All Twittered Out?

[image source]

It looks like the Twitter phase of what many (especially social media evangelists) are calling the "Twitter Revolution" has passed. According to Nicu Popescu:

Twitter is no longer useful. It has become a victim of its own popularity. If during the first day Twitter had live news from the main square, today Twitter has become a collection of spam. New messages appear every half-second, and the avalanche of information and messages buries any useful information.

Unimedia had the following update this morning (and more interesting updates since - check them out here):

(UPDATE 10:16, April 9, local time) Central Ellection Comittee has allowed the opposition parties to verify the voters lists. The opposition has 4 days starting today, Thursday.

While I'm no expert on the conduct of color revolutions, it would seem that this keeps the election results "in play," i.e. they remain something that can be credibly contested, over the weekend, which is perhaps a good thing for those among opposition parties and protesters who have the stomach for spending more time in the streets voicing their legitimate grievances. On the other hand, it may not be a good thing for the many Moldovans who would rather see a calm resolution to this crisis - preferring "stability," democracy be damned - since the opposition has not shown an ability to resist official provocations and conduct sustained, peaceful protests of the kind that achieved success in Ukraine.

During the next few days, I'd imagine both the authorities and the opposition will be jockeying for position, and the more cynical individuals involved (which some accounts suggest is a category that includes much of the opposition) may see if there are side bargains they can strike with the Communists, since it seems the latter now have the upper hand.

Meanwhile, Unimedia reports that Gabriel Stati, one of the businessmen accused of financing the protests has reportedly been arrested in Odessa, lending credence to Voronin's claims that the backers of the "revolution" have fled the country, so perhaps the behind-the-scenes score-settling among the elites is underway.

Unimedia's Romanian-language page is slightly more current than the English version and reports on two disturbing developments today - students who were involved in the protests being hauled out of their classes and driven away in BMWs and several Romanian reporters getting deported (RIA Novosti is also covering the latter story, no doubt Russia's image-makers love it when the former republics show themselves to be chips off the old block and help overshadow Russia's own bad acts).

Worth reading around the net - another roundup post of blog coverage by Veronica at Global Voices; a brief post by Moldovarious, which also has two sets of photos; and Komsomolskaia Pravda's coverage (in Russian, headlined "Uprising in Chisinau Organized by the Children of Migrant Workers") - don't miss their photo of Natalia Morari at the protests wearing an "I [heart] Barack Obama" t-shirt (amazing, assuming it's not photoshopped, and I have no reason to believe it is except that it plays so well into the hands of those who like to see any protest or political opposition in a post-Soviet country as an American plot). Hey, I love BHO too, but - even granting that the protest Morari's group co-organized was peaceful and probably well-intentioned - it doesn't look like the folks who looted buildings in downtown Chisinau were really after "change we can believe in."

I leave you with a story (apparently intended to be a straight-news item, although it reads a bit like an opinion piece) from today's Moscow Times, which has an interesting take on the situation in Moldova.

Moldova Underscores Failed Russian Policy
09 April 2009
By Nabi Abdullaev / The Moscow Times

Anti-government protests in Moldova this week unfolded in a similar manner to Western-backed uprisings that toppled governments in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Serbia in recent years.

But what should worry the Kremlin is not the threat of a similar uprising at home but the fact that both Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and the opposition groups turned to the West instead of Russia to mediate the conflict, analysts said Wednesday.

Because of the shortsightedness of Russian diplomacy and its failure to project its own "soft" power, the Kremlin faces the possibility of being sidelined once again in a former Soviet state that it considers to be within its realm of influence.


"The policy mistakes are clear and were much discussed after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine," said Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, referring to the weeks of street protests in what was once Russia's strongest post-Soviet ally. The 2004 protests resulted in pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko winning the presidency over the Moscow-backed candidate.

Despite the Kremlin's awareness of its mistakes, it has failed to become a big, benevolent partner to West-leaning former Soviet states since then, resorting instead to energy blackmail and military threats, like with Georgia, Petrov said. This has fueled anti-Russian sentiment among the opposition in those countries, he said.

Moldovan opposition groups took to the streets to demand a vote recount after the Voronin-led Communist Party swept weekend parliamentary elections. The protests turned violent Tuesday, with young people ransacking and looting the president's office and parliament. The authorities regained control of the situation Wednesday.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry portrayed the protests as a foreign-sponsored plot to overthrow Voronin, who like other long-serving post-Soviet leaders has enjoyed strong support from the Kremlin.

"Judging by the slogans shouted in the squares and the many Romanian flags in the hands of the organizers of this outrage, their aim is to discredit the achievements made toward strengthening Moldova's sovereignty," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

The statement was apparently referring to the Romanian flags waved by some protesters and scattered calls for Moldova to be united with neighboring Romania.

Voronin himself denounced the protests as a Romanian-backed coup attempt, announcing that Moldova would introduce a visa regime with Romania and declaring Romania's ambassador to Moldova persona non grata.

He and the opposition asked European governments to intervene.

The EU has agreed to send a special envoy to Chisinau to monitor events, but there has been no talk of any direct role, a diplomat close to talks told Reuters.

Youth-backed color revolutions that ousted deeply entrenched leaders in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005 have ignited fears in the Kremlin, prompting a clampdown on the opposition and nongovernmental organizations and the creation of pro-Kremlin youth groups, including Nashi, to absorb youth political activism.

"The street tactics used in Moldova were that of a color revolution, but these developments are of no threat for us," Nashi leader Nikita Borovikov told The Moscow Times on Wednesday. "Regime change in our country is impossible because Russia's leadership is not passive and cowardly."

Nashi, which once brought tens of thousands of young people onto the streets, and other pro-Kremlin youth groups have kept a low profile after the ruling United Russia party cemented its grip on power in parliamentary elections in 2007.

While the current economic crisis has sparked some anti-government protests, none has come close to posing a challenge to the status quo.

So instead of worrying about whether Russians might catch the anti-government fervor from Moldova, the Kremlin needs to ponder why Voronin and the opposition have turned to the West to resolve their differences, analysts said.

Moldova's decision to shun Russia reveals a longtime fallacy of Russian diplomacy, where the Kremlin unequivocally stands by incumbent leaders in post-Soviet states and largely dismisses contacts with other political forces there, said Yulia Belikova, an analyst with the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, a think tank that consults the Russian government on policy issues.

She said Russian officials needed to start working with opposition groups in other former Soviet republics, especially in Moldova. Moldova was separated from Romania by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1940, and the country has drifted back toward Romania after the Soviet collapse.

"If we're going to speak in terms of a color revolution, the West doesn't need to export it to Moldova. It is already there in the form of Romanian cultural and political influence," Belikova said.

This week's protests might also make it harder for Russia to mediate in Moldova's dispute with its Russian-leaning breakaway republic of Transdnestr, analysts said. It is one of the only post-Soviet conflicts where Moscow has portrayed itself as playing the "good cop" in seeking a resolution -- a role it has taken pains to highlight after its brief war with Georgia last August over Tbilisi's attempt to regain control of its breakaway region of South Ossetia.

President Dmitry Medvedev invited Voronin and the Transdnestr leader Igor Smirnov to Moscow earlier this year for negotiations.

The events in Moldova might give more power to the Transdnestr separatists, who could accuse Voronin of political weakness and an inability to curb Romanian nationalism.

The developments in Moldova also differ from a color revolution because the West is not openly supporting the opposition. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights body, reiterated on Wednesday elections observers' findings that the elections were fair.

The Kremlin will further shape its response to the protests after information surfaces about whether they were instigated solely by the Moldovan opposition or whether they were supported by Romania and other Western players, said Sergei Mikheyev, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies.

At the moment, it seems unlikely that European powers or the United States would want to push for regime change in Moldova, Europe's poorest country located off major trade and energy routes, and risk spoiling their improving ties with Moscow, Mikheyev said.

"But we all have seen in the past how the West has assured Russia of its best intentions but at the same time acted to upset Russia's interests," he added.

Another worthwhile clipping

From today's JRL (original article in Russian is here) - Furman's analysis of the near abroad is always worth a close read:

Nezavisimaya Gazeta
January 21, 2009
Article by Dmitriy Furman: "The Policy of the Siamese Twins"

We do not have separation of powers or even a diarchy. We have highly hampered powers.

