On Wednesday, the Russian State Duma passed a bill to counter the Magnitsky Act in its second reading. This version of the bill contains amendments that ban American citizens from adopting Russian children and expands measures against any country – not just the United States – that violates the rights of Russian citizens. In addition, it would ban NGOs financed by the U.S. that deal with political issues or present a “threat” to Russian interests from operating in Russia. The bill needed 226 votes to pass, and received 400 for, four against, and two abstentions.

In this blog post for Ekho Moskvy, journalist Anton Orekh questions whether this bill is not itself a threat to Russian interests.

Kind Putin Will Save the Children
By Anton Orekh
December 19, 2012
Ekho Moskvy

The story of the anti-Magnitsky law and its anti-child amendment has revealed not only the true faces of these deputies, but their real purposes as well. It is not as if we ever had any illusions about this collection of mandated citizens. It is just that these scoundrels really showed the full extent of their foolishness when they started retaliating against America by harassing our orphans and the disabled. But it is precisely because of their foolishness that we keep them.

What a clever move for our top leaders. America passes a law to protect itself from our swindlers and killers. We have nothing to respond to this law with! We are going to hide our swindlers and killers to the very end, and we have nothing to present to the Americans. But we really want to. You cannot just brush yourself off and move on. And then four hundred clowns burst into the arena and scoff, throwing about all manner of drivel and demonstrating the outrage of the state. This is how we declare the awesome position of our state, its unanimous patriotism and other crap.

But if the anti-Magnitsky law really is passed as it reads now, then the rest of the world is going to think that our country has turned into a wild territory filled with crazy humanoids with balalaikas. But we are not entirely apathetic about global public opinion. We love giving foreigners a good impression. And right at the moment that this parliamentary rapture reaches its climax, it is time for completely different people to come to the fore. Ones who say something like: we share your sense of worry and dismay; we understand your emotions and indignation. But let us not react to this so harshly; let us smooth out our language. We can give the Americans and our other enemies and enviers one more chance to redeem themselves. Putin, Medvedev, Matvienko and whichever other big fish can softly temper our position. They play good cop.

And on one hand, we show our people that our deputies do supposedly care about our children and the future of our country; we show the world how the representatives of our people practically unanimously express their ire and readiness to tear to shreds these treacherous Yanks, and on the other hand, we make a conciliatory gesture. They will say: look, we are holding this national anger in check, but this is not easy to do, because national anger is great and all-encompassing.

That is the role of our deputies. When we need them to turn into silent punch card machines that stamp documents without looking at any actual laws. When we need to display them as wild monkeys, jumping high in the air. Regardless, they will to be displayed as morons who only do what their leaders tell them. And that is why they are deputies. The question is: how did they wind up in our Duma?

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

Earlier this week, deputies from the United Russia party introduced a bill that would label non-governmental organizations that accept foreign funding as “foreign agents.” While the bill’s sponsors claim that the law is intended to inform the public of which organizations are purely Russian and which are financed from abroad, analysts and oppositionists are furious that it will effectively, as Mark Urnov put it, “allow people to discredit any organization that is not United Russia or that displeases the authorities.” The bill comes right on the heels of one that significantly increases fines for violating regulations on holding public protests, much to the chagrin of the recent wave of anti-government political activists.

Writing for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, journalist Anton Orekh delves into the blatantly illogical nature of the Kremlin’s newest project.

Enemies or Fools
By Anton Orekh
July 4, 2012
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Now they’re in just as much of a hurry to pass a law concerning “foreign agents.” Just like they rushed to pass the new law on public protests, now they’re all in a flurry over this one. It will, of course, be passed. They’ll require us to take account more often, to take the label of “foreign agent.” They would love, of course, to add more labels as well. Like when during the war signs saying “provocateur” or “partisan” were stuck on people about to be hung, or six-pointed stars were sewn onto the shirts of Jews in the ghettos and camps. So that everyone knows that this non-profit organization employee is a “foreign agent.”

Naturally, they’re making references to the experiences of other countries. It’s characteristic of us to refer to other countries when we need to limit something or introduce insane fines or punishments. Never when there’s something positive to adopt. The creation of a system for the courts, or the parliament, or the army, or for science and education – there’s a great deal that’s good there. Nope, we’re just interested in the fines. Fines comparable to ones they have abroad – when we have incomparable salaries.

There’s only one way that our people interpret the phrase “foreign agent.” Spy! The agent of a foreign intelligence agency or something like that. Which is to say – an enemy. And in telling the public that your organization is a “foreign agent,” you, as the author of the law intended, are thus telling everyone that you are an enemy. An enemy of Russia.

