Putin Watcher

A Russian Constitutional Revolution

2012-02-01T15:04:00.000-08:00

What's next for the Russian opposition when they take to the streets on Saturday? Clean elections are not enough: the opposition must also push for fundamental reforms to Russia's authoritarian constitutional structure. My latest piece for the Brookings Institution:

This Saturday, the Russian opposition goes back to work: More than 20,000 people have signed up on Facebook to brave subzero temperatures for "A Peaceful March for Honest Elections." This new protest comes at a critical time for Russia's nascent political opposition: There there have been no headline grabbing protests in January and the opposition has been fighting amongst themselves. Meanwhile, the Putin regime has been busy. Vladimir Putin has personally penned three long articles promising gradual, stable political reform while hinting that the opposition's goals will lead to the lawlessness and chaos of the 1990s.

How should the opposition respond on Saturday? Even with a massive turnout, the movement's current focus on "clean" parliamentary elections and the defeat of Mr. Putin in the March presidential elections is insufficient. In fact, even if March's presidential election is completely free and fair, Mr. Putin will win a new six-year presidential term—as much because there is no serious opposition candidate as to Mr. Putin's personal popularity. Furthermore, the disputed parliamentary elections concern the lower house of the Russian Parliament (the Duma). The upper house of the Russian Parliament (the Federation Council) is not directly elected and remains under the control of the presidential administration. Thus, any opposition gains in clean elections can be blocked by the upper house.

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The Costs of State Capitalism in Russia

2012-01-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

WHILE Moscow was witnessing its largest protests in decades last month, a life and death struggle was taking place in the frigid waters of the Russian Far East. On December 18, as the Gazprom-owned Kolskaya rig was being towed across the Sea of Okhotsk to Sakhalin Island, a massive storm swept in. Facing six-meter swells and gale force winds, the small jack-up rig stood little chance. In less than 30 minutes, the rig had sunk, forcing all 67 rig workers into frigid waters 200 kilometers from land. After days of frantic searching, only 14 crew members were rescued. With 53 rig workers dead, the Russian offshore oil and gas industry now faces the largest disaster in its history.

Read more of my latest post for the Brookings Institution here.

Putin Regime Betting on a Silent Majority?

2011-12-21T14:48:00.000-08:00

I just posted my first piece for the Brookings Institution. Here is a brief excerpt:

Mr. Putin’s question and answer session therefore was not directed at the internet-savvy, westernized elite who are demanding tangible change and furiously organizing another protest for December 24th in Moscow. Instead, Mr. Putin’s vague promises of “stable development” were directed at what Putin hopes is his own silent majority: the pensioners, factory workers, and office workers who have benefited from ten years of “stable development.” The regime is hoping that this majority will agree with a Russian factory worker and Duma member who addressed Mr. Putin early in the session. Instead of asking a concrete question, he simply addressed all Russians and said “In every family and house there are problems. . . . We Russians have always endured. We don’t need great revolutions.”

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Putin Activating Liberal "Sleeper" Candidates?

2011-12-12T08:02:00.000-08:00

The latest sensational news from Russia is that Mikhail Prokhorov is going to run for president and Alexei Kudrin is planning to build a new liberal party for Russia. How should we interpret this? Is this a political awakening? In most countries, this could be interpreted as new political figures seeing an opportunity to take power in the wake of Saturday's massive protests.

But this is Russia, where the leadership has been amazingly adept at managing or - more accurately - "faking" democracy since the early 1990s. What is going on here?

Prokhorov: A liberal candidate to co-opt the opposition?

So, for what its worth, here's my interpretation: the announcement this morning will become part of a "liberal variant" that the Putin regime will use to co-opt growing opposition. There are a couple of ways that this could have happened.

1. It was an explicit deal which Putin and Prokhorov had set up before. When the protests happened, Prokhorov's candidacy was activated. This would be the classic liberal "sleeper" candidate scenario.

Stanislav Belkovskii advocates this approach

"after the meeting on Boltnaia Square, when it became clear that the the urban education class were coming out against the government and were no longer hiding their views, the Kremlin decided to put forward Prokhorov in order to neutralize the energy of those protests."

Belkovskii thinks that Putin is considering Prokhorov as prime minister if he does well in the elections.

In support of this variant, there is a long history of the Kremlin creating parties/candidates to co-opt potential opposition forces has long been a strategy for the Kremlin. For instance, back in the Yeltsin period, the presidential administration enlisted Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his absurdly-named Liberal Democratic Party to co-opt any significant Russian nationalism. This has proven successful: until this day, Zhirinovsky has remained a loud-mouthed anti-semitic buffoon, but one that has always supported the Kremlin when push comes to shove (see Zhirinovsky's support for the regime during the recent protests). For more on the creation of parties/candidates to co-opt opposition, see Andrew Wilson's masterful book, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World.

2. Prokhorov's announcement was a strategic move for him to increase his profile in Russia. Prokhorov knows that in the wake of the protests, the Putin regime desperately needs a candidate like him to run in order to show that United Russia is not the only option and that Russia has a pluralistic political landscape. So, as a result, he announced his candidacy knowing that the regime would have to register him. The Putin regime will have little choice but to accept his candidacy (and all signs point to him being successfully registered).

Although this scenario seems like Prokhorov has check-mated the regime, it is not so easy. The regime will get the same outcome as if they had actually stage-managed the whole thing. Putin will undoubtedly win the presidency - he will run with no party affiliation (like every other successful presidential candidate) and therefore will (at least partially) avoid association with United Russia. Prokhorov will calm the urban educated elite and give them an option. Putin will then as President be above party politics and will bring Prokhorov into the administration.

Thus, bizarrely and rather worryingly, managed democracy looks less like a top-down orchestration and more like a game with willing participants all playing their part.

This theory seems to make more sense given the fact that Prokhorov is most likely not willing to jump at Putin's will. As Mark Adomanis writes:

I find it hard to believe that someone as supremely self-confident and arrogant as he would consent to be used in such a transparently insincere and fraudulent manner. Putin’s “deal” with the Oligarchs was predicated on their saying out of politics – not their being used as cheap political props to bolster his own image. While Putin calls the shots his ability to do so is circumscribed, and, from what I know of the way in which the vertical operates, I don’t think he would actually be able to “order” Prokhorov to so publicly demean himself.

Whether this agreement was explicit or tacit, the result is the same: Prokhorov will help legitimate the presidential elections and will give the Putin regime some breathing space from the popular pressure from educated, internet-savvy urban elites. In return, expect Prokhorov to get rewarded for playing an important part.

What to watch for?

To see if this agreement is working, keep your eye on the progress toward registering Prokhorov's candidacy. Indeed, what Prokhorov is trying is completely unprecedented: a non-Kremlin candidate has never gotten on the presidential ballot by collecting 2 million signatures. So if Prokhorov is allowed on, its a pretty powerful sign that this move is yet another orchestrated move in Russia's "stage managed" political game.

So far, so good. The news of Prokhorov's announcement led the evening news reports on Monday, suggesting official sanction for Prokhorov's move. Stay tuned, this story is only beginning....

Russia's World of Masks and Poses

2011-10-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

Vladislav Surkov - the chief Kremlin ideologist and perhaps Russia's answer to Talleyrand - apparently loves gangsta rap and was a former theater director. Peter Pomerantz tells us more in his insightful piece for the London Review of Books.

In Soviet Russia you would have been forced to give up any notion of artistic freedom if you wanted a slice of the pie. In today’s Russia, if you’re talented and clever, you can have both. This makes for a unique fusion of primitive feudal poses and arch, postmodern irony. A property ad displayed all over central Moscow earlier this year captured the mood perfectly. Got up in the style of a Nazi poster, it showed two Germanic-looking youths against a glorious alpine mountain over the slogan ‘Life Is Getting Better’. It would be wrong to say the ad is humorous, but it’s not quite serious either. It’s sort of both. It’s saying this is the society we live in (a dictatorship), but we’re just playing at it (we can make jokes about it), but playing in a serious way (we’re making money playing it and won’t let anyone subvert its rules). A few months ago there was a huge ‘Putin party’ at Moscow’s most glamorous club. Strippers writhed around poles chanting: ‘I want you, prime minister.’ It’s the same logic. The sucking-up to the master is completely genuine, but as we’re all liberated 21st-century people who enjoy Coen brothers films, we’ll do our sucking up with an ironic grin while acknowledging that if we were ever to cross you we would quite quickly be dead.

Putin and the Eurasian Heartland

2011-10-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

The Pivot State

ON the heels of his recent "return" to power, Vladimir Putin has taken the unprecedented step of penning an article on future Russian economic development. (English translation here). This article lays out a vision of Russian-led Eurasian integration that seeks to eliminate customs barriers, promote immigration and trade, and foster pan-Eurasian growth.

This attempt to create an EU-like unified economic space is so far starting small: only Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan are currently participants. But Mr. Putin is ambitious: he means no less to transform Eurasia - an area he describes as sharing both civilization and spiritual threads - into an economic force that can rival the now-ailing EU/US integrated space and will become a central emerging market that can compete with China, Brazil, and India in the coming century.

The Eurasian Heartland

Mr. Putin's concept of Eurasian geographical integration is not new. In fact, it was perhaps most famously described by the eminent British geographer Harold Mackinder in a sparsely attended lecture in 1904. In the lecture (which would become a highly influential paper), Mackinder described the potential geographical power of controlling the Eurasian "heartland," the vast tract of land stretching from the edge of Europe across the steppe to the Sea of Japan. Writing in 1904 at the height of the British Empire, MacKinder argued that Russia's geographical position accorded it great potential power to become the key "pivot state" in the world. Mackinder argued that if Russia could gain control of Eurasia and forge an alliance with Germany or another Eastern European power, it could potentially prove a powerful counterbalance to the sea power of Britain.

This concept has played an important role in driving both British and US foreign policy since 1904. As Tristam Hunt describes,

[I]n the aftermath of the first world war, Mackinder urged a buffer zone of friendly states – Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary – to prevent Germany and Russia joining forces. A single geopolitical entity in charge of the Ukrainian wheatfields, Ural riches and Siberia would pose a devastating threat to British imperial interests. This was very much Hitler's thinking – introduced to Mackinder's geopolitics by Rudolf Hess – when he established the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Then, as the Allies' victory looked assured and Stalin started to make a bid for hegemony, the elderly Mackinder warned how "the territory of the USSR [was] equivalent to the heartland" and that "if the Soviet Union emerges from this war as conqueror of Germany, she must rank as the greatest land power on the globe". Here lay the seeds of US "containment" policy. When the architect of American postwar anti-Soviet strategy, diplomat George Kennan, argued that "our problem is to prevent the gathering together of the military-industrial potential of the entire Eurasian landmass under a single power threatening the interests of the insular and mainland portions of the globe", it was pure Mackinder.

Whither Mackinder: Eurasian Integration a Threat to the West?

If we are to translate Mackinder's ideas to the present day, this project potentially looms as a strong challenge to US and Western power. Indeed, Russia has moved to forge close energy ties with Germany and has used its geographic position to its advantage in its bid to control both the extraction and transport of energy resources to Asia and Europe. And Mr. Putin's article has already spawned reaction in the West claiming that Putin is hoping to spark a Second Cold War by reuniting the former Soviet republics.

This kind of rhetoric, however, is off the mark. While Mr. Putin might be hoping to draw on Mackinderian concepts of effectively using land power, an integrated Eurasia is unlikely to be a powerful threat to Western hegemony. In fact, if anything the project would serve as an important bulwark against Chinese expansion and would also help drive economic growth at a time when both the EU and US are sputtering badly. Furthermore, Eurasian integration faces more challenges than European integration - and look how disfunctional Europe is at the moment. So, take a deep breath, and watch the real show: How is China - whose Shanghai Cooperation Organization seeks to spread Chinese influence in Central Asia - going to react to this?

The Putin Restoration

2011-09-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

Applauding the Putin Restoration

IF you are one of the 4 people in the world who hadn't heard but you read specialty blogs with names like Putin Watcher, then let me be the first to clue you in: Putin plans to be President of Russia for the foreseeable future. Most likely until 2024, given the President now serves a 6 year term.

And, for me, I must say it was terribly anti-climactic - especially given the Kremlinogist obsession with who it was going to be over the last year or so... Where was the drum roll? the Yeltsin-style drama (announcing Putin as his successor on the eve of a new millenium)? As newtimes.ru said, it was all over in 20 minutes. Maybe because this was so predictable, so obvious, it seemed so anti-climactic. The Russian Identity State - a form of government wholly reliant on the persona of one individual - is now cemented for the forseeable future.

                          The Tandem at work: Putin talks, Medvedev listens.

President Medvedev is now a lame duck (and the way he announced the decision made one wonder whether he was ever anything but a lame duck), whose decisions - including the recent firing of Finance Minster Kudrin - now will have to formally run through Putin's office.   And despite the predictions about the Restoration ranging from the positive to the negative, this decision is a reaffirmation of what I call the "Putin Contract": as long as economic growth in Russia remains positive - then Putin's Identity State (and the scores of corrupt bureaucrats that rely on proximity to him for power) will be secure.   But if economic growth stalls or drops (in response to a drop in oil and gas prices for example), expect the Putin Identity State to face significant opposition. So Kremlinologists best heed the words of Bill Clinton: "Its the economy, stupid."

Thus, the Putin Restoration likely promises more of the same.  That is, expect more policies that will keep economic growth going (and hydrocarbon rents flowing into the Russian budget) - given the high price of oil, this is likely good news for foreign oil and gas companies who will find increasing opportunities to invest in hard-to-extract Russian oil and gas resources. Also, expect the continued growth of the Putin cult: the Putin Army and Putin Parties are likely just the beginning...

Pipeline Politics: Russia Moving Closer to Checkmate in Europe?

2011-09-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

On Sept 16, Gazprom took a major step towards realizing the South Stream pipeline that would go from Russia (Novorossisk) under the Black Sea to Bulgaria (Varna). Gazprom signed a cooperation agreement with Eni (the Italian oil company), Electricite de France SA (French), and BASF’s hydrocarbon subsidiary (the Wintershall unit) to build the pipeline. Gazprom will control 50% of the pipeline consortium and the European companies will control the other 50%.

This is an important development in the recent chess game of European pipeline politics. This multi-dimensional game roughly involves the following players:

Russia: Using Gazprom as its commercial vehicle, Russia wants to retain its monopoly on the transit of oil and gas to Europe to ensure resource rents keep flowing into Russian coffers. This monopoly also is a powerful tool to exert political influence - particularly over the Russian "near abroad" (Poland, Belarus). Gazprom has deftly traded access to Russia's large hydrocarbon resources in return for cooperation/support of German, French, and Italian companies on Russian-controlled pipelines between Russia/Central Asia and Europe.

European Union: Wants to diversify its sources of natural gas in order to weaken Russia's ability to use energy to influence Europe (this policy is particularly popular amongst Eastern European countries - for instance, Poland recently has been highly critical of increasingly close relations between Germany and Russia). The EU therefore is actively seeking to partner with the United States to build the Nabucco Pipeline which would transport gas from Azerbaijan/Iraq/Central Asia through Turkey to Europe.

Italy, France, and Germany: Through their state-owned companies (ENI in Italy for instance), these countries are looking to profit from Russian resources. ENI- thanks in part to Berlusconi's close relationship with Putin and traditionally strong ties between Russia and Italy - has been a large player in developing oil and gas resources in the former Soviet republics and has long been a supporter of the South Stream pipeline. German oil companies (e.g., BASF's Wintershall Unit) have recently forged close ties with Russia (this is particularly the case since the Fukushima disaster in Japan and the German decision to phase out all nuclear power by 2020). For instance, the former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder has increasingly used his close relationship with Putin to get strong German involvement in the Nord Stream project. This cooperation is likely to continue.

Eastern European transit countries (Ukraine, Poland, Belarus): These countries - often with frosty relations with their formal imperial overlord during the Soviet period - have often tried to use their position as transit countries to leverage better deals on gas Russia. Ukraine has used its location as a transit point for 80% of Russian gas to Europe as a way to seek better deals on gas (particularly when they feel like they are being punished for political opposition to Russia with higher fees). This has led to serious clashes with Russia and stoppages of gas service to Europe in the middle of winter. See my previous post. It also continues to plague Ukrainian-Russian relations. Belarus, on the other hand, has backed down from showdowns with Russia. In return for Russian support, it has agreed to let Gazprom buy its pipeline system.

United States: Seeking to to reduce Russian influence over its European allies by finding a transit point for the massive gas reserves in the Caucauses and Central Asia that does not go through Russia. The US has therefore been an important player in the support for the Nabucco pipeline, which would link one of its staunchest, energy-rich allies in the former Soviet Union - Azerbaijan - with Europe.

A. Cutting Ukraine Out of the Picture

South Stream would have obvious strategic advantages for Russia in this game because it undercuts Ukraine's position as transit territory. Together with the Nord Stream pipeline - which is expected to go operational in October 2011 and goes from Russia to Germany - Russia would be able to cut Ukraine completely out of the gas transit game altogether.

This agreement also considerably increases the pressure on Ukrainian President Yanukovich and Russian President Medvedev on Sept 24 where Yanukovich is expected to propose that South Stream be built on Ukrainian territory. One of his main arguments will be that building the pipeline under the Black Sea is too costly and unnecessary. This is unlikely to work - the uncertainty of transit through Ukraine is enough to fund the extra cost of a sub-Black Sea pipeline.

B. The End of the Nabucco Pipeline?

South Stream also has obvious consequences for the US/EU-sponsored Nabucco pipeline. South Stream would service southern Europe so it would further undercut the already questionable economic necessity for Nabucco (which currently is almost entirely reliant on Azerbaijan given the political impossibility of transporting Iranian gas in the pipeline). Particularly with South Stream in operation, Nabucco is not assured a steady supply of gas - a kiss of death for members of the consortium who are being asked to put in the massive up front cash outlays to build the pipeline.

So, although there might be political support for "Energy Diversity" and Nabucco, private companies - who ultimately hold all the cards - are voting with their feet. Russia holds lucrative access to its own resources which private companies cannot resist. Furthermore, Russia has recently been doing a better job of burnishing its image as a reliable partner. As one US diplomat recently described the Nabucco project: "Big ideas need to be bankable, too." Thus, until real sources of gas can be found to make the deal viable, South Stream is a big move toward the final death of the Nabucco deal.

More Than a Rubber Stamp? Strengthening Parliamentarism in Russia

2011-08-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

Where's the rubber stamp?

In important statements today, President Medvedev stated his desire to reform the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's bicameral parliamentary system. These reforms could have deep ramifications in "democratizing" the institutional structure of Russian government.

Despite misinformed western reports that it was modelled on the United States Senate, the Federation Council has long been an institutional symbol of Presidential dominance over the legislative branch of government. In fact, Boris Yeltsin - with memories of legislative interference with presidential powers ringing in his ears - personally intervened in the final changes to the 1993 Constitution in November 1993 to ensure that the Federation Council was not to be elected but "formed" from a representative from both the executive and legislative branches of government.

Political realities in the 1990s (and the spread of power to Russia's regions) meant that the Federation Council became a place for powerful regional executives to exert influence over the federal center (many powerful regional executives were simultaneously both governors and representatives in the Federation Council). It became a breeding ground for corruption and cronyism but never became a serious block on Yeltsin's powers because of its official status as a nonpartisan body and control by President Yeltsin's close ally Shumeiko.

Since 2000, however, Putin has clamped down further on this body. First, he stated that the regional executives would appoint a representative (with the backing of the legislature) to serve in the Council. Then, in 2004, he made all regional executives (governors) appointed by the President. Thus, as it stands now, the Russian President now indirectly appoints one half of the upper house of the Parliament. Hardly democratic, right???

Well, today, Medvedev mentioned to journalists that he is thinking of changing this system. He said:

I think that we need to reform the system - gradually, but unflinchingly. I do not think that we should reject everything from the last 10-15 years, not everything has been problematic, but we should introduce some corrections into Russia's institutional system.

[In particular], I think that we need to think about strengthening the Russian parliamentary system, in order to make parties more active and to make parliamentary inquiries more effective. In its relations with the highest forms of power, I think it would make sense to return to elections.

A big question, however, is floating over these reforms: How can direct elections to the upper house be constitutional? The current constitution states that "Two deputies from each subject of the Federation shall be members of Federation Council: one from the representative and one from the executive bodies of state authority." So a key question remains: how would you have direct elections for the Federation Council in accordance with this provision? One option might be to have a referendum and have the winner assume legislative or executive powers. Another is for both branches to choose candidates that will then be elected by the people.

However they choose to do it (if at all), a return to elected members of the Federation Council would breath significant democratic life into the Federation Council.

20 Years Since the Fatal Blow to the Soviet Union

2011-08-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

                          Yeltsin standing on a tank during the putsch attempt

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-"The Hollow Men", T.S. Eliot

EXACTLY 20 years ago today, Russians awoke to a strange and uniquely Soviet display. As tanks rolled into the center of Moscow, the television stations showed "Swan Lake." Like much of Soviet reality, it was disjointed and fractured: one real, one manufactured. As Prince Siegfrid was falling in love with Odette on his hunting trip, the last pillar holding the Soviet Unino in place was crumbling.

There are many stories about the Putsch that can be told. The brave people who faced down Soviet tanks in the defense of Gorbachev's reforms. This post will tell another one: how the failed Putsch attempt by members of the KGB and other Soviet hardliners to depose Gorbachev and "save" the Soviet Union demonstrated how little vitality the Soviet federal center (and its chief glue, the Soviet Communist Party) had left. It was as Eliot predicted, the Soviet world really ended with a whimper, not a bang. For months legitimacy and power had been already been flowing to the individual Soviet republics, whose elected representatives were already beginning to push an increasingly impotent Gorbachev toward loose confederation (and then most likely independence). The failed Putsch just demonstrated how little real power was left in the Communist Party - the last piece of glue holding together the Soviet Union.

Here is what happened. In the summer of 1991, members of the KGB and other Soviet hardliners were increasingly unhappy with the direction of Gorbachev's policies (particularly, what they saw as moves that would lead to the disintegration of Soviet federalism).   In August 1991, when Gorbachev was on vacation in the Crimea, the Putschists (who called themselves the State Committee on the State of Emergency) made their move. The Putchists went on TV and reported that Gorbachev was sick and he had been replaced by Gennady Yanaev. At the same time, tanks were moved into central Moscow and surrounded the White House (home of the elected Russian Parliament).

Although it seemed scary from the outside, there were growing signs that the whole Putsch was largely ineffective from the beginning. Yeltsin was not arrested and instead was allowed to proceed to the Russian Parliament to rally the people gathering there. A young journalist brazenly asked the Putschists if they knew that they had just staged a coup.

Furthermore, a large number of the armed forces outside the Russian Parliament no longer saw the Soviet authorities as legitimate - instead, Boris Yeltsin - who had been elected President of Russia in a landslide only a couple of months earlier - was the clear legitimate leader.

Furthermore, as can be seen from the video footage below, the Putchists were hardly confident. Even if you cant understand Russian, watch the body language: Yanaev is reading as if from a script and his introduction of his co-conspirators is hardly charismatic. His hands are shaking; he is clearly nervous. The general impression is that this is a boring lecture rather than the beginning of a coup d'etat in one of the world's superpowers.

The last whimper of the once-mighty Soviet Union
Compare that with the energetic actions of the crowd and Boris Yeltsin in resisting the coup.

In the end, the failed Putsch destroyed the already flailing Soviet Communist Party - Boris Yeltsin banned this federal Party on November 6 (the Russian Communist Party was created in 1993). As the only glue holding the Soviet federal structure of republics together, the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union meant that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Union would cease to exist.

The Putsch also accelerated the centralization of presidential power under Boris Yeltsin, who was given the authority to appoint regional heads in the Russian regions. This signalled the beginning of the Russian vertikal' of presidential power that now flourishes under the Putin/Medvedev regime.

Historical understanding

In the West, the failure of the putsch is still considered to be the heroic victory of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian people over the last guard of the Soviet evil empire in the West. And there is no question that the coup touched off the peaceful collapse of one of the most heavily armed superpowers in the history of the world. In other words, the world should be happy (and grateful to the Soviet leadership) that the Soviet Union collapsed with a whimper and not a bang. It also signalled the end of the Cold War and a period of US hyperpower status. But the triumph of democracy in the world's foremost dictatorship? Well...

The Russian people certainly do not think so. A recent poll in Russia by the Levada center (July 15-19, 2011) reveals that an increasing number of Russians now view the failure of the August coup as "tragic news having disastrous consequences for the country." (up to 39% from 36% last year). The majority of others surveyed saw the coup as simply "a struggle for power at the highest levels of Russian government." Only 10% see the news as a victory for democratic revolution.

