The world of black and white, as described by yellow journalists

Evropa Publishing House came out with a book last year called "Putin's Enemies" by Pavel Danilin (he's listed as the main author on Evropa's website), a veteran of Pavlovsky's Fond Effektivnoi Politiki who blogs prolifically and whose writing frequently appears in online publications like Vzglyad. A couple of years ago, he wrote an interesting book on Russian youth politics, also published by Evropa.

Danilin has become one of the official chroniclers of "sovereign democracy," having written the chapter on that sacred topic in the controversial Kremlin-commissioned history textbook that came out last summer. He is also sometimes a real class act - for instance, in a recent post on the occasion of Boris Yeltsin's birthday, he wrote that the former president was "a piece of shit" who "should burn in hell, along with all of his supporters" (a commenter with a good sense of humor then posted a couple of Putin quotes in which VVP was full of praise for the man who put him in power).

But what I wanted to post was Evropa's English-language capsule summary of this book, the title of which they translate as "Putin's Opponents" (emphasis added):

Russia has only two friends: its army and navy. The enemies of Russia have always been innumerable. Recently we are seeing the enemies of Russia raise their ugly heads within the country with increasing impertinence. Their aim is to tear Russia apart and make it bleed to death. Their hate is aimed at the head of state, Vladimir Putin. They are confident that attacking Putin they are dealing successful blows to the country. Glancing above the ragtag up front we can see a number of grim figures who are the real enemies of Vladimir Putun [sic]. What binds them together is their shared hatred of the president for having cut short their murky dealings done at the expense of the entire Russian society. This is precisely why these people are the enemies of Russia.

This would appear to sum up the Kremlin's view of political opposition - or at least, the view that existed during the 2007-08 election cycle. If you don't support Putin's Plan, whatever it may be, you must be either an "enemy of Russia" or bankrolled by someone who is. Now that the election - or, as some prefer to call it, the "voting" - is over, perhaps there will be more official tolerance for at least a Kremlin-organized, vetted "loyal opposition." But, given the combined effects of the Kremlin's coordinated efforts at discrediting the very idea of opposition and the opposition's own self-discreditation (with its fragmentation and general incompetence), it's difficult to imagine there will be much more.

More recently, Evropa has published a collection of Dmitry Medvedev's articles and speeches, titled "National Priorities." Here is the English-language capsule summary of that book from the publisher's website, with an amusing contrast in tone to the blurb quoted above:

The collection includes articles, interviews and addresses made by Dmitry Medvedev at the time when he was supervising over realization of priority national projects. It was in those years that the First Deputy Chairman of the Russian government became a politician on a national level, known throughout the country. The high evaluation of his work by the society, political and government circles led Dmitry Medvedev to a crucial moment in his life, when President Vladimir Putin, the author of the strategy of priority national projects, which he put forward in the autumn of 2005, two years later, prior to the United Russia congress, said that his associate deserved holding the country’s highest executive position, being the President of Russia.

I found the contrast between the verbal beat-down of the first and the gentle fawning of the second quite striking, though of course not surprising.

Citizen journalism in the post-Soviet space

"Web based think tank" Eurasia21 has published an interesting paper about citizen journalism in Central Asia, including some interesting sections comparing government responses throughout the region with the situation in neighboring countries like China and Iran.

Here's a recent discussion of similar issues by Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman, and here's a reassuring report from RIA Novosti suggesting that internet censorship is not going to be an issue in Russia...

Colbert: One dead Russian journalist = $571.43

American comedian Stephen Colbert had this reaction to a viewer informing him that his picture is being used on a billboard in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk:

“Russians, you may not use my image until you have paid my fee - $20,000.
Which, I believe, in Russian currency, is 35 dead journalists.”

Looks like the country's image may need a little more "burnishing."

More video clips from Colbert Reports past involving Russia.

"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law"

Nikolai Zlobin is a Russian analyst who has been based in DC for some time - I'm not sure if it's that exposure that makes him generally sound more sensible than the average pundit, or something else. He also has a blog, the insights of which I wish I had been reading last fall when I was pontificating and speculating in this space about the fate of the Russian throne presidency. The article below is from the newspaper Vremia Novostei, and there's a slightly longer version on his blog.

Anyway, although I don't agree with everything in this article, I enjoyed the blend of an "outside-the-box" approach to international law with a pragmatic assessment of why things went down as they did in this case, so I decided to translate it for the edification of anyone who is fascinated or frustrated with the idea of a "Kosovo precedent" - and where it might lead - but doesn't read Russian.

Kosovo will not return to Serbia, just as Abkhazia will not return to Georgia

Nikolai Zlobin, Vremia Novostei, Feb, 29, 2008

In international law there are two principles – the right of nationalities to self-determination and territorial integrity of states – that at first glance appear to contradict each other. But if an ethnic group wants to break away and create its own state, it has the right to do so. The right of an ethnic group is superior to the right of a state. But if another state seeks to annex a part of the territory of a neighboring country, then the principle of territorial integrity applies, and the international community must ensure that it is observed.

