Cold War redux

I am relatively new to this blogging thing, but I've found a few of the bloggers out there who focus on parts of the region that used to be ruled from Moscow. There is some very interesting commentary out there; I won't post the links here because the best ones I've found are located permanently in the right-hand column.

One parenthetical observation before getting to the point: there seems to be lots of quality English-language blogging about Ukraine (by Ukrainians and otherwise) in a way that suggests the bloggers are physically there, though of course that's never verifiable, and there are at least a couple of excellent English-language bloggers posting from Central Asia, but I have not found a wealth of English-language blogs originating in Russia. Is this yet another consequence of Russia's ejection of the Peace Corps - a source of thoughtful English-speakers with time on their hands - while volunteers remain in Ukraine and Central Asia?

That logic breaks down, though, when I realize that I haven't been able to find a single Moldova-related blog (English-language or otherwise), although there are still lots of PCV's in that country. Maybe the expats in Russia don't think this place is exotic or interesting enough anymore to merit a blog; maybe they are just too busy getting a piece of the petrodollar windfall.

Anyway, one of the aforementioned excellent bloggers from Ukraine, Discoshaman of Postmodern Clog, posts the following, in part:

Ukrainians are people, not geopolitical pawns. And they want to be free.

One of the tragic things I see developing is that the Western media narrative seems to be falling into a US vs. Russia play. And I'm seeing more and more commentary in that vein on the web. So few seem to grasp that this is about an entire system, not about an election. Yes, the people are rallying for Yushchenko, but it goes so, so much deeper than that. [...]

People are proud to be Ukrainian, proud that their country is now known for something other than mafia, dead journalists, and corruption. People who a week ago were convinced of their own powerlessness are now standing fearlessly, singing together, "We are many, we are one, we can't be stopped!"

Can anyone be so dead of heart not to find this beautiful?

Powerful words and powerful ideas. The cynic in me is almost overpowered (then wants to say, "wait a minute, aren't we ALL geopolitical pawns?"). The Argus agrees heartily with Discoshaman's post, then goes into detail which is interesting and relevant to the point to which I'm getting. Namely, that it wasn't the US or Western media that created the narrative of the Chestnut Revolution as a US-Russian proxy battle - this narrative was created in no small part by the many Russian leaders, pundits, and media outlets which have framed the story in these terms.

Every time Channel 1's Vremya covered the events in Kiev, there was lots of footage of the orange brigades' large stocks of food and clothing, and not-so-thinly veiled insinuations that "someone" - i.e., "the West," or Soros, or another such meddler - had to pay for all of this, right? As for Russian elder statesmen, who should know better, Primakov's recent statement that "the West stands behind the crisis in Ukraine" is just the latest - Foreign Minister Lavrov is also on the record talking about Western "interference," not to mention Putin's statements on this score. All of this in spite of Ambassador Vershbow's protestations that the US "does not see Ukraine as an arena for US-Russian rivalry."

Furthermore, the mere comparison of the current events in Ukraine to Georgia's Rose Revolution, during which the role of the US irritated many Russian political elites, implies that there is some level of US involvement with a goal of rolling back Russia's sphere of influence. So it's not just "our" journalists shoehorning the story into a simpler narrative that lets them file their articles on time, there really is something to the US-Russian conflict angle, if only because the wounded superpower pride of so many Russian leaders prevents them from seeing that activities in the post-Soviet space do not have to be a zero-sum endeavor.

There is room for humor in all of this, right? I got a laugh out of some of the anti-American posters which apparently turned up in the hands of Yanukovych supporters, which polit.ru has helpfully aggregated on a single page.