As RIA Novosti reports, the city plans to build a multi-level parking garage underneath Triumfalnaya Square as part of two city construction projects, at least one of which had already been agreed upon in 2002.

The Grani.ru news portal cites experts as saying that such a garage would be inexpedient, as it could bring about an increase in the number of cars on Moscow’s already jam-packed central roadways. Scientific Director Mikhail Blinkin of the Scientific Research Institute (NII) for Transportation and Road Maintenance argues that supporting the lack of parking infrastructure in the city’s center would promote the switch from cars to public transportation.

The construction announcement comes one day after Strategy 31 co-organizer Eduard Limonov applied with the Moscow mayor’s office on Monday to receive sanction for the campaign’s upcoming rally on August 31. The application was co-signed by fellow organizers Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Konstantin Kosyakin.

In response to Tuesday’s announcement, opposition leaders said they still intend to hold their rally on August 31. “We’ll come to Triumfalnaya Square, what is this construction to us?” said Limonov. “Stunning. I haven’t seen something like this in a long time.”

Representatives of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Young Russia had also applied on Monday for sanction for their own rally on August 31, also on Triumfalnaya Square. The movement routinely organizers rallies that directly conflict with Strategy 31 events, providing an official basis for the Moscow government to deny sanction to the opposition.

Young Russia Press Secretary Natalia Maslova told the Kasparov.ru news portal that the youth movement managed to hand in their application just fifteen minutes before Limonov handed in the application for Strategy 31. “Our activists got in line outside the mayor’s office at twelve o’clock at night,” she said.

Strategy 31 rallies are held by the Russian opposition in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly on the 31st of each month with that date. In the thirteen months that the campaign has run, the Moscow city authorities have never once agreed to sanction the events. Recently revealed government documents verify that that the mayor’s office has lied about their reasons for refusing to grant official sanction, indicating that the decisions were politically motivated. The opposition routinely holds the rallies regardless, unsanctioned, and they are routinely brutally broken up by OMON riot police and other law enforcement agents. During the most recent rally on July 31, 100 of the 1000 participants were detained, many badly beaten. As a result, government representatives in the United States and Europe have criticized the Kremlin for failing to observe the fundamental civil right to free assembly.

Government authorities in Russia have repeatedly offered Strategy 31 organizers an unofficial compromise: the rallies could be sanctioned if the oppositionists agree either to a different location or to exclude Eduard Limonov from among the campaign’s official organizers. Despite initial disagreements, the organizers eventually agreed to reject all of the government’s proposals, insisting that the 31st article of the Russian constitution provides citizens with the right to peacefully assemble without any conditions from the government.

Two Russian opposition leaders appear to have agreed to make a compromise with Moscow city authorities in order to receive legal sanction to hold the next in the series of Strategy 31 rallies in defense of freedom of assembly, Grani.ru reports.

In a statement posted Saturday on her blog, former Soviet dissident and Strategy 31 rally co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva indicated, albeit inadvertently, that she and fellow former dissident Sergei Kovalyov have decided to exclude National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov from the group of organizers who regularly apply for sanction with the Moscow mayor’s office.

The concession would fall in line with a proposal made by the presidential administration earlier this month to exclude Limonov and receive sanction as a result. At the time, opposition leaders – including Alexeyeva – strongly denounced the proposal.

However, the 82-year-old former dissident said that the compromise does not signify a defeat for the Strategy 31 campaign, and is rather a structural alternation.

“A concession to alter the composition of the group of applicants, from our point of view, is not a fundamental concession as long as the new applicants are well-known activists in the 31 movement,” says the statement.

“We don’t think that an acceptance of the conditions put forth by the Moscow authorities would signify defeat,” the statement goes on. “To agree to force out anyone else from these rallies would be a capitulation. But an agreement to hold the rally…with different applicants for the event is by no means a disgraceful agreement. This is a success all the same. Yes, not an entire one, but a success.”

However, the joint statement does not actually mention Limonov by name, and there are conflicting reports in the Russian media as to who the oppositionists are actually referring to. Citing information from RIA Novosti, the online news site Gazeta.ru is reporting that Alexeyeva herself plans to leave the group of organizers, and not Limonov. If this was the case, however, the logic would be hard to find, as there was never any indication that such a step would result in the Moscow authorities granting sanction to Strategy 31 events.

At the same time, commenters on Alexeyeva’s blog have chastised her and Kovalyov for composing a Soviet-style bureaucratic document that, while clearly speaking about Limonov, does not actually mention his name. The post itself does indirectly reference the earlier proposal by the presidential administration to exclude Limonov, as mentioned above: “to agree to force out anyone else would signify defeat.”

As of Sunday morning, Limonov himself had not made any statement in response.

