Cause and effect, a.k.a. "диктатура закона"

Cause:

"Mechel was selling steel in Russia at twice the price it put on exports," Putin said in televised comments. "And where has the margin for the state taxes gone?"

Mechel's owner, billionaire Igor Zyuzin, was reportedly ill and not present at the meeting to hear Putin's threat.

"The director has been invited, and he suddenly became ill,'' Putin said. "Of course, illness is illness, but I think he should get well as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will have to send him a doctor and clean up all the problems." [...]

"I'm asking the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to pay special attention to the problem -- and maybe even the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office."

Watch the video. As one of the commenters at drugoi's post on this topic noted, it's not just the words, it's the intonation - and, I would add, the gestures. And the swift official follow-up. No doubt "А маржа где?" will soon become a catchphrase in Moscow OCG and high finance circles alike.


Effect:

[source]

More narrative on the fallout here, here and here. No doubt someone made a bundle. Talk about bread and circuses.

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Dreaming of a color revolution vaccine?

Moldova Suverana's website. The cheesy photos and low production values
make it hard to believe this is the largest-circulation newspaper in the country.

Official newspaper Moldova Suverana celebrated the Fourth of July last week in fine fashion by publishing a rather over-the-top attack on two democracy-promoting NGOs operating in Moldova, IRI and NDI. The piece they ran was a first-person account from an aggrieved former IRI employee who seems to have a toolshed full of axes to grind (here are a couple of articles for background), but the most amazing aspect of it was the numerous passages which seemed to have been cobbled together from stale stock phrases as though taken from some do-it-yourself anti-American verbiage kit drafted in Moscow ("now your country, too, can prevent colored revolutions!").

The timing of this article is no accident - Moldova is gearing up for elections next year and President Voronin, who cannot serve another term, would no doubt like to ensure a smooth succession, whether to another representative of the Communist Party or some other designated successor (sound familiar?).

Thus, a full frontal attack on IRI and NDI, which are perceived as proliferators of "colored revolutions" in the post-Soviet space (based perhaps on the eagerness of some of their own people at times in the past to take a bit too much credit for mass political phenomena), could well be an attempt to lay the groundwork for a campaign strategy modeled on the one used by United Russia in the '07-'08 Russian electoral cycle. Under that model, any potential - or even long-shot - challengers are dismissed as foreign agents who - in concert with the "meddling Americans," of course - want to, in the words of this article, "overthrow...the Constitutional regime elected by citizens of the republic through democratic elections."

One Moldovan blogger , who seems to be in a good position to comment on such things, [update: not anymore (see comments below)] wonders whether Marian Bunescu, the ex-IRI employee who has stepped up with this conveniently timed denunciation, is being pulled into political games while trying to defend his rights and press his own (perhaps legitimate) grievances against a former employer, and also notes that Bunescu's screed excoriates both IRI and NDI, when he only had firsthand experience working with IRI.

Personally, I sometimes have mixed feelings about American democracy promotion efforts. I also tend to believe that colored revolutions are impossible without genuine, broad-based discontent within the country with the government, and I'm not sure that exists in Moldova at the moment, so attacking these NGOs may be overkill. In any event, my reservations about an activist democracy agenda are somewhat neutralized when I read passages like these (excerpted from the Moldova Suverana article, a full translation of which is below):

The purpose of those [democracy promotion] specialists was to favor and bring to power at all cost the parties that would undermine the statehood, integrity and sovereignty of the country where I was born and live. [...]

Since there is a lot of time till the Parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova and I do not want to be convicted of participation in bringing to power of politicians marionettes, I want to inform that NDI and IRI, under the aegis of USAID, plan to destabilize the situation in the country, as they tried before, but have not succeeded. Yes, yes, namely during the last elections in the Parliament in Chisinau, for the first time, officials of these institutions have made attempts to bring to power corrupt politicians, interested in the disappearance of the Republic of Moldova as a sovereign and independent state.

Parts of these passages could in fact be describing Russia's approach to Moldova - undermining the country's statehood and sovereignty by promoting the continued separation of Transnistria and applying punitive bans on Moldova's major exports to Russia. And Russia's policies probably have to be judged a success on their own terms - after all, Voronin, whether because he thinks it will facilitate a settlement of the Transnistria conflict, or because he has realized (like Uzbekistan's Karimov, who was the first to desert the nascent GUAM coalition) that an alliance with Russia is simpler than building bridges to the West since it requires barely a pretense of democracy and no real reforms, has swung eastward in his orientation of late.

Analyst and blogger Nicu Popescu also excerpted some of the more outrageous language from Bunescu's denunciation and paused make this observation (my translation):

These are not quotations from the press in Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, or Kuchma's Ukraine. They're from the July 4, 2008, issue of Moldova Suverana. An article that is probably the start of a harrassment campaign against [IRI] and [NDI] ahead of the elections, two American NGOs which provide assistance to Moldovan political parties.

Assistance which is made available, it's important to note, to all Moldovan political parties, including the Communists.

Popescu titled his post "Moldovan Putinism vs. IRI and NDI" and marveled at the approach of the Moldovan government:

At the same time as this harassment campaign is being launched against two American NGOs, Moldova is expecting several hundred million dollars from the US under the framework of the Millenium Challenge Account Moldova and is hoping to start talks with the EU concerning a new agreement under conditions where the EU's foreign policy Commissioner has clearly said that the prospects for such an agreement depend on the quality of Moldova's elections. But the harassment of international NGOs is totally inconsistent with democratic elections practices and strikes a blow against the government's hopes to start negotiating a new EU-Moldova agreement.

