In light of continued mass protests calling for new elections in Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he is willing to meet with opposition leaders – but cannot identify who they actually are or what they want. In response, Georgy Satarov, a former aide to President Boris Yeltsin and the current president of the InDem Foundation, writes this rebuttal.

Putin’s Deceit
By Georgy Satarov
December 29, 2011
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

On Tuesday, December 27, Putin made an official statement with the essential point that the protesters don’t have a positive program. While the candidate for president has recently separated himself from the protesters to the most extreme extent possible, I, by contrast, am allowing myself to speak out, albeit delicately. What Putin said was deceitful to the fourth degree.

First of all: It is difficult to imagine a more positive program in today’s Russia than what’s been formulated on Moscow’s city squares: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t violate the law.

Secondly. The government itself is not in any condition to propose any sort of sensible or well-reasoned program that adequately reflects the situation in the country. Moreover, it isn’t even in any condition to carry out the mediocre programs that it actually does propose. A typical example would be the war on corruption.

Thirdly. The protesters on Moscow’s squares constitute our civil society. Their diversity is their resource. And a singular program does not suit its nature. Programs are usually presented by separate fragments of civil society – parties, public associations, etc.

Forth. If something sensible, cohesive and positive has come about in the form of a program, then it has been proposed precisely by civil society. There are so many examples of this that I’m afraid to try and number them. The fact that candidate Putin doesn’t know this is not a problem of society, but a defect of the candidate in question, who, on one hand, organically does not see society, but on the other hand does not need any real actual programs, aside from a program to refine its own ranks.

A lie repeated over and over can feign to be the truth, but will never become it.

Translation by theOtherRussia.org.

Monday, May 9 marked Russia’s 66th annual celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Victory Day is Russia’s most widely celebrated national holiday, with people across the country flooding the streets to join in public gatherings, ceremonies and memorials. For a country that lost upwards of 20 million people in World War II, such a large celebration is only natural.

The main event during Victory Day celebrations, however, is an elaborate military parade in Moscow. While such parades are a longstanding tradition in the country, it was only in 2008 that Russia reintroduced an element of military hardware not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. Along with thousands of soldiers, the parade now includes tanks, armored trucks, nuclear missiles, and a noisy aircraft flyover.

But why the sudden decision to showcase all this equipment, especially considering that nearly all of it is decades old? With that question in mind, journalist and military expert Aleksandr Golts remarks upon the social and political undertones of this year’s Victory Day parade.

Victory Day or a Holiday of Militarism?
May 6, 2011
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

All these past years, I have not ceased to be amazed at how ineptly our government has used the unique opportunities presented to them by Victory Day – the only real holiday in contemporary Russia. A holiday that can, at least for a day, unite Russia’s fragmented, isolated society. Only on Victory Day do thousands of the country’s people come out into the streets not by order from above but because they want to feel like part of a single whole – the people who in fact rescued modern civilization.

But instead of finding words, symbols or ideas to strengthen this extraordinarily positive feeling of unity, the Russian leaders rattle their rusty iron – the main part of the holiday is the military parade, which a larger number of soldiers take part in every year (this year it’s more than 20,000 soldiers and officers). It is assumed that citizens will get this feeling of unity by contemplating the parading files of soldiers striding the Prussian goose step. And citizens like the Odessan from the Soviet film Intervention are flooded with tears of emotion: “A standing army – now that’s something special.”

In practice, the exact opposite happens. The rehearsals for the parade, which bring about the collapse of transportation in the city, are a powerful tool to force Muscovites to leave the capital.

It’s doubtful that a contemporary Russian citizen is seriously inspired by seeing military equipment that was developed twenty years ago and is currently produced in paltry numbers. At least take the new, as the parade organizers assert, S-400 anti-aircraft system. There will be eight units in the parade. Which is to say exactly one fourth of all existing S-400 units, the production of which began way back in 2007. About the same can also be said of simpler models of military equipment proclaimed to be new – the Iskander ballistic missiles, the strategic Topol-M. And the chief commander of the army, Aleksandr Postnikov, recently correctly said that the T-90 tank was the result of the seventeenth upgrade of the old T-72. So the only real innovation in the parade is the demonstration of the new berets, which from now on will be worn not only by paratroopers and marines, but also by soldiers from other branches of the Armed Forces.

Why are the authorities so hung up on the parade? In privatizing Victory, like all other Russian values, the leaders approach the holiday in a strictly utilitarian manner: as an opportunity for self-promotion. In 2005, Moscow turned into a besieged fortress, essentially banning residents of the capital from reaching the center of the city. All only so that Vladimir Putin had the opportunity to strike a pose while receiving world leaders.

This time, the anniversary is not a key one, but an ordinary one, so to speak. There will be no foreign guests. And facing Putin and Medvedev’s political strategists is the question of what backdrop to use to show off the leaders. Old veterans who cannot speak well and are less than well-groomed are not well suited for this. For them, it’s enough to have perfunctory statements like “nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten,” wretched holiday food baskets, and routine promises to provide them with housing sixty-six years after Victory. And where is it nicer for the top Russian leaders to pose with rockets and dashing soldiers than next to veterans?

It was not by accident that everyone pretended that there hadn’t been an announcement last year by Presidential Affairs Office Chief Vladimir Kozhin that there wasn’t going to be a parade in 2011 because of proposed renovations to Red Square. Cancelling the parade in an election year would be impossible. As a result, the Victory holiday will become a holiday of militarism.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

As Brian Whitmore explained in a column for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

Medvedev set off the latest frenzy with his interview with China’s CCTV, where he gave the strongest indication yet that he plans to seek reelection in 2012. For good measure, he also said it was time to move beyond the authoritarian “state capitalism” model that has been a hallmark of Putin’s rule.

Putin then weighed in, saying elections were still nearly a year off and that either he or Medvedev (or perhaps both) could run. Putin also seemed to take a swipe at Medvedev by saying that all the “fuss” over the election is disrupting the work of the government.