In other words, if Russia wants to annex Abkhazia, that would be a violation of international law. But if Abkhazia wants to secede from Georgia and create an independent state, then its people have the full right to do so. There have been similar cases since 1945. This is the case in Kosovo as well, which is not becoming part of another state but is trying to create its own state. Moreover, a prohibition against becoming part of another state was a condition of Kosovo’s independence. Therefore, there is no basis for comparing the situation in Kosovo with the “Munich Agreement” which gave Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany in 1938.

International law inevitably changes. The foundations of the current system were formed in the first years following World War II. This was the international law of the Cold War period, and it does not adequately reflect contemporary realities and requires serious changes. Russia should become one of the leaders in the creation of a new system of international law, which would take into account the processes of globalization and technological developments. The way to do this is to avoid clinging to the norms and procedures of the past, whatever their benefits were in their day, and to shape the future based on the realities of the present.

The UN system, created in 1946, is in need of modification. It has long since ceased to be a politically effective international organization, has turned into a humanitarian organization and has not been in a position to solve a single significant international problem for years. In addition to Kosovo, one can point to the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many other things taking place which conflict with the letter of international law. We need new organizations which are capable of placing the world’s development within a manageable framework, so that events will not be left to their natural course as is the case today. Russia can and should play a large role in the creation of this new system, in cooperation with the EU, the USA, China, the Arab world, and other interested parties.

The principal complaint against supporters of Kosovo’s independence is that they have violated UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 10, 1999. But it’s not all that simple. That resolution concerned the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which ceased to exist a few years later. Serbia is not mentioned once in the resolution. The document does not require a UN Security Council resolution to approve further changes to Kosovo’s status, and supporters of the region’s independence took advantage of this.

I consider what happened in Serbia to have been a huge and primarily human tragedy. It happened, though, not on February 17, when Kosovo declared independence; it has been going on for quite some time already. In recent months, Russia’s representatives at meetings in Washington and Brussels made terrible threats, but then on the sidelines said, “Don’t worry, Moscow won’t do anything in response.” Serbian politicians constantly took a ambiguous position, sent unclear signals, and tried to sit not just on two, but on three or four chairs at once. As a result, it was they who lost Kosovo. The task became to make sure that this tragedy didn’t become a larger tragedy, that it didn’t lead to another war in the Balkans. Between a very bad option and a very, very bad one, the former was chosen.

Kosovo won’t return to Serbia, just as Abkhazia won’t return to Georgia – no matter what they are promised, no matter how high a level of autonomy is offered, no matter what position the UN Security Council takes. At some point in the negotiations, it became clear that Kosovo and Serbia would never come to an agreement. The EU and the US decided to be realistic and take responsibility for the situation. They decided that maintaining the status quo in Kosovo would be more dangerous than disrupting it.

Serbia wants to become an EU member and to join NATO as soon as possible. Kosovo and the other Balkan states want the same things. Adherence to European norms is a powerful motivation and sets the standard of behavior for the region’s politicians. Each country wants to enjoy a quality of life such that no one would want to secede from it. Serbia was unable to achieve this. It’s essential to create a country which attracts everyone to join it and not one which makes entire regions want to break away. President Putin had good reason to speak about the importance of making Russia an attractive country. This is a more effective method of combating separatism than appeals to other states whose own problems will always be more important to them.

Kosovo independence is one of very few foreign policy issues on which the Bush Administration has followed President Clinton's line. The genuine feeling in Washington is that stability in the Balkans depends in large part on whether Serbia can become a truly democratic country which fully shares Western values. But this can't possibly happen as long as Serbia has the colossal problem of Kosovo weighing it down.

In Washington, they say that the independence of Kosovo will help Serbia to become a successful state.

Serbia's reputation in American political circles has been ruined over the course of the past decade. Many American politicians see Serbia as the main threat to European security. This is why American policy on this issue was openly anti-Serbian from the beginning and continues to be so. Unfortunately, neither Russia nor Serbia itself will be able to quickly change this situation. This situation, though, makes Washington's stance even more intransigent and increases its impatience and willingness to take drastic measures without listening to its opponents. And not only on the issue of Kosovo.

I would take issue with a couple of the points here – first, the idea of self-determination under international law is not generally considered to be the unfettered right implied by Zlobin's description. The self-determination he suggests is so broad that it sounds almost like Lenin's idea of self-determination inevitably involving a separate state. In fact, I believe the current state of international law (for whatever it's worth) is that the general right of self-determination refers first of all to the right of nations to enjoy their national language, traditions, etc., within the confines of the state they happen to find themselves in through representation in that state's government; and secession, also known as "external self-determination," is considered a remedy of last resort.

Moreover, in the case of Abkhazia, there is a fairly compelling argument to be made that the conflict was not the sort of national self-determination which the international community should seek to promote or reward by recognizing. The Abkhaz, who constituted 17% of the population of the region in 1989, managed to drive out well over 200,000 ethnic Georgians – nearly a majority of the region’s population – during the fighting in 1992-93, and even then did not become a plurality in the region.