I don't really have anything else to add except to note that in the comments to his post on this Popescu quite rightly makes a distinction between Bunescu's personal employment beef with IRI, which is being resolved as it should be in the courts, and his rather sweeping and selective allegations (e.g., Bunescu mentions only the Our Moldova Alliance as receiving IRI support, when in fact pretty much all Moldovan political parties receive support from IRI on an equal footing).

I did find a small tidbit online about Mr. Bunescu's work with IRI in happier times (scroll down to the last item), but not much else.

Anyway, as promised, here is a translation of the full article (not by me):

IRI representative makes new disclosures promised at press conference

Pharisaic Democracy

Dear reader, meeting inside the headquarters "Infotag" was dictated by the need to make public some data that I have become aware of thanks to the long-time activity in the representation of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a project funded and administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). My name is Marian Bunescu and I worked in the IRI a period of four consecutive years and have to make some clarifications. For a long period of time, I can not ignore anymore the actions and processes taking place with the participation of foreign citizens, especially the U.S., which are conducting on the territory of the Republic of Moldova activities and meetings with opposition political leaders, instructing and financing them in order to overthrow in the spring of 2009, the Constitutional regime elected by citizens of the republic through democratic elections in the Parliament from Chisinau.

Intensive activity to suppress the party that legally came to power has its roots even before the elections in the Legislature of the Republic of Moldova. Namely, before the elections, at the request of IRI and NDI leadership, an impressive number of "specialists" in the areas of conducting coup d'états and orange revolutions arrived in Moldova. The purpose of those specialists was to favor and bring to power at all cost the parties that would undermine the statehood, integrity and sovereignty of the country where I was born and live. Namely because of the reported and from the fact that many times, I directly informed the head of IRI Stiven Rader about the illegality of the support of the opposition parties, basically I lost my job, being ousted illegally.

In order of the above, I want to inform you that Constantin Tanase as a lawyer with whom I had discussions last week and the current week and who is actively defending IRI's interests on the territory of the Republic of Moldova warned me, quote: "The communists will lose elections in 2009 and will come to power other political parties and I'll make you very big problems ". Advocate Tanase intimidated me and proposed a sum of money to restrain me from accusing Americans.

In that context, I want to let you know that in my presence Serafim Urecheanu asked from Rader the amount of 1.5 million dollars, to prepare for the election campaign. On this occasion I want to let you know that Mr. Urecheanu came in person several times (about 4-5 times) to the IRI office, once he arrived even at night. In the IRI's office, he held many times confidential negotiations for numerous occasions with the American in the office of Rader, in order to get their support for the parliamentary elections. Namely, because of letting the American know about my position, which does not correspond to the interests of the IRI on the territory of the republic, I can not get employed, as neither was I fired from my position at the institute nor can I come to my work place, as the American stands in the door and behaves like I am a criminal of America.

I want to inform you, that working for IRI, I had the opportunity to directly to know what "democracy", implemented by the U.S. structures, means. And those who declare and speak loudly about political pluralism and democratic values finance and train such political parties as Our Moldova Alliance. Training and preparation for elections in 2009 of political parties, which main interest is their own enrichment, are held by representatives of the IRI and the NDI through the organization of seminars and trainings, where the average citizens of the Republic of Moldova do not have access. The access is limited because they (Americans) do not want to make public the things that they teach participants, like how to take people out on the streets and how to destabilize the situation in the country. It requires an increased attention the fact that the seminars and meetings of Americans with the leaders of the opposition political parties are funded directly by Americans by cash money, money that are not controlled by any state structures in the country. Many times, during the seminars I directly participated in, I had the opportunity to monitor the way in which are financed the seminars conducted by the IRI. The following question seems logical, would Americans allow, on the territory of the U.S., the activity of foreign political organizations, which are not registered anywhere and are practically doing whatever they want under the motto of "democracy development"?

I can not remain indifferent to the way the American "bosses" act and behave towards the Moldovan citizens that work in the institutions funded by them. Thus, I intend to draw your attention that no employee of organizations funded by the Americans on the territory of our state does not pay any taxes, nor to the state budget, or the social fund. In that context, there is a logical question - do they have a similar and identical behavior in U.S. like the one they expose in Moldova? And in cases of resignation, they do not respect the legislation of the Republic of Moldova regarding the payment of due wages. In this context, I would like to mention that in the case of being fired from the organizations funded by Americans, native citizens with great difficulty can get back their work book, in which usually the necessary information and stamps are missing. As a result, the time spent working in such organizations is lost in vain and does not add up to working experience.

Today I wish to give to publicity and some aspects, in my opinion, of illegal activity of IRI and NDI. Since there is a lot of time till the Parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova and I do not want to be convicted of participation in bringing to power of politicians marionettes, I want to inform that NDI and IRI, under the aegis of USAID, plan to destabilize the situation in the country, as they tried before, but have not succeeded. Yes, yes, namely during the last elections in the Parliament in Chisinau, for the first time, officials of these institutions have made attempts to bring to power corrupt politicians, interested in the disappearance of the Republic of Moldova as a sovereign and independent state.

Thus, seeing the dirty things that take place under the aegis of "development and propagation of democratic principles" on the territory of my country, I thought well and took the decision to leave IRI. Because I do not want to take part in the dirty things, that are priorities in the plans of the Americans chiefs of IRI and the NDI. Now I want to draw your attention that the democracy being propagated by the people behind these organizations is nothing else than a fiction, well-hidden, which aims at destroying the stability on the territory of Moldova. In proof of these statements, I want to bring to your attention that training of political parties loyal to Americans in Moldova is conducted directly through the involvement of NDI and IRI in their activity, through various forms. Sometimes, to increase efficiency and image of some politicians and political parties, at the initiative of the institution in which I have worked, experts that took part in the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia are being invited. Thus, recently, at the IRI's initiative famous Serbian experts have been invited to Moldova, who have contributed directly to disorders in Ukraine, and are now familiarizing the AMN leaders with how to get the people out in the streets, in case of failure.

