According to United Civil Front leader and Solidarity co-leader Garry Kasparov, there is a set of more subtle factors underlying all of the obvious parallels and differences between the situations in Egypt and Russia that make consideration of Egypt’s uprising important to understanding Russia’s reality.

Pyramid Country in the View of Global Stability
By Garry Kasparov
February 2, 2011
Kasparov.ru

Egypt has implemented a pure, contemporary form of “soft” dictatorship – oriented towards the West, where the ruling elite does not use mass repressions as its main instrument. It was therefore necessary for the government to eliminate any visible democratic alternatives, making it so that forces the West would consider to be absolutely unacceptable presented a real threat to the stable, established regime. It’s no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood always remained the one organization that preserved its influence despite an official ban on its activities.

As a result, the problem of Egypt’s Islamization became a key topic in commentators’ remarks all over the world from the very beginning of the unrest, which has already grown into a nationwide insurrection. In the United States, we see a rare case in which, despite serious opposition in domestic politics and disputes over the new START treaty, the Republicans did not harshly criticize the White House position, which was to do everything possible so that Mubarak stayed power – at least for a little while – to implement a controlled transition. Interestingly, nearly everyone in our country – independent of ideological bias – is predicting Egypt’s inevitable Islamization and an eventual domino effect that will lead to the transition of the entire Arab world to Islamist influence.

For now, we’ll put aside Libya, Iran, North Korea, and Belarus – these dictatorships were created differently. But for dictatorships and monarchies in the Arab world and African countries, the presence of any al-Qaeda cells on their territory allows them to write off all lawlessness, corruption and repression as part of the war on terrorism. It’s obvious enough that the Muslim Brotherhood is not playing any kind of leading role, at least for now, in the events in Egypt. More than anything, it is a protest by the middle class and unemployed young people, outraged at the lack of social mobility or life prospects in general. It’s important to note – for our own domestic situation as well – that this outburst occurred in the absence of any clear economic change. There was no drastic economic collapse. The abruptness is also borne out by the fact that, in a January 25 interview on American television, US Vice President Joe Biden rather awkwardly defended Mubarak, insisting that he was not a dictator and that “our ally” and the situation are both under control. Obviously, he had to rely on information from intelligence agencies that had not yet then predicted such rapid change. It is also telling that the events unfolded spontaneously without any particularly visible central leadership.

In the end, the Islamists might come into power, but this would be most of all because of propaganda from liberal well-wishers. A graphic demonstration that people have the right to protest only when it doesn’t contradict geopolitical interests or global stability could conclusively push young Egyptians, like the young people of other Arab countries, into the welcoming arms of fundamentalists. The people are forming a logical connection that is ideal for any radical forces. America gives massive financial aid to a regime that has not formally cancelled its state of martial law in 30 years and has a leader who has never changed. At the critical moment, when the Egyptian people(especially the young ones), inspired by events like Obama’s speech at Cairo University, rose up and demanded Mubarak’s resignation, the entire Western world began to shamelessly discuss the negative consequences of his departure and how this will effect Israel’s security, oil supplies, and other things that are very important for Western politicians. It is impossible to think of a simpler example to demonstrate the attitude of the West – that is to say, the Christian world’s attitude towards the Arab street. In this kind of situation, Islamic radicals have no need to invent anything like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The emergence in recent days of anti-American slogans among demonstrators is the logical result of the fact that US foreign policy contradicts the principals of observing human rights that the administration publically proclaims. The Western world is grasping desperately onto an attempt to preserve the status quo, which is based on the general understanding that any changes will not be limited to the region in a globalized world and will affect everyone. Regardless of the rising degree of dissatisfaction on the streets of Egypt and Mubarak’s total discredit, commentators continue to only discuss possibilities for a gradual transition. Meanwhile, the people out in the streets are obviously not prepared to talk about anything while the president remains in power. Aside from his personal calculations, Mubarak’s stubbornness is based on a reading of the global situation. The people applauding the ostentatious courage of Mubarak, who vows to die on Egyptian soil, are careful not to notice that it was only the police and security forces who used violence on Cairo’s streets. And the bloody clashes that began today came only because supporters of Mubarak suddenly materialized on Tahrir Square, armed with bats and knives.