The move came a week after the Federation nominated chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov, backed by opposition leader and longtime chess rival Garry Kasparov, as a candidate for the presidency of the World Chess Federation. The incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is the multi-millionaire president of Russia’s autonomous Republic of Kalmykia. Among other things, Ilyumzhinov is famous for declaring an “economic dictatorship” and claiming to have been visited by aliens.

What exactly the stakes are in this unlikely scandal is the topic explored in this column written for Grani.ru by Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky.

The column is also available in Spanish.

Ilyumzhinov’s Game – For the Benefit of the Elites
By Stanislav Belkovsky
May 24, 2010
Grani.ru

Another striking move was made the other day in the battle for the presidency of the World Chess Federation [FIDE]. By order of Arkady Dvorkovich, an aide to the president of the Russian Federation and chairman of the Supervisory Council of the Russian Chess Federation (RCF), several men in black seized the legendary Central Chess Club on Gogolevsky Bulvar and sealed off the office of RCF Chairman Alexander Bakh and, of course, the accounting office. Such is the way that all professionals and fans that support the candidacy of 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov for the post as the head of FIDE were given a clear signal: you can meddle about, bustle around, do whatever you want – but we (that is, Dvorkovich & Co.) will never, under any circumstances, ever give you FIDE.

What happened was unsurprising. It fits entirely into the theory and practice of contemporary Russian monetocracy (monetary power is absolute). What’s surprising in this story is something else: that the progressive community of the Russian Federation began, for some reason, to sob like a whale over the “modernizing liberal” Arkady Dvorkovich, and became terribly worried about the possibility that the presidential aide could lose his untarnished reputation. Which, obviously, is no less of a national asset than all of our chess world champions put together.

In connection with that, I want to call for a vote on the following question: on what basis was it concluded that Dvorkovich, the aide mentioned here, is a “modernizing liberal,” and not a corrupt crook, perfectly typical for the contemporary power machine of the Russian Federation? What has this civil servant done in his career that’s been modern or liberal?

By all appearances, the progressive community once counted Mr. Dvorkovich as one of their own, given his Jewish surname, nice haircut, and expensive cuff links (you would think Igor Sechin had more expensive cuff links). Following these artificially chosen criteria further, we must come to the conclusion that there are only modernizing liberals in the government of the Russian Federation. Everyone else has left. And that means that the progressive community has been victorious, although this is not yet very noticeable.

Yes, a couple of years ago, when the Medvedev Thaw had only just begun, Arkady Dvorkovich made one radically liberal pronouncement: he promised to slash the VAT; and if the bureaucracy was going to resist, then he would swap out the entire bureaucracy for a chess-playing grandmother. But here, out of our impassible taiga, the terrible roar of Finance Minister Kudrin was heard, and not once has any bleating by aides about the VAT been repeated ever since.

In general, in order not to focus on cuff links, let’s analyze an abstract civil servant and figure out what exactly his concrete motivation is.

See here, ladies and gentlemen, respected progressive community. If some civil servant arranges for a personal living room named after him in the building of a commercial bank, and his brother has a job as an officer for public relations or government relations in the country’s most scandalous construction company, then believe me, he has long ago defined the terms of his reputation. He is actually publicly announcing to all interested parties: yes, I am a thief, I am corrupt, and I’m proud of it. Because the laws of the monetocracy are the social morals of the current Russian Federation, I would say. In the Euro-Atlantic world, such a bureaucrat would be thrown out of the civil service and blacklisted. But we aren’t in the Euro-Atlantic world.

Well, and if a civil servant makes such a fuss over such internationally renowned businessmen as Ziyavudin Magomedov (one step away from the Russian Chess Federation presidency) and David Kaplan (FIDE Director for Development and FIDE representative in Moscow) – what does this say? Or do you not know what kind of businessmen these are? No, I do not wish to dwell in detail on the reconstruction of the Bolshoi Theater, which their company, Inteks, is carrying out in full swing. Or even on the third oil terminal in the port in Primorsk, although parts of that are interesting. Remember all the financial institutions like Diamant, VIP-Bank, etc.? That they were closed for money laundering? And the murder of Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, remember? It’s true that a certain Alexei Frenkel took the rap for everything. He, apparently, didn’t have the chess know-how to jump off the board in time.

If an abstract civil servant recklessly promotes the interests of such a business, then already nothing frightens him. And there’s no need to cry on his Gucci vest. Save your tears.

Still, something sometimes occurs to progressive society so that at the last moment, fearing a total loss of face and FIDE’s reputation, all these little kids, including Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, stop. And they don’t bring the matter to the finish line. And that means that Anatoly Karpov will then become president of the World Chess Federation.

No. The little kids aren’t going to stop. FIDE’s reputation interests them somewhat, but only to the extent to which they control the Federation and all of its financial commodity flows. And they’ll do anything to keep that control. The seizure of the Central Chess Club – that’s only the beginning.

