August 29, 2008 — Contents

FRIDAY AUGUST 29  CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Olga Ivanova — Liar, or Neo-Soviet Patsy?

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russian History, Repeating Itself

(3)  EDITORIAL:  The Enemy Within

(4)  Foreign Investors Flee Putin’s Russia

(5)  Flashpoint: Crimea

(6)  The Mailbag

The Mailbag

Letters, we get letters, we get lots of cards and letters ever day!

Dear La Russophobe,

As always, “La Russophobe” is the best place to get all the relevant facts of the Georgia crisis.

Given that the governments of Western Europe, and indeed, sadly, our own, are unwilling to take meaningful military action to protect Georgia’s territorial integrity, I’ve been wondering what can be done to come out of this crisis with Russia genuinely put in check.

I’m curious about your opinion on what may be both a realistic and an effective way forward. While I’m loathe to suggest it, the best option I see is as follows: Have Georgia let go of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and then, have NATO fast-track Georgia and Ukraine in. I’m talking a matter of weeks, not years.

Putin and Stalin

Putin in the shadow of the Red Czar

Writing in the New York Times Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Young Stalin and the forthcoming novel Sashenka, warns us of the test we now face from the man who stands “in the shadow of the Red Czar.”

AT the center of Gori, Georgia, where every window has been shattered and Russian T-72 tanks patrol, the marble statue of the world’s most famous Georgian — Josef Stalin — stands gleamingly, almost supernaturally unharmed.  As this vicious colonial war turns into an international battle over spheres of influence, Stalin is Banquo at the feast, metaphorically present in the palaces of the Kremlin, the burning houses in the villages, the cabinets of Europe’s eastern capitals.

Today, as far as Moscow is concerned, the Georgian cobbler’s son and Marxist fanatic has been laundered of any traces of Georgia and Marx. He is now a Russian czar, the inspiration for the authoritarian, nationalistc and imperial strains in today’s capitalistic, pragmatic, swaggering Russia. In this crisis, and in who knows how many future ones, Stalin represents empire, prestige, victory.

An Epitaph for Solzhenitsyn

Writing in the Moscow Times Alexei Bayer (a Russian) offers a fitting epitaph for Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

Post-Soviet Russia is a curious place. It revels in unbridled jingoism that Soviet propaganda would have envied while renaming streets to honor dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But these may not be so incompatible after all.

Ossetia admits to Ethnic Cleansing in Georgia

Paul Goble reports that Ossetian leaders have admitted to systemmatic ethnic cleansing:

In an interview published in Kommersant, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity said that his people and Russian forces behind them had driven the ethnic Georgians who had been living there out and would not allow them to return, although he said his government would investigate and punish cases of burning and looting. Kokoity’s words are a rare public acknowledgement by an official that he and the forces under his command or with whom he is working are engaging in what can only be called ethnic cleansing, a form of genocide.

August 22, 2008 — Contents

FRIDAY AUGUST 22 CONTENTS

(1) EDITORIAL: Is Dima Medvedev a Liar, or Just an Idiot?

(2) EDITORIAL: Glory Days

(3) Essel on Making the Russians Keep their Word

(4) Felgenhauer on Georgia

(5) Russia, Losing Again

(6) Applebaum Asks: What is Russia Afraid of?

(7) The Mailbag

(*) Join the Fight: Say NO! to Sochi

NOTE: A bipartisan group of U.S. legislators is calling for an invitation to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to address a joint session of Congress. If you’re an American, call or write your representative or senator and tell them you support this outstanding initiative! If you’re not, contact your own national legislature and ask them to do the same.

NOTE: Check out Civil.ge for updates on Georgia from the source.

EDITORIAL: On Being “Russian”

EDITORIAL

On Being “Russian”

We have a challenge for you. Go to Moscow, sidle up to the first Russian you see, and ask them whether the following names are “Russian” — Nazyr, Islam-Beka and Aslanbek.

You won’t need to hear an answer. The quizzical “what kind of moron am I talking to” stare you will get should be sufficient. People with names like Nazyr, Islam-Beka and Aslanbek are subject to being lynched on sight in the Moscow city subway system or being cut to ribbons by machine gun fire in places like Chechnya and Georgia.