A separate question altogether is which one of these two leaders Russians citizens would rather vote for in the first place. In this article for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, journalist Anatoly Bershtein explores how the history of the relationship between Russians and their leaders might affect that outcome.

Which Tsar Do Russians Need?
By Anatoly Bershtein
April 18, 2011
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

So Medvedev announces unequivocally that he’s ready for a second presidential term. And he even lays the foundation for it: Putin’s time has passed; what was good ten years ago has become antiquated; the time for change is ripe.

The dispute has been going on for at least half a year – Putin or Medvedev. And for the most part, political scientists and people who consider themselves to be adults are certain that Putin is going to be president: the real power is in his hands; the fundamental forces and finances. Medvedev’s entourage isn’t serious, and he himself – no matter how hard he tries – is little more than a marionette. And therefore he looks ridiculous when making his own “independent” statements.

But the main argument against Medvedev is actually that he isn’t a “real tsar;” that is to say, he doesn’t look like a Russian tsar, doesn’t rule like one, doesn’t behave in an appropriate manner.

In Rus’, the tsar was seen as a consecrated figure from the very beginning. His power had no earthly basis; it was based on divine right. And as Boris Uspensky justifiably points out, there was no talk about “good” or “bad” tsars, but only about “proper” or “improper” ones.

In the mind of a medieval Russian person, a real, proper tsar is first of all not he who cares for his subjects or even he who builds up power. It is he who behaves as befits a true sovereign: that is to say, following an elaborate ceremonial and living in exact conformity with “procedure.”

Why didn’t the young and talented False Dmitiry I last in the seat of power? Largely because he didn’t behave like a tsar: he didn’t nap after lunch, ate with a fork, didn’t go to the baths, traveled around Moscow practically without guards, talked to laypeople. And on the other hand, he undertook all sorts of incomprehensible reforms, thought up new names. And so people started hearing rumors – “this is not a proper tsar.”

Much water has passed under the bridge since then, but nevertheless, the process of desacralizing the government has been extremely slow and incomplete over that period of time. And traces of ancient Russian impressions of this can be found in the Russian mentality even today.

The distinction of “higher” in regards to “power” continues to reflect not so much its position in the administrative hierarchy as reflects its special, almost “unearthly” status. A ruler is expected not so much to care about the prosperity of the citizens of its country as it is to fulfill some special mission and correspond with the image of an ideal ruler.

Although religion lost its core role in society long ago, the current throwback to the old religious consciousness has turned out to be wonderful aid for political spin. The work to fix a certain mythology around the country’s chief executives has allowed substantive conversations about their politics to be frequently be substituted with discussions of purely superficial displays of their actions.

I can’t say that this is a Russian phenomenon. A mythologized consciousness is characteristic for any society at any time, and Western political scientists construct the image of their own high-ranking “fosterlings” with the same accuracy as their Russian colleagues do. Although myths aside, there’s much that’s interesting to say about reality in the West.

And here people continue to pay markedly more attention not to what a person in the government does, but to how he presents himself. And so Putin – a self-promoter from God – looks like a more natural ruler than Medvedev.

Yeltsin ruled like a tsar, Putin like a national leader, and Medvedev is trying to become a reformer president. The fate of reforms in Rus’ is well known. Nevertheless, is our population finally ready to choose a president and not a leader or a tsar? It seems that the fate of the 2012 elections depends on the answer to this almost rhetorical question.

In a recent article, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov argued that the country’s ruling regime is degrading faster and faster every day. Indications of this, he wrote, include the government’s work to persecute lawyer and blogger Alexei Navalny and the unscrupulous behavior of backtracking police Sergeant Artem Charukhin. The overall picture is one of a government spiraling hopelessly into the abyss.

Kasparov isn’t alone in his assessment of the state of Russia’s regime. Writing in Yezhednevny Zhurnal, columnist Yulia Latynina remarked that Kasparov’s story of his 2007 arrest was a wake-up call for her: “The cops brought him coffee and asked: ‘So when’s it going to collapse?’ As I recall, it was only at that moment that I understood clearly that even the paid-off cops that the oppositionists hate and Russian citizens fear are in no way defenders of the government. They envy their bosses and hate them for zipping around in Mercedes while they do the hard work that has to be done.”

In this version of the same article written for the Moscow Times, Latynina offers a scathing assessment of “Russia’s extraordinarily weak leaders.”

It Smells Like February 1917
By Yulia Latynina
March 2, 2011
The Moscow Times

The smell of February is lingering in the air — February 1917, that is.

I am not talking about the revolutions in the Middle East but about Russia’s extraordinarily weak leaders and the growing contempt that the leading public figures and ordinary citizens are showing toward them.

Look how quickly the seemingly ironclad vertical power structure can evaporate into thin air. For example, Bolshoi prima-turned-celebrity Anastasia Volochkova had no qualms about publicly thumbing her nose at United Russia when she quit the party after revealing that she was “tricked” into signing a group letter in support of prosecuting former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In the 1970s, no Soviet citizen would have even thought about snubbing the Communist Party.

Then there was Natalya Vasilyeva, spokeswoman to Judge Viktor Danilkin in the second criminal case against Khodorkovsky, who revealed that the verdict was written by the Moscow City Court and forced on Danilkin. Certainly Vasilyeva would have never dared such a move if she thought that her life were at risk.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities are worried about their loss of control over citizens who blatantly display insolence and contempt toward the current regime. Pressed to the wall, the only thing President Dmitry Medvedev could say to deflect attention from these embarrassing weaknesses was his Putin-like bluster in Vladikavkaz last week, when he implied that foreign powers are conspiring (again) to disintegrate Russia.

Let’s not forget Russia’s courts. Billionaire Gennady Timchenko filed a libel lawsuit against opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, and Nemtsov turned around and filed a slander case against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Timchenko sued Nemtsov for writing that Putin’s old friends — himself, Yury Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers — were “nobodies” before Putin came to power but quickly became billionaires during his reign.