Another scandal has broken out in the European home. Everyone lives in tranquility in this home and everyone is friendly to some extent. Wailing can always be heard near the eastern entrance, however. Many people live on this side of the building, but when the shouts are heard, everyone knows it is not Ukraine bickering with Belarus, not Latvia fighting with Lithuania, and not even Armenia arguing with Azerbaijan (they were at war and they still "do not say hello to each other," but they do not start any scandals either). It is Russia "getting up off its knees" and fighting with one of its neighbors.

We Rail Against the Social Order

This happens for a variety of reasons -- because Estonia moved the Bronze Soldier, because we do not like Moldovan wine, because we support the separatists in Georgia, and certainly because of the prices of the gas we deliver and the transit fees for this gas. We are more or less accustomed to gas controversies, but this time the scandal acquired colossal dimensions, affected all of the people in the building, and is being discussed in every household.

The argument that these scandals are neurotic in nature and give Russia exactly what it does not want (the anger of its neighbors, who dream of being less dependent on it and having less to do with it in general, and the Western countries' treatment of it as a "problem state," with which "something has to be done") is self-evident. The connection between this policy (if it can be described as such) and the evolution of our social order is also quite obvious. On the one hand, our order is the main cause of our isolation and the reason for the impossibility of our integration into the alliances of the developed democratic countries and for the danger of the expansion of these alliances. On the other, the disappearance of the opposition in our country and the total unanimity of our main media outlets are a sign of the atrophy of critical thinking, which can restrain neurotic impulses and correct behavior. All of this is understandable, but something else is less understandable: the reason that our conflicts with our neighbors acquired this unprecedented intensity after Putin left office as the president.


First, Second, Third

The fundamental outlines of our foreign policy, just as the fundamental outlines of our sociopolitical system, took shape before Putin took office. Putin's personal mindset (we can recall his image of the boy walking toward a hostile group, clutching a piece of candy in his "sweaty fist," hoping to exchange it for something better but knowing it might be taken away from him instead) and his professional habits were ideally suited to our public thinking and those established outlines. Our second president strengthened and thoroughly developed everything that was put in place when the first president was in office. The futility of that policy, in which we were driving ourselves into a corner, was already fairly obvious after Putin took office. Furthermore, there was a sense that Putin's increasing anxiety and irritability toward the end of his term were connected with his vague awareness of that futility, and his decision to leave office was due partly to his realization that the next stage of development would require a different person, someone with a different mindset and a different image. It was no coincidence, of course, that when Putin named his successor, it turned out to be a man who was of the same stature (which evidently was extremely important), but did not have the same social origins and the same mindset. He was not as stiff, he was not at all neurotic, and he had some righteous and liberal tendencies. There was every reason to expect the new president to make some "corrections" in the policy line.

In democratic systems, the opposition waits for each mistake the government makes, exaggerates it, and strives not to be ignored. The government, knowing that elections are on the way, strives to avoid mistakes and has to listen to criticism and take it into consideration. If it is unable to adjust its policy line, it ceases to be the government and someone else makes the adjustments instead. The system of democratic rotation is a mechanism built into the society for the constant adjustment of the policy line and the correction of mistakes.

This mechanism does not exist in undemocratic systems. Even in these systems, however, the policy line is periodically adjusted. In tsarist Russia, each new tsar made some changes in policy. The new tsar was the new man in charge, he could look at policy from a new standpoint, and he had no reason to stubbornly defend the obvious mistakes of his predecessor. After all, they were not his mistakes. This also happened in the Soviet era. As soon as Stalin died, his successors ended the futile Korean war, and the thaw began soon afterward. Why did the change of presidents in today's Russia not lead to policy adjustments? Why did it actually intensify its most dangerous aspects instead? Why did we start moving more quickly toward an impasse instead of trying to avoid it?

Side Effects

We have already caused ourselves colossal damage in the two conflicts of the "early Medvedev era." As a result of the Georgian conflict, Georgia, under any president whatsoever, will be Russia's enemy for many decades, and we do not have the slightest idea of what should be done about Abkhazia and South Ossetia (which even Belarus has chosen not to recognize). As a result of the gas conflict with Ukraine, we not only lost our good reputation (although these fine points are no longer relevant here), but also lost billions of dollars and will lose tens of billions more in the future-- an amount many times the sum we ever could have gained from Ukraine. We abruptly intensified our isolation tenfold. We strengthened the tendency toward European integration, which is something we did not need at all, because it is more convenient for us to take advantage of the conflicting interests of various European countries. The gas conflict also revealed the surprising inertia and ungainliness of our policy line. It is obvious that the conflict did not have to happen. The agreement Putin and Tymoshenko recently reached could have been concluded in December. When it became completely obvious that it was time to end the conflict, when Europe was freezing and moaning, we could have concluded the agreement and turned the gas back on in a day or two, but this is the third week that nothing has been done.

I think the reason for the intensification of our propensity for conflicts and our sluggishness is the highly peculiar situation of the tandem Putin created. Putin decided to abide by the Constitution and give up the presidency. But he could not give up his power, as Yeltsin did, and he chose to become the prime minister. It would have been psychologically difficult and even dangerous for a man as young and healthy as Putin to give up all of his power. Besides this, Putin probably thought he could consolidate the government, help the young president, and guarantee the continuity of policy by taking office as the prime minister. He attained his goals, but the attainment of any goal often has unforeseen side effects. By changing offices, Putin created a situation hampering his friend and successor, himself, and our entire political mechanism.

We now have a president who was chosen by his prime minister, and the removal of this man from office would be incredibly difficult for the president in the psychological and political sense. By the same token, even if the prime minister regrets his choice, he has virtually no chance (at least until 2012) of getting rid of the president he chose. Our ruling tandem is "fused together by a single goal" and is even something like a set of Siamese twins, and any operation to separate the two would be extremely dangerous and frightening to both of them and to our entire political system.

There is no doubt whatsoever that our rulers are friends and that Putin chose a man he trusts more than anyone else as his successor. There are certain situations that objectively breed conflict, however, and they are stronger than we are. We must not think, for example, that the members of the Stalinist Central Committee Presidium "made a mistake" when they elected Khrushchev, or that Khrushchev was a villain, planning from the very start to destroy the people who had put their trust in him and with whom he had shared whole barrels of wine at Stalin's dacha. It is just that all of them were in a situation in which conflict was inevitable, and Khrushchev's victory was the highly probable outcome. The same can be said of many historical conflicts between friends and colleagues -- from the conflicts between the Roman triumvirs to Yeltsin's conflict with Rutskoy and Khasbulatov.

Trapped by Each Other

Putin and Medvedev are friends, but they have ended up in a situation which is objectively uncomfortable, painful, and conflict-prone. It is a situation in which neither can make a single move freely, because the people around them are waiting with a sinking heart for any sign of real or imaginary disagreements between the rulers, and any sign of disapproval of one partner in the tandem could give rise to an extremely painful conflict with unpredictable results and to overall destabilization, which both men dread. Putin and Medvedev are very different people, and there are signs of their differences of opinion, if not disagreements. Medvedev may have said it was wrong to "create nightmares for business" at the very time that Putin was "creating nightmares" for Mechel, for example, and Medvedev even expressed his dissatisfaction with the excessively bureaucratized government recently. These statements probably were not meant to send any particular message, however. At a time when the president's decision truly could have sent this kind of message, Medvedev, who obviously is not an evil man, nevertheless did not pardon Svetlana Bakhmina.

Any attempt at the adjustment of the policy line would be extremely difficult and dangerous in this situation. If Putin had simply gone away, as Yeltsin did, Medvedev could have made some changes in our policy and could have blamed various difficulties on the burdensome legacy he had inherited, as Putin had done earlier and Yeltsin had done before him (every president inherits a burdensome legacy). He cannot do any of this, however, because Putin did not go away. If the prime minister had not been Putin, Medvedev could have sent him packing and then gone on to make some changes in policy and to blame everything on the man he fired. But Putin cannot be removed from office! If, on the other hand, Putin had stayed in the president's office, there would have been less chance of policy adjustments, but they nevertheless would exist. It is difficult to admit one's own mistakes, especially for a man who only hears words of praise and support from every direction. It is possible, however. Now there is no possibility of this being done by Medvedev or by Putin.