The younger artistic generation, however, is seeking to take inspiration from the way in which the Soviet people stood up to the moribund Soviet structure and succeeded. A political art installation here, set to the DDT song "Pravda na pravdu", juxtaposed Metro riders pushing through doors with cutouts of riot police on them with footage of the people facing real riot police. Worth a watch:

Also, Echo Moscow has a great website, with a really well put together television-montage from the failed Putsch attempt.

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Putsch, how should we understand these varied reactions? Would the coup plotters have instigated the same reforms as Yeltsin and the other republic leaders? Are younger Russians beginning a new (and more favorable) interpretation of August Putsch - one that sees it not as the beginning of the awful 1990s, but as a halting first step toward a freer life?

These are open questions, but it remains a fact that a large majority of Russians (particularly older Russians) do not see the 1990s as a period of democratic birth or transition, but instead as the transfer of power from an oppressive faltering regime to one that was similarly dictatorial and calling itself "democratic". So, as we remember the 20th anniversary of the failed Putsch this week, we best dampen our triumphal descriptions: the failed coup finally crushed an institution responsible for massive oppression (the Soviet Communist Party) but it did not also immediately usher in democracy and pluralistic government to the former Soviet world. That is a project that is still far, far from completion.

An Army of Young Russian Women Tearing Off Their Clothes for Vladimir Putin

2011-07-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:

The first Putin Army event took place today at Pushkin Square. From the photos it seemed that there were more journalists than actual participants; nevertheless, the interest continues online (where it really matters) - the number of members of the V Kontakte group has reached almost 4,000.

The V Kontakte website now has a interesting range of pro-regime videos posted on it. One is an interview with a young student named Masha who is one of the founders of the Putin Army. Sitting in a rather posh restaurant with a fancy dessert in front of her lying untouched, she describes her lifelong devotion to Mr. Putin. She shows a photo of her with Mr. Putin when she was 7 and describes how she supports Mr. Putin because life in Russia is far better than in the 1990s. She also claims that Putin's Army has no outside sponsors and operates on a very small budget.

Another is a video entitled "Enemy at the Gates", which is an narrated video (made in 2008) detailing how protests in Russia are largely a "show" and are "provoked" by people intent on destroying Russia. All of the people portrayed in the protests are older - suggesting a desire by the pro-regime, pro-Putin forces to be seen as a progressive, modern force.

Another is a rather bizarre news report, that purports to describe Russia in 2020 - a world where Russia reigns supreme over a crushed and shattered United States - some dreams just do not die off it seems.

And, perhaps most interestingly, is the first entry into the contest, a video from Elena Kuznetsova, who declares her support for Mr. Putin amidst videos of her cleavage and her performing different types of kick boxing and judo kicks.

---------------------------

Sex sells. This marketing maxim is as true in the political realm as in any other. In today's age of charisma and celebrity politics, sex appeal is a powerful way of mobilizing votes. It is also an important way to capture the youth vote, a potentially powerful part of political mobilization. In the 2008 Presidential elections, Sarah Palin invested a reported $150,000 on clothes and makeup to get out the vote.

The candidates themselves are not the only participants in this high stakes political game of sexual magnetism. Charismatic candidates (so far only male) have generated their own followers, who cash in on their demonstrations of love for the candidate. Amber Ettinger's "Obama girl" phenomenon in the 2008 Presidential campaign is a perfect example: Ms. Ettinger's campaign of devotion to then-candidate Obama generated millions and millions of hits and launched Ms. Ettinger's career as a fashion correspondent for WPIX in New York City.

The Obama girl phenomenon has been particularly prevalent in Russia: in fact, young women declaring their "love" for Vladimir Putin have become a central part of the emerging Putin cult. We have seen attractive (and often scantily-clad) young women declaring their "support" for Mr. Putin in the recent Putin Party phenomenon (where Mr. Putin was declared the ideal man), young women who made a lingerie calendar with personal messages for Putin, and the "I want a man like Putin" song that made it to the top of the Russian charts in 2007.

Despite media portrayals insinuating that these declarations were part of a top-down effort by Mr. Putin to build up his own cult, many of these "barely political" declarations have had an Obama girl-like effect: they have been a powerful source of marketing and sales - it seems that scantily clad women and the Prime Minister of Russia sell a lot of tickets or records.

Now, as the Russian presidential elections loom in 2012, another installation of this phenonmenon is emerging: women - led by the young lady pictured below - are being encouraged to rip off their clothes in a show of support for Mr. Putin.

Semi naked political ambition

As the Independent writes:

Young women across Russia have been called on to show their support for Vladimir Putin in an unusual way: by ripping off their clothes. The unexpected campaign has been launched by a group calling itself the Putin Army, which posted a slick video online at the weekend featuring a trio of young women announcing a competition.

"I'm just crazy about a man who changed our country," says a voiceover, as we see "Diana" walking through Moscow, while the camera frequently hovers over her sizeable bust. "He's a great politician, and an amazing man. He's Vladimir Putin," she says, adding that despite the millions who admire him, there are some who "pour dirt on him, maybe because they are scared of him, or because they themselves are weak".

Later in the video, Diana meets two nubile friends sunbathing by the riverbank, and they daub "I'll tear [clothes off] for Putin" onto skimpy T-shirts in red paint. The video ends as they rip the T-shirts off. They ask other "young, smart and beautiful" girls to "tear off something for Putin" and post a video of it online. The best entrant will win an iPad. It is unclear who is behind the Putin Army, but the video is professionally produced, and bears the hallmarks of one of the pro-Kremlin youth organisations such as Nashi.

The Putin Army's homepage on a Russian social-networking site [V Kontakte] is dominated by a photograph of Mr Putin in a bright-red lounge suit and wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses [see photo above].

Presidential elections are due next year, and many expect Mr Putin to return to the job he did for eight years until 2008. He stepped aside because of the two-term constitutional limit, but he is still seen as more powerful than President Dmitry Medvedev.

Last year, students from the journalism faculty at a Moscow University posed for a raunchy calendar. Earlier this year, there was also a "Putin party" at a top Moscow nightclub, where strippers sang to Mr Putin's rendition of "Blueberry Hill". Kirill Schitov, a young parliamentarian from Mr Putin's United Russia party, wrote on his blog yesterday that the pro-Putin women were all very attractive. "Why do we never see successful, pretty girls in the opposition?" he asked.

Here is the video, asking young woman "to tear" off their clothes (or, in the other meaning of the word, fight) in support of Mr. Putin, post the video to a popular social networking site by August 26, and possibly win an Ipad 2 for their efforts (in addition to spending a large amount of time panning across the main character's cleavage):

It still remains unclear who is behind this effort. So far, it has been successful: in 6 days on Youtube, the video has been viewed almost 800,000 times. Furthermore, the social networking site hosting the "Army of Putin" page has over 2000 members. The site contains a growing treasure trove of pictures of Mr. Putin, videos, and declarations of support for Mr. Putin.

The question about all of this is whether Mr. Putin's supporters might actually be behind this effort. The video promoting the Army of Putin is certainly slickly produced. Is this really part of Putin's re-election campaign? Who else stands to gain from this promotion other than Mr. Putin himself?

For more, see the article on Global Voices online.

UPDATE: Anti-Putin spammers and cloners fight back...

The Army of Putin's LiveJournal site today reported that numbers of cloned sites (some claiming to be the St. Petersburg branch of the Army of Putin) have been created, that are spoofing the promotion. Most of these sites are rather crude. They also reported that the administrator of the V Kontakte group came under a 20 minute spam attack.

They have an event planned event at 5 pm on Friday in Pushkin Square in central Moscow - much more to come as that event unfolds.

Human Face of the Fall of the Soviet Union

2011-06-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

The fall of Soviet Communism nearly 30 years ago remains one of the most remarkable historical events in recent history. It has spawned powerful ideological movements (think, neoconservativism in the west) amidst a belief that the world had reached the "end of history" and there was no longer any alternative to western-style free markets and democratic government. As Francis Fukuyama points out in his now-seminal The End of History and the Last Man:

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

My Perestroika, a documentary that has received rave reviews, looks at a different and more neglected side of communism: the more personal side of the fall of communism and the story of real lives and how this massive geopolitical collapse affected them.

This documentary is only airing on screens in limited cities but it is now airing on PBS on Tuesday night (June 28). These more personal experiences of the fall of the Soviet communism will serve as a welcome antidote to another onslaught of grand theorizing on the fall of communism that will surely emerge later this year. I know that I will be tuning in.

Anti-Seliger: A Four-Day Summer Camp for Russian Civic Activists

2011-06-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

Today is the beginning of the Anti-Seliger political-entertainment-music-environmental advocacy festival in the serene and beautiful Khimki forest outside of Moscow. This return-to-nature camp phenomenon stems at least in part from the growing enviromental movement in Russia - which is tied with Russian nationalism and spans both the power establishment (i.e. Putin's interest in Russian wildlife) and the opposition (protestors who are trying to protect Moscow-area Khimki forest from the authorities attempt to build a high speed road). Take a look at the the pictures on Oleg Kozyrev's blog to get a sense for the camp's rustic feel.

According to Mosnews,

Musicians, artists, environmentalists, sportsmen, human rights activists, bloggers and their supporters have been invited to a four-day woodland rally set up by the Defenders of Khimki Forest.

Alongside leading Khimki eco-warrior Yevgeniya Chirikova, anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny and controversial rock guru Artemy Troitsky are among those who have confirmed their involvement.

“I see this as a meeting where concerned citizens can discuss their experiences and meet some shapers of opinion,” Chirikova told Moscow News.

The Anti-Seliger name is a reference to the Kremlin-sponsored summer youth "camp" at Lake Seliger, which has been around since 2005:

Since 2005, the camp at Lake Seliger has been sponsored by Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth movement created in the wake of the “color” revolutions in which groups of active youth played an important role. Although Nashi is no longer the main sponsor of the camp, it is still behind its organization. Vasiliy Yakemenko, Nashi’s founder, is at the head of the Seliger project. 30-foot tall portraits of the country’s president and prime minister flank the main event stages at the camp, and inspiring phrases by the leaders accompanied by larger than life photos overpower the tents throughout the camp. Some of the more interesting sights in the camp included a 20-foot tall oil derrick protruding from black water, enormous mirror-sheathed block letters spelling out “Russia” and an eternal flame guarded in one-hour shifts by solemn stone-faced youths.

But the name does not suggest that this "camp" has a unified anti-Nashi or Kremlin agenda: Anti-Seliger also includes former and active members of the pro-Kremlin group Nashi itself. In fact, to say that the attendees at Anti-Seliger have a coherent political platform at all is probably incorrect. In fact, the idea behind the camp is that people with widely divergent views can come together and discuss their views openly and freely. So far, that seems to have been the case as Russian nationalists and anti-nationalists have discussed their ideas without violence or problems. Furthermore, Ilya Varlamov - the famous Russian photoblogger - did not exactly show a great deal of support for the protection of the Khimki forest in his blog post:

Everyone is asking me about my position on the Khimki forest. There are are mites and mosquitos in the forest. I still don't understand why some people would want to build a road through a forest and why others would want to fight that. As in any good conflict, both sides have some truth. I don't know who is right. Personally I am indifferent to the fate of the Khimki forest.

But that is not the point of Anti-Seliger; its not a place to advance a coherent agenda. Instead, it has been an event for young Russians to show their discontent at the stagnant nature of the current political climate (and its chief lynchpin - the political party, United Russia). Indeed, the appearance of established and older politicians seemingly had a rather jarring effect. For instance, the appearance of Sergei Mironov - until recently an avid Putin supporter and the former head of the Federation Council - looked stilted and rather uncomfortable. The "Anti" in Antiseliger therefore is a pointed objection to the current state of Russian politics. What would replace United Russia and Putinism is unclear - but more and more young Russians want to give something else a try. Anti-Seliger's attempt to build a tolerant and respectful model of how a vibrant civil society might operate is a start.

Exposing the Private Side of Russian Lawlessness

2011-06-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Ilya Varlamov's "dance" with the private police of
Moscow-City

ON April 3, 2011, in a sleepy Moscow suburb, Natalya Seibel decided to go out and walk her dogs. As she was walking, a blue Land Cruiser pulled up next to her and the driver drunkenly tried to flirt with Natalya. Natalya ignored him, but he jumped out of the car, grabbed her by the hair, and punched her in the face. Her attacker? None other than the Chief of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Unit.
We frequently hear stories about this kind of official abuse in Russia. In fact, the recent Pulitzer Prize went to a brilliant series of New York Times articles focusing on this very topic: the shadowy role of the Russian state in repressing journalists, businessmen, and citizens. And there is no doubt plenty of truth in this. A recent poll suggested that almost half of Russians do not trust the police and almost a third actively fear the police.

The Privatization of Proizvol

There is more to Russian lawlessness, however. Indeed, with the help of a digital camera and a copy of the applicable law, some young Russian activists have exposed another side to the arbitrary exercise of power in Russia. These bloggers - many of whom prominently feature photography on their blogs - have made it their mission to expose the anti-photography bans in many Russian supermarkets and private malls as illegal.

Ilya Varlamov and Dmitry Ternovsky, prominent photo-activists, have led this charge, heading to a Perekryostok supermarket at the Evropeyskiy shopping mall near Kievsky Train Station and the Moscow-City business complex to challenge these bans. After a few minutes taking photos in both places, they were approached by private security guards telling them that they were not allowed to take photographs. In both cases, the private guards were wholly uninterested in the legality of the ban on photography; their main interest was in ensuring compliance with their own "private" rules.

At Moscow-City [ru], after it became clear that Ilya and Dmitry were not going to leave, the guards - who Ilya later determined worked for a Turkish construction consortium named ENKA - used verbal and physical threats to force them to leave. One typical exchange went as follows:

- "I have the right to ask you not take photos here," a man in a suit said threateningly.
- "That is an illegal demand," I [Varlamov] parried back assuredly to the man in the suit.
- "You know what, guys, this is private territory," said the man in the suit, standing his ground.
- "So what? Are Russian Federation laws not in effect here?" I said interested.
- "Many laws are not in effect here!" the man in the suit said, shocking us with his response.

After the police arrived, the private guards were much more "polite." Ilya later opened a criminal complaint against one of the private guards for assault; the police never followed up.
At Perekryostok/Evropeyskiy, Ilya and Dmitry again faced [ru] a phalanx of irate and threatening private guards. One addressed them:

Do you know who the owner of this supermarket is? Do you think he just fell out of the sky? No, he didn't fall from the sky, he came from the underworld. You should know that if you don't leave right now, it's not your camera that will be smashed, it's your your neck that will be broken, and the cops will be looking but will never see a thing. And you'll never prove anything here. This neighborhood here, it's dangerous, a train station... do you get it?

After the police finally arrived, the private guards ceased their physical and verbal intimidation. A policeman then made a show of arresting Ilya and Dmitry, but released them as soon as they were outside the store. He told them:

"OK, let's go. Why are you picking a fight with those guys? Did you not see who they were? You guys are just looking for trouble - and for what?" - this was said to me by a police officer who is supposed to defend us from such "bandits."

The policeman apparently thought he was doing Ilya and Dmitry a favor. As Ilya commented,

It seemed to me that the police really did not want to disagree with the private security guards of the shopping center . . . apparently, the owner has established his own set of laws here, which [even the police were not willing] to interfere with.

"Disheveled" attacker makes his move

In Krasnoyarsk, two photobloggers tried the same thing [ru] in a local supermarket. After being confronted by private guards, they insisted that they had a right to take photographs and demanded that the police showed up. The police refused to arrest them, agreeing that they had a right to take photographs. After the police left, however,

a disheveled man in a track suit emerged from a store room and identified himself as a the head of security. At the climax of the examination, he tried to grab Konovalov's camera. After that he came at me with his fists.

These encounters reveal a hidden side of Russia's problem with lawlessness: the private individuals - often associated with powerful business interests - who have no regard for the formal law and who enforce their own private laws almost exclusively through force (or the threat of force). These shadowy, non-state actors are a symptom of Russia's weak and corrupt state and a powerful sign of a governmental apparatus where the government's reach is either limited or coopted.
Almost fifteen years ago, the famous political scientist Stephen Holmes noted that

Today's Russia makes excruciatingly plain that liberal values are threatened just as thoroughly by state incapacity as by despotic power. "Destatization" is not the solution; it is the problem. For without a well-functioning public power of a certain kind there will be no prevention of mutual harm, no personal security, and no "standing rule to live by," to use a Lockean phrase.

The experiences of these photo-activists therefore remind us that the fight against lawlessness in Russia is as much about making law matter for powerful private interests as it is for officials.

Putin-Party concept (continues to) go viral..

2011-05-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

UPDATE (5/19/2011): Putin Party phenomenon spreads to St. Petersburg .. . .the hipster version this time....

The latest Putin Party spinoff, courtesy of St. Petersburg's Okean (Club Ocean). Here is the riff from the promotional page on V Kontakte:

The Great Liberation of Patriotism!
The Triumph of the Most Beautiful and Talented!
The Grandiose Ratification of Beauty

However, there is more to this party than some kind of kitschy, pseudo-hero worship. Part of the promotion is an open letter to Mr. Putin, inviting him to the party on June 3. The letter (which refers to the Article 33 of the Russian Constitution giving citizens the personal right to petition their leaders) reads like a manifesto of sorts, proposing to introduce Mr. Putin to a new generation of creative and talented young Russians (who apparently are characterized as "freaks" or "hipsters" by the media) who are not interested in politics but purely in beauty (krasota). Many of these people, the letter says, are leaving Russia because there are no avenues for self-expression. It continues:

We dont want to run away from these problems and run away from Russia. We want to live in Russia. And not just live in a Russia that is OK, but a Russia that is beautiful, happy and does not hide its own forms of expression.

We want to live in a country where people do not just refuse to fear self-expression, but a country where it is respected and encouraged, as the only natural form of personal development...

We want to destroy the stereotype that power is far away, illusive, and unknowable and which is only discussed on television (which we do not watch). Therefore... [we invite you, Mr. Putin, to this party]

This new incarnation of the Putin Party concept: good hipster marketing? or a real cry for hipster political change?

************************************

Ever dreamed of dancing to loud techno pop (most likely wearing sunglasses) and celebrating the "ideal" man (according to a managed democracy style "vote"): Vladimir Putin? Or want to voice your dance support for Mr. Putin's vanquished competitors, the intensely odd (and-question-begging) combination but runner-up-paragons of masculinity: Bruce Willis, David Beckham, terrible Russian rapper Timati, and Che Guevara? Well, you already missed Club Rai's wildly successful Putin-themed party ("Putin Party: I Want the Prime Minister") in Moscow last month...

But, if this sounds like the kind of party you've always wanted to attend, you're in luck. The Putin-Party is now coming to a city near you. That is, if you live anywhere near Perm' or Yaroslavl. Yes, you guessed it, the Putin-Party party concept has now officially been franchised: although the Putin-Party concept of honoring Putin's "ideal manhood" was originally celebrated in honor of International Woman's Day (March 8) - another shining testament to woman's liberation in the former Soviet Union - it has now apparently gone "viral". It seems this is a party concept far too lucrative to be tied to any one holiday.

And if you want a quick reminder of the Putin-Party's pulse-pounding cocktail of techno, scantily-clad dancers, and Russian politics, check out this uncut clip from the Moscow festivities:

Yaroslavl is hosting its very own Putin-Party on May 20.

DJ Face has also posted about a Putin-Party in Perm at Club Veter ("Breeze") on May 1. Here is the promotion:

Самая провокационная вечеринка года идет в регионы!
Начавшись как безобидное голосование за идеального мужчину в честь Международного Женского Дня, к моменту проведения Putin Party приобрела славу самой громкого скандала в клубной индустрии за все время, освещенного сотнями камер и обросшего тысячами слухов.

The most provocative party of the year is coming to the regions! Beginning as a harmless vote on the ideal man in honor of International Woman's Day, the Putin-Party turned into the biggest scandal in the club industry ever, unleashing hundreds of cameras and spawning thousands of rumors.

So far, I have not been able to determine Club Rai's exact involvement in the spread of the Putin-Party theme. There are some signs pointing to Club Rai's active involvement in the spread of this concept. First, the advertising campaign (at least from the photo above from Yaroslavl) is identical, with the cheesy love heart and the slogan "I Want the Prime Minister." Second, Club Veter in Perm is advertising a Club Rai DJ (DJ Vartan), so perhaps the deal is that regional clubs can use the concept if they promote Club Rai DJs (and the Club Rai name).

In any case, taboo sells. And in Russia, its not just sex that is taboo, its also politics. Put them together and you have an ingenius marketing tool.

UPDATE:

Photos from the party at Club Veter on May Day (May 1) have also been posted on Facebook. They look professional grade and have "Gradus Vodka" on the upper left side; marketing the Putin/sex/taboo, they also show a rather graphic looking "sex" show with scantily clad women straddling a Putin dummy. Keep it classy, Perm'.

Meanwhile, the Putin Party phenomenon continues to spread through rural Russia. The latest location is Ryazan' on May 21 at a bar called "Angel's" (in English, much like the "Putin Party" label itself...). Novaya Gazeta has an interesting post on the puzzled reaction of the local United Russia party to Ryazan's Putin Party:

The press secretary of the Ryazan' branch of United Russia Marina Savina struggled to comment on the coming Putin Party in Ryazan. .. According to Savina, United Russia is now fully focused on the May 9 holiday [Victory Day celebrations], and after that the regional branch will formulate an official response to the Putin Party and its use of the name of their leader.

Also, it seems that Club Rai is actively promoting this spread, giving full permission to use the Putin Party name and advertising slogan. As a Rai representative said,

This is not a commercial party. We are not selling this party, and if people want to use the slogans.. the Putin Party does not belong to Club Rai.

Yes, well, not to get too deep here, but who truly owns the most ideal man, the Mr. V. V. Putin himself? But, seriously, business-school types take note: its smart marketing, folks, smart marketing. Maybe there's something to this BRIC capitalist-taking-over-world thing after all?

Читать далее:http://www.gzt.ru/topnews/society/-klub-rai-ne-protiv-ispoljzovaniya-brenda-putin-/359597.html?from=copiedlink

Medvedev press conference: Is Putin modern enough?

2011-05-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

Mr. Medvedev looking modern

AFTER almost an entire 4 year term, Dmitry Medvedev held the first major press conference of his presidency today in front of over 800 journalists. Standing in front of a backlit podium in the colors of the Russian flag, Mr. Medvedev's refrain from the beginning was that Russia needed to speed up its process of modernization.

Much of the presser was symbolic and staged: first, rather than holding the presser in the Kremlin, Mr. Medvedev decided to host it at Skol'kovo: the center of Medvedev's modernization of Russia project (which according to Miriam Elder has no electrical outlets). Second, there were the usual staged questions from the state-sponsored media. For instance, Russia Today, the Kremlin-sponsored station, asked Mr. Medvedev if "during his term, people in the West have come to know more about Russia?" Hmm, yeah, hard-hitting.

But there were some interesting moments. In the second question of the night, Mr. Medvedev was asked about whether he might fire Mr. Putin (like he has fired almost two dozen governors). He gave a rather indirect answer but suggested that Russia desperately needed new blood in its political system (particularly in the regions):

No one should work for twenty years, no matter how good they are.. we need to pass leadership to the next generation and educate new people. No one can stay in power forever.

He also suggested that he differs with Mr. Putin on the pace of Russian modernization:

As far as I understand, he (Putin) believes modernisation is a calm, step-by-step process. I think we have the chances and the energy to conduct modernisation more swiftly without damage to what has already been done, and to achieve good results.

And, once again hinting that he thought Russia's political system needed modernization, Mr. Medvedev repeated his belief that the Russian president should be a member of a party:

And now political forces have formed to the extent that the Russian president should head one of the political parties.

Most commentators think Mr. Medvedev will head A Just Russia if he does decide to run as a "partisan candidate." Furthermore, the repeated suggestions that he thinks that the president should be a "party man" might also signal his belief that the Russian Constitution should be modernized so that the Russian President is no longer an enlightened (and non-partisan) autocrat that floats above Russian political life and assures the interaction of the system of separated powers below him.

Other than these comments, Mr. Medvedev left open much of what will be happening in the next year of Russian politics. But a question does still seem to be hanging over the podium after Mr. Medvedev's departure: Is Mr. Putin modern enough?

The Untold Story of the Victory Day Clashes in Lvov

2011-05-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Global Voices Online)

FROM watching Russian television this week, you might think that the annual May 9 commemorations of the defeat of Nazi Germany in Lvov, Ukraine, were under siege from throngs of neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalists.

Television footage showed hooded young Ukrainians attacking World War II veterans, giving Nazi salutes, and chanting nationalist slogans. As they ripped St. George ribbons from people's shirts, it seemed that Ukrainian youth had forgotten the terrible sacrifices made by the Soviet Union to defeat Germany.
There are few historical events that evoke more passion across the vast space of the former Soviet Union than World War II. And for good reason. Even conservative estimates of the cost of the war are unimaginable: more than 20 million dead.

