The editors at Yezhednevny Zhurnal sat down with some of the freshly-elected representatives to the Russian opposition’s new Coordination Council to ask what they thought about the election results, the Council’s initial tasks, and what difficulties they might have to face. Theotherrussia.org will continue to bring you several of these responses over the next several days, so stay tuned for more.

Ilya Yashin
Member, Solidarity movement
Total votes: 32,478
Rank: 5th

We had prepared for the difficulties that might come up during the election. The government organized a massive DDoS attack, which, despite the problems we had on the first day, was successfully taken care of and the site worked quite well after that. In Chelyabinsk, the FSB attacked our activists on the regional electoral committee, confiscated computers, frightened people, and the committee simply couldn’t function. There were provocations – prosecutors filed criminal cases about supposed embezzlement of funds. I’m glad that we were able to overcome these difficulties, and in the end, tens of thousands of people took part in the election – this is probably the single largest civil project in years, and shows that the opposition has maintained significant capacity to mobilize civil activity. This is probably the most important result.

The difficulties that await the Council in the future are obvious. They have to do with the fact that the people elected are very different. Although, yesterday, after the election, the elected members of the Coordination Council gathered on the Dozhd channel and had a rather emotional discussion that proved that it’s not going to be very hard to work or to find common ground. We foresaw these difficulties: since there were people of different viewpoints among the candidates, we formed congregations that would guarantee that the entire political spectrum would be represented; we knew that it was going to be rather complicated to find compromise on a whole set of issues. But everyone is generally prepared for this. In fact, one of the tasks of the Coordination Council is to create a dialogue between representatives of various opposition groups and find the common ground that unites us.

It seems to me that there should be several directions our work should take. One of our key tasks is to form a substantive agenda for the protest movement, a structural project that we have long been criticized for lacking, although not entirely fairly, in my view, since the opposition has generated a not insubstantial number of constructive ideas. Now there’s going to be a united platform that will promote our projects in the name of the united opposition. These projects, of course, are going to have, it seems to me, a much larger resonance. One of our main tasks is to formulate within the course of a year our main proposals concerning political reforms that, as we hope, the government will be ready to discuss at some point. Even if it’s not, we should still offer this to society.

The second direction is to support regional politicians, both in elections and within the framework of anti-corruption projects. I think we’re going to offer organizational, political, and sometimes even financial help to people who are forced to battle with local swindlers and thieves and need our help, in small towns and in the regions.

The third direction is education, which has to do with the dissemination of various types of anti-corruption reports and reports dedicated to the results of Putin’s rule. In addition, a background theme will be the defense of political prisoners. I think that right now we should mobilize all the resources we have to give the maximum amount of help possible to people who are currently sitting behind bars because of their dissent.

The liberal wing is represented in the Coordination Council rather heavily. This has to do with the fact that the protests on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Prospekt were represented to a significant degree by people of liberal-democratic views, which has been established by nearly all sociological surveys, and voting during the election for the Council confirmed that the basic part, the nucleus of the protest movement, is, like before, people who hold liberal-democratic views. The social portrait of the protest area, it seems to me, is very clearly reflected in the election results.

An Alternative Agenda
October 24, 2012
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Garry Kasparov
Leader, United Civil Front
Total votes: 33,849
Rank: 3rd

We managed to hold the election, despite extremely unfavorable external conditions. The Democracy-2 system, which Yekaterinburg programmers, led by Leonid Volkov, released this past year, proved its efficacy. There were some conflicts, of course, but on the whole the election was free and fair, because all of the decisions by the Central Electoral Committee were completely open. This stands in direct contrast to [Federal Central Electoral Commission Chairman Vladimir] Churov’s elections – it’s totally clear how and why various decisions were made. Of course, someone might want to challenge them if they don’t like them, but the entire procedure was fully transparent.

The fact that hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens went through the verification process in the online voting system (which involves agreeing to enter their passport and phone numbers) shows a growth of protest sentiment and of people’s desire to participate more actively in shaping the protest agenda. You could say that the result of this campaign, albeit a short (but still striking) one, is the emergence of a totally legitimate opposition body. The number of people who took part in this transparent process created a body that has legitimacy to speak in the name of the entire protest movement.

The obvious difficulty that the Opposition Council is going to face is that it consists of very different people with different ideologies, and that it will have, let’s say, many political newcomers. I, along with several of my colleagues – Andrei Illarionov, Andrei Piontkovsky, Boris Nemtsov, and especially the others who were also in the Other Russia movement and the National Assembly – have experience in this type of cooperation. But such people are now a minority in the Coordination Council – that’s an objective fact. It’s very important that the Council is able to overcome these dangerous problems and form a constructive agenda.