The present situation is not a lawful democratic case of the separation of powers or even a case of diarchy. This is a case of severely hampered powers. Medvedev cannot be a normal, fully empowered president as long as Putin is the prime minister. Putin, a man who was just recently referred to as the national leader and whose face was on the T-shirts handed out to Nashi members, cannot be a normal prime minister, modestly working on the crisis-ridden economy and waiting to be dismissed. They are fused together. Siamese twins have to synchronize their moves. They have to move together along an appointed route, not deviating from it in any way. It is logical that the leading member of the tandem is Putin, if only because all of the current conflicts are continuations of conflicts that existed when he was the president. He has already mastered the proper reactions and he is more familiar with our common route leading to an impasse.

The gas conflict could have been resolved quickly. If Medvedev had done this, however, it would have signified indirect criticism of Putin. Some people would have been certain to say that Putin raised Russia up off its knees, but Medvedev is a weak man who makes concessions. Others would have said that Putin led us into a blind alley and Medvedev had led us out of it. If, on the other hand, Putin had done this himself, it would have been an admission of his own mistakes. Theoretically, this would have been possible for President Putin, but it is not something Prime Minister Putin can do. As a result, the conflict acquired unprecedented dimensions, and a problem that could have been solved in a day at a loss of a few billion is now taking weeks to solve at a loss of tens of billions.

Our ship of state is sailing in an unknown direction. Neither Putin nor Medvedev knows where they are sending it. Of course, even in the absence of a distinct route, the captain of a ship can change course if he sees reefs. If, on the other hand, there are two captains and they are Siamese twins, their reactions are slowed down and they lose control of the ship. The storm of the crisis is ahead. The losses we incurred during the gas crisis as a result of this loss of control are only the beginning.

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.

VLKSM > Nashi

The 90th anniversary of the Komsomol is being celebrated more than one might expect, but it seems that the contemporary VLKSM-wannabes are not feeling as much love as they were a year ago. Read the full article for the punch line at the end...

Pro-Kremlin Youths Take Backseat to Crisis
Moscow Times, 28 October 2008
By Francesca Mereu / Staff Writer

Last year, pro-Kremlin youth groups were all over television, promising then-President Vladimir Putin love and loyalty, picketing foreign embassies and harassing a hodgepodge of opposition activists.

As recently as July, state-run television showed First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov lecturing Nashi activists in economics at their summer camp.

But with the election season over and the government grappling with the financial crisis, youth activists have drifted from the political spotlight, busying themselves instead with fashion shows and city cleanups.

There are no plans for a crisis-themed protest.

"We might organize something soon," Nashi spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik said of possible events concerning the crisis. "We have a meeting Friday. We will decide then."

Nashi is now working on "long-term projects," Potupchik said, adding that there are "fewer political reasons" for the mass demonstrations that the group organized during the December State Duma elections and the March presidential vote.

Nashi activist Antonina Shapovalova, who designed pro-Putin bikinis for the group, showed off her collection during the recent Moscow Fashion Week, Potupchik noted.

Nashi's top projects include promoting the patriotic children's movement Mishki, or Bear Cubs, tolerance programs and blood drives, she said.

"These are long-term and real projects, not one-day events," she said.

The plans are, however, unquestionably less confrontational than Nashi programs a year ago, when the group organized patrols -- accompanied by police and known as druzhinniki -- to head off any anti-Kremlin protests.

Now druzhinniki, members of a volunteer corps that dates back to Soviet times, are making different kinds of rounds. Recently, the volunteers removed political ads from the streets of Yaroslavl following local elections on Oct. 13, said Alexandra Valtinina, a spokeswoman for the volunteers.

"People were tired of seeing all those billboards, and we decided not to wait for communal workers to do the job," Valtinina said. "We cleaned everything up."

Nashi burst onto the political scene in 2005, staging a 50,000-member rally in Moscow to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Victory Day. The group was broadly seen as a response to the youth-led protests that helped bring pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power in Ukraine.

Last year, the group noisily picketed the Estonian Embassy following a feud over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn. It has also been accused of harassing former British Ambassador Anthony Brenton after he attended an opposition conference.

Nashi founder Vasily Yakemenko left the group last year to head up the Youth Affairs Committee, which is in charge of the country's youth organizations.

A woman who answered the phone at the committee Monday said Yakemenko was unavailable for comment and referred all inquiries to Potupchik.

Nashi's fellow pro-Kremlin youth groups have been comparably tranquil since the end of the election cycle.

Vladimir Nasonov, spokesman for the United Russia youth group Young Russia, said "mass action" is not a wise tactic during times of crisis. He echoed President Dmitry Medvedev's accusation that the Unites States "set up" other countries in the current global financial crisis.

"Our duty is to defend the powers that be in case of large protests against the government," Nasonov said. "We need to back them, because the policy of those people living on the other side of the ocean should be blamed and not our government."

Andrei Groznetsky, a spokesman for Mestniye, another pro-Kremlin youth group, said youth movements were politically active only during the election season.

Both Young Russia and Mestniye appear to be focusing on more nationalistic issues.

Young Russia will hold a demonstration to "protect the Russian language" on Nov. 4, People's Unity Day, Nasonov said.

Mestniye, meanwhile, is devoting its energy to "fighting against illegal immigrants who work as unofficial cab drivers," Groznetsky said.

Both Nashi and Mestniye plan to hold demonstrations on People's Unity Day. The Nashi event, called "Blanket of Peace," will be held on Vasilyevsky Spusk, near the Kremlin.

After United Russia recaptured a constitutional majority in last year's Duma elections and Medvedev won a landslide victory in the March 2 presidential election, Nashi and other pro-Kremlin groups have denied suggestions that they might fade into political oblivion.

In March, several young people took to the streets to distribute rolls of toilet paper embossed with the logo of Kommersant after the newspaper quoted an unidentified Kremlin official as calling Nashi activists "jubilant street punks" and saying their services were no longer needed.

Also printed on the toilet paper was the cell phone number of the author of the article. Nashi denied any involvement in the stunt.

Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with Indem, a think tank, said the Kremlin needs all the resources it can get to deal with the current economic crisis, meaning that there will be few funds left over to finance youth groups.

"The markets are in chaos, and there are no bankers or businessmen the Kremlin can ask for money like before," Korgunyuk said. "What can the Kremlin ask of [the youth groups] now? To hold a sit-in in front of the American Embassy and scream, 'Down with the crisis?'"

In fact, Nashi is planning a Nov. 2 protest outside the U.S. Embassy in conjunction with Halloween, Potupchik said.

Nashi activists will bring pumpkins to protest "what the Americans did in South Ossetia, in Afghanistan and in other conflicts," Potupchik said.

The name of someone who died in one of these conflicts will be written on each pumpkin, she added.

Navel-gazing

I try to avoid self-referential posts and indeed have only done one such post dissecting the contents of my server logs in the past - over three years ago! - that I can recall, in which I wrote:

I know this is a sad excuse for a post - whenever weblogs resort to navel-gazing like this, I usually roll my eyes and navigate away. But I hope that my regular readers - all 5 of them - will indulge me just this once.

OK, twice. Anyway, I've noticed in perusing my server logs that people sometimes visit from interesting domains, and sometimes the search terms which lead those visitors here are illuminating. For example, just in the past week or so:

- A visitor from an IP address associated with Ketchum Communications - providers of "really smart PR" to the Russian government - arrived here based on a Google search for abkhazia map 2008

- A visitor from the socom.mil domain (that would be the US military's Southern Command) arrived here based on a Google search for Black Sea Caucasus blog

- A visitor from NATO's Allied Command Transformation (domain name act.nato.int - interestingly, Statcounter still identifies the IP address as associated with SACLANT, although the reorganization of SACLANT into ACT took place 8 years ago) arrived here based on a simple Google search for a not-so-simple guy: rogozin

- A visitor using a computer on the NY Times' network found us while googling first for nashi and mishki and then just for mishki - it also seems one NYT reporter, who shall remain nameless, found this blog while googling himself

- A visitor from Kansas State University found this old post while googling for resurgent russia

- Someone from the European Commission (psbru.cec.eu.int) landed here while looking for something related to Itera

- Visitors from imedia.ru - a domain associated with the publisher of the Moscow Times - arrived here recently searching for moscow blog and abkhazia cement

- And someone visiting from pentagon.mil liked the map of Achara that I posted so much that they checked out the blog's archives for the past three months.

