Krizis v Kieve?

Looks like it may be an interesting weekend in Ukraine. Andy has a post that looks like it could start a comment debate. Veronica has photos and will not doubt have more as the weekend wears on - as long as her internet service is squared away!

An interesting tidbit I've just culled from Google News - the Georgian foreign minister is on a two-day visit to Ukraine and has met with Yanukovich. Not that it has anything directly to do with the current domestic crisis, mind you. But Ukraine's role in the GUAM organization (often described as a "counterweight" to Russian influence in the area Russia sees as its "near abroad") seems like it must be relevant to the domestic political situation there, because - at least as it seems from afar - so much of the back-and-forth going on in Ukraine in recent years has been about the fundamental question of whether the country will integrate with Europe or gravitate back towards Russia, or whether some sort of balancing act will be possible.

An interesting thing about GUAM is that with Uzbekistan's withdrawal from the organization, it now contains four post-Soviet countries - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova - which have all had issues with secessionist regions. In each of the four current GUAM members, Russia has played a role in supporting the region(s) attempting to break away. While in Crimea this has so far been limited mostly to words and to stunts like Dmitri Rogozin showing up at the Kerch Strait a few years ago, there are still a lot of Russians who think that Crimea should belong to them (that link is to a rather outdated survey, from 2001, but still...).

This is not always discussed in Western analysis of the organization but is clearly something that the members see themselves as having in common (see, for example, this joint declaration referring to "aggressive separatism" and "unresolved conflicts"). The GUAM charter emphasized that the organization's role is "promoting stability and strengthening security in Europe on the basis of principles of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of the state borders, democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights." Note the emphasis on European orientation and combating secessionism. But I digress. It will be interested to see what develops this weekend in Kiev/Kyiv.

Children in rural Azerbaijan - a depressing photoset

Last summer, we took a trip to see our friends in Baku over the long "Russia Day" (formerly the rather confusingly named "Independence Day") weekend. One day, we decided to take a road trip to the mountains, away from the hustle and bustle of the capital. We didn't reach our final destination (mountainside road was deemed unsafe), but we did see some amazing scenery along the way - beautiful, secluded mountains, little waterfalls, an abandoned fortress, etc.



In all, I took just over 550 photos that day, many of them touristy self-portraits but also some lovely mountain views. These photos below were actually some of the ones I thought the least of at the end of the day - all of them taken from the car, usually while it was moving. But looking back at them from a distance of some 9 months, I felt like posting them. All of them were taken on June 11 of last year in areas north of Baku.

More on the MGU scandal - from Chronicle of Higher Education & Vedomosti

The uprising in the MGU Sociology Department continues. You may recall Sean's post, my post with comments from a recent MGU alum, and Sean's follow-up - as well as LR's coverage (on Publius Pundit, too) - of the story. Bryon MacWilliams' latest from Moscow adds some additional flavor to the story and the people involved:

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2007
Protest at a Russian University Attracts International Attention [$]
By BRYON MACWILLIAMS - Moscow

An unprecedented campaign by students at Moscow State University to influence the conditions and curricula in the sociology department has been marked by arrests and accusations that the student activists are "paid provocateurs" and "extremists."

Police have detained students twice since late February, when activists, calling themselves the OD Group, first demanded changes in the department, whose standards they say fall well short of the reputation of an institution regarded as the best all-around university in Russia. The department enrolls about 2,000 students in 13 divisions.

The demands of the students, whose campaign has gained support from scholars in Russia and Europe, range from an affordable cafe and more classroom space to an overhaul of curricula they say are outdated and too heavy on theory over practice.

The increasingly public protest, uncommon in its tenacity and audacity, is a rare form of expression in a university that is typically unreceptive to student input and criticism, outside observers say.

The university's rector, Viktor A. Sadovnichy, took the unusual step this month of creating a special commission to investigate the merits of the complaints. Yevgenia Zaitseva, the university's spokeswoman, would not say when the commission, which does not count sociologists among its members, is expected to render its findings.

Last week six students were temporarily detained by police while distributing fliers outside the university library. They and others said they feared reprisal from Vladimir I. Dobrenkov, who has been dean of the sociology department since its inception in 1989.

Mr. Dobrenkov refused to be interviewed by telephone. In public, however, he has called the student activists an "extremist group" that is financed by "the money of teachers who have been fired." He also says they are too few to represent such a large student body.

Oleg Zhuravlyov, who is in his third year at Moscow State, said that while some former teachers have voiced their support, they have no role in the OD Group, which he claims has several dozen members. He said they pooled their money to pay for a Web site and to print fliers.

