Reflections on Russia

Today is one of those days when we just have to wait for things to evolve: the situation at Fukushima continues to deteriorate while we are waiting for the US Congress to decide what they are going to do as well as what transpires at the G-20 in St.Petersburg. I am taking pause to reflect on something that has been giving me cause for concern – the propaganda war against Russia

Considering Russia

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You cannot grasp Russia with your mind

Or judge her by any common measure,

Russia is one of a special kind –

You can only believe in her.

Fyodor Tyuchev 

Last night, on reading Robert Fisk's otherwise excellent article I found one line, "Putin would make a good Stalin".

The other day a friend said to me "the world's going really rotten". I thought he was going to talk about the United States, but no, he meant Russia. Russia was going dictatorial and Putin was "like Stalin".

How preposterous, I thought.

I spend very little time on the popular press and talkback radio, so I don't know what they talk about - but I can imagine.

One of the recent things has been a campaign against 'gay rights abuses' in Russia and a call to boycott Russia and the winter Olympics.

What the hell is this about!?  What we are talking about is a law (that probably accurately reflects public opinion) that targets homosexual propaganda" aimed at minors. 

Russia is not criminalising hemosexuality; yet there are plenty of nations that do. One of these would have to be Qatar which is about to host the World Cup.  

I have heard no one complain about Qatar or suggest that the World Cup be boycotted.

So what is it about Russia?

Why is Russia being singled out?

Putin as Stalin

Let's look at the 'Putin as Stalin' claims.

For Putin to qualify as a "Stalin" you would have to see a chilling affect, a fear of speaking one's opinion and a fear of contact  with foreigners.

Yet we are seeing nothing of the kind.

 There is, under these conditions, a wide gap between what people say in public and what people believe in their hearts and communicate with their closest family and friends (after they are sure that they are not  dealing with a 'stooge', KGB informant.

I have had some personal experience of Russia (or rather, the Soviet Union) after destalinisation and before the glasnost reforms of Gorbachev and the subsequent collapse, so I have had direct experience of what this means.

Either you have friends who are very careful and there is an unwritten rules about what can and can't be said, or there was a very heartfelt communication (usually assisted by liberal quantities of vodka.  These contacts were usually never repeated. In the cold light of day it would be realised that it was not worth the risk.

I have been back to Russia again once since then - in 2008 - to Putin's Russia.

In my talks with people there was no sense that people were reticent or nervous about speaking out.  Rather, it seemed to me that people are able to have a diversity of opinions, to express those opinions and, by and large, live their lives how they want to.

For a generation, my age and older, no doubt, old habits die hard, but there is now a new generation for whom the fears of the Soviet period are quite alien.

These young people are just as materialistic as young people elsewhere and subject to the same commericial popular culture as anywhere.

What is different, and  what has survived from the Soviet era is a healthy cynicism (or realism) about the nature of political power.  

The politicians and their agents (like the police), are not your friend.

As one acquaintance said to me once, the difference between living in socialist Russia and living in the West (as it was at the time) was "we knew we were being lied to".

Russia is neither the evil bear as portrayed (often by the liberal media), nor is it a fully-fledged democracy (whatever that is!).

For me this was expressed by Prof Stephen Cohen (who knows Russia well).  In talking about the last elections when Putin was voted back in as president and which the press in the West got so excited about because of voter fraud.

He said: no, the elections were not free-and-fair, but they were possibly the most free-and-fair in Russia's history.

To be perfectly fair, Russia is not a state like any other.

Russia's historical legacy

To understand it you have to understand its history which involves centuries of autocracy, a revolution in the midst of a devastating war with a brief 6-month experiment in democracy, followed by revolution, civil war and then the industrialisation of the country which was achieved by forced collectivisation, famine and destruction of the peasantry and Mass Terror.

After Stalin's death there was some normalisation, followed by years of stagnation and final collapse (given a good helping hand by the Untied States).

Then came the crazy Yeltsin years in which everything that moved was stolen and sold off, and the country was essentially run by the mafia and the oligarchs (who made their money, it has to be said, by stealing.

So, enter Vladimir Putin, an unknown ex - KGB colonel in 1999. After consolidating power,using methods most Russians will be familar with,  he has brought a stability and normality that is welcome to the great masses of Russians.

He has largely destroyed the power of the oligarchs and you no longer get the nightly mafia killings.

He still enjoys a level of support amongst large numbers of Russians who value stability and security over freedom and the chaos of the marketplace.

The opposition today consists of Moscow neo-liberals (supported and paid for by the CIA), or by communists.

To get a sense of things one only needs to look at the large anti-Putin demonstrations that went largely unmolested and compare this with the pepper sprays and beatings that were going on in the US during the Occupy movement around the same time. 

Russia's economy has largely recovered from collapse and many Russians in Moscow and St Petersburg are experiencing a sense of  well-being that is, by now alien to most in the United States and Europe.

It is the closest to being a normal civil society than it has been.

Dmitry Orlov gives a good account of how things are in Russia HERE

Most importantly Russia is providing a counterbalance to the United States. Thanks, once again, to the Russians, America is not able to exercise hegemony in the world and we have a voice that is demanding negotiation and adherence to international law.

RT, while being 'controlled by the Kremlin' (read state-owned, like the BBC, CBC or al-Jazeera) gives, in my opinion, one of the most balanced and truthful views of what is happening in the world and in the Untied States available on any conventional network.

Where else would we hear the alternative voices of American dissidents?

So, please, do not come and tell me that Russia is sinking into dictatorship and Putin is another Stalin!

Look at the dirt in your own backyard.

Finally for some youthful Slavic exhuberance, watch this!