But perhaps I’m simply falling victim to the “old thinking” that Zlobin would like to move beyond. In all seriousness, I too have found the existing international law framework to be insufficient to deal with or even at times to describe some of the aspects of the unresolved conflicts in the post-Soviet space. In any event, international law is at least to some extent based on state practice, so perhaps another Oliver Wendell Holmes quote (in addition to the one used in the title) might be applied to the situation surrounding Kosovo: “It is the merit [sic] of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principle afterwards.”

It's interesting that as Zlobin proposes an innovative, cooperative role for Russia in formulating new international law norms, at least one other commentator is observing that Russia's use of international law is stuck in the past.

Also interesting are some - though by no means all - of the articles that made up the avalanche of commentary which followed Kosovo's declaration of independence. Here is a random selection of ones I enjoyed reading:

Christopher Borgen, the lead author of the definitive legal analysis of Transdniester's attempt at secession from Moldova, runs through the legal analysis of Kosovo independence and concludes that it is "a quintessential 'tough case,' demonstrating the ways in which political interests of states affect how the international law is given effect." Borgen rightly points out the importance of the facts of a potentially precedential case (and how narrowly they are interpreted) in drawing broader legal lessons, but he concludes that

Despite the declarations and best intentions, just saying something is "unique" may not be enough. States and commentators may need to ask why one claim of independence is purportedly unique and then consider its downstream political and legal effects. In the end, we need to keep in mind that sometimes the most effective law in politically-charged situations may be the law of unintended consequences.

Moldovan analyst Dumitru Minzarari believes there is now a "Kosovo precedent," and that it represents "a triumph of the law of the fist over international law." He also points readers of his blog to Charles Kupchan's article on the Foreign Affairs website and discusses that article at length.

Slate's Christopher Hitchens, with his usual acerbic tone, lays the blame for the ultimate outcome at the feet of Serbia:

Of course, one ought to acknowledge that this is a calamity for the Serbs and indeed an injustice in the sense of an insult to their pride and history. But the injustice was self-inflicted. I remember seeing, in Kosovo, the "settlements" for Serbs that the Milosevic regime was building in a vain effort to alter the demography. And who were the bedraggled "settlers"? The luckless Serbian civilians who had been living in the Krajina area of Croatia until their fearless leader's war of conquest for "Greater Serbia" had brought general disaster and seen them finally evicted from farms and homesteads they had garrisoned for centuries. Promised new land on colonized Albanian territory, they had been uprooted and evicted once again. Where are they now, I wonder? Perhaps stupidly stoning the McDonald's in Belgrade, and vowing fervently never to forget the lost glories of 1389, and maybe occasionally wondering where they made their original mistake.

Oh, and in lieu of tracking down a pretty picture for this post, I'll simply point out that you can track which countries have recognized Kosovo's independence here.

It's funny because it's true...

This video has over half a million views on YouTube (is that a lot? I confess I don't know...but it seems like a lot, so I apologize if this post is the equivalent of an email forwarding you a joke you've seen five times already) and has been up since last month, but I first saw it today thanks to someone emailing me the link. It is by a KVN team from the city of Perm'.



So basically, a bunch of guys in Perm' got together and - using a comedy skit uploaded to YouTube - did a pretty good job of making the same basic point as Human Rights Watch did in its 2008 World Report about the problem of a "democracy charade" in many countries (see also here for a discussion putting Russia in the context of that report).

An Echo of Moscow

Tverskaya, Feb. 23, 2005 - from this set

Shortly after the Duma elections last December, I saw this article and wanted to translate it. I didn't have time then, and in truth it's a fairly challenging text to translate, since it is all about mood and atmosphere. The furor around Putin's Luzhniki speech has faded, but Nizhny Novgorod, where part of the article is set, is still in the news as the location of Medvedev's one official day speaking as a candidate and (perhaps less significantly) as the region singled out by the New York Times in a controversial article about the Kremlin's (ab)use of "administrative resources," so this seems like a suitable item to post as we await the inevitable result on March 2.

By way of background, this piece was supposed to appear in the Moscow weekly Bolshoi Gorod, but the head of the publishing house that prints BG decided not to print it as written, and BG's editor chose to publish it on his ZheZhe rather than edit it. The comments on the blog where it was posted suggest a range of assessments of that decision - mostly praise for the article, but also some averring that it was proper not to publish it, because it's not "journalism" and is more suitable for a ZheZhe post, or that it's an "empty" tale describing a political reality that has existed for years but is just now being noticed by the creative intelligentsia (it is indeed something one could see hints of a few years ago).

Comments elsewhere (and there were many, at the time) speculated about censorship or self-censorship and led in some cases to soul-searching online discussions among old friends divided by their opinions of Russia's path... but I should let the piece speak for itself.

An Echo of Moscow
by Roman Gruzov
c. December 3, 2007

The city before the elections

In late November it was cold in Nizhny Novgorod, and the people handing out United Russia fliers on the streets were bundled up in scarves against the chill. Nizhny covered in snow feels oppressive to a person unused to the Russian provinces. The industrial areas which die out towards the evening and the touching wooden downtown, restored in some places and lop-sided and half-abandoned in others, seemed like some sort of different, unknown, incomprehensible and thus not entirely safe country. There were campaign banners on every corner, so the word "Putin" was always visible from several angles at once.