Yet, as the first week of the Olympic games drew to a close, Russia had won only seven gold medals, a puny total exceeded or matched by seven other countries, and six of them had been won by Nazyr, Islam-Beka and Aslanbek — two each in the sport of Greco-Roman wrestling. The only athlete with a “Russian” name who had won a gold medal was Valeriy Borchin in race walking (20 km).

How is it that folks like Nazyr, Islam-Beka and Aslanbek get to be suddently “Russian” when the are capable of winning medals at the Olympics, but then immediately lose that status everywhere else in Russia? How is it that, having divested them of that status, Russians can still lay claim to the territories they live in as being “part of Russia”?

These are the questions we are asking.

Russia Promotes Organized Crime in Ossetia

If you have the stomach for it, YouTube has security camera video of marauding Russian soldiers in Georgia robbing a bank. Michael Bronner, an investigative journalist and filmmaker, writing in the New York Times, provides more detail on how Russia is promoting crime in Georgia (note his use of quotation marks around the word “peacekeepers” when applied to Russia; these crop up more and more where Russia is concerned these days, as in “prime minister” Vladimir Putin and “president” Dmitri Medvedev) :

EVEN as Russia and Georgia continue their on-again, off-again struggle over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a frenzied tea-leaf reading about the war’s global political ramifications has broken out across airwaves and think-tank forums. But as the situation on the ground recedes inevitably to some new form of the pernicious “frozen conflict” that has plagued the region since Georgia’s civil wars of the early 1990s, few are paying attention to a less portentous but equally critical international threat: an increase in the longstanding, rampant criminality in the conflict zones that is likely to further destabilize the entire Caucasus region and at worst provide terrorist groups with the nuclear material they have long craved.

Essel on the Journal

Making Russia Pay the Price for its Abominable Outrages

by Dave Essel

In my note Three Cheers for Georgia on August 13, I put forward some suggestions for civilised and proper actions that could be taken to bring home to Russia and its people the seriousness of such barbaric behaviour.

I am very pleased to see than no less an organ than the Wall Street Journal is advocating similar ideas in a opinion piece datelined August 15 entitled The Kremlin’s ‘Protection’ Racket by David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey.

Russia is Repudiated by the CIS

In another devasatingly harsh blow for Russia, virtually all the nations of its own CIS organization have refused to support its invasion of Georgia, and many have strongly criticized the action.  Paul Goble reports:

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said today that Georgia will “finally” leave the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a way of underscoring that “the USSR will never again return.” And he called on Ukraine and other countries which are now members to do the same. Saakashvili’s statement came in an emotional address to his country’s parliament during which he also labeled Russian troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia “occupation forces.” Given recent events, Saakashvili’s remarks come as no surprise, but they call attention to something Moscow has been reluctant to acknowledge.

August 11, 2008 — Contents

MONDAY AUGUST 11 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL: The Russian Carcinogen, Spreading

(2)  Russia Destroys its Relationship with the United States

(3)  Russia Bombs Civilians in Georgia Proper

(4)  A Clarion Call on Russia

(5)  The Russian Olympic Cheating Scandal Widens

(6)  Nazism and Sovietism were Just the Same

NOTE:  Russian forces have crossed the border from South Ossetia and invaded Georgia, seeking to conquer the city of Gori and “cut Georgia in half.” The New York Times reports: “The advance appeared to answer the question on which the conflict had been pivoting: Would Russia simply occupy the two separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or would it push into Georgia, raising the possibility of a full-scale invasion?”  As we report below, Russia has also bombed the outskirts of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.  Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation explains how Russia provoked this conflict and what it hopes to gain from it.

NOTE:  La Russophobe is now publishing on WordPress and using Blogger as backup, reversing the prior status quo. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.  All new content on LR will appear here first.