[Update July 15]

One more interesting one from yesterday:

- Someone visiting from the aommz.com top-level domain, which belongs to the flagship of Transnistrian industry, the Moldovan Metallurgical Factory, searching for itera usmanov.

[Update July 23]

OK, I guess I'm going to use this post to catalog a couple more interesting hits from recent days:

- Someone visiting from house.gov, a.k.a. "Information Systems U.s. House Of Representatives," searching for russophobia

- Someone visiting from the State Department, searching for rumsfeld foundation four [sic] central asia

- And this interesting search conducted by someone visiting from Ireland (a bit of an inside joke for the family of SRB commenters)

Celebrating Victory Day - and (mis)appropriating it

Hopefully my last post didn't create the impression that I don't think May 9th should still be celebrated in Russia. Of course it should. As I mentioned before, I think the way it was celebrated back in 2005, with a retro-style parade, was perhaps more fitting, but if there's a consensus among the population or the elites that a display of missiles is the right way to honor veterans, then so be it (though I liked how Russian LJ blogger peresedov summed up his reaction - with the witty phrase "танки, гоу хоум!").

In any event, the state does not have a monopoly on Victory Day - people will find their own ways to celebrate this holiday (see pictures of such celebrations from last year in this great photoset from Darkness at Noon), which is so very personal for many Russians and people throughout the former Soviet Union.

Ilya Barabanov writes about not having anyone in his family tree who was taken away by the war, which is unusual in Russia, and concludes that the holiday is one of the top three holidays for anyone, along with one's birthday and the New Year. He also directs readers to livejournals apparently written by war veterans, who are of course being congratulated by many readers today. Barabanov's wife, Natalia Morar', marked the holiday in Berlin and noticed the Germans' "amazing ability to acknowledge their historical mistakes."

Georgian blogger cyxymu writes about how the war affected his family, posts a photo from last year's Victory Day celebrations in Tbilisi, and comments that "for me personally this is a big holiday, the last Soviet holiday that unites all of us." Some folks in the Baltic states might disagree, feeling that the greater evil of Nazi Germany was merely replaced by the lesser evil of Soviet power, but on the whole he's probably right.

Natalia Antonova writes:

My grandmother started crying on the phone:

“I don’t want you to ever know what it’s like to hear the shelling and know that it’s coming for you.”

War is banal and blind and savage and ultimately meaningless. But there is still something to smile about today, at least for me. If only because its survivors had children, and those children had children, and one of them was me, and another one was my beautiful baby brother. And there’s a reason why we’re here, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives finding out what that reason may be.

This multimedia project looks to be a great - if time-consuming - way to honor the past by brushing up on your knowledge of the history of the war, and the same can be said of this website which archives the reminiscences of war veterans.

All of the worthy reasons to celebrate Victory Day, and the many ways in which it's possible to celebrate with dignity and respect, make attempts by the government and various groups and individuals supported by it to use the holiday for their own PR purposes (чтобы пропиариться, in contemporary Russian terms) seem especially distasteful. Sometimes it's just a matter of degree, and of course your own distastefulness mileage may vary (на вкус и цвет товарища нет, after all).

The proliferation of the St. George's ribbon - a great and certainly potent symbol of victory - is rather amazing by any standards. The Russian government's website features it along with the Soviet "Patriotic War" medal (this imagery is common on many websites today, including Russian search engines), which is no doubt a fine way to mark the occasion:

But simply displaying the ribbon is not enough for some. There is a dedicated website (using the by-now-familiar layout from websites like zaputina.ru and chernymspiskam.net with tiles of userpics of supporters at the bottom) which seems to have the purpose of providing people with these striped ribbons. I remarked a couple of years ago on how taking such fetishization too far in fact cheapens the holiday - the occasion for that was this crazy visual:

July 28, 2005, 12:35pm, near the entrance to Red Square.

The trivialization of the holiday and its symbols is not the worst thing, though - more disturbing is their instrumentalization for current policy purposes. One of the banners from RIA Novosti's tribute website 9may.ru appears to feature the controversial "Bronze Soldier" statue and is captioned, "Those who do not respect the past have no future!"

9may.ru also has a page dedicated to promoting and documenting the distribution of St. George's ribbons. I guess this - state-run organizations promoting an unrelentingly patriotic vision of history - is what passes for civil society in Russia today, and perhaps it's better than nothing.

As one might expect, the youngsters of Nashi are a bit more direct. Their banner shouts, "He's OUR SOLDIER! It's OUR war...and OUR history!"

This banner appears on Nashi's "Estonian State Fascism" page.

Without wanting to risk committing the same offense I just criticized in attempting to draw conclusions from the holiday which coincide with my worldview, I try to always remember the fact that victory was achieved not only by Russia - though Russia suffered more than any of the other Allies - but in a partnership with the West which unfortunately has yet to be repeated.

The anniversary was a couple of weeks ago (though I don't think it was celebrated this year as it was on the 60th anniversary), but there's no reason on Victory Day not to remember the famous meeting of US and Russian soldiers on the Elbe:

[image source]

"Happy 2nd Lt. William Robertson and Lt. Alexander Sylvashko, Russian Army,
shown in front of sign [East Meets West] symbolizing the historic meeting of the
Russian and American Armies, near Torgau, Germany on Elbe Day."
Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration,
Pictures of World War II, image #121.

At the risk of further politicizing history, I think it's worth remembering that the Allies' cooperation did not just consist of fighting the same foe on different fronts. US military aid to the Soviets under the Lend-Lease program ran the gamut from basic supplies (like the plastic Soviet uniform button with a hammer-and-sickle within a star on one side and "U.S.A. 1943" on the other side that I have lying about somewhere) to more advanced equipment.

A website that appears to be affiliated with the Russian Air Force (VVS) has an account of lend-lease here. Here, one Russian has posted restored photos chronicling his father's military service flying American airplanes. Here is some information about the ground vehicles supplied. And here is an article that looks like it might be interesting about how things changed at the end of the war.

An appropriate final word on Victory Day can be provided by Vladimir Vysotsky, whose songs over the decades allowed veterans to remember and provided to those too young to remember with some of the most evocative descriptions of the war available. A large part of Vysotsky's body of work is made up of songs about the war; here is how the bard once tried to explain this (my translation from a concert CD):

"I write a lot of songs about the war, the reason for that--and I even get letters where people ask, 'Hey, are you that same guy I broke out of siege with near Orsh?' But it was impossible for me to make it out of siege, because I was a little kid, but songs about the war are probably--you know, somehow, our generation which had their first childhood impressions of the war, we must be still fighting out the war or something…I don't know why, but in any case I know that quite a few relatively young people write songs about the war, I have a military family, and, well, anyhow, that's why."

Vysotsky was able to convey a sense of the many forms of loss created by the war even though he was born in 1938 and was not old enough to be a participant in hostilities. His skill as an actor at taking on the roles of his song's narrators makes many of his songs on other topics more powerful as well, but it's especially apparent in his songs about WWII. It's hard to say what his most famous songs about the war are since there are so many. In fact, he wrote a whole play in verse about the war, which was the source of several of his better songs on the subject.

Although I don't think anyone would question Vysotsky's patriotism, only a couple of his war songs are unabashed flag-wavers: "We Turn the Earth" probably falls into that category, as does his song about the marines who stormed Evpatoriia. Vysotsky's war is a more personal and complex war than the official version summed up by the red flag waving over the Reichstag; Vysotsky managed to perceive the war from all sides. He has a song written from the perspective of a fighter plane as it is getting shot down; a couple of songs from the perspective of soldiers in penal battalions; and even one from the perspective of the German invaders.

Vysotsky never served in the military, but he played military men in
several roles on the big screen, including an American marine in the
movie "Flight 713 Requests to Land" [image source]

He sang about the loss of couples torn apart by the war; about the loss of one's buddy in battle; and about the collective loss of the country, in his famous song "Common Graves" (Here's a video of him singing it - "There are no tearful widows at the common graves / Tougher people come here. / They don't put crosses on the common graves / but does that really make it any easier?").