Nemtsov responded to the charges by presenting documents to the court showing that, before Putin came to power, Timchenko had a yearly income of 326,000 euros ($450,000) in 1999, while Forbes estimated his fortune at $1.9 billion in 2010. Nemtsov also presented a document showing that Timchenko had flown gymnast Alina Kabayeva along with Putin’s friend Nikolai Shamalov, the nominal owner of Putin’s $1 billion Black Sea palace, in his private jet.

Nemtsov filed a lawsuit against Putin for stating during his annual televised call-in show that Nemtsov and others had embezzled billions of dollars along with tycoon Boris Berezovsky in the 1990s.

The only thing Putin’s lawyers could present as evidence in court was a Wikipedia article about Berezovsky that made no mention of Nemtsov but did state that Berezovsky financed and organized Putin’s presidential election campaign in 2000.

The notion that Putin is a leader who instills fear and discipline among bureaucrats and citizens is a myth. One WikiLeaks diplomatic cable revealing that most of Putin’s decrees went unfulfilled is enough evidence in and of itself.

With Putin looking more like Tsar Nicholas II, the smell of February 1917 is clearly in the air. It is the smell of a confused, wounded and weakened leader and a bureaucratic class standing dazed before the public eye. It is the smell of blood in the water.

It is not an especially pleasant odor because as experience has shown in impoverished countries led by corrupt and incompetent rulers, this kind of February 1917 can easily bring about another October 1917.

Russia: Freedom of Speech Online in 2010
By Marianna Tishchenko
February 10, 2011
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

With the Internet rising in influence as the single most important source of information (40% of Russian citizens use the Runet), the issue of online freedom of expression has become significantly more relevant. This year, the Internet became a platform for political and social mobilization in Russia. However, judging by the reaction of the Russian authorities, who strive to suppress activities in cyberspace, the government does not see online activism in a particularly positive light.

At the same time as ordinary Russians (who are, by the way, the most active users of social websites in the world) have begun to rely more heavily on the Internet, the government has also changed its priorities in regards to the global web.

Regional Blocking

Blocking websites is a practice used widely by government authorities, mainly on a regional level, to control Internet content. It must be noted that the particular nature of this method is that residents from one concrete region are blocked from seeing the same websites that everyone else can access as normal.

The most outrageous example of limits imposed on freedom of expression on the Internet was the decision of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Central Regional Court about blocking the website YouTube by Internet provider Rosnet. The ban (which was never put into effect) was a reaction to a neo-Nazi video clip that was put on a “list of extremist materials.” Regardless of the fact that the court’s decision was later forgotten, the case itself is an example of the burgeoning interference by regional authorities over Internet content.

YouTube has not been the only online resource to suffer. At the end of July, a court in the Republic of Ingushetia required a local Internet provider to block access to LiveJournal. In August, a provider in Tula temporarily blocked access to the independent portal Tulskie Pryaniki.

There was an analogous case with the environmental website Ecmo.ru. A provider in the city of Khimki blocked user access to Ecmo.ru because it was hosting a petition calling for Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko to resign.

Physical and Virtual Violence

In addition to website blocking, the freedom of self-expression on the Internet has been influenced by threats of actual violence against bloggers. Well-known Russian journalist and blogger Oleg Kashin was attacked after he published a series of articles about youth movements and protests against the construction of a highway through the Khimki Forest.

In August, a criminal suit was filed in the Kemerovo region against Aleksandr Sorokin for a post in which he compared regional governors to Latin American dictators.

In November, Ulyanovsk activist and blogger Sasha Bragin became a target of the Russian justice system when he was accused of running over a pedestrian. Bragin said the accident was staged and that a criminal suit had already been filed after he was repeatedly threatened for his investigative work.

A series of criminal suits have been filed against neo-Nazi websites. According to the Sova Center, Komi resident Vladimir Lyurov was sentenced to six months probation for inciting hatred with anti-Semitic comments posted on a local forum. Lyurov has not admitted his guilt.

LiveJournal, which is controlled by Kremlin-allied oligarch Alisher Usmanov, wound up in the center of public attention after suspending their users’ accounts. Rakhat Aliev, a Kazakh opposition politician and ex-son-in-law of President Nazarbayev, had his blog frozen. Incidentally, at one point before then, all of LiveJournal was blocked in Kazakhstan. Blogger pilgrim_67 also had his account blocked, forcing him to “transfer” to BlogSpot and lj.rossia.org.

These cases have proven the instability of LiveJournal as a platform for the Russian political blogosphere.

Blogger accounts were not only closed, but hacked. In the past five years, more than 40 Runet blogs have been attacked.

This week, a group of hackers called “the Brigade of Hell” attacked the blog of Valery Novodvorskaya. Hacker victims include political and commercial bloggers alike and the deletion and falsification of content on online journals still goes unpunished.

According to historian Vladimir Pribylovsky, who has closely investigated hacker attacks on bloggers, this group’s financing is controlled by Timofey Shevyakov, leading analyst of the Kremlin website Politonline.ru and former employee of the pro-Kremlin research institute Foundation for Effective Politics.

Control and Deletion of Content

The unrest on Manezhnaya Square on December 11, 2010 provoked a rise in attention paid to the Runet, particularly regarding any information of a nationalistic persuasion. Representatives of the website Vkontakte announced that their moderators were working in cooperation with the police and FSB to delete “dangerous” content. Until then, the site had admitted but not specified the level of cooperation with law enforcement agencies, and now the security services speak openly of monitoring social websites and tracing the IP addresses of people who, in their opinion, are inciting hostility.

Vkontakte was noted for deleting content from its pages more broadly. After the explosion in the Raspadskaya Mine, the website’s management deleted a group created in sympathy for the victims that numbered more than 6000 members when it was deleted. Last July, the group Antireligia (about 8000 members) was also deleted.

