Moldova Lashes OutOn this one, I think just the headline is amusing enough. Can you imagine Moldova actually trying to lash out?I have been planning a longer post on Moldova for some time now, because I think it's interesting how concerned pundits were about Ukraine being split in two when so little has been done to resolve Moldova having been split in two for over a decade. And now there is talk (granted, in the case of that link, by people with a clear bias) that Moldova will be the site of the next in the series of themed ("Rose," "Orange"...) revolutions.
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) -- Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin said Russian troops are stationed illegally in his country and that Moscow's explanations for failing to meet a deadline to withdraw were not credible.
Voronin, in an interview with ORT-Moldova television aired Tuesday, also dismissed as "silly" Moscow's claims that separatists in the Russian-speaking breakaway province of Transdnestr were preventing their withdrawal. He said Russia has great influence over Transdnestr.
"Mikhail Kasyanov," by Masha Gessen
Bolshoi Gorod, Oct. 1, 2004, p. 6
If you were asked to name the most important politician, businessman, man of the year, the man whose face will come to mind when you tell your children about the strange and scary year of 2004, who would you name? Mikhail Kasyanov, perhaps? No? Then keep quiet.
GQ, a glossy men's monthly magazine, conducted a poll of its readers to select the "Man of the Year." As always, the magazine invited readers to vote for men in several categories, such as "Writer of the Year," "Producer of the Year," "Restaurateur of the Year," and twelve more categories, including "Businessman/politician of the Year." The person receiving the greatest amount of votes, regardless of the category in which he was nominated, was supposed to become "Man of the Year." Except -- Shhhhh!
When the head of the Conde Nast Russia publishing house, Bernd Runge, found out who the readers of GQ had chosen, he immediately had the results of the survey cancelled; that is, altered; that is, designated. The second-biggest vote-getter turned out to be Writer of the Year Boris Akunin, but the editorial board decided to display its freethinking nature and chose number three, Mikhail Kasyanov, who had also been nominated in the "Businessman/politician" category. In exchange, the publisher allowed the editors to write that one other, that is to say, another, person won in the category of "Businessman of the Year."
Runge the publisher, though a German, is well-versed in Russian realities. This is no coincidence: the 43-year-old publisher graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). In 1981, while still a student, Bernd Runge began to work with the Stasi. In his free time he worked as a journalist. Now he is Vice-president of Conde Nast International, in charge of its German and Russian publications. This May the two largest German magazines published revelatory articles about Runge's past work with the Stasi. The head of Conde Nast announced that he didn't care about the transgressions of a valuable colleague, all the more so as they were committed in a completely different era.
Meanwhile the editors of GQ prepared the issue in which the results of the poll were to appear. The magazine interviewed all of the winners, but as for the businessman, they wrote only that his selection wasn't for nothing, after all, his company remains influential. When the publisher saw the final layout, he understood that it was liberal. The page with the businessman's picture had to be removed in Italy, where the magazine is printed, and replaced by a page with Mikhail Kasyanov's picture.
The awards ceremony for the "People of the Year" was held on September 24. The Alexandrov Ensemble played. The master of ceremonies was Leonid Parfyonov, who was introduced as "uncompromising." He immediately said that "the main intrigue will be the announcement of the one and only hero of our days." The winners received GQ logos made of crystal and mobile phones. When the magazine’s editor-in-chief went onstage to award the "Man of the Year" prize, his hands were shaking, and he even tried to refuse the envelope containing Mikhail Kasyanov's name. It was almost as though he wanted to say altogether another name. But he didn't. He kept quiet.
Moscow Times, Tuesday, December 28, 2004. Page 8.
Here's the plot of the new Russian blockbuster "Countdown" (Lichny Nomer): An oligarch living abroad wants to stage a fake terrorist attack in Moscow so that he can rush in and pretend to save the day. Partly out of his own ignorance, he hires real live terrorists to do the job. A major in the FSB risks his life and prevents both the fake and the real terrorist attacks, and not only in Moscow, but also in Rome.
Surreal Politics and Economic Soap Operas, by Konstantin Sonin
Without denying the film's merits as an action flick, critics have already accused director Yevgeny Lavrentyev of confusing reality with fantasy. They were completely off base, however. The director knew the difference between what was going on in the film and what happens in real life. He made a film about the way things should be, not the way they are. The film inspires pride in a country that can produce strong films and in a country that dreams of having strong security forces.