Some of his songs - like the one about a commander who made the correct tactical decision to retreat and was still ordered shot for it, but was not shot after all (see the story at the end of the song here) - are loosely based on true stories, and some no doubt on composite impressions he formed from talking to veterans. The songs about the many tragedies of war are some of Vysotsky's most moving, true tear-jerkers without being overly sentimental.

Vysotsky also wrote songs about the underreporting of Soviet casualties, about a hated but well-connected draft-dodger who ended up a Hero of the Soviet Union, and about the high price of glory and heroism. He wrote a song about the war's end (with the prescient final couplet, "А все же на Запад идут и идут эшелоны / А нам показалось, совсем не осталось врагов.") and about a misunderstood veteran drinking with an uncomprehending youngster twenty years after the war.

Vysotsky as a White Army officer in "Two Comrades Were Serving" [image source]

Here is how he described the post-war scene at the train station in Leningrad in his autobiographical "Ballad about Childhood":

[...]А из эвакуации толпой валили штатские.

Осмотрелись они, оклемались,
Похмелились, потом протрезвели.
И отплакали те, кто дождались,
Недождавшиеся отревели.

And here is his song from the perspective of someone who grew up during the Siege of Leningrad:

Я вырос в ленинградскую блокаду,
Но я тогда не пил и не гулял.
Я видел, как горят огнем Бадаевские склады,
В очередях за хлебушком стоял.

Граждане смелые!
А что ж тогда вы делали,
Когда наш город счет не вел смертям?-
Ели хлеб с икоркою,
А я считал махоркою
Окурок с-под платформы черт-те с чем напополам.

От стужи даже птицы не летали,
И вору было нечего украсть,
Родителей моих в ту зиму ангелы прибрали,
А я боялся - только б не упасть.

Было здесь до фига
Голодных и дистрофиков -
Все голодали, даже прокурор.
А вы в эвакуации
Читали информации
И слушали по радио "От Совинформбюро".

Блокада затянулась, даже слишком,
Но наш народ врагов своих разбил,-
И можно жить, как у Христа за пазухой, под мышкой,
Да только вот мешает бригадмил.

Я скажу вам ласково:
- Граждане с повязками!
В душу ко мне лапами не лезь!
Про жизнь вашу личную
И непатриотичную
Знают уже органы и ВЦСПС.

День Победы...Путина?

Does the way this photo was shot remind you of anything? [image source]

An interesting thing about this era of "tandemocracy" that seems at least for the moment to be upon us - even more than usual, everything can be seen (at least) in two ways. Putin's policy-laden speech to the Duma could be (a) a way for him to show that, in contrast to Medvedev, whose inaugural speech seemed relatively empty (notwithstanding the banalities about human rights and freedoms and the law; mentioning these things is not necessarily indicative of a change or "thaw," after all the idea of "free people in a free society" was prominent in Putin's 2004 inaugural speech and "dictatorship of the law" was a theme dating back to early in Putin's first term), Putin will continue to be the policymaker-in-chief; or (b) a soon-to-be Prime Minister making a speech about domestic policy fully appropriate for someone in his position.

The proposal of an oil tax reduction could be (a) Putin's way of showing the oiligarchs that he is the one who can continue to provide them with goodies (and, again, a way of underscoring who calls the shots on the issues the elites are really concerned about - hint: those issues are not "freedom" and "law") or (b) a thoughtful way to help President Medvedev's first term get started off on a note of optimism. Putin's uncontrolled laughter at Zhirik's silliness in the Duma on May 8 (truly, the court jester amusing the sovereign(s)) could be either (a) the relieved laughter of a man who has had the weight of governing Russia lifted from his shoulders, or (b) the nefarious chortling of a man who finds himself amused by the high position occupied by such a clown within the system he has set up and intends to continue to control.

Allowing Zyuganov's critical speech to the Duma to appear on Channel 1 could be (a) a good way to demonstrate the existence of an opposition while not giving media time to anyone who could actually be a viable independent contender for the presidency in the future or (b) an actual indication of some sort of "thaw" with respect to criticism of the government appearing on the major TV channels. I could go on, but I've probably already lost even my 10 regular readers by this point.

Only time will tell if Medvedev turns out to be his own man as President or simply a "Prezik" to be used by Putin like a condom ("prezik" in Russian slang) to stay safely inside the Russian body politic and later disposed of. Please forgive the metaphor - I'm hardly the first to think of it, and doesn't it work, at least to a point?

[image source]

It's possible that May 8, 2008, will come to be seen as the day Putin began to fade from the scene; at the moment, though, it seems more likely that we'll look back on it as the day VVP changed chairs but kept pulling most of the same strings. The focus of the endless Kremlinoputinology will now turn to the relationship between Vova and Dima and will no doubt include much speculation about when VVP might start thinking about returning to the Kremlin.

One bit of speculation so far has been that the calendar of elections might be changed so that the parliamentary and presidential elections don't fall in the same year, which could entail a new presidential election in 2010, by which time the Constitution could already have been amended to allow for 7-year presidential terms. Putin could serve two of those and be ready for a hard-earned retirement. It's all idle speculation at this point, though.

In any event, from outside Russia, there seems to be hope for a change, hope that the dyarchy will eventually reveal rifts within the ruling elite and the result will be some sort of pluralism - or at least a lurch in the direction of a more cooperative posture towards the West, one that recognizes that interests can coincide and that "defending Russia's national interests" does not always have to mean playing the spoiler to America or resisting what Western countries want. From inside Russia, this prediction seems as good as any other I've seen:

In the circus they only keep the little bears until they're three years old, after that they mature and are unmanageable and extremely aggressive.

There's no doubt that "Operation Successor" has up to now been as successful as its authors could have hoped. If one takes the maximally cynical view of Putin, one must assume he'll be watching Dima like a hawk to make sure the latter doesn't "pull a Putin" and develop a mind of his own. If one believes that Putin is contemplating fading from the scene in a couple of years, well, his first appearance as PM doesn't really suggest a man who's thinking about hanging it up, but perhaps there will be a trend in that direction.

In any event, the country will have a chance to contemplate all of these things today while celebrating the victory over Germany 63 years ago. All seems set for Victory Day. By happy coincidence (actually, the date of Medvedev's inauguration is consistent with the past two inaugurations, so the timing wasn't specially arranged for this year), Putin's confirmation as PM came just in time for the country to celebrate with a long weekend.

It's a well-known fact that Moscow doesn't believe in tears. Apparently,
though, Moscow does believe in gigantic, man-made phallic symbols.
[image source]

So, after convincing the nation to "slit'sia v ekstaze" and vote overwhelmingly for Medvedev, Russians will have the chance to "spit'sia v ekstaze" while enjoying what will no doubt be wall-to-wall TV coverage of the military parade in Moscow. One has to ask whose victory is really being celebrated, especially given the somewhat controversial decision to return this year to the Soviet practice of displaying missiles and other hardware in the Victory Day parade.

Photo from Nashi's 2007 summer camp at Lake Seliger.
The banner says, "There will be sovereign democracy!"
[image source]

Adding to the impression that Putin & Co. are celebrating their victories in the 2007-08 elections is the fact that, just like after a military victory, various heroic veterans have recently been rewarded for their service to the fatherland (or, as Gazeta headlined its story on this, "For Servicing the Fatherland"):

KREMLIN AWARDS POLITICAL SUPPORTERS (RFE/RL, April 28, 2008)
President Putin has signed a decree awarding state orders to a number of Kremlin-friendly analysts, political commentators, and media figures, "Kommersant" reported on April 26. According to the decree, which was reportedly signed earlier this month, the order For Service to the Fatherland, first degree, was given to IMA public-relations group head Andrei Gnatyuk.

The same award, second degree, was given to All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion Director Valery Fyodorov, former Nashi leader and current State Youth Affairs Committee Chairman Vasily Yakemenko, and Effective Politics Foundation head Gleb Pavlovsky. The same decree bestows honorary certificates on Channel One head Konstantin Ernst, All-Russia State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK) head Oleg Dobrodeyev, NTV head Vladimir Kulistikov, Center for Political Forecasting Deputy Director Vitaly Ivanov, and a number of activists in the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. According to "Kommersant," the awards are directly tied to the contributions the recipients made to the victory of Unified Russia in the December 2007 Duma elections and Medvedev's victory in the March presidential election. Gazeta.ru reported on April 25 that Gnatyuk's IMA group oversaw the implementation of both election campaigns.