I stopped a car on the banks of the Oka and thought about those banners and about why they seemed different in Nizhny than at home. To be honest, I always paid attention only to the most odious images. For instance, on the corner of Liteiny and Nevsky, on the building where the editorial offices of Afisha used to be, there's a gigantic group photo that covers up the entire facade, with the caption "Putin's Petersburg." The second lady from the left has such a ghoulish smirk that it looks like she's promoting the next of the "Dozor" vampire movies and not the Presidential line. Not far away, a poster on a pillar reads, "You are in Putin's plan," and my gaze has been stopping on that pillar for a month, too, but only because it's odd - he's not in my plans, but I am in his. In Nizhny the quantity of these pictures is something qualitatively different, perhaps because based on the way the locals look, it's hard to understand what they have to do with these banners.

I was picked up by a green Moskvich with a driver of indeterminate age wearing yellow wraparound shades and a shabby sheepskin coat. The radio was bellowing frightfully, and I thought the speaker's voice sounded familiar. But as we drove alongside the still unfrozen river, I had a moment of doubt - the rhetoric of the person shouting from the ragged car speakers about jackals and foreign embassies was just too coarse. I thought, "Could it be Zhirik?"

The driver turned the volume up louder - louder than was proper, so much louder that it became unpleasant to be in the car. After a couple of minutes I was sure that it really was the President speaking - the radio was picking up the TV broadcast from Channel One. I felt uneasy - at any other time I would have asked the driver to turn it down, but I kept quiet. The voice coming from the radio was too insistent, the city too incomprehensible, and the driver's murky gaze from behind his yellow glasses too unpredictable. I had absolutely no desire to argue with him about politics - practically for the first time in the last seventeen years I decided that it would be better to hold my tongue. It was unpleasant, strange and somehow radically new, all at the same time - to be driven around a dark, cold city, listening to the stadium responding to the speechmaker, and to feel that you are living an a new, different time, a time when if you don't know your interlocutor's mindset it's better to stay silent. And we did stay silent - we drove along and listened as various not-so-picky people made speeches at the stadium. Then the driver drew his hand out of his tattered cuff and sharply turned off the radio. It got quiet. Then he said:

"Those assholes!"

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, opened the window and spat angrily into the frosty evening.

In Moscow the next day I learned that many of my friends had been through something similar during the past few days, and that for almost all of them the feeling of a qualitative shift was surprisingly connected with something trivial - not with the Luzhniki rally, but with some silly story. One friend's kid got sick from paint fumes, because they were painting the school starting first thing in the morning, rushing to beautify it in time for the elections. Another got into a fight with drunken teenagers on the street, and at the police station noticed they had "I'm for Putin" scarves around their necks. And in response I told everyone how to my own surprise I had been afraid to ask the driver to turn down the radio.

When I returned to St. Petersburg a day later, there were heavy trucks with barred windows parked by the train station. There were more police on Nevsky than there were pedestrians, and the farther I went the more men in uniform surrounded me. Closer to Palace Square, when the police turned into riot troops, I realized that it was because of the dissenters. There was no march whatsoever - a dozen or so pensioners stood by watching the hundreds of soldiers who had secured the square. Then they came up to me, looked at my press card, and put me in a police bus.

"You have a laptop in your bag," said a calm, mustachioed officer, "and today only journalists accredited by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate [ГУВД] are allowed to be here. Let's take a ride to the precinct, and we'll take a look at what you've got in your computer."

In the new era this was normal, and I climbed into the dark freight box of the truck without a fight. Inside were about six dejected Tajiks, a gray-haired old man with a hearing aid and teary eyes, and a radical who looked like a sad demon with horns of hairsprayed dreads. They drove us around the city for a long time, and tears flowed down the old man's cheeks from the wind blowing through the cracks in the truck. It was unpleasant to see, so we looked out through the cracks - at the police, roaming about on Nevsky among billboards showing "Putin's Petersburg," and at the people avoiding the billboards and the policemen. Everyone was silent, but this time I knew for sure what everyone else was thinking. And after three more hours or so they photographed us and let us go - all but the radical, who didn't want to hold a number up to his chest for the camera. My number was 809.

"Assholes," said the Tajiks, stepping out into the fresh air.
"Assholes," I agreed.
The old man said nothing.

That was the winter; let's hope the spring will be different. Some observers seem hopeful.

By the way, the imprecation that is repeated in the middle and at the end of the article is "суки" in the original (literally, "bitches," which somehow didn't seem to fit in English), so I took a bit of license with it - though not much license, actually. According to my trusty Русско-английский словарь ненормативной лексики (М: Астрель, 2002):

Сука ж. [...] 3. груб.-прост. Употр. как бранное слово Cf. bastard, shit, asshole (used as a term of abuse).

[Update 3/5] According to many election-day reports, Medvedev likes the metaphor of a change of seasons as well:

"Mood is good, spring is here," Medvedev said. "Though it is raining, it's a different season. It's pleasant!"

