wish Russia and Russians well. But in fact, the two ideologies rest on completely different foundations, with Russian patriotism focusing primarily on the state and Russian nationalism on the Russian people as a community. And consequently, some of the variants of each often are very much at odds with those of the other.

A programmatic article by a Russian nationalist a month ago calling attention to this divide has reopened this debate. And it shows few signs of any quick resolution but nonetheless says a great deal not only about where Russians and the Russian state are now but also about where they could be and are likely to be in the future. In that essay, Aleksei Shiropayev argues that Russian nationalism properly understood will promote democracy, capitalism, and integration with Europe, thereby challenging a large number of the core beliefs of Russian patriots and of those Russian nationalists who follow them. Russian patriotism, he argues, presents itself as “the true service of the State” be it tsarist, Soviet or post-Soviet because “ontologically all these versions of the Empire are ontologically the same.” And consequently, it suggests that “the historic meaning of the existence of the Russian people” is sacrificial service to the Imperial Leviathan.”

“According to the patriots,” he continues, the Russian people do not have their own fate: their fate is [linked to that] of the supra-national hyper-State, of the fate of the empire. Not to rule in the empire but to be its eternal servant, its faceless cement; bearing without complaint the burden of imperial ‘super tasks” rather than acting for itself.” That is the “imperial ‘liturgy’” of the Russian patriots, Shiropayev insists, a doctrine that reduces Russians to “eternal slaves,” permanent collective farmers,” and forever “proletarians” who must be herded forward by an all-powerful state entity that alone can decide where they should go. Russian nationalists, on the other hand, focus on the Russian people, their needs and aspirations, but because Russian patriots and not they have been in charge so long, Shiropayev continues, their approach is best presented in terms of how different it is from the latter. Because they focus on the people rather than the state, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists – or at least the part of the Russian nationalist spectrum his “national democrats” represent – are “non-imperial” in principle. “Not through the restoration of the Empire lies the path to the Russian future, but across the corpse of the empire.”

“Thanks to the Empire, the Russian people has not become a nation,” he insists, and to change that, Shiropayev continues, it is vitally important to “open the sluice gates of regional development,” to promote “a bourgeois state,” and to integrate with Europe, must as the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic already have. The first task ahead of Russians, he argues, is “overcoming the fetishization of the state” by advancing the claims of the people over which the state has ruled. And the most effective way to do that is to promote the creation of regional governments that are closer to the people. These units could then perhaps form a Confederation, Shiropayev argues, and with that kind of a political arrangement, Russians would be in a position to develop the kind of economic and political system that would allow them to join Europe rather than stand in opposition to it as the Russian patriots always insist.
According to Shiropayev, Boris Yeltsin understood this point early on. In a speech to the Urals Polytechnic Institute in February 1990, the future president said that it should be possible to form within the Russian Federation “seven Russian republics: Central Russia, the North, the South, theVolga, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.”

For Russian nationalists, Shiropayev argues, that action makes Yeltsin a hero, but for the Russian patriots, it makes him a destroyer of the state. And for them, Yeltsin is worthy of praise only for his willingness to launch of a war against the Chechen drive for independence. Indeed, Shiropayev continues, if Russian nationalists have any reason to dislike Yeltsin, it is this: “he preserved” the core part of the empire, “its initial place des armes, its bastion of revenge – the Russian Federation,” rather than allowing that entity to disintegrate and the Russian people to become true historical actors. Russian nationalists offer the Russian people the opportunity to “live and work for themselves and not for the imperial-bureaucratic ‘uncle,’ to be guided by their own real interests and not phantom ideological construction like the ‘Third Rome’ or the ‘Third International,’” to escape “the sacralized slavery of the empire and live in a bourgeois democratic state, “a Russian Europe.’” In short, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists want Russians to practice “national egotism and self-respect instead of imperial internationalism and the belittling of themselves,” to escape from “the idea of Russia” and begin to live on their own, and thus to “begin at last” to make their own “Russian history.”

In the course of his long, two-part essay, Shiropayev discusses each of these points in detail as well as making a wide variety of comments on Russian history and the views of his ideological opponents, the Russian patriots. But his most controversial remarks concern his open support for the rise of a Russia of the regions. He surveys regionalist impulses in Siberia and other parts of the country, considers the movements that have already emerged to advance their ideas, and says he backs all of them even if that means that some of them might decide to pursue independence from the center. Shiropayev has received some support from these regionalists – for example, the equally detailed article of Mikhail Kulekhov on Siberian neo-oblastnichesto at which points out that Siberians “do not want the collapse of the Russian Federation but we do not fear it either.”

But his opponents, the Russian patriots, have attacked his ideas in a series of increasingly sharp, even vitriolic articles over the last month in the Russian “nationalist” – that is, “patriotic” – media. Typical of these is an essay by Vladimir Karpets that was posted online October 21st. He accuses Shiropayev personally and those who have published his writings of betraying the country, of promoting its disintegration, and of being hirelings of various international forces who see Russian regionalism as a weapon to destroy the Russian state, the only entity capable of defending the Russian people. To block the machinations of this group, he continues, Russia needs to establish “a genuine anti-separatist front,” on that will differ from the National Salvation Front only in that it will be directed not against the authorities but in support and under the guidance of them. And having created that front, Karpets continues, Moscow should move to create a “Yezhov-style Empire” – a reference to Stalin’s notorious secret police chief – to ensure that the Russian state that Shiropayev and his like want to put in the grave will in fact survive and prosper.

In terms of argument, Shiropayev certainly has the advantage, but in terms of Russian politics under Vladimir Putin, Karpets and those who continue to deify the state at the cost of keeping the Russians from a nation like any other would seem to have the greater influence.

The Streetwise Professor completes the thought:

This is one creepy statement from an interview with Oleg Shvarsman of Finansgroup:

This structure was created in 2004, after President [Vladimir] Putin said that big business should have a social responsibility to the state. At that time our colleagues from the FSB decided that an organization must appear that will incline, bend, torment, and lead the various and sundry Khordokovskies toward social activeness.”

This reminds me of the treatment of Winston Smith in 1984. Or perhaps better yet, it reminds me of The Captain in Cool Hand Luke:

You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set ’cause you’re gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT.

Shvartsman’s statement drips with irony–intentional or unintentional, I know not. For it is obvious that it was social activeness that was Khodorkovsky’s downfall. But not the right kind of social activeness. And just as The Captain was making an example of Luke (”(To the other inmates) Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke?”), Putin and the FSB were making an example of Khodorkovsky for others who might have thoughts of the wrong kind of social activeness. And from the looks of things, the example was well taken.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Enemies

Paul Goble reports that some Russians understand who Russia’s real enemies really are:

Russian patriotism and Russian nationalism are generally treated as synonyms or at least as mutually reinforcing phenomena, both in nearly all cases equally at odds with political democracy and economic liberalism and thus anathema both to Russian reformers and to others who wish Russia and Russians well. But in fact, the two ideologies rest on completely different foundations, with Russian patriotism focusing primarily on the state and Russian nationalism on the Russian people as a community. And consequently, some of the variants of each often are very much at odds with those of the other.

A programmatic article by a Russian nationalist a month ago calling attention to this divide has reopened this debate. And it shows few signs of any quick resolution but nonetheless says a great deal not only about where Russians and the Russian state are now but also about where they could be and are likely to be in the future. In that essay, Aleksei Shiropayev argues that Russian nationalism properly understood will promote democracy, capitalism, and integration with Europe, thereby challenging a large number of the core beliefs of Russian patriots and of those Russian nationalists who follow them. Russian patriotism, he argues, presents itself as “the true service of the State” be it tsarist, Soviet or post-Soviet because “ontologically all these versions of the Empire are ontologically the same.” And consequently, it suggests that “the historic meaning of the existence of the Russian people” is sacrificial service to the Imperial Leviathan.”

“According to the patriots,” he continues, the Russian people do not have their own fate: their fate is [linked to that] of the supra-national hyper-State, of the fate of the empire. Not to rule in the empire but to be its eternal servant, its faceless cement; bearing without complaint the burden of imperial ‘super tasks” rather than acting for itself.” That is the “imperial ‘liturgy’” of the Russian patriots, Shiropayev insists, a doctrine that reduces Russians to “eternal slaves,” permanent collective farmers,” and forever “proletarians” who must be herded forward by an all-powerful state entity that alone can decide where they should go. Russian nationalists, on the other hand, focus on the Russian people, their needs and aspirations, but because Russian patriots and not they have been in charge so long, Shiropayev continues, their approach is best presented in terms of how different it is from the latter. Because they focus on the people rather than the state, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists – or at least the part of the Russian nationalist spectrum his “national democrats” represent – are “non-imperial” in principle. “Not through the restoration of the Empire lies the path to the Russian future, but across the corpse of the empire.”

“Thanks to the Empire, the Russian people has not become a nation,” he insists, and to change that, Shiropayev continues, it is vitally important to “open the sluice gates of regional development,” to promote “a bourgeois state,” and to integrate with Europe, must as the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic already have. The first task ahead of Russians, he argues, is “overcoming the fetishization of the state” by advancing the claims of the people over which the state has ruled. And the most effective way to do that is to promote the creation of regional governments that are closer to the people. These units could then perhaps form a Confederation, Shiropayev argues, and with that kind of a political arrangement, Russians would be in a position to develop the kind of economic and political system that would allow them to join Europe rather than stand in opposition to it as the Russian patriots always insist.
According to Shiropayev, Boris Yeltsin understood this point early on. In a speech to the Urals Polytechnic Institute in February 1990, the future president said that it should be possible to form within the Russian Federation “seven Russian republics: Central Russia, the North, the South, theVolga, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.”