January 28, 2007 — Content

MONDAY JANUARY 28 CONTENTS

(1) EDITORIAL: Potemkin Russia

(2) An Australian Open Recap

(3) Neo-Soviet Postcards from Penza

(4) Exposing Putin’s Failure in Chechnya

(5) The Serbian Suckers

(6) The Battle of Britain, Part II

NOTE: Before the month has even ended, January 2008 has become our best month ever for visitation, with the blog for the first time recording more than 17,000 visits in a single month.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Happy New Year from La Russophobe!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Time Magazine’s Pooty Coverup

The New York Post reports:

TIME Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey got off on the wrong foot when he sat down to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Time managing editor Rick Stengel and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius. According to a “full and complete” transcript of the interview that first turned up on a New Zealand Web site, Huey started off a question about the Cold War by saying, “You were born in 1946 – I was born in 1948. We belong to the same generation.” Putin gives the correct year of his birth, 1952. The exchange is missing from the “full transcript” posted on Time’s Web site, and now some bloggers are screaming “fraudulent cover-up.” But Time spokeswoman Ali Zelenko told Page Six that even “full” transcripts need some editing. “It’s embarrassing, but it was a false start and they moved on. There’s no cover-up. We knew the Kremlin was releasing its own transcript. It was a three-and-a-half-hour interview.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Time Magazine’s Pooty Coverup

The New York Post reports:

TIME Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey got off on the wrong foot when he sat down to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Time managing editor Rick Stengel and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius. According to a “full and complete” transcript of the interview that first turned up on a New Zealand Web site, Huey started off a question about the Cold War by saying, “You were born in 1946 – I was born in 1948. We belong to the same generation.” Putin gives the correct year of his birth, 1952. The exchange is missing from the “full transcript” posted on Time’s Web site, and now some bloggers are screaming “fraudulent cover-up.” But Time spokeswoman Ali Zelenko told Page Six that even “full” transcripts need some editing. “It’s embarrassing, but it was a false start and they moved on. There’s no cover-up. We knew the Kremlin was releasing its own transcript. It was a three-and-a-half-hour interview.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Time Magazine’s Pooty Coverup

The New York Post reports:

TIME Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey got off on the wrong foot when he sat down to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Time managing editor Rick Stengel and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius. According to a “full and complete” transcript of the interview that first turned up on a New Zealand Web site, Huey started off a question about the Cold War by saying, “You were born in 1946 – I was born in 1948. We belong to the same generation.” Putin gives the correct year of his birth, 1952. The exchange is missing from the “full transcript” posted on Time’s Web site, and now some bloggers are screaming “fraudulent cover-up.” But Time spokeswoman Ali Zelenko told Page Six that even “full” transcripts need some editing. “It’s embarrassing, but it was a false start and they moved on. There’s no cover-up. We knew the Kremlin was releasing its own transcript. It was a three-and-a-half-hour interview.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Time Magazine’s Pooty Coverup

The New York Post reports:

TIME Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey got off on the wrong foot when he sat down to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Time managing editor Rick Stengel and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius. According to a “full and complete” transcript of the interview that first turned up on a New Zealand Web site, Huey started off a question about the Cold War by saying, “You were born in 1946 – I was born in 1948. We belong to the same generation.” Putin gives the correct year of his birth, 1952. The exchange is missing from the “full transcript” posted on Time’s Web site, and now some bloggers are screaming “fraudulent cover-up.” But Time spokeswoman Ali Zelenko told Page Six that even “full” transcripts need some editing. “It’s embarrassing, but it was a false start and they moved on. There’s no cover-up. We knew the Kremlin was releasing its own transcript. It was a three-and-a-half-hour interview.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Time Magazine’s Pooty Coverup

The New York Post reports:

TIME Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey got off on the wrong foot when he sat down to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Time managing editor Rick Stengel and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius. According to a “full and complete” transcript of the interview that first turned up on a New Zealand Web site, Huey started off a question about the Cold War by saying, “You were born in 1946 – I was born in 1948. We belong to the same generation.” Putin gives the correct year of his birth, 1952. The exchange is missing from the “full transcript” posted on Time’s Web site, and now some bloggers are screaming “fraudulent cover-up.” But Time spokeswoman Ali Zelenko told Page Six that even “full” transcripts need some editing. “It’s embarrassing, but it was a false start and they moved on. There’s no cover-up. We knew the Kremlin was releasing its own transcript. It was a three-and-a-half-hour interview.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Illusion of Stability

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The prospect of Vladimir Putin at the helm in Russia for years to come has been hailed by Russians and foreign investors as an assurance of interim stability, but analysts say the concentration of so much power in a single set of hands jeopardizes stability in the long run and negates the system of checks and balances Russia so desperately needs.