Next they’ll do everything that has become customary. They’ll convene some kind of emergency session of the RCF that will wipe out any of Karpov’s followers from any and all of their posts. They’ll draw up court rulings that confirm that the candidate for the FIDE presidency from Russia can only be a man with the surname starting with the letter I. Foreign participants of the FIDE Congress who are coming to Khanty-Mansiysk to vote for Karpov will not be granted entry visas. They’ll post a video on the Internet showing Karpov copulating with a rook. Finally, under some pretense, they will expel foreign federations from FIDE that cry out the word “Karpov” too persistently. There are many ways. Now they’ll put out yet another installment – we’ll see the new results. By the way, according to ancient folklore: if former television host Solovyov begins to piss on Karpov on his blog, it means that the installment is underway.

You ask: and why are these kids so hung up in general on this FIDE that they’re ready for the sake of their victory to bring down the entire edifice of world chess? For what? In the conditions of a monetocracy there is but one response: dough. Lots of dough. They have extensive plans to reform and commercialize chess. For example, it has already been announced that the FIDE headquarters will be moved to Moscow after Ilyumzhinov’s reelection. What does this mean? It means that the little kids are going to get money from the government or from banks close to the government (VEB, VTB, whoever else) to construct the headquarters. I think it’ll be around $300 million. They don’t give out more for such a plan, and less would be pointless. How many mouths there are to feed! Then, relying on the unprecedented experience accumulated in the process of reconstructing the Bolshoi Theater, $200 million (of the $300) will be immediately sawed off. More accurately, it has already been sawed off. Now. Today. In advance. And what – as if they’d allow Karpov to come and break up their entire saw-happy joyride?

In general, they have very extensive plans to work on chess. Just recently, David Kaplan (that same FIDE director for development and FIDE representative in Moscow) gave an interview to a popular Moscow newspaper. The person who did the interview – who seems to be a grandmaster – characterized him as a “mathematician.” Since I’m not such a well-known mathematician like Kaplan, I’m afraid of distorting the trajectory of scientific thought here, and am forced to bring in a piece of the interview. Here it is.

Kaplan: This is what my know-how consists of. I thought up the so-called “principle of squares.” I’ll clarify what that is. The worst thing in chess is when you are constantly beaten and you lose all interest in the game. Why, for example, is poker so popular right now? Because any player always has the chance to stand out. This means that chess players need to join into groups where all the players who meet have equal chances amongst themselves. I call such groups squares. And if a million dollars in prize money awaits the winner of the “square,” then young people will give up absolutely everything.

Interviewer: But who is going to give them this million?

Kaplan: I am personally ready to invest 32 million dollars in this venture. And I’ll find more sponsors for a billion. Two large banks have already agreed to allocate money for this project. Moreover, chess players will be attracted by stars of a global proportion. We already have 300 famous people on our list, including, for example, Madonna… The main task is to bring about the players’ interest. It’s important that they spent time every day on the virtual chessboard, playing in their square (there are 64 overall), even if for just a few minutes – a couple of games in a blitz. And in a year they would have played a thousand games overall. There are altogether 200 thousand fans the world over who routinely play on the Internet. And to earn a million while playing with those equal to yourself you’ll find more. So for money, a minimum of 50 million people will come. Let’s think about this further. How much is a portal for that number of visitors worth? A billion dollars! There’s the trick, the stunt, an effective business idea… Believe me, we’re standing on the brink of a chess revolution.

It is entirely believable that a gigantic supercomputer, perfectly and of course absolutely necessary to manage a portal for $1 billion, would be set up in the Skolkovo Innograd [Russia’s aspiration to recreate Silicon Valley near Moscow -ed]. And they’ll spend another, say, $500 million from the Russian budget on it. It would be, one could say, entirely logical.

But Ziyavudin Magomedov, who in the case of Ilyumzhinov’s reelection will probably become head of the RCF, has announced that, in the very near future, a series of chess tournaments will be held directly on the borders of conflicted countries (Azerbaijan/Armenia, North Korea/South Korea, etc.). This is a very rich topic. It wouldn’t be bad, either, to send a group of leading chess players (headed by Karpov and Kasparov, naturally) to the Gulf of Aden to hold a chess match with the Somali pirates. The promotion for chess will be ballistic. FIDE and its sponsors will split the ransom fifty-fifty. There’s the trick, the stunt, an effective business idea.

We also mustn’t forget that FIDE and the general structures of chess are almost ideally suited for money laundering in general and bribery in particular. So you’d like for your person to have, for example, a big post in whatever Ministry of Economic Development, the VEB or there in the Skolkovo Innograd – sponsor a chess tournament on the border between Sudan and Zimbabwe. And there’s no corruption!

