EDITORIAL: An Open Letter to Donna Welles

EDITORIAL

An Open Letter to Donna Welles

Blogger Donna Welles is having trouble understanding why Russians don’t understand why jokes about xenophobia are funny.  Herein, we explain it to her.

Dear Ms. Welles,

We thought we’d help you out with your conundrum about Russians and xenophobia.  You relate a “joke” about it told to you about Russia by a Russian who asked you why it was funny.  You suggest it might be because the joke wasn’t invented by a Russian, and therefore isn’t tortuously illogical enough for a Russian to comprehend.  But that isn’t it at all.

The reason is much more simple:  For Russians, xenophobia and racism are normal, not unusual, and certainly not suspect.  Russians believe that all people, just like them, hate those from other countries and want to see them destroyed.  It’s necessary to view the world like that, you see, if you want to live by such a view yourself.

EDITORIAL: Russia Crashes another Party

EDITORIAL

Russia Crashes another Party

In another editorial in today’s issue, we highlight the fact that Russia has just been revealed by Transparency International to be the very most corrupt nation in the G-20 organization.

Now it turns out that both Brazil and India, fellow members of the so-called “BRIC” group that includes Russia as well as the G-20, are already disgusted with the organization and are spurning it. This was, of course, supposed to be Russia’s great coming-out party, a new group of independent countries looking to Russia for leadership and acting as a bulwark against a unipolar world dominated by the United States.  It is turning out to be another classic Russian boondoggle, an illusion rather than a reality.

Once again, in other words, we see Russia being revealed as a totally isolated country, unsuitable and unqualified for membership in any civilized group of countries and unable to establish a leadership role in any organization.  Russia imagines itself a leader, but in fact it is not even a follower.

EDITORIAL: Russia to Jobs, Gates — Drop Dead!

EDITORIAL

Russia to Jobs, Gates — Drop Dead!

One thing that we here at LR, as visitors to Russia, have always found at once both most hilarious and most obscene about this benighted, fetid land is the Russian attempt to test foreigners for diseases like AIDS before allowing them to dwell within Russian borders. That Russia, one of the world’s worst breeding grounds for diseases of all kinds, would think itself endangered by American tourists says all you really need to know about just how truly barbaric Russia really is.

But there are plenty of other examples.  In their recent Moscow Times column, for instance, Ian Pryde and Suzanne Stafford of Eurasia Strategy & Communications in Moscow point out that if either of two most famous computer experts on this planet, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, wanted to try to set up a business in Russia, they would get simple response:  “Drop dead!”

Moscow: For “Russians” Only

Paul Goble reports (also see Michele Berdy’s mocking, acidic piece in the Moscow Times):

A senior Moscow Duma official says that his city plans to “work up a collection of rules” which will help those coming to Moscow to fit in with the style of life of the Russian city and know from a pamphlet to be published outlining “what is acceptable and what isn’t” for all residents in what he described as an “ethnic Russian” city.

In an interview published in today’s Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Mikhail Solomentsev, the chairman the city Duma’s committee on inter-regional ties and nationality policy, said that such a set of rules will help unite newcomers with longtime residents by stressing what the two have in common rather than what separates them. But his comments about this plan make it clear that he believes it is migrant workers and non-Russians who must adapt rather than the Russians into whose city the former have moved, an attitude that almost certainly will exacerbate the already tense ethnic relations in Moscow whatever Solomentsev in fact hopes for.

EDITORIAL: The World Spurns Russia

EDITORIAL

The World Spurns Russia

Even though Russia’s territory is far more vast than that of the United States,vastly more foreign tourists arrive in the USA each year than come to Russia.  The USA ranks #2 in the world for international arrivals, while Russia does not even make the top 10.  It ranks #14, with less than half the number of visitors received by the supposedly hated USA.

And Russia’s figures are in fact vast exaggerations.  Russia counts as “international” visitors people from places like Belarus and Ukraine and Kazakhstan that were previously part of the same country.  Take away those visits, and almost nobody from the civilized world is daring to set foot in Putin’s Russia.  By contrast, America’s visitors come from the elite nations of the world, from Japan to France.