In Russia, May 9 - known simply as Victory Day - is a day for Russians to honor the terrible sacrifices made to defeat Hitler's Germany in what is widely known as the Great Patriotic War. Indeed, for many Russians, these sacrifices represent nothing less than the simple and glorious triumph of good over evil.
For people in regions caught between the Soviet Union and Germany, however, the legacy of May 9 is not so simple. In Ukraine, for instance, it is the day to remember the terrible sacrifices made during the war - as well as the day that ended Ukraine's hopes of independence from the Soviet Union. Indeed, Ukrainian nationalists had hoped to take advantage of the war to fashion an independent Ukraine.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, both the Russian government and some ethnic Russians still living in the newly independent republics have sought to defend the Soviet Union's historical legacy in the face of what they see as unfair historical accounts of Soviet imperialism.

Nationalists, on the other hand, have sought to cement their position as independent nations in the face of what they see as Russia's neo-Soviet imperial ambition.

This simmering tension reached the surface in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2007, when Russians openly clashed with authorities after the Estonian government announced that they would be moving a World War II monument known as the Bronze Soldier. Soon after, an unprecedented Russian cyber attack shut down the Estonian government.

The May 9 clashes in Lvov seemingly presented another example of this simmering tension. With images of Ukrainian nationalist groups attacking aging World War II veterans, the Russian media had the perfect opportunity to paint Ukrainians as proto-fascists, intent on desecrating the sacred memory of Russian sacrifices in the Great Patriotic War. For instance, Russia Today's story on the clashes reported that:

Not everyone regards Victory Day as a cause for celebration. In Western Ukraine, nationalist party members have violently disrupted a memorial service as veterans paid tribute to those who perished in the war . . . Unlike most of the post-Soviet region on May 9th, the western Ukrainian city of Lvov became a vicious display of neo-Nazism. Several thousand activists from radical nationalist parties blocked the entrance to Red Army soldiers’ cemeteries, preventing war veterans from getting inside and paying tribute.

The clashes also fostered a wide-ranging debate on Oleg Kozyrev's blog [ru], after he posted a clip from Russian television detailing the events. In hundreds of comments, bloggers debated the meaning of the clashes. Were the clashes signs of a growing fascist, neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine? Or were they result of a small minority of idiotic Ukrainian ultranationalists?

One of the most interesting parts of the debate centered around an blog post [ru] from Egor Kustov (LiveJournal user ru-indeec), a Lvov-based Russophone freelance copywriter. His eyewitness account gave a more complete version than the one on Russian television:

I am not interested in politics, but I feel compelled to write about what I witnessed. I am sorry I did not bring a camera. As I was walking down Lychakovskaya, I saw a large group of people with banners and signs, as well as red and Russian flags. I had of course read that the pro-Russian group "Russian Unity" would either hold a rally in Lvov or not... [reports] were rather confusing. Well, I thought, they did come here after all. [...] They, as a group, suddenly began to shout slogans, insulting the local residents. The slogans were not political, but instead were national slurs. The ones I remember best included "[Ukrainians aren't worth a bucket of spit!] It is our victory!" and "Death to [Galicia]!"... Of course, in less than a minute, scuffles broke out. Since naturally these [Russian] provocateurs did not have a numerical advantage, they started to run. And then the shooting started. [...]

Mr. Kustov's account of the Russian provocateurs complicated the clean narrative of Russian victimhood. In a subsequent post [ru], Mr. Kustov denied allegations that he had written this eyewitness account for money and stated that he was simply trying to defend Lvov's image. He wrote:

[...] These kinds of clashes, in which both sides provoke violence, are easy to fabricate in any city. In Moscow clashes are often incited by large groups of skinheads (wearing masks, with banners, etc.), but the media do not come to the immediate conclusion that the entire city is comprised of fascists? [...]

For Mr. Kustov, these clashes were simply a media-created tempest in a teapot, the product of extremists on both sides. And there is no sign that the furor around these clashes is settling down. Two days after the clashes, the Russian Duma issued a statement calling on the Ukrainian authorities to punish the Ukrainian nationalists behind the clashes. Mr. Kustov ended with a saying:

During the cold war between the USSR and the USA some politician (I do not remember who) said: "A farmer from Oklahoma and a peasant from [Povolzhye] have [nothing to fight each other for]. That's why they have no use for war. Only politicians need it."

And that is perhaps the biggest untold story of these clashes: Mr. Kustov and the silent majority of Russians and Ukrainians in Lvov have little practical use for this big political game.

Russian englightened authoritarianism and the nonpartisan president

2011-05-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

The ongoing "Kremlinology/Putin-Medvedev/who-is-going to-be-president?" saga continues on. The NY Times's Ellen Barry published a front page article on the topic suggesting that tracking the current debate was like Churchill's famous quote: watching bulldogs fighting under the carpet.

There are many aspects to this debate. I will focus on just one: Putin's proposed creation of a "popular front."  Many are suggesting this is a way to shore up the flagging popularity of United Russia. And perhaps so. But it is also potentially a move to create a broader coalition to support Mr. Putin's run for president.  A much neglected aspect of Russian presidential elections is that not a single elected president has run as a partisan candidate. Yeltsin refused to officially join a party, preferring in his words to stay "above the fray." Putin ran as an "independent" in the 2000 presidential election.  And, although identifying with United Russia (the party of power) in the later years of his presidential stint, Putin was re-elected as an "independent" in 2004 (though of course United Russia gave him significant support). Medvedev won the 2008 election with support from four political parties, including United Russia, Fair Russia, Agrarian Party of Russia and Civilian Power.

The logic behind the idea of a non-partisan president is contained within the Russian Constitution: the President stands above the system of legislative, executive, and judicial power and is tasked with ensuring the "coordinated functioning and interaction of all the bodies of state power." Article 80, Section 2, Russian Constitution.  Thus, the Presidency was intended as an institution that stands above the interests of particularly parties or groups, and is the representative of the entire people (a institutional representative of sobornost' or a historical relic of Russian enlightened authoritarianism if you will)...

The creation of the popular front therefore might provide a way for Mr. Putin to disassociate himself from United Russia.  As prime minister, he has been increasingly identified with United Russia and United Russia has gone increasingly out of its way to claim Putin as their own for the 2012 election. This makes sense: if Putin comes back to the presidency in 2012 (which I think is likely) they would want to be able to claim his as their own. Mr. Putin's creation of the popular front is perhaps an attempt to avoid the "icey" grip of United Russia and to widen his support base heading into the 2012 elections.

A recent report seems to suggest that the popular front might be just that:

The front will "operate above the party, it’s not based on the party," Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, told reporters in Volgograd, southern Russia, after the prime minister announced the initiative May 6. "It would more likely be based around Putin, who came up with the idea."

UPDATE:
President Medvedev directly addressed the constitutional ramifications of the issue of a non-partisan president in remarks today to young deputies in regional parliaments:

I think that to this point it has been a good thing that the president is non-partisan (непартийным). But now I think that sooner or later the president will be partisan. Its just a matter of when...The sooner the better.. And anyway, I cannot think of an example where the president is really independent of political forces.

President Medvedev went on to say that he thought that although Russia's history demanded a presidential system of government, Russia needed to be careful of the centralization of power under one person. He proceeded to give a stark warning:

The top-down concentration of power truly is a dangerous joke, and in our country it has, as a rule, led to civil war and stagnation. We should understand this and should act strictly within the constitution. Any attempts to build a government under one person are incredibly dangerous. Even if attempts to build a government under one person are not a problem today, we should not doubt that in the near future they might reemerge. We should think about this and should learn the historical lessons.

Was this a veiled warning about the return of a Putin presidency???

Boris Gryzlov announced that the Popular Front will most likely support a candidate for the 2012 elections. This announcement helps confirm my suspicion that a significant part of the Russian elite does not want the next Russian president to be the head of a party. Meanwhile, it is an interesting way for United Russia to camoflauge its position as the party supporting a future president and is definitely part of its Strategy-2012 as its approval ratings flag.

The Paranoid Style in Russian Politics: Muammar Gaddafi as Anti-Fascist Revolutionary

2011-05-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

May 9 is Victory Day (Den' Pobedy) in Russia, the annual celebration of the triumph of the Soviet Union over Hitler's forces in the Great Patriotic War (known in the West as World War II). As one onlooker described the day,

“These are deeds that will live on for centuries,” he said. “Our people endured. They carried all of humanity on their shoulders.”

Nothing comes close to equalling the importance of this holiday in any other World War II combatant-country (in the United States, the victory over Hitler - "V-E Day" - passes largely without comment in the popular press, unless it is a major anniversary). In Russia, because of the massive sacrifice made by the countries in the former Soviet Union, it is a massive cultural, media, and popular event, and is the culmination of a long early series of May national holidays (where no one really works for more than a week) which signals the beginning of spring. It also features some classic Soviet-style militarism - think Krushchev's comment "we will produce long-range missiles like sausages" - to demonstrate to the Russian people the continued power of Russia.

Politically, it has become an important event for crafting post-Soviet Russian identity and therefore is most certainly the closest that Russia has to July 4th in the United States (at least, in terms of patriotic fervor). Indeed, Russian independence day has been largely a damp squib - Why celebrate the loss of an empire?? Sean has a great description of Victory Day and its shifting interpretation on his blog.

In other former Soviet republics, Vitctory Day is also celebrated, but in a way that downplays the Soviet Union as a Russian empire. In Ukraine, despite President Medvedev's statement about Victory Day as a day to celebrate friendship with the former Soviet republics, this tension erupted into a fistfight in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv when about 30 Ukrainian nationalists clashed with pro-Russian marchers celebrating the Victory Day. One man was shot in the leg by an air pellet pistol, but no arrests were reported.

Victory Day also provides a day for old-style, ancien regime communists to march through the streets of Moscow, holding banners calling for socialism and bearing the pictures of Lenin and Stalin. They are sending a not-so-coded message: without the communist system, Russia never would have been able to form the Soviet Union and defeat Hitler. Most of the time, these protestors are kind of sad: old, delapidated, and somewhat formulaic (like the late-period Soviet Union). But something rather new and unformulaic was present today amongst these socialist protestors: Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

These photos (courtesy of @varlamov) show the pro-Gaddaffi contingent.

Gaddafi's "antifascist" cause

Stalin and Gaddafi as "revolutionaries"

Gaddafi in his most stylish get-up

It is important to note that these Gaddaffi supporters represent a tiny minority of those marching at the Victory Day celebrations. But this support for Gaddafi is a reflection of the same persistent anti-western, conspiracy theory mentality in Russia that has also emerged in recent blogosphere comments that the United States faked Bin Laden's death. Whether you support the intervention in Libya or not (or even see the opposition as "democratic", it is hard to support his targeting of civilians in putting down the uprising as a "revolution" or "antifascist" behavior. Perhaps this is a sign of Russia's own "paranoid style" in its politics....

Anxieties of Russian Nationalism from Victor Kogan-Yasny

2011-05-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

Today, I am pleased to introduce the work of Mr. Victor Kogan-Yasny to this blog. Mr. Kogan-Yasny is a political adviser to the Yabloko party and the Chairman of the Regional Civic Initiative in Moscow.
I will excerpt from one of his essays, which provides key insights into Russian identity. On the issue of Russian nationalism, he points out a much-missed point: Russian identity today (and its anxieties) owes a great deal to the position of Russians in the Soviet Union. As the "big brother" to the smaller titular nationalities (Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians, etc...), Russians were first among equals in the Soviet Union (see Stalin's comments about the Russians during WWII). As Kogan-Yasny points out:

Strictly speaking, there has never been the same sense of political self-identity in the Russian Federation as in other republics inside the USSR. The authorities implanted the belief that Russia was identical to the Soviet Union. Today unproductive attempts are being made to build up its past-Soviet status. As a result, what is achieved is not the fortification of the unity of Russia and not the sensation of continuity with regard to the USSR with its exclusive polyethnicity and multicultural development, but parochialism, local self-consciousness, the lack of the vision of the country as a whole...

This helps bring out a key tension in the current creation of post-Soviet Russian identity: should it be based on proto-Soviet type myths and history (like WWII)? Or should it be based on Russian ethnicity? Or is there another way?
Mr. Kogan-Yasny is suggesting another way for Russia .

Nation-states are [traditionally] built on ethnic and territorial unity, and their histories and political development are grounded in a sense of collective identity. Empires emerge when a national group considers its existence inside its territorial borders either risky or ineffective, and embarks on a forced expansion that is usually connected with large-scale violence.

Western Europe found another route for its development only after WWII, when Hitlerism lay in the past but Stalinism posed a very present danger. Western European intellectuals realized that both nationalism and imperialism were unacceptable approaches to state-building, and that European stability required a union of nations that could and should expand, but that would never be transformed into an empire.

Western Europe’s political elite was quick to adopt this position, and America’s “Euro-Atlantic” political thinking, together with the Marshall Plan, contributed to it decisively. The Treaty of Rome, together with the establishment of the Council of Europe, embodied a legal, economic, and political – but mostly a philosophical – breakthrough.
A fundamental change occurred in Europe when the failure of Soviet communism opened up entirely new opportunities. But it is impossible to escape the feeling that Western Europeans and the Americans were eager to exchange their strategic Cold War perspective for one focused narrowly on trade and commerce. Those who were ready to consider cooperation with Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union in 1990 – the same year that the Charter of Paris aimed to establish a “Europe from Vancouver to Vladivostok” – had by 1992 begun to neglect Russia and the other former Soviet republics, with the exception of the Baltic states. Instead, the West chose to pursue only a tactical relationship with Russia’s post-Soviet bureaucracy.
Western leaders lacked the nerve to engage with the Russian people in a spirit of full cooperation, and at the same time openly to condemn the new Russian state’s human rights violations. The West overlooked authoritarian tendencies as long as Russia’s problems were not exported.

Thus, Mr. Kogan-Yasny's point is that the future creation of Russian identity is not just an internal process: it is one that requires European and American partnership. Keeping Russia from reverting to ethnic or imperial nationalism - given its nuclear arsenal and critical strategic position in the world - is clearly a goal for the entire international community. Thus, although western commerical interests might be doing very well in Putin's Russia in the short term, a long-term game of engagement on human rights and inclusiveness could help encourage a Pan-European Russian identity.

Nationalism in the Russian liberal opposition

2011-04-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

One of the main purposes of this blog is to provide different perspectives on Russia that you cannot or will not get in the mainstream media. Indeed, one of the main reasons I keep this blog is to correct the often simplistic stereotypes that are reinforced in news about Russia.

Today, A Good Treaty - another English language Russian blog - has an interesting piece on Alexander Navalny's nationalist/psuedo-xenophobic views. I have blogged about Navalny's involvement in nationalist movements before. A Good Treaty updates this connection, making a good point that recent profiles of Mr. Navalny in the West (particularly the one in the New Yorker) have painted a very one-sided picture of Mr. Navalny: they have made him out to be the next great hope for Russian democracy while largely downplaying his views on immigration and Russian nationhood (which would be seem rather close-minded and controversial to a western liberal).

Indeed, in the Western media's attempt to impose a good versus evil narrative on Russian politics (and this search for dichotomy is also strongly seen in discussions of the uprisings in the Middle East), Western coverage of the Russian liberal opposition overally has almost universally ignored/significantly downplayed the number of (particularly young) Russian liberals who espouse nationalist or even openly xenophobic/racist views. The presence of a pro-democracy, nativist movement should not be surprising to anyone who has traveled to Russia or spoken with educated Russians: the tolerance for casual racism in Russia is exceptionally high in comparison with the West. Furthermore, this phenomenon is also present in the West (though, Here, it is generally thought to be a product of right-wing groups): think of the growing nationalist/anti-immigration trends in America (Arizona immigration reform law) or Switzerland (anti-Islamic feeling).

Nationalism (or in its virulent form: racism) is not going anywhere it seems. Acknowleding its presence amongst members of the Russian opposition - and particularly amongst luminaries like Navalny - does not discredit the opposition. Instead, it helps us better understand the nature of Russian democratic opposition and more accurately predict what a more pluralistic Russia might look like.

Putin's speech to the Duma: His first campaign speech for the 2012 elections?

2011-04-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Mr. Putin holding Russia's future in his hands

The Russian Prime Minister's annual speech today to the lower house of the Parliament is normally a rather boring affair detailing the successes of the Russian government over the last year (cue images of Soviet party congresses with dull speakers droning in the same hackneyed language of near imminent triump). Putin's speech today was nothing like that.

The Duma was completely full as all 435 of the people's deputies anxiously awaited the arrival of Mr. Putin at high noon. Security was tight. When Mr. Putin walked into the hall two minutes late, the deputies applauded and waited. Coming on the heels of some very public disputes with sitting President Dmitrii Medvedev, everyone wanted to know how Putin would react in one of his chances to seize the bully pulpit from President Medvedev.

Mr. Putin immediately launched in, defending the work of the government and pointing out that European countries (Greece, Ireland, and Portugal) had fared far worse in the global recession than Russia had. He pointed to Russia's positive growth rate. But most of the two-and-a-half hour long speech (followed by a one and half hour Q and A session) laid out a blueprint for the future, laying out a plan for the next ten years. He set an ambitious goal for Russia: by 2020, Russia will be one of the five leading economies in the world. Subtext to all this meanwhile: Putin wasnt going anywhere. In fact, it was his plan and if Russia wanted to continue to grow it needed him.

In a classic Putin turn of phrase, he stated that Russia would continue to develop into a united, modern economic space. The Russian state - currently swelled by massive oil and gas rents with commodity prices soaring - would be the key player in that march forward.

State capitalism was in the air; undoubtedly the thousands of bureaucrats across Russia took a deep breath - their jobs were safe. Not only that - he promised that pensions would continue to increase, money would be used to increase the birth rate. Modernization, it seems, will benefit a number of people.

In what might be a swipe at Medvedev, Putin stated that the "modernization" (Mr. Medvedev's constant refrain) of the country was the most important task facing the Russian government, but warned that the country should not be distracted by "unreasonable liberalism" or "social demagoguery."

Discussing a "reasonable" form of liberalism?

He also laid out a vision for foreign investment that will be music to the ears of foreign companies and investors: that the Russian government would work closely with foreign investors to create a more attractive climate for foreign investors. This is more than just platitudes, as I blogged about before, Russia desperately needs foreign investment, particularly as it expands its oil and gas industry into difficult offshore ventures. This is true in other sectors as well, which are in desperate need of modernization (i.e. foreign investment and expertise). So, modernization = investment.

The Q and A session featured an interesting discussion of whether the Russian security services were really going to ban Gmail or Skype. Mr. Putin assured that this would not happen, reiterating the Kremlin's position that the comments about banning Skype and Gmail were not official policy. As the questions continued into the fourth hour of the speech (the longest speech to the Duma in 20 years at least), the famously buffoonish V. Zhirinovsky stood up to ask a question:

"You should have taken a break. You don't think about people. It's lunchtime. No one has had lunch. You'll spoil everyone's digestion system," he said.

Pulitzer for Prize-Winning Articles on Russian Corruption

2011-04-18T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ellen Barry and Clifford Levy were the well-deserved recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for International News today for their groundbreaking work on corruption and lack of justice within the Russian state. In a series of articles, these journalists detailed a number of important issues in today's Russia, including:

1. The violent intimidation of journalists.
2. The suppression of democratic dissent and widescale ballot stuffing.
3. The acquiescence of major western companies (Microsoft) in illegal and unethical business practices.
4. The circumvention of juries to ensure favorable outcomes in court cases.

The Pulitzer Committee rewarded these journalists for “their dogged reporting that put a human face on the faltering justice system in Russia, remarkably influencing the discussion inside the country.” These articles clearly had a powerful effect on the work of western companies in Russia: an article in this series was able to shame Microsoft into softening their strong anti-piracy stance so that it could not be used to persecute human rights activists in Russia.

Furthermore, there is little doubt that these articles also helped influence the current debate in Russia: given Russian state control of much of the media and the dangers of critical journalism in Russia, even an English-language newspaper like the NY Times was able to fill a gap and start a debate in a Russia. And at no small risk to their own lives: the killing of the American journalist Paul Klebnikov of Forbes Magazine for his work exposing Russian corruption shows that foreigners are not immune to these dangers either.

   Journalist Anna Politkovskaia, found outside
   her home with two bullets in her chest and one
   in her head.

It is important, however, not to overstate the importance of the western press and the NY Times in Russia. Indeed, an English language newspaper like the NY Times can only go so far in affecting the national debate and as this blog has reported, there are an increasing number of brave, muckraking Russian-language bloggers and journalists in Russia. These figures - perhaps most famously exemplified by Anna Politkovskaia whose work on Chechnya and state corruption led to her murder - have showed that, despite the perils, Russians are continuing to hold power accountable in Russia.

So, at the risk of sounding melodramatic (and perhaps it might even be necessary at this point), as we rightfully honor the contributions of these American journalists, it is also an important time to honor the sacrifice of those journalists within Russia who have also done so

What is happening with A Just Russia?

2011-04-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

IMAGINE if the White House created a center-right political party that opposed the Democrats in Congress (and would weaken Republican representation in Congress) but that would also support democratic presidential candidates. You might think that this kind of Orwellian political manipulation could never exist in reality. Well, it is a time-tested tradition in post-Soviet, Russian-style "managed democracy" (and other post-Soviet democracy). Andrew Wilson's excellent book Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World goes into great detail about the false parties that have been created by incumbents to weaken any real opposition.

The Russian political party A Just Russia is a perfect example of one of these "false parties." It was created in 2006 as a center-left opposition party that would eventually push out the Russian Communist Party (in 2007 it proposed a merger with the Russian Communist Party) and therefore has heavily criticized and campaigned the "Party of Power": United Russia. Yet, at the same time, it has remained very loyal party to the Putin/Medvedev power elite (and the presidential administration in the Kremlin). This position is of course completely contradictory: the Putin/Medvedev tandem have essentially been de facto leaders of United Russia for years.

A Just Russia, however, has only been mildly successful in siphoning off votes from the Communist Party. Indeed, according to the Moscow Times, the Party has had problems since its creation:

It has suffered an identity crisis from the beginning, playing with nationalist, socialist and loyalist platforms but not pursuing any wholeheartedly.

The ambiguity is reflected in its popularity ratings. The party claims its support stands at 14 percent, but official polls indicate only half of that amount — just enough to cross the Duma threshold but not to make a difference.

A Just Russia's pro-Kremlin, anti-United Russia position now seems to be eroding. The party has openly stated that it will not support a candidate associated with United Russia party (most likely to be Mr. Putin). Instead, they will put their own candidate forward for elections. This is a clear statement that A Just Russia will no longer acquiesce in the face of United Russia and is planning to seriously compete with United Russia in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

Another sign of changes emerged recently: two days ago, the long time head of A Just Russia (Sergei Mironov, pictured below) stepped down as leader. Mr. Mironov has long been a lapdog of the presidential administration and a close ally of V. Putin: he started his political career in Mr. Putin's hometown: St. Petersburg. His loyalty was perhaps best shown when he ran for President against Mr. Putin in 2004 and he was quoted as saying "We all want Vladimir Putin to be the next president." He has been generously rewarded for his loyalty: he has been head of the upper house of the Russian Parliment (whose leadership is not organized based on party loyalty but instead on loyalty to the presidential administration) and has recieved numerous state awards for his service.

The truly loyal opposition: Sergei Mironov

Mr. Mironov's decision to step down has created a sensation as rumors are now flying around that Mr. Medvedev will head the party in the 2012 presidential elections and challenge Mr. Putin's bid (with the support of United Russia). These rumors, however, seem to me to be very unlikely and are much more likely another example of how the Russian press is increasingly obsessed with reading the "tea leaves" for 2012 as the Putin/Medvedev tandem continue to remain silent on whether they will run.

It is much more likely that Mr. Mironov's departure signifies a desire to stay on in his current role as head of the upper house of the Russian Parliament (the Federation Council).

"His term as the speaker comes to an end soon, and he understands that he can't be the head of an 'opposition' party and of the Federation Council at the same time," political scientist Mark Feigin said by phone.

Mironov's resignation may be a gambit arranged with United Russia's Kremlin backers to keep his seat in the Federation Council, a position that makes him nominally the third most powerful politician in the country, said Mukhin, of the Center for Political Information. "He has suffered several attacks from United Russia, which has threatened to remove him from the post," Mukhin said.

Furthermore, Mr. Mironov's departure is another encouraging sign that A Fair Russia might actually be moving toward a position in the real opposition: A Fair Russia could never seriously oppose the Putin/Medvedev/United Russia elite with Mr. Mironov at its helm. Perhaps these recent developments are a sign that managed democracy is starting to crack in Russia?

Guerilla Erection Wins Russian Award for Innovative Art

2011-04-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

Inset: "A Dick Held by the FSB." The winner of the Russian State Center for Contemporary Art's "Innovation 2010" contest

A couple of weeks ago, I described how two members (Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev) of the renegade art collective "Voina" ("War") were facing criminal mischief charges for one of their artistic installations (a "Palace Coup" where they flipped over police cars - see picture below).