I address the free media for help, to clarify the case of my illegal dismissal and defend my rights provided by law. At the same time, I address to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, as well as to the State Tax Inspectorate with the request to clarify the situation when citizens of the Republic of Moldova working for the American institutions and their labor rights are being ignored seriously.

I request, in my capacity of a citizen of the Republic of Moldova, who is not indifferent of the future of his country and its people, for the immediate implication of the organs of Prosecutor's Office and Judiciary in the clarification of the activity of the American organizations, above-mentioned. I want to inform you that due to NDI and IRI, in the neighboring countries was possible the overthrow and annihilation of legal interests of the population in favor of some politicians marionettes, who in the end have filled their pockets as a result of undertaken colorful revolutions. Pay special attention that at this moment, those countries are going through processes that influence negatively the life of simple and average people, from the countryside, who no longer have any other options but to leave the country in order to support their families by working abroad. At the moment I can declare with certainty that the main purpose of NDI and IRI is bringing to power in 2009 of the AMN leader, Serafim Urecheanu, who constantly has been seeking help and financial resources from the leadership of IRI, the American Steven Rader. He should be invited and asked if in America he participates in bringing to powers marionettes too? Does Serafim Urecheanu not understand that in the end he is selling his country and its people for some ambitions dictated from outside?

Marian BUNESCU

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Reading the TV Tea Leaves in an Age of Mediacracy

In contemporary Russian politics, it may seem that "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Political events are unfolding according to a scenario predicted by many (i.e., Putin is retaining influence, at least for now), and no matter what eventually happens between Putin and Medvedev, given the array of predictions flying around, odds are someone will have predicted it. Sometimes, though, mediologists, not meteorologists, are the best way of trying to figure out which way the political winds are blowing on a given week.

Heavy coverage was given by Russian online media during the last election cycle to statistics charting TV appearances by major politicians. These figures have long been covered by some newspapers and online news sites, but the coverage by Lenta.ru last fall, in cooperation with an outfit called Medialogia - which included not only weekly statistics but also analytical reports interpreting the numbers - seemed more thorough than in the past.

Сравнительная динамика количества упоминаний ТВ-каналов в федеральных печатных СМИ [source]

Lenta also recently covered the release of a report by Mediaguide.ru (a portal which appears to be related to Medialogia) analyzing how frequently the TV networks with nationwide reach are cited in the print media - it appears this report will now be available monthly. Although it doesn't seem to analyze whether the mentions are positive or negative, the figures may be of interest to those who argue that the Kremlin's dominance of Russian TV airwaves does not stamp out the free press because of the existence of alternative print sources of news.

Masha Lipman recently made the following observation (in the Washington Post, natch) about Russian TV under Putin:

During Putin's tenure, television broadcasting was honed to perfection -- as a tool to shape public opinion. Coverage of political and public affairs is now tightly controlled through a coordinated effort of the national channels' top managers and Kremlin aides. The result is that any event, person, group or movement may be boosted or played down in the public eye in a way that would best suit the Kremlin's desires and designs; anyone deemed an adversary of the government may be discredited or vilified.

Polls indicate that the public is highly responsive to television brainwashing -- whether the campaigns are against Georgia, Ukraine or the West, or are intended to influence voting preferences. In contrast to Soviet times, the government's most effective media tools are also highly profitable. Each of the two biggest channels reaches almost all Russian households. While stations don't compete in news coverage -- news shows differ little from channel to channel -- other competition for viewers and advertisers is fierce. The result: first-class soap operas and other entertainment programs that keep people glued to their screens. Advertisers, attracted to large audiences, eagerly commit their budgets to state-controlled television.

This business model and the controlled political content are inseparable and mutually beneficial. The Kremlin-designed television diet is easily digested: Bland information is supplemented by exciting entertainment shows. As he completed his second term, Putin granted special letters of commendation to the top managers of the national channels.

The government has radically curtailed broadcast freedom, but it does not totally control speech. Some broadcast, print and online outlets with smaller audiences have maintained relatively independent editorial lines, which serves to let off steam. These outlets may create an appearance of media freedom, but they are tightly insulated from national television, effectively marginalized and kept politically irrelevant.

The huge role played by the media in shaping - and reflecting, although a chicken-and-egg question arises if you want to determine whether it molds or reflects more - the country's political climate might tempt one to call Russia a "media-cracy," though I'd probably avoid the term, as it's too much of a simplification, it sounds too much like "mediocrity" (which Russia is certainly not at the moment, no matter how one wishes to see the country), and the term was already being used over 30 years ago - and continues to be used, albeit informally - in reference to American domestic politics. It's interesting to see how one online source defines "mediacracy" in the American context:

(mē'dē-ə-krə-sē) 1. (n.) Government, usually indirectly, by the popular media; often a result of democracy going awry. A system in which politicians stop thinking and begin listening exclusively to the media regarding what the important issues are and what they should do about them. Origins: A play on democracy and news media; possible reference to being mediocre.

The suggestion is that media elites are invested with a disproportionate amount of independent political power. In today's Russia, the term would probably have to be defined slightly differently - the use of the media, in particular those controlled by the state, as an instrument of government rule through the shaping of opinions.