There is no doubt that the little kids are going to think up a whole lot more to raise the level of income for chess. Why not, for example, rent out the names of chess pieces? For example, for $150 million a year the king could be named “Oleg Deripaska,” and for $200 million a year, the queen could be “Elena Baturina.” “The grandmaster has sacrificed Baturina and has bravely advanced on Deripaska.” The sort of new income that would flow right away! To economize, we could modernize speed chess. The new rules are extremely simple: two chess players meet – whoever has more money before the beginning of the game is the one who wins. Not to mention the knockout system, for which there are always blackguards who know no pity.

When Anatoly Karpov said that the polemic in the FIDE Congress in Khanty-Mansiysk could turn out to be unsafe for human life, he wasn’t at all mistaken. For the little kids, money means a great deal more than life (someone else’s, naturally).

Should the understanding be that the little kids are afraid of nothing in general? No, they’re afraid – of the FBI in the United States, of the seizure of foreign assets, and of visa problems in Euro-Atlantic countries. This is what we need to work on.

In sum, this is how we’ll live to see chess in the 21st Century.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

Dmitri Soloviev, a blogger and activist of the Oborona opposition movement, was notified on Monday of the December 31 decision. According to the document sent to the blogger, two groups of investigators found no evidence that any crime had actually been committed.

Soloviev had been charged in August 2008 with inciting hatred against police and federal security agents with a series of posts on LiveJournal.

Investigators had initially claimed that the five posts “instigated social strife” due to their content regarding the police.

The posts, under Soloviev’s username dimon77, included phrases accusing federal security agents of killing Russian children and assertions that the police would not succeed in breaking up the Oborona movement.

Advocates for the blogger maintained that the majority of the posts included material previously published elsewhere on the internet, and, furthermore, represented legitimate criticisms of specific actions of law enforcement officers.

As part of the investigation, Soloviev’s computer and notebook had both been confiscated, preventing him from completing his graduate dissertation.

Oborona leader Oleg Kozlovsky said that the decision to drop the case was “unprecedented in recent Russian history.” He added, however, that the case was very much an exception, as Soloviev’s case was only one of many similar, high-profile lawsuits against Russian bloggers.

In November, blogger Oleg Kozyrev launched a trade union for bloggers, citing the need for an organization to protect the rights and freedoms of the authors of online content.

Numerous Russian bloggers have been arrested and jailed under charges of extremism, inciting hatred, or instigating social discord. Most recently, 22-year old Ivan Peregorodiev was arrested in the southern city of Saratov in December and charged with disseminating false information related to an act of terrorism after he discussed rumors on his blog that victims of swine flu actually had pneumonic plague.

The Sayano Chernobyl
Vitaly Portnikov
August 21, 2009
Grani.ru

I remember the first days after the Chernobyl disaster well. I wasn’t living in Kiev then, but wanted to visit my relatives for the May 1st holidays. The accident had already taken place, but it was absolutely impossible to understand what was happening: the official reports were patchy, Western radio voices were strenuously suppressed, and even they at first had trouble getting a sense of what happened.

The May 1st demonstration resolved everything. It was hard to suspect that it could be conducted in a city that should, to be safe, have been evacuated. That was how I ended up in the post-Chernobyl Kiev. And after several days took ill with a heavy cold. Panic was already wandering the city streets, everyone was picking up [Radio] Svoboda and Voice of America, buying up red wine by the case. The doctors who visited me only shrugged their shoulders: what do you want, radiation, people are dying now like flies… They started washing the tram stops with soapy foam, parents tried to send away their children to relatives in other cities, even under threat of expulsion from the Party and dismissal from work.

And so, in its throes, sneering over its subjects and scornful of them, the empire of lies, whose leadership would declare glasnost just a few months after the Chernobyl nightmare, was on the verge of death. And it seemed that all this would end forever. At least they wouldn’t hide catastrophes from the people. At least in the critical moments, the government would think not about a pretty picture on the television, but about human lives.

It turned out that everything was just starting. The accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, and the willingness of authorities to crush the single(!) journalist who disputed the official version of events, presses this home with complete clarity.

In recent years, many in Russia were sincerely perplexed, [wondering] why the crazy dissenters went to their marches, and independent journalists, instead of describing the color of Kseniya Sobchak’s underwear or the eyebrow movements of yet another high-ranking bureaucrat, tried to make sense of the authorities’ true intentions. As if these people didn’t live in the Soviet epoch and don’t understand what stupefying silence leads to. As if they don’t remember how one could only find out about plane crashes if they happened in the West, how those who tried to relate the execution of workers in Novocherkassk were arrested, how they suppressed the truth about natural disasters, hunger, emergencies.

