dmitrybabich

The electoral campaign for the Duma elections scheduled for December 4, 2011, kicked off without much fanfare. Both president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin let it be understood that this time the campaign WON’T be different. Changes introduced into the electoral legislation since Medvedev’s election in 2008, despite some reassuring hints, made by him at Yaroslavl forum in 2009, were largely cosmetic. OK, parties which got 5-7 percent of the vote, will have the right to have ONE deputy in the Duma. OK, the registered losers (whose numbers continue to dwindle – Russia now has 7 registered political parties instead of 14 right before Medvedev’s election) will even have a chance to address the parliament – ONCE IN FIVE YEARS FOR 10 MINUTES, as it was the case with this Duma. Does it change much?
It is not hard to predict the ironically-indignant reaction of Western media to this election. Of course, taking part in an interactive TV show, which the election of the US president turned into in the last 30 years, makes just such a great difference. The renowned Russian-American TV anchor Vladimir Pozner, who has a long experience in both the Russian and the American television, once bluntly reacted to the admiration of his audience for interactive TV. “I feel myself a co-author of modern television!” one of such viewers exclaimed. “You don’t co-author anything. Don’t deceive yourself,” Pozner said grimly. Such a reaction from the usually soft-spoken Pozner, with his habitual priestly air of a sympathetic and understanding “holy father,” was somewhat sobering. Not only Russia, the whole world has lost the appetite for democracy.
Why did this happen? Russia’s presumed “backslide” on democracy is in fact not retrospective, but very modern. It is mostly connected with a very modern, initially American, preference for anything material over – I hope, you didn’t you yet forget the words? – spiritual and intellectual. Just talk to the sociologists and ask them the question – why do people vote for United Russia.
“The motives of most of the voters are purely pragmatic. Since the United Russia is seen by many as the only political force that can make things happen, a lot of people vote for it since they hope to get the road mended, the local hospital to get a facelift, etc,” explains Alexey Grazhdankin, deputy director of the sociological research think tank Levada Center. “It does not mean that they like the state’s policies. They just think that if they vote for, say, Just Russia nothing will happen – that’s all. And if they vote for the UR, something MAY happen.”
According to public opinion polls, conducted by the Levada Center, voting patterns in fact do not reflect the whole variety of ideological preferences of Russians. The reason for that is the fact that most of Russians have little respect for the opposition parties, both registered and unregistered.
“Most of the people have an impression that there are two real parties in the country – United Russia and the Communist party of Russian Federation. The other parties – social-democratic, nationalist, liberal – are often seen as “unreal” ones. In the opinion of the majority of the polled, these parties are manipulated by the Kremlin, the West, oligarchs – you name it,” Grazhdankin says.
Is it a sad situation? Both yes and no. On the one hand, for example, the current sad showing of the increasingly dissident Just Russia party (4 per cent) does not reflect the real attitude of Russians to moderately leftist opposition or to social democracy, for that matter. “In fact there may be a lot more Russians sharing social-democratic views, but they just don’t believe that Just Russia is a real party, that it is not one more decoy created by political spin doctors,” Grazhdankin says. On the other hand, mistrust towards small political parties deprives the political life in the country of any sort of alternative. Since the chances of a return of the communist party to power are actually nil, United Russia’s majority remains unchallenged.
The Western interpretations of this situation are, as usual, simplified and stuck in the cold war clichés even more than during the cold war itself. Never in the twentieth century were the Western appraisals of Russian society so negative as today. The simple fact that people DO NOT BELIEVE parties positioning themselves as social-democratic or liberal is seen in Washington and Brussels as an indication that these ideologies have no support in Russian society.
“If Parnas [Party of People’s Freedom, headed by former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov] ran today, even with access to public television and other perks of an independent party, it would not get more than 1 percent,” comments Alexander Oslon, the director of the Obshchestvennoye Mnenie (Public Opinion) research center. The problem is, people most often have reason to doubt the sincerity and the “reality” of opposition parties, Parnas included. I would add: I wouldn’t vote for this party myself. Not because I don’t believe in people’s freedom and other democratic values. I am just NOT SURE these values are represented by former government officials Kasyanov and Nemtsov, thanks to whom, among others, Russia wasted its chance to become a democratic country during the 1990s. I am left indifferent or sometimes even insulted by their promises of “liberal reforms” which in translation to basic Russian means “more money for the rich.”
The irony of this situation is that my (or anyone else’s) refusal to give trust to avowedly pro-Western political formations, which are almost officially on the payroll of various “endowments for democracy,” will be interpreted by Western press as “inner slavery” and “old mentality.”
When will the situation change? When people start valuing their sense of human dignity and other spiritual “perks” more than promises of an immediate construction of a new road or bridge (or church, for that matter). In small towns voting for a small party or abstaining from a vote is also a material risk – it is not hard for your superiors to figure out who “let them down” by voting in a wrong way. Later on this may reflect on the holiest of the holy – your salary or, worse, your job security. So, for democracy to prevail, the value of things spiritual must increase.
And where in the world do you see the spiritual values prevailing over material ones now? Advertising, which gives us every minute examples of people ready to subject themselves to any sort of humiliation (in fact, people embodying human manias for coffee, beer, chocolate, etc.) does not provide good role models for both young and old.
Last time when Russians preferred freedom to sausage inside the voting booths was in 1991. Will this situation repeat itself any time soon? Let us hope.