[image source]

Actually there is an online project named Mediakratiia (Медиакратия), or Mediacracy, which seems to have the goal of unifying young Russian journalists in covering issues in a "socially responsible" way, with what appears to be a particular emphasis on journalists working in the regions. Since the project was set up in part by United Russia and is funded by the Press Ministry, it is not difficult to conclude that the organizers have "state-friendly" in mind when they say "socially responsible."

The Mediakratiia effort from the United Russia side was spearheaded by Aleksandr Shkol'nik, one-time (and perhaps current, I'm not sure) head of children's and youth programming at Channel One and later the director of the Russian News Service under whose tenure Gazeta.ru called that radio service "Russian Brainwashing Service" after Shkol'nik's infamous attempt to introduce a rule that 50% of news coverage must be positive. The website publishes a monthly list of the "Golden Hundred" participants, young journalists who compete with each other to earn points in the following manner:

"The Golden Hundred" is a system under which the mediacrats earn a certain amount of points every month (from 1 to 15) for various types of activities, including participation in online conferences, discussion of current topics on the project's online Forum, publications, news for the "Regional Time" page, and cooperation with Mediakratiia's partners, for example the Russian News Service and the National Projects magazine.

As for the project overall, here is part of its mission statement:

"Mediakratiia" is not the power of journalism and certainly not the power of journalists - a journalist cannot and should not rule over [people's] minds. A journalist is not an "engineer of human souls" [a term coined by Olesha under Stalin about Soviet authors], but is more like a gauge reacting to any changes in society and life.

When we say "Mediakratiia," we mean the power of information over any form of human activity. In the current media-driven society, in this era of informational technologies we live in, the old saw "forewarned is forearmed" should be rephrased as "he who is uninformed is helpless."

[...]

The mass media is a weapon of mass defense, not mass destruction. Journalism is a socially responsible activity.

We want to be and we can be responsible!

[emphasis in original]

Anyway, that's what the government and the party of power are doing to raise up the next generation of "socially responsible" journalists.


Luckily, some members of the profession in Russia still seem to have the level of irreverence which in my opinion is essential to good journalism. I say this based in part on a recent online find, what looks to be the start of an absolutely fascinating new blog. I think anyone who reads Scraps of Moscow will appreciate it. It's called Newsinside.ru; here's what its creators have to say about it:

Newsinside.ru reports on the seamy side of the news and the behind-the-scenes stories of wire services, internet projects and TV companies.

Newsinside.ru's professional detectives continuously investigate the news and write about the most interesting and important items.

Unfortunately, they haven't had any new posts since May 11, but hopefully they're just taking a holiday break and this isn't indicative of that too-common phenomenon of a well-begun internet project petering out rapidly. The folks behind Newsinside.ru say they are planning on launching an English-language version, but I can't wait, so I've translated a couple of their posts below:

NTV didn't notice the tanks in Moscow
April 30, 2008

The passage of heavy military equipment through downtown Moscow was one of the most popular news stories in the Russian-language blogosphere (according to Yandex). Human curiosity was evident on the city's streets - crowds of people stood along the routes taken by the tanks and armored vehicles.

The national TV channels devoted a great deal of attention to this truly unusual event. We observed that the round-the-clock channel "Vesti" devoted the most effort to reporting the procession of heavy equipment.

Their camera was the only one to meet the tanks at the picturesque spot entering the bridge by Belorussky station (pictured). "Vesti" set up live broadcast feeds of the military vehicles moving around Moscow from five (!) different locations in the city.

Channel One limited itself to broadcasting footage on the following day. And on NTV in the day's final newscast at 10:40pm Aleksei Pivovarov didn't even mention the tanks which had attracted everyone's attention. Perhaps Pivovarov decided that NTV wasn't up to competing with Vesti's live broadcasts.

Echo of Moscow: Putin is losing his TV clout
May 4, 2008

[excerpted from this radio transcript, dated May 2]

A. VENEDIKTOV: Putin as president had another supremely powerful resource. That powerful resource was the state-run mass media. But now we see...

L. SHEVTSOVA: Whose side are they going over to?

A. VENEDIKTOV: Whose side is a good question. Here's one example: RTR, or VGTRK, which is headed up by Oleg Borisovich Dobrodeev, made a film called "Eight Years of President Putin," a rather pompous movie.

L. SHEVTSOVA: So, he's with the prime minister's vertical [of power]

A. VENEDIKTOV: And so it would seem that everything's in order: a departing president, a documentary - even a pompous one - because Oleg Borisovich has been with Vladimir Vladimirovich from the very first day and even before. I remember when [Dobredeev] left NTV, that was in January of 2000, when Putin was a presidential candidate, and Oleg called me and said, "I'm going to VGTRK, they offered me a job, you're the first to know," but that's not the point, the point is that this documentary is being aired on Saturday at 11:55am. And for people in the know, it should air in prime time. You understand? [...] It's a sort of signal: "We're with you, but we're not with you."

L. SHEVTSOVA: "We're with you, but we're standing in two different queues."

A. VENEDIKTOV: And it's the same thing now, I am absolutely sure of it, they'll start to calculate who to put on the air first and for how long. But the mass media, and first and foremost television, was a huge resource of Putin's....And Putin may start to lose them, because after all they have to put the president on the air - President Medvedev. So there's already a downside [for Putin]. [...]

L. SHEVTSOVA: It's a curious thing. We will probably yet see some very big movements and people dashing to and fro. By the way, Aleksei, I noticed these dashes - and fairly active ones - before Putin's February speech to the State Council. But after that and after he agreed to head up United Russia, people started moving in the opposite direction, back to Vladimir Vladimirovich. But, by the way, we have forgotten about the most powerful resource of Dmitry Medvedev - that is, after all, the power of the Constitution, the capability of the powerful presidency itself. And what do we have today? Today we have an attempt to embed, to implant a powerful prime-minister's vertical, which has already been created by Putin's team, to implant that vertical...