Ultimately, Chernobyl was the end and not the beginning to the lies. In that same Ukraine in the 30s, newspapers merrily recounted the successes of agriculture to their dying readers in the epoch of the Holodomor. Then, already after the war, an entire section of Kiev went underwater when the authorities tried to backfill Babi Yar, with its hated memory of murdered Jews, and erect a dance floor in its place – and again, to speak about this was anti-Soviet agitation.

They have found just about the same clause for journalist Mikhail Afanasyev. I’m not one to judge the truth or exactness of his information about the possible victims of the accident. I won’t even say that this person is saving the honor of the journalist profession. At least because the workers of the official Russian media and those close to them, who lie to the people daily about what happens in their own country and the world around it, aren’t journalists at all: they are ordinary grey bureaucrats, working for their ration in prescribed conditions.

Were there a different society, then journalists would appear. But in order for this to happen, Russia’s citizens must themselves feel the necessity for honest journalism, which thinks about them, and not the authorities. Not for the sake of abstract freedom and democracy, but for the sake of ordinary safety. So they’ll remember about you, your wife, your son, your mother, when you end up the victim of nature, an accident, terrorism – and not just cast them aside, like soulless debris, for the sake of a pretty television report.

translation by theotherrussia.org

Who is Mister Medvedev?
May 27, 2009
Irina Pavlova
Grani.ru

Plenty has been said and written about the recent anniversary of Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency.  The apologists sing their praises for the appearance of a tandem, seeing in it the signs of a new style of Russian politics and the seed of a future separation of powers.  The critics, both in Russia and the West, conversely lend the heaviest meaning to any hints of division in the tandem, still hoping that Medvedev will become a monocratic leader and start to modernize the country (although truth be told, the patriot-defenders see modernization in one way, and the liberals in another).  “The process of political modernization of the Russian government”, writes one author of the Yezhednevny Zhurnal [online newspaper], “needs a leader.  Will President Medvedev have enough courage, political will and public liability to have a clear break from the corrupt bureaucracy?  In many ways, Russia’s future depends on it.”

And so, hope still nurtures those who are ready to speak out with calls of “Premier Putin must resign!,” “All authority to President Medvedev!”  In reasoning this way, however, it is a good idea to keep in mind what is really happening in the country, so as not to be too surprised later.  I’ve had the occasion to write more than once that the current system of power works by the rules of a conspiracy.  Major decisions are made by a secret Politburo, and most of these decisions, which lead to some movement in the “gears” of the vertical of power, are secret.  We only learn of them when they start to materialize.  Aside from that, I have conjectured that the most unpopular decisions of this regime would be connected with Medvedev, and furthermore that he himself would have to cover them.

In such a system of rule, the right words about freedom and lack of freedom, about justice in a law-based state, about the necessary battle with corruption, as well as actions like meeting with human rights activists, an interview with Novaya Gazeta, and so forth, turn out to be nothing more than disinformation.  This is a strategy particular to a covert regime, taken both to disorient public opinion and cover up for its own actions.

In order to get an insight into the core of Medvedev’s presidency over the past year, I propose to recap not his words, but those acts which have come to the surface during this time.  One must admit that the Russian president has been very active.  Kommersant counted the number of staff appointments during the last year.  It turns out that from May 7, 2008, Medvedev signed off on 373 appointments, while Putin only signed off on 241 in the first year of his presidency.

Thus, without claiming that it’s complete, I’d like to bring attention to the following actions, which have already affected the country’s fate or will affect it in the future:

– clandestine preparations for the armed conflict with Georgia in August 2008.  The formation of the “independent” entities of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Occupation of part of Georgia’s territory.  An informational war.  All these actions have already been written into history on account of President Medvedev.

– the creation of a department for countering extremism in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in September 2008.  Centers for  countering extremism (the “E” Centers) have been created across the whole country under the jurisdiction of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate (GUVD) and the Department of Internal Affairs (UVD) as part of former branches of the Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (UBOP).

– reinforcing the system of politically motivated investigations in the country.  Under the cover of the work and resources of the criminal investigation department of the Russian Federation MVD, a “Watchdog Surveillance” (storozhevoy kontrol) database has been created, which is used for political purposes.  This has been confirmed, notably, in a court session in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as in an [official] message that [youth activist] Roman Dobrokhotov managed to photograph.

– stepping up the technical resources of the intelligence agencies.  In the words of Vice-Premier Sergei Ivanov, “regarding the intelligence agencies – FSO, FSB, SVR – they are equipped fully, 100 percent.”

– under the president’s initiative, implementing changes to the Constitution that increase the term limits for the president from the current four to six years, and the State Duma – from four to five years.

– waiving elections of the chair of the Constitutional court (KS).  Now, the KS chair and his deputy will be approved by the Federation Council at the president’s proposal.  In other words, they will be dependent on [the president].