For Russian nationalists, Shiropayev argues, that action makes Yeltsin a hero, but for the Russian patriots, it makes him a destroyer of the state. And for them, Yeltsin is worthy of praise only for his willingness to launch of a war against the Chechen drive for independence. Indeed, Shiropayev continues, if Russian nationalists have any reason to dislike Yeltsin, it is this: “he preserved” the core part of the empire, “its initial place des armes, its bastion of revenge – the Russian Federation,” rather than allowing that entity to disintegrate and the Russian people to become true historical actors. Russian nationalists offer the Russian people the opportunity to “live and work for themselves and not for the imperial-bureaucratic ‘uncle,’ to be guided by their own real interests and not phantom ideological construction like the ‘Third Rome’ or the ‘Third International,’” to escape “the sacralized slavery of the empire and live in a bourgeois democratic state, “a Russian Europe.’” In short, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists want Russians to practice “national egotism and self-respect instead of imperial internationalism and the belittling of themselves,” to escape from “the idea of Russia” and begin to live on their own, and thus to “begin at last” to make their own “Russian history.”

In the course of his long, two-part essay, Shiropayev discusses each of these points in detail as well as making a wide variety of comments on Russian history and the views of his ideological opponents, the Russian patriots. But his most controversial remarks concern his open support for the rise of a Russia of the regions. He surveys regionalist impulses in Siberia and other parts of the country, considers the movements that have already emerged to advance their ideas, and says he backs all of them even if that means that some of them might decide to pursue independence from the center. Shiropayev has received some support from these regionalists – for example, the equally detailed article of Mikhail Kulekhov on Siberian neo-oblastnichesto at which points out that Siberians “do not want the collapse of the Russian Federation but we do not fear it either.”

But his opponents, the Russian patriots, have attacked his ideas in a series of increasingly sharp, even vitriolic articles over the last month in the Russian “nationalist” – that is, “patriotic” – media. Typical of these is an essay by Vladimir Karpets that was posted online October 21st. He accuses Shiropayev personally and those who have published his writings of betraying the country, of promoting its disintegration, and of being hirelings of various international forces who see Russian regionalism as a weapon to destroy the Russian state, the only entity capable of defending the Russian people. To block the machinations of this group, he continues, Russia needs to establish “a genuine anti-separatist front,” on that will differ from the National Salvation Front only in that it will be directed not against the authorities but in support and under the guidance of them. And having created that front, Karpets continues, Moscow should move to create a “Yezhov-style Empire” – a reference to Stalin’s notorious secret police chief – to ensure that the Russian state that Shiropayev and his like want to put in the grave will in fact survive and prosper.

In terms of argument, Shiropayev certainly has the advantage, but in terms of Russian politics under Vladimir Putin, Karpets and those who continue to deify the state at the cost of keeping the Russians from a nation like any other would seem to have the greater influence.

The Streetwise Professor completes the thought:

This is one creepy statement from an interview with Oleg Shvarsman of Finansgroup:

This structure was created in 2004, after President [Vladimir] Putin said that big business should have a social responsibility to the state. At that time our colleagues from the FSB decided that an organization must appear that will incline, bend, torment, and lead the various and sundry Khordokovskies toward social activeness.”

This reminds me of the treatment of Winston Smith in 1984. Or perhaps better yet, it reminds me of The Captain in Cool Hand Luke:

You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set ’cause you’re gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT.

Shvartsman’s statement drips with irony–intentional or unintentional, I know not. For it is obvious that it was social activeness that was Khodorkovsky’s downfall. But not the right kind of social activeness. And just as The Captain was making an example of Luke (”(To the other inmates) Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke?”), Putin and the FSB were making an example of Khodorkovsky for others who might have thoughts of the wrong kind of social activeness. And from the looks of things, the example was well taken.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Enemies

Paul Goble reports that some Russians understand who Russia’s real enemies really are:

Russian patriotism and Russian nationalism are generally treated as synonyms or at least as mutually reinforcing phenomena, both in nearly all cases equally at odds with political democracy and economic liberalism and thus anathema both to Russian reformers and to others who wish Russia and Russians well. But in fact, the two ideologies rest on completely different foundations, with Russian patriotism focusing primarily on the state and Russian nationalism on the Russian people as a community. And consequently, some of the variants of each often are very much at odds with those of the other.

A programmatic article by a Russian nationalist a month ago calling attention to this divide has reopened this debate. And it shows few signs of any quick resolution but nonetheless says a great deal not only about where Russians and the Russian state are now but also about where they could be and are likely to be in the future. In that essay, Aleksei Shiropayev argues that Russian nationalism properly understood will promote democracy, capitalism, and integration with Europe, thereby challenging a large number of the core beliefs of Russian patriots and of those Russian nationalists who follow them. Russian patriotism, he argues, presents itself as “the true service of the State” be it tsarist, Soviet or post-Soviet because “ontologically all these versions of the Empire are ontologically the same.” And consequently, it suggests that “the historic meaning of the existence of the Russian people” is sacrificial service to the Imperial Leviathan.”

“According to the patriots,” he continues, the Russian people do not have their own fate: their fate is [linked to that] of the supra-national hyper-State, of the fate of the empire. Not to rule in the empire but to be its eternal servant, its faceless cement; bearing without complaint the burden of imperial ‘super tasks” rather than acting for itself.” That is the “imperial ‘liturgy’” of the Russian patriots, Shiropayev insists, a doctrine that reduces Russians to “eternal slaves,” permanent collective farmers,” and forever “proletarians” who must be herded forward by an all-powerful state entity that alone can decide where they should go. Russian nationalists, on the other hand, focus on the Russian people, their needs and aspirations, but because Russian patriots and not they have been in charge so long, Shiropayev continues, their approach is best presented in terms of how different it is from the latter. Because they focus on the people rather than the state, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists – or at least the part of the Russian nationalist spectrum his “national democrats” represent – are “non-imperial” in principle. “Not through the restoration of the Empire lies the path to the Russian future, but across the corpse of the empire.”

“Thanks to the Empire, the Russian people has not become a nation,” he insists, and to change that, Shiropayev continues, it is vitally important to “open the sluice gates of regional development,” to promote “a bourgeois state,” and to integrate with Europe, must as the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic already have. The first task ahead of Russians, he argues, is “overcoming the fetishization of the state” by advancing the claims of the people over which the state has ruled. And the most effective way to do that is to promote the creation of regional governments that are closer to the people. These units could then perhaps form a Confederation, Shiropayev argues, and with that kind of a political arrangement, Russians would be in a position to develop the kind of economic and political system that would allow them to join Europe rather than stand in opposition to it as the Russian patriots always insist.
According to Shiropayev, Boris Yeltsin understood this point early on. In a speech to the Urals Polytechnic Institute in February 1990, the future president said that it should be possible to form within the Russian Federation “seven Russian republics: Central Russia, the North, the South, theVolga, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.”

For Russian nationalists, Shiropayev argues, that action makes Yeltsin a hero, but for the Russian patriots, it makes him a destroyer of the state. And for them, Yeltsin is worthy of praise only for his willingness to launch of a war against the Chechen drive for independence. Indeed, Shiropayev continues, if Russian nationalists have any reason to dislike Yeltsin, it is this: “he preserved” the core part of the empire, “its initial place des armes, its bastion of revenge – the Russian Federation,” rather than allowing that entity to disintegrate and the Russian people to become true historical actors. Russian nationalists offer the Russian people the opportunity to “live and work for themselves and not for the imperial-bureaucratic ‘uncle,’ to be guided by their own real interests and not phantom ideological construction like the ‘Third Rome’ or the ‘Third International,’” to escape “the sacralized slavery of the empire and live in a bourgeois democratic state, “a Russian Europe.’” In short, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists want Russians to practice “national egotism and self-respect instead of imperial internationalism and the belittling of themselves,” to escape from “the idea of Russia” and begin to live on their own, and thus to “begin at last” to make their own “Russian history.”

In the course of his long, two-part essay, Shiropayev discusses each of these points in detail as well as making a wide variety of comments on Russian history and the views of his ideological opponents, the Russian patriots. But his most controversial remarks concern his open support for the rise of a Russia of the regions. He surveys regionalist impulses in Siberia and other parts of the country, considers the movements that have already emerged to advance their ideas, and says he backs all of them even if that means that some of them might decide to pursue independence from the center. Shiropayev has received some support from these regionalists – for example, the equally detailed article of Mikhail Kulekhov on Siberian neo-oblastnichesto at which points out that Siberians “do not want the collapse of the Russian Federation but we do not fear it either.”

But his opponents, the Russian patriots, have attacked his ideas in a series of increasingly sharp, even vitriolic articles over the last month in the Russian “nationalist” – that is, “patriotic” – media. Typical of these is an essay by Vladimir Karpets that was posted online October 21st. He accuses Shiropayev personally and those who have published his writings of betraying the country, of promoting its disintegration, and of being hirelings of various international forces who see Russian regionalism as a weapon to destroy the Russian state, the only entity capable of defending the Russian people. To block the machinations of this group, he continues, Russia needs to establish “a genuine anti-separatist front,” on that will differ from the National Salvation Front only in that it will be directed not against the authorities but in support and under the guidance of them. And having created that front, Karpets continues, Moscow should move to create a “Yezhov-style Empire” – a reference to Stalin’s notorious secret police chief – to ensure that the Russian state that Shiropayev and his like want to put in the grave will in fact survive and prosper.