The Newsinside.ru website looks like it could be a great addition to the RuBlogosphere - they have most recently posted some coverage of the coverage of Medvedev's inauguration, and - unless I'm reading too much into things, which has been known to happen - the blog even seems to be cleverly named: it is aimed at the "news insider" and addresses itself to that person by using "newsinside[.]r" in the dative case.

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Who Lost Russia? A rogues' gallery from a decade ago

Last February, I was inspired to collect a bunch of references from the past 10 years to westerners asking "who lost Russia?"

At the time, I promised a follow-up post, which has now been over a year in coming (no doubt you've all been waiting...). But since my original post, there's been a new twist on the question - last March, a WaPo columnist asked, "Who's to Blame for Russia?" - modifying the old "who lost Russia?" question by stirring in one of Russian philosophy's "eternal questions."

And the question came up in an interesting interview with Mark Medish:

(Konstandakopoulos) Who lost Russia?

(Medish) Russia may not have been lost. If it was lost in any sense of the word, it was lost by the Russians. Not from outside. I do not believe that those outside have the gift of losing countries. And this is the wrong way to think of the world. It is up to the Russians what to do with their country. If they feel themselves to be losers, it is because of their policies.

(Konstandakopoulos) I phrased the question in this way because this is how you traditionally do.

(Medish) US tradition teaches us how Americans think of the world, not how the world is. We go through cycles of high expectations and disappointments from other countries.

(Konstandakopoulos) A new cold war?

(Medish) I don't think so. There is no ideological component. Russia went through a transitional phase, it was quite weak, it sought a new identity after the collapse of the empire.

(Konstandakopoulos) What do you mean by transition? A transition to what?

(Medish) Good question. To begin with, a transition from something, from empire, from a communist-controlled political system, to something that they should decide. It is up to Russia whether to win or to lose. The ability of Europe and the United States to decide what the new Russian identity will be is extremely limited. We should not delude ourselves.

Actually, another variant on the question was posed last year as well: "Who Lost Moldova?" But I digress. The first anniversary of Yeltsin's death (which was yesterday, if I'm not mistaken) seems like a good time to revisit the 1990s. And an excellent vehicle for a trip back in time is a 1999 NYT Magazine article on the era, and specifically the illustrations to the article. Presumably, they are intended to depict people who, one way or another, were involved in "losing" Russia. I've listed the individuals pictured, in case you can't read the captions, and I tried to provide some links to bios in case you hadn't heard about some of these folks in the past few years.



David Lipton, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers; Anatoly Chubais; Boris Yeltsin and President Clinton; Tatyana Dyachenko.

Gennadi Zyuganov; Strobe Talbott and Viktor Chernomyrdin; Yegor Gaidar; Jeffrey Sachs.


Sergei Stepashin; Viktor Chernomyrdin and Vice President Gore; Vladimir Gusinsky; Boris Berezovsky.

Obviously one shouldn't attach too much meaning to the selection of photos, but it's interesting that the only guy who shows up twice, Chernomyrdin, still has a not unimportant job, and that Khodorkovsky did not merit placement in this photo array at all.

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The Political Technologist from the Left... and from the Right

Gleb Pavlovsky: "Fortunes told - politicians only" - image source.

Below are a excerpts from a couple of things I've read recently which address the role of "political technologists" in contemporary Russian politics. In order to save space, I have not indented the excerpts; hopefully it's clear where they begin and end.

Pavlovsky from the Left

[image source]

From: Chto delat
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2008 12:50:32
To: [Alain Badiou]
Subject: Lettre des activistes russes concernant votre prochaine visite en Russie

Dear Comrade Badiou!

We are Russian activists and leftist intellectuals. We know and value you as a philosopher and intellectual who has not surrendered in the face of the current neo-capitalist reaction. In your public statements, you have on many occasions expressed your allegiance to the great contemporary liberation movement, of which we also consider ourselves to be a part. [...] [I]t has come to our attention that Gleb Pavlovsky’s foundation (The Russian Institute is a branch of this foundation) has invited you to visit Moscow this coming April. This news dumbfounded those of us here who know and appreciate your work and your political stance. We have long dreamed that you would visit us in Russia. But a visit under these circumstances would be worse than no visit at all. It would compromise you and us, your readers and supporters.

What is at issue is the person of Mr. Pavlovsky, who is not only one of the principal ideologues of the Putin group, but is also a cynical “political technologist” who several times switched his political orientation during the nineties. He has now settled on an ultra-rightist version of nationalist and imperialist conservatism, and is busy erecting the Putin personality cult. You might wonder why he decided to invite you of all people. The answer, however, is obvious: the Russian regime has decided, on the ideological level, to develop a new strain of anti-westernism based on Russian nationalism.

This is motivated, in part, by the real imperialist pressure exerted on Russia by the EU and the US; in part, by the discomfort that liberal demands to observe human rights and legality in general creates for the regime. Therefore, Putin and his ideologues have an objective interest in recruiting western oppositionist intellectuals to an international front that would support them. At the same time, it must be understood that Putin is no Chavez. As opposed to the latter, Putin and his ideologues systematically anchor their appeal in rightist values: nation, order, the fear of revolution, Russian Orthodoxy, cultural anti-modernism, etc.

[. . .]