– introducing a draft bill “On countering the rehabilitation of nazism, nazi criminals and their supporters on the territory of independent states– the former Republics of the USSR” into the State Duma, as well as the creation of a Presidential Commission for countering attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russian interests.  Both the future law and the new commission are clearly intended at blocking the way for “incorrect” (in the eyes of our current authorities) interpretations of Soviet and Post-Soviet history.  These initiatives have already been backed both by official historians and the majority of the public, who the authorities have essentially managed to disorient in the last decade.

– taking the course of militarizing the country.  The amount of the state defense order in Russia amounts to 1.3 trillion rubles ($50 bln or €36 bln) in 2009, of which more than 300 billion will go towards purchasing military technology.

– covert preparations for new conflicts with Russia’s neighbors, who do not wish to comply with Moscow’s policy.  Launching a new round in the information war against Georgia.

In my mind, there is enough information to think about.  But let each person make their own conclusions on where the country is headed and what role President Medvedev will play in this process.

translation by theotherrussia.org

A Strategy With No Dangers
Vitaly Portnikov
May 15, 2009
Grani.ru

Having signed the National security strategy for Russia until 2020, President Dmitri Medvedev gave the chance for Western – you almost want to say “Sovietologists” – to talk once more about Russian foreign policy.  Perhaps this is a signal for Barack Obama, the new American president?  Perhaps the new Russian president in such a way demonstrates confidence in his own strengths and a continuity of policy?  Since it is absolutely indispensable for the American President, who plans to come to Moscow, to understand that the Russian leadership will continue to regard siting elements of US missile defense in Europe as all but the most important problem of their country’s security.

Any sensible Russian could tell her president about the major threats to the country’s national security.  In the natural resource dependence of the economy, which would turn Russia into a third-world country the next day after a fall in oil prices.  In the corruption suffocating the country.  In the catastrophic population loss, which calls into question the physical capability, not even of the development, but simply of populating Russia’s expanses.  But who among the Russian political elite cares about these trifles?

In the minds of the people who have by some accident ended up in Moscow’s corridors of power at the start of the new millennium, present-day Russia is a sort-of clone of the Soviet Union, rising from some imagined knees.  Naturally, the threats to this clone, which lives its life in a virtual Kremlin-televised space, are completely different.  Its major opponent is those same United States, who dream of beating Russia down and hindering its renewal.  Its major betrayer is the former Soviet satellite states, who dared to regard the happy years of sitting in the shade of their “big brother” as not quite the best times in their history, and are now entering into cooperation with the overseas adversary.  Its major ally is China, whose leadership hardly dreams about joint battle with the adversary, as it economically – and the crisis has clearly proven – depends on its well-being.

Remarkably, all the threats thought to be serious at the start of the century have practically disappeared from the new strategy.  The current authorities aren’t worried about the growing divisions in society, terrorism and separatism, despite the anything-but-simple situation in the Caucasus, the crisis of social welfare and public health, and the criminalization of social relations.  Is there actually none of this left?  One would really like for it not to be there – and so issues actually critical to Russia’s future are simply culled from the strategy.  Even allowing that this is an ordinary, bureaucratic document, at least it used to give evidence that the authorities understood what country they lived in.

But now, the strategy approved by its president has no relation to the problems of actual Russia.  From the document, we can learn everything we need about the fanciful day-dreams* of Russian officialdom.   About how every clerk, landing a job at the Security Council or in the head of state’s administration, thinks of themselves as a Napoleon, and what image of Russia takes shape in his mind on the road to Rublyevka**.  But we won’t learn anything about Russia itself, just as we won’t understand at all, what kind of country it will be in 2020.  One thing is evident – if the documents passed by the highest leadership of the country continue to be so far removed from the actual situation in Russia and the world, ten years down the line, Dmitri Medvedev’s successor won’t be concerned with disseminating strategy any longer.

*trans. note.  Portnikov references Manilov, a character from Gogol’s “Dead Souls” who has a lofty imagination.

**an unofficial name of a prestigious residential area West of Moscow, Russia.

translation by theotherrussia.org

—

“Along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness,” Dostoyevsky once said. “When trouble comes, don’t shrink from it,” the [Russian] proverb teaches. But are there any positive effects of the crisis that has seized Russia in the run up to 2009? Boris Nemtsov, Yevgeny Gontmakher, Garry Kasparov, Yevgeny Yasin, Nikita Belykh, and others respond.

Boris Nemtsov, board member of the Solidarity movement:

One point is welcome to everyone: gasoline prices have started to fall. Even though they are falling tenuously for now, they should fall to around 15 rubles [per liter] – and everything still lies ahead. Another good point for everyone is that prices for housing and land have started falling: this is also nice, although few have the money [to buy].