A wave of awareness is now on the rise. People are saying, what’s the deal here, what is it you’re doing?! Because if this law is passed, even Putin’s favorite foundation Give Life and the less loved but universally known and “significant” Gorbachev Foundation would fall under the definition of “foreign agents.” And most importantly – the Russian Orthodox Church! It also fits the description of a “foreign agent!” A real horror, isn’t it?

Don’t you worry. The law will be passed all the same. But, just like all of our laws, it’s going to be interpreted loosely. It wasn’t written in order to interfere with our bureaucrat priests or Chulpan Khamatovа or Mikhail Gorbachev. Their institutions will get off, at the very worst, with a write-up. But most likely the government will just close its eyes. There’s no saying who under what circumstances will fall subject to which laws. Laws are instituted not in order to regulate our lives (but in normal countries normal laws are needed for just this reason), but in order to repress those the government deems to be undesirable, to make their lives harder, to put obstacles in their way, and to shove sticks in their tires. This is all done so that, if the need arises, they can apply rules that don’t even actually exist in the law. And that’s why Pussy Riot is locked up right now, for something that they didn’t actually do.

The intent of the authors of the law on “foreign agents” is something I can understand. What I don’t understand is another thing. Why are they hiding the enemies of the people? Why are they limiting themselves to taking half-measures? They’re giving the status of “spy” and “enemy of the state” to a huge swath of different offices. These are spy agencies that are financed from abroad. They are financed with a single goal: to undermine our system, to break Russia apart – and when Russia does break apart, to dismember her, occupy her, take control of her natural resources, and…it’s scary even to imagine what they want to do to our people. Right? And if that’s not right, then why are foreign governments setting up sabotage organizations on our territory?

So what do we have here? An entire network of hostile, subversive organizations are at work in Russia, but the state, instead of defusing them, is only requiring them to increase their financial paperwork and write up twice as many certificates. What kind of way is this to deal with our enemies? Instead of catching and punishing them, we’re going to make them hang tags on themselves and send them off into the world to keep on crapping all over it?!

I’ve had questions like this for a while. Remember what a whirlwind rose up after a group of oppositionists visited the American embassy. And it turned out that a visit to the American embassy was an incident of treason. So why is this embassy still functioning in general? If the very act of going there constitutes treason? Why do we still have relations with a country whose embassy carries out no functions besides radically extremist ones?

Forgive me, but I just don’t see any other logic. If a trip to the American embassy is treason, then it means that America is our enemy. Why should we have the embassy of an enemy in Moscow? If anyone who gets money from abroad is officially – officially! – considered to be a foreign agent, which is to say an enemy, then why aren’t these people in the Kolyma Gulag, and why aren’t their organizations closed down?

I believe my logic to be beyond reproach, and the authors of these laws are either the accomplices of our enemies or they’re simply fools. Here, there’s simply no other option.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

In the organization’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, Russia’s transparency rating fell from last year’s 2.2 to 2.1, on a scale of 0.0 (“highly corrupt”) to 10.0 (“very clean”). Additionally, it’s country ranking fell from 146 out of 180 countries to 154 out of 178 countries, landing between Papua New Guinea and Tajikistan.

Within Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Russia was ranked 16 out of 20, with the only countries more corrupt listed as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The organization estimates that the market for corruption in Russia is worth $300 billion a year.

While authors of the report did not comment on individual countries, they advised overall that “governments need to integrate anti-corruption measures in all spheres, from their responses to the financial crisis and climate change to commitments by the international community to eradicate poverty” in order to combat corruption.

Political commentator Anton Orekh responded to the report by saying that Russia would continue to fall in the ratings “until honest people become the most powerful ones in the country.”

“To say it plainly, take away the bureaucrats’ unlimited authorities, leave them with only the most necessary functions, and you will defeat corruption,” said Orekh. “Because corruption is the way of life for parasites, and our bureaucrats have become precisely parasites.”

The countries ranked in the report as the most transparent were Denmark, New Zealand, and Singapore, while Somalia, Myanmar, and Afghanistan were seen as the most corrupt. The United States came in at 22nd place, and China at 78th.

Transparency International noted that since “corruption – whether frequency or amount – is to a great extent a hidden activity that is difficult to measure,” the level of the perception of corruption in any given country was chosen as a telling alternative. “Over time, perceptions have proved to be a reliable estimate of corruption,” says the organization.

He did, however, announce his resignation from United Russia – the country’s leading political party, head by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a written statement, the now ex-mayor said that he had been “subjected to a fierce attack by the state mass media” and “savage harassment,” which “were connected with the task of eliminating the mayor of Moscow from the political arena.” He then blamed United Russia for “not giving a member of the party any kind of support; [the party] did not demonstrate any desire to deal with and put a stop to the stream of lies and slander.”