Gleb Pavlovsky is one of a number of notable intellectuals who chose the career of “political technologist” in the nineties. During the crisis in the universities and the intellectual vacuum that formed after the discrediting of Marxism, many members of the intelligentsia chose to engage in paid PR work, motivating their choice via a combination of watered-down postmodernism and social constructivism. As they would put it, all meanings are artificially produced.

In 1996, Pavlovsky — who was a dissident in Soviet times and an active liberal during perestroika — became the principal beneficiary of the Kremlin’s ideological commissions. In the early years of the new millennium, he became even more powerful when his foundation, The Foundation for Effective Politics, engaged in the propaganda and informational support of the Putin administration. It is this foundation that developed the fundamental ideologemes of the regime: “stability,” “the Putin majority,” etc.

Whereas in the nineties Pavlovsky justified himself in the postmodernist spirit, as we have mentioned, in the new decade he has become a frank collaborationist and a businessman trading in propaganda, exploiting the impoverished social and economic status of Russian intellectuals and thus turning them into cynical servants of power. At present, Pavlovsky hosts the television program Real Politics, on which he propagandizes extreme anti-westernism and the Putin personality cult. He also manages the Evropa publishing imprint, which among other thing has issued a series of books exposing the idea and phenomenon of revolution. Recently, Pavlovsky organized a roundtable entitled “Putin’s Enemies”—a farce that made open reference to the Stalinist show trials.

Dear Comrade Badiou! We have no doubt that your visit will be used by Pavlovsky to legitimize the Kremlin, which aspires, mostly unsuccessfully, to intellectual hegemony. In the spring of 2007, Pavlovsky’s foundation invited Slavoj Žižek to Moscow. It is conceivable that this leftist thinker didn’t know beforehand the context in which he would be speaking. In the event, however, he participated in a seminar entitled “The Limits of Democracy” and sat at the same table with court “political scientist” Sergei Markov, who as a television commentator praises the wisdom of Putin’s decisions, and with Pavlovsky himself, who doesn’t himself believe a single word he utters. Pavlovsky and Markov spoke about the need to “limit” democracy, in the sense of Putin’s “managed democracy.” It all resembled a bad comedy and forever discredited Žižek in the eyes of Russian (leftist or liberal) intellectuals. If you do visit Russia, this context will hinder any attempt on your part to polemicize and discuss the views of those who have invited you.

We do not mean to say that Russia is lost for good, or that it is of no interest. Russian society is still lively, anarchic, critical, highly educated, and intellectually hungry. It possesses the will to transformation and a consciousness of the need for struggle. At the present moment there is a growing network of organizations and groups that, we hope, will consolidate into a new anti-liberal, communist movement. For this to happen we also need international cooperation. In particular, we take as a guide your ideas, whose universalism impresses us, dwellers of the semi-periphery. We would like to engage you in conversation. But your visit to Pavlovsky would disenchant many activists. We ask you, therefore, to weigh your decision again.

[...]

Chto Delat/What Is To Be Done Platform
Forward Socialist Movement
Pyotr Alexeev Resistance Movement
Carine Clément (Institute for Collective Action)



From: Alain Badiou
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:42:47 +0100
To: Chto delat
Subject: Re: Lettre des activistes russes concernant votre prochaine visite
en Russie
Dear Comrades,

I thank you for your serious and well-argued warning. I have just returned from Greece and I will have to examine your arguments in more detail. They already seem quite strong to me. I will notify you of my decision in the coming days. If you believe that there is a real possibility of my coming to Leningrad, then we can go this route. I thank you again for your vigilance. And be assured that I have no wish to serve Putin’s interests!
Fraternal greetings,

Alain Badiou
4 February 2008

* * * * *
In his last letter, dated 17 February 2008, Alain Badiou informed us that he had turned down Pavlovsky’s invitation to visit Moscow and that he planned to come to Russia in the spring of 2009.


Note that the guys at Chto Delat' also had good coverage of the MGU Sociology Dept controversy, a subject which we at Scraps of Moscow had occasion to cover last year and which remains interesting, not least because of the possibility that it was that controversy that first put exiled journalist Natalia Morar' on the Kremlin's radar.


Pavlovsky from the Right

[image source]

The other article I wanted to highlight is one which is worth reading in its entirety if you are interested in contemporary Russian domestic politics. Some of the more insightful passages are excerpted below. I have added my own links to outside sources where appropriate, replaced footnotes in the original with hyperlinks and omitted citations from the original where it was impossible to hyperlink them.

Ivan Krastev, Democracy's "Doubles"
Journal of Democracy, April 2006

Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy. He is also the research director of a project on “The Politics of Anti-Americanisms” coordinated by the Central European University in Budapest. [...]

If I were to choose the two major protagonists of the new antidemocratic politics, I would put alongside Hugo Chávez not Vladimir Putin but Gleb Pavlovsky, Russia’s premier political technologist. Admittedly, Pavlovsky and Chávez make a strange pair. The latter is a passionate former army officer, with a talent for expressing public sentiments, who loves elections even more than coups and spends his free time running a television show. [...]

Pavlovsky, by contrast, is an intellectual with a talent for manipulation and political engineering. Far from loving crowds, he fears them—though he also recently started a TV talk show. These two men — Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s populist president, and Gleb Pavlovsky, Russia’s ultimate political manipulator — best symbolize the major challenge to democracy today. They are freedom’s enemies from within both democratic discourse and the institutional framework of democracy. The ex-colonel and the political technologist are the faces of the antiliberal doubles of democracy.