And things are getting worse.  Much worse.

EDITORIAL: Postcards from the Russian Wasteland

EDITORIAL

Postcards from the Russian Wasteland

In a recent survey by HSBC Bank of 26 countries, Russia ranked #24 as the third-worst place on the planet for expat corporate workers to take up service.  Emigrate.co.uk reports:

Russia came stone cold last in terms of enrolling children at a new school and establishing finances. Its healthcare system was ranked 25th and commuting experience at 23rd, with an overall placing of 24th out of the 26 countries surveyed. The ranking was also hampered by poor scores in utility set-up (25th) and ease of finding an apartment (23rd). Russia did manage to beat out India and Qatar which came 25th and 26th respectively. The poll was topped by Canada, Australia and Thailand.

Ouch.  And the expat community brutally condemned every aspect of Russian life even though they have the highest per capita earnings of all the surveyed countries!  Just imagine what they would have said if that weren’t the case.

Russia: Hater Nation

Vladimir Shlapentokh, a professor of sociology at Michigan State University, writing in the New York Times:

Xenophobia exists in all societies, past and present. It goes back to the socio-biological nature of human beings and the distinction of “ours” and “others” in the human psyche.

Aggressive xenophobia, however, with its open declaration of hatred, discrimination against and physical persecution of “others,” is a purely social phenomenon. It is almost always, in my opinion, a product of policies shaped by a ruling elite in order to acquire and preserve political and economic power.

The case of anti-Americanism in contemporary Russia is a perfect illustration.

Russia teems with Anti-American Venom

Megan Stack, writing in the Los Angeles Times and reporting from Moscow, documents Russia’s frenzied, pathological hatred of America and its values just in time for Barack Obama’s meeting with Putin, a timely reminder for the new president of the nature of the evil he faces:

When President Obama visits the Kremlin, he will face the task of trying to reset relations with a government that has built its power base and defined itself by its anti-American, neo-Cold War stance.

It’s an opportune moment for the United States to warm up a frosty relationship. Moscow could help on some of Washington’s most intransigent foreign policy troubles, including Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. But in Russia, there is scant evidence of a desire for a fresh start.

EDITORIAL: Impossible Russia!

EDITORIAL

Impossible Russia!

The IKEA Corporation’s slogan is:  “Impossible prices!”  That’s in the outside world.  Where Vladimir Putin’s benighted, barbaric country is concerned, the slogan is now:  “Impossible Russians!”

EDITORIAL: How we See Things

EDITORIAL

How we See Things

There are those who think that the sort of direct confrontation of Russians practiced by this blog is counterproductive. They naively think it will only make Russians recoil into their nationalist shells like turtles, giving them confirmation that the world really does hate them and justifying their rabid xenophobia.  They think Russians need kindness and understanding from the outside world to coax them out of their shells like timid forest creatures to nibble at the tender morsels of civilization in our outstretched hands. 

This is how Chamberlain saw Hitler.

To the extent these are folks who actually know the Russians, as a result of living cheek-by-jowl with them (we think precious few such persons are among them), as opposed to abject fantasizing morons with no more idea of the real Russia than of the real Mars, they’re entitled to their own opinion.

We, however, beg to differ.

A Fairynightmare: Russia and the Golden Goose

The Moscow Times reports on how Russia is pathologically savaging the last vestiges of its credibility among foreign investors:

A lawyer for Farimex Products said Friday that it did not want Telenor to sell its stake in VimpelCom, a perhaps surprising admission given that Farimex has spent the past few months fighting in court to make Telenor pay close to the very value of that stake.

The now three-year saga, which has drawn comparisons to the attack on Yukos and the drama last year at TNK-BP, stands alone for the questions it has raised regarding the hierarchy of competing verdicts — and the might of individual shareholders.