In terms of argument, Shiropayev certainly has the advantage, but in terms of Russian politics under Vladimir Putin, Karpets and those who continue to deify the state at the cost of keeping the Russians from a nation like any other would seem to have the greater influence.

The Streetwise Professor completes the thought:

This is one creepy statement from an interview with Oleg Shvarsman of Finansgroup:

This structure was created in 2004, after President [Vladimir] Putin said that big business should have a social responsibility to the state. At that time our colleagues from the FSB decided that an organization must appear that will incline, bend, torment, and lead the various and sundry Khordokovskies toward social activeness.”

This reminds me of the treatment of Winston Smith in 1984. Or perhaps better yet, it reminds me of The Captain in Cool Hand Luke:

You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set ’cause you’re gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT.

Shvartsman’s statement drips with irony–intentional or unintentional, I know not. For it is obvious that it was social activeness that was Khodorkovsky’s downfall. But not the right kind of social activeness. And just as The Captain was making an example of Luke (”(To the other inmates) Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke?”), Putin and the FSB were making an example of Khodorkovsky for others who might have thoughts of the wrong kind of social activeness. And from the looks of things, the example was well taken.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Enemies

Paul Goble reports that some Russians understand who Russia’s real enemies really are:

Russian patriotism and Russian nationalism are generally treated as synonyms or at least as mutually reinforcing phenomena, both in nearly all cases equally at odds with political democracy and economic liberalism and thus anathema both to Russian reformers and to others who wish Russia and Russians well. But in fact, the two ideologies rest on completely different foundations, with Russian patriotism focusing primarily on the state and Russian nationalism on the Russian people as a community. And consequently, some of the variants of each often are very much at odds with those of the other.

A programmatic article by a Russian nationalist a month ago calling attention to this divide has reopened this debate. And it shows few signs of any quick resolution but nonetheless says a great deal not only about where Russians and the Russian state are now but also about where they could be and are likely to be in the future. In that essay, Aleksei Shiropayev argues that Russian nationalism properly understood will promote democracy, capitalism, and integration with Europe, thereby challenging a large number of the core beliefs of Russian patriots and of those Russian nationalists who follow them. Russian patriotism, he argues, presents itself as “the true service of the State” be it tsarist, Soviet or post-Soviet because “ontologically all these versions of the Empire are ontologically the same.” And consequently, it suggests that “the historic meaning of the existence of the Russian people” is sacrificial service to the Imperial Leviathan.”

“According to the patriots,” he continues, the Russian people do not have their own fate: their fate is [linked to that] of the supra-national hyper-State, of the fate of the empire. Not to rule in the empire but to be its eternal servant, its faceless cement; bearing without complaint the burden of imperial ‘super tasks” rather than acting for itself.” That is the “imperial ‘liturgy’” of the Russian patriots, Shiropayev insists, a doctrine that reduces Russians to “eternal slaves,” permanent collective farmers,” and forever “proletarians” who must be herded forward by an all-powerful state entity that alone can decide where they should go. Russian nationalists, on the other hand, focus on the Russian people, their needs and aspirations, but because Russian patriots and not they have been in charge so long, Shiropayev continues, their approach is best presented in terms of how different it is from the latter. Because they focus on the people rather than the state, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists – or at least the part of the Russian nationalist spectrum his “national democrats” represent – are “non-imperial” in principle. “Not through the restoration of the Empire lies the path to the Russian future, but across the corpse of the empire.”

“Thanks to the Empire, the Russian people has not become a nation,” he insists, and to change that, Shiropayev continues, it is vitally important to “open the sluice gates of regional development,” to promote “a bourgeois state,” and to integrate with Europe, must as the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic already have. The first task ahead of Russians, he argues, is “overcoming the fetishization of the state” by advancing the claims of the people over which the state has ruled. And the most effective way to do that is to promote the creation of regional governments that are closer to the people. These units could then perhaps form a Confederation, Shiropayev argues, and with that kind of a political arrangement, Russians would be in a position to develop the kind of economic and political system that would allow them to join Europe rather than stand in opposition to it as the Russian patriots always insist.
According to Shiropayev, Boris Yeltsin understood this point early on. In a speech to the Urals Polytechnic Institute in February 1990, the future president said that it should be possible to form within the Russian Federation “seven Russian republics: Central Russia, the North, the South, theVolga, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.”

For Russian nationalists, Shiropayev argues, that action makes Yeltsin a hero, but for the Russian patriots, it makes him a destroyer of the state. And for them, Yeltsin is worthy of praise only for his willingness to launch of a war against the Chechen drive for independence. Indeed, Shiropayev continues, if Russian nationalists have any reason to dislike Yeltsin, it is this: “he preserved” the core part of the empire, “its initial place des armes, its bastion of revenge – the Russian Federation,” rather than allowing that entity to disintegrate and the Russian people to become true historical actors. Russian nationalists offer the Russian people the opportunity to “live and work for themselves and not for the imperial-bureaucratic ‘uncle,’ to be guided by their own real interests and not phantom ideological construction like the ‘Third Rome’ or the ‘Third International,’” to escape “the sacralized slavery of the empire and live in a bourgeois democratic state, “a Russian Europe.’” In short, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists want Russians to practice “national egotism and self-respect instead of imperial internationalism and the belittling of themselves,” to escape from “the idea of Russia” and begin to live on their own, and thus to “begin at last” to make their own “Russian history.”

In the course of his long, two-part essay, Shiropayev discusses each of these points in detail as well as making a wide variety of comments on Russian history and the views of his ideological opponents, the Russian patriots. But his most controversial remarks concern his open support for the rise of a Russia of the regions. He surveys regionalist impulses in Siberia and other parts of the country, considers the movements that have already emerged to advance their ideas, and says he backs all of them even if that means that some of them might decide to pursue independence from the center. Shiropayev has received some support from these regionalists – for example, the equally detailed article of Mikhail Kulekhov on Siberian neo-oblastnichesto at which points out that Siberians “do not want the collapse of the Russian Federation but we do not fear it either.”

But his opponents, the Russian patriots, have attacked his ideas in a series of increasingly sharp, even vitriolic articles over the last month in the Russian “nationalist” – that is, “patriotic” – media. Typical of these is an essay by Vladimir Karpets that was posted online October 21st. He accuses Shiropayev personally and those who have published his writings of betraying the country, of promoting its disintegration, and of being hirelings of various international forces who see Russian regionalism as a weapon to destroy the Russian state, the only entity capable of defending the Russian people. To block the machinations of this group, he continues, Russia needs to establish “a genuine anti-separatist front,” on that will differ from the National Salvation Front only in that it will be directed not against the authorities but in support and under the guidance of them. And having created that front, Karpets continues, Moscow should move to create a “Yezhov-style Empire” – a reference to Stalin’s notorious secret police chief – to ensure that the Russian state that Shiropayev and his like want to put in the grave will in fact survive and prosper.

In terms of argument, Shiropayev certainly has the advantage, but in terms of Russian politics under Vladimir Putin, Karpets and those who continue to deify the state at the cost of keeping the Russians from a nation like any other would seem to have the greater influence.

The Streetwise Professor completes the thought:

This is one creepy statement from an interview with Oleg Shvarsman of Finansgroup:

This structure was created in 2004, after President [Vladimir] Putin said that big business should have a social responsibility to the state. At that time our colleagues from the FSB decided that an organization must appear that will incline, bend, torment, and lead the various and sundry Khordokovskies toward social activeness.”

This reminds me of the treatment of Winston Smith in 1984. Or perhaps better yet, it reminds me of The Captain in Cool Hand Luke:

You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set ’cause you’re gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT.

Shvartsman’s statement drips with irony–intentional or unintentional, I know not. For it is obvious that it was social activeness that was Khodorkovsky’s downfall. But not the right kind of social activeness. And just as The Captain was making an example of Luke (”(To the other inmates) Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke?”), Putin and the FSB were making an example of Khodorkovsky for others who might have thoughts of the wrong kind of social activeness. And from the looks of things, the example was well taken.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Enemies

Paul Goble reports that some Russians understand who Russia’s real enemies really are:

Russian patriotism and Russian nationalism are generally treated as synonyms or at least as mutually reinforcing phenomena, both in nearly all cases equally at odds with political democracy and economic liberalism and thus anathema both to Russian reformers and to others who wish Russia and Russians well. But in fact, the two ideologies rest on completely different foundations, with Russian patriotism focusing primarily on the state and Russian nationalism on the Russian people as a community. And consequently, some of the variants of each often are very much at odds with those of the other.

A programmatic article by a Russian nationalist a month ago calling attention to this divide has reopened this debate. And it shows few signs of any quick resolution but nonetheless says a great deal not only about where Russians and the Russian state are now but also about where they could be and are likely to be in the future. In that essay, Aleksei Shiropayev argues that Russian nationalism properly understood will promote democracy, capitalism, and integration with Europe, thereby challenging a large number of the core beliefs of Russian patriots and of those Russian nationalists who follow them. Russian patriotism, he argues, presents itself as “the true service of the State” be it tsarist, Soviet or post-Soviet because “ontologically all these versions of the Empire are ontologically the same.” And consequently, it suggests that “the historic meaning of the existence of the Russian people” is sacrificial service to the Imperial Leviathan.”