Then, on late Tuesday, an entirely unexpected document was published by the opposition-leaning newspaper the New Times: a scathing letter from Luzhkov to President Medvedev, accusing the latter of “informational terror” and intentional slander, among other things. The harassment, he says, stemmed from two of Luzhkov’s letters concerning the Khimki Forest controversy that were published earlier this month. But the letters, in which Luzhkov backtracked on his original decision to stand with Medvedev in opposition to the forest’s destruction, were “not a reason, but an excuse” to get rid of him, Luzhkov asserts. “The task has been set: Get rid of him. The excuse is found. Act!” says the letter.

The Kremlin had already made about as much clear through a whisper campaign of anonymous tipsters to the Moscow press over the past month, as well as a propaganda campaign run through the state-run media. Denouncing Luzhkov’s Khimki letters as an attempt to drive a wedge between the president and the prime minister, one Kremlin source noted that “it’s obvious that such attempts will not go without corresponding reactions.”

According to Luzhkov’s latest letter, the president’s administration had already told the mayor on September 17 about the decision to fire him due to loss of confidence. Apparently, Luzhkov was asked to resign voluntarily the next day, but when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, he was given an extra week to think it over. When Luzhkov returned to his office on Monday morning and announced that he wasn’t going anywhere, he already knew what was going to happen the next day.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has translated the text of the letter in full. Newtimes.ru, which hosts the original, has been suffering from bandwidth overload since the letter went online.

Prime Minister Putin said he agrees with Medvedev’s decision, and, as he is wont to do, stressed that it was made in strict accordance with the law. “It’s perfectly obvious that the relationship between the mayor of Moscow and the president didn’t work out, and anyway, the mayor is a subordinate of the president, not the other way around,” Putin said.

Several opposition activists were detained outside the mayor’s office on Tuesday evening, including one Other Russia member who attempted to unfurl a banner reading “Luzhkov, as you leave, break the fence.” The fence in question referred to the recently-erected barrier blocking off Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, where oppositionists gather on the 31st of each month to hold rallies in defense of free assembly as part of the Strategy 31 campaign. About 50 demonstrators were present outside the mayor’s office in total, including members of Solidarity, Yabloko, and the United Civil Front.

Here is a sampling of reactions from Russian analysts and oppositionists on Medvedev’s monumental decision:

Boris Nemtsov, Solidarity Co-Leader and Former Deputy Prime Minister

This morning, D. Medvedev, for the first time, performed a truly presidential deed. He fired Luzhkov as a result of a loss of confidence.

This is the first case where Dmitri Anatolevich has clearly acted independently.

The conflict between Medvedev and Luzhkov was advantageous for Putin, but the removal of a corrupt civil servant is extremely undesirable, as his system of power breaks down.

It’s the first time that there’s been a dismissal due to loss of confidence without having criminal suits filed or obvious city cataclysms.

If criminal suits for corruption don’t show up after this dismissal, then the dismissal is going to look unconvincing, and Luzhkov has a clear political future…

In short, in the run-up to 2011-2012, Luzhkov will offer up more than a few surprises.

So whether or not Dmitri Anatolevich likes it, criminal suits are going to have to be filed.

Otherwise we’re going to have yet another unexpected candidate for president.

Stanislav Belkovsky, Political Analyst

What should have happened has happened. Luzhkov is done with, although Yury Mikhailovich himself firmly believed that he was going to survive the latest try after seven previous unsuccessful attempts to remove him. For me, as a Muscovite voter, who the new mayor is going to be is totally unimportant. For me, it’s obvious that Luzhkov’s dismissal is not a political project, but an economic one. There are no politics here, because Luzhkov didn’t block Kremlin policy. He didn’t interfere in the process of determining a nominee for president in the 2012 elections, and a year and a half later would have supported any, or the only, candidate named by the Kremlin. The political character [of the dismissal] is very contrived.

The fact is that the federal financial-industrial groups decided to take Moscow for themselves, because they have long considered it unjust that these gigantic economic resources are being managed by a person from the past, who is organically disconnected from the contemporary federal elite. However, Vladimir Putin, who governed under the unofficial slogan “don’t make a splash,” that is to say don’t violate such hard-won socio-political stability – he was afraid to fire Luzhkov. And Dmitri Medvedev, as the famous Chinese proverb says it – “a newly born calf doesn’t fear a tiger,” the president, who doesn’t remember how it is when there’s instability, when there’s chaos, who is used to stability, came to this radical decision…

It’s possible that the new mayor, in the first months of his rule, will take a few relatively popular steps in order to win Muscovites’ trust… But the new mayor is not going to be interested in dismantling Luzhkov’s system. His task is to get control of this system and even strengthen it. Therefore, corruption in the city will remain and even grow.

Eduard Limonov, Other Russia Party Leader and Strategy 31 Co-Organizer

So they’ve gotten rid of the mayor!

Look out the window into the streets; can you see tanks? Luzhkov’s division hasn’t appeared?

