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Now that everyone seems to be talking about an impending war over Abkhazia, in spite of Germany's best efforts (see the latest news here), I've decided to finally translate this post from a few months ago by LiveJournal blogger Cyxymu (perhaps my favorite blogger from the Caucasus), a Georgian who spent his childhood in Abkhazia but now lives in Tbilisi, having become an "internally displaced person" (IDP) during the hostilities in the early 1990s.

Why am I translating this now? For one thing, it's good to remember the human side of the conflict at times like this, but I had a more selfish reason for translating this post - the parts which describe pre-war bliss sort of called to my mind my childhood comfort level visiting my grandparents in Peoria and Madison combined with my in-laws' house in Floresti, Moldova (same corrugated roof, same clattering downspouts, same type of cellar...), where I hope to be spending some time next month.

And perhaps the most selfish reason for undertaking the task of translating this lyrical post rather than rooting around the internet for the most up-to-the minute speculations and accusations is that I just don't have time to do a proper roundup of all the analysis and pseudo-analysis that's circulating at the moment about what might actually happen in the region. Hopefully it will stay at the usual level of saber-rattling.

Anyway, here is cyxymu's post, titled "home":

Last night I dreamed about my grandfather's house. I hadn't dreamed about it in a long time, and it was amazing to find myself back in my childhood.

Most of the time I spent in Sukhumi I lived in that house, I knew all of its nooks and crannies, had secret hiding places and places to be alone and dream...

I dreamed that I was climbing the stairs to the attic, and it was so nice to listen to the rain fall up there. My brother and I went up there a lot and listened to thunderstorms, you could hear the branches banging against the corrugated roof, the rain pounding the tile and flowing down the gutter.

I also liked to hide in the garage, my brother and I had our headquarters there, the garage had a metal roof and the rain would pound on it really hard...

Sometimes when the Besletka [river] would rise during a rainstorm, it would start to flood. The water would pour into the cellar, and then we had to save our supplies) heroism was rewarded with the jam that grandmother made.

In the cellar we had hiding places where we hid all sorts of things, even just before we left, we hid an optical sight that I had found that very day. In back of the house was a chicken coop, and a rooster woke us up every morning as he summoned the sun to rise. Sometimes rats would get into the chicken coop, and I would hunt them with a small-caliber Geco. That's what I wanted the sight for.

In the garden grew everything necessary for human life: two types of pears, apples (champagne and winter), persimmons, green springtime plums [ткемали], plums, feijoa, medlar, figs and two kinds of cherries. I planted the peaches with my own hands. And tomatoes, cucumbers, raspberries, strawberries (though the strawberries often went bad, since we had very damp earth). The cucumbers liked to climb up on the raspberries, and we sometimes missed a cucumber, since we couldn't always see them in the greenery, and it would grow into a big, yellow cucumber. Then grandpa would say, "Well, it's OK, we'll use it for seeds next year."

Every spring he would start the seeds first in cans, then he would replant them into wooden crates, and only then into glass hot-houses. And when the tomatoes grew tall, grandpa and I strung nets over them, so that the pears wouldn't fall on the tomatoes when they ripened.

During [the war], when an Abkhazian shell hit next door, a bit of shrapnel took down a branch of the champagne apple tree as wide as your arm, some of the other trees lost limbs also, and I kept saying that it was the trees that protected us...

Shrapnel chopped up the whole house then, pieces flew in the window of the room where grandpa and grandma slept, miraculously not touching them, lots of bits penetrated the walls, tore the roof apart, knocked out all the windows in the house... But we didn't go move into an Abkhazian's house, instead we put in new glass and fixed the roof (patched the holes). Thinking ahead, we stuck crosses of white paper tape on the windows...

My heart aches for that house more than any other, in spite of the fact that we had nicer houses and apartments in Sukhumi. My heart stayed behind in that house.

And more than anything I can't forgive myself for leaving behind my grandpa and grandma - when I took my parents out of Sukhumi, I was hoping to return in a couple of days.

And no one from my family was able to make it to Sukhumi for my grandpa and grandma's funerals. We simply weren't allowed to return.

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Getting a job - and an education - in the new Russia

Translated from barabanch (original is here):

A young lady came to interview for a job with a friend of mine.
She's a "Young Russia" activist.