Art or criminal mischief?

Despite these pending charges against some of their members, the painted penis on the bridge - which when raised directly faced the former KGB (now FSB) building in St. Petersburg - has now won the prestigious State Center for Contemporary Art's "Innovation" Award.

The "prisoner" being erected

This piece of guerilla street art had received critical accolades from the Russian contemporary art world as a demonstration of "revolutionary art" that "demonstrates the phallic, patriarchal character of our [the Russian] state." And, like it or not, Voina's "actions" draw on Russia's long history of experimental, avant-garde art, that dates back to the work of Mayakovsky and Melnikov in the 1920s. Olesya Turkina, a curator and research fellow at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, recently said that "Voina has inherited the tradition of the Russian futurists from the early 20th century. This isn't just art, but revolutionary art." The avant garde nature of its works was likely the reason that Voina's original nomination was withdrawn but then later reinstated, most likely as the organizers sought to test if it was too controversial for a state award.

Members of Voina looking anarchical

Voina has a stated policy of not participating in these kinds of contests. As they stated on their blog Free Voina (which contains a manifesto linking themselves to the avant-garde protest art of Dmitri Prigov):

Voina never has and never will participate in any awards or money prizes. We make free, non-whoring art. Our art is our gift to the world and to each and every person. If reading the reports of our actions makes you feel joy or, on the contrary, provokes deep gloomy meditations, then we become happy. Our art touches people. And no one dares fix a price to it. You can’t love for money, you can’t bear a child for money and you can’t make art for money — otherwise it’s not art. It’s a matter of principle and we will always stand by this. To sell art, to value it in terms of money prizes and award statuettes, means to display stereotyped thinking, to equate art with plaster, to murder it. There is no product to our art, it is not aimed at creating a product and evaluating it. Voina is a phenomenon that is based on honesty, fairness, sometimes daredevilry — those are the basic principles and notions, the spirit and the premise. There’s good and there’s evil. Each Voina activist has a position and it is sincere and free.

Furthermore, some of its stated "Goals and objectives" are:

-Creating a real left front of art in Russia in traditions of futurism of 1920 years, which radically shifted all ideological poles by the facts of its being. Rebirth of political protest art all over the world.

- Rebirth of heroical behavioral ideals of an artist-intellectual, in a manner of Russian libertarian decemberism. Creation of image of artist as romantic hero, who prevail over the evil. Creation of lively romantic models in today`s soulless commercial conceptual art.

Although no members of Voina were at the award ceremony, they have issued a statement saying that they will accept the prize money and it will be donated to political prisoners (presumably their criminal defense). This outcome, in a way, will allow the "captive penis" bridge to be much more than just a protest against the Russian state: it also will be a protest against the close connections between money, culture, and politics in Russia.

According to the Guardian, however, some members of Voina are not completely satisfied with this "action" winning the Innovation award.

Other members of Voina said it should have won the prize for a different "action" – when a woman in the group was filmed stealing a chicken from a grocery store by inserting it into her vagina. "Now that was something," said Vorotnikov.

UPDATE:

For more on Voina, check out their LiveJournal blog. If you read Russian, it has some fascinating descriptions of their lesser heralded work (they have an English page as well). Here is a sampling of the photos:

Who is waging war on LiveJournal?

2011-04-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

WHO is behind the recent attacks on LiveJournal? Many have been quick to blame the Russian government itself for these attacks, with some seeing these attacks as a form of dress rehearsal in a coming "information war" surrounding the looming parliamentary and presidential elections in late 2011 and early 2012. These fears of top-level Russian government involvement have only been heightened by recent decisions by Middle Eastern governments to "switch off the internet" in the face of massive popular uprisings.

But as emotionally intuitive that this answer might be (especially for those us unconsciously conditioned by cheap Bond films with evil Russian villains issuing top-down orders in bad accents), this answer actually obscures more than it actually reveals. And - cue me stepping onto my soapbox - as I have said before: Russia is simply a far more complicated place than that. In fact, any country who would give a prestigious award to an renegade collective whose leaders are facing criminal charges and whose prize-winning installation would be classed as vandalism in most Western countries defies knee-jerk, one line villification.

As I discussed last week, the Russian government is not a single unitary actor. Instead, in the chaos and anarchy since the fall of communism it has factionalized and fragmented (to the point where Russia itself almost balkanized during the 1990s - the problem went far deeper than just Chechnya). Here's one useful way of thinking about it: If Russia had a totalitarian-fully-top-down governmental apparatus during the Soviet period (which I highly doubt), the post-Soviet Russian government has been characterized by the opposite: a fragmented chaos of different (and often competing) government branches, all wrestling with each other like two feral dogs fighting under a carpet. This fragmentation has served powerful interests: in particular, it has allowed Russian bureaucrats across Russia's 12-time-zones to abuse power and enrich themselves with few checks from above. In other words, decentralization, chaos, and fragmentation has helped enable the deep corruption that now hobbles Russia.

Discussions of the factionalization in the Russian government in the past have tended to focus on at least two rival factions within the government: the siloviki (anti-western, Cold-War influenced security service officers who largely populate the former KGB and related branches) and the zapadniki/liberal-technocrats (younger, modernizing westernizers who tend to be more associated with Medvedev and the laptop-toting Russia and have close ties with Russia's new corporate-state conglomerates like Gazprom). These characterizations are still a simplification - other factions clearly exist - but this breakdown does however provide a useful starting point to understanding the divisions within the Russian government.

So, given this, it is therefore possible that elements or branches of the Russian government were directly or indirectly responsible for these attacks. For instance, members of the security services faction (the siloviki) might have independently employed some of their "administrative resources" to test the robustness of LiveJournal prior to elections.

Or there might have been no "official" involvement at all. Andrei Soldatov has an interesting post today suggesting that certain members of the Russian leadership itself likely did not have to actually use any government resources to coordinate an attack like this. Instead, "patriotic hackers" - highly suspicious of activist bloggers like Navalny (who they see as undermining Russian power) - could have been explicitly (or implicitly) encouraged to engage in the attacks.

Furthermore, Russia has a powerful cyber-crime mafia. Perhaps the most notorious organization in this shadowy network is the Russian Business Network. This innocuously-named organization is a kind of hacker-syndicate-for-hire that is known for its involvement in malicious software, distributed DoS attacks, hacking, child pornography, and spam. According to Network World

Since then the RBN has scaled up its operations to include the creation of a program called Black Energy, which is a tool used to control a botnet, a large group of infected computers, which in turn are used in an assault on a targeted Web site to paralyze it and shut the site down.

In a report by Siobhan Gorman and Evan Perez in December 2009, the Wall Street Journal published claims that the FBI was "probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang." The report implied that Black Energy was being used in the attack. However, within hours of publication, "Citigroup and a federal law enforcement source … refuted a claim that the bank's customers lost millions of dollars in an advanced cyber heist over the summer, leaving lingering questions over details of the alleged attack."

This shadowy world of cyber-mafia has close ties with both Russian government officials and high-level corporate officials. Which presents another scenario: perhaps these DDoS attacks were coordinated from a corporate board room (for instance, Transneft). LiveJournal has increasingly become a powerful voice against not just official government graft but also corporate graft (and here it is often difficult to see a clear line between government and big business in Russia).

It might be difficult (or impossible) to ever know the exact source of these attacks, but it is likely that the Russian cyber mafia played an important role in these attacks. If Mr. Medvedev is serious about stopping these types of attacks, he will have to attack this underlying problem and seek to prosecute Russian cyber criminals. In the meantime, we should replace our James-Bond inspired fears of a top-down attack from old bald men in Russian army uniforms to a fear of loose networks of pimply-faced computer geeks operating in run down internet cafes across the Russian Federation.

As Ilya Dronov, the director of development for the company that owns LiveJournal has said: “Someone wants Livejournal to cease to exist as a platform . . . The question now is whether we will succumb or not. This is war, and, alas, will not be without casualties.”

Cyber war on Russian activist bloggers intensifies

2011-04-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

Things have come a long way since Roman Leibov, a literary scholar and social critic, launched the first Russian-language blog on LiveJournal in early 2001. Ten years later, cyberspace has become a powerful force in Russia for community action. In fact, blogging on LiveJournal.com has become a potent force for checking the corruption and power of the Russian state. Yesterday, this blogging community - which has faced frequent attacks recently - came under an unprecedented "sustained and powerful" attack. At 2 pm, a massive attack targeted the top 5 blogs on LiveJournal, including Aleksei Navalny's blog (whose has just launched a new crowd-sourcing website called RosPil to combat state corruption). As LiveJournal administrators were responding to this attack, hackers targeted another 30 popular LiveJournal bloggers and communities. The attack - a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) - was successful in knocking LiveJournal offline.

This assault comes on the heels of an an attack a week earlier that started the 24th of March and caused a brief outage on March 30. It also comes at a time when the Russian blogging community is growing in power (particularly under the charismatic presence of Mr. Navalny, who was just recently profiled in the New Yorker and whose new anti-corruption website is generating alot of support).

Aleksei Navalny, blogging activist
LiveJournal administrators - who are calling these attacks a "war" - are planning on purchasing additional equipment to cope with the attacks. They are also now debating whether to refer the increasing attacks to United States law enforcement officials: LiveJournal's servers are located in the United States. This cyber war is unlikely to end, particularly as Russian bloggers grow in influence and power. Stay tuned.

UPDATE:
Global Voices Online has an interesting post detailing the reaction of Russian bloggers to this unprecedented attack. Most agreed that the likely target of this attack was Aleksei Navalny and his growing power base on Live Journal.

Blogger nafanko pegged the government for the attack: "As long as Navalny doesn’t leave LJ, they will continue. [The attack] was politically motivated." ...Dimk_dims seemed to blame the attack on Navalny’s political blogging: "Because of one revolutionary a million of Internet hamsters [a pejorative name for Internet commenters - GV] were deprived of [their] dear LJ for a day. Well done, man."

Furthermore, an attack of this magnitude was clearly coordinated by an organization with significant resources. Russian bloggers have pointed fingers at the Kremlin youth group "Nashi." Although it is probably impossible to determine the exact source, DDoS attacks have been the favored technique in blogging attacks linked to the Russian government in the past. In fact, both the attacks on the Estonian government (during the controversy about removing the monument to the Soviet army) and the Georgian government (during Russia's conflict with Georgia) were DDoS attacks.

Other bloggers wondered if it was time to switch to a new platform like Facebook or Twitter (echoing a recent article in Argumentuy i Fakty suggesting that Russian bloggers switch to Tumblr or Blogger.)

Anton Nosik, another influential Russian blogger, dismissed this idea of switching to a new blogging platform:

The article does not even list one actual comparison of the functions of LJ versus those of the other platforms where people are allegedly running. In reality, the main result of the exodus of Russian-speaking bloggers from LiveJournal will be the lose of contact with readers for whom this platform is standard. And in that case, if the exodus of interesting bloggers from LJ actually begins, it will mean for RuNet the lose of an important independent media-platform, which in this coming election year, obviously scares the filthy technologies used by the Power Vertical.

Nosik has a point: LiveJournal is different from other blogging services (like Tumblr and Blogger) because it combines social networking with blogging. Indeed, LiveJournal allows each blogger to have a friend list, providing people with wide friend circles to widely disseminate their posts very quickly. As Wired (UK) reports:

Another pillar of LiveJournal that helps explain its longevity is the "Friends Page", or, as its known by its Russian portmanteau, frendlenta -- "the friend strip". The English term lacks the rich connotations of its Slavic counterpart: it is really a Mobius strip; an endless procession of brilliant insight, drunken rants, fat trolls and epic dramas. Frendlenta is what makes LiveJournal as much a blogging platform as a social network to its steadfast Russian userbase.

This "frendlenta" aspect allows like-minded bloggers to link their blogs easily and lends Live Journal its real power. Power, of course, which threatens the status quo. Thus, as Ilya Dronov, LiveJournal's head of development and LJ blogger, has posted: "Most likely, a similar type of situation will be repeated in the future."

UPDATE: Who is responsible for these attacks?

As DDoS attacks continue on LiveJournal (there was another attack on April 6), President Medvedev has now waded into the fray, condemning the attack as "shocking and illegal" and stating that the authorities must consult with both the administration of LiveJournal and law enforcement. These comments were released on his LiveJournal blog, which releases videos and comments from Medvedev's speeches and pronouncements.

How should we interpret these comments? Are they simply an attempt to misdirect blame by Medvedev? Or do they betray a sincere desire from Medvedev to root out the source of these attacks?

And, more to the point: Who is to blame for these attacks? Until this point, the general answer is that the Russian government is to blame for these DDoS attacks. The problem with this approach is that it is not a complete answer. In fact, the Russian government is not a single unitary actor; instead, despite rhetoric about the power vertikal' in Russia, there is a great deal of autonomy wielded by different departments in the Russian government. Furthermore, these departments are often subject to market capture by powerful state-owned monopolies: for instance, key departments of the Russian government often coordinate with state-owned businesses (like Gazprom or Transneft). These powerful business-political conglomerations often act independently of the presidential administration (particularly given Medvedev's campaign against corruption).

Thus, it is likely there was some Russian government involvement in these attacks but it is not clear that this involvement was a directive from the very highest echelons of Russian government. I will address this issue more fully in a complete blog post next week when the dust settles somewhat.

Police brutality in Russia

2011-04-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Inset: The dog lover and journalist who was punched and kicked by the Chief of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Unit outside her apartment.

Last night (April 3) in the Moscow suburbs, Natalya Seibel - a successful journalist who produces a series of popular shows on Russia's Channel One - decided to go out and walk her dogs. As she was walking, a blue Land Cruiser pulled up next to her and a man stuck his head out and drunkenly tried to flirt with Natalya, asking who she was and where she was going. Natalya ignored him and kept on walking. Reports are conflicting but sometime after that he jumped out of the car, grabbed her by the hair and punched her in the face. She reported what happened next:

“After that, everything was like in a television show – hands on the hood of the car, he bent my arms behind my back, threw my phone to the ground. I called for the police. He threatened me, peppering it all with expletives. My neighbor came out and said: ‘What are you doing, that’s a woman!’”

As he continued to kick and beat her, she screamed to her neighbors to call the police. As her son reported on his Facebook page, "none of the neighbors hurried to call the police." As another neighbor exited the building near her, Ms. Seibel again appealed for help but the attacker showed the neighbor his police credentials.. In the end, Ms. Seibel herself had to call the police.

When the police finally showed up, they took all of the people involved to the police station. After it became clear that her attacker was the Chief of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Unit, the police allowed him to leave. According to Ms. Seibel's son, "For 40 minutes they refused to take a statement. They said 'he's our boss, what are we supposed to do?' and 'would you have us accuse our own boss?'" Only after news of the attack reached the press, did the situation change. Suddenly, the local leadership arrived and they began to question Ms. Seibel. Today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has decided to open a criminal investigation of the attacker.

So far it appears that this unprovoked attack was completely random - Russian television is under strict official control and the shows that she edits are not particularly controversial. Even if it is was completely random, it is a vivid reminder of the rampant corruption in Russia's police force. The police face very few legal checks on their power. In a recent survey, almost half of the respondents said that they do not trust the police and more than a quarter of said that they actively feared the police.

Russians are trying to push back. In 2009,

Alexei Dymovsky, a drug cop in southern Russia, posted emotional video addresses to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on his personal website, accusing his superiors of severely overworking him and pressuring him to fabricate criminal cases to improve clearance rates — a practice known in Russian police jargon as "chopping sticks." Dymovsky was fired over the videos, which have amassed more than 1.2 million views since they were reposted on YouTube.

And just recently, police seized the bulk run of a book detailing the corruption in the Moscow police force. Entitled "Corporation: Moscow Region", this book

rehashes corruption allegations that have plagued the administration of Governor Boris Gromov in the years since he was elected in 2000. Among them are reports that officials stalled and harassed IKEA's local business in attempts to obtain kickbacks and accusations that companies linked to regional authorities purchased agriculture land for illegal real estate developments. The book also includes the story of Alexei Kuznetsov, the region's former top financial official who has been implicated in a 30 billion ruble ($1 billion) embezzlement scheme that brought the region to the brink of default in 2008. Kuznetsov moved to the United States in 2008, while his former deputy Valery Nosov was arrested last year and remains in pretrial detention pending trial on fraud charges.

The internet has emerged as a powerful way to hold the police accountable in the absence of legal checks: I have recently blogged about the power of bloggers in checking this police corruption. Perhaps this incident will shed further light on the need for reform in the Russian police.

Split in Russian Opposition

2011-03-31T11:11:00.000-07:00

Today, the split in the Russian opposition was on show. In Pushkin square, Russian opposition groups gave speeches and rallied in favor of their constitutionally-guaranteed right to gather and rally for the last time. As police looked on passively, the activists declared that there was no longer any need to protest in favor of public rallies (because they are now officially sanctioned) and signalled their desire to focus on other civil and political rights issues. Not too far away, in Triumph Square, however, another opposition group protested, and scores were arrested and sent packing in paddy wagons.

Both had originally been part of "Strategy-31", a protest movement that organized rallies in support of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution on the 31st of each month with 31 days. Article 31 of the Russian Constitution guarantees that:

Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.

This right, however, has largely remained on paper, as peaceful protests have been banned/denied permits/harassed and often been subject to overwhelming police force.

In October 2010, Russian authorities grudgingly allowed limited protests on these days. As the NY Times reports,

the arrests of the Strategy-31 demonstrators — among them Lyudmila Alekseyeva, 83, the grande dame of Russia’s human rights movement — had become such a drag on Russia’s reputation abroad that it forced the country’s leaders to back down, said Aleksei A. Venediktov, the director of Ekho Moskvy, a liberal radio station.

Indeed, the cumulative effective of 18 months of arrests, violence, and bad PR on the 31st of each month finally persuaded the Russian authorities to back down and allow limited protests on the 31st. A compromise was reached: the opposition rally would agree to certain limitations in return for the permission to protest. Official permission has been interpreted by some as a thaw in Russia's schlerotic political system.

With official sanction, however, came problems for Strategy-31 and the overall opposition movement. As soon as official permission was granted, Eduard Limonov, a radical opposition leader and head of the rather bizarre National Bolshevik Party, broke with the movement and criticized Ms. Alekseyeva (head of the Moscow Helsinki group), Lev Ponomarev (leader of the "For Human Rights" movement), and the other moderate members of the Russian opposition for agreeing to the limitations. Claiming that the moderates had caved into official pressure, Mr. Liminov has vowed to continue to defy the Russian authorities.

Today's split protests demonstrated the strange bedfellows that co-exist in the Russian opposition movement today. It also might be a good thing for the Russian opposition if it is to play a constructive role in next year's presidential elections.

UPDATE:

Zyalt has posted a series of pictures taken from the two rallies.

Free Willy

2011-03-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks back, I blogged about the guerilla art collective "Voina" ("War"). The phallic depiction above - which when the bridge was raised faced the current Security Services (FSB) building in St. Petersburg - had received critical accolades from the Russian contemporary art world as a demonstration of "revolutionary art" that "demonstrates the phallic, patriarchal character of our [the Russian] state."

It had been nominated for an award but this nomination had been withdrawn. Now it has been reintroduced into the State Center for Contemporary Art's "Innovation 2010" contest under the title "Kh.... A Prisoner of the FSB." Theres a catch, however: Voina does not want the award. As they stated on their blog Free Voina (which is worth a browse and contains a manifesto linking themselves to the protest art of Dmitri Prigov):

Voina never has and never will participate in any awards or money prizes. We make free, non-whoring art. Our art is our gift to the world and to each and every person. If reading the reports of our actions makes you feel joy or, on the contrary, provokes deep gloomy meditations, then we become happy. Our art touches people. And no one dares fix a price to it. You can’t love for money, you can’t bear a child for money and you can’t make art for money — otherwise it’s not art. It’s a matter of principle and we will always stand by this. To sell art, to value it in terms of money prizes and award statuettes, means to display stereotyped thinking, to equate art with plaster, to murder it. There is no product to our art, it is not aimed at creating a product and evaluating it. Voina is a phenomenon that is based on honesty, fairness, sometimes daredevilry — those are the basic principles and notions, the spirit and the premise. There’s good and there’s evil. Each Voina activist has a position and it is sincere and free.

Furthermore, some of its stated "Goals and objectives" are:

-Creating a real left front of art in Russia in traditions of futurism of 1920 years, which radically shifted all ideological poles by the facts of its being. Rebirth of political protest art all over the world.

- Rebirth of heroical behavioral ideals of an artist-intellectual, in a manner of Russian libertarian decemberism. Creation of image of artist as romantic hero, who prevail over the evil. Creation of lively romantic models in today`s soulless commercial conceptual art.

Nothing if not ambitious. So, if Voina wins, the money will all remain in the state budget. This outcome, in a way, will allow the phallus bridge to be much more than just a protest against the Russian state: it also will be a protest against the close connections between money, culture, and politics in Russia. What's in your wallet?

Odyssey Dawn Causing a Split in the Russian Leadership?

2011-03-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Vladimir Putin has emerged as a powerful critic of the operation to create a no-fly zone and degrade Khaddafi's ability to wage war on the rebels. In remarks today, Putin called the action a "medieval call for a crusade" and framed the issue as a matter of respecting the sovereignty of the Libyan government: "It effectively allows intervention in a sovereign state."

These comments contradict the official Russian position on the growing civil war in Libya. Indeed, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had taken a stance that suggested that the Russian government was less interested in the sovereignty of the Khaddafi regime and more interested in protecting the lives of civilians in Libya:

"We do not accept the use of military force against civilians. That is why Russia joined the consensus of world superpowers with a requirement to cease violence against the civil population. However, Gaddafi's regime did not listen to the requirements of the international community, and the UN Security Council approved the resolution. No one can predict the consequences of the current situation in Libya. We hope that they will be minimal and that they will not undermine the territorial integrity of Libya and the region," Russia's foreign minister said.

For these reasons, the Russian government has abstained from the vote and allowed the UN resolution to pass.

Putin's comments were greeted with a swift rebuke from President Medvedev, saying that any references to the airstrikes as a "crusade" were unacceptable and potentially made things much worse in the region.

This public split in the leadership raises important questions about who is in charge of Russian foreign policy and the future of Russian leadership as Russia gears up for March 2012 presidential elections. Here are a couple of scenarios of what exactly is going on:

1. Putin is still in charge, but does not want to be seen authorizing US military power with an election coming up. He is aware that large numbers of African and Arab countries called for a resolution and has decided against using the veto power (much like the Chinese) in order to maintain credibility in the eyes of these important countries. Yet, at the same time, the prospect of largely US military intervention is very unpopular domestically (given the interventions in Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq) and Putin has decided that he must appear to be critical of these actions to ensure his popularity in the lead up to the presidential elections. In a way, this scenario would suggest that he and Medvedev are playing a good cop/bad cop scenario...

2. Medvedev made this decision against Putin's wishes. This scenario would suggest that Medvedev possesses a less conspiratorial view of western military power and is more willing to work with the West to resolve regional problems (particularly when regional neighbors ask the UN for help). It would also suggest that Medvedev is more independent than we give him credit for and can assemble a coalition in the Russian leadership to push through a policy in the face of Putin's opposition. If this is true, then we might revise our view that Putin is still in full control of the Russian government.

Soviet Nostalgia

2011-03-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

For most of us, March 17 is a day to wear celebrate some foggy conception of Ireland by wearing green and consuming lots of beer. For those nostalgic for the Soviet Union, March 17, 1991 (20 years ago exactly) is an important day as well: it is the date that a majority of Soviet citizens voted to preserve the USSR "as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedoms of all nationalities will be fully guaranteed." This popular demonstration of desire for the preservation of the Soviet Union is said to further prove that the Soviet Union was "dismantled by a group of crooks hired, presumably, by jealous enemies." This Soviet nostalgia is clearly reflected in Putin's infamous comment that "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,"

This myth, of course, omits some glaring problems. First, the referendum was boycotted by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, and Moldova. Second, the phrasing of the referendum - as if often the case - was deliberately parsed to encourage the most support.

Third, and largely ignored, is the fact that March 17, 1991 marked the genesis of the single most important institution in Russian history since 1991: the Russian Presidency. Indeed, in March 1991, the Russian republic (at that point just one Republic within the entire federal structure of the USSR) had an all-powerful parliament that managed political life (obviously still at that time under the supervision of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). However, Boris Yeltsin and other reformers were increasingly growing frustrated with the Communist Party's ability to manipulate Parliamentary rule and were pushing for an elected President who could rival the power of the Party.

When Gorbachev and the USSR federal center called a referendum, they jumped at the chance and added a question to the referendum asking the Russian people whether they supported the creation of a Russian president. 70% approved and soon later the Russian Parliament passed a bill creating the position of Russian President for the first time in Russian history.