This should reinforce the conventional wisdom that VTsIOM polls on Russian domestic politics should be taken with a grain of salt. With respect to the executives from state-run TV channels, it simply underscores the obvious: they are the President's colleagues, his valued partners in the important task of keeping the masses properly mis- and underinformed; and they have been given a little pat on the head for smoothly managing the media environment during the recently concluded electoral cycle. Never mind that what Putin likely perceives as the main "victory" - the avoidance of a "colored revolution" - was, given his government's substantial genuine popularity, probably such a remote possibility as to really only exist as "cockroaches in his head," to use the Russian expression about personal hang-ups.

Anyway, the Kommersant article cited by RFE/RL digs deeper and describes the Putin Administration's recent tradition of taking care of the friendly journalists at state-run TV channels by bestowing government awards upon them (my translation):

In November of 2006, for the first time in the history of television President Putin gave a large group of TV employees (more than 100 people) awards phrased "For making a large contribution to the development of Russian teleradiobroadcasting and for long-time fruitful work." The formal reason for the awards was the 75th anniversary of broadcasting in the country. Among those receiving awards were predominantly employees of the three federal TV channels - Channel One, Rossiia, and NTV.

"For Services to the Fatherland" orders of the fourth degree were awarded to six people, including Mr. Ernst and Mr. Dobrodeyev. Mr. Kulistikov also received an Order of Honor. Half a year later in June of 2007, almost as many employees of the federal TV channels, mostly from Rossiia, NTV and TV Center (TVTs) received orders and medals of various ranks with the same phrase as the one used the year before for their colleagues.

The tradition actually seems to go back at least three years now - back in March 2005, I posted about Sergei Ivanov giving awards to then-ORT reporter Margarita Simonyan and her colleague from RTR. Simonyan's real reward, of course, turned out to be her chance to head up the Russia Today project. After all, nothing says "thank you" - in any language! - like the chance to manage the cash flowing into a government project. Kommersant also notes that Yeltsin officially thanked several hundred people after the 1996 elections, including members of the media, but there was no "For Service to the Fatherland" award at that time (it was introduced in 1999).

Regrettably, I haven't had much time in recent weeks to browse around and see what the Russian blogosphere is saying about all of this. Ilya Barabanov had a simple "no comment" about the awards story.

My photo, taken in late Dec. 2005 in Moscow.
An explanation of the meaning for non-Russian-speakers is here.
The photo is part of a large set of my photos of Moscow stickers,
graffiti and other "street art" which can be viewed here.

Notwithstanding the criticism which must be present in the RuBlogosphere (though as I mentioned, I haven't had time to survey it recently as much as usual), I doubt too many Russians really feel as negatively about Putin's latest victory as the folks who made the sticker shown above; certainly opinion polls suggest the percentage of people who view the current state of affairs negatively is quite low indeed. For the time being, that's true even of polls conducted by pollsters who haven't received awards for services rendered to the fatherland.

Why Putin is like Mugabe*

Zimbabwe's President Mugabe has been accusing his political opponents of intending to return farms to their dispossessed white owners.** Where have I seen similar populist rhetoric recently? Oh, right:

[image source]

The Nashi pamphlet this page comes from is an old story, but it is a good illustration of the Kremlin's main anti-Kasyanov talking point throughout the 07-08 election cycle - that he would surrender Russia's oil wealth to "the West" and take things back to the bad old days of the 1990s.

Here is a translation of the quotation attributed to Mikhail Kasyanov (under the banner headline, "This is what betrayal looks like"):

Having received the approval of American businessmen to enter the Russian presidential campaign, I have decided to sell Russian oil for three times less than the current market price.

And here is the actual quotation which appears to have served as the basis for the misquote above:

In his first interview with foreign media since announcing his candidacy, Mr Kasyanov said he would use the huge surplus from high oil prices to improve pipelines. He said: "Such projects would help lower the price of oil and gas on the market." A "fair price", he said, is $20-$25 a barrel. The price is now $63. "The world needs to think about alternative sources of energy, but use what we have now."

As Russian campaign spin goes, this is actually a pretty minor distortion, and no doubt Kasyanov would have been more accommodating, for example, to Western participants in the Sakhalin projects (in fact, one could argue that such accommodation would actually be in Russia's interest, since Western investment and know-how will likely be needed to maximize development of Russia's oil & gas sector). It's worth noting, though, that when Kasyanov was PM, he appeared to at least make a show of driving a hard bargain with Western investors in Russian oil projects.

Nevertheless, it served the Kremlin's interests to portray Kasyanov not only as the corrupt "Misha 2-percent" (a nickname acquired when two percent was enough of an alleged skim to seem offensive; never mind that the only proof of Kasyanov's corruption offered up to the public was a shady dacha privatization involving a sum which the barons of Rosneft and Gazprom would not bend down to pick up off the sidewalk on Tverskaya) but also as an agent of Western corporate interests. Similar nefarious intentions to forfeit Russia's oil wealth were ascribed to Vladimir Ryzhkov (apparently solely on the basis of a meeting with Dick Cheney).

Of course, the myth-making about Russian traitors would be nothing without the creation of a parallel mythology of Western politicos salivating at the prospect of carving Russia up and feasting on the oil wealth. Exhibit A in that book of fairy-tales is the infamous false claim that Madeleine Albright once stated Russia was unworthy of Siberia's oil wealth.

Unlike Zimbabwe, Russia is not a former colony of the West and has never been in danger of losing control of its natural resources. Apparently, Putin & Co. realized that the rhetoric of xenophobia and class hatred travels well to any country.

* Presumably one could fill many blog posts with why Putin is unlike Mugabe. I know almost nothing about domestic politics in African nations, so I would be on shaky ground trying to write such posts (as indeed I may be in trying to draw the comparison which provides the lede for this post). If you feel strongly about the distinctions, feel free to sketch out such posts in the comment section. Let me begin: Putin almost undoubtedly has more genuine popularity in his country than Mugabe does in his; on the other hand, Mugabe's political opponents seem to have actually made it on the ballot, an indignity which Putin refused to suffer.

** For all I know, this may be a valid accusation. My guess, however, is that Mugabe is attempting to spin a more conciliatory stance on the part of the opposition toward the farmers into some sort of treacherous behavior which goes against the interests of the state.

Nash Feminizm?

OK, so this is quite visually arresting:

[image source]

The young lady - or at least part of her - is proclaiming, "VOVA! I am with you!" This was part of a Nashi-sponsored fashion-show-cum-rally (at least, that's what it looked like, judging from other pictures, which are replete with Nashi's alarm-clock logo, something the Nashisti casually appropriated from their ostensible ideological opponents, Ukraine's Pora). Commenters on the post where I saw the picture above had a variety of reactions, including:

Is MTS rebranding again? (in reference to the red-and-white color scheme shared by Nashi and a major Russian mobile telephony provider);

I get it, I get it! They're a mixture of pioneers and cheerleaders.

Nice panties, what does Putin's wife think of this?

Our answer to Uggs. (in reference to the young lady's striped valenki)

Other commenters noted that it's time to change the label - to Dima, or to Medved - or responded with variations on the olbansky word песдец - and one noted that the placement of the label was "If we consider the symbolism....not very proper."

The antics of Nashi can hardly startle one anymore, but this is sort of a new level of tastelessness, fetching though the ladies involved may be. It got me thinking about feminism, truly a dangerous road for me to go down, so I'll admit right away that I'm out of my depth in such topics and apologize ahead of time in case I offend anyone.

The thing is, feminism is one of those "Western" ideas that many Russians condemn based on a flawed understanding of the concept. The Russian stereotype of feminists can probably be summed up as "manly-dressing, unattractive women who get offended when you try to open doors for them." Now, much of this has to do with the wonderful fact that Russian women are brilliant at maintaining dignity and power even while observing certain gender roles and playing along as though they really believed it were a man's world.

But I would venture to say that at least some of it has to do with the fact that many people are uncomfortable with this "foreign" idea - feminism and female empowerment - and the changes it might represent, the aspects of essential "Russian-ness" it might leave behind, and therefore feel the need to discredit such a threatening, new, "Western" idea. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the idea of feminism* in Russia may even be as discredited as the idea of democracy.