Exposing Russians’ Hatred of Americans

Susan Richards, writing on Open Democracy’s Polit.ru website shows that unlike Americans, Russians are not hostile to the “American government” but to the very notion of America itself, the same way Iran is hostile to Israel:

Russian attitudes to the West are known to have soured in recent years. But it may surprise Western readers that the majority of Russians now express a positive dislike of the West in general, and particularly of America. Nor do most of them regard liberal democracy as a model towards which Russia should aspire any more, either.

These are the findings of an ambitious new socio-economic study entitled ‘Are Russians Moving Backwards?’ by Sergei Guriev of the prestigious New Economic School in Moscow, Aleh Tsyvinski of Yale University, and Maxim Trudolubov of the business newspaper Vedomosti. The research is based on the findings of regular opinion polls and on a mass of data on values, attitudes and perceptions between 2003-2008 which have not been drawn into the policy debate before. [1]

EDITORIAL: Exposing Russian Hate

EDITORIAL

Exposing Russian Hate

We report today on the horrifying case of Tang Quoc Binh, just the latest in a long string of barbaric lynchings that are sweeping Vladimir Putin’s Russia.  We condemn not only the apelike clan of race murderers themselves but also those who fail to take any action to stop or even protest their crimes, and this includes the Russian government and the vast majority of Russia’s cowardly, craven, silent denizens.

An article last week in a West Virginia newspaper called The Journalrecounted how local resident Marina Yax was organizing a festival of Russian culture at the county library.  Russia food was prepared, lectures on Russian culture were given, Russian crafts were for sale and there were presentations by various residents of Russian extraction regarding their family members and their history.

One presenter stated: “I think there is a little bit of a misunderstanding about Russia. There are similarities between the cultures in Russia and the U.S., and we have more in common than we think.”

Unfortunately, as with most things involving Russia, this well-intentioned exercise was tragically and fatally flawed.  In fact, it should be counted as being among the best evidence there is of just how very different from Americans Russians really are.

Russian Hatred of America, on Film

The Moscow Times reports on how deep-seeded Russian hatred of America expresses itself on Russian movie screens?

Russian filmmakers are not known for their glowing portraits of American culture. From the 1948 Soviet propaganda film “The Russian Question” about a communist-bashing American newspaper editor to the immensely popular film “Brother 2,” in which a young Russian man rampages through back-stabbing hoodlums in Chicago, there is no shortage of anti-Americanism in the country’s cinema.

Now in 2008, filmmaker Yury Grymov adds his film to the genre. Americans “place themselves higher than all other peoples of the earth,” said Grymov in an online journal written during the shooting of his new feature “Strangers,” which opened in Moscow on Thursday. “They forcibly attempt to inculcate their morality and their modes of behavior. And what is most frightening of all, they sincerely suggest that they are committing a charitable act.”

Russia Humiliated Itself: Explaining Russian Hatred of America

Cathy Young, a contributing editor for Reason magazine, and the author of Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood, writing in the New York Times:

SHORTLY before the presidential election, at a discussion about Russian-American relations I attended in Cambridge, Mass., speakers from both countries voiced the hope that the election of Barack Obama would signal the renewal of a beautiful friendship. These hopes were chilled the day after Mr. Obama won. In an address to the Russian Parliament, President Dmitri Medvedev welcomed President-elect Obama with a threat to deploy Russian missiles on the Polish border if the United States put anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe. While some conciliatory signals followed, it seems clear that the Kremlin intends to keep the “new cold war” going.

Just three days before Mr. Medvedev’s speech, the state-subsidized youth movement Nashi staged a Halloween-themed rally in front of the American Embassy in Moscow. Nearly 20,000 young people held pumpkins marked with the names of “America’s victims,” among them the casualties in South Ossetia. In an amateur film shown at the rally, an actor portraying a drunken George W. Bush bragged that the United States had engineered both world wars and the rise of Hitler to expand its power.