This fateful decision was critical to the final dismantling of the Soviet Union. After Boris Yeltsin's landslide victory in the June 1991 Russian presidential elections, he would play a critical role in opposing the August coup (where the hard-line Communist putchists tried to sideline Gorbachev and take over the All-Union USSR government) and then signing the agreements with other Soviet Republics that essentially abolished the federal center and the All-Union Communist Party (and therefore ended Gorbachev's career).

Twenty years later, therefore, the March 17, 1991 referendum is probably best remembered as a short term victory for Gorbachev and those seeking to preserve the Union BUT ultimately a huge blow to the Union. As is clear teh first Rdestruction of the Union and the subsequent development of the institution of Russian president (including its cooptation of many Communist Party functions), the basis of this institution in an All-Union USSR referendum is yet another reminder of the ironies of history.

Silencing the Russian People

2011-03-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Kremlin and Russia's ruling party, United Russia, have perfected numerous tactics to secure electoral victory and maintain power. These strategies include extensive use of administrative resources, bribing voters, and extensive use of misinformation and black PR (kompromat).

But, according to many observers, the recent round of regional elections in Russia on 13 March were some of the most corrupt in recent memory. Given the continued turmoil in the Middle East and the awful tragedy in Japan, this story, however, has not recieved a great deal of press in the English-language world. So, here is a short description of how bad things have seem to have gotten in Russia when it comes to manipulation of elections.

One of the most disturbing incidents was the outright intimidation that an established Russian election watchdog "Golos" ("Voice") recently faced. Golos was established in 2000 to seek to secure free, fair, and clean elections in the wake of the voter fraud that took place during the Yeltsin years. In 2002, it established a newspaper, "Grazhdanskii Golos" (The Citizen Voice), which publicizes its work. In 2005, it joined the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations. It has also participated in drafting an All-Russian Election Code (which is still yet unadopted).

The members of this organization fanned out across Russia on March 13 to monitor elections. They faced a vast campaign of coordinated intimidation and violence.

1. In Nizhnii Novogorod, a correspondent for the The Citizen Voice was arrested on suspicion of terrorism after failing to bow to a sustained campaign of threats and intimidation. Soon after, the police raided his house and confiscated the identity cards of numerous election observers.

2. In Kaliningrad, a Golos activist who was present at a polling station and witnessed outright fraud was taken by three unidentified men and beaten savagely. Golos alleges that this savage attack was the result of an order from the local administration.

3. In Kirov, the head of one of the local election commissions showed observers a letter from the head of the Oblast level election commission demanding that all Golos representatives be removed from polling stations.

As Russia heads toward its federal-level elections in the upcoming year (including the Presidential elections in 2012), these tactics are likely to once again be used. Stay tuned.

NB: English-language description of Golos.

Will the contagion effect spread to Russia?

2011-03-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

The fires of popular unrest are spreading in the Middle East and North Africa. So far, with the exception of Libya, leaders are largely turning to constitutional reform to placate these large opposition movements. The Moroccan King announced yesterday his intention to reform its constitution to satisfy the demands of protesters. Yemen followed suit with a similar pledge of constitutional reform today, though it is unclear if this will placate the opposition. And Egypt of course is already embarking on its own military-led constitutional reform, with all of the dangers that this entails. Tunisia is electing a constituent assembly in July to draft a new constitution.

The contagion effect has not yet spread to Russia. Recent polls from фонд «Общественное мнение» (ФОМ) give us a picture of the satisfaction of the Russian people with their government now.

It is not particularly comforting for Putin and his leadership team. First, perhaps motivated by the Middle East, the number of Russians who are willing to actually take part in protests has risen to 49% (from 40%) in the month of February alone. And a long term study - judging the "Level of protest fervor" in Russia - has shown a steady increase in the number of people willing to protest over the last 12 months. Yet, the same study, posed the more practical question: If there was a meeting or protest in your city this Sunday, would you attend? 64% said no. Only 26% said yes.

What explains these results? One reason is likely the fact that although they are currently dissatisfied with the current government, Russians still feel better off than during the 1990s. Given the unpopularity of Yeltsin and the awful deprivations of 1990s Russia, Russians are probably not keen to experiment with large-scale street revolutions again and not many are willing to risk their lives or livelihoods on such a protest.

Any others you can think of? Please leave a comment...

The Origins of International Woman's Day: 100 years of women's rights?

2011-03-08T11:12:00.000-08:00

Across the English language blogosphere and media, journalists and commentators are touting the 100-year anniversary of International Woman's Day. The centennial is being used to draw attention to maternal health issues, press Arab reformers to include more women, and to criticize current Republican attempts to cut federal programs.  In Egypt, woman organized a march on Tahrir Square, which CNN reports has devolved into a shouting match with male hecklers. And how could I fail to mention Daniel Craig's touching tribute by dressing in drag.

In the United States and much of western Europe, this day generally passes unobserved by the majority of ordinary citizens and remains surprisingly unexploited by the marketing-industrial complex that so gleefully draws on other holidays. Maybe Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day is just too much and crowds it out?  Or maybe celebrating International Woman's Day means that the other 364 belong to men?

Another reason why it is hasnt become a major public holiday in the West lies in its historical development. From the very beginning, this day has been associated with left-wing political movements.  In fact, the Day itself was the brainchild of the Socialist Party of America, which provided the first formal declaration of an International Woman's Day in 1909.   The next year, the Socialist International established a Woman's Day, helping its spread to Europe. In 1917 Russia, women demanding bread and peace took the streets on the Gregorian March 8, 1917 (Feb 23 on the Julian calendar) and helped break the back of the Tsarist regime. Four days later, Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated and the Bolsheviks ruthlessly seized power in the ensuing chaos 7 months later.

The Soviets made this day an official public holiday, largely as a propaganda tool to tie its own rule to the woman's movement. This connection became an empty one, however, as the day soon developed into a day for entrenching rather than overcoming gender stereotypes.  Indeed, across the former Soviet space, International Woman's Day involves men giving woman flowers, possibly deigning to put on an apron and do the cooking, and compliment women on their beauty. Very little emerges about women's rights or liberation; the Kremlin-supported Russia Today demonstrates the official view of the day well in this short clip.

As Miriam Elder deftly points out in the Global Post:

Soviet women carried what has been dubbed a “double burden” — required to work and manage the home, while men were never really expected to live up to both sides of the bargain. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many women embraced an uber-femininity, be it in style of dress or in their expectations of relations between the sexes (man buys things; woman consumes things)

Rarely is that more clear than in the lead-up to International Women’s Day. A host of polls are always released. This year, the Levada Center asked 1,600 men what they valued most in women. The overwhelming winner was thrift (56 percent), followed by good looks (39 percent), thoughtfulness (38 percent) and fidelity (37 percent). At the bottom of the list were: independence (6 percent), temperament (7 percent) and the ability to deal with misfortune (9 percent). For the record, only 31 percent thought a woman's intellect was important.

A Putin-Party: The Putin cult and guerilla marketing in Russia

2011-03-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

On the eve of International Women's Day tomorrow (March 8), a popular Moscow club (Club "Rai") is promoting a party (taking place today and yesterday) entitled: "Putin-party: I want the Prime Minister."

Here, Club Rai is deftly drawing on Putin's status as sex symbol and embodiment of the kind of man a good Russian woman wants: strong, powerful, and dependable.

This is nothing new. Putin has sought to build this cult status in recent years. First, there were the photos of him riding horses with a bare torso that were released to the public. As the Times Online states:

Mr Putin was also following a Soviet tradition of lauding the prowess, usually imaginary, of party leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev, who was fond of hunting for bears and wild boar. He grew so incapable towards the end that KGB officers would drug and tether animals to trees so that Mr Brezhnev could shoot them. President Medvedev, who has previously expressed a love of yoga, has so far refrained from emulating his mentor by stripping off for the cameras.

I also blogged a couple of years ago about the pop sensation "Takogo kak Putin" - a catchy song sung by a pop group calling themselves "Singing Together." In the song, the attractive young female singers declare that they want a man like Putin. It is still unclear whether this pop group was sponsored or created by the Kremlin.

More recently in 2010, a group of female Moscow State journalism students created their own take on Marilyn Monroe's famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President": they made a lingerie calendar in honor of Putin's birthday (October 7). Each month includes a message to the Prime Minister. Perhaps one of the more creative is Miss March declaring to Putin that "You put out the forest fires, but I'm still burning." Of course, this calendar was not a purely spontaneous effort. Although the Kremlin was not involved, the calendar was printed by Vladimir Tabak (a former Moscow State journalism student), whose obscure printing house has now been put on the map by this calendar.

This sycophantic calendar touched off a controversy as other female journalists at Moscow State protested the choice and created their own calendar:

the new calendar attempts to extinguish any enthusiasm. "Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?" is the question posed by Yekaterina Ulianova, in a plain black outfit with yellow tape over her mouth. One of the Kremlin's toughest critics, Politkovskaya was the journalist shot dead on Putin's birthday four years ago today. Other questions include, "When will the next terrorist attack be?"

Unexpectedly, Putin later went on the record declaring that the calendar was "beautiful" in an interview with Naomi Campbell in British GQ.

Now, fast forward to the present and a Moscow-based dance club is also seeking to draw on the Putin cult as a way to promote their club. Here is a brief summary from The Moscow News:

“Putin Party: I Want the Prime-Minister!” is the name of the event and complimentary tickets invite revelers to “Select an object of desire.” The short list [of objects of desire] includes Hollywood heartthrob Bruce Willis, Russian rapster Timati, football star David Beckham and revolutionary Che Guevara. The vote is, however, rigged and visitors to the club and female staff have already chosen the prime-minister, with lipstick marks next to Putin’s name, Lifenews.ru reported. “We wanted to stress that we are choosing the prime minister above everyone,” a club spokeswoman, who identified herself as Maria, told RIA Novosti.

So far, it seems to have been successful: the party went ahead as planned last night and long lines snaked outside in the cold as no less than 2,000 people attended. The official response from Putin's press secretary (Peskov), however, has been frostier: Peskov has stated that a court will look into whether Rai has inappropriately used Putin's image. The organizers at Club Rai, however, have heard nothing official. Generally, in the new Russia, no news is good news: that is, if Putin and his team wanted to stop this party from going forward, they would have already done so and probably none too subtly. My guess is that Mr. Putin's team is also privately calculating that the publicity is good, particularly given the presidential elections next year and will allow this promotion to go forward without any legal actions.

Thus, everyone wins and we see the internal workings of the Putin cult.

Russian energy sector remaining open for foreign oil majors: Total signs deal for massive natural gas development in Western Siberia

2011-03-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

The conventional wisdom is that Russia is taking advantage of increasing commodity prices to slowly squeeze out all foreign involvement in its oil and gas sector. As I have argued in a paper published in Demokratizatsiiya, this narrative of a creeping nationalization in the Russian hydrocarbon sector is a gross oversimplification of a highly complex dynamic (and flat wrong).

Instead, Russia needs foreign oil majors like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell to get to its increasingly difficult-to-extract natural resources. Thus, it clearly needs current and future foreign involvement in its major oil and gas projects - although these will almost certainly be minority shares, the Russian government has no choice but to entice in these highly capitalized and technology-rich companies.

Recent news seems to be bearing this thesis out: BP signed a massive 16 billion dollar share swap deal to extract hydrocarbons from the Arctic. Also, today Total purchased a 12.5% minority share in a massive liquified natural gas (LNG) project in Western Siberia. LNG requires significant technological investment: Total will help ensure that this facility is the best in the world. Here is a summary from The National :

The French oil group Total plans to acquire almost a fifth of Russia's biggest independent gas producer and will join a large project to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from western Siberia.

At a meeting in Moscow on Monday, a US$4 billion (Dh14.68bn) agreement was signed for Total to take a 12.08 per cent stake in Novatek with options to increase the holding to 15 per cent within 12 months and 19.4 per cent within three years. The meeting was attended by Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of Total, and Leonid Mikhelson, the chairman of Novatek.

The French company will also become the biggest foreign investor in Novatek's Yamal LNG project, with a 20 per cent interest. The project includes the development of the South Tambey gas and condensate field in western Siberia's Yamal Peninsula, which holds an estimated 44 trillion cubic feet of gas resources from which the partners plan to produce 15 million tonnes per year of LNG. The Yamal deal is expected to close by July.

"Total is delighted with this strategic alliance with Novatek, which will accelerate the group's development in Russia," Mr de Margerie said. "In becoming the first international investor to participate in the development of the giant gas resources of the Yamal Peninsula, Total pursues its strategy aimed at establishing partnerships in producing countries with national players and confirms its leading position in the liquefied natural gas business."

Russian authorities last year declared the Yamal LNG project to be of national interest. It would allow Russia to compete with African and Qatari LNG supplies that have been displacing Russian pipeline gas in western Europe. The development would be Russia's second LNG project after Sakhalin Island in the far east of Siberia.

Hydrocarbon projects are only going to get more complex in Russia - thus, Russia will likely continue to work closely with oil majors (as long as they are will to accept their place as minority stakeholders).

Art or criminal mischief?

2011-03-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

Inset: This photo depicts a real cat being thrown at a real McDonalds employee. The cats were thrown to "alleviate the boredom" of the McDonald's employees by Russian art group Voina...

Russia has a deep tradition of avant-garde art that has tested the boundaries of art and expression (think 1922-1932 and Mayakovsky, Melnikov, Kandinsky, et al). The work of the current group Voina - meaning "war" in Russian - is part of this tradition. As Russia's political and economic system continues to centralize and grow more sclerotic, corrupt, and reliant on natural resources, this group is seeking to shake things up, juxtaposing humor and the absurd next to the gray-ness of Russian official life (much of their work focuses on stunts involving the police). The performance and public guerilla art of this collective (comprising at least 60 people) is dedicated - in their words - to the “destruction of outdated repressive-patriarchal socio-political symbols and ideologies.”

Their first major stunt was an orgy two days prior to Medvedev's stage-managed election as successor to Putin. Here is a description from Wired.

About 12 activists, one of whom was a pregnant woman, entered the Biology Museum and staged an orgy.

Meanwhile, the group’s leader and chief ideologist, the bearded Alexei Plutser-Sarno, donned a top hat and unfurled a banner that said: “Fsck for the Teddy Bear Heir!” The slogan played on Mr Medvedev’s surname, which is derived from the Russian word for “bear”, and poked fun at what the group said were “farcical and pornographic elections” in which Mr Medvedev was to inherit Vladimir Putin’s “throne”. The group was charged with “disseminating pornography” and so began a life underground, where the core group of activists eschewed mobile phones and moved apartments frequently to evade the authorities.

Some of their more attention grabbing events since have been:

1. Painting a large phallus on a bridge in St. Petersburg that when raised faced the FSB headquarters...

2. Flipping over police cars in a "palace coup." This is the act that has brought criminal charges.

3. Having young women kiss female police officers.

Their work has attracted alot of attention. The elusive British street artist Banksy has pledged an 80,000 pound donation to the Voina art collective. It has also led to the arrest of two of its prominent members (who are charged with hooliganism), and the group's leader is on the run from authorities.

But, Russia is never that simple. Despite the official repression of the group, Voina has been nominated for an award from the Ministry of Culture for its phallus on the bridge. This piece of work in particular has attracted good reviews from critics in powerful positions like the Russian Museum:

"Voina has inherited the tradition of the Russian futurists from the early 20th century. This isn't just art, but revolutionary art," said Olesya Turkina, a curator and research fellow at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. "The Dick Captured by KGB was an absolutely genius artwork that demonstrates the phallic, patriarchal character of our state." She admitted that overturning police cars was more difficult to justify, but said it is "absurd" that the hooliganism charge on which the arrests were made is the same used against skinhead groups who perpetrate racist attacks.

Recently, however, the Ministry has revealed that Voina is no longer being considered for the prize. Not surprising, I guess, but clearly despite the official Kremlin line, Voina has some supporters in high places.

Pipeline politics: Gazprom increases role as natural gas supplier to China

2011-03-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

Today, Gaprom finally purchased the massive Kovytka natural gas field in eastern Siberia from TNK-BP, ending a chapter in Gazprom's (and the Russian state's) move to control natural gas resources flowing to China.

This has been a long-running saga. In 2007, at the height of the Russian government's moves to reassert control over its strategic oil and gas resources, TNK-BP - under heavy pressure from the Russian government - provisionally agreed to sell to Gazprom. However, this deal never went through because of wrangling over the price. As the deal languished, Russia's largest oil company (Gazprom is Russia's largest natural gas company) - Rosneft - began to express interest in the project:

Investors believe that Rosneft has targeted the acquisition of the Kovykta gas deposit so that it can build a more diversified energy giant, Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Moscow’s Uralsib bank, wrote in an e-mailed note to investors earlier. “Control over the Kovykta gas project would also allow it be the gas export partner with China as the gas deposit is well located to fill a dedicated gas pipe into Eastern China. It is well known that China favors a ring-fenced project that has a primary source of gas, a dedicated pipeline and possible CNPC involvement in the operating company. For that, China would probably pay in advance for gas as it did with oil to be delivered via the ESPO (East Siberian Pacific Ocean) Pipeline from Rosneft production.

As we found out today, however, Rosneft was not successful. The fact that Gazprom finally completed the purchase suggests that the Russian government has decided that Gazprom will remain the major natural gas player and that Rosneft will not diversify into natural gas (as some experts thought when Rosneft seemed to be moving in to make the purchase).

Now that this deal is done, Gazprom will now have a virtual monopoly of the supply of natural gas to China. Indeed, Gazprom took the Sakhalin-2 offshore natural gas field in 2007 and now will be the only player in the natural gas market for China. This is potentially a huge growth market, particularly as China seeks to move away from its reliance on coal and move to cleaner energy sources. Indeed, a recent NY Times article suggests that the Chinese are increasingly worried about the effects of its coal burning economy on the environment. Natural gas (which burns much cleaner than coal) from Kovytka and Sakhalin will likely play a major role in solving this dilemma.

Blogging to ensure accountable government in Russia

2011-02-25T08:16:00.000-08:00

Russia is now the second largest internet market in Europe and growing. Within this growing internet community, Russia has an extremely strong and active blogging presence (most operating through the San Francisco-based - but Russian-owned- platform Live Journal). Bloggers are using the internet to pressure the government, expose rampant Russian corruption, and hold officials accountable for violations. It has become, in many ways, a powerful court of public opinion that the government officials cannot ignore.

Global Voices Online has a highly informative survey of the most influential Russian bloggers. Here is an excerpt of the kind of outcomes that bloggers have helped create. Here is an example from one blogger, Valerii Nazarov

His coup de grace was the expose of Ruslan Gattarov, senator and leading light of Molodaya Gvardiya, United Russia’s youth wing. At a time that Russia was facing an ecological nightmare of uncontrollable forest fires, this young apparatchik released several pictures of him supposedly putting his life fighting some of these fires. Nazarov showed Gattarov had, in fact, deliberately set some trees on fire to make for a flattering photo-shoot. The embarassing revelation brought about Gattarov’s removal from Molodaya Gvardiya’s top table.
In another example of smart digital journalism, Nazarov helped identify a gang of hooligans who were targeting lone drivers in the neighbouring city of Yekaterinburg. The attitude of the police varied from ignorance to incompetence, but Nazarov led a brilliant investigation, using photos and data collected from victims to lead him back to the criminals’ odnoklassniki social networking accounts. The evidence he uncovered was sensational, and led back to members of the United Russia party in the Tyumen region. After Nazarov’s investigation, police were forced into action and arrested one of the offenders. The blogger is also one of the founders of the mejdurechensk LiveJournal community, a space for free discussion of the hottest political topics.

Read on for more...

Corporate warfare, Russian-style

2011-02-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

A powerful state-owned bank is using a television expose on state-sponsored television to force out a minority shareholder in a corporate takeover target.

Business is a vicious game in Russia and the Russian state has powerful levers to expand its empire. The removal of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov last fall therefore had more than just political ramifications - it had deep implications for big business in the Russian capital. Indeed, over the course of his 20 years as Moscow Mayor, Luzhkov and his wife accumulated a vast business empire in Moscow. Since his removal from power, oligarchs and state companies - working closely with the Kremlin - have systematically purchased the Luzhkov empire. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr. Luzhkov - the deposed feudal lord - discussed these moves against him.

One of the most glittering prizes in this game is the Bank of Moscow. On February 22, 2011 (two days ago), VTB bought the City of Moscow's controlling stake in the Bank of Moscow (50.8%). VTB is owned by the Russian government (though is privatizing some of its shares to raise capital) and is THE up and coming bank in Russia today. As the FT reports:

VTB’s investment bank unit, non-existent only three years ago, is now the number one in Russia in both equity and debt capital markets. Its retail bank, again from a virtual standing start, is number two, and is set to grow again with the acquisition of railway bank Transkreditbank and Bank of Moscow.

VTB is also known as a black hole for Kremlin cash and is seeking to be the Gazprom of Russian banking. The FT again:

The bank had also initially planned to sell the 10 per cent stake to a pool of strategic investors led by TPG, the US private equity group. But bankers familiar with the matter say they may have balked at taking on significant stakes in the bank. “The strategic buyers were in a position to take a good hard look inside the bank. But now the government is selling it to investors who aren’t able to take a good look,” said one person familiar with the matter. TPG is now readying to buy a stake of only up to 0.3 per cent in the bank.

At the root of concerns is VTB’s murky corporate business, which is still seen by many senior executives and bankers in Moscow as a black hole for Kremlin cash. “They’re bringing in new people from western banks at ridiculous salaries, but they don’t intrude into the inner core,” said one executive. “The boom in the investment bank business looks like a cover for failings on the corporate side.”

VTB likely used its connections in the Kremlin to pressure the new leadership in the City of Moscow to get a good deal on its purchase of the Bank of Moscow two days ago. Indeed, Uralsib Capital analyst Leonid Slipchenko believes the Bank of Moscow was undervalued:
“Frankly, I expected a higher price. According to my calculations, the ratio capitalization to the bank’s own capital was at 1.4, which is a kind of some undervaluation.”

However, VTB has not yet finished the purchase: it wants 100% ownership in the Bank of Moscow. Minority shareholder, Andrei Borodin, who owns almost 20% of the shares, believes that the initial purchase was greatly undervalued and is making life difficult for VTB's attempts to consolidate control at the Bank of Moscow. The police have raided his offices, yet no charges have been filed yet.
But, perhaps as a warning to Borodin that he better sell or else, the Russian TV station NTV (which was the last independent television station before it was purchased by Gazprom in the early Putin era) has suddenly decided to run an expose that is directly focused on Andrei Borodin's corrupt involvement with the Luzhkov administration. Experts say this black propaganda - most of which is likely true (Luzhkov and his cronies were highly corrupt) - is both a signal to Borodin to sell as well as a possible way to turn public opinion against Borodin if the struggle for control continues.

Borodin will have to submit and sell - the real question will be for how much.

Russia's Neo-Feudalist State and its origins in the "democratic" period of the 1990s

2011-02-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

An interesting and provocative article about the moribund state of the Russian political system.

I think it contains a great deal of fascinating insights about Russia today and its current direction.

In particular, it highlights a key misperception that persists strongly in the West today:

[Westerners forget that] the quasi-authoritarian “superpresidential” Russian political style arose in the “democratic” period of the mid-1990s, when then-President Boris Yeltsin forcibly dissolved the legitimate Parliament and pushed through a new constitution under which the powers of the President were not balanced by any restraints. Indeed, his status resembled that of the Führer of the German nation as it was determined by the Ermächtigungsgesetz of March 23, 1933. Later, Yeltsin’s inner circle orchestrated his victory in the 1996 presidential elections. This derailed the country from the natural path of alternating power between liberal and socialist politicians that, however improbably, led Eastern Europe to its often anxious but successful development in the 1990s and 2000s. From that time on, the idea that “there is no alternative” to the current leader or to his chosen successor has become a vital part of Russian politics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the remnants of the KGB roster.

My new blog: Constitutional Democracy

2011-02-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

As political revolution sweeps, the Middle East, constitutional reform will follow. Come follow all the constitutional politics at my new blog...

The Kremlin's strategy to Middle Eastern uprisings: Tie Uprisings to Muslim Extremism

2011-02-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

Many dictatorships are currently rather worried as the contagion effect from Tunisia and Egypt seems to be spreading. The reaction of the Russian government has been interesting as it has sought to link the uprisings in the Middle East to the Muslim extremism and religious fanaticism (as Mubarak and the Israelis have, as well as Glenn Beck).

Russian President Medvedev visited the restive Caucasuses region today and said that "uprisings could lead to decades of "fires" spreading Islamic extremism, and that the Arab rebellions could have a "direct effect" on the situation in Russia."

Furthermore, state-sponsored Russian TV was juxtaposing Medvedev's appeals for strong leadership with on the "chaos" unleashed in Libya from the uprising.