“This system may look stable now,” said Maria Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. “But the stability is fragile because it hinges on one man as the safeguard for everything.”

Western leaders had hoped the Russian Constitution — and its requirement that the president step down at the end of his second term — would represent an ideological bulwark that Putin couldn’t sidestep. Putin, however, has devised an end-around that could keep him in power for years to come by announcing he will head the ruling party’s ticket in the Dec. 2 parliament election and may become prime minister. Officials in the Bush administration say Russia can build a democracy only if it strengthens its institutions. The Kremlin has moved in the opposite direction, they say, concentrating power in Putin’s hands.

Concentration of power

“In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday in Moscow after meeting with Russian human-rights leaders. “I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that,” Rice continued. “Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media, and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the” lower chamber of parliament.

An election in March will produce Russia’s new president, but that person is likely to be a loyal subordinate anointed by Putin — someone who would remain accountable to Putin, even if Russia’s government structure requires the prime minister to answer to the president. Putin, who recently turned 55, said the possibility of becoming prime minister hinges on two conditions: Russia’s dominant, pro-Putin party, United Russia, must emerge victorious in the December election, and the president Russians vote for in March must be someone he can work with — in his words, “a decent, competent and contemporary man.” Both caveats are foregone conclusions. Putin’s sweeping popularity ensures that United Russia will run away with the parliamentary elections and likely retain a majority large enough to change the constitution.

While the Kremlin insists it’s up to the voters to select the country’s next president, few in Russia believe that person will be anyone but Putin’s choice. Many analysts in Moscow believe that Viktor Zubkov, the obscure bureaucrat Putin selected as his new prime minister Sept. 12, is also the man he envisions as the next president. Zubkov, 66, is a longtime ally of Putin’s, having worked for the Russian leader in the St. Petersburg city government in the early 1990s. And unlike two other leading candidates for the presidency, First Deputy Prime Ministers Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, Zubkov has no strong ties to competing clans within the Kremlin. If Zubkov is Putin’s choice, he could serve as a figurehead president until 2012, when Putin could legally run again for president. Or, if Zubkov steps down before that, Putin could return to the presidency sooner. “It’s obvious Zubkov is being prepared as the successor,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a Kremlin expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Sociology Institute. “He’s a very convenient figure for Putin. To make Putin stronger as prime minister, someone has to weaken the position of president, and Zubkov fits perfectly. He has few connections, he’s loyal and he can be easily managed by Putin.”

It’s the kind of behind-the-scenes engineering that comes from a regime dominated by former KGB agents, Kryshtanovskaya said. The Kremlin prefers to call this approach to governance “managed democracy.” As the Boris Yeltsin era showed, plunging Russia into democracy headfirst doomed the country to chaos and failure, the thinking goes. The state needs to ease post-Soviet Russia into the age of liberty and civil society. Stability first, then full-fledged democracy, the Kremlin insists. In reality, managed democracy is an exercise in Kremlin doublespeak, analysts say. Putin’s designs on retaining power are its latest example.

Moves against democracy

Putin’s government has abolished the election of governors, made it increasingly difficult for human-rights groups to work in Russia and enacted laws that make it virtually impossible for opposition parties to gain seats in parliament. While the Kremlin’s moves against democracy have drawn criticism from the Bush administration and Western European leaders, Russians themselves have not been stirred by the issue. The way they see it, Putin has improved living standards, and that makes democracy a back-burner issue. His approval ratings have consistently hovered between 75 and 80 percent. In fact, an opinion poll earlier this year found that more than a third of Russians would like to see Putin become president-for-life.

While oil prices remain high, Putin likely will continue to bask in his popularity. However, analysts warn that his government has done little to diversify the Russian economy to reduce its oil dependence, or address some of the country’s most pressing problems, including corruption, a plummeting population, a brittle Soviet-era infrastructure and an ailing health-care system. “They’re living off the fat of high oil prices,” said Michael McFaul, a Russia affairs expert at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “That could come back to haunt them.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Russian Technology: Nobody Milks a Moose Like a Russian

ITN reports:

Breeders have been trying to domesticate the moose for centuries especially in the former Soviet Union where they were needed for travelling across areas covered in snow.

Many attempts fail because moose kept in captivity often die due to the expense of providing them with all the nutrients they need.