Or maybe he just didn't want to talk about anything more substantive than the weather; that, at least, was the conclusion of the NYT's Clifford Levy, who suggested that talking about the weather on election day - as opposed to, I guess, the election - was "a reflection of the tenor of the campaign." The optimist in me wants to believe he missed the subtlety of Dima's metaphor.

A dog-and-pony show, starring a Bear

From officially approved "democrat" Andrei Bogdanov's wikipedia page:

In the summer of 1992, after a visit to Pridnestrov'e as part of a delegation of the youth union of the DPR [Democratic Party of Russia], he qualified Moldova's actions as "genocide against the people of Pridnestrov'e." The DPR's youth union condemned the position of the Russian government on this issue and called for immediate action by the Russian military "to save the people of Pridnestrov'e." [Bogdanov] blamed the Russian mass media for spreading lies about the events in Pridnestrov'e, and called the Russian government "sellouts." He immediately established a charity, "The Youth Chooses the Future," which collected money, medicine, equipment and food reserves for the defenders of the PMR.

This episode - far from the most bizarre one in Bogdanov's eccentric political career, which also included campaigning for pyramid scheme mastermind Sergei Mavrodi - is also mentioned briefly in his bio on anticompromat.

Amazingly, such a history of dedication to the PMR's cause doesn't seem to have won Bogdanov the support of politicians in this breakaway part of Moldova. Everyone seems to be supporting Medvedev and the continuation of Putin's course. This was the conclusion reached at an "international conference" which took place in Tiraspol last week, titled "Forward with Russia":

The conference was organized by the Patriotic Party of Pridnestrov'e. Participants included representatives of a number of other PMR socio-political organizations, as well as pro-Russian organizations from Ukraine, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, a representative of St. Petersburg veterans, the president of the "Planet of Children" foundation, and others.

A policy declaration adopted at this conference can be seen here.

Bogdanov also failed to win the support of the politically active youth of Transdniester, who are 100% behind Medvedev:

"PRORYV!": Demonstrations in support of Dmitry Medvedev will be going non-stop
Lenta PMR [reprinted verbatim from the PRORYV! website], Feb. 26, 2008

The week remaining until election day will be filled with many demonstrations organized by the International Youth Corporation / People's Democratic Party [ММК-НДП] "PRORYV!" [trans. - the name of this group means, "Breakthrough"] in support of Dmitry Medvedev's candidacy.

Young people from "PRORYV!" are working simultaneously in practically all of cities and towns in Transdniester. In personal talks with citizens, the "Proryvians" are explaining the importance of participating in the voting [голосовании], providing information about the location of election precincts and giving out calendars with Dmitry Medvedev's picture and an inscription calling on the recipients to come to the ballot boxes on March 2. According to PDP "PRORYV!" leader Aleksandr Gorelkovsky, March 2nd is a genuine national holiday for the 120,000 Russian citizens who reside in Transdniester.

"On this day we can come and vote for the president of our 'Greater Homeland' [«Большой Родины»]. Each of us understands how large Russia's role in Transdniester's existence has been: economic assistance, security guarantees, and the uninterrupted cultural-historical connection which allows us to maintain our national identity. The Russian authorities' attitude toward us in the future depends on voter turnout. That is why 'PRORYV!' is doing everything possible to increase the turnout and is endorsing Dmitry Medvedev. Unlike other parties, we do more than make political statements, and 'go to the people' in the fullest sense of that phrase. I am certain that serious political success can result only from direct interaction with citizens," emphasized Aleksandr Gorelkovsky.

More recently, it seems that one of the people behind PRORYV!, a shady guy named Dmitry Soin, decided to try to manage expectations, at least with respect to turnout:

"Turnout will be above 50%, but it will not be tremendously high. This is because many Russians [residing in Transdniester] are currently outside of Transdniester, and the ones who are here are certain of D. Medvedev's victory. 97 percent of the Russians we surveyed believe he will win. The lack of a sharp battle or intrigues will lower the turnout. From 88 to 92 percent of voters are prepared to vote for the main candidate, depending on the region surveyed. Mr. Bogdanov has the lowest rating, about one percent. V. Zhirinovsky and G. Zyuganov could get from 4 to 7 percent each

[all items translated by me - links to originals in Russian]

When enmity gets in the way of friendship

The free rein given to Kremlin-controlled mass media to whip up anti-Western sentiment briefly upset Russia's relationship with Serbia over the weekend. Somewhat ironically, this occurred just as the Russian government was accusing the U.S. of seeking to "humiliate" Serbia.

Serbia has forgiven Russia for the offensive comment made on "Vesti"
Lenta.ru, Feb. 25, 2005 [my translation]

Serbian President Boris Tadic accepted the explanation provided by a Russian delegation headed by Dmitrii Medvedev for a scandalous comment on the "Vesti +" TV show during a report on the massive protests in Belgrade against Kosovo's separation from Serbia, reports RIA Novosti.

According to a Russian diplomatic source, "an exhaustive explanation was given for this regrettable incident, and it was accepted." "Boris Tadic emphasized that he of course understands that these statements, which are unacceptable to Serbia, cannot possibly reflect Russia's position,"* said the source.