Another good thing is that new people have started coming into the Solidarity movement. Seven young twenty-somethings walked in to the political advisory council at the [Solidarity] conference. The youth understand that the country is headed the wrong way. I consider this a fantastically good moment – not only Roman Dobrokhotov, not only Ilya Yashin, not only Yulia Malysheva, but many other young people from the regions were with us. [Youth] in the country are defining their stances. In my opinion, this is the major positive result of the crisis. It is impossible, after all, to remain in a constant state of oil and gas delirium. The faster we sober up, the better it will be for Russia.

Yevgeny Gontmakher, chair of the Center for Social Politics at the Economics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences:

A crisis is always a chance to make sense of what has happened, and glean some sort of lessons. For all the past years, we accumulated problems and didn’t solve them. Only a crisis, perhaps, can push us to finally solve these problems, although the situation isn’t the most favorable for this at the moment. But nonetheless, there are positives in this sense.

What positive points can I see for myself personally? I regard life with great interest. I am curious as to what will happen with the country in these new, unorthodox conditions. I want to hope that everything will end well, and that we come out of this crisis in a civilized manner as a democratic country with a market-driven economy. As a country open to the world.

Nikita Belykh, appointed governor of the Kirov oblast:

I will probably not be very original, but will still say that the crisis, despite all of its drastic consequences, the tightening of belts and so forth- is a time of possibilities, a time of rising personal effectiveness and competitiveness. I think that within the frame of the crisis, a new generation of entrepreneurs and businesses will emerge, which will be able to take a dignified role not only in the Russian but in the global economy. [They will succeed] because they will prove their competitive ability in such severe conditions. This also applies to the political system.

From this perspective, I accepted the proposal [to become governor of the Kirov oblast]. I believe that if I can do something positive for the oblast, it will demonstrate my personal competitive edge and at the same time underscore that liberals can effectively administer the regions. I hope very much that from within one region, I will be able to show that we are not simply in a position to speak, criticize, point out flaws, but also to engage in substantive action.

Yevgeny Yasin, Research Director at the Higher School of Economics:

For myself personally, I do not see any positive moments. The only good I see for the country is that the crisis could somehow affect those stagnant developments that have formed in our economy and society. They are connected, first of all, with high oil prices, which paralyze any kind of changes whatsoever in the domestic social structure. Secondly, [they are connected] with the authoritarian rule which has grown from this oil-based economy. This is a fairly difficult, painful adaptation, but it is essential to make our society and economy more healthy, so that they are oriented to work, risk and progress.

Maria Gaidar, politician:

I do not see any positive points, neither for myself nor the country. The restructuring taking place in the commanding elite comes at too high a price. We could somehow sober up without it. Without people being laid off, without falling industrial production. It is a tough time, what good is there? It is a tough, difficult time for everyone: for my friends who are losing their jobs; for the people who ran their business, their small or mid-sized, honest market-based business, and who now have colossal problems; for editorial offices, who are laying off journalists. If housing prices fall sharply – this will be good, but nothing else good can happen. There are no pluses in this. Including political ones.

Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Merkator research group:

I am feeling a certain satisfaction as an expect, because all of what we long predicted is being realized. Unfortunately, this looks fairly nasty, and will get even nastier. Of course, the personal feelings of an expert have no significance at a time when the situation is becoming worse.

As for the good in this year, the society is apparently starting to recognize itself as separate from the government. The state tries to contrive and invent something, but the people understand that they cannot wait for some benefit from the state, and act independently. This is the number one point, because whatever they are saying at the top, people are acting in their own interests. For instance, rubles are being exchanged for foreign currency, businesses are transferring money abroad– this is a rational policy, but a personal policy, not a government one. This kind of individual behavior naturally leads a person away from the government.

At the end of the 80s, a serious public protest only started when cigarettes ran out in the stalls. People had become accustomed to the fact that there was no food. It was normal that there was never [food in the stores]. Now, since a new class of people formed who are aware of their interests and who are trying somehow defend these interests, the threshold for protest is lower. Which means that things are unlikely to go so far as the Soviet example. People already understand that they cannot expect anything good from the authorities. We are promised that everything will be in order, and we understand perfectly that everything will not be in order, and solve our own problems. As result, this governmental monster ends up sort of isolated from reality. This is very dangerous, but unfortunately, is inescapable with the model of governance built by [Vladimir] Putin. This is precisely why all the unpleasant predictions are justified, regrettably.

For me personally, a time of freedom has come, and I in no way depend on the government. I have cut all contacts with the state institutions and feel like an independent person.

Garry Kasparov, leader of the United Civil Front:

A crisis is the kind of thing where it’s hard to find any positive points, because it affects everyone. Maybe someone will cash in on it, but I do not belong to that group of people. And if we speak about the political and economic situation, then in Russia, as in America, China and Europe, the crisis is revealing problems in the existing authorities, their mistakes, miscalculations, and willingness, or lack of willingness, to find adequate solutions together with the public.