Thus, while "feminism" in Russia conjures up (false) images of militant, asexual shrews, who in actuality represent an extreme and perhaps imaginary fringe of the movement, "democracy" also conjures up (false) images of people who mainstream Russians have been taught by the mainstream Putin-era political discourse to refer to as the "demshiza" (democratic schizos), "dermokraty" (shitocrats), or "demokrady" (demo-thieves) - in other words, the people who allegedly** brought the country the collapse and poverty of the 1990s.

As I said at the outset, I'm out of my depth here, and perhaps it's a fool's errand to try to turn a T&A pic with a suggestively placed label into some kind of pseudo-thoughtful discussion. But I figured I'd give it a shot.


*Not that there's just one "idea of feminism" in the rest of the world. Actually, this Nashistka's choice of outfits, which might get her blackballed from some feminist circles in the US as a traitor to the sisterhood who allowed herself to be objectified in the service of a male-dominated political system (I mean, talk about "the personal is political"!), might also be hailed by "stripper feminists" - no doubt this Putinista was thinking, while freezing onstage in that bikini, "By deploying femininity as a tool I [am] exposing it as a construction."

Seriously, though, I have no idea about these ideologies, and probably not much room to speculate on as a guy, even as a "sensitive, caring, romantic 90s kind of guy" (anyone else remember that funny turn of phrase?). So I decided to ask Natalia Antonova, the first person I thought of when I pondered who a reliable source about post-Soviet feminism might be. I've emailed her and asked her to respond in the comments here. We'll see if she can take time away from her own writing, commenting, and general saving of the world with the written word to pontificate in this space.


**I say allegedly because in fact the initial collapse and poverty of the 1990s was largely a carryover from the overprinting of rubles and price controls which were in effect in the USSR right up until 1991. What happened later in that decade is often blamed on people like Chubais, but why then is someone like Medvedev - who policy-wise seems like basically a market liberal like Chubais (actually, an ultraliberal like Chubais, according to Maxim Kalashnikov :-) ) - being designated Putin's heir?

Seriously, is it just me or is it kind of funny to hear Gryzlov talk about the Chairman of Gazprom being the "most socially oriented candidate" (I wonder if he meant, "from among the group acceptable to Putin"?) leading a government focused on raising people's quality of life. It's almost as funny as the idea of that famous "statist with a US passport" (and founder of a "youth movement" that's both less famous and less Soviet than Nashi, one with pre-Soviet roots) Boris Jordan "consider[ing] the life of an average citizen" from his near-oligarchic height.

Speechless

The text says:
"Vladimir Putin, let's continue to work together in the future!" and
"Chief Teddy-Bear, take care of the little children!"
[image source]

Speechlessness - or a brief, shocked (resigned?) obscenity - has been the response of many Russians and Russia-watchers to the latest brick in the pro-Kremlin wall.

The good news? "Restless Bears Have Found a Job for Putin," reports Moskovsky Komsomolets. The bad - or at least profoundly questionable - news? Those "bears" are children aged 8 to 15, who will now have the chance to be involved in a nationwide movement called "Teddy Bears" ("Mishki"). The new organization has been rolled out in the midst of a circus-like frenzy of pro-Putin demonstrations in Moscow. According to the Nashi website (all of the quoted texts in this post are my translations):

On the 6th of December over 35,ooo commissars and activists from the Nashi movement, the "Our Election" (Nashi Vybory) all-Russian youth program, the All-Russia youth education project "Cadres for modernizing the country," the interregional child-youth movement "Mishki," the "Shapovalova" designers' project, and the federal programs Our Army ("Nasha Armiia"), Friendship Lessons, Blood Group, Voluntary Youth Militia, Our New Education, and Hiking, came [to Moscow] to congratulate the President, and also to present their plans for the future.

Actually, it would seem that the powers-that-be initially positioned the busing of provincial youth to Moscow for several days and kitting them out in Putin ponchos at least in part as a way to have a bulwark against the "orange infection" - at least, that motivation is expressed in a Nashi flyer that came out just before the elections. Another funny thing about Nashi's version of events in the paragraph quoted above is that nearly all of these groups and "programs" are parts of or organized by Nashi. But I guess there is strength not only in numbers (and official sanction!) but also in lots of bombastic names.

One thing officials should remember - people care less and less about slogans and politics, but Muscovites always care about anything that will impede traffic. And apparently Nashi's antics throughout the city in recent days have caused lots of probki. Gazeta.ru's story about this was titled "Teddy Bears Lock up the Center" and was illustrated with a picture of a traffic jam and a map showing road closings. Kommersant had a story about the traffic-diverting meeting involving Mishki:

Yesterday on Bolotnaya Square the childrens' movement "Mishki" made itself known for the firs time. The movement is for children from 8 to 15 years old, and their counselors [вожатые - for which my dictionary actually gives "young pioneer leader," so strong is the association] are Nashi commissars. According to the organization's internal hierarchy, a counselor who is able to organize ten events with children is called a "Restless Bear" ["медведь-шатун" - a term for a bear which has woken up for hibernation], and one who unites children from ten apartment buildings is a "Polar Bear." The most senior counselors carry the title of "Brown Bear."

According to the movement's organizer, Yulia Zimova, "Mishki" have organized mainly in the regions [i.e., not in Moscow or SPB], and the parents of the children involved have nothing against their children's participation in public life. On Bolotnaya Square "Mishki" recorded a video message to Vladimir Putin. In it, they called on the president to head up their group, "since he is the most important Teddy Bear in Russia," and asked him to "assign the group a developmental vector."

"I would like to note that any forced participation of schoolchildren in political life is prohibited by law in this country. Especially considering that this took place during the school day," Moscow City Council Deputy Evgenii Bunimovich told Kommersant. "Russia always had enough good sense not to get children mixed up in politics. And today this is happening, and it is horrible."

Representatives of the parties and movements which, according to Nashi, had planned to foment an "orange revolution" in Moscow, told Kommersant that the actions of the pro-Kremlin youth was just bewildering. "The authorities have dishonestly won this election, and no children will make them any more legitimate. [...]" thinks SPS's Boris Nemtsov.

"I would be interested to talk to the city authorities, who swore that they would never permit mass events in Moscow that would cut off traffic downtown," added Denis Bilunov, executive director of Unified Civil Force and a co-organizer of the "Dissenters' March" that was dispersed on November 24.

Kremlin-friendly (or so it seems to me, at least on the CIS issues that I follow) news portal RosBalt.ru had the following to say about Mishki:

Little Teddy Bears Ask Putin to Be Their Megasuperbear

The Mishki movement appeared in September and unites children from 8 to 15 years old. The counselors - high school students - have their own "positions"... the apex of the hierarchy is the "brown bear."

"That is a megasuperbear, who can with his skill and experience solve children's problems in a particular city - for example, someone who can organize the construction of a playground," said the organizer of "Mishki," who is also a Nashi commissar, Yulia Zimova, in an interview with Trud.

"We expect to succeed," said Zimova. "Even if the President doesn't become the leader of Mishki, we hope that he will still support us one way or another."

Mishki already participates fairly actively in pro-Kremlin demonstrations organized by Nashi. For example, they were present at the demonstration celebrating Putin's birthday [Mishki's LJ identifies this as the source of their first press mention] with posters reading "Thanks to Putin for our stable future."

One blog commenter responded to that last quote by recalling a phrase from the 20th century: "Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!" At least one other commenter on a different internet forum had a similar thought:

"We've already been through this, and it was thanks to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood. Except that then it was much more sincere, and now it's done to order and for money."

Another commenter questioned the age bracket involved:

I also remember that they used to accept people at age 14 into Komsomol, i.e., into a totally adult socio-political organization. And here it's "plush teddy bears" until age 15. This is some kind of retarded infantilism.

Yet another commenter on the same forum went off:

Can't you see where this is all headed? I support the right of any party to freely campaign. BUT NOT A MONOPOLY!!! What difference does it make - teddy bears, jerboas, or baby crocodiles? If you pound something into a child's unformed head from the age of eight, he'll accept it uncritically as the truth. This is straight-up zombification of children.