EDITORIAL: Neo-Soviet Russia’s American Bogeyman

EDITORIAL

Neo-Soviet Russia’s American Bogeyman

Last weekend, Vladimir Putin’s youth cults burst into a flurry of activity in Moscow.  On Saturday, the Youth Guard marched in support of banning migrant workers from entering the country, an openly racist and fascist position that even some of its own members had previously denounced.  Then on Sunday, the Nashists were out in force, laying the groundwork for “president” Dima Medvedev’s state-of-the union message, which will seek to blame America for Russia’s current financial crisis.  Other Russia reports that while Nashi claimed 20,000 of its activists were on the streets, even Kremlin-controlled media were reporting that number was exaggerated by at least half, while OR’s own sources claimed no more than 3,000 Nashists actually came out to march.

No thinking person can point to any significant difference between these events and those that would have occurred in Soviet times.  Russia’s frenzy of generalized xenophobia and particularized anti-American hatred, seeking to scapegoat the outside world for the Kremlin’s own failures, mixed with ridiculous lies and propaganda that only a nation of sheep would believe, is precisely the demonic force that prevented the USSR from undertaking real reform and which therefore drove it into the dustbin of history.

Where are the Russophiles, who routinely screech that attacks on Russia are born of anti-Russian hatred? How can they stand silent as Russia mobilizes such an intense tsunami of openly racist hatred against foreigners? We doubt that they are capable of giving any coherent answer to that question.

How can they, or the people of Russia, justify this mind-boggling hypocrisy? They cannot. They can only follow the USSR into the dustbin of history.

Russian Arrogance gets its Just Desserts: Turns out they Still have Lots to Learn

Andrei Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia Foundation in Moscow, writing in the Moscow Times:

Look around at your Russian colleagues, business partners, clients, bosses and employees. Remember how self-assured and optimistic they were just this summer. Remember their grandiose business plans and strategies. It was as if Russia had forever lost the need for the thousands of expat managers, analysts and consultants who were working in the country. It seemed that Russia’s business elite had mastered Western management and finance skills so well that they would begin giving their U.S. and European counterparts a run for their money not only in Russia, but throughout the world.

Where did all of that enthusiasm go? Today, the Russian business community is a state of near panic. Judging from interviews with many Russian business leaders, they are expecting the end of the world — mass bankruptcies and layoffs, sharp declines in salaries and benefits, the devaluation of the ruble and stagnation of the real economy. The transition from extreme optimism to extreme pessimism hit the country like a brick.

Annals of the Neo-Soviet Nightmare

The Daily Mirror reports:

It is the first place thousands of English football fans will see when they arrive in Moscow for the Champions League final. But for one young British visitor, Moscow Airport’s cavernous customs hall was the start of a living nightmare he was lucky to survive.

Tig Hague, 35, was on a business trip in 2003 when, misunderstanding a request for a backhander, he was pulled to one side to have his bag searched. Just one more irritating inconvenience, he thought – until the guard found a tiny lump of hashish in a pocket, the remnant of a recent stag weekend. By nightfall the banker from London found himself in Moscow’s infamous Piet Central jail, accused of being a drug smuggler. Later sentenced to four-and-a-half years in the gulags, he was soon on the way to the notorious Zone 22 prison camp in the remote wastes of Mordovia.

Issuing a warning to fans travelling to the all-English final on Wednesday, Tig says: “I was incredibly naive and I would hate for someone else to make the same mistake. Anyone travelling to Russia needs to be extremely careful.”

It was just hours after Tig had kissed his fiancee Lucy goodbye on the morning of July 17, 2003, that his life descended into hell. He was five yards from the airport exit and could see a driver holding a card with his name on it. He recalls: “A customs official shouted at me to join another queue to have my bags X-rayed. I’d taken whisky for my clients and some Western cigarettes. The official started telling me I couldn’t take them through and asked if I had any money. “With my English head on, it didn’t register with me that a bribe was in order. Because the penny didn’t drop, he decided to search my case.”