“According to the patriots,” he continues, the Russian people do not have their own fate: their fate is [linked to that] of the supra-national hyper-State, of the fate of the empire. Not to rule in the empire but to be its eternal servant, its faceless cement; bearing without complaint the burden of imperial ‘super tasks” rather than acting for itself.” That is the “imperial ‘liturgy’” of the Russian patriots, Shiropayev insists, a doctrine that reduces Russians to “eternal slaves,” permanent collective farmers,” and forever “proletarians” who must be herded forward by an all-powerful state entity that alone can decide where they should go. Russian nationalists, on the other hand, focus on the Russian people, their needs and aspirations, but because Russian patriots and not they have been in charge so long, Shiropayev continues, their approach is best presented in terms of how different it is from the latter. Because they focus on the people rather than the state, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists – or at least the part of the Russian nationalist spectrum his “national democrats” represent – are “non-imperial” in principle. “Not through the restoration of the Empire lies the path to the Russian future, but across the corpse of the empire.”

“Thanks to the Empire, the Russian people has not become a nation,” he insists, and to change that, Shiropayev continues, it is vitally important to “open the sluice gates of regional development,” to promote “a bourgeois state,” and to integrate with Europe, must as the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic already have. The first task ahead of Russians, he argues, is “overcoming the fetishization of the state” by advancing the claims of the people over which the state has ruled. And the most effective way to do that is to promote the creation of regional governments that are closer to the people. These units could then perhaps form a Confederation, Shiropayev argues, and with that kind of a political arrangement, Russians would be in a position to develop the kind of economic and political system that would allow them to join Europe rather than stand in opposition to it as the Russian patriots always insist.
According to Shiropayev, Boris Yeltsin understood this point early on. In a speech to the Urals Polytechnic Institute in February 1990, the future president said that it should be possible to form within the Russian Federation “seven Russian republics: Central Russia, the North, the South, theVolga, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.”

For Russian nationalists, Shiropayev argues, that action makes Yeltsin a hero, but for the Russian patriots, it makes him a destroyer of the state. And for them, Yeltsin is worthy of praise only for his willingness to launch of a war against the Chechen drive for independence. Indeed, Shiropayev continues, if Russian nationalists have any reason to dislike Yeltsin, it is this: “he preserved” the core part of the empire, “its initial place des armes, its bastion of revenge – the Russian Federation,” rather than allowing that entity to disintegrate and the Russian people to become true historical actors. Russian nationalists offer the Russian people the opportunity to “live and work for themselves and not for the imperial-bureaucratic ‘uncle,’ to be guided by their own real interests and not phantom ideological construction like the ‘Third Rome’ or the ‘Third International,’” to escape “the sacralized slavery of the empire and live in a bourgeois democratic state, “a Russian Europe.’” In short, Shiropayev says, Russian nationalists want Russians to practice “national egotism and self-respect instead of imperial internationalism and the belittling of themselves,” to escape from “the idea of Russia” and begin to live on their own, and thus to “begin at last” to make their own “Russian history.”

In the course of his long, two-part essay, Shiropayev discusses each of these points in detail as well as making a wide variety of comments on Russian history and the views of his ideological opponents, the Russian patriots. But his most controversial remarks concern his open support for the rise of a Russia of the regions. He surveys regionalist impulses in Siberia and other parts of the country, considers the movements that have already emerged to advance their ideas, and says he backs all of them even if that means that some of them might decide to pursue independence from the center. Shiropayev has received some support from these regionalists – for example, the equally detailed article of Mikhail Kulekhov on Siberian neo-oblastnichesto at which points out that Siberians “do not want the collapse of the Russian Federation but we do not fear it either.”

But his opponents, the Russian patriots, have attacked his ideas in a series of increasingly sharp, even vitriolic articles over the last month in the Russian “nationalist” – that is, “patriotic” – media. Typical of these is an essay by Vladimir Karpets that was posted online October 21st. He accuses Shiropayev personally and those who have published his writings of betraying the country, of promoting its disintegration, and of being hirelings of various international forces who see Russian regionalism as a weapon to destroy the Russian state, the only entity capable of defending the Russian people. To block the machinations of this group, he continues, Russia needs to establish “a genuine anti-separatist front,” on that will differ from the National Salvation Front only in that it will be directed not against the authorities but in support and under the guidance of them. And having created that front, Karpets continues, Moscow should move to create a “Yezhov-style Empire” – a reference to Stalin’s notorious secret police chief – to ensure that the Russian state that Shiropayev and his like want to put in the grave will in fact survive and prosper.

In terms of argument, Shiropayev certainly has the advantage, but in terms of Russian politics under Vladimir Putin, Karpets and those who continue to deify the state at the cost of keeping the Russians from a nation like any other would seem to have the greater influence.

The Streetwise Professor completes the thought:

This is one creepy statement from an interview with Oleg Shvarsman of Finansgroup:

This structure was created in 2004, after President [Vladimir] Putin said that big business should have a social responsibility to the state. At that time our colleagues from the FSB decided that an organization must appear that will incline, bend, torment, and lead the various and sundry Khordokovskies toward social activeness.”

This reminds me of the treatment of Winston Smith in 1984. Or perhaps better yet, it reminds me of The Captain in Cool Hand Luke:

You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set ’cause you’re gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT.

Shvartsman’s statement drips with irony–intentional or unintentional, I know not. For it is obvious that it was social activeness that was Khodorkovsky’s downfall. But not the right kind of social activeness. And just as The Captain was making an example of Luke (”(To the other inmates) Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke?”), Putin and the FSB were making an example of Khodorkovsky for others who might have thoughts of the wrong kind of social activeness. And from the looks of things, the example was well taken.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Zhirinvosky Smears All Britons, Queen

If any further proof of Andrei Lugovoi’s guilt were needed, the lunatic Vladimir Zhirinovksky has stepped forward to provide it. From his crazed nationalist ramblings, it’s clear the Kremlin knows it has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar and it’s lame constitutional canard that Lugovoi cannot be extradited to Britain for trial has been blown to smithereens. Now, it scrambles like a den of rats for a new warren to hide in. The Moscow Times reports:

Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky on Tuesday said Britain was a nation of cheats and bandits and had no right to seek the handover of Andrei Lugovoi, a State Duma candidate for his party. Lugovoi, a former security services officer, is wanted by British prosecutors on suspicion of killing Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko. He will be a candidate for the LDPR in Duma elections on Dec. 2. Sitting next to Zhirinovsky at a news briefing, Lugovoi disavowed a statement made Monday that he would like to become president, saying: “Vladimir Volfovich [Zhirinovsky] has all the qualities for the job.” Minutes later Zhirinovsky — known for his flamboyant and sometimes violent rhetoric — flew into a rage when a Western journalist mentioned the murder of Litvinenko. “Britain, you keep the whole world soaked in blood, the whole world will hate you,” yelled Zhirinovsky, who is a deputy speaker in the Duma.

Litvinenko died in a London hospital on Nov. 23 after receiving a dose of radioactive polonium-210, a rare and highly toxic isotope. Lugovoi has always said he is innocent. Zhirinovsky said London could not prosecute Lugovoi because Britain itself was providing a safe haven for Kremlin opponents such as tycoon Boris Berezovsky. “You cover cheats, extremists and criminals,” he said. “You are all accomplices, all of you are similar bandits and criminals, your whole government, together with your queen,” he said, adding that his party was “most loved by ordinary Russians” and would win one-fifth of all seats in the next Duma. He blamed Britain for backing the Bolsheviks during the 1917 revolution, financing Chechen rebels and opening the second front too late during World War II. “Half of your embassy should be thrown out of Moscow,” he barked at the reporter representing a U.S. media outlet. “They are not diplomats, all of them are spies. … You in Britain are good for nothing, you only plundered Europe.”

“Britain will disappear under the water one day,” he said. “And it will serve you right … Even your sheep die every day and every hour due to your sickening British policies.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

This is Putinism

Blogger Paul Goble explains the horrifying nature of Putinism in today’s Russia:

Young Russians inflamed by radical nationalist and xenophobic ideas are more numerous today than at any point since sociologists began studying the phenomenon in the late 1980s, with some investigators suggesting that there may now be as many as 500,000 Russian young people involved in extremist groupings.

And the number of such young people aged between 13 and 30 and especially between 15 and 17 is increasing rapidly, especially in the major cities in the hitherto predominantly Russian European portion of the country, an article in today’s “Novyye izvestiya” reported.

The exact number of young Russians who are now extremists remains very much a matter of dispute, in some respects because of problems with the available data and in others because of definition: Are all violent football fans to be included? Or are those without a clearly articulated nationalist ideology to be excluded?

Aleksandr Brod of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau gives the highest number – half a million – while others including the SOVA Center’s Galina Kozhevnikova give lower ones, with “no more than 60-70,000” real extremists surrounded by a much larger penumbra of hangers-on. But the students of this subject appear to agree on three important things: First, they all say, the number of young Russian extremists is growing and now is at a level higher than at any time since this phenomenon began to be tracked in 1988, with no sign that this rise is about to end anytime soon.

Second, they insist, a major reason why he number has increased because over the last 10 to 15 years is that the young have concluded that they can act on their extremist views with little fear of punishment because many in positions of power back their ideas or at least will help to protect those who manifest them.

And third, extremist attitudes are far more widespread among young people than in the population as a whole. According to the Levada Center’s Lev Gudkov, some four to six percent of the total Russian population has Nazi-like extremist views, but among the young, the share of extremists may be as high as 15 percent.

With the passing of time, some of these young people may outgrow their radical and xenophobic nationalism, but given the large numbers of those now infected, many will not – and that will pose yet another challenge to already embattled political liberties in the Russian Federation.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Happy Birthday, Adolf!