"The thing that makes our blood boil is the irony that, in the country's best university, in the sociology department, there is no sociology," he said. "At one point it just became so unpleasant, so unbearable, and we understood that professors are afraid and that we were going to need to be the ones to do something about it."

Students began to organize last year after the dean's office refused to provide a cheaper alternative to a cafe that charged restaurant prices, including tea for $2.70 ­ - seven times higher than the university's average price.

They also say that class schedules are inconvenient because much of its space is occupied by the military or private business; existing lecture halls are in disrepair and have poor ventilation; foreign professors are rarely invited to speak; professors rarely conduct research; too many freshman are admitted each year; and the department does not have a library.

Internet Petition

An Internet petition started by the group has won the support of scholars throughout Europe, but primarily that of Russian sociologists at state universities, scientific journals, professional organizations, and the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Vladimir Yadov, dean of the sociology department at the State University of Human Sciences, in Moscow, called upon Mr. Sadovnichy, the rector, to intervene. He said the administration of Mr. Dobrenkov was "an intolerable regime of a closed institution" that "disgraces not only the leadership of the department, but the reputation of Moscow State University ­ - the pride of Russia."

Some academic observers say the situation at Moscow State demonstrates how a refusal to listen to students can backfire.

"When you have a structure that is run more or less in an authoritarian way, and the perception there is that democracy is not that important, that students really only care about getting their diplomas ... ," said Andrei Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia Foundation, in Moscow, who has long been involved in higher education, "then you run the risk of sudden unexpected explosions of student activism."

Vedomosti also has a recent story about this, which makes it sound like the students' lack of access to a subsidized cafeteria was the genesis of the problem:

Политэкономия: Студенческая весна На социологическом факультете МГУ работало дорогое, недоступное рядовым студентам кафе. Студенты выразили свой протест. Протестные настроения были пресечены силовым образом. Студенчество приступило к самоорганизации — была создана OD Group. Далее

In this piece, Kolesnikov mentions the 1968 student unrest in Paris a couple of times (he notes that the riots back then are sometimes said to have started because someone wasn't allowed to enter a women's dorm), but I don't think we're headed there yet.

My translation of what I thought were the best parts of Kolesnikov's piece:

However, the conflict is obviously not being politicized by the students, who seem inclined to civil self-organization. At a recent faculty meeting, the department chair [dekan, in this case the head of the Sociology Dept.] stated that "political forces of a pro-Western orientation"* stand behind the student unrest, and that these forces are "fine-tuning color-revolution techniques for seizing power." He is seconded by the leaders of political Orthodoxy from the Union of Orthodox Citizens (SPG): "There can be no doubt that serious forces stand behind the actions of these radical youths, forces that are interested in an orange revolution in the main Russian university on the eve of the parliamentary and presidential elections."

It turns out that the students' actions are aimed at "forcing out Orthodox, nationally oriented ideology from MGU...[and] inculcating aggressively secular liberal ideas under the guise of scientific worldliness and objectivism."** The political Orthodox call on all good people to "speak out against the subversive activities" of the students, "which are a threat to the national interest."

Apparently, the young simpletons from the "Nashi" movement can walk around the capital on the government's tab, scaring the masses with tales of Western intervention, but the students of the Sociology Department are prevented from defending their social rights, in which there is no politics whatsoever. Clearly, the politicization of the conflict is a means of defense against the students.

But why conceal such managerial incompetence, manifested at the very least by the fact that an intradepartmental squabble has turned into national news and led to accusations of revolutionary and even "subversive" activity? And where is this special-services slang coming from in the rhetoric of a department chair and his defenders, the politicized Orthodox doing battle with "liberal thought"?

* To be honest, I was wondering how OD Group got that prime NY Times coverage. They must be in on the conspiracy.
** Interesting how much this quote resembles what one might hear on a US college campus during a skirmish in the "culture wars."


Additional Russian-language links on this topic:

A blogger posts an article she wrote for something called "Levyi Avangard" "long, long ago" when the scandal was just getting started, and is now perhaps of "historical interest."

Blog of a professor (I think), Oleg Ivanov, who appears to be allied with the students, though not formally. He is posting lots of material, including university documents, about the developing situation. This post of his I liked enough to translate:

I've just heard about several situations where Sociology Department professors have been trying to convince their students to "show their position as citizens" and openly speak out on the internet against the OD Group. They are promising the administration's loyalty. No comment.

Resurgent Russia

The latest issue of The Washington Quarterly has a number of articles on Russia which should be worth reading - especially since it seems you can get free pdf's of them at the TWQ website. This "Resurgent Russia" theme issue had been advertised in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, and Robert Amsterdam has also posted excerpts and promised to critique the articles at a later date.