It seems that action movies are the only place in Russia today where reality is clearly separate from fantasy and where actors do not confuse themselves with the roles they are playing. Sure, we have already gotten used to announcers pretending to be journalists and guys in sweaters pretending to be analysts. Yet this autumn's events in Ukraine demonstrated that live television coverage is actually one of the performing arts.
This would not be a big deal, however, if there were a director behind the televised scenes who faithfully summarized events and wrote a plotline for the average television viewer. The horrible truth is that there seem to be no faithful summaries. Statements by Russian representatives during the course of the Ukrainian elections suggested that they were getting their information from the same television coverage they were supposedly running. The over-identification of actors with their roles made viewers feel completely cut off from reality.
The surreal trend continued with the recent Yuganskneftegaz auction. No one seems to know how Rosneft came up with the $9 billion needed to buy Yugansk. How do we know whether Rosneft ever paid a cent? Only from the speeches of federal officials on television. Maybe they are simply reading from a prearranged script. Sberbank then reads its lines that certain guarantees have indeed been paid. That $9 billion should show up in the federal budget somewhere. How will we know it appeared? From State Duma deputies? Half of them are merely cartoon characters. If someone draws them without mouths, they won't say a word. It is possible that Yugansk was bought for free, and we were shown an economic soap opera. With these surreal media dramas unfolding, the fantastic adventures of an FSB major are the least of our worries.
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Jennifer is actually a truly multi-talented individual. According to a concert announcement from earlier this year in Pulse Magazine:
She's best known as the frontwoman in St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review. Davis also goes by her alias, DJ Freakadelka, when she spins classic funk, soul, disco and eighties pop at venues like Dacha. But she actually started off as a classic jazz singer with Alexei Kanunnikov's Leningrad Dixieland and with performances at the Jazz Philharmonic Hall.
Check out her DJ'ing Monday nights (I think, but she'll correct me if I'm wrong) at Dacha on Dumskaya Ul. off Nevsky.
"Russia's step backwards into the Not Free category is the culmination of a growing trend under President Vladimir Putin to concentrate political authority, harass and intimidate the media, and politicize the country's law-enforcement system," said Freedom House Executive Director, Jennifer Windsor. "These moves mark a dangerous and disturbing drift toward authoritarianism in Russia, made more worrisome by President Putin's recent heavy-handed meddling in political developments in neighboring countries such as Ukraine."
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Every 10th Victim of the Militia is a Teenager
December 15, 2004
One-third of Russian male teenagers aged 14-17 (32%) have been the subject of militia interest in the past year. These data are from a survey on “militia violence toward teenagers” which was conducted by Yuri Levada’s Analytical Center at the request of the Social Verdict foundation.
According to sociologists, in 48% of these interactions the militiamen behaved in an improper manner. The most frequently mentioned incidents were detention without cause (in 23% of interactions and more than one half of the instances of improper militia behavior); verbal insults and abuse of the teenager (in 18% of interactions with militiamen); threats (15%); and beating (in 12% of interactions, i.e. one in eight interactions). It’s no surprise that over 70% of teenagers and their parents are afraid of the militia’s lawlessness and aggression. Of every one hundred cases alleging human rights violations committed by law enforcement bodies, ten involve children or teenagers as the victimized party.
“The level of expectation that law enforcement officials will violate the law is such that a sociologist must consider it the statistical norm in the lives and consciousness of today’s Russians,” said the head of the Levada Center, professor Yuri Levada. “In other words, behavior unbound by rules or limits and the militia’s demonstration of its dominance by any means necessary are becoming increasingly widespread and are expected by the majority of Russians in encounters with government law enforcement officials.”