Over the weekend, the Kremlin violently attacked peaceful protest marchers in Russia’s two major cities. Kommersant reported:

The Moscow Helsinki Group and other human rights organizations are going to send information they have gathered about beatings and unsanctioned arrests to the Prosecutor General’s Office. Other Russia leaders also sent appeals to EU and U.S. authorities, asking them to deny visas for those responsible for the suppression of the rallies. The list includes Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko and some other officials. A group of Other Russia activists are going to take a stroll along Rozhdestvensky Boulevard in Moscow on Sunday to denounce last week’s violence.

On Tuesday, the International Air Transport Association reported that Russia is the most dangerous place in the world to board a Western-made civilian aircraft.

On Wednesday, Russian police raided the offices of an NGO that trains Russian journalists how to actually report the news as opposed to parrotting the Kremlin line (full details below). It was also reported that Russia’s wealthy continue to gobble up the nation’s resources at a rate six times faster than the nation as a whole is growing, re-creating the economic situation that existed at the time of the Bolshevik revolution, while millions languish in dire poverty. The heads of the European Union declared that the EU-Russia relationship is at its lowest ebb since the fall of communism. Cold War is now openly discussed between America and Russia. The speaker of Russia’s version of the House of Representatives told the body this week that America got what it deserved in the Virginia Tech killings: “The situation where a country dictates rules of behavior to other countries, but cannot keep its own people in order, does raise questions.” The first cold war, of course, destroyed the USSR utterly.

On Thursday, despite all that, a new public opinion poll in Russia showed Vladimir Putin enjoying 79% public appoval, with two-thirds of respondents calling for him to remain in office for a third term.

As if to put a cherry on top of all this whipped cream, today, and all weekend long, dark-skinned students will be confined to their dormitories in Russia in order to allow Russia’s vast hoard of neo-nazis to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday without blood in streets. Forces of the “Other Russia” protest coalition, of course, continue to be banned from marching. The Associated Press reports the details:

A leading Moscow university ordered its foreign students on Thursday to remain in their dormitories for the next three days because of fears of ethnic violence before Adolf Hitler’s birthday this weekend, students said.

Hundreds of students at the prestigious Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy were told to stock up on food and warned they would not be let out of the dormitories through Saturday in an attempt to protect them amid a marked rise in hate crimes.

In the past, some members of ultra nationalist groups have marked Hitler’s birthday with attacks on ethnic minorities.

“It is nice that the university is taking care of us, but on the other hand it’s absurd that our freedom is being limited because of some militant groups,” said Liah Ganeline, a second-year medical student from Israel.

“In a normal, democratic country the authorities don’t obey the interests of these groups, but on the contrary protect people from them,” she told The Associated Press by telephone.

Only practicing physicians in training were allowed to leave the building, she said, along with students who had signed a statement saying they were responsible for their own safety and had received approval from university officials. Others were given permission to miss classes.

Ganeline said authorities have locked down her dormitory in southern Moscow_ which houses about 500 students from Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus _ every April 21 for the past several years. She said officials call it a fire safety drill.

Ganeline said, however, that all students were aware of the real reason, and noted that someone had scrawled the word “skinheads” over an announcement of the lockdown posted on a dormitory wall. Last year, she said, a group of skinheads threw firebombs at the dormitory building after shouting offensive slogans and giving the Nazi salute.

Sergei Baranov, acting dean of the university’s foreign students department, said the school was conducting emergency drills through Saturday. Asked why only foreign students were involved in the exercise, Baranov said the university was at the same time trying to protect students from possible violence. “We are trying to kill two birds with one stone _ these days the danger of some incidents is higher.”

Ganeline bought two cartons of milk, four containers of yogurt, apples, corn and rolls of toilet paper and prepared to spend the next three days isolated in the dorm with fellow students.

“It’s horrible that this is happening,” she said, referring to the rising xenophobic sentiments in Russia. She added that another university dormitory housing several hundred students in central Moscow was subject to similar restrictions.

In the past, Moscow authorities have closed down some outdoor markets, where many traders are dark-skinned foreigners, for several days before the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday to avoid violence.

Russia has seen a marked rise in racism and xenophobia over the past several years, with nonwhite or dark-skinned residents, foreigners and Jews bearing the brunt of the violence.

According to the human rights center Sova, which monitors xenophobia, 53 people were killed in 2006 and 460 others were injured in apparent hate crimes.

Activists say authorities do little or nothing to combat the problem and that obvious hate crimes are regularly classified as mere hooliganism.

Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow Bureau for Human rights, said authorities should do more to prosecute hate groups and protect foreign students rather than subject them to restrictions.

“The activity of radicals is significantly increasing,” he said. “But the decisions of the university officials … must not violate the freedom of movement of foreigners.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

COWARDS!!! Now, they’re going after Mickey D! Who’s next, Mickey Mouse?

Well, it’s come to this. Russia has launched a violent attack on a McDonald’s restaurant, lumping itself once and for all in with the crazed banana republics of the world whose cowardly denizens lack the guts to confront the American military (or any target that can defend itself) and so like the pathetic little worms they are launch attacks on defenseless commercial establishments. Can it be a coincidence that this attack follows so closely on the heels of “President” Putin’s crazed vitriolic attack on the U.S. in Munich? One thing is for sure: You can’t say LR didn’t try to warn you. Reuter’s reports:

Russian police investigating an explosion at a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg doubt it was an act of terrorism, media reported on Monday. The Sunday night explosion injured six people and rekindled memories of a wave of attacks by Chechen separatists across Russia in the 1990s. But there have been no big attacks outside the Caucasus region for more than two years and a St Petersburg police spokesman said there was no immediate reasons to believe that the McDonald’s bomb was one of those. “At the moment the main priority version is hooliganism,” the spokesman told Interfax news agency. Police have said they were checking other McDonald’s restaurants in St Petersburg for explosives. City prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said late on Sunday the explosion at the outlet on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main thoroughfare, had been caused by an unidentified substance.

“Hooliganism”? What would Russians say if a Russia-identified target of this kind was attacked in Chechnya? Would it still be “hooliganism”? It’s obvious that the most likely explanation is either a violent act of anti-Americanism (confirming Russia’s deep-seated hatred of the West) or an act of terrorism connected with Chechnya (confirming Russia’s inability to pacify the breakaway republic), yet the Kremlin chooses to attempt to pass it off as “hooliganism” as if the outside world consists of nothing but witless fools.

The Moscow Times has more (including a picture of the scene, at right):

A bomb exploded late Sunday in a McDonald’s restaurant in central St. Petersburg, injuring six people in what St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko called a “monstrous act of vandalism.” The explosive device was hidden under a seat at the restaurant on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, Yulia Denisova, a city prosecutors’ spokeswoman, said Monday. The bomb was detonated shortly after 8 p.m., she said.

Five women and one man, a German tourist, were hospitalized with various burns and injuries, Denisova said. “The German tourist and three of the women were treated and released, and the others are in stable condition,” she said. Prosecutors are classifying the crime as attempted murder on two or more persons.

As of Monday, no suspects had been detained, Denisova said. She declined to give further details about the attack, citing the ongoing investigation. St. Petersburg police could not be reached for comment. The explosion has left many in the city on edge. Some of the country’s most notorious terrorist attacks have been preceded by smaller scale, though deadly, explosions, including a 2002 blast at a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. Five Chechen men were convicted in 2004 in Moscow City Court for the October 2002 car bombing outside the McDonald’s restaurant near Moscow’s Yugo-Zapadanaya metro station, in the southwest part of the city. That attack left one person dead. Prosecutors called the blast part of a series of attacks planned by Chechen rebels. Those attacks culminated with the seizure of hundreds of hostages at the Dubrovka Theater, four days after the McDonald’s explosion.

Another series of attacks in 2004 began with a small bus stop bombing on Kashirskoye Shosse, in Moscow, and ended with the three-day Beslan school siege that left hundreds of people dead, most of them children. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for those attacks.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Matviyenko said there was no evidence, to date, pointing to an “organized campaign. Most likely it was the work of extremist hooligans,” she added, Interfax reported.

Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly, told Interfax that the blast could have been an attempt to destabilize the city ahead of regional elections next month. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that police officers inspected all McDonald’s restaurants in the city following the blast. Shoigu said a timely and coordinated response by rescue workers helped prevent a fire from breaking out, Interfax reported. The blast victims included two girls, aged 16 and 17, and three women, aged 19, 25 and 46, Fontanka.ru reported. The German tourist injured in the explosion was 38, the web site said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

COWARDS!!! Now, they’re going after Mickey D! Who’s next, Mickey Mouse?

Well, it’s come to this. Russia has launched a violent attack on a McDonald’s restaurant, lumping itself once and for all in with the crazed banana republics of the world whose cowardly denizens lack the guts to confront the American military (or any target that can defend itself) and so like the pathetic little worms they are launch attacks on defenseless commercial establishments. Can it be a coincidence that this attack follows so closely on the heels of “President” Putin’s crazed vitriolic attack on the U.S. in Munich? One thing is for sure: You can’t say LR didn’t try to warn you. Reuter’s reports:

Russian police investigating an explosion at a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg doubt it was an act of terrorism, media reported on Monday. The Sunday night explosion injured six people and rekindled memories of a wave of attacks by Chechen separatists across Russia in the 1990s. But there have been no big attacks outside the Caucasus region for more than two years and a St Petersburg police spokesman said there was no immediate reasons to believe that the McDonald’s bomb was one of those. “At the moment the main priority version is hooliganism,” the spokesman told Interfax news agency. Police have said they were checking other McDonald’s restaurants in St Petersburg for explosives. City prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said late on Sunday the explosion at the outlet on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main thoroughfare, had been caused by an unidentified substance.