Among other measures used against online activists was the incident of Dmitri Gudkov’s car, which was smashed up after Gudkov posted a video titled “Our Gulf of Mexico” about an oil well explosion that the authorities did not react to in any way at all.

Regardless of the fact that the Russian government has staged a series of serious attacks to limit the activities of Internet users, the Runet continues to grow, unite and discuss the most varied topics all the same. It’s possible that the government will realize that controlling freedom of expression is extremely difficult – not only because of the public’s stubbornness, but also because limiting online freedom could not only hinder regional and national debates but also harm the reputation of Russia in the global arena.

A Few Words About Methods
By Viktor Shenderovich
December 7, 2010
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

I intentionally waited a few days – would anybody speak out?

Nope. All is quiet…

Impudence is bliss.

“The methods of our security services differ in a good way from the methods used by United States security services,” Putin told Larry King. “Thank God… the officers of our intelligence services and other security services are not noted as having been involved in the organization of secret prisons, kidnappings, or the use of torture.”

They were noticed, naturally, and more than once.

The difference between Russia and the US is that the people who used torture in Guantanamo are in prison, having been convicted by American courts, and the Russian citizens, kidnapped and tortured by FSB officers, won’t get justice from anywhere closer than Strasbourg.

The second difference is that the American journalists who investigated Guantanamo won the Pulitzer Prize and are all alive, and Politkovskaya and Estemirova, who investigated the filtration camp in Chernokozovo, have been murdered, and their murderers have not been found, and Putin still managed to publicly spit on Politkovskaya’s grave.

So that’s it about the methods. And not those of the security service, but of Putin and his propaganda. They are simple, like a stick: lie through the teeth, nobody will notice!

It doesn’t go unnoticed there – here it definitely goes unnoticed, because 99% of Russian citizens simply don’t hear the objections. Ekho Moskvy, a couple of uncensored magazines with a two-kilometer radius… The sweet joys of our liberal ghetto.

And on television, Putin makes a universal smear to Larry King.

Attacks on journalists are far from rare in Russia, and so is impunity. While suspects often abound, 94% of murder cases have never been resolved. Writing for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, noted journalist Yulia Latynina lays out the most likely perpetrators of Kashin’s brutal attack.

Kashin – Who Ordered the Attack?
By Yulia Latynina
November 8, 2010
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

The attack on Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin is notable for the fact that, like in an Agatha Christie novel, its circle of suspects is finite and small.

The first suspect is Khimki Mayor and Afghan war veteran Strelchenko. The same thing happens to all of Strelchenko’s opponents – their skulls get broken. Exactly two years ago, they broke the skull of Mikhail Beketov; on the anniversary of Beketov’s beating, they broke the skull of Khimki Right Cause leader Fetisov, and a day later – Oleg Kashin.

What do we have here in Khimki, Chechnya? Who is Mayor Strelchenko – Ramzan Kadyrov?

The second suspect is the manager of the Federal Agency for Youth Matters, a close associate of Surkov, the spiritual leader of the Putinjugend – Vasily Yakemenko.

In August 2010, Kashin uncovered and expanded upon an unappetizing story about Yakemenko.

A young girl attending Seliger, Anastasia Korchevskaya, decided to promote herself by bragging about her proximity to the top command, and posted a photo of herself with Yakemenko online with the caption: “Seliger 2008. Yakemenko still thinks I’m madly in love with him.” Yakemenko commented in response: “Korchevskaya, if you came to me two times at night in my tent, it doesn’t mean I think you’re in love with me.”

The page was then deleted, but Kashin managed to make a screenshot and generally did everything possible to expand upon the story. It turned out that Yakemenko not only uses his authority to sleep with schoolchildren, but he also brags on LiveJournal that he screws them in tents. Kashin is not a simple person; he has cooperated with the Kremlin on multiple occasions (it is only worth nothing how he insisted that Private Sychev’s legs fell off on their own accord), and his position could be seen not just as the position of an enemy, but worse – the position of a traitor.

To declare Kashin to be an enemy of the people as a result of this issue was awkward. In the pedofuhrer’s place, it was worth it to wait and latch onto some other one of Kashin’s writings. And, for sure, when Kashin did an interview for Kommersant with the head of the antifascists who were rampaging against the Khimki administration, the Young Guard website, which is under Yakemenko’s jurisdiction, came out with an article entitled “Journalist-traitors (my emphasis – Y.L.) must be punished!”

In the interview with Anonymous (an unprecedented step that Kommersant went ahead with the publication of an anonymous interview, but that’s just it – Anonymous’s name is well known), Khimki is called “absolute evil,” and Strelchenko – “a bandit from the 90s.” But the most important thing is that Anonymous marked the beginning of “a new level of social evolution in our country.” The very existence of these kinds of youth movements, capable of instantaneous organization, self-sacrifice, and going to prison, and the enthusiasm with which the anarchists were greeted by Khimki residents who happened along their path, was a threat to the status and the money that people who love to screwing schoolchildren in Seliger are accustomed to.

And this came through very clearly in the Young Guard article. The article ended like this: “We cannot be under the thumb of information extremists. They are enemies, and that means they will be punished.”

Punished – how? Here is just a shortened list of beatings whose authors have never been found. The epidemic of beatings of Polish diplomats, the beating of Marina Litvinovich (”You need to be more careful, Marina!” she was told by one of the men who was standing nearby when she woke up), the beating of Lev Ponomarev. The murder of antifascists; the investigation of their connections with the Kremlin needs to look at the organizations Russian Verdict and Russian Image, which were joined by Nikita Tikhomirov and Yevgeniya Khasis – the presumed murderers of Markelov and Baburova.

Finally, we mustn’t fail to mention the third candidate. Oleg Kashin is extremely well known as the creator of the expression “sh!tty Turchak,” referring to the governor of Pskovskaya Oblast, former coordinator of youth policy for United Russia, Seliger guest and son of Putin’s friend – Andrei Turchak.