Excerpt from Access code - Yulia Latynina’s weekly program on Echo of Moscow radio -transcript from October 16, 2004
Yu. Latynina – Good day, this is Yulia Latynina and “Access code” is on the air. First, as always, some questions from the internet. I have a bunch of questions I’m going to try to answer here about Abkhazia, about Yuganskneftegaz, about the terrorist act in Taba, even about the Russian national soccer team’s loss. But first I would like to briefly mention one interesting item which went practically unnoticed by the Russian press but was very much of interest to Western newspapers. That is the report of the governing council of Iraq, which found that Russian politicians and officials received fairly large amounts of money from Saddam Hussein.Companies linked to the KPRF received about 142 million barrels under the oil-for-food program, that works out to about $16 million of profit for them. Zhirinovsky received more than $8 million, Mirkom, the MChS’s trading company, that is, I should remind you that at that time that trading company and the MChS were headed up by the then-leader of “Unity” [Sergei] Shoigu, and all of this was going on while the question of whether Russia would support Iraq or America was being decided. Shoigu received $7.6 million, and the most modest recipient was Aleksandr Voloshin, the then-head of the presidential administration, a mere $638,000, according to the Iraqi governing council.
As I already said, none of this aroused very much curiosity in Russia. First, because all of this has long been rumored, and there wasn’t really anything that seemed too disturbing for Russia. Yes, we know more or less what our Russian officials are like, but in the West everyone was terribly alarmed. The reason I’m talking about this is that it’s a very important matter, this story about Iraqi money, Iraqi bribes to be more precise, which explains the mechanism by which our foreign policy decisions are made.To be honest, it was always incomprehensible to me why Russia took Europe’s side on the issue of Iraq rather than America’s. Let me repeat that I don’t want to discuss the Iraq war here, I don’t think it was justified, and I don’t think President Bush was a smart man for starting it, that was all falsehoods, stupidity, and lies. Just like all lies, this one has ended badly; Bush wanted to use the Iraq war to help defeat terrorism, but he’s only made it stronger. He wanted to lower the cost of gasoline for his voters, but he’s raised it. And most importantly, the war in Iraq has changed the USA from a power which controlled the world through certain mechanisms, certain economic, financial, and, as funny as it may sound in relation to the US, cultural mechanisms, to the extent that Hollywood and McDonald’s can be considered culture. So anyway, this war has transformed the USA from America into an empire. To be what America was and become an empire, that’s sort of like what happened to Spain in the 16th century, what a fall.
But we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about the fact that the war in Iraq could have become a fortunate gift for Russia, because we could have become America’s natural allies in the war against Islam. That is, we are fighting Islam in Chechnya, after all, and the US is doing so in Iraq. Second, because the USA was prepared to compensate us for our support in this war. They were ready to repay us not only with trade concessions and not only with the repeal of Jackson-Vanik; they were willing to repay us by changing Russia’s geopolitical status. Specifically, they were willing to make Russian oil instead of Arab oil one of the main sources of US oil reserves.Forgive me for such a pro-Russian statement, but a chance like this comes along to a country that has left the ranks of the superpowers once in a century. And we supported not the US, as it happened, we supported Iraq, we supported the EU, which, let me remind you, is a half-Islamic state. It’s enough to say that the most popular name for newborn boys this year in Holland was Mohammed. And now it’s become clear, from the report of the Iraqi governing council, why this happened: because the US was offering trade benefits for all of Russia, geopolitical status, Jackson-Vanik, etc. Saddam Hussein was offering big bucks to the big-shots. That is, Saddam Hussein understood better than the Americans how Russia works, because as it turned out, to get our support, the Americans shouldn’t have enticed us with Jackson-Vanik or whatever. It would have been enough to pay our officials more than Hussein did. That is a frightening decisionmaking process. We have 50 seconds to commercial, so speak up, you’re on the air.
Listener Alexei (Moscow) – Yulia, you find lots of interesting stories in the surrounding environment and comment on them in very interesting ways. But how would you comment on this story, it seems pretty interesting that some liberals are shouting on every street corner about how democracy and freedom of speech are being suppressed. But other liberals, including the leaders of SPS, Gaidar and Chubais, are implementing this very same suppression of democracy and free speech. How can that be?
Yu. Latynina – thanks for the question, I’m of course quite surprised that it turns out we’re ruled by Gaidar and Chubais here in Russia, that they are the ones suppressing free speech and democracy. I’m speechless, so I can end my commentary there and break for commercial. But, actually, that’s a brilliant text, I advise you to send it in to the Financial Times, that certain liberals, as you said, certain individual liberals, that’s a classic way of putting it, certain individual liberals are suppressing democracy. Turns out Gaidar’s in charge of the country. Commercial.