Ekaterina Yegorskaya said: “In May when the female moose give birth we get close to them, then later on, when the baby moose are taken from them, we smell like the baby moose and she then sees me as her child, that’s why she lets me milk her.” Moose milk has more fat than cow’s milk and more protein and vitamins. It is used to treat many diseases and is in high demand.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Sunday Quotation

More proof of how well Russian “President” Vladimir Putin is leading Russia into the future:

The French Revolution of 2007 has not seen heads roll but has involved the destruction of 10 taboos as President Nicolas Sarkozy assumes the role of Europe’s most dynamic leader.

THE AMERICAN TABOO

Enthusiasm for the United States was unacceptable for a French political leader because it was always interpreted as an embrace of “Wild West” capitalism, “Anglo-Saxon” hegemony and vulgarity. De rigueur attitudes held sway: patronizing contempt in Paris met macho derision in Washington. Communication suffered. Sarko’s New Hampshire vacation, enthused American dreaming, iPod-accompanied jogging and in-your-face style cleared the air.

THE RUSSIAN TABOO

Moscow was France’s offsetting power to the United States. For many cold-war years, the French left struggled to decide what was worse: Soviet totalitarianism or American imperialism. Some of the French right was undecided, too. Later, Chirac suggested “neo-liberalism” — unfettered market forces — was as much a danger in the 21st century as totalitarianism in the 20th. Weak-kneed moral equivalency often placed Paris in a halfway house between Washington and Moscow. Sarkozy is clear: American democracy beats Russian authoritarianism, just as U.S. freedom beat Soviet enslavement.

— New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, September 20th

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Failure

Foreign Policy magazine has announced its 2007 “failed states index” and, interestingly, Russia has actually made a bit of progress — even though its overall outlook remains horrifyingly bleak. With a score of 81.1 (120 is as bad as a country could get), Russia is the 62nd biggest failure out of 177 nations surveyed, a bigger failure than China, Venezueala or Cuba and sandwiched between Lesotho and Azerbaijan. However, both Russia’s score and its ranking were improvements on last year’s data, when Russia’s ranking was 43 and its score was 87.1. Russia’s ranking is now roughly back where it was on the 2005 study, mired in the middle of the “warning” states that could lapse into failure at any time. The prognosis for Russia is states as follows:

While some progress has been made on the economic front, Putin has re-centralized power around himself in recent years and democratic institutions remain weak. Russia has severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement, although sporadic violence still occurs throughout the North Caucasus. Without addressing corruption, it will be difficult to build democratic institutions, but plenty of Russians appear content to make this a second-tier priority. Russia is playing a renewed assertive role in the world, although its continuing economic stratification is a potential source of future internal conflict. The police forces suffer from massive corruption, and have been accused of some abuses. The Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation are responsible for internal security such as the fight against organized crime (which is extremely prevalent) and terrorism. The organization has been accused, however, of suppressing internal dissent, surveilling individuals, and influencing important political events, as the KGB did in the USSR. Security forces are reported to regularly single out individuals from the Caucasus for document checks, detention, and the extortion of bribes. Detainees were often beaten or tortured. Russia, instead, suffers from a severe population decline, due to disease—including AIDS—and poor health care after the collapse of the more equitable Soviet health care system. Deaths outnumber births, and most of those who die are in the 20-49 year age group, the most productive segment of the population. This may have a devastating impact on the workforce. Russia received high scores for group grievance, mainly because of an ongoing nationalist-separatist conflict in Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim area in the north Caucasus.

These results are a sign that the increasing pressure being brought to bear on the Kremlin regime may be bearing some fruit. At least, it seems that the Kremlin is being a bit more careful about how thuggish and barbaric it appears to the world, but it also highlights the need to avoid being fooled by neo-Soviet propaganda, which will only increase as the Kremlin consolidates its grip on power.