The writing on Kashin’s blog, however, was not about Turchak, but about Kaliningrad Governor Boos: “Compare him with any governor, not even with Ramzan and not with Tuleyev, with any sh!tty Turchak – is this Boos uncompromising?” – wrote Kashin.

If you think about the tone used on the Internet, the remark can be seen almost as innocent: but the son of Putin’s friend suddenly personally demanded that Kashin “apologize within 24 hours,” and then even took the time to call a press conference, where he called Kashin’s retort “informational trash.” “Now I know what kind of person this is, he is not a journalist as I understand it.”

I mention Andrei Turchak, by the way, for the completeness of the list: since, although the epithet “sh!tty Turchak” is now stuck with the former coordinator of youth policy for United Russia, this whole story looks more like a routine dirty internet fight than anything else. As opposed to the stories of Strelchenko and Yakemenko.

And so, like in an Agatha Christie novel, the list of suspects has been defined, and there is no chance that the crime was committed by the yardkeeper on the side. Interrogations on this case need to be carried out on Khimki Mayor Strelchenko, youth movement leader Vasily Yakemenko, and Governor Andrei Turchak. In the best case scenario, there will be talk about a semi-independent initiative by some kind of fascist organizations who were upset about the interview with Anonymous. But it’s most likely that one of these two, and not three – either Strelchenko or Yakemenko – decided that he would get away with everything. And let’s note: all of this is connected to Khimki in one way or another.

And another thing. Yes, I understand that there is more than one suspect. But, in my view, it is stupid to walk around with signs saying “find the criminals” and “take measures,” refraining from naming the suspects. If you guys are going to ask them to “find the criminals,” then they’re going to respond “we’re looking.” Gelman deserves honor and praise for writing that he thinks Yakemenko is behind the attack.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

That Russia has become a strategic ally of Venezuela in recent years is not news: from arms trading and nuclear power ventures to recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia when no one else would do it, the Bolivarian Republic has repeatedly reached out to its distant Slavic partner to make deals in an effort that its leaders insist “makes the world more democratic, balanced and multipolar.”

Critics of both governments have often pointed out that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez share a number of similarities, including their strong cults of personality and suppression of opposition movements. As noted Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza writes in this column for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, those similarities have recently become too numerous and too apparent to ignore – and, given last week’s opposition victories in Venezuela, could be a sign of things to come for the Russian opposition itself.

Venezuelan Parallels
By Vladimir Kara-Murza, jr.
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
October 6, 2010

Analogies, as you know, are weak. But the similarities between Russia and Venezuela these past few years is so striking that the only thing to do is compile a primer of comparative politics.

Chavez, a retired lieutenant colonel who came to power at the end of the ’90s with slogans about the war against “predatory oligarchs,” was not distinguished by his talents either in economics or in governmental administration, but high oil prices arrived right at the very best possible time to help him out. The stream of oil dollars that flowed down onto the lieutenant colonel neutralized the mood of protest and secured the silent consent of the majority for his regime, setting it free to usurp power.

The presidential term was extended to 6 years, the Supreme Court was filled with the president’s followers, and electoral legislation was redrawn by the ruling party. The change in management of the company Petróleos de Venezuela, initiated by the government authorities, put its oil branch (Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere) under the reliable control of the presidential administration. The popular independent television company RCTV was stripped of its airwave frequencies, and then later of its right to broadcast across cable and satellite networks. Chavez’s political opponents wound up in prison (former Minister Raúl Baduel) or in forced emigration (ex-candidate for president Manuel Rosales).

A boycott of the 2005 parliamentary elections, announced by the opposition as a sign of protest against the lack of fair competition, allowed Chavez’s supporters to take 100% of the seats in the National Assembly and dismantle the remaining constitutional supports. Proclaiming the victory of the “Bolivarian model,” the lieutenant colonel expressed his intentions to remain in power for a minimum of ten more years.

This past Sunday, the “Bolivarian model” had its first malfunction. Parliamentary elections, which the opposition did not boycott this time, took place in Venezuela on September 26. The Coalition for Democratic Unity, created by the opposition parties, won 65 seats in the new National Assembly. Chavez’s supporters won 98 mandates – a formal majority, but not enough to put through constitutional laws or confirm judges with only the power of their own party (for that, the “Chavistas” would need two-thirds, which is 110 mandates). The lieutenant colonel is stripped of the qualifying majority in parliament, and together with that, of the possibility of one-man governance. His prospects for the 2012 presidential elections unexpectedly look a great deal more clouded.

The untenability of the authoritarian model is going to become obvious sooner or later. In the conditions of an economic recession and the natural fatigue of the population from a kinglet who has overstayed his welcome, the opposition wasn’t stopped by censored television, controlled courts, or ill-disposed electoral commissions. Luck is beginning to change for the Venezuelan lieutenant colonel.

Analogies, of course, are often weak. But it’s entirely possible that it’s time for the Russian opposition to prepare for good news.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

The War on Terrorism: Medvedev Takes Putin’s Path
By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
April 8, 2010
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

In the week that has passed since the bombings on the city metro, President Dmitri Medvedev has actively intruded upon Putin’s personal domain – which the war on terrorism is considered to be – and proposed a few solutions. Clearly, they should demonstrate that his approach to this problem differs from the last one, which, considering what happened, has obviously not proven its worth. Today there are three initiatives – a presidential decree regarding transportation safety, the appointment of a new security force in the North Caucasus, and the introduction of a scale of terrorist threats.

The decree entitled “On the creation of a complex system to provide safety to the population on transportation” calls for the creation of a system to prevent emergency situations and terrorist attacks, most of all in the metro. Judging by the text, this would involve equipping public transportation with special technology to deal with “acts of unlawful interference,” and also systems to collect information about emerging emergency situations and threats of terrorist attacks. That is to say, additional systems to monitor passengers, and also all possible devices to determine the presence of poisonous, toxic, or other malicious agents in the air.

According to the document, the most vulnerable facilities should be equipped with this special technology by the end of next March, and the entire safety system should be completed by 2014.