During the whole week, the Russian media has been talking about the 20^thanniversary of the failed coup of August 1991. It remains largely a mysterious event which was actually just a link in a chain of events some of which, while less spectacular, had an even greater importance. (The power of the Soviet Union gradually petered out back in 1989-1990, and the action of the GKChP members was the last desperate attempt to wring power from the hands of the leaders of the resurgent constituent republics of the failing USSR.) The referendum on the preservation of the Union, held on March 17, 1991, whoseresults GKChP cited to “legitimize” its action, was boycotted by 6 republics out of 15 and Kazakhstan reworded the question asked to the voters. So, only 8 out of fifteen republics planned to send their representatives to Moscow to the signing of the Union Treaty, which GKChP thwarted.

 

The battle for the USSR had been lost much earlier than in 1991, as new actors – the former Soviet republics – entered international scene beginning from 1990. This opened a huge window of opportunity for lots of positive developments. Improvement in Russia’s relations with the United States and Western Europe was just one of these opportunities. The original plan of the new Russian president Boris Yeltsin and his foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev was to make Russia an ally of the West. Why did this plan fail? 

 

In fact, the problem lay primarily in the lack of imagination on the Western side. “I remember the main question that I heard from my Western interlocutors in 1991 was very simple: What is it, a democratic Russia? How can anything like that be possible?” remembered late Yevgueny Saburov, deputy prime minister of the government of Russian Federation in autumn 1991. The Western leaders could not IMAGINE Russia in the same camp with them. The events that followed proved a very American truth – if you can’t imagine your dream coming true, it will never materialize.

 

The problem lay not in evil intentions of American and European leaders, but rather in their poor knowledge of post-Soviet realities and several misconceptions about Russia and its neighbors, which persist to this day. These misconceptions were most vividly revealed in the moments of crisis – such as the events of August 1991, October 1993, the Russo-Georgian conflict in August 2008. On the anniversary of the republics’ formal and final victory over the Soviet Union, I will talk about only one such misconception, which wrecked US-Russia cooperation in the post-Soviet space.  This misconception is the belief that Russia is the root of all authoritarian tendencies in the post-Soviet space with the ensuing conclusion that the more the new independent states distance themselves from Russia, the better their chances of becoming democratic will be.

 

The most disappointing trend is that with years this misconception grew more and more entrenched, further and further clouding the Western sense of post-Soviet realities. Let us take the example of  South Ossetia’s conflict with its sovereign – Georgia. The conflict broke out in the end of 1990, when the newly elected Georgian president-dictator, Zviad Gamsakhurdia abolished its autonomy and declared Georgian the only official language in the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Jack Matlock, the American ambassador in Moscow at the time, openly called Gamsakhurdia a dictator and American scholars and politicians condemned Gamsakhurdia’s actions. In 2008, they failed to do the same to Mikheil Saakashvili.