The results also make it utterly impossible to support the argument that Russia belongs in the G-8. China’s score is higher, but China isn’t in the G-8. India’s score is far higher, but India isn’t in the G-8 either. A borderline failed state can’t be a reliable partner for the G-8 democracies, none of which are classified as “warning” states the way Russia is.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Sunday Photos: Oborona Remembers

In photos taken from the Oborona website, a team visits the memorial in Moscow which commenorates the August 1991 grass roots uprising against the neo-Soviet coup plotters

When was the last time you heard “President” Putin mention these grassroots heroes? Could it be he’s afraid of people like them, real Russian patriots interested first and foremost in the welfare of their country? Does he have reason to be afraid?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of the Russian Dark Ages: Estonia in Context, Part II

Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Fred Hiatt also helps put the Estonian crisis in historical context:

In 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his Estonian counterpart, the polymath Lennart Meri, chummily drank together in a Kremlin chamber as their foreign ministers labored nearby to complete a historic treaty to withdraw all Russian troops from the tiny Baltic state.

When it was time to celebrate the finished draft, Yeltsin mocked his own foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, for his weak drinking skills — “Bring the boy some ice cream,” he roared to an attendant — but approved the agreement. That may have been the high-water mark of Russia’s willingness to face its imperialist history and allow its neighbors to live in peace.

How far Russia has regressed since then became shockingly evident last week when Vladimir Putin’s Russia (population: 143 million) unleashed a barrage against neighboring Estonia (population: 1.34 million) that included Kremlin cyber-attacks on official Estonian Web sites, gangs of Kremlin-sponsored youths menacing Estonian diplomats in Moscow, Russian officials and government-controlled media spewing incendiary propaganda, Russian companies suspending contracts with Estonian firms and, in predictably Putinian fashion, Russian threats to cut off the tiny nation’s energy supplies. (Suddenly, the Russian railway announced, all its coal-carrying railcars were in desperate need of repair.) The onslaught illustrated the dangerous real-world consequences of mythologizing history — of Putin’s glorification of Stalinism — and the link between Russia’s atrophied democracy and its increasingly aggressive foreign policy.

The episode began on April 26 when Estonia began relocating a Soviet-era war memorial and the remains of a dozen Soviet soldiers buried beneath it from a central square in the capital, Tallinn, to a nearby military cemetery. Russian-speaking youth, after meeting with Russian diplomats, rioted in protest. Russia’s foreign minister attacked this “disgusting . . . blasphemy.” The upper house of Russia’s parliament demanded a severing of relations. The Kremlin-controlled press furiously (and inaccurately) assailed the “dismantling” of the statue.

Why such a fuss? To Russians, the statue was a tribute to their overwhelming losses in World War II — which they know as the Great Patriotic War. To Estonians, it was a reminder of a half-century of Soviet occupation during which the Kremlin shot thousands of Balts; sent hundreds of thousands to Siberia; moved hundreds of thousands of Russians in to take their places; and tried to eradicate their culture, their language and any memory of independence.

The trouble is that Russia has never acknowledged this history, and under Putin it grows less and less willing to do so. The passing of the Soviet Union is mourned, the old KGB is celebrated — imagine if Germans continued to honor the Gestapo — and the current independence of former Soviet states is treated as a transitory error. Neither Putin nor even his foreign minister has deigned to pay a bilateral visit to independent Tallinn. Virtually every neighbor — Georgia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, even Finland — has been subjected to bullying.

“It seems they cannot tolerate any democracy on their borders,” Estonian President Toomas Ilves told me in a phone conversation late Friday night. He sounded weary after a week of crisis, but hopeful that tensions would ease, particularly after Estonia had received support from the West, including an invitation that day from President Bush for Ilves to visit the White House in June.

Democracy in Estonia or Georgia, Ilves suggested, calls into question Kremlin claims that “Western-style” democracy won’t work in that part of the world. An absence of democracy at home, in turn, makes it awkward to face history, “because if you start saying the Soviet Union was bad, well, what was at fault? One-party rule, a lack of human rights?” — it’s all too familiar.

Russian leaders dwell inordinately on the lack of respect paid them — but the more they stifle democracy at home, the less cause others have to show respect and the more the Kremlin ends up having to demand respect in a Soviet way. “Now Germany commands a tremendous amount of respect,” Ilves told me, “not because people any longer are afraid of it, but because it is a thriving and effective country.

“For Russia, respect is based not on achievement or accomplishment, but intimidation and fear — that was the ‘greatness’ of the Soviet Union.”