Insofar as this is the only open document adopted after the bombings in the metro, one can make the conclusion that the state is intent on investing funds to prevent terrorist attacks at the last stage – when a terrorist with a bomb or poisonous gas cartridge is already moving toward a goal and falls into view of technical or other systems of control.

Meanwhile, it’s entirely obvious that cameras and censors don’t help to stop terrorists in the middle of a crowd in the metro or in a train station; at the very least, there have been no such examples of this happening in the past ten years. Moreover, as Russian experience has shown, barriers can be an obstacle to entering a defined area, but they won’t hinder a terrorist from detonating a suicide bomb in a crowd of people. At the Krylya festival in Tushino, a suicide bomber was unable to enter the stadium and blew herself up in the line at the barrier.

Of course, video cameras can help to quickly establish the identity of a suicide bomber, and, it’s true, that turns out to be helpful in the search for the terrorist’s accomplices; although, recently, as a general rule, they skillfully disguise themselves, covering up with caps and using glasses to change how their faces look. But none of this has anything to do with preventing a terrorist attack itself, and, at best, eases the investigation of a tragedy that has already happened.

In London, the world’s most developed video surveillance system (official figures say that Great Britain has one camera for every twelve people) couldn’t prevent the underground and bus terrorist attacks in 2005, although, as consequently became clear, the terrorists fell into view of the cameras numerous times on their way to the sites of the explosions and as they made preparations for the attacks.

British police already admit that all of this technology is practically useless even against normal crime, let alone terrorist attacks. The head of video surveillance management at Scotland Yard, Mick Neville, said at a 2008 press conference that less than one of every thirty crimes is uncovered with the help of CCTV – with its help, but not thanks to it exclusively.

Moreover, for understandable reasons, the metro and above-ground transportation in large cities cannot be equipped with the same safety measures that are used in airports (barriers, x-rays, all possible kinds of detectors). The head of the city metro, Dmitri Gayev, has spoken about this numerous times in the past few days.

The second initiative announced after the Moscow terrorist attacks was the scale of terrorist threats, which the National Anti-terroristt Committee is intent on introducing – not the same type that was introduced in the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It’s obvious that this scale is meant first and foremost for the population, since the intelligence agencies already have their own internal plan of action for any terrorist threats that show up. For example, before the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the threat level was decreased. Moreover, experience has shown that raising the threat level only increases the nervousness of the population. Normal people who aren’t trained to identify dangerous behavioral indicators are inclined to see them in everyone that looks or behaves “just not right.” This, naturally, leads to a growth in suspiciousness and xenophobia. At the same time, the intelligence agencies wind up swamped with a humongous quantity of garbage information that they’re required to respond to.

Medvedev’s third step was a staffing decision in the North Caucasus. Having visited Dagestan, the president appointed Deputy Chief of Internal Forces Yevgeny Lazebin, who head the United Group of Federal Forces in 2005-06, as the supervisor of the Internal Ministry in the North Caucasus.

All three of these decisions proposed by Medvedev in the wake of the terrorist attacks have one quality in common: they are a direct continuation of the strategy formed by Putin in the beginning and middle of the last decade.

The Internal Ministry has been investing funds in a system to control the population, including with video surveillance, since at least 2005. The scale of terrorist threats has been the beloved brainchild of Nikolai Patrushev even since during his tenure as FSB director, and they’ve been trying to introduce it since 2004. However, while the effect of these two initiatives is simply doubtful, the appointment of an Interior Forces general belongs in a separate category.

The Kremlin began to systematically move the Interior Forces into the main role in the North Caucasus back in the middle of the last decade. Back then, the highest-rated terrorist threat was an attack on a city by large detachments of militants, as happened in 2004 when Basayev’s detachment took control of Nazran within nearly twenty-four hours. Therefore, the main task was considered as having heavily armed detachments of special forces on hand to deflect an attack and carry out tactical operations in the city or forest.

In appointing Lazebin, Medvedev has shown that he continues to consider attacks by powerful militants to be the most dangerous threat. It’s obvious that such an approach has nothing to do with preventing terrorist attacks by suicide bombers, which most of all demand intelligence work – not the Interior Forces’ strongest point.

Moreover, Medvedev’s choice demonstrates that the Kremlin isn’t planning to even begin a battle for “the hearts and minds” of the North Caucasus. The interior forces have a fully developed reputation in the region. There are no such words that could convince the local population to enter into cooperation with the crimson berets. But this scarcely worried Putin, and as is becoming clear, doesn’t interest Medvedev even a bit.

Translation by theOtherRussia.org.

Therefore, Yezhednevny Zhurnal recently sat down with Kasparov for another interview, in order to extend the discussion of why European integration is necessary for Russia and how current political posturing on economic and political reforms will inevitably come to naught.

Garry Kimovich, in your opinion, do the nationalist and leftist wings of the National Assembly support the idea of European integration?

The strategic vector of Russia’s future development is, of course, a question for national discussion. At a time when a new global consensus is developing, Russia’s own interests force it to determine who its strategic partners are. It is possible that, as before, part of the left will look towards China. They think that the ruling Chinese Communist Party will implement the correct scenario for the country’s development.

However, in my opinion, if Russia focuses so recklessly on the East, it will inevitably cause our country to lose geopolitical subjectivity. Nothing will come of Russia’s own role, most likely becoming a purely raw-exports role for its active eastern neighbor. China is a very strong player, constantly driving economic expansion. By steadily expanding the limits of its influence, it has already established hegemony over practically the entire Asian expanse.

It is possible that there are some nationalists who, believing in Russia’s divine destiny, will say: “But we don’t need anyone – we’ll handle it ourselves.” I think that all of these utopian theories will come to be rejected as a result of discussion. I do not doubt that in the end, both the nationalists and the leftists will choose the vector of European integration.

Do you think that all Russian citizens support this geopolitical course?