Dmitri Trenin is always insightful, Celeste Wallander introduces (to me, at least) the interesting concept of "Transimperialism," and there are also articles about France's Russia policy and the "special relationship" between Germany and Russia. Jeffrey Mankoff's piece gives prominent play to the secessionist conflicts on the very first page:

The Kremlin’s decision to challenge Western participation in several major oil and gas exploration projects, notably Sakhalin-2, and its prominent support for separatist rebels in Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and Moldova (Transdnistria) had exacerbated tension with the West even before the shocking deaths of Litvinenko and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in late 2006.

He also gives the left bank of the Dniester/Nistru River yet another spelling in English. Transnistria is what the Moldovans call it, Pridnestrov'e is what Russian-speakers call it, and Western journalists, mediators and academics have long used compromise versions likeTransdniester, Transdnestr, Transdniestria and Trans-Dniester (although Google tells me that Transdnistria, while less common than those other variants, is also in somewhat common usage). Sadly, the spelling of the region's name is far from the most complicated thing about the conflict.

Is this really news?

Infighting Fractures Russian Opposition - WaPo, March 28.

If I had time, I could do a romp through the thickets of the internet and come up with a dozen articles making the same point from recent years. Although I guess it is a rather important and alarming story. And it's always good to see Ryzhkov get more coverage, though, as he seems like a stand-up guy.

Police brutality in Russia - RFE/RL, March 29.

Again, definitely a worthy subject - especially since the story contains new survey data - but it's sadly not such a new phenomenon.

More on the Russian Academy of Sciences Story

Succinct piece in today's WaPo about the latest developments in this story, which was covered here (second part of the post) earlier as well as by Sean. ITAR-TASS also covered yesterday's news, and the IHT's Russian Press Review blurbs a Kommersant piece on the story. I guess now the ball is in the government's court - and the only way this story will become a true scandal is if they try to override the near-unanimous opinion of the Akademiki. Given the Russian government's propensity for engaging in PR self-destruction, it seems like a possibility.

Russian Academy of Sciences Rejects Demand to Give Up Autonomy
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, March 29, 2007; Page A12
MOSCOW, March 28 -- The Russian Academy of Sciences, the historic home of Russia's brightest scientific minds, on Wednesday rejected a government demand that it cede more control to the state, and instead adopted a charter that preserves its centuries-old autonomy.

The almost unanimous decision by the academy's general assembly sets up a potential clash with the government, which had told the academy to adopt a charter written by officials in the Education and Science Ministry.

The government wants to place the academy, which was founded by Peter the Great in 1724, under the management of a supervisory board on which a majority of members would be appointed by parliament and the presidential administration.

To be valid, the new charter must be approved by the government. There was no immediate word on how it planned to respond.

Academy members rejected the government's plan as a threat to independent scientific research and called it part of a broader trend of increasing official control over critical parts of Russian society. Some academy members have suggested that the government's plan may be driven by the desire of some bureaucrats to gain control of the academy's rich property portfolio.

"We will not agree to the supervisory council on any conditions," the academy's president, Yuri Osipov, told journalists after Wednesday's vote. "This goes against the spirit of science and traditions of science, and not only Russian science."

The academy has about 1,000 senior members. Wednesday's vote in Moscow was unanimous but for one abstention, members said after the meeting.

The academy did agree that in the future the president of the body, who is elected by its senior members, will be ratified by the president of Russia. Senior officials at the academy said Kremlin officials had assured them that their choice, made by secret ballot, would not be rejected.

The self-governing institution's senior members oversee a $1.2 billion budget, 400 research institutes and 200,000 researchers and other staff members across Russia.
Government officials said the academy needs new management to better integrate it into the modern economy, and they have said the academy could extract more revenue from its property.

New look

After two and a half years, it was time for a change. Plus, this lets me get more text on the page. The font on some of the older pages may look a bit small, though. I'm afraid I won't be going back to edit them all...

But I may swap this template for another one if it turns out I don't like it after a few days, or if it turns out no one else likes it. Feedback, constructive criticism and comments are all welcome.

I've also updated my links list for the first time in forever, so please let me know if there's anything/anyone I missed.

A Flickr of inspiration

While I'm on the subject, Culiuc.com had a report earlier this month about the celebration of the Moldovan holiday of Martisor in DC - Lucia Candu also blogged about it, all the way from Moldova! - and the attendant photo exhibit. I'm happy to say I participated in both the party and the exhibit, and people seemed to like a couple of my photos - the one of sunflowers displayed at the end of this post, the cats from this post, and this one:

Chişinău, Moldova, Aug. 7, 2006.

There's actually a great story that goes with this picture. I was on one of the streets bordering the lower side of the Piata Centrala in Chisinau and saw this photogenic car - an antique with a crate of melons on the trunk and melons spilling out of the back seat, plus a dog sleeping underneath it. As I was taking pictures of it, the car's owner (and melon salesman) approached me and told me I was the second person that day who to photograph it. We chatted for awhile, he offered me a free sample of melon and showed me a couple of features of the car (such as the homemade lock on the driver's-side door and collection of stickers on the dash), and it eventually turned out that he was from my wife's hometown and knew her parents. It's a small world, even smaller in a small country.

With such an opportunity, I should have been able to get a better shot of this car, which is a real classic (a GAZ-21, just like Putin's) and a definite "daily driver," as the classified ads in the States often say, meaning it's still in daily use - in this case, as a commercial vehicle. As it was, there were a bunch of people and some port-a-potties around, not to mention a couple of dogs, so perhaps there were just too many obstacles to achieving a better composition. Here's a picture of the car's interior, showing the homemade door lock and stickers, as well as a crumpled plastic woven bag, de rigeur at the market and also known locally as a "torba" or (still locally, but more broadly) as a "kitaiskaia sumka."


Note that Louis Vuitton has recently created a bag with a similar pattern (made of leather, natch - see the slideshow here), so the folks toting these bags at rynki and train stations across the former USSR (and indeed, throughout the Third World) have now become much hipper.

Anyway, I was inspired to finally get a Flickr account and upload all of the photos I presented at the Martisor part exhibit, "Memories of Moldova," into a single photoset. Hopefully, more Flickr activity and uploads will follow. Maybe I'll even figure out how to set up one of those cool sidebar widgets like Veronica has.

Americans in Moldova; Moldovans in Italy...

Alexandru Culiuc's weblog is one of the best in the Moldovan blogosphere - probably the one I enjoy reading the most, and happily it has an owner and readership that don't seem to mind my mostly English-language comments. Last year, Alex had an interesting post about foreigners' impressions of Moldova (titled "Moldova as seen by comedians and volunteers"), in which he discussed and linked to a few of the blogs written by Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) - Americans - in Moldova.

For whatever reason, the discussion in the comment section of that post was re-started about a week ago, and I posted a couple of comments there, mainly 1) trying to stick up for an outstanding PCV blogger named Peter Myers - not that he needs me to stick up for him - who some of the Moldovans felt was being too critical of the rural school he teaches in, and 2) disagreeing with the broader notion that all PCVs are "losers" or people who haven't found themselves in American life.

My comments there are not that interesting, frankly, because they go down a well-trodden path about how criticism can be a good thing if it's constructive (familiar to anyone who cares about Russia and has tried to criticize it to patriotic Russians), and digress into discussions of the American educational system and other less-than-relevant topics (though the discussion was refreshingly friendly compared to others I've been involved in recently). They are not, for example, as interesting as one of Peter's recent posts:

After class today, I noticed nearly a dozen men, of whom I know several and who are major figures in the village, standing around on the first floor of the school. I said hello and then continued upstairs. On the way to the computer lab, I saw Raisa, one of the cleaning ladies. I struck up a conversation:

"Why are practically all the men in Mereseni at the school right now?" I said, exaggerating.

"It's a Communist party meeting," Raisa said. "They want the Communists in power."

This was the first time I had heard of a local Communist party in the village, but it didn't surprise me. Before I could respond, Raisa summed up the political thinking of many Moldovan villagers, rooted in nostalgia for the times when food was cheap salaries came on time:

"I would be in favor of the Communists," she said, "if I thought that they could make things the way they were back then."

But I've already digressed from my intended point, which was to translate one of the more recent comments to the post mentioned above on Culiuc.com, written by a Moldovan living in Italy [I've translated it from Romanian, and I hope anyone who can will correct any mistakes - although I don't think there are any serious ones, my Romanian is not as good as my Russian]:

snejana 28 March 2007 17:08
Hello to everyone from Moldova, I'm in Verona, Italy now, it's a beautiful and rich country, but you just can't imagine how much you miss those green pastures of home. Here as everyone knows there are lots of foreigners who work at very difficult jobs, there are lots of Albanians, Moroccans, Blacks, and of course Moldovans, Ukrainians and Russians.

When I get on a bus or go into a supermarket, I feel at home because if you want you can ask something in your own language. Ours is a small country and I don't understand who has stayed home if there are so many of us here. I hear a lot of compliments from the Italians about us: we learn foreign languages very easily compared to them, we are good-looking, clever, and very emotionally strong. When they have a little problem, they have to go to a psychologist, since they are very melancholic and, as they say, "Non voglio fare niente" - man, what about all the problems we have, I guess we should just die, but no, we struggle and get through it all.

My friends ask me what Moldova is like, and I don't know what to say, it's a lovely country but of course there's nothing to see there, because it's nothing compared to other places, so I tell them that all you see there is bars, good times, and drinking.

Everyone who's here wants to go home but then they come back and say that it's even worse, they shouldn't have gone because it was just a waste of money and it's sad there, but I still hope that someday we too will speak with pride about our country and lots of foreigners will come so we can show them how brave [bravii] we are.

Now I ask myself, what am I doing in a strange land with a strange language, living in a strange house, if I have a big house and an apartment at home, and all my folks are there? I don't have an answer, for some reason my plans seem to keep me here, but Moldova is still in my heart always.

Maybe it was the style of the original - stream-of-consciousness, with minimal punctuation and capitalization; I've added paragraph breaks and more sentence breaks in translating it - or me being too sentimental in the spring air, or who knows what else, but I found this to be one of the most moving things I have read in I don't know how long.

The ingenuity of rural folks

This is a bit News-of-the-Weird-like and somewhat beyond my usual geographic focus (all the way on Romania's Western border), but it's a classic:

Cows in boots confuse detectives
March 19 2007 at 07:20PM

London - Romanian cattle rustlers put rubber boots on two cows they had stolen so police couldn't follow their hoof marks.

But they were caught because a pig followed them and left a clear trail of trotter prints.

The three men, from Burila Mare in Mehedinti county, raided a woman's stable during the night.

The owner, Mioara Fratila, from Hinova village in Mehedinti county, called the police.

She told Gazeta de Sud newspaper: "When I woke up in the morning to feed my animals they were all gone... just disappeared.

"There were only boot marks outside. But I looked closer and saw some pig tracks. It seems they ran out of boots or just couldn't find any for the pig."

Police tracked the 14 foot marks and four hoof marks for more than 28km and arrested the three men for theft. - Ananova.com

That old-time propaganda with a new, modern twist

Sean blogs about recent youth-politics events in Russia and discusses a recent Nashi-sponsored event in Moscow called "Связной Президента" ("Connecting with the President" as Sean translated it, or "President's Liaison Officer" as ITAR-TASS translated it in their report).

Last week I saw a post on the LJ community ADVЁRTKA (devoted to images of and commentary on various ads - which I found via Vilhelm Konnander's blog - thanks, Vilhelm!) asking if anyone knew what a sticker-based guerrilla marketing campaign (techniques now as familiar in Moscow as in Western capitals - ah, globalization...) with the words "Связной Президента" was selling. Commenters speculated that it might be an upcoming film or book (well, one jaded commenter just said, "the font is shit. and by now I could spit on whatever they're PR-ing.").

But now we know what was actually being promoted - another Nashi PR-aktsiia. Even more interesting was a link posted in the comments of that ADVЁRTKA post, to a site where someone has posted the official event brochure with the following comments (I've translated the poster's comments and added links):

An event ["акция"] organized by the youth movement "Nashi" and involving thousands of people will take place on March 24-25 in Moscow. 10,000 [Nashi] comissars will gather in Moscow, living for two days in tent village on Sakharov Pr-t (this is practically a shortened 2007 version of Seliger). On the 25th they will all be walking around the city and offering passers-by to send an SMS to Vladimir Vladimirovich's mobile (strangely, during the last "direct line" broadcast with the President he said that he doesn't use a mobile phone) and receive an answer.

Just as they did before the event ["акция"] with the Santa Clauses, Nashi's print-shop has published a bright, colorful brochure for the commisars, explaining the crux of the event and the consistency of its participants' actions.

I wonder how much Sviaznoi [the chain of mobile phone stores] dropped on this... what great advertising!

The juiciest page of the brochure to me was this one (click to enlarge):



The money bags are labeled "To our friend Limonov," "To Kas'yanov," and "To Mr. Belykh." Soviet propaganda art techniques meet modern liberal-bashing! Actually, I think I've seen things like this before in Zavtra. What is new here is not just that from 1991 and up until a couple of years ago such imagery could be seen only in venues like Zavtra and maybe in the imagination of Vladimir Vol'fovich; it's also of great interest that while the cartoon bone is being thrown - predictably - to Khakamada, the dollar bill is labeled "Rogozin"! Rogozin's fall from official grace is old news, of course, but to suggest he's on on the take from Western sources given his politics...? I guess to Nashi's youth vanguard - and their actual, slightly older, comissars - they are all the same: irrelevant meddlers in the country's pursuit of the course set by Putin.

The brochure also makes the statement that "in another eight years, food will be rationed in the US and distributed only on holidays" and suggests that the upcoming Russian elections are recognized in the US as "the last chance to establish external rule in Russia." The US, of course, wants to do this in order to "sponge off our [Russia's] resources."

The whole brochure - exhorting "Nashisty" from the regions to come to Moscow and take part in this event - plays on some sick blend of provincial desire to visit Moscow and take part in a mass event; technophilia (with all the cell phone action); patriotism (not that there's anything wrong with that, per se); and anti-Americanism (that's the part I have the biggest problem with). It even manages to revert to the favorite Soviet move of referring back to World War II as relevant for contemporary discourse (without wanting to dishonor the memory of WWII and the blockade, in 1980's Leningrad WWII was more often used as an excuse for why this or that building was still "na remont" or why so many people downtown still lived in communal apartments).

Unlike some other bloggers, I don't use the term "Soviet" lightly. But this brochure, well, how can I put it? To paraphrase Pushkin, "Здесь советский дух - здесь совком пахнет!"

[Update: a paraphrase more true to the original meter from "Ruslan & Liudmila" occurred to me: "Совковый дух - совком здесь пахнет!" And check out this great electronic concordance of Pushkin's works.]

An addendum on translation - Multitran offers several translations of "sviaznoi": contact, orderly, messenger, communication agent, runner, go-between, and liaison officer (TASS chose its term of translation well, although I like "Connecting with the President" also). Sviaznoi is a mildly linguistically interesting word in that it's an adjectival form used as a noun.

The idea of using Nashi partisans as electronic "go-betweens" to/from the President (the passers-by receive special SIM-cards which will also be able to receive "all essential information about the movement's activities," per this description of the event) is an intriguing modern take on the Soviet idea of a loyal vanguard, though it's supposedly an exercise in "modern democracy" ("sovremennaia demokratiia").

Hullabaloo at MGU

Sean has a post covering the student protests at MGU; also covered by LR at her blog and on Publius Pundit. I emailed the NYT article to an acquaintance of mine who is a recent MGU graduate and received the following email in response:

Unfortunately, this is the terrible tendency in the Moscow State University. I can only imagine what happens in other universities that are not as sophisticated as this one. I also noticed that growing trend during my studies there and was really shocked by the level of prejudiced stupidity some professors had. The level of education has indeed significantly deteriorated because of such people. In my opinion it also adequately represents how complexed and nationalistic the society becomes. After all, academia is considered to be the best part of that society, at least the most enlightened one. Instead we see that even academia has a vast number of narrow-minded and not smart people. Unfortunately, I am not as idealistic about my alma mater as I used to be.

So, there you have it, straight from a disappointed alum. A comment at Publius Pundit "wonders what their alumni association thinks of this." One problem is that the sense of alumni cohesion, painstakingly created at great expense by US universities (with the hope of even greater financial returns to the university), is not as prevalent among Russian graduates, even of top institutions. Sure, people from MGU are proud of having gone there and feel some more loyalty towards each other than to MGIMO grads, for example, and there are informal alumni organizations and networks, often based around specific academic departments and linked to from the University's official website. But these don't seem to be affiliated with the university per se, and based on their website map it doesn't appear that the university has a development office or office of alumni affairs that outraged alumni could call.

Even if there were somewhere to call, MGU alumni don't have the same leverage that many alumni of US universities have over their alma mater - namely, the power of the donation dollar. Yes, if a scandal like this happened at a major US university, alums would be burning up the phone lines and threatening to withhold contributions - or at least demanding to know the story - and the administration would respond by bending over backwards to convince the alumni that all is well. Witness the alumni-oriented speaking tour and other reassurances by Duke University's President Brodhead in light of the "lacrosse scandal" that rocked the university last year - a major goal of which had to be PR damage control to keep those alumni donations flowing. Since MGU is state-funded, it doesn't have the same kind of incentives to engage in alumni relations.

While there's no direct link, I can't help but see some thematic relationship between the scandal at MGU and the dispute over the future direction of the Russian Academy of Sciences:

Russia Seeks More Control At Academy Of Sciences
By Peter Finn, Washington Post

Tuesday, March 13, 2007; Page A01 MOSCOW --

[...] Government officials describe their efforts to give the academy a new basic charter as necessary to inject some efficiency into an academic cocoon run by an aging club of researchers too removed from the modern economy. "The new charter should create a competitive environment, and it should cover new mechanisms of state and public control over the academy," Dmitry Livanov, a deputy minister at the Ministry of Education and Science, said in a telephone interview.

Some independent analysts agree that the academy has let itself slide into lethargy in recent years. Older members, they say, tend to cling to posts as sinecures; many younger ones have gone abroad in search of better pay and opportunities. The organization has often been slow to commercialize its scientific discoveries.

"The academy needs reform," said Alexander Shatilov, deputy director of the Center for Current Politics in Russia. "The question is whether it needs the kind of reform the government wants."

The issue will come to a head this month at the academy's annual general assembly, when its 1,250 full and corresponding members vote on a new charter. The document they have drawn up incorporates few of the elements demanded by the government.

The fateful RAS assembly is next Monday. Robert Amsterdam's blog has also written about the upcoming showdown. I'm not saying there's a concrete relationship between these two higher-education-related scandals, of course; just that both of these situations are evidence of a lack of reform in higher education and academics over the past 15 years, and of the fact that the old guard has perhaps finally grown unsustainably out of touch - and of course the government would like to step into that vacuum, whether it's really there or not. The bribes to get into MGU have grown, I'm sure, as Russia's richest have become richer; maybe now the students are going to start demanding some customer service - in the form of better professors - for their money.

A break from our regularly scheduled programming

St. Petersburg, July 22, 2006.

C-Asia on my mind

Andy at Siberian Light has continued his interesting interview series with one of Nathan Hamm, the man behind the legend that is Registan.net. Registan is still one of this blog's top referrers of all time, with most of the hits probably dating back to May of 2005, when I was obsessively blogging about the Andijan massacre. But Nathan is an inspiration for different reasons - he has created an authoritative website about this part of the world, a blog which I'm sure is a must-read for English-speaking followers of the region; and his blog definitely played some role in my decision to just say WTF and take a trip to Uzbekistan in the summer of '05 - though I didn't get around to posting some of the better photos from that trip until last month! People I "met" in Registan's comments section gave me a couple of the more useful travel tips I received.

Anyway, with that long preamble, Nathan's thoughts about the generally poor quality of leadership at the national level in the 'Stans reminded me that I have been meaning to post this little nugget from Martha Brill Olcott's 2005 book on the region, Central Asia's Second Chance:

None of the region's presidents was truly prepared for the job of leading an independent state. While we can debate what the ideal training would be, bad training is easy to identify and would certainly include a successful career in the top ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - an institution that demanded blind obedience and inspired devious behavior.

It's an obvious point, of course, but she phrases it well, and it has considerable applicability for other post-Soviet (when will that term cease to be appropriate...?) countries - Georgia and Moldova come immediately to mind as having suffered especially from the rule of former CPSU bigwigs (Shevardnadze and Lucinschi, or Luchinskii, if you prefer the Russified spelling). I suppose the legacy of Heydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan is debatable, but I think that country's government would have come in for a lot more criticism from the West during the '90's and the first half of this decade if not for all of that oil. And actually, if one considers that Heydar's most obvious legacy was putting his son Ilham in power, maybe it's not so debatable after all.

Who lost... my passport? and Russia's national idea?

Rubashov of Darkness at Noon experienced a classic bit of Russian-ness when getting his new visa - at one point, it appeared that the guy responsible for getting his documents processed had lost them. But the story ended with a bit of Russian wisdom:

As I left his office, he told me with a slight grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, "In Russia we don't lose things. We just take a long time looking for them!" Touche, AM!

Of course, this little saying puts the familiar (and tired) question of "who lost Russia?" in a new light: maybe Russia isn't lost after all - maybe we're just still looking for it...

Indeed - "Who Lost Russia?" should now be known as the question so tired that the Washington Post op-ed page wouldn't use it for a headline. Fred Hiatt's recent column there was instead headlined "Who's to Blame for Russia?" I was expecting a new twist to the discussion. But what were the first three words of the lede paragraph? That's right, "Who lost Russia?" The column actually contains a number of sensible observations, taken separately, but as a whole it doesn't quite hang together.

There are certainly a lot of things the Russian government is still "looking for" - a cohesive national idea that actually inspires people, for one, and maybe a decent plan to reform the military - but Rubashov's last sentence (talking about what "we're...still looking for") is interesting for another reason. Perhaps the foreigners who view Russia through the lens of our media have "lost" the real Russia in a blizzard of cliches and stereotypes. And perhaps - as has often been said in this ten-year-old debate - it was never ours to lose in the first place.

I like the idea of continuing to "look for" Russia, although I wish I were still there to do the looking myself. On the other hand, many Russians seem content to let it remain "lost," and it's probably not up to us foreigners to find it. Middle-class Russians, in my experience, are among the least politically introspective people around; you won't find them pontificating about the country's direction or identity, rather they're concerned about their next career move or vacation. There's nothing wrong with that - voter turnout, for example, is not very impressive in the US, and one of the good things about the new Russia is that people do have career mobility and opportunity - but the problem of Russia's lack of a cohesive national idea hasn't gone away, it's just been submerged for the time being in a flood of petrodollars.