Others took a more humorous tack, and tried to come up with nicknames for this new organization (all based on puns that aren't really translatable) : "путинята" or "едросята," proposed one commenter at that same forum. At another forum, proposals for pejorative nicknames were "Putin's Hamsters," "HitlerJungend" (rather unoriginal, since Nashi has already been slapped with this somewhat over-the-top label), and "Медвебрята", "Медвеонеры" and "Медвемольцы" (puns using the word for "bear" with the words for "recruit," "pioneers," and "Komsomol"). On both forums, people lamented the fact that children so young are apparently the subject of a political "hearts-and-minds" campaign.

Would you trust this man with your children?

Most likely, Russian parents have new Minister of Youth Vasily Yakemenko (ex-Nashi head commissar) to thank for the expansion of Nashi's ambit to include the pre-teen set. A Radio Svoboda interviewer got one of the participants to say a few embarrassing things about the way they got kids involved (not-very-good Google translation), and that account suggested that the "Young Russia" group might also have been involved in organizing Mishki's Moscow meeting.

I decided to see whether this new "movement" has a website. Mishki.ru got a "server not found" message, but then I thought that maybe this group uses the same cringe-inducing top-level-domain as Nashi's website. Sure enough, punching in Mishki.su got me to the freshly-baked website of this teddy bear of a youth group, says it has been online since November 21. The website, though, looks like it's still in beta. The front page has impressive, appealing graphics of bears cavorting in red neckerchiefs (a la the Soviet-era Young Pioneers), but the "contact" page lists just some nonsense characters - here's a screenshot, since that's likely to change:


On the section of the site called "Media about us," the only link at the moment is to what appears to be Mishki's official LiveJournal blog, the profile page of which provides an abbreviated mission statement:

We are the All-Russian [sic - even though it's called "Interregional" elsewhere] Child-Youth Movement "MISHKI" [Nashi also likes to write its name in all-caps sometimes, not because it's an abbreviation, but just 'cause, I guess]. We invite you to connect with the future of your country, to touch the creation of the history of Russia - to not allow the loss of the young generation.

Every generation can make a contribution to the country's development. Today, practically a whole generation of Russian citizens has grown up not feeling responsible for the future of their Motherland. At best, they will leave behind graffiti in courtyards, at worst, nothing at all will be left after them. We are people who believe in the future generation and who think that their fate is in our hands. The fate of Russia is in our hands.

The LJ itself has an odd header with what looks like a cartoon version of the Sydney, Australia, skyline; and a couple of posts like this one with photos of children doing wholesome-looking things and not much text. And although that "mini-manifesto" is a bit bombastic and self-important, I certainly can't argue with the principle of raising kids to be conscious of their debt to their society and country. It's a different matter whether this type of consciousness-raising should be a task for a political party that already dominates the public discourse.

At the moment, there's something wrong with the text spacing on the page describing the organization's "Manifesto," but it's nothing a quick edit by a good web designer couldn't fix. The Manifesto itself - or the document on the page labeled "Manifesto" - offers a lot of nice thoughts on values - volunteerism, physical fitness, etc. - and how to inculcate them, but toward the end it depicts something so involved that I can't imagine much of it ever being done in real life by volunteers. It also offers a lot of insight into what values are most important to the people who have set up this organization, and what kind of citizens and country they hope to create (strange numbering as in the original, though I have introduced line breaks for clarity in some places):

III. Once you have earned their trust - start building a state: the Courtyard Democratic Republic
1. The building of a state can start with having the children do what adults do in real life. Children always want to try themselves out at adult tasks.
The children can be actors and play in a theater, or anchors and cameramen and film the courtyard news [...]

1. When you start to build a democratic republic, it doesn't necessarily have to function as a state economically at first. It all depends on what the children want.

The economy should involve around 100 people. Every child should know that, for example, in stairwell 5 of building 7 between the first and second floors, every day between 19.00 and 20.30 the Courtyard Bank, Employment office, and Tax Inspectorate will be open. If he wants to earn Mishkarubles, he can go to the Employment office, where someone will give him a job. For example, if there's going to be a play the next day, then he can set up the chairs for 15 rubles, make the set for 40, or for 30 Mishkarubles take a role in the play. The child takes on the job, gets the money on the day after he works, pays a tax, for example, one Mishkaruble. At the end of the week or month the Leading Mishki conduct an auction, where the little Mishki can buy theater or movie tickets, flash-drives, picture frames, etc. - it depends on the interests and age of the children.

When the children get used to this system, you can build a real state - the President and government of the Courtyard will plan the budget for the month, based on which one or another ministry will conduct events in the courtyard, government employees will get a salary, and some will even be able to open their own companies, for example a firm that does homework assignments, or open their own private bank.

1. When the republic grows to include several courtyards, you can set up a big parliament, buy up land in the courtyard, found an inter-courtyard state television station, hold beauty contests, set up advertising companies, walls of honor for Mishki and Little Mishki.

Before the launch of any courtyard democratic republic, a seminar will be conducted with all organizers who are Leading Mishki in your city.

IV. The Unique thing: the city becomes a single united state of children, where they are the main citizens and are responsible for everything. Now your children have opened real companies, they defend in election campaigns their projects to improve life in the courtyard, they earn money and pay taxes. They are learning management, learning to think independently and make decisions. Now your task is to introduce their projects into the system of regional government. Teach them not to be afraid to live in the adult world, to achieve the goals they have set. [...]

Based on a successful small model, any child, and then teenager and adult, will build a larger model. The model of his city, his state. And even if in that model not everyone will be a government employee, the rest will one way or another be representatives of nationally oriented businesses, or socially responsible entrepreneurs. A country where the children are occupied and involved is assured to have great success. To be the best. To be beloved.

It struck me that a lot of these things - having a "government" and even sometimes a "TV station" are things that kids experience through their schools in the U.S. Strangely, this document says nothing about using the school as an organizing principle.

"Chief Teddy Bear - Take Care of the Children!"
[image source]

Confusingly, the section of the website titled "For Mishki" also has a document that is labeled a Manifesto. Maybe they just accidentally swapped the two texts when they put the site together. This document must be the actual manifesto, for it contains principles rather than a specific plan of action:

Why Now?

A country's prosperity, as a rule, is accompanied by a the mass development of a children's movement. The wise ruler ["Мудрый правитель" - I'm not making this up] wants to know into whose hands the country for which he is responsible will fall, and the residents want to be sure of what will happen tomorrow. Today, we have something to pass along to the next generation - the ability to cope with difficulties, achievements, experience, knowledge, faith in Russia. We can instill much in the generation that will follow us: tolerance, collegiality, the ability to empathize and survive, independence and responsibility. And most important: the ability to be a human being and a patriot. This is not simple, as we know. But it is necessary. After all, this will allow us to create the Russia of our dreams.

The manifesto document talks about developing creative talents, promoting a healthy way of life and charitable work, patriotism and professional preparation, and other worthy things for a youth organization to do. And then it ends with a bang (my translation, italics in original):

A child-youth courtyard movement is something that has never been done before. Perhaps a children's courtyard movement is the very path which will lead us to the development and consolidation of not just new traditions, but also an interesting, kind mass culture. It's possible, that we will raise the sort of citizens, who will be able to take to the streets nationwide and demand that TV shows which degrade the personalities and minds of their children be taken off the air. The Little Mishki who grow up and become Mishki, will preserve the country, the people, history, and culture.

We will raise the sort of citizens who will be a source of pride not only to us, but also to other countries.

Fascinating indeed. But for a post titled "Speechless" I've gone on at great length about this embryonic children's organization - who knows if it will go anywhere? I'll end the post with a bit more info from the MK article I mentioned above:

One of the "Restless Bears" is 18-year-old Masha from Sochi. But she spoke in a way not entirely appropriate for her age: "Sood Uncle Putin will resign, he won't have anything to do, and he'll accept our offer!"

The counselors plan to politically enlighten the children in their charge: "At eight years old it's pointless, but we'll tell the older ones about the 'orange' threat."

As far as Mishki's funding, people in the organization say that the counselors are volunteers and that parents help out with the supplies. But it's doubtful that transporting a thousand citizens to Moscow was within the parents' means. We have heard that the "Restless Bears" are sponsored by large banks and regional businesses.

Can the pro-Kremlin enthusiasts at least leave children alone? If things keep going in this direction, soon the members of "Teensy Bears" [“Медвежулечки”] will be rolled out onto the street in strollers, and after them we'll have pregnant women as members of "Clumsy Embryos" [“Косолапые эмбриончики”]...