Unlike the United States or China, which have a potentially negative connotation in the Russian consciousness, Europe won’t be rejected outright by Russian citizens. Europe is a related culture with high standards of living and free movement across the continent without the need for a visa. Where do our citizens turn to when they are disappointed with Russian justice? To Strasbourg. Many consider Europe to be a source of judicial justice. On the other hand, there’s a danger that people will get high expectations and hope that integration will solve all of our problems. The integration process is long and requires the introduction of legislation to bring us in line with basic European norms, and also to balance economic conditions and social safety nets.

Over the course of the integration process, the situation in the country should fundamentally change, of course, for the better. It is obvious that industries are beginning to move from the West to the East, closer to sources of raw materials, and that the qualified work force is catching up with them. Indeed, Europe today is suffering from overpopulation, and Russia has a great deal of undeveloped territory. If Russia becomes part of a common European expanse, we will be able to have European technology for, among other things, Russia’s gigantic farmlands. We will come to share such high-tech European projects as Airbus. With European integration, situations like the failed deal between Sberbank and Opel will become impossible. These issues will be resolved without the influence of political factors, even if the Americans don’t like it.

Is it just coincidental that several Kremlin political consultants have recently introduced projects that, in one way or another, promote the idea of European integration?

It is important to stress here that the Kremlin’s projects differ fundamentally from the processes of European integration as we understand them. They would base the integration of Russia with the Western world on alliances, including military-political ones, with various governments in Europe and America. For example, Director Igor Yurgens of the Institute for Contemporary Development proposed forming a military-political alliance with America together with his coauthors in a project entitled “A New Entente.” The United States could choose to enter into an alliance with Russia for their own tactical reasons – to move Russia away from China and to prevent China from creating a raw materials base in the Far East and Siberia. In doing so, the Americans would close their eyes to the lawlessness and absence of democracy in Russia.

The situation with Europe is more complex, but it could also enter into other types of elite arrangements. For example, former German Councilor Gerhard Schröder has already worked for Gazprom’s sister company for quite some time. The former Finnish Prime Minister, Paavo Lipponen, also works for Gazprom. Silvio Berlusconi makes no attempt to hide his close business contacts with Putin. This is precisely why the propagandists from the Kremlin are trying to formulate such projects, so that they can maximally integrate the Russian elite with the global elite. Such plans would ensure that there would be no interference from the West in our own matters, and would preserve the patriarchal-feudal system of the Russian government. Even Dmitri Rogozin has spoken publicly about the use of integrating Russia into NATO. These projects are pure ostentation, and the authorities have absolutely no desire to discuss the process of real European integration that would demand a change in the inner substance of our state. Such changes would be fatal for the government, since they would have to introduce electoral legislation that corresponds to European norms.

Are the experts from the Institute for Contemporary Development, who are often critical of the government and promote various proposals to modernize the economy, really not potential allies for the opposition?

As a matter of fact, they are our antagonists; our ideological opponents. And they are all the more dangerous – in contrast with open fans of authoritarian and totalitarian forms of governance, they put on a show of multi-layered, ostentatious rhetoric to hide their actual refusal to accept political liberalism. That the very meanings of “democracy” and “liberalism” have been cheapened in the eyes of Russian society has been their “contribution.”

Rehabilitating liberal thought in Russia would require overcoming the inertia of a massive consciousness that still include proponents of the views of Gaidar and Chubais. Andrei Piontkovsky devotes much consideration to this important topic in his impassioned articles, constantly pointing out how these types of Russian liberals are incorporated into the infrastructure of the oligarchic regime. The National Patriots, who have shown that they are prepared to work with other ideological groups and abandon current stereotypes, did an interesting comparative analysis of the position of liberals and neo-liberal “liberasts” on key socio-political issues.

Not long ago, Yegor Gaidar made a very important confession. In an interview with Novaya Gazeta, he said that while we had indeed created a market economy, “we did not solve one of the important problems – the separation of power and property.” Herein lies Yegor Timurovich’s trickery: that the problem of the separation of power and property was never solved. We never had real market reform because the market, most of all, presupposes a systematic battle against monopolization in every sector, and not a formal division and privatization by the very same oligarchs of companies such as the Unified Energy System.

In her new book, “The Lonely Power,” Lilia Shevtsova writes that Russian “reformers” came under criticism in the 1990s by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, then-Senior Vice President of the World Bank. “Privatization is no great achievement,” Stiglitz mocked the “privatizers,” “it can occur whenever one wants – if only by giving away property to one’s friends. Achieving a private competitive market economy on the other hand is a great achievement but this requires an institutional framework, a set of credible and enforced laws and regulations.” Stiglitz convincingly proved that privatization in Russia occurred “in an unregulated environment,” and instead of doing what was needed to creating the environment “to curb political intrusion in market processes, an instrument was created to be used by special interest groups and political forces to preserve power,” Shevtsova concludes.

The oligarchic method of governing – that is to say, the seamless interweaving of power and property – will sooner or later lead to the abolition of democracy as such. Nobody will give up their power if they risk losing their property. Obviously, the ideal of the Medvedev wing that Yurgens represents is the liquidation of various excesses from Putin’s administration. But in doing so, it may not touch the oligarchic essence of the state. The Russian liberals that are incorporated into the system fear free elections like fire, since they inevitably lead to the abolition to the oligarchic model of government rule. Among these people, genuine liberalization brings about a real allergic reaction.

Why, then, was Igor Yurgens present at the conference of the Public Anti-crisis Initiative, expressing his intent to sign a measure that would promote political demands to modernize the political system?

First of all, signing a demand and managing to fulfill it are very different things. Secondly, the political reforms proposed by this group go, at the very most, only halfway. Without a doubt, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Sergei Aleksashenko and even Aleksandr Lebedev can potentially be our allies, but they have never before crossed the line necessary to challenge the system.

What do you think of the idea of gradual democratization of the system, which many have put their hopes in?