As the official picked up a pair of jeans, Tig froze, remembering the events of the weekend when he’d met friends on a stag do and, after drinking heavily, had decided to buy some cannabis. Tig says: “The world went into slow motion as I watched him run his hands through the pockets. Then he barked something in Russian and guys with submachine guns started running towards me.” Wrapped in a Rizla paper, the tiny amount of dope was enough to warrant a slap on the wrist in the UK. But Tig was far from home. “I was frogmarched to a room, strip-searched, and made to sign a statement which was all in Russian,” he says. “I managed to text Lucy and call my boss back in London on my mobile before my things were taken away. “Hours later I was lying in a dirty, damp cell in Piet Central jail, sobbing uncontrollably.”

Back home, Lucy’s world fell apart just as dramatically. She says: “I was shopping in my lunch break when I got a text message from Tig which read, ‘I love you more than you will ever know, forever in your heart’.” A few minutes later she saw Tig’s boss on his way to find her. “He told me he could be away for seven years and I collapsed in a heap, dropping my shopping bags on the pavement.”

Tig was refused bail and put in the foreigners’ cell of a Moscow prison where he remained for two months. He quickly learned how to survive in the harsh environment where guards would subject prisoners to random beatings. A mobile phone, smuggled in by an African cellmate, provided a lifeline, allowing him to make a few brief phone calls to his family.

Lucy says: “In September I went to visit Tig with his mum. I was shocked at how thin and ill he looked. As soon as I got out of there I burst into tears.”

Despite his family’s best efforts – and a £30,000 bribe – Tig was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in the notorious gulag Zone 22. “Lucy bribed a guard Û500 to spend five minutes with me. I just clung to her, sobbing, saying, ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. I was then herded on to a train for the 500-mile journey. I was terrified.” But the prison camp was even worse than Tig expected. In winter inmates froze in temperatures as low as -35C and in the summer the heat was unbearable. Sadistic guards meted out indiscriminate beatings and disease was rife.

During his incarceration his parents – a builder and a housewife – shelled out more than £100,000 in bribes and also provided him with enough chocolate, coffee and cigarettes to buy his way out of trouble. Tig says: “It was medieval. The buildings were riddled with cockroaches. They put me to work in a sewing factory. The material was saturated in chemicals and we’d get welts and fungus all over our bodies. My eye swelled up so much they came close to removing it.”

But the most torturous part was when Lucy came to visit. Because they weren’t husband and wife they had to sit at opposite sides of the room. Desperate to spend time together Tig and Lucy decided to tie the knot. The ceremony took place in October 2004, followed by a 48-hour “honeymoon” in a dirty cell with two beds pushed together. “Those two days got me through the rest of my sentence,” Tig says. “But we don’t speak about the wedding day. It’s still far too painful.”

Tig was finally released in March 2005 after clocking up points for good behaviour and paying off two prison officials. He now has a new job and the couple have a 15-month-old daughter, Isabella. Two years since his ordeal finally came to an end, Tig has this advice for football fans: “Don’t take any risks with anything. Bribery is endemic so always carry Û150 to bribe your way out of trouble. “Don’t go anywhere without photo ID. And if you do get into trouble, don’t sign anything, insist on seeing a lawyer and speak to the embassy. “Don’t do anything that, like me, you may regret for the rest of your life.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Russian Xenophobia: Putin’s Edict Bans Foreigners

The Moscow Times reports that Russia’s xenophobe-in-chief is now on the warpath against all foreigners in positions of power in Russia:

President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that there should be fewer foreigners in high-level positions at Russian companies. Putin, who has been very wary of foreign influence, urged the country to rely more on its own products — including managers. “It’s necessary to start with personnel, with people, because everything depends on them,” Putin told lawmakers. While the thrust of his remarks appeared to be that an economically growing Russia should be able to provide its own managers for its companies, the comments could chill a foreign business community already struggling with bureaucratic hurdles and corruption. “In our big, leading and today already global companies, mostly in the raw materials sector, you know that the thin layer of top management is mostly made up of foreign specialists,” Putin said in televised remarks late Tuesday. “Until we achieve the ‘replacement of imports’ — not just in big companies but in other sectors of the economy, in administrative activity, we will be swept by imports,” Putin said. “As they used to say, personnel decide everything,” Putin added. Putin has repeatedly emphasized that Russia no longer needs to rely on foreign aid and advice as it did during the troubled years following the 1991 Soviet collapse. He also said there was a need to better educate and prepare Russians for jobs in the country’s growing economy. While there are a number of foreigners in high-level positions at top Russian raw materials companies, the country has been loath to grant foreign companies leading roles in the strategically important sector. Analysts and critics of increased state control over the raw materials sector say Russia needs foreign expertise to make efficient use of its energy riches.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Russian Xenophobia: Putin’s Edict Bans Foreigners