From my point of view, the most important task, besides writing regulations and organizing normal functioning for the Coordination Council, is to build up our electoral base – not just the people who vote, but and who participate in the entire process; people who want to follow the Council’s work continuously, to make remarks and proposals. They should have that opportunity. This is what we’d like to build and call the Free Russia Forum. All of these people are registered, and they should be as full participants of this process as the members of the Coordination Council are. In my opinion, the Council should hold referendums on important issues as often as possible. Tens of thousands of people, if they want, should have the opportunity to vote on some type of key issue. In the same vein, the next issue is expanding the Council beyond the Garden Ring. Of course, we do already have quite a wide regional base – only 35% of those who voted in the Council election were Muscovites, just more than a third. But it’s very important that activeness increases, so that people in the regions, where there are many potential voters, create their own coordination councils, meaning that they build up a local infrastructure.

Yevgenia Chirikova
Leader, Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest
Votes: 32,221
Rank: 7th

It seems to me that the most important thing right now is to establish a system to provide people with information. In Khimki, I was confronted with the fact that the propaganda that currently flows from Channel One, NTV, and local television is effective, and has an absolutely corrosive effect on people. Our task is to make it so that they know the truth. We absolutely need to support local media in places where we plan to participate in municipal elections.

It seems to me that, because [the local media] had been destroyed in Khimki, we had low turnout, people were disappointed in everything and didn’t believe that it’d be possible to change anything. We need our own media system, since we need to be able to have an impact on people. In places where you can impact people, everything else is possible: defending human rights, defending nature, defending the rights of prisoners. If the citizens trust us, if we can get through to their hearts and minds, then we won’t have a problem calling them, for example, to come to a picket in defense of prisoners or a rally in defense of a forest.

The biggest difficulty of our time is to remain free. But whether or not it’ll be possible to negotiate is going to depend on external factors – the harder they push, they easier it’ll be to negotiate. The way things are going now, we will have a wonderful time negotiating!

In this column for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, noted satirist Viktor Shenderovich discusses an ironic but all too representative instance of corruption within the Russian government, and issues a warning to politicians who think their impunity will last forever.

Part of their Repertory
By Viktor Shenderovich
July 19, 2012
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

The St. Petersburg City Cultural Committee designated budget subsidies for non-state theaters. Out of 15.6 million rubles, 15 million went to one theater – the Andrei Mironov Russian Enterprise Theater. The theater’s artistic director, Rudolf Furmanov, is both a distant relative of Cultural Committee head Dmitri Meskhiev, and a confidant of Vladimir Putin.

This isn’t even corruption. Corruption tries to avoid sticking out and hides from the law. But this – this is a typical demonstration of lawlessness, an insistent announcement of the new rules of the game…

Yes, this is how it’s going to be – there you go! Yes, all of the allocated budget money is going to the relative of a boyar and the confidant of a khan. Yes, we wanted to spit on what you think and say. Yes, yes, and yes once again! And no matter how much you bash your head against the wall, we’re still going to have it our way.

And they will, naturally. Until one day (hello Hegel) when quantity turns into quality, the system screws up, and the khan and boyars, emboldened by their impunity, choke on their own shit and blood (check your history textbooks, virtually any chapter).

But until then everything is going to be so cool and controlled that it’s not even going to occur to anyone sawing up the budget to disguise themselves.

P.S. Under closer inspection, this dull corruption story turns out to have a paradoxical side note: the theater intends to spend a large portion of the money it’s received on a production of Evgeny Shvarts’s version of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

This should be particularly instructive in the production of dear Vladimir Vladimirovich’s confidant:

“You’re naked, you old fool! Do you understand? Naked, naked, naked! Look at the people! Look at the people! They’re lost in thought. Lost in thought, you poor buffoon! Our traditions are shaking! Smoke is billowing above the state! (the king cries out.) Shut up!…”

And the rest is in the script.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

The Degradation of Putin’s Dictatorship
By Georgy Satarov
June 19, 2012
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

I have long been lambasted by my political science textbook-wielding colleagues for calling the Putin regime a dictatorship. And I’ve fought them off: there are different kinds of dictatorships; they turn up in different historical periods in different ways; dictatorships in the information age are not what they were in the previous century. That is why I can confirm that what we’re seeing right now is not the establishment of a dictatorship, but its degradation. Let me explain: the degradation of social order is always a clear historical move to an old, primitive form. The degradation of our dictatorship is a transition from a 21st century dictatorship to a dictatorship from a century ago. That is exactly what we’re seeing right now. Pay attention: the same thing happens with a person in a state of stress or fear. His behavior begins to be governed not by subtle mechanisms of societal control, but by ancient animalistic instincts. This is exactly what our government is demonstrating, by moving from episodic imitation of commitment to the law to complete, unlawful tyranny – whether it’s by passing laws or carrying out indiscriminate searches and arrests – when they’re seized by panic. Let me remind you, by the way, that this didn’t just begin now. The first mass arrests were in 2006 – right before the first Other Russia coalition conference.