An anti-democratic regime can be neither reformed nor modernized; it can only be dismantled. All the hope that goes into finding a way to somehow reform or perfect the current system is in vain. It’s impossible, because the essence of the system will remain the same. Yegor Gaidar was precise in defining this: it’s power and property mixed up in the same bottle. Our situation will not change while the question of the separation of power and property remains resolved. This is a purely political decision. There exists no other way of reforming the system, such as with free elections. The five-second rule doesn’t apply to free elections – they’re basically saying that “we cannot allow irresponsible people to come to power.” We take a directly contradictory stance: “Give the people freedom, and you need not worry excessively about their elections.”

Do you think that the government’s apologists will convince the public that the discussion of unfair elections is a thing of the past, and that now, like they say, the new president is working to curb the “administrative games” of United Russia?

As a matter of fact, Medvedev has said nothing about honest elections; I don’t need to speak on his behalf. Twenty years ago, this was a beloved pastime of Western experts, who based their conjectures on their readings of Gorbachev in translation. Thank god we listen to Medvedev in Russian! On the contrary, he maintained the status-quo, saying: “We shall not rock the boat… We shall not allow the balance to be disrupted… We shall put this to an abrupt stop… We shall put them in jail.” Add to that the fact that the authorities took this as a direct order and put Limonov in jail for ten days for standing up for citizens’ right to freedom of assembly. Nothing in Medvedev’s speeches indicates that the Russian president wants real change. So, let’s leave him alone.

The apologists from the “Medvedev Majority” don’t say anything about free elections, either. This remains the case even when examining very different people. For example, the same Igor Yurgens who talks about the possibility of democracy “from above.” He proposes creating two political parties – one under Putin and another under Medvedev, and making it so that they can replace each other from time to time. Are those really free elections? This is a mask for the regime, unapologetically suppressing any impulses that threaten the bond between power and property. And free elections are a direct threat to the oligarchic method of managing the economy.

This is also characteristic of the regional governments, where the families of governors and state prosecutors control large spheres of business. So the regional elites aren’t interested in free elections, either. But Medvedev’s apologists won’t manage to fool the people. Russia’s main “liberast,” Anatoly Chubais, generally sees these tricks as an empty waste of time, and is calling directly for economic reform, putting a stop to these unnecessary discussions of political reform.

One more apologist from the “modernization majority,” a, is trying to hoist the same agenda upon us, but hiding it behind the name of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. Such attempts are typical for the more active Russian “liberasts,” and are especially immoral because they use Sakharov’s humanitarian legacy to justify a purely technocratic approach to governing the country, one based on the innermost contempt for its own people.

Then what does it tell us when, for example, prominent United Russia member Andrei Makarov announces that the Internal Ministry needs to be liquidated? Did he not, in fact, state your proposal?

That’s the spontaneous revolt of individual people who are sensing the dead end ahead. Anyone not completely hardwired into the system is protesting. And within the system, this protest is gaining momentum. “Sartre’s nausea,” as Andrei Piontkovsky writes, is approaching. The Brezhnev generation might see the question of when everything will come tumbling down as a rhetorical one, but for the 40-50-year-olds who make up the basis of the current government, this is not a theoretical question, but a practical one. Today, these people want to understand what will happen tomorrow. They still have the strength and desire to not wind up beneath the wreckage of the system.

And indeed, the system is not going to collapse just because I write that it will – all I do is expound upon the fears and dangers that a lot people are experiencing. I think that the process of the system’s collapse is going to gain momentum. At the end of the day, the stumbling block will be the question of political liberalization.

It’s possible that all of these people will put their hopes in Medvedev until the very end…

But he isn’t planning to introduce any corrections into the political system. After a year and a half of Medvedev’s tenure as president of Russia, Putin’s authoritarian regime has only become more severe. The Internal Ministry now has a special new subdivision for the war on extremism – Center “E;” cases of extremism have begun to appear, demonstrations have begun to be broken up more severely, and political activists have begun getting beaten.

In addition, today we have come face-to-face with a new and extremely dangerous phenomenon – the sharp growth of street violence between neo-Nazi and anti-fascist groups. Violence is pouring out onto the streets, and the thieving, cowardly government tries to use violence to its own ends. All of Medvedev’s attempts to play an independent role are connected with a desire to preserve Putinism without Putin. Further thoughts on this are worthless. Putin and Medvedev are representatives of a single system, one where power and property are combined. This renders the whole conversation about economic reform meaningless. The monopoly in politics and the economy doesn’t go together well with free elections.

Would you, then, recommend those who aren’t hardwired into the system to wait for the regime’s collapse?

In any case, I don’t advise them to participate in Medvedev’s various initiatives – that’s an attempt to shift his civic duty onto somebody else. Such attempts may bring about an opposite result and only prolong the agony of the regime. No attempt to play along with Medvedev’s initiatives will benefit anyone. The citizens that want free parliamentary elections have been effective in uniting into their own networks.

Is this where you got the idea to transform the National Assembly into a series of networks?

Yes, we are planning to reform the National Assembly. We want to make it available for all Russian citizens to join, and also to create regional branches for the National Assembly. The new structure will respond to the demand to represent a maximum number of different ideological trends on the basis of our common values. We hope that the existence of such a wide-ranging structure will help us support the country at a time of catastrophe, and implement a range of necessary actions during the transitional period while the country is preparing for elections – which will be held with clear, transparent rules. Right now, nobody knows where they’re going to be working, whether in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches; we can develop an objective procedure for elections and a system of checks and balances that would suit everyone.

In your opinion, will the National Assembly be the only force vying for power when the system collapses?

Undoubtedly not. A variety of forces will come to the surface during the moment of chaos. The advantage of our organizational structure is that it includes all colors of the rainbow; all political spectrums. The National Assembly is a place to form a new political expanse. We have an important trump card – nobody has learned better than us how to negotiate the most complex issues. And it is only possible to rescue the state during a moment of crisis on the basis of a wide consensus.

Interview conducted by Olga Gulenok. Original version in Russian available on Ej.ru.

Exclusive translation by theotherrussia.org.