Under "Professional Accomplishments" [on her resume] the one and only line read "Participated in the inauguration of Dmitry Anatol'evich Medvedev."

A couple of comments on the post:

by avdeev [my translation, punctuation as in original]:

it's funny, but things like that have been happening for awhile
for example at RGGU they accept [United Russia] party members into the graduate programs, and it's harder for people who haven't been vetted by the office to get in [...]

a couple of my friends were advised by the academic department that before turning in their grad school applications they should pay a visit to the [local United Russia] office, that it would be more correct and predictable to do so

at the office it was suggested that they write an essay about how much I love the motherland, i.e. [United Russia], and how much I want to join the party, well they told [United Russia] to go you-know-where and they submitted their applications anyway, we'll see what happens in September

by el_cambio:

You don't understand.

[quoting from here, which also seems to have been quoted from a transcript of some kind:] Speaking at [a panel discussion on "the new Russian elite" at the "Strategy-2020 Forum"], Vladislav Surkov called on the participants in the discussion to "determine what the Russian elite is." In response to this, producer Andrei Fomin suggested compiling a "list of the elite," and the Andrei Korkunov, general director of the Odintsovo candy factory, noted that such a list already exists, and pointed out the list of participants in the presidential inauguration in the Kremlin.

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Platon's plaudit for Putin portrait

[image source]

The head shot of Vladimir Putin looking ice-cold that graced the cover of Time's "Man of the Year" issue last year - not to mention the photo inside that had Putin looking like a cross between a tsar' and a godfather - caused quite a stir (earlier SoM posts about the issue are here and here) and had many people wondering how the photographer was able to get such shots of the Russian president. Now that photog, who goes by the name Platon, has won a World Press Photo award for the picture. As it turns out, there is indeed a fairly interesting story surrounding the photo.

You can listen to an interview with Platon in which he tells the tale of how he got the shot on the World Press Photo award website (click on 2008 and then the thumbnail of VVP) - the tale has been noted by at least a couple of photography-focused blogs as worth a listen, and I second that impression. I haven't seen a transcript anywhere, or I'd paste in some of the more interesting bits, but again, the whole thing is worth listening to.

Sofia Kornienko of Radio Svoboda interviewed Platon (as well as Stanley Green, who is famous as a photo-chronicler of Chechnya) and also got some fairly interesting comments about the Putin photo. Her own comments about the impact of the Putin "Man of the Year" issue are also quite interesting, although some of her conclusions strike me as perhaps a bit exaggerated. I decided to translate a portion of the interview (n.b. presumably an original English-language text of this interview exists somewhere, but I couldn't find it online; there are likely to be substantial differences between the original and my somewhat stilted re-translation back into English - as always here at Scraps of Moscow, you get what you pay for):

Platon: [the first part of the interview tracks closely with the story told by Platon in the audio interview linked above - Kornienko identifies Platon as a "fan of tall tales"] Then Putin came into the room, and I think he felt sorry for me. I was all sweaty and about to lose it. Pity is the only reason he agreed to pose for me. The ability to make people feel sorry for you is the photographer's greatest weapon.

The first thing I said to him was, "Let's not stand on ceremony. What was it like to meet Paul McCartney?" Everyone in the room was shocked, because in Putin's office you're supposed to stay very serious, and no one smiles. Then, when we had finished the photo shoot and were talking about the Beatles, I thought I was able to get inside his interior world.

The picture I took was a play on the Godfather, or Scarface, or something like that. I think Putin liked that picture. After all, it's what he wants, it's his style to look like a gangster.

Sofia Kornienko: After the awards ceremony, I asked Platon why he decided to take on this assignment.

Platon: It's my job. I have very strong political views, but my job is to take people's pictures, therefore part of my work is to break down the natural barrier, the natural resistance [of the subject] upon meeting them, whether it is simple shyness, emotion or a lack of confidence, to break down that barrier and reach the internal content of their personality.

In this case, I had just eight minutes to feel out that connection with what the person had inside. Having felt out the person's internal substance, I have to capture it as I see it. As far as political views, it's not my role to come up with an angle or approach to the subject ahead of time that would intentionally depict him as an evil man, if I perhaps think that's what he is. My agreement to photograph someone [also] doesn't mean that I have agreed to idolize him or sing his praises. I simply documented his presence for history.