“Hooliganism”? What would Russians say if a Russia-identified target of this kind was attacked in Chechnya? Would it still be “hooliganism”? It’s obvious that the most likely explanation is either a violent act of anti-Americanism (confirming Russia’s deep-seated hatred of the West) or an act of terrorism connected with Chechnya (confirming Russia’s inability to pacify the breakaway republic), yet the Kremlin chooses to attempt to pass it off as “hooliganism” as if the outside world consists of nothing but witless fools.

The Moscow Times has more (including a picture of the scene, at right):

A bomb exploded late Sunday in a McDonald’s restaurant in central St. Petersburg, injuring six people in what St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko called a “monstrous act of vandalism.” The explosive device was hidden under a seat at the restaurant on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, Yulia Denisova, a city prosecutors’ spokeswoman, said Monday. The bomb was detonated shortly after 8 p.m., she said.

Five women and one man, a German tourist, were hospitalized with various burns and injuries, Denisova said. “The German tourist and three of the women were treated and released, and the others are in stable condition,” she said. Prosecutors are classifying the crime as attempted murder on two or more persons.

As of Monday, no suspects had been detained, Denisova said. She declined to give further details about the attack, citing the ongoing investigation. St. Petersburg police could not be reached for comment. The explosion has left many in the city on edge. Some of the country’s most notorious terrorist attacks have been preceded by smaller scale, though deadly, explosions, including a 2002 blast at a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. Five Chechen men were convicted in 2004 in Moscow City Court for the October 2002 car bombing outside the McDonald’s restaurant near Moscow’s Yugo-Zapadanaya metro station, in the southwest part of the city. That attack left one person dead. Prosecutors called the blast part of a series of attacks planned by Chechen rebels. Those attacks culminated with the seizure of hundreds of hostages at the Dubrovka Theater, four days after the McDonald’s explosion.

Another series of attacks in 2004 began with a small bus stop bombing on Kashirskoye Shosse, in Moscow, and ended with the three-day Beslan school siege that left hundreds of people dead, most of them children. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for those attacks.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Matviyenko said there was no evidence, to date, pointing to an “organized campaign. Most likely it was the work of extremist hooligans,” she added, Interfax reported.

Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly, told Interfax that the blast could have been an attempt to destabilize the city ahead of regional elections next month. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that police officers inspected all McDonald’s restaurants in the city following the blast. Shoigu said a timely and coordinated response by rescue workers helped prevent a fire from breaking out, Interfax reported. The blast victims included two girls, aged 16 and 17, and three women, aged 19, 25 and 46, Fontanka.ru reported. The German tourist injured in the explosion was 38, the web site said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

COWARDS!!! Now, they’re going after Mickey D! Who’s next, Mickey Mouse?

Well, it’s come to this. Russia has launched a violent attack on a McDonald’s restaurant, lumping itself once and for all in with the crazed banana republics of the world whose cowardly denizens lack the guts to confront the American military (or any target that can defend itself) and so like the pathetic little worms they are launch attacks on defenseless commercial establishments. Can it be a coincidence that this attack follows so closely on the heels of “President” Putin’s crazed vitriolic attack on the U.S. in Munich? One thing is for sure: You can’t say LR didn’t try to warn you. Reuter’s reports:

Russian police investigating an explosion at a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg doubt it was an act of terrorism, media reported on Monday. The Sunday night explosion injured six people and rekindled memories of a wave of attacks by Chechen separatists across Russia in the 1990s. But there have been no big attacks outside the Caucasus region for more than two years and a St Petersburg police spokesman said there was no immediate reasons to believe that the McDonald’s bomb was one of those. “At the moment the main priority version is hooliganism,” the spokesman told Interfax news agency. Police have said they were checking other McDonald’s restaurants in St Petersburg for explosives. City prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said late on Sunday the explosion at the outlet on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main thoroughfare, had been caused by an unidentified substance.

“Hooliganism”? What would Russians say if a Russia-identified target of this kind was attacked in Chechnya? Would it still be “hooliganism”? It’s obvious that the most likely explanation is either a violent act of anti-Americanism (confirming Russia’s deep-seated hatred of the West) or an act of terrorism connected with Chechnya (confirming Russia’s inability to pacify the breakaway republic), yet the Kremlin chooses to attempt to pass it off as “hooliganism” as if the outside world consists of nothing but witless fools.

The Moscow Times has more (including a picture of the scene, at right):

A bomb exploded late Sunday in a McDonald’s restaurant in central St. Petersburg, injuring six people in what St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko called a “monstrous act of vandalism.” The explosive device was hidden under a seat at the restaurant on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, Yulia Denisova, a city prosecutors’ spokeswoman, said Monday. The bomb was detonated shortly after 8 p.m., she said.

Five women and one man, a German tourist, were hospitalized with various burns and injuries, Denisova said. “The German tourist and three of the women were treated and released, and the others are in stable condition,” she said. Prosecutors are classifying the crime as attempted murder on two or more persons.

As of Monday, no suspects had been detained, Denisova said. She declined to give further details about the attack, citing the ongoing investigation. St. Petersburg police could not be reached for comment. The explosion has left many in the city on edge. Some of the country’s most notorious terrorist attacks have been preceded by smaller scale, though deadly, explosions, including a 2002 blast at a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. Five Chechen men were convicted in 2004 in Moscow City Court for the October 2002 car bombing outside the McDonald’s restaurant near Moscow’s Yugo-Zapadanaya metro station, in the southwest part of the city. That attack left one person dead. Prosecutors called the blast part of a series of attacks planned by Chechen rebels. Those attacks culminated with the seizure of hundreds of hostages at the Dubrovka Theater, four days after the McDonald’s explosion.

Another series of attacks in 2004 began with a small bus stop bombing on Kashirskoye Shosse, in Moscow, and ended with the three-day Beslan school siege that left hundreds of people dead, most of them children. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for those attacks.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Matviyenko said there was no evidence, to date, pointing to an “organized campaign. Most likely it was the work of extremist hooligans,” she added, Interfax reported.

Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly, told Interfax that the blast could have been an attempt to destabilize the city ahead of regional elections next month. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that police officers inspected all McDonald’s restaurants in the city following the blast. Shoigu said a timely and coordinated response by rescue workers helped prevent a fire from breaking out, Interfax reported. The blast victims included two girls, aged 16 and 17, and three women, aged 19, 25 and 46, Fontanka.ru reported. The German tourist injured in the explosion was 38, the web site said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

COWARDS!!! Now, they’re going after Mickey D! Who’s next, Mickey Mouse?

Well, it’s come to this. Russia has launched a violent attack on a McDonald’s restaurant, lumping itself once and for all in with the crazed banana republics of the world whose cowardly denizens lack the guts to confront the American military (or any target that can defend itself) and so like the pathetic little worms they are launch attacks on defenseless commercial establishments. Can it be a coincidence that this attack follows so closely on the heels of “President” Putin’s crazed vitriolic attack on the U.S. in Munich? One thing is for sure: You can’t say LR didn’t try to warn you. Reuter’s reports:

Russian police investigating an explosion at a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg doubt it was an act of terrorism, media reported on Monday. The Sunday night explosion injured six people and rekindled memories of a wave of attacks by Chechen separatists across Russia in the 1990s. But there have been no big attacks outside the Caucasus region for more than two years and a St Petersburg police spokesman said there was no immediate reasons to believe that the McDonald’s bomb was one of those. “At the moment the main priority version is hooliganism,” the spokesman told Interfax news agency. Police have said they were checking other McDonald’s restaurants in St Petersburg for explosives. City prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said late on Sunday the explosion at the outlet on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main thoroughfare, had been caused by an unidentified substance.

“Hooliganism”? What would Russians say if a Russia-identified target of this kind was attacked in Chechnya? Would it still be “hooliganism”? It’s obvious that the most likely explanation is either a violent act of anti-Americanism (confirming Russia’s deep-seated hatred of the West) or an act of terrorism connected with Chechnya (confirming Russia’s inability to pacify the breakaway republic), yet the Kremlin chooses to attempt to pass it off as “hooliganism” as if the outside world consists of nothing but witless fools.

The Moscow Times has more (including a picture of the scene, at right):

A bomb exploded late Sunday in a McDonald’s restaurant in central St. Petersburg, injuring six people in what St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko called a “monstrous act of vandalism.” The explosive device was hidden under a seat at the restaurant on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, Yulia Denisova, a city prosecutors’ spokeswoman, said Monday. The bomb was detonated shortly after 8 p.m., she said.

Five women and one man, a German tourist, were hospitalized with various burns and injuries, Denisova said. “The German tourist and three of the women were treated and released, and the others are in stable condition,” she said. Prosecutors are classifying the crime as attempted murder on two or more persons.

As of Monday, no suspects had been detained, Denisova said. She declined to give further details about the attack, citing the ongoing investigation. St. Petersburg police could not be reached for comment. The explosion has left many in the city on edge. Some of the country’s most notorious terrorist attacks have been preceded by smaller scale, though deadly, explosions, including a 2002 blast at a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. Five Chechen men were convicted in 2004 in Moscow City Court for the October 2002 car bombing outside the McDonald’s restaurant near Moscow’s Yugo-Zapadanaya metro station, in the southwest part of the city. That attack left one person dead. Prosecutors called the blast part of a series of attacks planned by Chechen rebels. Those attacks culminated with the seizure of hundreds of hostages at the Dubrovka Theater, four days after the McDonald’s explosion.