It remains to be seen whether this will be a successful strategy. In the meantime, however, one thing is certainly clear: the uprisings in the Middle East are worrying strongly dictatorial regimes across the globe.

How to avoid a new dictator in Egypt: Lessons from Post-Communist Political Change

2011-02-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

Mubarak has stepped down and the crowds in the streets of Egypt are jubilant. Freedom and democracy are coming to Egypt. Well, wait a second, not so fast. Looking at post-communist change, we can learn that the fall of one dictatorial regime does not necessarily mean the rise of a liberal democratic one. Egypt now faces a long and treacherous road to actual pluralistic, law-based democracy. Here are some lessons that post-communism teaches:

1. Use existing rules to structure the transition.The most successful transitions to democracy in the post-communist world stayed within the confines of their communist-era constitutions. For instance, to this day, Hungary is still operating under its Soviet-era constitution (albeit much amended). Furthermore, it took Poland years until it finally adopted a new constitution - and much of the transition to democratic, pluralistic government took place under the amended communist-era constitution.
These communist-era constitutions were largely aspirational during the reign of the Communist Party in these countries. When the Party collapsed, however, they suddenly mattered - a whole lot. They then served as a powerful force for ensuring moderation, peaceful regime change, and reducing the overall stakes of political power. There is no question that the use of Soviet-era constitutions created a hailstorm of protest against what were termed as “illegitimate” constitutions. Although this was almost certainly true, these constitutions - no matter their legitimacy - helped ensure that all of the new players in the immediate post-Soviet political game sat down and had to follow external rules.

Lesson for Egypt: Keep the transition bounded by existing rules in the existing Egyptian constitution to ensure that all the players vying for power in the post-Mubarak world will be forced to compromise. The legitimacy of the “Mubarak constitution” - as it surely will be labeled - will certainly be questioned; however, it will serve an important stabilizing role in allowing the regime to transition toward a more pluralistic regime and will also teach any new potential players that they will have to abide by external rules. This is not to say that it should not be amended: by all means, the constitution should be amended. But it should not be suspended or ignored. All signs suggest that the military will serve as guarantor of stability and if they allow the current constitution to structure political change, they will be doing the country a favor in the long term.
Why?

2. Beware elites making frequent appeals to the “will of the people.”In Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and other post-Soviet republics, power-hungry and charismatic presidents suspended the constitutions in the name of popular sovereignty. They claimed to be representing the will of the people against the old bureaucratic elites from the communist period. In the process, they were able to undermine and de-legitimize party-based legislative assemblies which were just beginning to assert their newly found prerogatives in the post-Communist Party world. In so doing, they built a political ideology that allowed them to reassert dictatorial power.
Yeltsin set this model. He consistently attacked Parliament and his opponents for resisting the will of the people. As the agent of the people, he argued, he could do no wrong. And for a time, the people did support him, particularly as they grew frustrated with the inefficiencies of parliamentary government. During this period, he was able to accrue incredible power, particularly vis a vis the Parliament. In the long term, however, as it became increasingly clear that he could not solve the problems of the Russian people and his popularity dropped, his appeals to popular sovereignty became simply empty slogans. Yeltsin had essentially rebuilt the Communist Party apparatus in his own presidential apparatus. Putin and Medvedev have inherited this apparatus of power.

Lesson for Egypt: Try to avoid creating the post of an elected president or giving a forum for charismatic elites to claim the mantle of popular sovereignty. Pursue parliamentary reforms and party-building. Although this might be criticized as inefficient, resist any impulse to throw power to one person as the savior of Egypt. He will most certainly become a dictator and a new Mubarak.

20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

2009-11-09T06:56:00.000-08:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that has taken on a great narrative significance in America as a near religious, revolutionary triumph of good over evil, Reaganism over soft liberalism, freedom over tyranny. It spawned books (The Triumph of Liberal Revolution), ideological movements (neoconservatism), and intellectual movements (transitology).

Douthat of the NY Times captures this naive romanticization perfectly in his column today:(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09douthat.html):

By rights, the Ninth of November should be a holiday across the Western world, celebrated with the kind of pomp and spectacle reserved for our own Independence Day.
Never has liberation come to so many people all at once — to Eastern Europe’s millions, released from decades of bondage; to the world, freed from the shadow of nuclear Armageddon; and to the democratic West, victorious after a century of ideological struggle.
Never has so great a revolution been accomplished so swiftly and so peacefully, by ordinary men and women rather than utopians with guns.

Despite a flood of ink from political columnists hoping to make a Disney narrative out of the fall of the Berlin Wall, very little of the real published empirical historical work exploring this complex social and political transformation has permeated the general consciousness. This lack of western understanding has helped contribute to real problems and misunderstandings in American foreign policy (it is no coincidence that the ideological origins of the neoconservative movement lie in the fall of the Soviet Union).

A recent book, Uncivil Society by Stephen Kotkin, hopes to fill this void, pointing to a far more realistic, but far less politically sexy, answer for why the Berlin Wall fell: the system cannibalized itself.

"Uncivil Society" examines the end of Soviet-style socialism in three exemplary bloc states: East Germany, Romania and Poland. Kotkin complains that on this subject most analysts "continue to focus disproportionately, even exclusively, on the 'opposition,' which they fantasize as a 'civil society.'" With the exception of Poland, where the Solidarity movement constituted a real counterpart to the Communist regime, this notion of a valiant resistance who modeled a better order and spearheaded the mass uprisings of 1989 falls, in Kotkin's view, "into the realm of fiction." And, while he credits the West for its "steadfast" containment of the Soviet Union ("whatever the mistakes and excesses"), Kotkin doesn't seem to regard direct Western action as a significant cause of the collapse of the USSR, either. Instead, he views the whole thing as an "implosion"; the Soviet-style establishments ("uncivil societies") simply gave up the ghost -- in some cases even helping the dissolution along. (quoted from http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/10/14/uncivil_society/)

Russian Constitutional Court Cites the European Convention on Human Rights in Landmark Ruling on Illegal Detentions

2009-06-17T14:32:00.001-07:00

On June 16, the Constitutional court issued a ruling in a case brought by three people arrested by Russian police in recent political protests. The Court criticized the current process whereby Russian courts - despite thousands of claims - regularly dismiss claims by Russians detained or held by the Russian police (often on the grounds of jaywalking or disturbing the peace). In a strongly worded ruling, they ruled that Russian legislators need to bring the Russian Administrative Code into line with the European Convention on Human Rights.

This ruling comes against a backdrop of a Russian justice system that does little to allow Russian citizens to sue the government for arbitrary actions. A holdover from previous Tsarist and Soviet days, the relative lack of responsibility that officials enjoy has been a constant source of criticism from human rights watchers in Russia. The Court's decision seems to be an attempt by the Court to finally address this problem and pressure the legislature into building a real framework for holding the actions of Russian officialdom to account. The real question, as with many questions in Russia, is whether this ruling will be enforced. In other words, will the Russian legislature pass laws that ensure that people detained by police have recourse to sue the government.

It seems unlikely. The Russian President's permanent representative on the Court Mikhail Krotov sought to downplay these detentions hinting that they were not a big deal: "If the police ruin someone's suit or hold them for three hours - is this really serious damage?" He went on to say that the Court had overstepped its bounds in suggesting to lawmakers how to legislate. Given the power that the Russian presidency has over the Parliament and the executive branches of power, major changes seem unlikely in the future.

However, even given this, glimmers of change do seem to be on the horizon.

The Russian prosecutors office (prokuratura) supported the Court's decision, arguing that every person who is detained illegally should have the right to challenge this detention in court.

Thus, there does seem to be some growing support for the creation of a real mechanism for administrative justice in Russia.

Obama drawing on Soviet propaganda techniques

2009-01-13T13:44:00.001-08:00

Max Weber reminds us that there are three types of authority: traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal. Presidential campaigns are about establishing some kind of legitimate authority - something that is called, looking presidential.

Obama, with his lack of traditional authority (George W. Bush derived much of his authority from this type of authority) and youth and inexperience (rational-legal authority was weak, particularly in contrast with Hilary Clinton) wisely drew on his charisma as a way of building his authority and winning the presidency. Thus, we have seen chants, spontaneous outbreaks of cultish like following. Charismatic leaders also often come along at times of trouble or crisis; thus, the financial crisis, therefore, helped push Obama as well.

Russia has a long tradition of charismatic leadership and iconography.

And one of the most successful Obama poster makers, Shepard Fairey, is deliberately drawing on Russian constructivist posters from the Soviet period in his portrayal of Obama. Fascinating stuff.

The poster above has become an iconic poster, popping up all over the US during the campaign.

Interestingly, this link has become a major point of talk for the right wing bloggers as it is seen as further proof of Obama's dangerous, communist tendencies, etc..

This is an absurd argument: in fact, as we know from Soviet history, charismatic leadership campaigns always start from the bottom up: Nina Tumarkin's book on Lenin is a good example - the Lenin cult was initially a bottom up, largely spontaneous movement. Then it is harnessed.

This seems to be what has happened here: this was a largely spontaneous movement that has since be harnessed by the Obama campaign in service of that most American of outcomes - winning. McCain initially sought to make fun of this move with his ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and other celebrities (a move that Plouffe has since revealed was the most frightening to the campaign).

But later on, he chose Sarah Palin, who had a similar charismatic appeal (and who created a similar cultish following).

So, charismatic leadership won the day in the richest country in the world; so much for arguments that modernity and progress are getting us away from old methods of legitimacy creation.

The Petersburg Constitutional Court

2008-05-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

The Constitutional COurt has now officially moved to St. Petersburg. Today is the first official day of residence for the 19 Constitutional Court judges who have moved from their previous court in Moscow to St. Petersburg.

All 19 Judges agreed to make the trip to the northern capital and they are awaited by a luxurious (if also rather creepy) set of cottage residences in the prestigious Krestovskii Island where they will all live in close proximity (one road leads to their little village). They also have a special sauna and medical facilities.

In what might suggest the continuing encroachment of executive power on the other branches of power in the Russian government, the ever expanding Presidential administration is moving into the former offices that the Constitutional court occupied until now.

At the same time, the move will lead to a net decrease in the number of assistants who aid the Judges in their work. A new (but decreased) number will be taken from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University (connected with Putin and others).

It remains to be seen whether geography really is destiny in determining the influence of the Constitutional court. If it is, the Constitutional Court has been both sidelined and placed in a tightly controlled setting where they can be controlled (the fact that they are all to live in such close proximity is disturbing).

Nash Dom Gazprom: Medvedev's Energy Policy

2008-04-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

Many have speculated that the election of Medvedev would be a boon for Gazprom in its ongoing business war with Rosneft over the Russian hydrocarbon industry. Today's news suggested that they are right.

Today, Gazprom received the massive gas field of Chayanda (which has been classified as a field of strategic significance) without a tender. This flew directly in the face of Yuri Trutnev and the Ministry of Natural Resource's view that this massive field should be offered in a tender - therefore, giving Rosneft some leverage to gain more control of this field.

An interesting question to follow now will be the fate of Rosneft during a Medvedev administration. Will the Sechin-led Rosneft be downgraded and to be eventually absorbed by the national champion, Gazprom? Putin tried to merge Gazprom and Rosneft and failed - will Medvedev have the power to finally do this?

What about the publicly owned Lukoil? And Surgutneftegaz, which has remained very loyal to the Kremlin?

Today's move suggests that Medvedev is going to be aggressive in the pushing the interests of Gazprom - it is now possible that Gazprom will receive other gas fields without a tender (including Sakhalin 3).

Russian political analysts have pointed out that the continuing influence of Putin in the Kremlin will ensure that Medvedev will not be able to alter the balance between Rosneft and Gazprom too much...

Either way, Rosneft is on the back foot right now. What happens with Sakhalin 3 will give us more information.

Stay tuned.

Uzbekistan and Western Human Rights Policy

2008-03-05T12:06:00.001-08:00

Worsening conditions in Afghanistan have led America (through NATO) to once again engage with Uzbekistan.

1. History of relations

Readers will remember that the West (and America in particular) had engaged seriously with Uzbekistan during the post 9/11 buildup to the invasion of Afghanistan (Uzbekistan became a critical base for American warplanes). however, this accord broke down after America and the West widely criticized Uzbekistan for the human rights violations that accompanied the Andizhan massacre in 2005. This had led Karimov, the Uzbek President, to expel the Americans from the base in Uzbekistan and move more closely to Russia and China (partly facilitated by the Shanghai COoperation Organization). However, since that break down of relations, in the last year both the West and Karimov have had an increased dialogue.

2. Why? What has changed? Why have relations improved?

Reuters attributes this to an attempt to promote democracy:

"The West has stepped up contacts with Uzbekistan over the past year, hoping dialogue would lead the nation towards more democracy. U.S. Admiral William Fallon visited Tashkent in January in a first high-level attempt to mend ties since 2005."

I disagree. More likely, this is a realization by NATO and America that the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is more important to their national interest than the human rights record of Uzbekistan. Indeed, there have been few - if any - moves by Uzbekistan to increase its pitiful human rights record since the dialogue began.

"I want to create a holiday atmosphere. There will be music playing everywhere. "

2008-03-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

You'd hardly know it but the Russian Presidential elections are tomorrow, Sunday March 2nd. The most intriguing part of the day will be the turnout - what percentage of Russians will turn out and vote knowing that Dmitry Medvedev will be the next President?

One of the state owned television stations is running a story about the different attractions that are being offered at different polling stations to encourage Russians to come out and vote.

Here are a few of them:

1. In St. Petersburg, voters will get free disks and books signed by Russian actors, singers, and sportsmen.

2. In the Samara Oblast, they will be showing cartoons about heros going to vote at the polling stations in order to encourage parents with small children to come. They will also be handing out free scarfs to the children.

3. In Nizhnyi Novgorod, they will be entering people who vote into a lottery to win a new car. What car, you ask? Nothing less than the pride of the Russian automobile industry: a new Volga.

4. In Khaborovsk, every voter will be given a token which they will then be able to give to their children. The children will then bring this to school and the teachers will collect them. The school that collects the most will get a free excursion to the theater and will be recognized in the newspaper.

5. In Kazan, they will open a polling station in the major train station there where thousands of people will be traveling.

6. In Kaliningrad, all public transport will be free for the day. One of the authorities in Kaliningrad said "I want to create a holiday atmosphere. There will be music playing everywhere. "

7. In Sochi, voters will also be voting for the mascot for the Winter Olympic Games in 2014.

8. In Karachaevo-Cherkisia, all voters will get free haircuts.

9. Finally, for those who don't turn on the tv, radio, open the window, or read the newspaper, every mobile phone subscriber in Russia will receive a text message saying "Everyone to the polling stations!"

NATO Summit in April: How Much of a Lame Duck will Putin Be?

2008-02-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

As the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute heats up and Russia is threatening to target missiles at Ukraine if they join NATO and help host US missile defense rockets, Putin has announced that he will be attending the NATO summit in April. This summit promises to be a highly contentious one (and not just because of Putin's attendance). Major questions will be discussed, including the NATO mission in Afghanistan, the expansion of NATO eastwards (particularly, its expansion further into former Soviet Republics like Georgia and Ukraine).

This is a surprising announcement for a number of reasons:

1. Most of all it is surprising because Putin will be traveling after the Presidential elections and Putin will be a lame duck - Medvedev's inauguration will be in May. Most experts think Putin will use this as a way of setting the tone of the relationship between the west and Russia on the eve of Medvedev's decision to take power. Others think it is a way of sending a message to Medvedev that he is in charge and that he doesnt plan to fade away from power, even after the elections and in his last days as president.

2. A major question will be this: will Putin's lame duck status stop him from resolving any problems? The reaction of the western members - who will most likely want to encourage Putin to step down from power - will be telling. They might try to treat him as a lame duck and refuse to really face any hard questions in the NATO-Russia relationship. Alternatively, they will use the forum to avoid further deterioration of relations. The latter is the most likely result.

However it turns out, the most important part of this visit will be symbolic. Putin will make his voice heard as President for the last time; NATO will get its last chance to communicate with the most combative Russian leader since Andropov. It will set the tone of the next four years of a Medvedev presidency.

Looking in the Mirror: Russia and America

2008-02-10T14:50:00.000-08:00

Russia and America have long viewed each other through stereotypes, political rhetoric, and fear. On the Russian side, the image set forth by the political and (state controlled) media elite is America as a violent and rapacious expansionist power marauding through middle eastern countries, setting up missile defense shields on Russian borders, expanding NATO, and encircling Russia in a ring of military hardware. This vision helps galvanize political support in opposition to a seemingly omnipotent threat.
From the American perspective, political discourse encourages us to see Russia as dangerous, unstable country, hoping to return back to its Soviet roots, and looking for confrontation with the west.

Both versions are utter nonsense: Russians certainly do not want to go back to breadlines, inability to travel, and stagnating economy in order to get their pride on the international forum back. Similarly, America's policies are at best only partially aimed at Russia, many (like missile defense) are acknowledged as universally useless and do not threaten Russia at all.

These misperceptions of each other, however, serve the interests of political elites in both countries - they reinforce old cold war stereotypes that are comfortable and familiar. Yet, such rhetoric cannot hold up, as Russia has opened up to the world. Many of the American bloggers on the blogosphere have lived in Russia, know Russians, or have studied Russia; they cannot be so easily duped into thinking that Russia is the Soviet Union again (as they might have been during the Cold War or earlier when Russia was closed to the outside world). Alternatively, many Russians also understand the misleading nature of anti-American propaganda in Putinist politics.

A brilliant article from Gazeta.ru's Semen Novoprudsky demonstrates this increasing awareness on the Russian side . It suggests that Russia's criticisms of America are ultimately hollow: Russia essentially wants a version of American political stability, economic prosperity, and opportunity. There are no great ideological schisms; Russia and America are natural allies.

Novoprudsky is right. Both countries would do better to see the other in a more balanced light. And the only question is how quickly these stereotypes are wiped away and the two countries understand each other's flaws and strengths more clearly.

New Russian Internet Watchdog Proposed

2008-01-29T13:47:00.000-08:00

Today, the Duma is considering in its first reading a Bill "On the Internet" which proposes the creation of an Internet Technology Center. It also envisions the creation of an Association of Electronic Communication for the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the countries of the CIS (the loose confederation of successor states to the Soviet Union). Other CIS countries (like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, or Belarus - who already have tight internet controls) could now work closely with the Russian watchdog (an ominous sign).

The government has of course been quick to argue that this body is simply created in response to the rising number of cyber crimes and, in particular, to curb increasing nationalist hate speech that is resounding across the Russian internet.

For instance, the head of the committee on constitutional lawmaking, Yuri Sharandin pointed out that it is "not only possible to regulate the internet but it is also necessary to regulate it." He said that the center would not engage in unconstitutional censorship, but simply "the punishment of legal violations, for instance, the distribution of child pornography, or racist or nationalist speech." Other regulated speech that was mentioned by Duma members was "information on how to make bombs,

However, as some critics have pointed out, the text of the law seems to be wider than this: the center is charged with regulate the "development and use of the internet."

Anton Nosik, a Russian internet expert, argues that this law raises dozens of questions. First, he thinks the creation of a watchdog might lead to the Chinese approach to internet use, in which users are limited access to certain sites.

Much is still to be determined, though, the Bill is up for a final reading in March.

And now to the cultural front: The Russian Orthodox Church?

2008-01-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

A series of announcements recently by Medvedev and the United Russia party suggest that the government is now looking to exert more control over the culture industry in Russia.

1. Lenfilm, the old venerable Soviet film agency, is no longer to be privatized and will now be given aggressive state funding in order to create films that will have appeal not just in Russia but across the world.

2. The Russian Orthodox Church - almost certainly with Kremlin backing - is now creating a commission on morality in the media and will be rating television shows.

3. The Russian Duma is now considering a bill that will make it a finable offense to read pornographic material in public.

The interesting factor in these new cultural programs is the influence of the Russian orthodox church. The bill on pornographic material was introduced by a former Nashi member - and, as many of you know, Nashi has strong ties with the Russian orthodox church. Recent polls suggest that no more than 6% of Russians actually attend church on a regular basis. But does this mean that these programs will be a failure? I dont think so. In this sense, at least, Nashi's involvment with the Russian orthodox church gives us the answer: they are involved with the Church as a nationalist - not religious - enterprise. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Chruch has little effect on the average Russian's private belief, but could have a great deal of influence on his/her public attitudes to government/nation/leaders.

In this way, the Church will continue its paradoxical rise: despite very little religious belief, the Church will instead become a symbol of Russia nationhood and identity, thereby helping to create (if the authorities have their way) another secular style belief in the Russian state...

Promoting Putinism and a New Ideological Stance: The Putin Museum

2008-01-09T22:57:00.000-08:00

A law has been introduced into the Duma by the ever present Putin sycophant who also happens to be head of A Just Russia Sergei Mironov that will create a museum for Vladimir Putin studies. The law claims that the new institute will promote research based on Putin that will explore issues of Russia's place in the world, its future development, and its history. It also claims to be a way for future presidents to preserve their role in Russian life after they have finished their two terms.

This is an interesting development: it seems likely that this Institute will be another part in a growing network of governmental bodies that are supporting the new Putinism/sovereign democracy ideology which is now being touted as the gel for the development of the new Russia - and is Putin's new coalition for bringing together Russia and redefining its 'mission' in the world after the fragmentation of the post-communist 1990s. This ideology seems to be developing into a strange blend of continued capitalist reforms, Eurasianist ideology (Dugin, the Eurasianist thinker is now featured prominently in Kremlin propaganda and espouses similar ideas regarding Russia's use of landpower and what he calls a "conservative revolution" - one that seemingly preserves traditional Russian institutions while also brings about needed change), anti-Americanism (see Nashi's frequent attacks on America and on opposition politicians as being American), and good ole fashioned nationalism (this is mainly manifested through spending oil money on the army and "national projects", though here, there is a difficult struggle going on between those who are more and less willing to flirt with anti-immigration and racism in Russia as another plank in the Putin coalition). Much of this is leading to a renewed interest in the Tsarist empire and its less western oriented ideology...

Constitutional Meaning in Russia: Limiting or Legitimizing the Russian State?

2007-12-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

One of the major decisions of the last year or so in Russia has been Putin's decision to step down from the presidency, resist the temptations to change the Constitution, and decline to take up a third term. On its face, this would suggest that the Constitution is an influential document in Russian political life. Yet, its legitimacy has been challenged by some in the past, much of which is based on the Constitution's checkered past. In fact, the Russian Constitution is widely considered by many constitutional experts as a bloodstained document: it was pushed through by the Yeltsin government after he had forcibly disbanded the Russian Congress (by sending the military into the Russian congress) and then dismissing the Russian constitutional court after they had declared Yeltsin's actions unconstitutional.

And, despite the Putin presidency's attempts to jettison much of their inheritance from the Yeltsin-era 1990s - including pluralism, influential oligarchs, decentralization - Putin has embraced the Constitution. He often speaks of the importance of constitutional order in Russia. In fact, he has taken the Constitution and given it a distinctly Putinist (and un-western) interpretation: for Putin (and those in his sovereign democracy movement - an ideology that preaches a strong, proud state apparatus), the Constitution does not limit the government (as our Constitutions do in the West) but instead legitimates the government, strengthening the state (the constitutions during the Soviet period played this kind of role). In this way, the Constitution is therefore a critical part of Putin's state centric approach to politics (everything that Putin and his supporters have done in the last 8 years has been aimed at strengthening the Russian state: from the well publicized arrest of Khordorkovsky and the destruction of Yukos to his less well publicized decision to adopt a pro-market flat tax and engage in serious legal reform (unlike Yeltsin, whose legal reform policies were a failure and half baked)).

Does the average Russian see the constitution in the same way? For its not just the elite, but also the people who give a constitution meaning...

The Levada center has surveyed Russians over the last 10 years asking them whether they agree with the following questions about the Constitution.

1. The Constitution guarantees the rights and freedom of citizens [essentially this is the western view of constitutions].

1997: 12%
2002: 21%
2003: 14%
2005: 21%
2007: 31%

2. The Constitution guarantees order in the activities of the state [here we have a classic statement of the Putinist view of constitutions]

1997: 20%
2002: 22%
2003: 25%
2005: 22%
2007: 30%

One thing is clear: we can see that the Constitution is becoming more relevant to the average Russian under the Putin years. In fact, the year after Yeltsin's election (1997), almost half of Russians (46%) said that the constitution does not play any role in their life because "no one even considers it." But in 2007, the polling suggests that this number has dropped to 21%. Some of this drop can be attributed to Putin: in particular, his decision to step down from the Presidency has shown the average Russian that the Constitution has a tangible affect on the leader of Russia.