Democracy According to the Political Technologists

In a Kremlin world dominated by mediocre apparatchiks, KGB officers, and ruthless oligarchs, the political technologists might look like people from another planet. They come from the milieu of the intelligentsia and the world of alternative culture. Gleb Pavlovsky is a policy intellectual and a former dissident who was persecuted in Soviet times for his “reformist delusions.” Marat Gelman is an extremely successful art-collector and gallery owner and one of the gurus of the Moscow arts community. Sergei Markov is an internationally respected academic. They all have the biographies of typical Russian Westernizers. Pavlovsky worked with George Soros and his Open Society Institute in the early 1990s and briefly acted as editor of a Russian version of the Journal of Democracy. Markov was a fellow in the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and coauthored a book with Michael McFaul [the book is ironically titled The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy and is available on Google Books]. Gelman was a favorite source for Western journalists working in Moscow. They were Russia’s liberals. In the early 1990s, they proclaimed their belief in free and fair elections, limited government, democratic pluralism, and independent media. Today, however, they have all become “political technologists.”

In his scandalous political thriller The Politologist, written in the best tradition of conspiratorial realism, Alexander Prohanov, a leader of Russia’s patriotic opposition, gives us the most sinister and at the same time most profound psychological portrait of the Russian political technologist. He is a creature from hell: cynical, disloyal, ambitious, and greedy. He is highly creative and deceptive at the same time. He is the hostage of his ambition to manipulate others. He is the consummate social engineer, but also a tool of Kremlin politics. He is a tragic figure — confused, scared, and insecure. In his own view, the political technologist is the savior of democracy in Russia; in the view of others, he is its gravedigger.

In Moscow, the way you define the meaning of “political technologist” is a significant indicator of your political positions and moral taste: “Political technologist” can mean a policy analyst or political consultant; it can mean an expert in “black PR” or in contaminating the political environment; it can mean a Kremlin insider or political provocateur. Contrary to the common view of the Western media, “political technologist” is not simply the Russian term for “spin doctor.” What makes political technologists a different species from the other election strategists or PR consultants who have populated the strange world of Russian politics is their direct or indirect connection to the Kremlin. The Russian political technologist resembles a Western political consultant in the way that the electric chair resembles an armchair.

Political consultants in the West (however low one’s opinion of them) work with independent media, and their trade is influencing these media. Political technologists are experts in manipulating dependent media. Political consultants in the West are experts at winning votes for their candidates; political technologists are also specialists in winning votes, but they take matters one step further—they are also specialists in “creative counting” of the votes. A political consultant works for one of the parties in an election and does his best to help that party win; the political technologist is not interested in the victory of his party but in the victory of “the system.” His goal is not to maximize the vote for his client, but to obtain an election result as close as possible to the percentage of the vote that the Kremlin has planned for his client.

In other words, political technologists are those in charge of maintaining the illusion of competitiveness in Russian politics. As Andrew Wilson puts it, “Post-Soviet political technologists . . . see themselves as political metaprogrammers, system designers, decision-makers and controllers all in one, applying whatever technology they can to the construction of politics as a whole.” Their role in Russian politics recalls that of Gosplan in the Soviet economy. They are the ideologues and the symbol of Russian managed democracy. They operate in a “world of ‘clones’ and ‘doubles’; of ‘administrative resources,’ ‘active measures,’ and ‘kompromat’ [compromising information]; of parties that stand in elections but have no staff or membership or office . . . of well paid insiders that stand as the regime’s most vociferous opponents; and of scarecrow nationalists and fake coups.” [fn 6] Political technologists are the principal enemy of democratic pluralism.

Political technologists play several different institutional roles at one and the same time. They run think tanks and speak as experts on behalf of the public good. They are also consultants who speak the language of business and deny any political affiliation with their various clients; this does not prevent them, however, from also presenting themselves as independent political commentators who interpret for the public what is going on in Russian and global politics. When it becomes necessary, the political technologist, as a sacrifice of last resort, is even ready to take a public job. In 2003, just before the parliamentary elections, Marat Gelman was appointed as deputy director of the public television station ORT-Russia to help ensure that political parties would gain the electoral results that were planned for them. In the wake of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Modest Kolerov, Pavlovsky’s deputy at the Center for Effective Policies, joined the presidential administration as head of the new “anti-Orange” department dealing with the post-Soviet republics. The political technologist can be found everywhere in the policy process, performing all kinds of jobs. In his role as “gray cardinal,” Pavlovsky urged the Kremlin to adopt new legislation that would create a body known as the Public Chamber in order to control Russia’s NGOs. In his role as a policy expert he supported the move, and then in his role as an independent political commentator he explained to the public what a wonderful policy the Kremlin had initiated. The circle was closed.

Those who question the real importance of political technologists, contending that they are less influential in Kremlin decision making than the siloviki or the in-house oligarchs, fail to recognize that the political technologists’ impact is greatest in framing political issues and not in lobbying for concrete policies. In this sense, the political technologists can be analyzed as a collective player in Russian politics, despite the fact that in real life political technologists constantly compete with and often passionately hate one another. It is their shared view of the nature and the goals of current Russian politics that makes the political technologists so revealing with regard to the nature of the political regime in Moscow. Their interest is the interest of the system.