We need to understand that this same kind of algorithm of action is going to spread to Russia – but to a much greater extent. Russia is a nuclear power, and the financial interests of the Putin clan intersected with the interests of Western politicians and businessmen long ago. Therefore, any attempt to abandon the basic principles of liberalism would be suicide. People have a right to free expression and free elections. Consent to rude procedural violations and “soft” forms of dictatorship, justified by the idea that things would be worse otherwise, not only discredits the idea of liberal democracy and its advocates, but also inevitably leads to the reverse result – the strengthening of radical elements. The dissatisfied protesters will, at some point, realize that their opportunities to influence the situation in a peaceful way have been exhausted. In fact, as we’ve seen from the situation in Tunisia, which has much in common with the one in Egypt given the undoubtedly less severe problems and the level of influence of Islamists on domestic politics, all the horrors and nightmares that were being predicted turned out to have been concocted out of thin air. The situation in the country is gradually going back to normal and it is beginning to prepare for free elections.

The downfall of authoritarian regimes is linked to their complete discredit, which leaves them with no defenders. This happened in Russia in February 1917, when, over the years of Rasputin’s influence over the imperial court, the tsarist government became associated with degradation, depravity and corruption. We are now being taught the Putin version of this history lesson. And homegrown liberals that serve Russia’s “soft” dictatorship not only enable the legitimization of the regime but also significantly reduce the chances for a peaceful transition to a normally-functioning democracy.

Photograph by Irina Kalinka.
Translation by theotherrussia.org.

NEW YORK — When Time Magazine chose Russia’s Vladimir Putin as its Man of the Year, a lot of folks were outraged.

Time answered back that their pick wasn’t an endorsement of Putin. After all, they chose Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year in 1938, even though they were appalled by what he was doing. But Hitler used Time’s designation as an endorsement, propagandizing that it elevated his status as a statesman.

And according to Garry Kasparov, Putin’s doing the same thing. The Kremlin’s ad men are using the Time cover at home to portray Putin as a class act.

That got us thinking. Why didn’t Time put Garry Kasparov on the cover as Man of the Year?

Kasparov’s battle with Putin is the kind of David and Goliath story that Time used to love. Kasparov is a former world chess champion who could easily sit back with his millions, living the lush life in Paris or New York. Instead, he puts his freedom and his life on the line, fighting against a former KGB bully, who uses the full force of a powerful state to crush all competition.

Now we admit we’re biased, because we know and like Kasparov. And we also recognize that one guy trying to reform a state like Russia is the long shot of all time.

But because Scoreboard loves long shots and genuine class acts, we pick Garry Kasparov over Vladimir Putin as our Man of the Year.

Man of the Year?

By GARRY KASPAROV — December 22, 2007; Page A11

Ever since President Vladimir Putin took office eight long years ago, the political and media leadership of the West have had a full-time job trying to look on the bright side of Russia’s rapid turn from democracy.

The free press has been demolished, elections are canceled and rigged, and then we hear how popular Mr. Putin is. Opposition marches are crushed, and we’re told — over and over — how much better off we are today than in the days of the Soviet Union. This week Time magazine named Mr. Putin its 2007 “Person of the Year.” [Vladimir Putin] Vladimir Putin

Unfortunately, there is no silver lining to Russia’s descent into dictatorship. If anything there is a look of iron to it.

Condoleezza Rice, hardly a Putin critic, said recently that Russia “is not an environment in which you can talk about free and fair elections.” A good start, but this comment was not made where one would imagine — perhaps at a press conference insisting that Putin’s Russia be removed from the G-7 for making a mockery of democratic practices. No, her remark came as a side note to her very early endorsement of Mr. Putin’s handpicked heir to the throne, Dmitry Medvedev.

The most revealing moment in Ms. Rice’s comments came when the topic of Mr. Medvedev as the next president was first broached. The official transcript reads: “SECRETARY RICE: Well, I guess, they’re still going to have an election in March. <Laughter.>”

Perhaps my sense of humor was dulled during the five days I spent in a Moscow jail last month for protesting against these sham elections. Or maybe it was reading about the constant persecution of my fellow activists across the country that did it. Madam Secretary went on to speak approvingly of Mr. Medvedev, making the undemocratic nature of his selection sound like a minor annoyance. The last remaining element of democracy in Russia, the transition of power, will be destroyed. Will Mr. Putin and his successor still be welcomed with open arms in the club of leading democracies?

In the early days of our opposition activities last year, when members of Other Russia were harassed and arrested, the “bright siders” in the West said it could be worse. Later, when our marchers were badly beaten in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Mr. Putin’s fans in the West said at least the police weren’t killing us in the streets.