For Russia, in my opinion, the crisis tallies up the Putin epoch, and demonstrates that the Putinist economic and political models are exhausted. This supports our fight, because many are starting to understand that our warnings and estimations weren’t just conjectures, but were based on a true assessment of the state of affairs.

A crisis is always fraught with risk and possibility. The one who withstands the crisis – in their personal life, in politics, in the economy, on the chess board – comes out stronger, and hence with a better outlook. We need to build plans for the future, understanding that the crisis will not spare anyone.

Kasparov.ru, the internet portal of the United Civil Front party, was forced offline Monday evening, the editorial office said. As many as 1,500 requests per second were sent to the site, which could not handle the load, and the attacks continued well into the following day. Nazbol.ru, the website of the banned National Bolshevik Party, was concurrently taken down.

On Wednesday morning, another opposition online newspaper was targeted. Grani.ru, which publishes news and opinion content, was accessible to readers only intermittently by Wednesday evening, editors said. Ikd.ru, which publishes news about demonstrations going on around Russia, also reported an attack.

DDoS attacks, which send phony user requests and jam web servers, have frequently been used against political websites in Russia.

In the past year, opposition leaders have described the attacks as a systematic problem. Kasparov.ru was last targeted in August. Other affected sites include the web portals of Human Rights in Russia, Ekho Moskvy radio, the March of Dissent protests, and even the Kommersant newspaper.

As of Thursday December 25th, each of the sites appeared to be working properly.

The article first ran in the Grani.ru online newspaper on December 10, 2008.

A Thaw from Below
Andrei Piontkovsky
Grani.ru
12/10/2008

The significance of the Basmanny court’s December 5, 2008 decision, or more precisely, the Russian Federal Center’s legal expertise which preordained it, goes far beyond the bounds of my case.

The FSB [Federal Security Service] and the prosecutors, armed with a new law on extremism, were trying to hold a show trial and create a precedent of criminal prosecution for criticism of the authorities.

The highly professional and academically reasoned report by Andrei Smirnov, Olga Kukushkina and Yulia Safonova, which found no signs of extremism in my harsh criticism of the country’s president, knocked this “avenging sword” from the hands of the repressive agencies. And for a long time, I hope.

The 34-page text of the report is our small Magna Carta; a charter of liberties to Russian journalists; a first step to restoring freedom of speech in Russia, which was deceitfully stolen from the public by a chekist lieutenant colonel who imagined himself the “father of the nation.”

A just-as-important first step to restoring an independent judiciary was the juror revolt against the judge’s attempt to close the proceedings of the trial against the men accused of killing Anna Politkovskaya.

The truth which may ring out in an open process is too dangerous for the authorities.

The “national leader” gained notoriety for two statement he made the day after Anna’s murder. First, struggling to hide his suffocating hatred for the deceased, he said that she “was an extremely insignificant journalist, and her death brought US much greater damage than all her writings.” Afterwards, deliberately trying to send the investigation on a false path, he asserted: “WE know credibly that her murder was organized by enemies of Russia abroad.”

The investigation, however, did not confirm this version, and on the contrary, established that the killers were assisted by two teams of Russian “siloviki” –one from the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] and one from the FSB. In an open process, it should become clear to what pinnacles of power the tracks of Anna Politkovskaya’s killers lead.

Many observers, especially Western ones, ask the question: don’t these two victories –in the trial against Politkovskaya’s killers and the trial over Piontkovsky’s books– offer evidence or an indication of the coming thaw in Russia?

Yes, they do, but not that thaw from above, which adherents of the “liberal successor” theory have been speaking about for almost a year.

This is a thaw from below, which was not triggered by Medvedev the “successor,” but by Kolesov the roofer, and by the scholars, Smirnov, Kukushkina, and Savelova. People who honestly did their duties.

The “successor” wasn’t allowed to pardon Svetlana Bakhmina, and he didn’t dare do it himself. Even if he was publicly and respectfully asked by his own spin doctors in the Public Chamber.

The extent of pathological sadism shown by the highest authorities to Vasily Aleksanyan and Svetlana Bakhmina is such that is forces one to question the mental health of the people who head an atomic superpower.

Offering to release the dying Aleksanyan, who has been tortured for two years now, for 50 million [rubles] – here’s an example of a “thaw” from above that our authorities are capable of.

Someone among the highest-ranked humanists likely had the thought that “the death of this insignificant lawyer in custody will do US more damage.” As result, they decided that it was worth it, perhaps, to deny themselves the pleasure of continuing his torture.

2009 will become the year of the thaw from below. More and more people will refuse the Nabokovian “Invitation to a Beheading,” will forswear the game whose rules were given to the public by a chekist kleptocracy. And then the regime will face a dilemma: to move on to massive repression, or to finally take their chances on a belated thaw from above.

translation by theotherrussia.org