It’s clear enough that the attempts to frighten hundreds of thousands of people with fines and repression have had the opposite effect. We saw this for certain on June 12. But remember that this whole disgrace is happening prior to the routine pokazukha that we call the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. My colleagues and even friends will be going there. They are going to participate in the same collective lie in the same halls as Putin and Medvedev. They will be smeared like paint all over the canvas of a picture of a beautiful, liberal Russian government. And then I’ll have to become even more discerning with whom I choose to shake hands.

Western politicians and businessmen will also be at the forum. Politicians I can still understand. They need to endear themselves to their constituencies and put gas in their tanks, and therefore they are forced to make agreements with an illegitimate, criminal regime. But how are we to understand the businessmen?! The political risks of investing in Russia are steadily approaching the absolute maximum possible. But yes, that’s their problem. And we have to deal with our own.

What can we expect next? We have to proceed off of the steadily growing inadequacy of the government. We also must assume that there are people in the government who are also aware of this inadequacy and its negative consequences. This, most likely, is going to increase discontent in the administrative elite with the (relatively) higher political leaders. The traditional behavior of the elites in this kind of situation is to split and for one to try and sacrifice the other, giving it up to the mercy of the opposition and outraged public opinion in an attempt to save itself. And here’s a funny thing: at a certain point it becomes a race for whoever can unite with the opposition faster and betray the rest, throwing them to the dogs. To speak concretely: either the Chekist “Putinyata” blame the liberal “Chubaisyata” for everything, beating themselves in the chest and proclaiming their professional patriotism, or the “Chubaisyata” sacrifice the Chekists and join up with the hated military.

So here’s what’s unpleasant: there is no guarantee that such a scenario ends gracefully with the establishment of democracy and the rule of law in the interest of the citizens of Russia. But there are more uncertainties, fraught with catastrophic consequences including the collapse of the country, in the inertial scenario of the non-stop, uncontrolled collapse of the regime. An understanding of this dramatic fork in the road, which is unavoidable since Putin’s dictatorship is deteriorating, would be helpful for the collective protest leadership. That’s to the extent, of course, that such an understanding can serve as a reason for adequate actions. And it’s clear what those actions would be: the development of legitimate protests (the opposition has no right to compete with the government in levels of inadequacy), the split of the ruling elite, and the search for possible partners. The growth of the scale of the protest is not only a means of pressuring the government to split up, but also the single means of defense from a government prepared to violate any law to save itself.

One last thing. I am not ruling out that the government hopes to set up a zugzwang for the protests. Repression will either frighte the people and the protests will come to naught, or, conversely, it will infuriate and provoke the protesters to act outside the boundaries of the law. The latter could lead to the consolidation of the elite and provide an excuse for expanded repression. This means that the protest needs to be legitimately expanded and supported. It’s difficult, but it’s the only way.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

It’s been less than a month since Vladimir Putin returned to the post of Russia’s president. In that time, he already managed to sign a degree indicating that Russia’s corrupt system of deciding which corporations should belong to the state and which should not is showing no sign of abating. As Yulia Latynina reports:

Legalizing the Loot
By Yulia Latynina
May 24, 2012
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

One of the first orders that Vladimir Putin signed as president instructed the government to “remove state investment from non-energy sector companies” by 2016. This included companies such as the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), and Rostechnology.

This order was no accident: literally one week later, Putin demanded that Rostechnology prepare proposals to privatize the assets of this state-owned corporation within the space of a month.

If you think about it, this is a very odd piece of news.

UAC, USC, and Rostechnology are not old companies like, for instance, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise, tucked away in state-owned silos since the Yeltsin era. These are companies that were created by Putin in 2006-2007 and headed, in a number of cases, by his close friends.

In many cases, private enterprises were incorporated into these companies in a way that was, more or less, violent. And the government declared that these enterprises held an important strategic purpose and should therefore be nationalized. And now after 3-5 years it turns out that they should be privatized again.