Sofia Kornienko: But the issue of Time which named Putin "Man of the Year," on the cover of which your photograph appeared, as well as the interview illustrated by your portrait, was perceived by many liberally oriented people in Russia and outside of Russia as a betrayal on the part of our Western colleagues whose support is so highly valued. Putin's interview with Time didn't contain a single question which could have provoked a substantive discussion and, in the eyes of many, discredited the Western ideals of the free press which have generally been considered the benchmark [for journalists everywhere].

Doesn't it seem that your photograph was used as a banner or symbol of this tendency which disappointed so many readers, and what would you like to say to people who found that issue of the magazine outrageous or insulting?

Platon: The fact of the matter is that, as I already said, it's my job to document people living today. If I had lived in the 1940s, it's quite possible that I would have photographed Stalin. That doesn't mean that I support the subjects of my photos. The main thing is to get a portrait that shows who my subject really is. I can't control what happens with the portrait after that.

As soon as a photo is published, it leaves my sphere of influence and becomes public property. I am sure that one way or another history brings the truth to the surface. It's possible that some people were outraged by that issue of Time or by the context in which [Putin] was presented - I can't change that. But I documented him. I showed that if you look deep into his eyes, you see power, strength, incredible self-discipline and cold, icy cold.

I have my own strength: a visual image is able to convey to the audience that which the written word cannot. Perhaps people felt that their ideals were betrayed by the written words, but as far as the photograph, it shows Putin as he really is. That's the way he is. And one can't not accept a precise portrait, because it is true to life and honest. I tried to be honest with myself and with Putin when I was working. That's all you can expect from a photographer.

Radio Svoboda interview via barabanch

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Russian popular opinion on the "frozen conflicts"

[image source]

The Russian Analytical Digest (RAD) is a valuable resource; each issue focuses on a different topic (almost always something highly relevant to current events) and has essays as well as polling data. A recent issue focused on the "frozen conflicts" (even as that term comes to seem less and less apt) in Georgia. The lead essay provided a good overview of the ongoing tension between Georgia and Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia and incorporated some of the ideas that were discussed at a recent conference on the "frozen conflicts" that I was fortunate enough to attend.

One interesting thing that the RAD often does is put together relevant polls on whatever topic the issue is covering, often using Russia's major polling outfits. Even though one of them has been compromised after its director received an award from Putin for his work during the recent election campaign, their polls are still probably the best ways to follow the changes in Russian public opinion over a span of years. Here are a few of RAD's graphical summaries of their polling data on Abkhazia and South Ossetia (click on them to enlarge if you can't read the fine print):

[original source - Levada Center]

[original source - VTsIOM]

Russia's third major polling agency, FOM, also had a report in early April about the situation surrounding Abkhazia, with some interesting analysis about the changes in Russian public opinion about the secessionist region over the years:

And how have the events in Kosovo affected Russians' attitudes toward the Abkhazian problem? Reference to the example of Kosovo is encountered fairly rarely among the arguments advanced by those in favor of recognizing Abkhazia's independence - in just 2% of the responses: "how is it any worse than Kosovo?"; "America recognized Kosovo, and we need to recognize Abkhazia"; "in connection with Kosovo - likewise." [these are quotations from FOM's respondents]

There is, however, another number, which obviously demonstrates that the events in Kosovo have put Russians noticeably on guard. Since October 2006, the portion of our fellow citizens who believe that Russia should recognize Abkhazia's independence has declined by 12% - from 51% to 39%. Correspondingly, the percentage of respondents who found this question difficult to answer increased from 30 to 45%. The answers to the free-form questions prevent us from concluding that support in Russia for Georgian sovereignty over the region has increased. More likely, we should conclude that solidarity with Serbia and feelings of sympathy for the "brother Slavs" related to their loss of Kosovo forced some Russians to begin to doubt whether it is desirable or acceptable to promote separatist tendencies wherever they may arise - including in Georgia.

The FOM question discussed in the bit I translated above was worded as follows (the graphic is from the same report):

In 1999, Abkhazia declared its statehood and independence [from Georgia]. Other countries have not recognized Abkhazia's independence. Do you think that Russia should or should not recognize Abkhazia's independence?