We can also see that both the views of the constitution as a document that is focused on human rights and freedom and one that is focused on enabling the state to act legimately are on the rise in Russia. Whether there is a tension between these views is another question - maybe they will slowly converge, maybe not. But this split in the interpretation of the Russian constitution suggests a hybrid form of constitutionalism that suggests an counter intuitive conclusion: Putin has succeeded in enhancing respect for the Constitution in Russia but this constitutional respect is divided between those who see the constitution as a limit on government and those who see it as a enabler for government. As the Russian state grows increasingly powerful, the real struggle will be fought by those who see the constitution as a limiting factor. Will this human rights view of the constitution grow in influence as it becomes clear that the problems of a weak state in the 1990s are a distant memory and Russians realize that the new threat to their security is not chaos, devaluations, and a crumbling state apparatus, but instead overbearing state power?

Spinning Putin for Political Gain in Both America and Russia

2007-12-19T21:56:00.000-08:00

As most of you are probably aware, Time magazine has named Putin person of the year. This decision is now being spun for personal gain in both America and Russia.

America:
1. Time magazine made the choice. We start with them. This choice was made by Time as a way to increase flagging interest in the magazine by creating some controversy. Learning from the Paris Hilton and scores of other talentless celebrities whose bedroom indiscretions on videotape are mysteriously "stolen" from their bedrooms, Time magazine is hoping that the no publicity is bad publicity mantra holds true for them as well. And, as Stengel's gauntlet of news show appearances today suggest, naming Putin as person of the year and holding up the specter of the Russian KGB bogeyman resonates fear and revulsion in many western minds, spurring controversy, sales, and increased circulation (particularly after last years uninspired choice of internet users as the person(s) of the year).

2. Furthermore, many of the Republican candidates have used this opportunity to show how tough they would be on dictators like Putin. McCain commented that he would see three things in Putin's eyes now: a "K", a "G", and a "B".
Here is what Mitt Romney had to say when told that Putin was named man of the year:

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Oh, you are kidding. Did they put Vladimir Putin on the cover?

GLENN: Yeah, Time magazine.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: That really, that's disgusting. I'm absolutely -- I mean, are you -- I mean, I haven't seen Time. Are you serious?

GLENN: No, I'm serious. It is Vladimir Putin, Time magazine man of the year. A guy who, you know, with all of the KGB stuff in the past, Time magazine says has transformed the country and congratulations. Time magazine man of the year, Vladimir Putin.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, you know, he imprisoned his political opponents. There have been a number of highly suspicious murders. He has squelched public dissent and free press. And to suggest that someone like that is the man of the year is really disgusting. I'm just appalled. Clearly General Petraeus is the person or one of a few people who would certainly merit that designation and I know Time magazine makes a distinction. They say, well, people who had an impact, whether it's good or bad, is the man of the year. I think that's a --

GLENN: No, no, hang on.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: -- a false --

GLENN: Before you go too far down this road -- wait a minute. Before you go down this road, this is the quote why he's the man of the year, "For bringing stability and renewed... what was it, impact? Status. Renewed status to his country. That's why.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Isn't that something. So a good dictator -- I guess Raul Castro will get it next. A good dictator that imprisons or murders political and media opponents and therefore brings stability, I mean, there's nothing like the stability that martial law provides or dictatorship provides. I find it a truly appalling designation.

GLENN: And the stability that he's bringing to the Middle East with the transfer of this last few days of nuclear technology to Iran.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yeah. I mean, he's once again supplying nuclear material to the Bushehr power plant and it's another example of Russia trying to destabilize the world, destabilize the Middle East. It does tell you something about Time magazine. I'm really -- I must admit I'm really disappointed. That's a real shock.

GLENN: I was --

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Our mainstream media I think has just showed its hand.

*****

Russia
1. The current ruling elite: This article is now being trumpeted by the state owned press in Russia as a sign of the grudging respect that Putin is receiving even in America. In particular, they have quoted the sections of the article that played up Putin's ability to get Russia back on its feet after the 1990s and his tough guy image.

All in all, a successful ploy serving the interests of both political and media elites on both side of the Russia-US divide. Whether it serves the interests of the Russian people or the American people is a question that I will leave you to decide.

Administrative Resources and the Russian Parliamentary Election

2007-12-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

Investigative journalism remains a dangerous profession in Russia.

Natalia Morar' (picture above in the insert), a journalist for newtimes.ru, a website that I highly recommend for good independent news about Russia, has been refused entry to Russia (she is Moldavian) as she was returning to Russia from Israel. Apparently the order came down from the FSB, a highly irregular practice in border security and a suggestion that she has made someone in the FSB very unhappy with her reporting. She is now back in Chisinau where her parents live and has already gone to the Russian embassy there, who knew nothing about her deportation order other than they had seen on television.

This denial of entry is most likely linked to an article that she wrote about the use of a "black fund" (sometimes translated confusingly as "black till") system for newtimes.ru that detailed the use of administrative resources to control the most recent Parliamentary election (she has written other articles describing other corruption that has allegedly taken place in the Kremlin, including work on the bank Discount and work that has described the killing of the head of the Russian central bank, Andrei Kozlov). Though, it is also possible that she is being barred from entering Russia because of her participation in Kasparov's Other Russia movement or her involvement in the March of Dissenters protests.

Her most recent article is interesting. As she points out in her article, the "black fund" method for controlling election results, was born in the Yeltsin era. It involves the creation of a cash based fund which the Kremlin uses to fund parties that it supports, including opposition parties like A Just Russia, Yabloko, and others.

According to a series of interviews with high ranking Russian bankers and politicians, the system works like this. The Presidential Administration has unparalleled power over the financing of elections.Major government corporations like Gazprom and others donate money to the fund (in cash) and then these are distributed by the Kremlin administration (Surkov - Putin's chief ideologue and one of the founders of sovereign democracy).
Also, any major contributions that any other major party is planning on receiving as support is also required to be funneled through this black fund as well.
The fund itself is kept at Vneshekonobank (VEB). VEB was created in 1992 to handle Russia's inherited foreign debt liabilities from the Soviet period. Since then it has been hardly a source of transparency (it cannot be inspected by the Central Bank for irregularities) and now two of Putin's former KGB colleagues, according to Morar's report, are heading it up.

Summed up shortly, imagine if the Bush administration were responsible for controlling the funds of the Obama campaign - unlikely that they would be particularly fair in handing the money out. It also suggests the far ranging influence of the Presidential administration in the Russian political system.

Medvedev as Putin's Successor: Nash Dom Gazprom?

2007-12-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

Today, Putin announced that Medvedev would be the choice of a coalition of four major parties in Russia for the upcoming Presidential election. This coalition included Putin's party United Russia, Mironov's A Just Russia (with about 8% of the seats in the new Duma), the Agrarian party, and the Citizen Power party. According to current news, Medvedev was a compromise choice. Either way, Medvedev is a surprise if for the simple fact that he was a predictable choice: for almost a year, Dmitrii Medvedev, the deputy prime minister, has been considered a likely successor to Putin (second only to Ivanov the other deputy prime minister).

Medvedev - as the numerous press reports are likely to stress - is a lawyer, generally thought as a technocrat, and has no background in the KGB - instead, he knows Putin from his days in St. Petersburg working for the liberal, westernizing mayor Anatolii Sobchak. This choice suggests a few things:

1. This represents a set back for Ivanov, the hawkish former KGB deputy prime minister, who has recently been trumpeting Russia's need for nuclear parity with the west. The fact that he was not chosen suggests that some of the feuding between rival security service clans recently will better be mediated by someone like Medvedev who is not involved.

2. Medvedev is the Chairman of Gazprom and is considered a mild westernizer in terms of his economic policies and approach. The markets have responded well to this announcement.

3. It also is a version of the weak successor scenario in which Putin will try to exert some continued influence on his successor. Medvedev is young (only 42) and also owes his entire career to Putin (they have known each other for 17 years). Medvedev will need Putin to mediate between the security services in the administration. A large and interesting question to watch will be how many liberals and non-security service people that Medvedev brings into the administration.

4. The Russian blogging community has responded with commentary, some of it fairly cynical. A couple of bloggers have suggested that Putin picked Medvedev because he is the only candidate shorter than Putin, others have suggested that they now will be voting for Gazprom to be the new Russian president.

5. Finally, it turns out that Mr. Medvedev - who is a soft spoken and largely wooden on camera particularly in contrast to the more charismatic leaders like Zhirinovskii - as a youth was a major hard rock fan, loving Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin. He also reportedly loves the sound of vinyl records.

A Colored Revolution in Strasburg?

2007-12-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

There was a lot of hype by United Russia and Nashi (the Kremlin sponsored youth group) that following the Duma elections a western sponsored demonstration would begin seeking to annul the elections (as was alleged to have happened in Ukraine in 2003) - see my previous post regarding the need for Putin's team to occupy the squares and buildings in order to keep Kasparov, Kasyanov, and Limonov from seizing power. This has not happened (and was more likely a ploy to encourage more Russians to vote for United Russia as a patriotic move). Since the elections, there has been serious criticism from the west: there has been criticism from the EU and Bush (although Sarkozy seems to have called Putin and offered his congratulations). But in terms of mass demonstrations, the western backed parties - Kasparov and his Other Russia group - have demonstrated how little credibility they have in the country by being unable to really stage any serious protests.

However, this is not to say that opposition parties are not seeking to annul the elections. Today, the Russian Communist party has filed a number of claims with the election commission to annul the elections.

They claim:
1. that there was not equal coverage of all the parties on television
2. They also argue that United Russia's use of so-called icebreakers (see my previous post - A Potemkin Party) - is a violation of election laws since the voters were essentially voting for the sitting government and not a distinct political party.
3. They argue that the Election Commission changed the ballets twice in the month before the election which is a violation of election laws.
4. They argue that Vladimir Putin wrongly used his position as President to campaign for United Russia.
5. They argue that the Election Commission has been negligent in not following up on charges of election violations.

The Election Commission has already said that it will rule on these claims on Friday, the 7th of December, leaving little doubt that it will deny these claims.
A Communist spokesman was not hopeful about the validity of these claims, saying that the Election Commission could have spent more time looking at these claims (they have until the 15th of December to declare the official results) but that their decision to announce on Sat and give a response to the claim by Friday suggests they are not taking it seriously.

The Communists are also preparing a formal legal challenge (that due to the volume of complaints will not be ready for a couple of months) to the elections (with the Union of Right Forces, a pro-western liberal market party that polled about 1% of the vote) in the Russian Supreme Court and, if not successful there, will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasburg. In 2003, the Russian Communist Party had petitioned the ECHR unsuccessfully.

The real question about these claims - particularly since they will not be filed until early next year - is what remedy can the courts really give?
The ECHR has a high enforcement rate when it comes to Russia because they generally only fine (small amounts) the Russian government money for its human rights violations and Russia usually pays. Clearly, the ECHR could not invalidate the elections themselves. Thus, the meaning of these claims is largely symbolic (they could fine the Russian government a paltry amount for human rights violations during the election). Thus, there remedy would be purely symbolic. But, intriguingly, given that they are symbolic claims anyway and that this time around the European Community is much more worried about Russian backsliding on democracy: will the ECHR adjudicate these claims in order to give Russia a bloody nose for the alleged violations that took place before the Duma elections? It is certainly more likely that they will accept it this time around then in 2003. As always, stay tuned.

NY Times: Facing the Music?

2007-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

As part of their election coverage, the NY Times has solicited questions from readers for the Moscow bureau . A fair few of the questions (particularly from people who live in Russia or have Russian friends) openly ask the NY Times about worrying bias in their coverage of Russia - why for instance, the razorlike focus on Kasparov when the Communists represent the real opposition? Why the criticism of Russia but little criticism of China?

Dont get me wrong - I think the NY Times is a great newspaper, but would it kill them to publish an article that wasnt highly critical of Russia once in a while?

Here are a two of the more interesting questions:

114. December 2nd,
2007
11:45 pm
Thanks for your articles. However,it seems to me that your reporting about Russia is obviously biased. Talk to the average Russian NOT living in Moscow. I have. Moscow is its own political force like Washington, D.C. is in America. My question is this: Russia is no longer a Communist country. China is STILL a Communist country. Why is the bias against China so much less than the bias against Russia? Could it have anything to do with the flow of money we see daily from China into our consumer-driven economy?

— Posted by Christopher

94. December 2nd,
2007
4:04 pm
I’m an American living in Moscow too. Why is the news in the West so disparate from the reality here? Your reports from the field seemed biased and incomplete to me.

Such as the reporting about the opposition, Other Russia. It seems that the only thing that articles use as legitimacy for Kasparov is that he was former chess champion and that he is anti-Putin. Or Eduard Limonov, leader of NBP, whose members are mainly skinheads, who are ultra-nationalist and have a black hammer and sickle set into a nazi flag in replacement of a swastika as a logo. Limonov supported and fought along side the Serbs during the Balkan wars (ie. against the US)

Or that don’t have a free press, or that their is vote rigging, or they’re backing out of Democracy. I’ve been here for a while and have many Russian friends and the sense I get here is hope and I myself have not felt any worse off then in America. I am truly mortified to see such a disparity in what is reported and what I know from being here. It makes me feel as if I must be in the Twilight Zone.

Is there an agenda to this bias against Russia?

— Posted by Paul

****

Will be interesting to see if anyone in the bureau tackles these questions head on. Hears to hoping that they do...If you feel inclined, you might want to add another comment suggesting they do so...

UPDATE:

Here is C. Levy's response to the general question of bias.

Clifford J. Levy: I will leave it up to others to judge whether our coverage of Russia is distorted or too harsh (or too kind, for that matter). But I will say that I strive mightily to avoid falling back on clichés about The Return of the Soviet Union (cue gloomy music). Yes, Mr. Putin has amassed increasing amounts of authority since taking office, and some of his detractors call him an autocrat. Where Russia currently stands on the democratic scale can be endlessly debated.

But in ways large and small, Russia is not the Soviet Union, and I hope that we portray that in our coverage. In Moscow and increasingly in provincial capitals, people can buy almost anything they want. Ikea has opened outlets all over the country, including Siberia. The hypermarkets that ring Moscow – akin to Costco or Sam’s Club – have a huge array of products, often at prices not much different than those in large American cities. I bought a hunk of imported Parmesan cheese at one recently for roughly the same price as you can find at Fairway in Manhattan. (Some of the supermarkets in the center of Moscow, on the other hand, are very expensive.)

Foreign travel was a precious commodity in Soviet times, but these days, it is an everyday activity. Russians are flocking abroad. My family and I went on a Russian package tour last spring from St. Petersburg to a beach resort in Egypt, and the area was so full of Russians that there were billboards on the highway in Cyrillic.

Public discourse is also far more free. The Kremlin does control the national television networks, and you rarely if ever see criticism of Mr. Putin on their news programs. But there is a radio station called the Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) that regularly features interviews with opposition politicians and is something of a sounding board for the intelligentsia. Many newspapers also have a wide swath of opinion. Last month, Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and opposition leader, held a protest and march in Moscow at which he was arrested. The national networks either ignored the events or ridiculed him. Soon after, Kommersant, one of the best newspapers in Russia, ran an article that analyzed the television coverage and essentially took the networks to task for disregarding the protests. (Kommersant has an English language Web site, with abbreviated versions of its Russian articles). And the Kremlin has made no effort to censor the Internet.

Have we done a good enough job capturing this? In some sense, politics tends to dominate our coverage, because Mr. Putin has become such a dominant figure in Russia, and has not shied away from flexing his muscles at home and abroad. What’s more, his efforts to crack down on the opposition in Russia, as European election monitors have detailed, have drawn fierce criticism. As a result, to many people, including officials in Washington and European capitals, Russia has increasingly become a disappointment. Whatever that criticism, for now at least, it is important for us to also keep in mind that many Russians have noticed distinct improvements in their lives in recent years. In addition, many people, exhausted from the turmoil of the 1990s, have become relatively apathetic and crave only stability and a decent economy.

****

1. First off, this is refreshing - I will wonder if this will change the approach.
2. What I am interested in hearing about (and what Levy or the others in the Moscow bureau will not mention) is how are topics for stories chosen? Why isnt there an article on the front page about the issues he raises above (this set of responses is now no longer on the front page of the NY Times internet edition)? Are there directives from the central NY Times office asking specifically for articles on political repression in Russia (he admits that "politics tend to dominate our coverage" - but why is that the case? Or is there a feel that NY Times is trying to portray the stories about Russia that matter for policy makers?
3. Finally, Levy sets up somewhat of a false argument in the beginning when he says that negative coverage must fall into the old cold war, Soviet Union style mentality. There can most certainly be negative reporting on Russia that acknowledges that Russia is not returning to the Soviet past (it is an absurd idea anyway that Russia is simply returning to the Soviet Union - freedom of travel, freedom to use the internet, expanding capitalist system - these cannot be reversed and should not be downplayed).
4. Finally, the NY Times has reported on aspects of Russian life that are not political, but these tend to be about collapsing buildings, the amount of fires in public buildings, and the materialistic nature of Russians - why not one discussing the major changes that have taken place in Russian's lives since 1992? Why not one that seeks to compare the so-called democratic 1990s (when there was more pluralism, but that manipulative politics was very common) with the current system (more monolithic, but is there a value to stability?).

Because of the influence of the NY Times as a media source, a more balanced view (not necessarily less critical) and one that steers between propagating stereotypes of Russia and one that whitewashes the problems of life will give readers a more realistic view of Russia.

United Russia: A Potemkin Party?

2007-12-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Interesting article on newsru.com which describes how the so-called "ice-breakers" for United Russia in the regions (often the most high profile politicians in the region headed up the United Russia party lists) will not be entering the Duma as deputies. And, of course, it is unlikely that the chief "ice-breaker" - Vladimir Putin - will join the Duma (and still is not a member of the United Russia party).

Thus, the names that people saw on the lists when they voted will not necessarily be representing them in the Duma (instead, their representatives will be determined by internal United Russia decision-making).

This is all well in line with the closed party system that the Electoral Law (Art. 85) envisions. Whether it serves to deceive voters is another question and one that Russian electoral law reformers might want to think about.

Russian Parliamentary Election Results: And now for the second phase...

2007-12-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

The results of the December 2 election have largely been a foregone conclusion since Putin decided to head up the United Russia party list. The only questions that really hold any interest are the voter turnout (estimated to be 52% - 4 percentage points higher than 4 years ago) and the share of the Duma that United Russia has (what looks to be around 60% - somewhat lower than many expected). Also, of interest is that four parties appear to have made it into the Duma, which is a surprise for some experts who were predicting only the Communists and UNited Russia would make it in considering the new requirement of needing 7% of the overall vote to make it into the Duma (this threshold was successful in eliminating the liberal, pro-market parties like Yabloko and SPS). The other two parties that made it into the Duma were the two pro-Kremlin parties, which each barely beat the 7% barrier with 8% of the vote:
1. The Liberal Democratic Party, like the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy nor Roman), is neither liberal or democratic. Instead, it generally sells its votes to United Russia and is managed by the colorful Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pontificates and makes alot of noise, ultimately signifying nothing.
2. A Just Russia, a party rumored to have been started by the Kremlin, that is headed by the sycophant Sergei Mironov, who like the Roman senate in the first century BC calling for Caesar to become dictator, is continually calling for Putin to set himself up for a third term...

Thus, in effect united Russia will control almost 80% of the Duma - enough to make any constitutional changes if they so desire.

We now turn our attention to two things:

1. According to a mass produced poster that was already being printed a couple of days ago (see insert upper left) to be handed out December 3 (proclaiming the victory of Putin and UNited Russia - again reflecting the certainty of United Russia's victory in this election), there will now be mass stagings of support for Putin in the squares of Russia in order to forestall (a highly unlikely) attempt to annul the election results (a la the Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2003).

On the back of this poster (described in an article more fully on Gazeta,ru , it describes how America (described as Russia's enemy) is planning to stage an orange revolution in Russia from the 3 Dec - 6 Dec.
"America has a different plan for Russia. American wants those traitors and wolves to win: the American citizen Kasparov, the fascist Limonov, and Nemtsov, who will sell the country down the river. They do not agree with the victory of our President. These traitors want power in order to again allow the bandits and criminals to rape our country, to sell our oil and gas for nothing. From the 3rd to 6th of December before the official announcement of the results of the vote, they will try to seize the squares and buildings in order to deny our victory."

In order to stop that, the reader is exhorted to join the "President's team" in defense of the "independence of Russia."

2. The more interesting presidential race will now begin to heat up. The certainty of the Duma race is matched by the uncertainty of this race - who will run for UNited Russia? Will Putin really step down? What will the effect of United Russia's victory be? These questions will all be answered by March of next year. Stay tuned.

Legitimizing the Upcoming Duma Elections: Tactics of a Virtual Democracy

2007-11-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

With the recently highly publicized remarks by Putin that the US is behind the OSCE’s decision not to send observers to watch the Russian elections (Russia had already limited OSCE’s participation in the beginning), there appears to be a major push in Russia to ensure a massive turnout to legitimize the elections in the eyes of world.

Gazeta.ru has reported on the massive television coverage of the elections – election news, encouragement to vote, and information will be beamed out on all the major Russian television stations all day on Sunday, December 2 (election day). http://gazeta.ru/politics/elections2007/articles/2352008.shtml

Newsru.com is reporting on the potential use of absentee ballots in the upcoming election to further boost the percentages of voter turnout.

One of the most interesting examples of incentives to vote (and to vote for United Russia) is reported in another Gazeta.ru article. A teacher in a school in northern Moscow (who wishes to remain anonymous) reports on a potential “cultural excursion” to Konstantinovo – a village where the poet Esenin lived. Solovev, a member of the social fund, described how it will be organized for all teachers who get an absentee ballot (*this is the only requirement to go). He said there is no requirement of voting for United Russia, but strongly suggests that the teachers decide to vote for United Russia.

The extent of the program is stunning (and shows that the government is taking this election very seriously).

He described: "The program will be like this. There will be a Mercedes bus. It is very comfortable. We will leave at 7 am. Everyone should have an absentee ballot - that is the basic rule....we will arrive in Konstantinovo. At first there will be an excursion. Then we will go to the restaurant. There you can have vodka, wine, or champagne...the more people who attend the better. If there are 40 people that is great. If there a 20 - not bad. if there are 500, even better."

Clearly government oil money is being spent liberally on this election.

A key point that is made in the Gazeta.ru article: The perception that many of these tactics are a change from the elections in the 1990s (which are considered in the western mind as the golden age of democracy) are flawed. These same media manipulation tactics (and some others) were widely used by Yeltsin to shore up support for the Constitution (in the referendum of 1993) and to defeat the Communist party in 1996 (who Sean at Sean's Russia Blog rightly points to as the real opposition to United Russia in the upcoming elections). For more on this, see Andrew Wilson's trenchant book entitled Virtual Politics.

Russian-Ukrainian Gas War Again?

2007-11-27T11:20:00.000-08:00

Turkmenistan has become a new player in the Russia-Ukrainian gas pricing game.

It is reaching the end of the year and, unsurprisingly, once again Russia (through its subsidiary Gazprom) is using control of the supply of natural gas to exert influence over its neighbors (generally referred to as pipeline politics). Indeed, natural gas is one of the chief tools inherited from the Soviet period and one that was not dismantled amidst the privatizations of the 1990s (where oil was - it has only been recently that the Russian state has once again sought to gain control over the oil industry - the attempt to expand Rosneft and the destruction of Yukos).

This time the deal is with Turkmenistan - an emerging gas power now that Niyazov (who vaingloriously called himself Turkmenbashi) has died. In fact, as I have pointed out in previous posts, Ukraine relies on Turkmen natural gas for many of its needs (much of this gas has been shipped through Ukraine using Rosukrenergo). Anyway, Gazprom has reached a deal with the Turkmen side to increase the price of gas for the Ukrainians.

This deal serves two purposes for the Russians:

1. it is potentially a large blow to Ukrainian industry and will more than likely force a response from the newly elected Timoshenko-Yushchenko "orange" alliance. It will be interesting to watch - will the Ukrainians once again use their control of Russian gas pipelines to Europe to make up the difference?

2. It further cements a Russia-Turmenistan relationship. Since the death of Niyazov, control of Turkmeni gas has become a new prize in the competition (between China, US, and Russia) for influence in Central Asia and this is a powerful statement that Russia is doing well (China has also been successful, leaving the US as the odd man out recently in securing influence and hydrocarbon resources in the area). In particular, the US has been trying to secure a non-Russian pipeline route for gas out of central Asia. This deal has to be seen as a blow to those interests.

Here is an article with more details on this deal. .

New Shadow Government or Just More Pre Election Agitation for a United Russia Supermajority?

