Protesting the protesters

Dmitri Simes has "The Real Story" about the protests last weekend. He criticizes the opposition figures who organized the protests (especially Limonov), but saves some of his harshest words for the western media:

It is perfectly appropriate, and indeed necessary, not to whitewash Russian domestic practices, as President George W. Bush once did. What is not appropriate, however, is to accuse Putin and his government of all kinds of terrible deeds—often providing highly misleading information in the process—just because he is supposed to be undemocratic. And that is clearly what happened with coverage of last weekend’s protests in much of the mainstream media in the United States. The Wall Street Journal editorial page—which believes that Vice President Dick Cheney is a wise statesman, John Bolton an effective diplomat and Paul Wolfowitz a model anti-corruption reformer—has predictably adopted the cause of their regular contributor, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was one of the leaders of the opposition marches. Mr. Kasparov was a great chess player. He is also a man of courage and determination. But anyone familiar with his career in politics, and as a matter of fact, in chess long before it, would know that he has a strong propensity for theatrics and artificial confrontation. Quoting Mr. Kasparov as a dispassionate commentator on his own struggle, as TheWall Street Journal editorial page did, is unpersuasive.

But, being persuasive is in the eyes of the beholder, and editorial pages by definition are entitled to their opinions. Not so the news pages. In the case of The Washington Post, news stories regarding the April 14 and 15 events in Moscow and St. Petersburg were written as if they were coordinated with the notoriously anti-Putin attitude of The Washington Post editorial page. In their April 18 article, "Kremlin Says Riot Police Overreacted", by Peter Finn, both the text and the photographs present a highly misleading picture. The photographs show Garry Kasparov appealing to the menacing-looking police officers. It also shows the police in anti-riot gear overwhelming a long-haired, bespectacled young man.

Russia Blog has a less measured but somewhat interesting piece by Sergei Roy critiquing the opposition - worth reading as a catalog of the facts and rumors which ensure that the leaders of "Another Russia" would be likely electoral failures if left to their own devices. Roy also makes the point that the US loses points with the Russian "street" by being seen to support Kasyanov et al.

While true in many respects, this misses an important point. Of course this is not a real, capable, popular opposition. Of course Putin is supported by the majority of Russians, with some justification given Russia's recent economic good fortune. But none of this means that people engaged in a protest action should be beaten and detained by the authorities - especially authorities who, at the lowest level of the chain of command, talk about their duty to enforce the law like this.

And the image of the US as being "behind" these protests is promoted more by the Kremlin than by anyone else. Aside from Gryzlov's comments, see, for example, the image in this post; and more shockingly, this glossy catalog of lies, deftly debunked by the Russian bloggers who posted it; not to mention the tempest in a teapot stirred up by Russian politicians over the recent State Dept. report.

There's an interesting range of views on last weekend's protests here - I was going to post excerpts, but don't have time. Though the new Russia-Profile-costs-money format means that after 30 days the material will be accessible only to people who pay for the archive.