(left column - should [recognize]; center - should not [recognize]; right column - difficult to say)

(blue - July 29-30, 2006; purple - Oct. 7-8, 2006; yellow - March 29-30, 2008)

The latest chapter (or perhaps the latest paragraph in the latest chapter) in this very long story would seem to be this report.

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

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

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

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

Nikolai Zlobin, Vremia Novostei, Feb, 29, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 Luzhniki speech has faded, but Nizhny Novgorod, where part of the article is set, is still in the news as the location of Medvedev's one official day speaking as a candidate and (perhaps less significantly) as the region singled out by the New York Times in a controversial article about the Kremlin's (ab)use of "administrative resources," so this seems like a suitable item to post as we await the inevitable result on March 2.

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

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

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

The city before the elections

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

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

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

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

"Those assholes!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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When enmity gets in the way of friendship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reaction of another commenter:

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

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

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

[Update 2/27]

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

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

Rossia Should Bite the Bullet And Apologize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Well, this looks interesting...*

[scroll down for updates]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


[Update]

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

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

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

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

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


[Update 2/23]

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

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

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

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

Translate articles about Russia into Russian

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

Collect comments from Russian-language bloggers on their articles

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

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

Shall we?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


[Update 2/24 ]

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

[Update 2/25]

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

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

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

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

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

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Preved, Medved - the new apparent heir apparent**

VVP makes Dima an offer he can't refuse.*
[image source]

Much as Putin called for a resounding victory for United Russia in the Duma elections, he has arranged a resounding endorsement for his apparent heir-apparent, Dmitry Medvedev. At a televised meeting between involving four of the parties that participated in the recent elections - party of power United Russia, Kremlin creation Fair Russia, the Agrarian Party, and the Civil Force party - as well as Putin himself, Medvedev received an endorsement from all present.

There is, of course, lots of reaction to this news already. The Russian stock market has surged - Gazprom, where Medvedev is Chairman of the Board, is up 3% - and I have to say that in the imperfect world of Russian politics a smooth transition to a Medvedev administration may be the best possible outcome for anyone concerned about continued growth and stability in Russia. Medvedev's involvement in corporate Russia predates his involvement with Gazprom - he was head of legal affairs at SPB-based timbercompany Ilim Pulp for most of the 1990s - and fits with his the "moderate liberal / technocrat" label generally applied to Medvedev's politics.

The market's favorable reaction to this news may also reflect a sense of relief that the succession process is moving forward. There have been a lot of rumblings about unseemly "under-the-carpet" battles taking place among top officials lately (with baffling and disturbing public manifestations like the affair surrounding the Shvartsman interview, and the arrest of Storchak), and perhaps having a successor-designate in place reduces the sense that Putin's departure is leaving a huge vacuum.

Who will be leading the way after March?
[image source]

Looking ahead, this may also be good news for the future of the US-Russian relationship, both because making money is one thing both countries agree on and because of who Medvedev is not - a hawk like Sergei Ivanov. But who knows - the past few months have been all about surprises and the expectation of more surprises, so this apparent outcome (an anointed successor from among the two candidates who have been in play for at least a year now), because it's one which might have been expected six months ago, is in itself a bit of a surprise.

On the other hand, there's still plenty of time for more twists and turns as the "2008 question" works its way to a resolution. And perhaps Medvedev in the Kremlin would be ideal - young and easily packaged for voters, palatable to big business and to the outside world, and apparently very manageable. According to Limonov (not that he's an unbiased, or even sane, source):

It is well known that within Putin's entourage Medvedev is called "son," apparently, because of his obedience to Putin. The fact that he has practically been appointed president means the continuation of chekist-oligarchic rule in Russia.

From the Moscow Times profile of Medvedev, titled "A Soft-Spoken, 'Smart Kid' Lawyer":

None of Dmitry Medvedev's friends can remember hearing him bark an order. If he ever did, it would sound forced, they said.

Soft-spoken and a full 10 centimeters shorter than the diminutive President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev is a far cry from what the public expects in a leader, political consultants said.