The Moscow Times reports that Russia’s xenophobe-in-chief is now on the warpath against all foreigners in positions of power in Russia:

President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that there should be fewer foreigners in high-level positions at Russian companies. Putin, who has been very wary of foreign influence, urged the country to rely more on its own products — including managers. “It’s necessary to start with personnel, with people, because everything depends on them,” Putin told lawmakers. While the thrust of his remarks appeared to be that an economically growing Russia should be able to provide its own managers for its companies, the comments could chill a foreign business community already struggling with bureaucratic hurdles and corruption. “In our big, leading and today already global companies, mostly in the raw materials sector, you know that the thin layer of top management is mostly made up of foreign specialists,” Putin said in televised remarks late Tuesday. “Until we achieve the ‘replacement of imports’ — not just in big companies but in other sectors of the economy, in administrative activity, we will be swept by imports,” Putin said. “As they used to say, personnel decide everything,” Putin added. Putin has repeatedly emphasized that Russia no longer needs to rely on foreign aid and advice as it did during the troubled years following the 1991 Soviet collapse. He also said there was a need to better educate and prepare Russians for jobs in the country’s growing economy. While there are a number of foreigners in high-level positions at top Russian raw materials companies, the country has been loath to grant foreign companies leading roles in the strategically important sector. Analysts and critics of increased state control over the raw materials sector say Russia needs foreign expertise to make efficient use of its energy riches.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

How Does Russia Despise Foreigners? Let LR count the ways . . .

The Moscow Times reports:

Expatriates beware: You now have to prove that you aren’t a drug addict to work in Russia.

A little-noticed regulation came into effect at the start of this year that requires foreigners who work or intend to work here to have their blood tested for traces of drugs. Evidence of the drugs is reason for authorities to refuse to issue a work permit. The regulation indicates that authorities want to know whether a foreigner is addicted to hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin, not marijuana or hashish. “On receiving a work permit, the employer must present medical certificates confirming the absence in the employee of illnesses associated with drug addicts,” the regulation says.

Foreigners should not be concerned about the fact that the certificate is only valid for three months, the Federal Migration Service said. “The regulation says that documents are to be submitted once in a year,” a service spokesman said Thursday. “So a certificate of a drug test will also be needed only once.” But if a foreigner wants to undergo an operation at a hospital or apply for a loan at a bank, he will need to present a certificate that is still in effect. If that comes more than three months after the test when the work permit was issued, the foreigner will have to go for a second test. Essentially, the arrangement is the same as with HIV testing, which is mandatory for both work permits and one-year visas. A 1995 law aimed at preventing the spread of AIDS requires the HIV test. That certificate also lasts for three months, and a foreigner may need to take the test again to receive certain goods or services during the year.

Foreigners contacted Thursday were in the dark about the drug test regulation. “I’ve never heard about such tests,” said Richard van Wageningen, a Dutch citizen and CEO of British Telecom for Russia and the CIS. “I barely needed my HIV test.” Roland Nash, a Briton and head of research at Renaissance Capital, expressed surprise. “They are just increasing the number of hoops that one has to jump through for the honor of working in this country,” Nash said. He said Russian bureaucracy seemed to be getting worse. “It is just another inconvenience that makes things more complicated,” said Marisa Fushille, director of the Moscow American Center, a public library. “But if it is a law, there is no way to avoid it.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !