Twittering while Russia burns

It was interesting to see the translated article below appear in JRL on the same day as Svetlana Babaeva's piece appeared dismissing the political impact of social networking and new media in Russia ("nothing more than banal social chatter"; "inconsequential prattle").  

My value add in the article below is to link to the Twitterings of these government luminaries (other than Medvedev, since I can't be fussed to figure out which is the real one, and Astakhov, since I couldn't locate his using any of the obvious search terms) - and to point out that there is an aggregator-type Twitter account called gosblogi for Russian official Twitterers.  I would also note that the only one of these guys I really try to follow is Rogozin - he is a master of the form and often manages to display his sense of humor in 140 characters or less.  Though somewhat confusingly, he appears to have two accounts - the one linked in the previous sentence and this one.

And my purpose is, in part, to plug my very own new Twitter feed (in which, of course, I will tweet a link to this post, while praying that the universe does not collapse upon itself or get stuck in some sort of infinite loop of narcissism).  You can see recent tweets in the sidebar and the whole thing here - http://twitter.com/scrapsofmoscow


Twitter Takes Off Among Russian Politicians
Izvestia [translation courtesy of JRL]
July 29, 2010
Report by Aleksandra Beluza: Authorities of Short Messages

The Twitter era has begun in Russian politics. In the wake of President Dmitriy Medvedev, who launched his micro blog in June, governors and other highly placed figures have arrived there. A round the clock personal broadcasting channel, which is what Twitter essentially is, can be used during elections to mobilize the population when actions are being conducted.

Thanks to Twitter (from the English "to twitter") politicians all over the world are "taking off their jackets" and giving us the chance to see a stream of their personal news. Here is Dmitriy Medvedev writing about his visit to Belgorod Oblast: "I flew in to Alekseyevka. I went to the graves of my great grandmothers and great grandfathers. I was going for the first time. For work, as always." Now Medvedev has over 50,000 regular readers on Twitter.

Medvedev himself reads the micro blogs of US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But presidential aide Arkadiy Dvorkovich believes that it is precisely the Russian leader who has the best Twitter. "None of the leaders is comparable," Dvorkovich wrote on his own Twitter. "Where else will you see a photo taken by him personally (Medvedev -- Izvestiya)?" A picture called "view from the window of my hotel" taken by Medvedev in San Francisco has already been viewed almost 233,000 times, for example. Dvorkovich himself also posts a lot of photographs on his micro blog. He also writes quite openly -- for example, that "it is very hard to sleep after a week's tour in North America, but it is harder for the president."

"What does Twitter give you? Why are you ready to spend time on postings?" Izvestiya asked Dvorkovich on Twitter.

"Not a great deal of time is spent, but the ability to set out thoughts and share them concisely is developed," the presidential aide responded before five minutes had passed.

There are already around 20 senior Russian politicians and hundreds of officials at the level of deputies and heads of departments, including in the regional administrations, and also mayors, on Twitter. However, it is not pleasant to read all the micro blogs. Out of 10 governors only three write really interestingly -- Nikita Belykh (Kirov Oblast), Dmitriy Zelenin (Tver Oblast), and Mikhail Men (Irkutsk Oblast). Zelenin in particular distinguished himself by simply writing the following after Medvedev's departure from the Seliger youth camp: "The boss has left. The Tver forum and Seliger went well. I feel like a horse at a wedding -- with my muzzle in the flowers, and myself in a lather."

" Twitter has become a little personal news agency for politicians," managing partner of the Sotsialniye Seti (Social Networks) agency Denis Terekhov believes. "And here it is a question of information openness -- is the person ready to write quickly and without coordinating, without thinking about whether he has said it right or wrong 10 times? I think politicians who join Twitter are a priori more open than others. In this sense Twitter can be an acid test."

Essentially Twitter today is a test of a politician's openness -- is he ready to show that he is a person like everyone else? Mikhail Men admits: "I listened to (singer Vladimir) Vysotskiy all day." Dmitriy Rogozin, Russia's permanent representative to NATO, writes: "I have arrived in Moscow for a week's vacation; 360 degrees Centigrade (as published) is not that hot. It has been hotter at our NATO sessions." Pavel Astakhov, the ombudsman for the rights of the child in Russia, characterizes his secretariat like this: "I have 12 women working for me. I call them the 'child's special purpose troops.'"

There are only two party leaders here, Sergey Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council and the head of Just Russia, and Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). They both write every day, but somewhat turgidly. Denis Terekhov believes that "the part ies are quite sluggish and it is hard for them to use Twitter as a real channel of communication." In the opinion of other experts, Twitter could attract them not so much as an information technology as a mobilization technology.

"Many politicians are seeking communication with their target audience here -- the middle class and young people," Dmitriy Badovskiy, the deputy director of Moscow State University's social systems scientific research institute, says. "Plus Twitter gives an instant link with quite a big audience. And this makes it possible to gather supporters, coordinate observers at elections, and publish current information quickly. So I think that as the elections approach, activity and testing of Twitter as a possible environment for political mobilization will increase."

The 10 most popular Russian politicians on Twitter (by number of micro blog followers):

Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev 52,896
Russian's permanent representative to NATO Dmitriy Rogozin 7,513
State Duma Deputy Konstantin Rykov 3,769
Federation Council Speaker Sergey Mironov 2,084 [strangely seems to have protected tweets]
Tver Oblast Governor Dmitriy Zelenin 1,988
LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovskiy 1,716
Kirov Oblast Governor Nikita Belykh 1,489
Presidential aide Arkadiy Dvorkovich 1,309
Perm Kray Governor Oleg Chirkunov 812
Children's Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov 535

 Perhaps tweeting is, for Russian officials in the era of Medvedev, something akin to 

taking up tennis under Yeltsin or becoming a martial arts beast / skier under Putin.

Suspicion of the Westward Turn

 Given their partner publications, perhaps the tone of this Vedomosti editorial shouldn't be surprising.

[image source]

Website Fears Russia's 'Turn West' Aimed at Preserving 'Corrupt' System
Vedomosti
www.vedomosti.ru
May 26, 2010
Editorial: "Turn West" (Translation courtesy of JRL)

The modernization of Russia declared by the country's first person dictates fundamental changes in foreign policy. A number of events confirm that Moscow is abandoning the fat years' great power arrogance and isolationism and striving for full-fledged cooperation with the West.

It seems that Russian politicians are striving for more trusting relations and, in the future, even for integration with Europe. For example, the recent warming of relations between Moscow and Warsaw is connected not only to the personal sympathies of the premiers and the catastrophe involving Poland's aircraft No. 1 near Smolensk. The tone itself of foreign policy speeches and documents has changed. The participation in the 9 May Victory Parade in Red Square by NATO country military units and its conclusion with Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" -- united Europe's anthem -- are symbols confirming the trend.

The "Program for Effective Use of Foreign Policy Factors for Purposes of Russia's Long-term Development" published the in the magazine Russkiy Newsweek (the document's authenticity is confirmed by experts and the lack of the MID's (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) denials) must not be considered as our response to American President Barack Obama's new international strategy. The program, however, suggests a very substantial tactical correction. The understanding that "reinforcing relations of interdependence with leading world and regional powers . . . including the creation of 'modernization alliances' with our main West European partners and with the European Union as a whole" will help Russia emerge from the crisis has arrived to replace self-satisfied statements about an "island of stability."

Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov is talking about the need for political rapprochement with advanced countries. In the article "The Euro-Atlantic: Equal Security for All" published the other day in the French magazine Defence Nationale, the minister emphasized that our country "is an integral part of Europe" and pointed out that "the philosophy of joint work lies at the foundation of Russia's foreign policy." Yet another key of the article is that Russia will not get into confrontation with the West and when necessary will wait while "natural processes create the conditions for convergence at the level of assessments and practical policy."

Two reasons caused the changes in Russian foreign policy. Europe and the US agreed to take Russia's interests in the post-Soviet space into greater consideration. Simultaneously, they recognized in the Kremlin that they will not succeed in modernizing the Russian economy using their own efforts and resources. Adults posing as an offended adolescent -- this is not the best way to attract western investments and technologies. And this means that political trust is needed.

It is another matter that closer relations with Europe and the US may lead to ambiguous consequences for Russia and, speaking broadly, for the post-Soviet space. The problem is in the understanding of the term "convergence," meaning rapprochement of different economic and political systems, and the degree of this rapprochement. Convergence with the European Union, of which Lavrov spoke, may accelerate the creation in Russia of European institutions -- the supremacy of the law, the independence of the courts, and the inviolability of private property.

There is, though, reason to fear that part of the Russian establishment views the future "European choice" exclusively as the state and major corporations' free access to Western technologies and credit lines, as the possibility of one's own going about Europe without a visa, buying real estate, and maintaining high standards of consumption. Moscow probably is trying to use cooperation with Europe in order to, by attracting resources and technologies, preserve the present system: clannishness, corruption, and access to resources through the electoral system.

Social Networking in Russia

A bit of a cut-and-paste post here - a couple of translated articles courtesy of Johnson's Russia List, and some awesome graphics from Yandex kartinki, all dealing with the always-interesting topic of social networking in Russia.

Young Russian professionals choose social networks - survey

MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti)-More than half of Russian Internet users (52%) have accounts in several social networks, a poll by the Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) published on Tuesday revealed.

Sociologists portrayed the typical social network user as a resident of Russian northwest administrative district (71% of them have accounts in the social networks), aged from 18 to 24 (75%), highly-educated (57% have a higher education), and financially stable.

The poll shows that the most popular network among Russians is Vkontakte with more than 75 million registered accounts. Almost one-third of the respondents (31%) visit it daily and another 23% visit the site on a weekly basis.

The second most popular Internet spot for Russian networkers- is Odoklassniki.ru. Twenty-one percent of the users visit it daily, 28% - weekly.

Unlike Odoklassniki.ru, Vkontakte allows the posting of music and video, which the networker can share with the friends and manage his or her account by changing privacy settings.

According to the survey, other social networks are not so popular amid the Russian audience. The micro-blog network Twitter is used by only 13% of the respondents, blog-generating site Blog.ru - by 14%, Facebook and MySpace are familiar to only 15% of the respondents.

The poll was held on April 3-4, 2010, with 1,600 respondents in 140 localities of 42 regions. The margin of error is 3.4%.

_______________________________________


Social Networking Sites Becoming Political, Alarming Authorities

Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal
http://ej.ru/
May 18, 2010
Commentary by Marina Litvinovich, under the rubric "In the Opposition/The Wild Ones": "The Miners Are in Contact"

Social networks are the egg in which the needle is kept, and along with it -- the death of Koshchey (fairy tale monster). Koshchey is not so much Putin as he is the established social order (which, it is true, has nothing in common with order in the sense of harmony). The social order built in Putin's time presupposes the absence of self-willed and self-reliant citizen unification and action and proceeds from the idea that everything that is happening with the society should be approved and financed in the Kremlin, and then shown in approved form on television. Public action a la Putin is a youth army of many thousands which is brought in to stand on Academician Sakharov Prospekt, who is turning over in his grave for the umpteenth time at this spectacle. The young people usually are standing to confront some kind of color threat: the planners apparently proceed from the principle of "if not skills, then numbers," and each time bring in more and more people to do the "confronting," while who they are confronting remains unclear to this day. The personification of confrontation usually ends up with good-natured bouts of drinking in the neighboring courtyards, and this is despite that fact the all the local wine stores have been closed since morning.

However, as many people predicted -- and I was one of them -- the Internet is creating a completely new structure of public space. This has become especially noticeable in the last two years thanks to the growth and development of the social networks. Millions of new social cells -- groups, communities, circles, and associations -- have arisen on the Russian (more accurately Russian-language) Internet at the websites VKontakte (In Contact), Odnoklassniki (Classmates), Meyl.ru (Mail), and LiveJournal. These communities and groups structure Russian society in an absolutely new way: the ordinary urban Internet user today voluntarily belongs to at least 2-3 communities, but at the same time is not and has never been a participant in any public association or group in reality. It is considered natural for young city-dwellers to "belong to groups" on the Internet, but completely unnatural for them to join a party or become a member of some association. This is largely because membership in Internet groups does not obligate you to anything in particular except voluntarily receiving information, and entry to and departure from them is simple. However, here is an interesting fact: if there is a threat to some interest of the given group, it mobilizes instantly and is frequently ready to move from the virtual world to reality.

With the arrival and spread of social networks, we absolutely unexpectedly received in Russia an enormous civil society consisting of millions of virtual groups. The construction of a civil society, which Russia has been seeking for many years now, was not assisted by any state efforts or international grants: it was facilitated by a simple leap forward in Internet technologies -- the transition to web2.0. And it is not so bad at all that many of the groups that have arisen on the networks are comical like, for example, the large society of people who lick yoghurt lids. Suffice it to glance at the lists of public organizations in the United States or in Europe -- strange organizations are met there too, such as the Foundation To Rescue Cows in Great Britain or the Movement To Resist Aliens from Other Planets in the United States. I will go further -- if something begins to threaten yoghurt lids, we can receive a vigorous, ready-to-act community that rises to the defense of its interests, even such unusual ones.

There are many political, human rights, and social communities in the networks. But they are not so large. The large communities are those created on the territorial or fan principle. Experience shows that in critical situations it is these communities that become the main sources of information and help people unite their efforts and move to actions offline, that is, in reality. When it was decided to revoke the license of the television channel "2x2," hundreds of fans and viewers who adored the Simpsons and "South Park" went into the streets with posters in defense of the channel. People far from politics were organized for public actions thanks to the users of the VKontakte network who originally belonged to the "2x2" Channel fan group.

After the accident at the Sayano-Sushenskaya GES (Hydro Power Plant) operational information that was different from official reports could also be gotten from users of the VKontakte network, who organized a group to exchange information on survivors and victims.

A recent example is provided to us by the situation in Mezhdurechensk, where after the explosion at the Raspadskaya Mine, the rally, the clashes with OMON (special-purpose police), and censorship of the mass media, the primary debate and exchange of information and opinions developed in the community "Devoted to the Miners of the City of Mezhdurechensk" at the mail.ru website and in a group on this same subject at VKontakte. Both communities had existed for a long time and joined people on the territorial-vocational principle. The first has more than 6,000 participants, while the second has more than 5,000. It was in fact online in the community on mail.ru that the first report appeared that clashes with OMON had begun on the railroad tracks. These same communities went very quickly from discussing "what is happening" to "what is to be done" and, inevitably, to political topics and conclusions. Words that formerly had been heard only from the mouths of the non-system opposition began to be heard from the mouths of ordinary people. And this alarmed the fighters against extremism (E Center) and the FSB (Federal Security Service). The administrator of the VKontakte group was summoned to the organs and they took his password, which makes it possible to manage user profiles and groups. Power over the group was seized, its name was changed, the group was made closed (originally admission to the group had been free and open), and all information and exchanges of opinions were deleted. Several users who made pictures of screens were able to document the process of the disappearance of information and the irreversible metamorphoses with the group.

The group on mail.ru still exists, but no one is giving any guarantees that they will not treat it in the same way. This is actually the first time that the security structures worked out a procedure for a "raider takeover" of a group on the social networks. "All it took" for this was to put strong pressure on the administrator so he would give up the password. And "pressure" is something the "siloviki" (security officers) know how to do -- it is not brain work.

State and security structures have been concerned with the subject of controlling the Internet for years now. They usually talk a great deal about the fight against pornography, but during the commotion they deal with politically undesirable websites and bloggers. And the fight is not against "wheels," but rather against individuals: bloggers are being put in jail, and as we now see, they are pumping out their passwords with threats. It is like some kind of "war and the Germans," and every blogger or group owner is a potential female radio operator Ket (Cat). I think that in the near future the "siloviki" will try to incorporate this new and promising area of the fight against their own people.

[image source]

"Information Direct from the Manufacturer": An interview with the guys behind Privesc.Eu

First off, apologies for the long absence from this space - things have been genuinely busy at work, and I just haven't had the time.  Fortunately, something I initiated back in early October, before I got busy, has finally born fruit.

I think I first wrote about Privesc.Eu back in July, on Moldova's second election day of 2009.  At the time, I described it as

a streaming video site called privesc.eu ("I watch," in Romanian), launched during the campaign, which has increased transparency by showing complete video of press conferences and public meetings of, for example, the Electoral Commission... rather than the carefully edited versions which appear on state-run TV.

And that evening, I watched on a laptop in my kitchen as the results came in and Privesc.Eu's live feed and open mic from the Central Electoral Commission picked up random conversations of journalists and election officials, including one where two people were discussing, in Russian, whether the country that had just voted should be called "Moldova" or "Moldavia." 

Anyway, I was familiar with Privesc.Eu founder Mihai Moscovici as one of the first Moldovan bloggers I saw on the interwebs, and more recently from his prolific Facebook updates, and decided to ask if he and his collaborators on this interesting project would mind answering a few questions about what it has been like to launch an online public-access channel in the midst of what has to have been one of the most politically tumultuous years in Moldova's history.

To put this in an American context, these guys have created something that is a cross between CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, and hip-hop (rap music being, in the immortal words of Public Enemy's Chuck D, "CNN for Black people"), all with a level of interactivity that makes full use of all the capabilities Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now?).  I don't think they were the first to do it in Moldova (Public TV and JurnalTV were first, I think, by a matter of months), but the team behind Privesc.Eu has done a great job working with hardly any resources other than what they have contributed from their own time and pockets.

Before (or after) you read the interview, please consider contributing some amount, however small (or large!) to support the work of these young Moldovans who are working to improve transparency and people's access to government in their country and for the many labor migrants who might otherwise be out of touch with political developments at home.  You can donate via PayPal (which takes all major credit cards) right here.

What motivated you to start this project?

On the way to democracy, Moldovan media find themselves forced to play the games of diverse political and economic interest groups, thus losing neutrality in presenting information to citizens. As a result, the Moldovan public is confused and is not discerning with respect to media coverage. Lately, international monitoring organizations have often criticized the Moldovan media for lack of objectivity, misleading reporting and one-sided presentations of information.

Since the Internet penetration rate in Moldova grows about 50% every year, online media coverage has long been a challenging journey for existing mainstream media, amateurs and new media projects. Still, there is a need for innovation and intense exploration to create new initiatives and progressively successful projects to satisfy the need of the Moldovan public for access to information online.

Information consumers, particularly youth, are looking to avoid media that only offer one-way information sharing and prefer to become participants in events and play their own role in the decision-making process.

We have started Privesc.Eu because there was a need for an innovative online platform which will give young people opportunities to share their opinions on real-time ongoing events, to instantly react and interact with each other, to ask questions, to be active and get involved in the country's daily life, to share and discuss their know-how, to organize and promote their own events, and, more than that, to share their activism by maintaining that platform.

Privesc.Eu is now an innovative online project, integrated with the latest social media elements and modern real-time data transmission technologies, that focuses on exposure of current events and on providing opportunities for social engagement for the Moldovan online youth community.

Did you start with a detailed business plan and specific goals, or just with a camera and a dream?

We started this project on July 5^th, 2009 in the central park in Chisinau. We had no business plan, but we had a dream, inspiration, and enthusiasm. In a few weeks, we realized that a business plan is necessary for the future of project, and eventually drafted one.

It occurred to me that Privesc.eu's content and goals are sort of like those of the C-SPAN channel in the U.S.  Are you familiar with this channel, and if so, what do you think of the comparison?

One of our team members watched this TV channel while living in the US, but we didn’t know about it until we launched the project. We started Privesc.Eu following the needs of the Moldovan society. As for comparison, we look forward to establishing such a TV channel in Moldova :)

When did you begin broadcasting online, and how did you promote the site when you launched it?  How quickly did you develop an audience, and how large is that audience now?

We started our broadcast on July 5^th, 2009, in the central park in Chisinau. On that day we set up the domain name for the project: www.Privesc.Eu (translated from Romanian as www.Watch.I).

We established two main directions of activity: provide live video streaming from the major events in the country (politics, economy, social, civil society, etc.); and establish user interaction to enable them communicate with each other and with the event organizers.

Since launching www.Privesc.Eu in July 2009, the site has continuously grown in traffic and user participation. In the first four months, the project has already become well-known among Moldovan young people in the country and abroad. Now we have more than 30,000 viewers per month. Every live stream on www.Privesc.Eu is watched and commented in real-time by 200 to 2000 visitors, depending on the event.

In addition, Privesc.Eu has more than 1000 fans on Facebook.

If you could start the project over again, is there anything that you would do differently?

If we would start over again, perhaps we would think more about better promotional methods than we have used so far.

Do the people involved have journalism backgrounds or more IT backgrounds?  (Please feel free to discuss what the various members of the Privesc.eu team do professionally or not, and/or their educational backgrounds, as you prefer)

Privesc.Eu was developed and is maintained by an innovative and creative team of volunteer young professionals: two high-skilled web developers, a professional journalist, a marketing/PR specialist, and an inspired and dedicated project manager.

You and your partners have obviously spent a lot of your own time on this project - how have you found time for this in addition to doing whatever your "day jobs" are?  And how much of your own money have you had to spend on equipment and other expenses (hosting, etc.)?

Five people are involved in this project: Eugeniu Luchianiuc, Vitalie Eşanu, Mihai Moscovici, Radu Chivriga, Oleg Ciubotaru. Each of them is responsible for a specific department: Tehnical Department - Vitalie Eşanu and Oleg Ciubotaru; Promotion and Marketing Department - Mihai Moscovici; Journalism and LIVE Video Streaming Department - Radu Chivriga and Eugeniu Luchianiuc. Every one of us has a primary job, but Privesc.Eu is more than just a hobby, it is a way for changing our society for better. We use our own equipment: laptops, microphones, webcams and 3G mobile internet services. Privesc.Eu is grown on enthusiasm and we don't seek any financial benefits from this project.

Have your expenses been covered by advertising revenue?  Do you have any other sources of funding for the project (private donors, grants)?

On our web-site, we have a page where people can donate money through PayPal or to donate money to cover our mobile internet expenses through top-up terminals. Until now, we have 13 private donors who have donated a total of 400 USD.  Also, we applied for a Soros Foundation grant and are currently waiting for their decision.

Why do you think online broadcasting is important in Moldova?

Privesc.Eu helps Moldovan internet users to have open access to unbiased, democratic, interactive, objective, as-is coverage of important events in Moldova.  It helps citizens to form their own opinions based on pure and as-is information, avoiding journalistic comments and opinions.

Privesc.Eu fills the void of information about the situation and events in Moldova currently experienced by citizens working abroad, as well as by those living in the breakaway Transnistria region.

What do you think Privesc.eu provides viewers that they cannot get from TV or other mainstream media, or from already existing online sources such as YouTube?

Primarily, Privesc.Eu is a source of pure and as-is information about Moldova’s major events for citizens, as well as for international internet users, tourists, business people, potential investors, researchers and other people interested in Moldova.

Do you view your primary audience as being located in Chisinau?  Moldovans overseas?  Rural areas of the country?  Romanians sympathetic to Moldova?

According to Google Analytics, last month we had viewers from 58 countries . Most of them are from Moldova – 27,000, Romania – 1,500, United States - 540, France - 500, Italy - 455. Moldovan viewers came mainly from 5 cities: Chişinău, Rîbniţa, Bender, Tiraspol and Balti.

Many Moldovan websites have Romanian-language and Russian-language versions (and often English-language as well) - is there a reason that Privesc.eu has only a Romanian-language interface?

We don't think this is a problem for Russian-speakers. Any visitor can easily click on the video and watch it as it is. Sometimes we cover events where people speak Russian. Also, there are many comments in Russian language during our live broadcast.

What has been the most memorable or most significant event you were able to broadcast this year (in the opinion of you and/or your partners)?

The day when we had the most traffic and the highest number of viewers so far, was July 29^th, when we presented the results of the elections in Moldova.  On that day we had more than 6,000 live viewers. Also, some Romanian TV channels and national web-sites used our live video stream.

Have you had any difficulties with hackers attacking your site or with people spamming or acting as provocateurs in the comments section?

Yes, we have lots of provocateurs in the comments section, but didn’t have any hacker attacks.

 Do you have any advice for people who might want to start similar projects in countries with semi-closed media systems?  Why do you think it was possible for you to make a project like this happen in Moldova, and do you think it would be possible for people in places with more authoritarian governments, for example in Central Asia (or Transnistria)?

The main problem is with the quality of internet coverage in the country, and it depends also on the country's government. Live video streaming requires a good Internet connection, without it you can only do live blogging from the events. 

 What are your future plans for Privesc.eu?  Do you have any plans to generate original content (roundtable discussions or interviews which would be exclusive to Privesc.eu), or will you continue to focus on providing direct coverage of government-related events without commentary?

We have lots of ideas, but it takes time and resources to develop them all, so we take one idea at a time. We already have a talk show called "Fara cenzura" ("No Censorship") it's a show that seeks to present the facts without editing the video. Follow Privesc.Eu and you’ll see many great things in the coming months.

Moldova's repeat elections - the "Battle of the documentaries" and the online campaign

"Бес-при-дел", originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, May 25, 2009.
The word scrawled on the concrete, which should actually be
spelled "беспредел," means "lawlessness" or "chaos" in Russian

An earlier post of mine provided a few places to go for good analysis and updates on today's elections in Moldova. Additional sites to check are ADEPT's website, alegeri.md (also in English and Russian) and the website of the Moldovan Central Election Commission (showing a fairly high turnout as of 3:45pm local time). Before I head out to the Moldovan Embassy way out in Chiswick to provide moral support to my better half as she votes, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane through the campaign that was, to provide some basic background for those who have not been following it - while trying not to get too bogged down in the minutiae - as well as add a bit of detail about how the campaign has spilled over into the interwebs. I saw the lead-up to the repeat election campaign, as I was in Moldova from late May through June 21, but I had to follow the past five weeks online.

Sadly, only today did I re-discover Morning in Moldova, a wonderful (and unusual) English-language blog about Moldova, which I had seen briefly in the frenzy of link-hopping I engaged in while trying to keep up with the events that followed the April elections. The coverage at MiM is worth reading; I especially liked this attempt to map out Moldova's political scene.

The repeat elections, of course, were made necessary by the inability of the parliament chosen in the April 5 elections to choose a president to succeed Vladimir Voronin, who is term-limited out and has become a creaky dinosaur holding his country - and perhaps even his own party - back. Voronin managed the nifty trick of being both acting president and speaker of parliament (a post he will try to retain - a la Putin, or to use Voronin's own analogy, Deng Xiaoping - depending on how well his Communist Party, the PCRM, does today). The major reason there was no compromise in parliament was extreme societal polarization and outrage - and somewhat unexpected unity - on the part of the three opposition parties who made it into the legislature in the wake of demonstrations on April 7th which turned violent.

Who is ultimately to blame for the violence remains something of a mystery, although looking at qui prodest it should be noted that the burning of parliament and the presidential building arguably played into the hands of ruling Communists, at least in the short term, allowing them to characterize the opposition as would-be putschists who had attempted to overthrow the government. (An interesting timeline of foreign reactions to the post-election violence can be found here.) April 7th turned out to be the birthdate of a lot of myths - both in Moldova and among journalists and social media evangelists who were quick to seize on the overblown notion that the unrest in Chisinau could be characterized as a "Twitter Revolution" (this post puts a similar meme in its place in the context of Iran).

In Moldova, much of the June-July campaign centered around narratives of the events of April 7th, and the key difference between the campaign that ended on April 5th and campaign one ending today turned out to be the defection from the PCRM of Marian Lupu, the former parliamentary speaker whose name had been on the lips of many Western Moldova-watchers in March and early April as the best possible option to succeed Voronin. Lupu's role is yet to be determined - some from the opposition think he is part of a Communist plot to draw centrist votes (one of Lupu's campaign slogans has been "The political war must be stopped") and that upon making it into parliament, assuming his party and the Communists have enough votes to elect the president, he will make a deal with the PCRM and the three opposition parties who made it in in April will remain marginalized (in fact, one of them, Serafim Urechean's AMN, may not make it into parliament at all this time around).

Trash your TV, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Chisinau, June 7, 2009

A major first salvo in the information battle which characterized Moldova's second election campaign was kicked off when the government aired a "documentary" titled "Attack on Moldova" (Atac Asupra Moldovei) on NIT. In the best traditions of Russian propaganda films of recent years, this one-sided narrative featured alleged recordings of phone conversations and hinted at shadowy threats from abroad as well as fingering internal enemies - namely, the leaders of the opposition parties as well as jailed (and later released) businessman Gabriel Stati. This masterpiece can be viewed on YouTube (naturally) here. It led to at least one opposition party leader threatening legal action. Moldovan analyst Oleg Cristal projected in June that the film would be the "quintessence of this campaign," and he wasn't far off the mark. As Cristal wrote in late June:

I understand that this film is currently being shown all over the country, and it aims to provoke a reaction that is both emotional (blood, fire, screaming, shooting, chanting, etc.) and sentimental (fear, personal and group security, hatred, patriotism, love of country, etc.): "we are being attacked by external enemies (Romania and transnational crime groups) and internal enemies (the liberal opposition)."... "Attack on Moldova" rallies society around a common threat: "We must defend our Fatherland," urges Voronin.

"Attack on Moldova" kicked off what one interesting commentary referred to as the "Battle of the documentaries." The opposition decided to present its own versions of the events of April 7th and get its message out by screening its own "documentaries," both on YouTube and in some cases by screening them in the country's smaller towns where many voters do not have access to internet (or fast enough internet) to enable them to watch these online, or would not be inclined to do so. The main examples of these films were "Black Box," "Whither Moldova?", "Who Loves Moldova?", and the party-sponsored "The Truth About April 7th" (PL), "Green Eyes" (PLDM - whose party color is green) and "In Defense of Moldova" (AMN - see JurnalTV's report on this film, with highlights, here). Later in the campaign, Romania's TVR1 aired yet another "documentary" (I use the scare quotes throughout because, while some of these films may be relatively more or less objective, none of them is really a documentary), "The Trap," about the events of April 7th (some discussion of the film is here). This untitled opposition film may also be of interest.

One could hardly call the "Battle of the documentaries" a battle of equals - the ruling party by all accounts made full use of its "administrative resource," including its ability to broadcast and rebroadcast its propaganda films on nationwide television. The national news programs are also used to cast opposition politicians in the worst possible light. While I was in Chisinau, I saw several days of intense coverage of the city's stray-dog problem, all of it concluding that the city's mayor, liberal Dorin Chirtoaca, was at fault. I knew I was going native when I out-conspiracy-theoried even my post-Soviet friends and theorized that the PCRM had perhaps imported stray dogs from the rest of the country to give their mud-slinging increased credibility. Then the nightly news started to highlight alleged rat infestation in Chisinau, alleging that "the 'most European mayor in the city's history' has brought Chisinau to the verge of an epidemic."

Progressive Moldovans have found ways to compete with or combat the government's domination of broadcast TV, but most of these are internet-based and therefore problematic in terms of reaching rural voters. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning the nascent online TV channel JurnalTV, as well as a streaming video site called privesc.eu ("I watch," in Romanian), launched during the campaign, which has increased transparency by showing complete video of press conferences and public meetings of, for example, the Electoral Commission (and is currently streaming Moldova's main opposition-oriented TV station, ProTV), rather than the carefully edited versions which appear on state-run TV.

Another way of using the internet to deal with biased broadcast media is to take on the most egregious excesses directly - by publishing monitoring reports highlighting the bias of state-run news programs or by showing side by side how careful editing is used by the state-run programs to distort the messages of opposition politicians or foreign critics. In general - not surprisingly - the authorities have found it harder to control online media (though not for lack of trying) than conventional media, but this is cold comfort to the opposition given the internet's relatively limited reach in Moldova.

Fighting Fist, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, June 16, 2009.
You might assume the writing says "Fight with Communism," but in fact it says "Fight with Romanism"

YouTube provides a wealth of clips for those interested in how the campaign unfolded. While the major parties had video clips available on their websites, they all also had their video materials aggregated on YouTube:

PCRM
Partidul Liberal (PL)
Dorin Chirtoaca (separate from PL)
AMN (under the username scottgeorges for some reason)
Lupu (showing inter alia what seem to be dozens of clips of his meetings with voters in various cities throughout Moldova)

PLDM couldn't get their party's acronym as a username because it had already been nailed down by a YouTube channel called "Peace! Love! Deathmetal!" I couldn't find a one-stop source for their ads, but luckily the good people at ADEPT have set up a YouTube channel with campaign ads from all parties.

Online and traditional media which support the authorities also have made use of YouTube channels:

Moldnews, an online news portal which resembles Russian-funded efforts in Georgia
TV channel NIT

As have opposition-minded individuals and media:

Change Moldova
Unimedia
JurnalTV

For a somewhat more light-hearted YouTube clip, check out this animated spoof showing Voronin and several others (Greceanii, Turcan, Lupu, Rosca) conspiring to burn down the parliament. In general, the atmosphere of "permanent campaign" seemed to lead to fatigue and some silliness. A well-respected group of young, opposition-minded (though some used to work in the current gov't) economists called Clubul Idea started a something of a parody of the elections on its website - people create their own parties and then have the chance to vote for them.

Lupu, Chirtoaca and PLDM's Vlad Filat are on Facebook (note that Lupu is the only one of those three who has not tricked out his profile with a customized URL); Urechean is not, which makes sense given his target demo. They have been using the internet fairly extensively in general and their Facebook feeds in particular, as has Voronin adviser / PCRM parliamentarian / "grey cardinal" Mark Tkachuk, whose feed has reliably contained some of the black PR that is being pumped out by the PCRM campaign. Tkachuk (also spelled Tcaciuc) went all VVP with an "online news conference" on news portal Omega. Omega's unintentionally funny (to those familiar with Anglosphere netspeak) URL, OMG.md, stands for "Objective Media Group." They seem to be taking a page from Fox News' self-proclaimed "Fair & Balanced" stance, as this is an overtly pro-PCRM site.

Lupu joined Facebook fairly late in the game and received some scorn early on for making the noobie mistake of posting many, many videos as individual status updates, thus flooding the home pages of his "friends" and leading some people to exclude his feed from their home page. Sorry, I said I wouldn't get bogged down in the minutiae... To Lupu's credit, he did hold a meeting with Moldovan bloggers, video of which of course made its way online (PL leader Mihai Ghimpu also had a well-documented "off-line" meeting with Moldovan bloggers, as did Urechean). Lupu also, tellingly, has a standalone website (i.e., not one associated with the party he is using as a vehicle for his campaign, PDM) and has put a bunch of photos up on Flickr, including (somewhat oddly) items apparently intended to show that he is an international playa, e.g. an invitation from the French President to attend Bastille Day celebrations.

Tricolor, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, May 27, 2009.
Of course the pro-Romanian camp has its own cans of spray paint...

Another intriguing online innovation was the chance for voters in Chisinau to check their status on the election rolls online. Those lists which were the focal point of the fraud allegations which followed the April 5th balloting. Not sure how much it helped - Filat claimed (to the press and in a Facebook status update, naturally) to have found two extra people registered in his apartment when he went to vote this morning.

And what of the reverberations from the "Twitter Revolution"? Well, a few days before July 29th, I saw reports (initially on the Facebook feed of prolific Moldovan blogger and Twitterer extraordinaire Mihai Moscovici, later picked up by Unimedia) that fake Twitter accounts - nothing new, and apparently even non-celebrities are at risk - purporting to belong to Vlad Filat and Dorin Chirtoaca were calling for supporters to come protest on July 30th.

I can't think of an appropriate conclusion to this post and already have one foot out the door. I may come back later this evening with some more links and perhaps a report on whatever the scene is at the Moldovan Embassy in London. While I am not overly optimistic about what may follow this evening's vote-counting (which, as we all know, is much more important than the actual voting), permit me to conclude with a more uplifting - and probably apolitical - bit of street art:

Be United, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, June 17, 2009

Moldova and Information Wars

An interesting translation from today's JRL:

Nezavisimaya Gazeta
April 15, 2009
Editorial: "Campaigns and Wars: A Thing or Two About Information Policy"

Right now it's too soon to judge how much events in Moldova might exacerbate the information conflict between Russia and the West. There are substantial grounds for thinking there won't be any exacerbation. First, the attack upon and fire set at the parliament building is an obvious delict that does not offer a multitude of interpretations; second, both sides know full well that Voronin is not a pro-Russian figure; and finally, third, the prospect of Moldova joining Romania with the inevitable secession of the Dniester region is hardly inspiring to any sane person.

It would seem that in war as in war all means are good and you can quibble over anything. In fact, spontaneity and omnivory are signs more characteristic of a propaganda campaign, a more obviously local and short-term phenomenon.

That's not how it is in areal information war. Dilettantes sometimes think that its goal is to convince the opponent. However, that is the second goal both in time and importance; in fact, the top goal of an information war is to convince your own side. And only afterward to present this indestructible ideological unity to your opponent as an irrefutable argument in your debate.

The two phenomena we're talking about are utterly unalike in their very organization. A propaganda campaign is carried out by a limited circle of professionals and aimed outward from the beginning. There is no 'our side' here by definition. If you're convinced of what you're doing, fine; if you're not but you look convincing, that's not bad either. War is a deeply structured affair. Here each side has its headquarters and command points, a decent-sized army of mercenaries, abroad array of transmission belts to bring orders to subordinates and dependents. But the main thing is this: in no 'hot' war have so many volunteers participated as are now battling on the information fronts. Formally, these are the millions of participants in forums and blogs, but in essence it is everyone who has ever gotten into a conversation about the theme under discussion rather than about sports or the weather.

If we understand the goal of an information war as changing our opponent's mind, then it is hard to understand who is supposed to debate whom and in what language. Debates go on between countries, too, of course, but all these are faint streams on the backdrop of runaway domestic tsunamis going to and fro.

The information noise of politicians, the media, debating political experts, public figures, writers, artists, and even high school and university students is what creates the specific principles in accordance with which reality is understood and demonstrated. It is from this stock that the soft power of the state is extracted -- as an element of competitive advantage. Which ceases to be competitive if it is subordinated to the goals and means of the information war.

In very recent history we can distinguish three information wars between the West and Russia: the second Chechen war, the events surrounding the orange revolution, and 8 August 2008 in South Ossetia. All the rest -- Yukos, Litvinenko, and so forth -- are examples of classic propaganda campaigns.

It is wrong to think that there is one big war and the above mentioned are merely episodes in it. There is no total permanent war. Most of the time over the course of the last two decades, a pluralism of opinions in both camps has predominated over their uniformity, which is characteristic for war.

But what is most interesting is that all three instances developed according to completely analogous scenarios. A visible unity of the 'developed world' was achieved with respect to the subject of disagreement, and it was presented to Russia without visible effect, inasmuch as Russia had the opposite consensus. As we know, a whale and an elephant cannot fight each other. Due to a total mismatch of discourse.

Moreover, those who brought Russia human, material, and moral losses -- the Chechen fighters, the oranges, or Saakashvili -- subsequently made the West blush many times for the fact that it had ever supported them.

Could it be time to stop consolidating public opinion against one another? That is, might it be time for the elephant and whale to stop their attempts to butt heads?

What's in a Name?

Old Orhei Monastery, July 31, 2005

Many were eager to dub last week's protests in Moldova the "Twitter Revolution." Leaving aside for a moment the fact that it's probably improper to strain to find in provocateur-instigated mob violence parallels to the color revolutions of a few years ago, if one seeks a name for the events in Chisinau, there would seem to be better monikers at hand.

Last week I noted a couple of the ones making the rounds - "#pman Revolution" and "Orphans' Revolution," a coinage which got another mention in this interesting post by a foreigner living in Moldova - and mentioned that I regard the tag I've been using to aggregate posts on the situation in Moldova, "Grape Revolution," as tongue-in-cheek and probably not the best name of the ones out there.

From the outset, the peaceful protesters on April 6th wanted to have a Candle Revolution - burning candles to mourn what they saw as the death of Moldovan democracy. At the demonstration on Sunday the 12th, I saw several people at the back of the crowd trying to keep the meme alive by lighting votive candles in plastic cups on the sidewalk. It didn't look like they were having much success. Gusts of wind kept blowing out the candles and tipping over the cups.

A couple of the other appellations which have been circulating in the Russian-language coverage of events in Moldova are somewhat indicative of Russians' tendency to look down their noses at Moldovans.

The first of these is the moniker "Mamaliga Revolution," after Moldova's polenta-like national dish. The Transdniestrian propagandists at LivePMR wasted no time in rolling out a post under this name. An item on Moldovanova earlier this year had this meditation on the idea of a Mamaliga Revolution:

Mamaliga, as we know, is tasty and pleasant while it's hot. When it gets cold people usually feed it to their dogs.

Calling the violence of last week a "Mamaliga Revolution" doesn't quite work, however, if one believes the riots were truly spontaneous - you see, one of the fundamental bits of conventional wisdom tossed around by those who hew to the view that the Moldovan people are politically passive is that "mamaliga doesn't explode" ("мамалыга не взрывается").

Another sobriquet that's been making the rounds in Russian mainstream media as well as online is "Tile Revolution" ("кафельная революция"), a reference to Russians' apparent belief that, since many of the Moldovans in Russia do construction work (and are regarded in the ethnic hierarchy of post-Soviet migrant workers as semi-skilled enough to be given the painting and tile-laying parts of the jobs), that must be what all of them do.

I first heard about this one from an ethnic Russian who lives in Chisinau. He was dismissive of the term, saying of his co-ethnics in Russia, "they'll say anything to put someone else down." A quick Yandex search shows that "Tile Revolution" - an appropriately derisive way to refer to Moldovans, and uppity Moldovans especially, at least from Moscow's point of view - seems to have received an official imprimatur, having appeared in the headline of this story on state-run news program Vesti. Komsomol'skaia Pravda also dropped this phrase in a somewhat interesting, if biased, roundup of Russophone blogs from Moldova, which is, however, missing links to the blogs in question.

Propaganda

When I boarded the Air Moldova turboprop in Vienna for my connecting flight to Chisinau last Friday (talk about a small world - seven people on the plane, I knew one of them and he knew two of the others), the reading material available for passengers left no doubt as to how the Moldovan government was spinning the events of April 7.

Below are the two pages of coverage from state-run Moldova Suverana (a newspaper we had occasion to discuss last summer when it ran a hatchet-job piece on American NGOs in Moldova) - the paper had only four pages in total and the other two were business announcements, classifieds, etc. The front-page headline is "The Opposition's Latest Vandalism Will Cost Us 300 Mln Lei," and the stories along the right-hand side discuss Voronin's conversations with the Presidents of Russia and Lithuania and the Russian Duma's support for the Moldovan authorities.

MS's second page of coverage highlights, among other things, photos of opposition leaders Chirtoaca and Filat supposedly organizing the riots and - rather unbelievably - photos of destruction in Chisinau in 1941 when it was retaken by Romanian forces, inviting readers to draw a comparison between the devastation wreaked by a fascist army and the riots in downtown Chisinau on April 7th.

Further down and continuing below the cut is coverage from Vremea, a Russian-language newspaper which doesn't seem to have a functioning website at the moment (the URL on the front page leads to a blank page). The bulk of the paper is devoted to what it calls a "Chronicle of a Failed Putsch."

IMG_1371, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1372, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1373, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1374, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1375, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1376, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1378, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_1379, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

The last page, of course, is not about Moldova, but its slams on Georgian and Ukrainian leaders assist one in pinpointing the paper's editorial stance.

Roundup of Russian - and other - MSM coverage

[Click to expand, or go to the original source to see the image at full size]

First, for all you English-only types, here's the NYT's latest report on the goings-on in Chisinau.

The following is just a selection of the Russian-language media's coverage of the situation in Moldova. For more coverage, visit Yandex's news aggregator or Russian-language Google News.

Above is RIA Novosti's map of the protests which unfolded on Monday and Tuesday. All of their coverage of the story can be found here.

RIA Novosti also has some stories about the events in English, reporting most recently that President Voronin has blamed Romania for the demonstrations, which he referred to as an attempted coup, he has expelled the Romanian ambassador and established a visa regime with Moldova's neighbor.

The BBC's Russian Service reports that Voronin also accused "the wealthiest sponsors" of the unrest of having already fled the country. Presumably he is referring to the Moldovan opposition's local backers in the business community. There's an active debate underway in the BBC's forum on the subject.

Lenta.ru's coverage of the story can be found here, I'll highlight this article as worth checking out for its bizarreness - the Eurasian Youth Union has apparently criticized Voronin for being unable to contain the protests and suggested that he should have used Vlad-the-Impaler-type methods instead.

Kommersant also reports on the introduction of a visa regime with Romania and has a story on the protests headlined "The First Anti-Communist [War]." Kommersant also has some video posted:

Vedomosti reports that the Russian Duma will be discussing the situation in Moldova today - not that they're likely to be of much use.

Gazeta.ru has a story suggesting things have quieted down in Chisinau and an interview with opposition leader Mihai Ghimpu in which he blames the authorities for yesterday's violence, disavows the seizure of government buildings and claims that the police "opened the door" and let protesters in.

Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal's Sergei Buntman has a commentary piece that compares the Moldovan protesters unfavorably to Ukraine's Orange Revolutionaries and suggests that their actions more closely resemble the riots in Moscow in 2002 which were occasioned by Russia's loss to Japan in a soccer match. He also draws a parallel to the violent overthrow of Ceausescu in 1989, remarking that the protests in Chisinau are "fanatical and very Romanian" in more ways than one.

NTV reports protesters downtown again on Wednesday (see here for the text of their report):

Rating the media - and the governors

Medialogia, a useful ratings website I've followed in the past (which, however, seems not as frequently updated now that the election cycle is over) has a couple of interesting recaps of the Russian media market. The most comprehensive is the rating of newspapers and magazines most frequently cited in the Russian media in 2008. Interestingly, four of the top ten newspapers and five of the top ten magazines are either foreign or are Russian editions of foreign publications (albeit with local talent and content). Medialogia also has a rating of the most authoritative internet media for the fourth quarter of last year.

Also quite interesting is the ranking of governors by mentions in "central" news media for December 2008 (excerpt above). It's predictable that Luzhkov and Matviyenko would head up the list, but the drop-off in number of mentions once you get outside of the two big cities is precipitous.

Also, the previous month's bronze medalist, that connoisseur of track suits and Hummers, Ramzan Kadyrov, was knocked down a peg in December by erstwhile opposition leader and new governor of the Kirov region Nikita Belykh. Belykh's appointment occasioned much hand-wringing among the opposition about whether he was selling out or on the contrary taking an opportunity to demonstrate that politicians from the non-United-Russia camp can be successful as managers - or whether, on the third hand, he was being set up for failure by the powers-that-be by being given the governor's spot in a struggling region.

Black PR or market manipulation?

This fake ad (image source - advertka LJ community) was apparently stuck up all over the Moscow metro in recent days. It appears to be an exhortation by TV personality Vladimir Soloviov to invest in Sberbank. The text above the photo reads, "In 2008 I made $2,000,000 with Sberbank." And below the photo, "You can do it too! After all, I'm just as ordinary as you."

Soloviov, who appears to be even more self-absorbed than your average TV host, is convinced that this is part of a campaign to discredit him in the eyes of the public, alleging that it's government-funded. And perhaps it is, I don't know what controversies he's been embroiled in as of late, and the text of the "ad" is not exactly flattering to Soloviov (the final line could also be translated as "I'm just as simple as you."

My first thoughts (most likely incorrect but more interesting than a theory as mundane as black PR) upon reading about a fake ad using a public figure to pump the idea of investing in Sberbank were (1) maybe someone's trying a low-budget way to goose SBER's share price (but it's not as if the Moscow Metro is full of retail investors in the stock market); and (2) I doubt that anyone made $2m on Sberbank last year, unless it was by short-selling the stock, which since the start of 2008 has underperformed even the collapsing RTS index.


[UPDATE 1/29: having seen this additional (obviously fake) ad involving Soloviov, which shows him promoting a sketchy-looking weight-loss method, I am more inclined to agree that someone is just trying to make him look bad.]

Crisis and unintentional comedy

R.I.P.

barabanch has a post about the impact of the economic crisis on the Russian media sector - not his first on the topic, as media in Russia, as elsewhere, have been shedding staff, scaling back publication schedules, and going belly-up for months now. This time, the unfortunate news is that the online magazine Izbrannoe has stopped publication. It will be missed by many, among the things I appreciated about it during its less-than-two-year life span was its publication of Nashi and DPNI propaganda materials which might not otherwise have reached a broad audience.

Meanwhile, unintentional comedian and United Russia shishka Boris Gryzlov has a very simple way of addressing the crisis: denial. According to RIA Novosti, "[Gryzlov] observed that the global financial crisis is called 'global' because it's happening outside of Russia." Right. And if you believe that, I've got a class A development project in Moscow for you to invest in.