2007-11-15T11:49:00.000-08:00

In Tver today, an assembly of delegates from across Russia gathered to call for Putin to be the national leader. Behind closed doors for much of the time, this highly scripted act of political theater is a bid to provide Putin with a support base independent of the government (and of the Presidential administration which could turn on him), in order to shore up his power (and reduce the options of his successor as President) when Putin steps down from the Presidency in March 2008. Interestingly, Pavel Astakhov - a lawyer - who has become increasingly prominent in Putin's recent attempts to build post-presidential legitimacy, pointed out that all options are still on the table for Putin: prime minister, head of the Constitutional Court, or chief Prosecutor (Attn general equivalent). Furthermore, a large theme in this whole campaign is preserving the integrity of the Russian constitution, so it now seems less and less likely that the Russian constitution will be changed.

In a related story, the opposition parties in Russia are fighting back against what they see as illegal pre-election campaigning by Putin for United Russia . In a growing reflection of the increasing personification (or, better said, Putinization) of politics in Russia, the Union of Rightist Forces are filing a claim personally against Putin for two charges.

1. They are charging Putin with responsibility for the harassment they are undergoing from police and law enforcement in the lead up to the election (they allege that campaign material is being seized, their freedom is being impaired, etc. in a coordinated move by the law enforcement under the watchful eye of Putin).

2. They charge Putin with illegal pre-campaign agitation for United Russia.

Two Good Reader Questions Answered

2007-11-13T17:37:00.000-08:00

In general, I encourage questions on this blog and others as it is important for the English language blogging community to think about these issues, read each others blogs, and engage in a dialogue. As a result, I will give my thoughts on two good questions posed by readers -

First, Ash asks: "What is your take on Kasparov".

I think that Kasparov has little chance of winning and is more of a factor in the western press than in Russia at the moment. I am also worried by the coalition that he has assembled (see my previous post on its association with fringe, neo nazi, anti-kremlin groups).

Second, Jesse Heath asks:
"What is best for Russia at this point? I myself am at a loss - it would be nice if [strong] democratic institutions sprung up in the next several months, but this is wishful thinking. I think the best result is for Putin to become PM. All this 'Putin for Tsar' business is coming from entrenched interests worried about where their income sources will go under a [*****] Administration. A balancing of the Executive and Legislative branches could result from a Putin prime ministership, though he will surely be roundly criticized for doing this (but won't he be criticized no matter what he does?)."

I think that the real struggle for power is going on within the Kremlin right now regarding positioning for the post-Putin presidency. I do think that currently the Kremlin is leaving a few options on the table - one of which is Putin not stepping down (my guess is that no one expected the instability that has arisen from Putin's departure from the Presidency). Evidence of the fact that a third term is still in the cards is the increasing number of staged meetings (Putingi as they are being called) where people are lobbying for a third term. Also, there still has been no mention of a successor - time is growing short and I do think that the Kremlin (and Putin) are keeping their options open in order to be able to respond to events.

Overall, I think in the long term Russia is better off (in terms of long term stability) strengthening its institutions and if Putin were able to take up the Prime MInistership and use his supermajority in the Duma to amend the constitution to strengthen the Duma (and weaken the Presidency), I think that Russian institutions would be more stable and less subject to executive capture. This is unlikely, though, and I think it much more likely that Putin will seek to use informal power (perhaps by convening one of these old Tsarist land assemblies) to ratify Putin's Plan and ensure his position as a national leader. Furthermore, there is more evidence now to suggest that Putin is undermining the legitimacy of institutions in Russia by continuing to strengthen the cult that surrounds him. As to the cult, its worth visiting a website called "For Putin" (Za Putina) which seems to be coordinating much of this Putin cult. It struck me as stylishly put together and beautifully designed - there is no doubt that this administration is learning quickly the power of the web and web video (and using these tools to promote Putin).

Putin as the National Leader: A Solution to Russia's Political Instability?

2007-11-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

As Russia hurtles ever closer to the Parliamentary elections in December and then Presidential elections in March, 2008, uncertainty is high. Presidential succession is still very much in doubt and numerous rallies are being held (organized??) around the country calling on Putin to remain as the national leader and to continue to pull Russia out of her time of troubles.

There have been increasing calls to install Putin as a pseudo-Tsar, ruling outside the traditional institutional power structure through a National Assembly (grazhdanskii sobor) which will adopt as its ruling power base UNited Russia and as its chief legitimating document Putin's Plan. This kind of Assembly (sobor) has deep roots in history: it is the same kind of assembly that elected Mikhail Romanov as Tsar in 1612 after a period of international involvement and chaos in Russian history (many Russians see the 1990s as another such time and they fear that Russia without Putin will once again fall into this trap...). Putin's success in ruling has made him indispensible - he has made himself the only arbiter between competing factions within the Kremlin and he commands loyalty amongst the people (part in due to his growing cult). If he were truly to step down a large scale power vacuum would open up and there would be significant instability.
In this way, Putin's success has also made Russia more instable - hence, now, all of the questions about a new institution that will rival the power structure of the Presidency.

However it turns out, Russia is now highly unstable and the powers that were once established are beginning to erode - the next 6 months will be critical in determining yet again the institutional break down of power in Russia.

Here is a description of the National Assembly idea from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty .

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On November 6, Unified Russia posted on its website an article that further lays out the Mikhail Romanov scenario. The piece argues for the calling of a Public Assembly shortly after the Duma elections, at which representatives of grassroots organizations would anoint Putin as the country's "national leader." According to the piece, the public has no confidence in the political process or political parties and only such a Public Assembly would have the legitimacy to effect the radical political change the country needs. Unified Russia is in the process of drafting a "Pact of Civil Unity" that could be adopted at such an assembly. That pact will "formulate the institution of the national leader as the basic element of a new configuration of power."

If the Kremlin's plan (whichever one is finally put into action in March 2008) succeeds and Putin is installed as the country's leader for the foreseeable future, the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution will likely be treated entirely differently. In 2012, Russia will mark the 400th anniversary of the end of the Time of Troubles, presumably in the 12th year of Putin's reign. In 2017, when the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution rolls around, there will likely not be even any rump communist enthusiasts around to mark it.

With the problem of political succession solved, the state's need to play up the possibility of "troubles" will disappear; the need increasingly to celebrate the regime that ended the troubles and lifted the country off its knees will grow stronger. A system that derives its legitimacy from a trumped-up groundswell of popular support and a stage-managed Public Assembly will have a hard time resisting maintaining its grip on power by a combination of fear and a stultifying cult of personality. Russian history offers models for this as well.

Nationalism in Russia

2007-11-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

A recent informal political debate that was supposed to pit an SPS member (Maria Gaidara) and a United Russia representative (who never showed up) devovled into violence at the end. A member of Yabloko (Apple), the liberal political group was shot in an ensuing fight. This incident suggests a dangerous trend in Russia: the growing alliance between ultra nationalist groups and the "liberal" opposition to the Kremlin. See the following report from the anti-nationalist group Sova .

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Another disturbing tendency - suggesting some sort of «the Kondopoga effect» - was a lack of uniform position among the liberals concerning "acceptable boundaries of xenophobia.» So for example, in September, the Karelia branch of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (UCF) ex-pressed virtual solidarity with perpetrators of pogroms in Kondopoga by praising their actions as a "manifestation of civic self-government." Notably, the UCF leaders - even though civil society ac-tivists specifically tried to draw their attention to unacceptability of such pronouncements - failed to respond to, or denounce, the statement of their members in Karelia.

In November, a scandal broke out involving Alexei Navalny, a leader of the Yabloko Party Moscow branch who reportedly attended a meeting of the Russian March organizing committee as an observer. While there is nothing wrong with «observing» any phenomena, Navalny also said publicly that he did not denounce any of the Russian March slogans. And while Deputy Chair of the Yabloko Party Sergey Ivanenko responded with a critical statement, his promise to «look into» the incident remained a mere declaration.

The Yabloko leadership also failed to respond to the ads Russia for [ethnic] Russians! and For Democracy! For the Power of [ethnic] Russians! posted by Vladimir Abrosimov, their regional party leader in Krasnoyarsk, on an office building in the city.

Admittedly, the argument about the extent and forms of patriotic and nationalist slogans (with the boundaries between them often unclear) acceptable to liberals is far from new. But the Russian March brought these debates to the foreground. In particular, there was an ambivalent re-action to the fact that SPS leader Nikita Belykh finished his address to the anti-fascist meeting on 4 November with words Long Live Russia!

Equally debatable and relevant in the context of increasingly active nationalism is a question about boundaries and principles concerning relationships with nationalists of various types. This question was actively discussed following A. Belov’s participation in political debates organized by the Democratic Alternative and chaired by the mentioned A. Navalny.

Nonetheless, on 20 November, a round table on Civil Society and Protection of Russian People’s Rights held in the Realists Club attracted leading representatives of democratic forces, such as Alexander Auzan and Georgy Satarov, who came to mingle with right-wing radicals rang-ing from Dmitry Rogozin to Andrei Savelyev and Alexander Belov. UCF leader Garry Kasparov sent a welcome letter to the participants of the roundtable, while other public figures, such as Lyudmila Alexeyeva, third co-chair of the Other Russia and the All-Russian Civil Congress, re-fused to attend a meeting with Rogozin.

The Olympics, Big Business, and Expropriating Property Rights in Russia

2007-10-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

A major controversy has been brewing in the Sochi region - the city that will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics - that threatens to sully the image of the Olympics as Russia's demonstration of its greatness and power to the world (and its own citizens). As the Russian government seeks to transform Sochi into what one observer has said will be the largest Potemkin village in Russia, there is the small matter of consolidating land, building new hotels, and getting rid of undesirable housing (such a project of construction has already been carried out in Beijing in preparation for the summer olympics next year). It doesnt take a genius to figure out that when the Russian government creates a large government corporation (goskroporatsiia) to carry out the changes, that individual property owners will lose out.

In general, Russian property rights are subject to contradictory legal protections. The Russian Constitution guarantees the right to property and that a court order is required for expropriation (art. 35) but is not clear whether this applies to land (article 9 and article 36 seem to suggest that land may not count as the type of property that is only seizable after a court order). Even if we assume that Article 36 does apply to land, there is no public use requirement for requirement like in the west, but the procedural hurdles of expropriation (compensation and a court order) are at least a protection for property. To make things even more complex, however, there are conflictin legal frameworks for land protection that are needed to buttress a constitutional protection. Despite the potential broad protection in Article 36, the land issue was a contentious one throughout the 1990s and only in 2001 was a Land Code passed (though even this one was a compromise bill which exempted agricultural land - which is still not a fungible good). The Civil Code is also involved in providing the government with more powers - for instance, it can specify that a certain plot of land be used in a certain way (for a school for instance) and if the owner discontinues that use, the land automatically reverts to the government. At the same time, the Civil Code requires that one year's notice be given someone who is ejected from their land.

In the past, local (and regional) governments have taken advantage of this morass of contradictory law to deny serious property rights (some going as far to say that land is not a fungible asset at all). Recently, the federal government has now stepped into this contentious area with a new bill on the Olympics, which promises to further complicate the legal support for property rights in Russia.

The Olympic law establishes a so-called "simplified order" where the state decides what property can be taken and what it will give (if any) to the expropriated person. This simplified order is put allegedly for the period up to 2014 for easing the land allotment for Olympic facilities and infrastructure construction. But there are questions whether this will be a permanent change that will also implicate property right disputes taking place in Moscow and elsewhere (in the Butovo area, people are resisting plans to build a new road). If it was permanent and far reaching, it would mean a significant erosion of property rights in Russia.

Problems with the bill:
1. In practice, many people in the Sochi region have been unable to register deeds with local government, which means that their property is unregistered and can be taken with no expropriation compensation or mandatory waiting period.
This recently happened in Sochi to a group of refugees from Abkhazia who were living illegally (but paying monthly bribes to the police) to live in condemned housing (they had been living there for 15 years which would have triggered squatters rights or adverse possession doctrines in western courts). They were forced to leave their houses by the police and many were unsure where they would be living in the future.
2. There is also a question of whether full compensation will be paid to those who have registered their property. Prices in Sochi since the announcement of the Olympics have skyrocketed and the government is not likely to pay full market value (this is what experts think the simplified order entails).

Keep watching for more on this.

Putin Faces the Nation

2007-10-24T14:35:00.001-07:00

Almost a week ago, Putin faced the Russian nation in a televised three hour question and answer session that was beamed across Russia's eleven time zones.

Some highlights:

1. Despite a reportedly massive volume of questions, Putin fielded no questions regarding who the next President might be. It is unlikely that no one asked him this (very important) question. Likely the questions were screened heavily - Putin's answered questions that all seemed to play into the developing ideology of power.

2. Putin also suggested that constitutional changes might be in the offing: he mentioned the fact that the Parliament needed to be strengthened as one of his reasons for heading up the United Russia ticket.

3. Putin engaged in the old tradition of doling out gifts to supplicants (like a Tsar). He promised to fix the arrears in payments from the 1990s to army soldiers (40 billion rubles in back pension pay).

4. There was mention of the USA - unsurprising since anti-Americanism is a major plank in Putin's sovereign democracy ideology. Here is a translation of one such moment:

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"A. SIBERT (Novosibirsk): Mr President, I want to ask a question that is no doubt of interest to many Russians. In an interview not so long ago, former U.S. Secretary of State Albright said that it is not fair that Russia alone should have control over Siberia's colossal natural wealth. My question is: what consequences can such statements have, and what is your view of such statements?

Thank you.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: This is an unexpected question, but I understand that it is an issue of concern, especially for everyone actually living in Siberia.

I am not acquainted with this particular statement by Mrs Albright, but I know that some politicians do share these ideas. I think such ideas are a sort of political erotic fantasy: they procure a certain pleasure, perhaps, but are unlikely to ever produce positive results. The events in Iraq provide the best illustration. There we have a small country with little ability to defend itself but with enormous oil reserves. And what is happening there now? We can all see with our own eyes that they have learned how to shoot there but have not had such success in bringing order to the country. And it is unlikely that they will be very successful because fighting the local population is always a losing prospect. It is possible to overthrow tyrannical regimes, such as that of Saddam Hussein, for example, but there is no future in waging war against the people.

Russia, fortunately, is not Iraq. Russia has enough means and strength of its own to be able to defend itself and protect its interests both at home and in other parts of the world. These kinds of statements by Western politicians only serve to confirm that the work we are undertaking to improve our defence capability and strengthen our armed forces is the right choice, and we will continue this work."

****

In this response, we have all the elements of Putinist ideology: the need for control of resources *(resource nationalism), the need for increased defense spending, and the need to keep out American imperialists/political eroticists.

5. Massive increases in social spending and government sponsored projects. Putin, in a response to what the Putin Plan entailed, laid out this highly state centric vision of Russian development:

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Over these last years I have taken as the main theme social development, strengthening the armed forces and improving defence capability and security, international relations, and economic development. Medium- or long-term programmes have been drawn up for all of these different areas, and I consider that all of this together provides a strategic plan for the country's development.

One of the issues we have been discussing now is the demographic situation. As you know, as part of our efforts to resolve this problem, we have decided to institute what has been called the maternity capital. This is a programme that will be carried out over a ten-year period, an example of an absolutely concrete programme with funding calculated for ten years ahead.

Or take rural development, for example, another area in which we have adopted a rural development programme that will be implemented over the next several years. And then there are the armed forces, where we have a programme for modernising arms and equipment over the period through to 2015. All of these different programmes are components of the strategic national development plan. The fact that people have decided to personify this plan and link it to the current President can be put down to campaign tactics in the run up to the parliamentary election, but the plan itself is real and the country needs it, and I am sure that if we implement it consistently, we will succeed in making serious progress in our development. <.>

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It is striking the extent to which all of these Russian problems have government spending as the solution - such spending is already leading to rising prices in Russia and inflation. Further spending (loose fiscal policy) - which is very easy now that the price of oil is around $90 a barrel - will have further inflationary effects if not curbed...

OUTCOMES:

Today, relying on polling, Gazeta.ru is reporting that Putin's rating were down this year in comparison with last year .
a) 25% less Russians watched this year than last. This potentially suggests that Russians are really beginning to tune out of politics alltogether as it becomes increasingly difficult to participate.
b) Putin's most attentive audience were pensioners (they were statistically the most likely to watch the entire three hour show). This is a reflection of the fact that pensioners have benefited greatly from the increased social spending (pensions are now being paid unlike in the bankrupt 1990s) thanks to the increase in petrodollars in Russia due to the high price of oil.

Rising Prices in Russia: Is it Really Such a Mystery?

2007-10-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

Prices are on the rise in Russia. According to RFE/RL "The price of bread -- a highly symbolic staple Russians refer to as "our wealth" -- has more than doubled. A package of 10 eggs has risen from $1 to $1.60; a bottle of olive oil that previously sold for $1.20 now costs $2."

What does the Russian leadership have to say as an explanation? RFE/RL reports again:

"Viktor Zubkov, Russia's new prime minister, has been front and center in the public battle against the price hikes. A recent newspaper article quoted a Russian shop director as telling the prime minister that the reasons for the skyrocketing costs "are a mystery for us." Zubkov, reportedly deep in thought, replied, "For us as well."

Other officials apparently find the issue less mysterious. Aleksei Gordeyev, the Russian agriculture minister, has pointed to global population growth outpacing food-production capabilities. "Along with the 1 billion members of the upper class residing in developed nations, the middle class in China, India, and Vietnam is increasing by 800 million people," he said. "The need for food products is increasing sharply. Another serious factor is that a lot of biomass -- mainly grain and oil cultures -- is now being used for the production of biofuel."

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But a major factor that the government surely knows (and just isnt saying) is that the massive gas windfalls have been increasingly converted into government spending. Russia's tight fiscal policy of the early 2000s is gone. Such spending is bound to have an inflationary impact and we now see its effect on basic foodstuff prices.

Even more telling (and interesting) will be how this will be dealt with. So far, the central government seems to be avoiding putting caps on prices, but with an election not too far around the corner, this stance may not last. Either way, the government has helped create this problem and at an inconvenient time.

Political Theater in Russia: United Russia's Party List Presented by Circus Performers

2007-10-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

Political theater is increasingly a powerful tool of state control (particularly, as the television media is controlled by the state). Today was a great example. In a highly choreographed, staged, and (for a westerner at least - rather bizarre) move, United Russia's lists were presented to the Central Voting Commission. The people who were chosen to the present the list were the Zapashny brothers (pictured above) who are Russia's equivalent of David Copperfield, as well as Tatyana Borivikova, who is the head of the All Russian Multiple Children Society (whose motto is "Many children - that is good!).

This was all for the cameras and journalists as each of the presenters of the lists reminded the voters who was at the top of the list (Putin). Here is a sampling of those statements (all suggesting the further development of the Putin cult - see my previous posts).

"I am sure that we are obligated to support Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin). For years his leadership has changed our country immeasureably. I can now utter the name of Russia with pride when I am abroad." Askhold Zapashny

"We should support Vladimir Vladimirovich for another term. God does not give such (great) leadership every year. We do not want our children to be bereft. United Russia is the party of action, and not words. And we want to make our future with him." Tatyana Borivikova, United Russia.

Corruption, Pipeline Politics, and the Russia-Ukraine Relationship: A Gas War will Once Again Threaten Europe's Energy Security This Winter

2007-10-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

With the new Orange Coalition of Timoshenko and Yushchenko now joining forces after the Ukrainian election, Russia and Ukraine look headed once again for a gas war. ONce again Europe will more than likely be affected: Europe relies on Russia for about one-quarter of its gas imports, and 80 percent of Russian exports to Europe pass through Ukraine.

Here is the situation - deja vu from late 2005: Ukraine currently owes about 1.3 billion (US dollars) in back fees to Gazprom for the gas shipped into Ukraine. Russia wants this money paid by the end of the year; Ukraine cannot pay it back without serious pain to the economy. To forestall another showdown, Putin has tried to put pressure on Yanukovich (the much more pro-Kremlin leader in Ukraine) who recently lost his position as Prime Minister. In fact, prior to the certification of the election results (where Yanukovich lost), Putin called Yanukovich to Ukraine last week to sign an agreement receiving payment for the gas through release from Ukraine's strategic reserve which is controlled by Rosukrenergo .

However, this agreement may not stick with the change in leadership. Putin and Gazprom now have a problem with the new leadership in the Parliament (Timoshenko). She is in no mood to draw natural gas from the strategic reserve to pay Gazprom in kind and will likely refuse to do so (she can block the deal by obstructing Rosukrenergo or investigating it so that it cannot release the gas), instead simply reminding the Russians of the bad press and ineffective measures from the previous gas war in 2005/06 - where Russia turned off the gas to Ukraine and Ukraine began to siphon off gas that was contractually bound for Europe (this leverage that the Ukrainians still have over Russian gas exports will continue to ensure a lower than market price for the Ukrainians and is also the motivating factor in Russia's attempt to build the North Stream gas pipeline that will completely circumvent Ukraine in piping gas to Ukraine).

Why does Ukraine owe so much money? Much of it can be attributed to the fact that much of the Ukrainian energy sector has not been restructured since Soviet times (Kuchma's reign during the 1990s was a period of cronyism and very little serious restructuring) and people are still not paying the full value of their heating bills (and as the Russians increase their prices from the subsidized prices that Ukraine got during the 1990s - much less than half that the Europeans were paying - Ukraine's system of energy payment cannot catch up).

Another major factor is the staggering amount of corruption in the Ukrainian oil and gas sector. Case in point: Rosukrenergo. 200 million of the debt is owed by this shadowy company that is 50% by Gazprom itself. This company is not just a transit company for Russian gas to Ukraine but has dealt with gas coming into Ukraine from Turkmenistan. Global Witness issued a report on this last year , pointing to the shocking lack of transparency.

Thus, stay tuned at the end of this year for what will likely be another showdown between Gazprom (the Russian government) and the Ukrainians. Europe will once again hope that it will not have to shiver in the cold - and perhaps will realize that trying to put pressure on Ukraine to normalize their energy industry (both corporate governance and in payment reforms) will serve their long term interests.

For more on this highly complicated issue, see Orange Revolution's post from 2006 on this issue .

The Birth of the Russian Constitution A Little Over 14 years ago

2007-10-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

With all this discussion of the Russian Constitution in regard to Putin's future as a Russian leader, there is a brilliant photojournalism posting on Grani.ru showing first hand the violence that Yeltsin engaged in to force his version of the constitution on the current Parliament (who were holed up in the White House and were attacked by Army in October, 1993). This incredibly pro-Presidential powers constitution has allowed Putin free reign to consolidate his power in Russia; it also will be the constitution that Putin will have to operate under as Prime Minister next year (leading many to say that Putin will change the Constitution - which then begs the question: if he changes it and then returns to the presidency in 2012, he will have undercut his future power). My personal opinion is that there will not be major constitutional changes next year, instead Putin will seek to preserve his power informally through his clan network (and the limited ability of the Duma - whcih Putin will fully control - to Impeach the President).

As for 1993, the general consensus in the western scholarly and media world is that Yeltsin was doing what he had to do, despite the fact that he was acting in direct contravention to the existing constitution which was inherited from the Soviet period (also, he was acting in direct contravention to an order of the Russian constitutional court). Yeltsin's supporters claim that he drew legitimacy from a series of referenda that he passed in April 1993 and a plebiscite that "ratified" the Constitution. Either way you see it, the Russian constitution was less a contractual document between the Russian government and the people and more a major tool of power in Yeltsin's attempt to aggrandize power in the newly created Russian federal executive.

A Just Russia Faces the Press: Mironov Manages to Praise Putin and Criticize United Russia

2007-10-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

Putin's recent decision to head the list of United Russia has made life very difficult (to say the least) for the head of Fair Russia, the supposed party of opposition, and its leader, Sergei Mironov. A Fair Russia had already been showing signs of weakness - see my earlier post and Lyndon's comment to folllow. But, now, with Putin heading up their rival party, their entire campaign had been derailed: they had hoped to run on the slogan: "Putin's Plan - A Victory for Fairness" in opposition to United Russia's slogan which is "Putin's Plan - A Victory for Russia." Obviously, that slogan is no longer available.

Further, in his first press conference, since Putin's announcement, Mironov criticized United Russia but praised Putin. He also said that United Russia would remain the chief political opponent of A Just Russia and that the fact that Putin was by himself at the top of the list was evidence that United Russia (with the exception of Putin) was not the right party for Russia.

He also said that UNited Russia (which he characterized as a rightist liberal party), A Fair Russia (which he classified as a socialist party), and one other party would make it into the Duma.

Finally, perhaps referring back to his attempted chracterization of United Russia as a rightist party, he rather cryptically said that voting for A Fair Russia might represent a Putinist call to action - this statement, however, seems to make little sense since - as UNited Russia stressed - Putin has given his full support to United Russia in the elections.

Despite these words - a fascinating attempt to twist himself out of the difficult position his party is in - Mironov and A Fair Russia are now going to struggle to make the 7% barrier (over which a party will get representation in the Russian Duma). This means that the Communists (and a newly resurgent Liberal Democratic Party under Zhirinovsky and who have recently added Lugovoi - the man wanted in Britain for the Polonium poisoning - to their ranks) once again will emerge as the opposition parties.