Reporting on the "Rossiia" channel on a mass protest in Belgrade, anchor Dmitrii [sic] Semin stated that today the Serbs had remembered "how a country stupefied by liberal promises mourned the loss of the Western puppet Zoran Djindjic, a man who destroyed the legendary Serbian army and special forces, selling out the heroes of Serbian resistance to the Hague for abstract economic assistance, and received for that a much-deserved bullet."

In response, Serbia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the "Rossiia" channel a note of protest, which stated that "the comment of journalist Konstantin Semin, which insulted democratically elected Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and excused his murder, is absolutely unacceptable for Serbia."

A video clip of the statement in question is up on RuTube and has collected some predictable comments there.

New Times journalist Ilya Barabanov diagnoses this on his blog as "smoldering schizophrenia" on the part of the Russian media, but one of his commenters takes a more reserved view:

Ilya, this isn't schizophrenia at all. It's ignoble, politically incorrect, short-sighted - call it what you want, but not schizophrenia. These people are not idiots, they understand perfectly well what they want and what they are doing. That doesn't justify their actions, but it shows that the diagnosis should really be a different one.

The reaction of another commenter:

When all kinds of scum started writing on the internet after Anna Politkovskaya's murder that she deserved to be killed, it was disgusting and bitter... When news broadcasts are conducted in this manner, I don't even know how to react.

And another interesting series of comments is here, suggesting how the rhetoric used by the Kremlin's court commentator with respect to Serbia's own passivity leading to their loss of Kosovo (in this case, the anchor's statement about having two options - "option A, to resist; option B, to give in, and this relates not only to Serbia") can with some creativity be applied to the Russian domestic political situation.

* Yes, I know this suggests that an alternative argument could be made that this incident actually demonstrates the Kremlin's inability to control the people who do its TV reporting.

[Update 2/27]

Two articles in today's Eurasia Daily Monitor mention this incident - here and here. The TV anchor's name is of course pronounced Syomin, not Semin.

And the Moscow Times has just put on its website a blistering editorial, which will run in tomorrow's print edition:

Rossia Should Bite the Bullet And Apologize

Thursday, February 28, 2008. Issue 3851. Page 08.

Rossia television has laid to rest any lingering doubts about whether the level of propaganda on state television has returned to record Cold War highs. Konstantin Syomin, an anchor with "Vesti Plus," opined on the nightly news program last Thursday that Yugoslav Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic had deserved to be assassinated for "selling out" to the West.

Syomin described Djindjic as "a Western puppet" who "destroyed the legendary Serbian army." He accused Djindjic of "selling the heroes of Serbian resistance" to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. Therefore, Djindjic "got a well-deserved bullet" in 2003, Syomin said.

One has to wonder whether even Soviet television anchors made such outrageous observations after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Moscow's Cold War foe.

The Serbian Foreign Ministry has filed an official protest, and Serbian lawmakers have complained. But neither the Russian Foreign Ministry nor Rossia have deemed it necessary to apologize.

Lax reporting standards allowing television anchors to opine on their news programs have long been a tradition in Russia. Another tradition has been state control of television management and the editorial content of news programs. The anti-Western bias, if not borderline hysteria, fomented on the national channels these days is part of this carefully planned coverage.

But to call the assassination of a prime minister "well deserved" is beyond the realm of biased reporting. It is simply appalling and unacceptable. It is also unsatisfactory for a democratic country and for any media outlet, whether it is state-controlled or not, to refuse to apologize.

The anchor's remarks were so shocking that one might be tempted to speculate that they were an attempt to undermine presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev ahead of his trip to Serbia on Monday.

Not only do Rossia and the Foreign Ministry owe an apology, but the channel would do well to fire the anchor and whoever allowed -- or instructed -- him to put such a "spin" on the bullet that killed Djindjic.

State media and its Kremlin supervisors should stop fomenting irrational anti-Western hysteria. True, there is a divergence of interests between Russia and Western countries on many key issues. But this does not mean that coverage of the West should be based on groundless or unacceptable invectives, such as the one voiced about Djindjic.

Sooner or later ordinary people will begin to wonder why the country's rulers want them to hate the "evil" West but send their own children to study there, keep their money in banks there, and buy real estate there.

Strangely enough, the Politburo, which guided the anti-Western propaganda on Soviet television, was more honest with the people because it did none of that.

Well, this looks interesting...*

[scroll down for updates]

The New York Times appears to have established a Russian-language community on LiveJournal where they are going to post some of their coverage of Russia and solicit responses.* The first article posted appears to be one that hasn't appeared in the English-language NYT yet (and perhaps the idea is to produce content exclusive to this community or to use the community as overflow space - after all, the NYT's print version is limited in the amount of Russia stories it can run).**

Even more intriguing is the promise to translate the comments of Russian bloggers and publish them on the NYT's website in English. The subhead of the page reads, "Tell Americans and the whole world about Russia," and a note to users follows:

This community was created by the journalists of the New York Times with the goal of collecting the opinions of LiveJournal users. The opinions expressed by you on the pages of this community, even the most negative ones directed at us, will be translated into English for publication on the newspaper's website, www.nytimes.com.