Lenta.ru recalls the shifting fortunes of Medvedev and Ivanov over the course of 2006 and 2007 in this commentary - perhaps we shouldn't be to quick to pronounce Medvedev the successor, since he already looked to have it in the bag in 2006, only to seem surpassed byIvanov earlier this year. But time is running out another twist of fortune. From the Lenta piece, which is titled, simply, "The Successor" (my translation):

Observers by now were expecting all sorts of surprises. Few believed any longer that the successor would be from the group of long-discussed candidates. Some thought that Zubkov would become a "technical" president, who would stay in office for a year or two and then resign so that Putin could once again head the government. But as it turned out a different scenario has played out. [...]

If nothing extraordinary happens, Medvedev's victory in the presidential elections is, of course, guaranteed. Experts agree that this would mean the very continuation of the course of Russia's development that Putin and the members of United Russia have been talking about so much. Gryzlov called Medvedev the "most socially oriented" of the potential candidates, and United Russia representatives had earlier said on multiple occasions that in the Fifth Duma they plan to focus on social issues. Economic analysts call Medvedev a liberal, which, in theory, should be appealing to Western investors.

The New Times asks, "Who is Mr Medvedeff?" in an article which headlines his intelligentsia background and traces his rise to power in 1990s St. Petersburg and later in the Putin administration (my translation):

According to many accounts, during those years [the early '90s] people often thought Medvedev was Putin's personal secretary and did not take him seriously. According to Stanislav Belkovsky, "Dmitry Anatol'evich, who is pliant, soft, and psychologically dependent, was psychologically always absolutely comfortable for Vladimir Vladimirovich, and for [Putin] that is extremely important." [...]

Medvedev's new life begain in November 1999, when he became the deputy head of the government administration while Putin was Prime Minister. Immediately following Boris Yeltsin's historic speech and his "abdication of the throne," Medvedev became the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, with the idea that he would later replace Aleksandr Voloshin. Voloshin and Roman Abramovich, according to Stanislav Belkovsky, proposed Medvedev for the job, and when Voloshin was stepping down three years later as head of the administration (in large part in protest over the Yukos case), he insisted that he be replaced by Medvedev (who also talked about the authorities' actions in the Yukos case as "not thought all the way through").

Putin himself has admitted that he planned to make Medvedev head of the Federal Securities Commission (according to some accounts, he wanted to have Dmitry Kozak head up the administration). If that had happened, Dmitry Anatol'evich could have gotten his hands on some "real" work, like his friend and partner Anton Ivanov did. It's no accident that Medvedev resembles a young top manager or financial director... And then today there wouldn't be the official Medvedev, there would be Medvedeff, the head of a division of some large Western investment bank. And he would have parted ways with Putin once and for all, not counting Christmas cards sent from Moscow to London and from London to Moscow.

But Putin needed a reliable person in the Kremlin, moreover Medvedev did not irritate the Yeltsin-era elite either. That's how the idea emerged to make him the president's heir: Medvedev was chosen as a compromise and practically ideal figure, acceptable to everyone. By many accounts, the idea took shape in the fall of 2005. By November of 2005, Medvedev was appointed first deputy Prime Minister, and in the spring of 2006 he was supposed to become Prime Minister. However every action, as is well known, leads to an equal and opposite reaction.

New Times then talks a bit about how Igor Sechin and his allies in the administration worked against Medvedev, but that part of the story is not very well developed. No doubt there will be copious speculative accounts about how this is a "victory" for this or that faction of the Kremlin elites.

Other internet resources about the apparent heir-apparent (I like that phrase, can you tell?):

Vladimir Pribylovsky's Anticompromat has a thorough bio and a clippings file. Just yesterday, Pribylovsky had speculated that Valentina Matviyenko might be the designated successor.

Robert Amsterdam has posted excerpts from Medvedev's "most official 'keynote' address."

NewsRu.com has an interesting agglomeration of stories about Medvedev, including his comments on the use of "olbansky" (a corrupted version of Russian used on the internet) and his affinity for Deep Purple. It also cites a fresh joke from the website Dirty.ru, which also has this picture of a stunned Medvedev:

"Independent observers from Turkmenistan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan have already declared that the Russian Presidential elections were a free and open expression of the will of the Kremlin."

Indeed, the news did not take long to make it on to the Kremlin's website (which, interestingly, does not seem to have a text of Putin's scathingly anti-Western Luzhniki speech) and United Russia's website (