Another series of attacks in 2004 began with a small bus stop bombing on Kashirskoye Shosse, in Moscow, and ended with the three-day Beslan school siege that left hundreds of people dead, most of them children. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for those attacks.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Matviyenko said there was no evidence, to date, pointing to an “organized campaign. Most likely it was the work of extremist hooligans,” she added, Interfax reported.

Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly, told Interfax that the blast could have been an attempt to destabilize the city ahead of regional elections next month. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that police officers inspected all McDonald’s restaurants in the city following the blast. Shoigu said a timely and coordinated response by rescue workers helped prevent a fire from breaking out, Interfax reported. The blast victims included two girls, aged 16 and 17, and three women, aged 19, 25 and 46, Fontanka.ru reported. The German tourist injured in the explosion was 38, the web site said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

COWARDS!!! Now, they’re going after Mickey D! Who’s next, Mickey Mouse?

Well, it’s come to this. Russia has launched a violent attack on a McDonald’s restaurant, lumping itself once and for all in with the crazed banana republics of the world whose cowardly denizens lack the guts to confront the American military (or any target that can defend itself) and so like the pathetic little worms they are launch attacks on defenseless commercial establishments. Can it be a coincidence that this attack follows so closely on the heels of “President” Putin’s crazed vitriolic attack on the U.S. in Munich? One thing is for sure: You can’t say LR didn’t try to warn you. Reuter’s reports:

Russian police investigating an explosion at a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg doubt it was an act of terrorism, media reported on Monday. The Sunday night explosion injured six people and rekindled memories of a wave of attacks by Chechen separatists across Russia in the 1990s. But there have been no big attacks outside the Caucasus region for more than two years and a St Petersburg police spokesman said there was no immediate reasons to believe that the McDonald’s bomb was one of those. “At the moment the main priority version is hooliganism,” the spokesman told Interfax news agency. Police have said they were checking other McDonald’s restaurants in St Petersburg for explosives. City prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said late on Sunday the explosion at the outlet on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main thoroughfare, had been caused by an unidentified substance.

“Hooliganism”? What would Russians say if a Russia-identified target of this kind was attacked in Chechnya? Would it still be “hooliganism”? It’s obvious that the most likely explanation is either a violent act of anti-Americanism (confirming Russia’s deep-seated hatred of the West) or an act of terrorism connected with Chechnya (confirming Russia’s inability to pacify the breakaway republic), yet the Kremlin chooses to attempt to pass it off as “hooliganism” as if the outside world consists of nothing but witless fools.

The Moscow Times has more (including a picture of the scene, at right):

A bomb exploded late Sunday in a McDonald’s restaurant in central St. Petersburg, injuring six people in what St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko called a “monstrous act of vandalism.” The explosive device was hidden under a seat at the restaurant on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, Yulia Denisova, a city prosecutors’ spokeswoman, said Monday. The bomb was detonated shortly after 8 p.m., she said.

Five women and one man, a German tourist, were hospitalized with various burns and injuries, Denisova said. “The German tourist and three of the women were treated and released, and the others are in stable condition,” she said. Prosecutors are classifying the crime as attempted murder on two or more persons.

As of Monday, no suspects had been detained, Denisova said. She declined to give further details about the attack, citing the ongoing investigation. St. Petersburg police could not be reached for comment. The explosion has left many in the city on edge. Some of the country’s most notorious terrorist attacks have been preceded by smaller scale, though deadly, explosions, including a 2002 blast at a McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow. Five Chechen men were convicted in 2004 in Moscow City Court for the October 2002 car bombing outside the McDonald’s restaurant near Moscow’s Yugo-Zapadanaya metro station, in the southwest part of the city. That attack left one person dead. Prosecutors called the blast part of a series of attacks planned by Chechen rebels. Those attacks culminated with the seizure of hundreds of hostages at the Dubrovka Theater, four days after the McDonald’s explosion.

Another series of attacks in 2004 began with a small bus stop bombing on Kashirskoye Shosse, in Moscow, and ended with the three-day Beslan school siege that left hundreds of people dead, most of them children. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev took credit for those attacks.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Matviyenko said there was no evidence, to date, pointing to an “organized campaign. Most likely it was the work of extremist hooligans,” she added, Interfax reported.

Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly, told Interfax that the blast could have been an attempt to destabilize the city ahead of regional elections next month. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that police officers inspected all McDonald’s restaurants in the city following the blast. Shoigu said a timely and coordinated response by rescue workers helped prevent a fire from breaking out, Interfax reported. The blast victims included two girls, aged 16 and 17, and three women, aged 19, 25 and 46, Fontanka.ru reported. The German tourist injured in the explosion was 38, the web site said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Rise of the Skinheads

CNN: Whats Going On In Russia? – video powered by Metacafe

CNN reports on the rise of the skinheads in Russia

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Crazed Russian Nationalism on the Rampage

The Moscow Times reports on yet another explosion of crazed nationalism in Russia, this time aimed at tiny Estonia’s desire to remove a monument (pictured below, right) to Russian soldiers from it’s main city. This is like the French objecting to Russia removing a monument to Napoleon from downtown Moscow on the grounds the Napoleon heroically tried to free Russians from their evil Tsar (who, after all, Russians would soon depose on their own initiative). Note the comment by the Russian Duma that Estonia’s action “will obviously lead to … the further alienation of the peoples of Russia and Estonia.” They say it like they think Estonians would consider that a BAD thing. Pictured above right are members of the pro-Kremlin youth cult “Nashi” (“us Slavic Russians”) dressed up in World War II soldiers’ unforms and protesting the Estonian “outrage.” Ah yes, the idealism of youth. Today’s Russians seem every bit as detached from reality and hell-bent on self-destruction as were their Soviet counterparts.

Russian lawmakers launched a scathing attack on Wednesday against the Estonian government’s plans to relocate Soviet soldiers’ graves and a monument to the Red Army in downtown Tallinn. “Estonia is meddling with victims and memorials. This is a historic mistake,” Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said after the upper house voted unanimously in favor of a resolution condemning the relocation, Interfax reported.

In its resolution, addressed to the governments of all former Soviet republics and European countries the Federation Council called a law permitting the relocation of military graves “an attempt to legalize fascism.”

“This will obviously lead to … the further alienation of the peoples of Russia and Estonia,” the resolution stated.

Lawmakers were not alone Wednesday in blasting Estonia’s intention to move the graves and a Soviet-era bronze statue of a Red Army soldier that hails the Red Army as liberators of Estonia from German occupation. On Manezh Square, hundreds of members of the United Russia party and the pro-Kremlin youth organizations Young Russia and Nashi protested the proposed move. “The removal of the memorial amounts to the destruction of the memory of the liberators,” Nashi spokeswoman Anastasia Suslova said. Suslova said that if the statue were removed, a member of Nashi would stand in place of the statue as “a living monument to the liberator.”

In Tallinn on Wednesday, the Estonian parliament considered a bill on the “removal of forbidden structures,” which would have given authorities the right to move the Red Army statue, where many people gather to celebrate Victory Day each year. Raivo Jarvi, a member and acting spokesman of the Estonian Reform Party, said by telephone Wednesday that the bill would also ban “structures that glorify the occupation of the Republic of Estonia,” such as the Red Army statue. Jarvi insisted the statue would not be destroyed, however, but moved to a Soviet-era seaside military cemetery. “People are offended by the presence of the monument in the center of the city,” he said. The bill failed on a second reading, however. “The bill was rejected in its present form,” Estonian parliament spokesman Gunnar Baal said. Baal denied that Russian protests had influenced the outcome of Wednesday’s vote. “A few more details need to be added before it comes up for another vote,” he said.

Estonia’s parliament did give preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill that would forbid the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols, Interfax reported.

Also in Tallinn, members of various Russian organizations submitted a petition to Estonian President Toomas Hendrich signed by some 17,000 residents who oppose the removal of the Red Army statue, Interfax reported.

The remains of several Soviet soldiers are believed to lie in unmarked graves under a bus stop located a few meters away from the statue at a busy intersection in central Tallinn.

On Jan. 10, Estonia passed into law a bill on the protection of military cemeteries, which allows for the transfer of the remains of buried Soviet soldiers to clearly marked cemeteries.

The Geneva Convention, which came into force in 1950, forbids the burial of war victims in unmarked graves. The convention was ratified by Russia in 1954 and Estonia in 1993.

The conflict over the proposed removal has been escalating for several weeks. During a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last Sunday, President Vladimir Putin said: “Estonia wants a seat in the front row and to gain some kind of advantage.”

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, have also voiced their outrage in recent days.

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip weighed in Wednesday, criticizing Russia for using the threat of economic sanctions to solve political spats. “The Estonian people will decide for themselves how to arrange their affairs in their republic,” Ansip said, Interfax reported. “Russia’s threats cannot influence the decisions of a democratic sovereign state.”

Also Wednesday, the Council of Europe — one of the addressee’s of the Federation Council’s resolution — entered the fray. Terry Davis, Secretary-General for the Council of Europe, said in e-mailed comments that Red Army soldiers deserved “respect and gratitude” for fighting against the forces of Nazi Germany. “On the other hand,” Davis continued, “the Soviet Army was an occupying force in Estonia, which is the reason why some Estonians object to the monument.” Davis called for the fallen soldiers to be treated with “dignity and respect.”