This strikes me as a creative and very cool idea.* Of course bloggers of all political stripes will use it for various attacks - on the NYT, on Americans in general, and on each other - but it has the potential to be an extremely interesting forum. If this is the real deal, I hope that the NYT puts follow-through and resources behind it, because it seems like the kind of highly ambitious internet project that could fizzle out without some serious manpower, especially since they seem to have received over a thousand comments in their first day online. Somewhere tonight a translator is very busy...

The headline of the first article seems almost designed to provoke a shitstorm of commentary from indignant pro-Putin Russians: "Harsh measures in one region show how much less democracy there is in Russia under Putin."

Would NYT correspondents based in Russia really be so intentionally provocative as to kick off their interaction with the Russian blogosphere with just the kind of article which - while it's no doubt true - is likely to lead not to thoughtful discussion but irate recriminations?

I guess one (perhaps remote) possibility is that someone is trying to get the NYT's Moscow bureau closed down. On the other hand, the user info set up under Clifford Levy's name looks like it was written by a native speaker of English, and the forum's moderator appears to be a real, live blogger (as opposed to the always-suspect username set up yesterday with no posts to its name) - so maybe this project is the real deal.

Then again, you would think there would be some sort of announcement on nytimes.com's Russia page, and there isn't. So perhaps after all this is just an effort to make the NYT's Moscow correspondents look like "meddlers." It is really bothering me that a potentially "feel-good" project like this immediately makes me suspect some kind of black-PR plot...

I found out about this from Russian LJ blogger drugoi, a pillar of the Russian blogosphere, so I'm inclined to take it seriously, and my immediate reaction when I saw the page was that it's a great idea. But as I think about the kind of reaction such a project could get from official Russia, I have to wonder if the NYT's Moscow team would be bold enough to do something like this. In any event, I will try to find out what the deal is - though I'm sure that others will be writing about this before too long.


*...but part of me thinks it could just be a very interesting hoax. [Update - it's the real deal! See below]

** Apparently this is an article which will appear in a later edition of the NYT - and the plan is that Russian LJ readers will get to preview some of the paper's coverage of their country on an ongoing basis.


[Update]

I decided to translate another note that's on the front page of the community from its creators about its purposes:

This community is moderated. New topics are posted by the journalists, who are also the moderators of this community. Among other things, articles written for the New York Times will be presented for discussion - special reports which come out once a month as well as daily reports about events in Russia. We would also like to use this community to lay the groundwork for reports and travel around Russia, and we hope for your assistance and support.

We created this community to give our American readers the chance to learn what Russians really think. Our goal is to capture the largest possible range of different opinions, so we welcome any ideas, links and opinions in the comments to our entries.

Well, what can I say, it sounds like a lovely idea, but it does seem like a surprisingly grass-roots approach for an establishment publication like the NYT - narodnyi journalism with an element of public diplomacy!

Anyway, I applaud them if this whole thing is for real, although I might have picked a "softer" article to kick off the community (on the other hand, if you want to speak truth to power, why not start strong?), and I can't help but think that the project as a whole sort of plays into the narrative which has been created by xenophobic forces in Russia about foreign "meddlers." This of course says more about the cynicism of the people who created that narrative than it does about anything else.


[Update 2/23]

Well, it looks like this is the real deal after all. There's a new post today promising that translated comments will show up on nytimes.com soon:

Dear Readers!
We have already begun translating them, all manner of comments, and in a few hours we will start placing them on our website at www.nytimes.com in English. Millions of readers around the world will read your comments about Russia! As soon as the article is posted, we will provide the link. All of the comments in English posted at www.nytimes.com will include a link to the corresponding Russian-language comment on LiveJournal. You will be convinced that we are not afraid of criticism and will post a large number of negative comments directed at us.

Even more convincing with respect to the authenticity of nytimesinmoscow are that Lenta.ru ran an article about it yesterday and that ZheZhe titan dolboeb (a.k.a. Anton Nossik) also introduced his readers to the new community yesterday, discussing the NYT's plans for the project:

This newspaper regularly writes all kinds of things about Russia, and not exactly in the same tone as the English-language version of RG [presumably he means Rossiiskaya Gazeta, although the only official English-language newspaper I know of is the paid supplement that comes out once in awhile in the Washington Post], and had suffered up to now from a lack of feedback. In order to solve this problem, the NYT's editors decided to do the following:

Translate articles about Russia into Russian

Publish these translations in the nytimesinmoscow community before they appear in the paper in the original English

Collect comments from Russian-language bloggers on their articles

Translate these responses into English and publish them on the New York Times website. The idea is that American readers will learn our opinions about the [NYT] articles from which they get their information about Russia. In addition, the authors of these articles, and the editors who order them, will learn about our opinions.

So, we are being invited to participate in the portrayal of Russia on the pages of the New York Times.

Shall we?

In another post, Nossik talks about reaction in the Russian blogosphere to this new project:

In their blogs people are naturally trying to guess what portion of the comments will appear in English on the American newspaper's wesbite. People with a totalitarian Soviet consciousness are convinced that they will only translate those responses with a particular slant (this must be what they think would do if they were the editors). I remember that when we talked with the NYTimes about creating this community, they planned to translate around 500 comments to each article. Considering the quality and quantity of the responses they are receiving, we'll see how many they actually translate.