"Sovereign democracy" - which has been floated as Putin's idea of a national idea (articulated at length by Vladislav Surkov and recently discussed by Sean Guillory in his interview at Siberian Light) - doesn't exactly trip off the tongue in Russian and doesn't strike me as particularly inspiring, although perhaps polling data from Russia would prove me wrong. Plus, it seems like one of its focal points is that Russia needs to find its own way, distinct from the formulas pushed on it by "the West" in the '90's - but that still doesn't fully articulate what way Russia should find.

I would certainly hope that the fears of some that Russian ethnic nationalism (of the ultra- variety, involving beating non-Russians and lots of blaming foreigners from both the near and far abroad) will become or is becoming some sort of national idea will not be borne out. Such ideas generally have wider appeal the poorer people are (and the more they need scapegoats for their material problems), so one might hope that the average Russian is feeling some sort of trickle-down effect from the oil money and that this would lessen the likelihood of a "Russia for the Russians" national idea becoming popular on a large scale. But the oil money can't be the only solution, although the idea of Russia as an "energy superpower" constituting a sort of national identity has been floated by at least one observer:

[P]ublic enthusiasm for the idea of Russia as an energy superpower is possibly the most important development. Russians have long complained of the lack of a “national idea,” which some interpret as a vision for statehood and others as a blueprint for economic development. The new concept has struck a chord with both groups. On one hand, it has the potential to mobilize Russian public initiative around a well-defined objective – energy dominance – like space exploration and military buildup did before. On the other hand, it raises the spirit of a public whose longing for a clear state policy of economic development has been repeatedly frustrated. But how feasible is the potential of this idea? [...]

[W]hat does the slogan of “energy superpower” mean in the end? It is just that: a powerful and flexible slogan that the next Russian president will likely find expedient to inherit from Putin. It appeals to practically everyone: The elites think the concept justifies the energy exports that are the source of their livelihood; nationalists see in it a tool to restore Russian greatness; entrepreneurs hope that the slogan will form the backbone of long-term state economic strategy and result in business stability; rank-and-file voters are willing to support political candidates who offer clear policies that drive personal income growth.

Although the best national ideas are those which appeal to different people for different but non-conflicting reasons, there does need to be some substance, and the lack of a unifying idea is not the kind of void that can be papered over forever with PR projects. The "energy superpower" idea is clearly feasible for the moment as an economic strategy (though not, one hopes, an overarching philosophy), but is it really the path to sustainable economic development in the long term, or will it just lead to a worse case of "Darvensazimus disease"* than Russia already has? It's not as though sticking a straw in the ground requires the scientific prowess of the people who launched Sputnik. On the other hand, it's not as if the scientific and military achievements resulted in a Soviet economic miracle.

One would hope that the Russian people, with a legacy of great cultural and other national achievements (littered at times, to be sure, with corpses), would not settle for a role as suppliers of hydrocarbons to Europe, the Chinese, and the Indians. Nowadays, though, black gold is where the money is, and I don't see any latter-day Dostoevsky being able to tool around Moscow in a Maybach - or generating the coin to provide the government with the revenues to keep paying those increased pensions. So for the time being, the domestic financial stability and foreign-policy leverage provided by high oil prices are standing in for a real national idea.

In any event, while foreigners can try to help with civil society development programs (civil society development and "rule of law" being their own sort of "national idea"), it's probably too late for that - and ultimately the Russians will have to decide for themselves where Russia was lost and how to find it.


*Andrei Illarionov's catchy name for the combination of Dutch, Argentinean, Venezuelan, Saudi, and Zimbabwean diseases that he claimed Russia had a year ago - see the Powerpoint presentation linked to here for the background data he used to make this case.

Stay single - live longer?

A happily unmarried friend emailed this to me from Moscow:

Ukraine's 'oldest man' turns 116

By Helen Fawkes BBC News, Kiev

Hryhoriy puts his long life down to the fact that he never married

A man thought to be the oldest living person in the world is celebrating his 116th birthday. Hryhoriy Nestor was born in what is now Ukraine.

The authorities are to mark the occasion by officially recognising him as the oldest person in Ukraine.

They say they have documents that prove that his birthday is on 15 March 1891. An attempt is now being made to get him into the international record books.

Hryhoriy puts his long life down to the fact that he has never been married.

To mark his birthday, Hryhoriy Nestor is having a small party - just a few friends and family will gather at his home.

Austro-Hungarian 'golden era'

Unlike many people from his village in western Ukraine, Hryhoriy has survived a brutal dictatorship, wars and grinding poverty.

In the past, the area was ruled by Poland and the Soviet Union.

But the 116-year-old says that life was best when the region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire a century ago.

It was only at the age of 100 that he retired from working as a farm labourer.

He is now looked after by a relative.

Hryhoriy, who still has a full head of hair, says that being single has kept him feeling young.

He recommends a diet of milk, cheese and potatoes as well as the occasional shot of vodka.