Yeltsin, for all his drinking and Siberian gruffness, had at least glimmers of understanding that Russia could become a greater country by withdrawing unwanted troops than by imposing them. Putin, clean-cut and fit, seems the more modern man. But his troops remain in parts of neighboring Georgia and Moldova, and no decisive Kremlin summits to solve those problems, with vodka or ice cream, seem likely anytime soon.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Ukrainians Learn How to Speak Their Own Language

The Associated Press reports on how, at long last, the language of oppression and exploitation in Ukraine (that is, Russian) is being opposed at ground level. Ukrainians are learning to speak their own language — and there’s not a thing Russia can do about it!

The fidgeting, wide-eyed girls and boys squeezed around a table in Elizaveta Moklyak’s kindergarten class are helping lead a cultural and political revolution.

With her pointer and colorful posters, Moklyak teaches Ukrainian to Russian-speaking children — ensuring that by the end of the school year, the language of their homeland no longer sounds like a foreign tongue.

Today Ukrainian has emerged from second-class status, slipping quietly into the chambers of government and popular culture. This is more than a cultural change: It could doom any hopes Russia may have of restoring its traditional political influence over the country.

Just two years ago, some Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine talked of secession, fearing dominance by Ukrainian speakers in the west. The language debate was one of the most divisive of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which helped oust Ukraine’s pro-Moscow leadership.

While competition for political power continues, Ukrainian may already have triumphed in the language war.

“I think there is the sense that Ukraine has passed over the hump on this issue, that there has been a big, but quiet, victory,” said Ivan Lozowy, a political analyst.

President Vladimir Putin appears deeply worried about the erosion of the use of Russian worldwide, and last week called for creation of a national Russian Language Institute. “Looking after the Russian language and expanding the influence of Russian culture are crucial social and political issues,” Putin said in his state-of-the-nation address.

In countries like Ukraine, that influence is shrinking. The nation’s Ukrainian-speaking west yearns to be part of Europe; the Russian-speaking east and south is the base of politicians who want to maintain Ukraine’s historic ties to Moscow. Pro-Russia Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has said he would oppose aggressive “Ukrainianization.” But even Yanukovych has brushed up on his Ukrainian and now uses it — not only at official meetings, but at rallies of his Russian-speaking supporters.

Some Russian speakers feel besieged. Mykola Levchenko, 27, secretary of the Donetsk city council, said Russian speakers like himself suffer daily insults, and some Ukrainians even question his patriotism. When he buys a Ukrainian-made home appliance, he says, the directions come only in Ukrainian.

“In world society, Russian is a major language, Ukrainian isn’t,” he said. “Why would we give this up?”

After Ukraine became independent, it declared Ukrainian the sole state language and switched over more than 80 percent of its schools. Nearly all universities now teach in Ukrainian; as a result, parents push children to study Ukrainian early.

“Without this it would be difficult for him in life,” said Yulia Bondarenko, who speaks Russian at home to her 7-year-old son, Zhenya, but sends him to a Ukrainian-language school.

Ukrainian and Russian both use the Cyrillic alphabet and have the same linguistic roots, and it’s not uncommon to hear people slip seamlessly from one to the other. Many words are similar — the Russian word for apple is “yabloko,” Ukrainian is “yabluko” — but differences also are common.

For example, thank you in Russian is “spasibo;” in Ukrainian, it’s “dyakuyu.” And even simple words can be different: in Russian, yes is “da” and no is “nyet;” in Ukrainian, yes is “tak” and no is “ni.”

Ukrainians in Kiev joke that if a traffic cop pulls them over, they’ll curse in Russian, then switch to Ukrainian — which conveys an air of authority — to try to persuade the officer from writing a ticket.

“We have nothing against Russian, we all use it,” said Yuliya Vladina, a 22-year-old DJ. “But we have a language — Ukrainian — so why shouldn’t we promote that? It’s progressive. It’s hip.”

Ukrainian’s identification with pop culture appears to have been a key factor in its success, particularly among young people. Many popular bands sing in Ukrainian. Ivan Malkovych, director of a Ukrainian-language publishing house, rushed out a Ukrainian translation of the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series, beating Russian-language publishers. That success, he said, helped attract young readers to other Ukrainian-language titles.

Russian does maintain its dominance in some fields. Most national newspapers publish only in Russian, as do many magazines.

But every year, the demand for Ukrainian publications increases — propelled by readers who began learning the language in kindergarten classes like those taught by Moklyak.

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