Last week, 22-year-old opposition activist Yury Chervochkin died in hospital after several weeks in a coma. He had been beaten nearly to death an hour after making an anxious cellphone call to our offices saying he was being followed by members of the organized-crime task force known as UBOP, which has become the vanguard of the Kremlin’s war on political opposition. A witness saw him clubbed repeatedly by men with baseball bats.

Yury’s sin was not chanting Nazi slogans or praising the deeds of Josef Stalin, activities that regularly go unremarked in Russia these days. No, he had been caught throwing leaflets that read “The elections are a farce!” That was enough to make him a marked man. Now, for agitating for real democracy in Russia, he is dead.

The stakes have been raised to the highest level, and what bright side will be found now? Where is the line that cannot be crossed without a serious response from the West? So far Mr. Putin hasn’t found it — and he has good reason to suspect such a line simply does not exist. It is for the leaders in Washington, D.C., Paris and Berlin to decide what it means to denounce the Russian elections as fraudulent, only to then embrace the winners as democratic partners.

Lesser tragedies than that of Yury Chervochkin are occurring on a regular basis in Russia today. Last week journalist Natalya Morar was denied entry into the country on secret orders of the FSB security force, after writing investigative articles on financial deals with Kremlin connections. Lyudmila Kharlamova, a political organizer for Other Russia, was arrested after heroin was planted among her possessions in Orenburg. Activist Andrei Grekhov suffered a similar fate in Rostov, though the police chose to plant bullets instead of drugs in his pockets.

This is a good opportunity to remember Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative journalist who was murdered on Oct. 7, 2006, Putin’s birthday. The police investigation into this infamous assassination has stalled and talk of it has died down. The Kremlin is counting on the same thing happening with “minor” cases like that of Yury Chervochkin.

In a recent speech, Mr. Putin said “the enemies of the state must be wiped out!” It has been made quite clear that by “enemies” he means anyone who opposes his total authority. It is no surprise that his words are taken at face value across the country, and acted on by security forces eager to prove their loyalty and enthusiasm.

The presidents and prime ministers of the West seem just as eager to bow down to the Kremlin and the great god of business as usual. Nicolas Sarkozy raced to congratulate Mr. Putin on his party’s election victory, despite the overwhelming evidence of massive fraud at the polls. A few days later France’s Renault picked up a 25% share in Russian automaker AvtoVaz, a purchase made from Sergei Chemezov and his arms-dealing company Rosoboronexport. Why should Mr. Putin and his oligarchs worry about democracy as long as the money keeps rolling in?

Time magazine, of course, took obvious pains to explain that its award to Mr. Putin is “not an endorsement” and that it goes to the person who made the most news “for better or for worse.” Nonetheless the article praises Mr. Putin for restoring his country to prominence in the international arena, dispelling “anarchy” and recovering national pride. The magazine does express concern about his “troubling” record on human rights.

The same things could have been said about Adolf Hitler in 1938, when he took his turn as Time’s Man of the Year. “Fascism,” Time wrote then, “has discovered that freedom — of press, speech, assembly — is a potential danger to its own security.” Again these words apply equally well to this year’s winner.

Most of the criticism leveled against Mr. Putin regards “alleged” abuses or comes directly from known critics. This abdicates the journalist’s role to report the facts as facts.

Consider the timing of this announcement, right after the counterfeit parliamentary elections that added to Mr. Putin’s record of eradicating democracy across Russia. The Time article will be trumpeted by Kremlin propaganda as an endorsement of Mr. Putin’s policies. The man on the street will be told that even America, constantly blasted by the Kremlin as an enemy, has been forced to recognize the president’s greatness.

Internationally, the focus will be on the myth that Mr. Putin has built a “strong Russia.” In fact he and his cronies have hollowed out the state from within. Most of the power now resides in the super-corporations like Gazprom and Rosneft, and among the small group of loyalists who run them.

The Putin regime has taken Russia from a frail democracy to an efficient mafia state. It was an impressive balancing act — behaving like a tyrant while at the same time staying in the good graces of the West.

After each crackdown, with no significant international reaction forthcoming, Mr. Putin knew it was safe to take another step. As ever, appeasement in the name of realpolitik only encourages would-be dictators. And such moral weakness inevitably leads to very real costs in human life.