Nossik also discusses why the kickoff post (with its 1600+ comments) has not made it into Yandex's top-30 rating, and notes that it has been linked by many highly rated ZheZhe bloggers. I recommend checking out the posts - and comments thereto - by peresedov and nl (+ this one, humorously headlined to parallel the title of the NYT article, "Harsh comments to one post show how much less democracy there is in Putin's Russia") to get an idea of what the RuBlogosphere is saying about the NYT's new community.

My own conclusion is that this is a very interesting and creative step, with the potential to realize the full interactive power of the internet. Unfortunately, though, the comments section risks being engulfed in crap written by the usual ZheZhe know-nothings, each trying to prove he is the greater Russian "patriot" by trying to outdo all the others in shouting down external criticism. There is some irony in the fact that, depending on the selection of comments translated, the most ardent anti-Westerners have a good chance of damaging Russia's image among an English-language readership.

The concept of pre-posting an article online and collecting comments before running it in the paper is of course a fascinating one for anyone who thinks about how the media interact with the societies they cover. So this new project provides a basis for discussing a lot of "big ideas" - not just the tenor of the US-Russian relationship and the negative image of the US (evident from the comments) which has been successfully created within Russia with the assistance of the Bush Administration; but also thoughts about whether opinions expressed in the blogosphere have anything to do with general public opinion, how old-school newspapers can use new media, and the proper or desirable role of journalistic institutions, and whether they should try to do something more than just tell stories and sell papers.

Only time will tell if the NYT is able to successfully invert Peter the Great's founding of St. Petersburg (hailed as the opening of a window to Europe) and open a window for its English-speaking readers into the minds of Russian netizens and bloggers.

For some reason, I just thought of the Donahue-Posner Telebridges of the 1980s...perhaps not the most auspicious association, but I'll certainly be following the NYT's foray into the Russian blogosphere with interest.

A final note on all the translated bits above - I did them in a hurry, so if anyone thinks I missed a nuance anywhere, please feel free to say so in the comments.


[Update 2/24 ]

144 translated comments by Russian readers to the article (now available here in English) have been posted on the NYT's website. Let the dialog begin!

[Update 2/25]

A couple more posts on Russian blogs about this project - here (with lots of interesting comments) and here. And there's another publication with a Russian Livejournal version - Esquire, although the situation is rather different from the NYT's because Russian Esquire also comes out in print and has a standalone website.

The NYT is translating American readers' comments into Russian and posting them in the LJ community. I doubt they will undertake the translation burden for the responses to these comments (which are of course responses to Russians' comments which the NYT translated into English), so of course the translator-assisted online dialog cannot continue ad infinitum.

And there's an NYT article discussing the response of Russian commenters ("An Article Brings Sharp Responses from Russians"), which does a fairly good job of capturing the overall tenor of the discussion at the LJ community. This English-language comment to the original post was also insightful in categorizing the commenters and explaining some of the reasons for the harshness:

[Y]ou're facing an uphill perception battle. Your article is a piece of investigative journalism; to you - but not to your audience. Most of what's published in this genre in Russian are thinly veiled, slanted opinion pieces masquerading as reporting. Your work, to a greater or lesser extent, will be read in the same vein. American audiences have developed a degree of innate trust in the quality of what ends up in a major newspaper. Russian, conversely, have developed a degree of innate distrust. You can probably appreciate how a largely anecdote-driven critical piece written by a foreigner (worse, an American) would be seen in that light, regardless of its factual accuracy.

Uphill battle or not, and even though the individual comments from either country are unlikely to provide any great insights or breakthroughs in the bilateral relationship, on the whole this project will be one to watch in the future, since the NYT has promised to continue pre-publishing Russian translations of articles from their "Kremlin Rules" series. I think, though, that this will be my last update to this post!

In Honor of Past Defenders of the Fatherland

Apparently, last month was the 65th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the siege, or the Blockade, as it is called in Russian, on the city. The signs advising citizens which side of the street to avoid when the city was being shelled remain in one or two places on Nevsky Prospekt as a reminder. Survivors, or perhaps today their descendants, still lay flowers beneath them.

Even in the 1980s, infrastructure problems and dolgostroi issues were being blamed on the wounds the city suffered during the Great Patriotic War, and of course the devastation of some of the tourist attractions surrounding St. Petersburg was still being restored in this century.

Anyway, I thought I'd post, somewhat belatedly for the anniversary noted above but right on time for Defenders of the Fatherland Day, a photo of my own blockade relic. Not that I was a survivor of those hellish 900 days. No, my connection is a bit more tenuous and involves this document:


This is the certificate issued to recipients of the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad," received on March 6, 1944 by one Ivan Vasil'evich Nikiforov, if I'm making out the handwriting correctly. Although it now seems impossible, my memory of how I acquired this item is that it was tossed on the trash heap in the courtyard of the building where we lived in downtown Leningrad, along with the rest of the belongings of its deceased recipient.

Archival photos from wartime Leningrad can be viewed here.