You know, only one of two things is possible. Either the government advocates a socialist ideology, in which case it nationalizes companies like Salvador Allende, or it advocates a market ideology, in which case it privatizes them like Margaret Thatcher. But if the government first takes companies from their owners and then privatizes them again, it means that it isn’t advocating either ideology. That means it’s just stealing. So UAC, USC, and Rostechnology are not state companies. They are just an instrument with which private companies are taken from their owners and given out to Putin’s friends.

Take, for example, UAC. Until it was created, the country had to deal with the difficult but necessary process of self-organizing the aviation industry. The weak companies died off, and then the country found itself with a few strong aviation companies: the company Russian Avionics, or Irkutsk Aviation Factory, privatized by management and having fallen on the procurement for the Su in India, which they themselves modernized.

After UAC was created (in November 2006), this process was interrupted. The owner of Irkut, Aleksei Fedorov, was made a proposal he couldn’t refuse: to transfer his private shares to the state, but head the entire company. Fedorov agreed.

The main force behind the pressure on the corporation was Mikhail Pogosyan’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 project. The Superjet turned out to be a super vacuum: the plane’s development cost, according to experts, around 7 million dollars, as opposed to the 1-1.5 million dollar estimates from its competitors. The plane was three years late and turned out to be three tons heavier than promised, but, clearly, from the point of view of the “economy of ROZ” [Stanislav Belkovsky’s characterization of the corrupt nature of the Russian economy – ed.], the project was successful: Fedorov left, and Mikhail Pogosyan took his place.

Or take another instance – the company AVISMA. In 2006, Russia’s largest titanium producer was purchased by the predecessor to Rostechnology – Rosoboronexport – with a 30 percent discount and market quotations of around 1.2 billion dollars.

This was preceded by a rather dramatic story. Sixty percent of AVISMA shares were divided equally between its two owners, Tetyukhin (“the red director”) and Bresht (“the young financier”). Another 13.4 percent of AVISMA shares belonged to Viktor Vekselberg, and between Vekselberg and the owners there was an agreement about “Russian roulette,” and it was specifically stipulated that when the company was purchased, nobody could borrow money from their own bundle.

Allow me to remind you that “Russian roulette” in this context is when you can propose that another owner buys his share at a certain price, and he in response can buy from you at the same price per share.

In May 2005, Vekselberg, having waited for an opportune moment in the market and thinking that AVISMA had less money than he did, offered to buy 60 percent of AVISMA at 96 dollars per share, which was, to put it lightly, inexpensive. However, Bresht and Tetyukhin refinanced through Renaissance and bought from Vekselberg instead.

Clearly, the oligarch found this insulting, and appealed to [Russian businessman Sergei] Chemezov. After that, the state suddenly discovered that AVISMA was a strategic company that should have belonged in the state’s coffers. Bresht and Tetyukhin were offered 700 million dollars for their bundle; they asked for 2 billion.

The matter went all the way to Putin. Putin supposedly said: “Pay them, so there’s no scandal.” But the ones who had taken AVISMA didn’t want to pay up: Bresht was supposedly called to the carpet of then-FSB head Patrushev, who, obviously, was at that moment the main arbiter to determine the price of companies listed on the market.

In the end, the case was settled in the middle: Bresht and Tetyukhin gave away their shares and left Russia, and you can’t say that 1.2 billion dollars is so little money. But you also can’t say that they would have sold any shares at that price in a sound state of mind and with a solid memory.

And now Vladimir Putin is signing an order to privatize state companies that were created 6 years ago. You have to agree that it turned out oddly. It’s not hard to guess that if the UAS assets are privatized that it could easily happen that the state would remain with the cost of developing the Superjet but that future profits from its sale will end up in the hands of future owners of its assets. Or look again at AVISMA. Six years ago it was taken into state coffers (on credit from state banks) as a strategically important enterprise, and now they’re selling it again?

The presidential order is just a continuation of the 180-degree turn in Putin’s economic policy going on before our eyes. Not long ago, all traders – let alone foreigners – were kicked out of the gas sector. And in March 2011 they sold 20 percent of Novatek to the company Total. Also recently we kicked Shell out of Sakhalin, and now Rosneft and Exxon have signed a cooperation agreement, rather similar essentially to what Mikhail Khodorkovsky was suspected of being prepared to sign.

In principle, this is how rulers behave whose thrones are tottering and who are worried about legalizing loot through privatization and through buying shares in the loot with foreign companies.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

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.