Manipulating the Media

The type of political regime that governs Russia today would have been unthinkable in the pre-television age. The art of the political technologists lies in replacing the political representation of values, interests, and ideas that is at the heart of liberal democracy with the media representation of a nonexisting political reality that is at the core of managed democracy. Their ideology is a Molotov cocktail of French postmodernism and KGB instrumentalism. What the political technologists have borrowed from the postmodernists is their intuition of “the unreality of reality.” What they borrowed from the rich tradition of the Soviet secret police were the technologies that can make the unreal real. The role of television and m in establishing managed democracy in the post-Soviet states is perhaps best captured by a poster that one Ukrainian youth carried in the streets of Kiev during the Orange Revolution in late 2004. The poster read: “Kill the TV in yourself.” [interestingly, this later became a rallying cry for the nationalist Eurasian Youth Union as well]

[image source]

A common thread in the otherwise diverse ideological views of people like Gleb Pavlovsky, Marat Gelman, and Sergei Markov is their militant antirevolutionism and their self-proclaimed break with the traditional politics of the Russian intelligentsia. In Pavlovsky’s words, “Our position on revolution is simple: no revolutions and no encouragement of revolutions.” The demonstrative cynicism of the political technologists is intended as a direct challenge to the idealism of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia at the beginning of the last century. Their open ambition for money and status is the opposite of the culture of self-sacrifice and the attachment to nonmaterial values of the old Russian intelligentsia. Their project of excluding the people from political life runs directly contrary to the old intelligentsia’s mission of giving power to the people.

The political technologists believe that their mission is to save democracy from the antidemocratic impulse of those on top and from the populist egalitarianism and communist nostalgia of those below. For them the government is the only real liberal force in Russia. In their eyes, “Liberal democracy is nothing more than a mechanism of elite control through the use of elections, parties . . . and most importantly, ‘the independent media.’” They have fashioned themselves as the postliberal postintelligentsia.

[...]

In hindsight, two events appear to have been critical in shaping the emergence of Russia’s managed democracy: Yeltsin’s bombardment of the Russian parliament building in October 1993 and his victory in the presidential election of June 1996. The attack on parliament convinced the elites of the undesirability and limited effectiveness of violence. The reelection campaign convinced them of the power and effectiveness of manipulation. Managed democracy was justified as the best way to prevent a communist restoration. For this reason, it appealed not only to some Russian liberals but also to Western governments, whose greatest fear was that Yeltsin would be defeated by the Communists. The establishment of managed democracy in Russia would never have been possible without the endorsement of the West. It was the decision of Western governments to endorse Yeltsin and not to insist on fair elections that brought to life the current regime in Russia.

Read the whole article here.

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More on the power of two

[image source]

The cover of the latest issue of the New Times calls the current (and perhaps future?) period "Междуцарствие" - which I might translate as something like "interkingdom" or "interregency," although that doesn't really capture it which means "interregnum" - and, rephrasing Snoop's classic query, has several articles on the general theme of the subhead on the cover: "Whose chair is tougher."

And in an intriguing development which suggests that finely honed Russia-watcher skills might soon become transferable to US politics, a recent article in e-magazine Slate discusses how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "could run together and take turns being president" for the next 16 years by "creatively using the constitutional rules created by" the little-known 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

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Tandemocracy, DIMAcracy, and other neologisms for a new era

Note the presence of "Iron Felix" in the background.
[Image source]

Tandemocracy (which I first saw as the headline of this Kommersant-Vlast' cover story, "Тандемократия") - this is certainly a more warm-and-fuzzy term than the archaic-sounding двоевластие (usually translated into English as the even more archaic-sounding "dyarchy").

DIMAcracy (or ДИМАкратия, which I first saw mentioned on Veronica Khokhlova's blog as "DIMAkratiya") - this is a witty pun on the nickname of the new president, but we'll have to see if it remains popular - as of now, Yandex blog search provides a number of results for the term but nevertheless comments, "Typo? You may have meant 'democracy'."

Putvedev - this is a nice way to refer to Russia's two leaders with a single term. The term occurred to me - and no doubt to many others - in February, but I believe the first use of it in the English-language press was in a Guardian column on March 3rd (translated into Russian by InoSmi under the headline "All Power to Putvedev"), followed closely by Sean Guillory's Pajamas Media piece the next day; and Lenta.ru headlined its March 3 roundup of Western press coverage of the Russian elections "The New Russian Putvedev."

Since people have started referring to the dyarchs - sorry, the tandemocratic leaders; tandemocrats, if you will - collectively as Putvedev, there is at least some possibility that if the tag-team arrangement continues and things happen to go south in the new era, it could come to be known as the time of Путведевщина.

[image source]

[update 3/19] - I realized that I omitted a few good ones.


ДАМ - The new president's initials, which turn out to be very punnable. The three-letter word formed by them is the genetive case of the word for "ladies"; it's also the first-person singular, future tense, of the verb "to give." For example, blogger kotoeb complained that the traditional Women's Day toast "за дам!" ("to the ladies") became "100% political as of March 2nd." And a witty commenter on the NYT's LiveJournal community suggested that the new "Damskaya" vodka (intended for ladies) is just a rebranding of Putinka vodka.

Диммовочка (so far this has not come into wide usage) - this is a play on the word "дюймовочка," which is what Thumbelina is called in Russian, and the new president's nickname"Dima" (для тех, кто не в курсе, it's also a reference to his height).

МДА - The new president's initials, arranged in a more traditional Russian order (ФИО, or last name, first name, patronymic). As it turns out, this is also a commonly used word in Russian internet-speak, meaning something like "uh, yeah" (to the extent such things can even be translated, and of course the meaning in any given case is highly dependent on context and inflection - you can read inflection on a computer screen, right?). Anyway, it seems like it's often used in online discussions to express skepticism or weariness. Here's where I saw it used in reference to Medvedev:

Некоторые думали он ДАМ (свободу дам, тв дам, оттепель дам),
а он просто МДА

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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An Echo of Moscow

Tverskaya, Feb. 23, 2005 - from this set

Shortly after the Duma elections last December, I saw this article and wanted to translate it. I didn't have time then, and in truth it's a fairly challenging text to translate, since it is all about mood and atmosphere. The furor around Putin's L