At the heart of the dispute is the role that Soviet forces played in Estonia after German occupation ended in 1944. Russians take pride in the victory over the Nazis by the Soviet Army, which was hailed as a liberating force. Many Estonians, however, view 1944 as simply a transition between two occupying armies that marked the start of decades of oppressive communist rule.

As Russian-Estonian relations have cooled in recent years, the statue in central Tallinn has been the site of sometimes-violent clashes between ethnic Russians and Estonians. Demonstrations there have been banned. “Russian young people gather and wave the flag not of Russia, but of the Soviet Union,” Jarvi said. “For Estonians, the Soviet flag is the same as the Nazi flag. Both occupations were by the same kind of totalitarian regime.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Oh, You Glorious Russian Mothers!

Medals for giving birth? How neo-Soviet can Russia get (see left for a picture of the medal the USSR used to award to patriotic child bearers)? How neo-Soviet is there? Kommersant reports:

Mothers to Get Decorated

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, discussing chaired a session of the Council of Legislators on demographic issues.

The session upheld an idea to encourage families to have more children not only by material benefits but also by moral incentives, such as awarding women with medals and orders for giving birth to a few children.

Russia’s leader said he was concerned about the country’s rapidly ageing population and the problem of alcoholism, which are responsible for some alarming demographic trends. Putin cited statistics:

“In the past 13 years, the death rate has exceeded the birth rate by 11.2 million,” he said. “People under 65 make up 13.7 percent of the population at the moment, which means our rate is twice as high as the international standard for an aged society.”

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev promised that the government would submit the concept for Russia’s demographic development before the end of the year and draw up a program until 2025 by next spring.

Sergey Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, suggested restoring the Soviet tradition of decorating mothers of several children with medals and orders. Speaker of the Lipetsk regional legislature went on to propose introducing decorations for fathers of several children. Vladimir Putin upheld Mironov’s idea but said medals would be given to mothers only.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Piontovsky on Russian Paranoia

Project Syndicate offers a column by Andrei Piontovsky (pictured, left), a Russian political scientist and a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC., entitled “The Paranoid Style in Russian Politics.” Following is the text in Russian.

An old saying in politics in Moscow is that relations between the United States and Russia are always better when a Republican rules in the White House. We are statesmen, and the Republicans are statesmen. Because we both believe in power, it is easy for the two of us to understand each other.

The problem with this saying is the paranoid mindset behind it, for it implies that the nature of Russian-US relations has not changed fundamentally since the Cold War’s end; that the animosities that exist between the two countries are those of two permanently implacable geopolitical opponents. Russians, it seems, can only feel good about themselves if they are contesting the world’s great power head to head. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the Soviet Union’s collapse “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.”

As a result of this mindset, key elements in the Russian elite have tried mightily – and with some success, especially in recent years – to bring about a deterioration in Russian-US relations. The Kremlin appears to be seeking systematically to obstruct the US, even when obstruction does not seem to be in Russia’s national interest.

Thus, Russia sells high-technology weapons, including bombers, submarines, and perhaps an aircraft carrier, to China, which not only shares the world’s longest border with Russia, but also disputes parts of that border. Russia’s assistance to Iran in realizing its nuclear ambitions also falls into the category of self-destructive folly. Not only is Russia building a civilian nuclear reactor in Iran, thereby helping to advance Iranian knowledge of the nuclear process; it is also reluctant to support efforts by the United Nations Security Council to press Iran not to develop nuclear weapons.

Diplomatic obstruction is not the only means Russian elites use to foster antagonism with the US. They also seek to inflame domestic public opinion. To maintain their influence, it seems, they believe that they need to create an image of America as Russia’s implacable enemy, which, by extending NATO membership to ex-communist countries, is bringing an existential threat right to the country’s doorstep.

Of course, this demonization is nothing like what we saw during the days of the USSR. Nevertheless, Putin still considers it necessary to pose in front of television cameras every few months to report that Russian scientists have developed some new missile that can penetrate any anti-ballistic missile system that the US may erect.

Why Putin’s advisors and public-relations managers encourage him to make these banal triumphalist announcements is difficult to fathom unless one comprehends the sense of grievance that almost all Russians feel at the loss of Great Power status. That trauma burns even deeper among Russia’s rulers, where it has generated a powerful and persistent psychological complex. For them, America and the West remain the ultimate enemy. Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” Russia’s rulers appear to live by the credo, “I resist America, therefore I am great.”

Consider the words of Vitaly Tretyakov, the editor of the weekly Moscow News , on the recent US elections. According to Tretyakov, “the coming to power of a Democrat as president in America is incomparably worse for us than the savage imperialism of today’s Republican administration.” Whereas “the Republicans’ actions are not aimed at us,” but instead “at Islamic terrorists and rogue states,” under a Democratic president, Russia would likely “become a prime focus of antagonism, due to our authoritarianism, our lack of democracy, stifling of freedom, and violation of human rights.” Thus, for Tretyakov, “bad Bush and his Republicans are better for us than the very bad Democrats.”

Tretyakov is hardly alone. On the contrary, his morbid logic is a perfect reflection of the paranoid vision that has taken hold in the Kremlin.

But what if these people get their wishes, and NATO collapses and Islamists triumph? Who then will stop their advance towards Russia’s southern borders from Afghanistan and Central Asia? The problem with diplomatic paranoia is not that someone is after you, but that you are unable to tell the difference between a real enemy and an imagined one.

RUSSIAN

Параноидальный стиль в российской политике

В политических кругах Москвы давно уже известно высказывание о том, что отношения между США и Россией всегда лучше, когда в Белом доме правит президент-республиканец. Мы государственники, и республиканцы тоже государственники. Поскольку как они, так и мы верим во власть, нам легко понять друг друга.

Проблема с этим высказыванием в том, что за ним стоит параноидальное мышление, поскольку оно предполагает, что российско-американские отношения не претерпели фундаментальных изменений со времен окончания холодной войны, что конфликты, существующие между двумя странами – это конфликты двух вечных непримиримых геополитических противников. Кажется, как будто россияне чувствуют себя в своей тарелке, лишь конкурируя на равных с крупнейшей мировой сверхдержавой. Действительно, президент России Владимир Путин считает распад СССР «величайшей геополитической катастрофой двадцатого века».

Результатом такого мышления стало то, что ключевые фигуры российской элиты старательно – и с некоторым успехом, особенно в последние годы – пытались вызвать ухудшение российско-американских отношений. Кремль как будто систематически старается ставить палки в колеса США, даже если это и не в национальных интересах России.

Так, Россия продает высокотехнологичное оружие, в том числе бомбардировщики, подводные лодки, – а возможно, и авианосец, – Китаю, который имеет не только самую протяженную из всех стран границу с Россией, но и территориальные претензии на некоторых участках этой границы. Помощь России Ирану в реализации его ядерной программы также попадает в категорию самоубийственной глупости. Россия не только строит в Иране ядерный реактор для использования в мирных целях, тем самым помогая иранцам изучить ядерную технологию, она и не очень стремится поддержать усилия Совета безопасности ООН по оказанию давления на Иран с целью заставить его отказаться от разработки ядерного оружия.

Дипломатическая обструкция – не единственный способ, с помощью которого российская элита нагнетает враждебность к США. Она также настраивает соответствующим образом общественное мнение в стране. Создается впечатление, будто ее представители полагают, что для сохранения своего влияния им необходимо создать образ Америки как непримиримого врага России, который, за счет приема в НАТО бывших коммунистических стран, создает угрозу самому существованию страны прямо у ее границы.

Конечно же, эта демонизация не идет ни в какое сравнение с той, что имела место во времена СССР. Тем не менее, Путин по-прежнему считает необходимым каждые несколько месяцев позировать перед телекамерами, заявляя, что российские ученые разработали какую-нибудь новую ракету, способную проникнуть сквозь любую систему противоракетной обороны США.

Зачем советники Путина и его пиар-менеджеры побуждают его делать эти банальные триумфальные заявления, понять трудно, если не осознавать того чувства обиды, которое испытывают почти все россияне по поводу утраты статуса сверхдержавы. Для правителей России это еще более болезненная травма, вызвавшая у них сильнейший и стойкий психологический комплекс. Для них Америка и Запад остаются врагами номер один. Знаменитое высказывание Декарта: «Я мыслю, следовательно, существую» – в применении к лидерам России можно перефразировать как кредо: «Я сопротивляюсь Америке, следовательно, я велик».

Посмотрите, что сказал Виталий Третьяков, редактор еженедельника «Московские новости», по поводу недавних выборов в Америке. Согласно Третьякову, «приход к власти в Америке президента-демократа несравнимо хуже для нас, чем дикий империализм нынешней администрации Буша». В то время как «действия республиканцев не нацелены на нас», а направлены вместо этого «на исламских террористов и страны-изгои», при президенте-демократе Россия, вероятно, «станет главным объектом антагонизма из-за нашего авторитаризма, отсутствия демократии, удушения свободы и нарушения прав человека». Поэтому, согласно Третьякову, «плохой Буш и его республиканцы – это лучше для нас, чем очень плохие демократы».

Вряд ли Третьяков одинок в этом мнении. Наоборот, его нездоровая логика – безупречное отражение параноидальных взглядов, укоренившихся в Кремле.

Но что будет, если пожелания этих людей исполнится, НАТО рухнет, а исламисты будут праздновать победу? Кто тогда остановит их наступление на южную границу России из Афганистана и Центральной Азии? Проблема с дипломатической паранойей не в том, что за вами кто-то охотится, а в том, что вы не можете отличить реального врага от мнимого.

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