Mr. Kasparov is a former world chess champion and a leader of The Other Russia, a pro-democracy coalition. He is the author of “How Life Imitates Chess,” recently published by Bloomsbury USA.

First let there be no misunderstanding about what this award is supposed to represent. According to TIME, it is for the person who “has done the most to change the news, for better or for worse.” Obviously Putin has been in the news a great deal in 2007, and it’s clear that the direction he has moved my country has been “for worse” both for Russians and for the international community.

Putin’s regime has crushed dissent, rigged elections, and systematically destroyed democratic institutions and civil liberties, processes that only accelerated in 2007. Despite record oil and gas prices that sent the Russian GDP skyrocketing, the vast majority of Russians outside the major capital cities have seen little or no improvement in their standard of living, largely due to runaway food prices and a decaying infrastructure. With most of the corporate and state revenues leaving Russia for western real estate and personal bank accounts, the gap between rich and poor here has reached staggering levels.

The TIME announcement praises their selection for restoring his country to prominence in the international arena, dispelling “anarchy”, and recovering national pride. The magazine does express concern about his “troubling” record on human rights. The same things could have been said about Adolf Hitler in 1938, when he took his turn as TIME’s Man of the Year. “Fascism,” TIME wrote then, “has discovered that freedom – of press, speech, assembly – is a potential danger to its own security.” Again these words apply equally well to this year’s winner.

In 1938 there was no doubt that Hitler was a force for evil and TIME made that very clear. But with Putin they perpetuate elements of Kremlin propaganda into the story and often present Putin’s mythology uncritically. Yes, there was epic corruption in the Yeltsin years, but have things improved under Putin or just become more efficient and quieter? Are Putin’s pet oligarchs less rich, less rapacious, less influential? The main difference is that because there was still a free press under Yeltsin, the people found out what was going on. Putin eliminated that possibility – along with many of his critics – soon after taking power.

That Putin has created a “strong Russia” is the biggest fallacy of them all. In fact he and his cronies have hollowed the state out from within. Power now resides with the giant corporations like Gazprom and the small group of loyalists who run them. Putin has managed to bully Europe with Russia’s energy wealth and to damage global stability by entertaining and defending the likes of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Intimidation and provocation, however, should not be misconstrued as real strength. The Tsar’s new clothes are woven entirely from oil and gas.

I understand that this award is not intended to be a beauty contest. But for all of Putin’s attacks on the West, this will be promoted widely within Russia and around the world as a victory and an endorsement by the West of Putin’s policies and practices of dictatorship. It’s an early Christmas present to the Kremlin when what they really deserved was a lump of coal.

I will add a brief response to Putin’s jibe in the TIME article about my speaking English to reporters after my arrest last month. First, I also spoke in Russian, which oddly enough never makes the Kremlin-controlled newscasts. Second, since opposition statements are almost completely banned in the Russian media the foreign press usually makes up 90% of attending media at opposition events. Lastly, I would be delighted to show Mr. Putin which of us speaks and writes better Russian. Perhaps he will accept my challenge to a debate on national television or allow an editorial of mine to appear in a major newspaper.

[Kasparov’s] organization, the Other Russia, a coalition of those opposed to the rule of President Vladimir Putin, has held a series of demonstrations, often broken up by the police. For Kasparov, Russia today, dominated by a combination of huge energy enterprises and former security apparatchiks (such as Putin), is a betrayal of those who dreamed of democracy in the early 1990s.

Putin’s foes are fragmented and run from old-fashioned nationalists to modern liberals; Kasparov, 44, insists he is just a moderator, not a leader, of the movement. But by giving a voice to those who believe that Russia can develop in a way different from the authoritarianism that seems always to have been its fate, the retired grand master shows that he has not yet made his last move.

Kasparov gave us the following comments on the award, which put him on a list with a disparate list of people including sports starts, musicians, and politicians from around the world.

“I’m happy because this honor is for all the Russians who aren’t afraid to speak out against the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin. They are the ones who will be truly influential. I hope this helps send the message to Putin that even if the world’s political leaders are quiet, even if the world’s business leaders are taking profits in KGB Incorporated, the world is watching. And the world will not let Russia return to totalitarian rule.

“They can ban our organizations. They can slander us in the Kremlin-controlled media. They can beat us in the streets. They can detain and arrest us. But they will never convince us that democracy is not worth fighting for. People keep saying that Putin is popular, but this is a myth. If the White House had complete control of all the US media even Bush would have a 70% approval rating!”