I don’t think it’s going to appear…

I’ll see very soon whether or not the attitude of the Moscow courts toward the conflict on Triumfalnaya is going to change. On September 30, the Tverskoy Court is going to decide (for the second time) the fate of our suit (Alexeyeva, Kosyakin, Limonov) against the Moscow government concerning the rally on December 31, 2009.

On October 5, Justice Zaytsev will decide my personal fate as an organizer of the rally on August 31 of this year.

On October 6, the Moscow City Court will decide the fate of our suit (Alexeyeva, Kosyakin, Limonov) against the Moscow government regarding the July 31 rally.

So we’ll see.

Anton Orekh, Journalist, Ekho Moskvy Radio

This is what I want them to understand.

Moscow is a separate state. They say this about Moscow often, striving to underline how it gets fat at the expense of the rest of the country…

And few would find it simpler to govern Moscow than to govern the rest of Russia. And if the comrades from Leningrad think that this isn’t so, then they’re mistaken. And if they think that their friends from some kind of cooperative or their messmates from their school department can deal with the management of a separate country, they they’re also mistaken.

We shouldn’t be naive.

You’re not going to create freedom or democracy in Moscow by itself. There can’t be an honest capital in a larcenous country. If there’s no justice here, there won’t be any in Whitestone.

Whatever kind of mayor we get, he’s going to have to govern Moscow by the same rules that work in the entire rest of the territory of Russia, albeit Moscow and Russia are different countries.

Regency?
May 8, 2008
Anton Orekh
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

An astonishing time awaits us. The time of Medvedev’s rule will without a doubt be astonishing. Astonishing not because the astonishment will be pleasant, although, who knows, what if! It’s just that something simple and ordinary cannot come out of this whole contrived plan.

The grandiose inauguration against the background of the thievishly modest hand-over of presidential credentials, that is to say, the effective takeover of the full [presidential] powers. Will his rule henceforth be the same: a bright outer shell and the absence of any inside filling? If Medvedev is going to rule on his own –it will be astonishing. Because now, no one is expecting it.

They are waiting for regency. Something like it existed in our history, but it was long ago, and no one now living caught it. If Medvedev rules in name only, cutting ribbons, sending facsimile telegrams on the anniversaries of his favorite actors and accepting the credentials of ambassadors – it would be logical, but unfamiliar and incomprehensible in a country where the tsar must be the Head. And Russia’s president is indeed her tsar.

If the tendency of the presidential post gradually becoming formality continues, wherein all the actual powers are in practice transferred to the prime minister – it will violate all established traditions. But still, how perfectly did the renowned Putin political analyst put it: as in, who said that the president is the head of the Executive Branch? This is a misconception! The prime minister was always the head of the Executive Branch! And if you thought this wasn’t the case, then it was merely a temporary and necessary deviation and error.

Which means, we are already being prepared to regard the prime minister as the state’s chief executive. And as for his boss, the president… I don’t even know what [to call him].

But imagine that Medvedev, having received the “Card” and having sworn on the Constitution, suddenly decides that he’s the head and really does become the head? Then it will be quite an astonishing rule, with the dethronement of the all-people’s idol-prime minister.

But imagine how delightful it will be, if both immediately start administrating, which is also possible up to a point. Although, this would not be as much astonishing as fraught with consequences. Already, unrest has started among the civil servants, since they can’t grasp who to resolve matters with, who to brown nose, who to follow. And when the two-voiced cacophony sounds from the Kremlin! The bureaucrats will finally go haywire, and serve two masters, like Truffaldino.

But the main danger for the new epoch doesn’t even lie in all this. Up until now, after all, the times have not been less astonishing. At no time before did such a golden rain pour down upon our country. Nearly eight years of a continuous stream of oil and oil dollars. Like any freebie, the hydrocarbon one will also cease sooner or later (likely sooner!). But holding on to it is our whole economy, and all of our prosperity – which is like winning after putting [all your money] on “zero” out of desperation. But it isn’t possible to keep winning on “zero” forever.

Medvedev will find it necessary to struggle with falling revenues from the sale of resources –against a background of out-of-control inflation. And it has already gone out-of-control. 18% per year is what we’re heading toward– such a hole can’t be filled with promises and cheerful segments on the news. And who will blame who? Will the president dismiss the premier, or will the premier say the president has failed?

And how long will this astonishing time extend? One term, two terms? Or maybe, until the first scandal with a planned switch-up?

Predictions, as is known, are a foolish and unrewarding thing. Furthermore, the way you make a prediction is precisely how it probably won’t happen. But, on the other hand, for all the cartwheels of Putin’s rule, his appointment of Medvedev as successor was one of the most evident and oldest of the discussed versions [of events]. And that means that there are still some things in this life we can predict.

translated by theotherrussia.org