 

Matlock, who had left Moscow days before the failed coup of 1991, was much more realistic about Russia and the former Soviet Union than, say, the ideologically driven Madlene Albright or the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Mathew Bryza, Saakashvili’s ardent supporter. At least,I could hardly imagine Matlock in 1991 living in the imaginary world where Zviad Gamsakhurdia (already in power at the time) is a democrat and Azerbaijani “Islamic democrats” need to be supported in “standing up to Moscow.” I can hardly imagine Matlock now phantasizing about Saakashvili’s Georgia as “the beacon of democracy.” But Bryza, now American ambassador to Azerbaijan, LIVES in such an imagined world, much like his former boss, president George Bush. Lack of good imagination, already evident in 1991, is made worse by the excess of bad imagination. It is this dangerous gap between reality and Western ideological imagination that breeds conflicts.

 

Since we have entered the period of anniversaries (the anniversary of the Russo-Georgian war and the August coup will soon be followed by the anniversaries of the collapse of the USSR after the Belovezhye agreements), let us remember a less notorious event – the August crisis in South Ossetia in 2004, when Saakashvili first tested Tskhinvali’s preparedness to defend itself.

 

Erosi Kitsmarishvili, former Georgian ambassador to Russia in 2008 and now the leader of the opposition Georgian Party, testified about these events before a Georgian parliamentary commission in autumn 2008. Here is how a pro-Saakashvili site www.civil.ge describes his testimony about the crisis in August 2004 and the events that led to it (months after Saakashvili’s coming to power!) Sorry if this excerpt appears too long – every detail here provides fascinating reading despite some inaccuracies in English grammar and lexical mistakes of my Georgian colleagues:

 

“In February 2004 in a capacity of the Georgian President’s special envoy I was sent to Moscow to organize the first meeting between president Saakashvili and the then Russian president Vladimir Putin… During the meeting between Putin and Saakashvili in Moscow in February, 2004 – and I know it based on accounts by Saakashvili himself, as well as by Irakli Okruashvili [then General Prosecutor of Georgia] who also attended that meeting – Putin said that he was not ready for talks on the Abkhaz issues, but he was ready to launch talks over resolution of the South Ossetian problem… Irakli Okruashvili was especially active in this regard and he was engaged in direct talks with Eduard Kokoity, the South Ossetian leader; these talks were held in informal formats; they were even hunting together. Kitsmarishvili said he knew this because he participated in the discussions of the results of these activities; these discussions were taking place mainly in the so called presidential special residence in Shavnabada, outside Tbilisi. Okruashvili was saying at that time that he had reached an agreement with Kokoity and the latter was ready to launch talks with Tbilisi over power transition in Tskhinvali in exchange for several millions. But an incident took place between Okruashvili and Kokoity [Kitsmarishvili did not specify] and escalation started to raise in the region; a special operation was then carried out in South Ossetia, which was led by Okruashvili; on that day Okruashvili announced [on August 19, 2004] that [the Georgian troops] killed eight Cossacks fighting on the South Ossetian side. But eventually it turned out that only one person was killed.

During that meeting, President Saakashvili asked the question whether to launch a military assault on Tskhinvali or not?.. We were very close to taking a decision in favor of the operation, because Okruashvili, who was in favor of the military operation, was at that time very close associate to President Saakashvili…Prime minister Zurab Zhvania was against… After [Saakashvili’s] phone conversation with one of the foreign capitals – who warned against of any military operation – a decision was made against this military operation and the war was averted.”

 

So, in 2004 the war was averted THANKS to the fact that Western governments (obviously, Washington in the first place) preserved some sense of  reality in the issues of post-Soviet settlement. In 2008 that sense of reality shrank to such proportions that Condoleezza Rice gave Saakashvili what he perceived to be a green light for military operation in July 2008. Let us listen to Erosi Kitsmarishvili’s presentation again:

 

“On July 10 2008 President Saakashvili calls me – I want to stress that this phone call was not made on a secured line – and tells me: ‘Is that someone – [head of Russia’s presidential administration] Naryshkin – really coming to Tbilisi?’ I replied that yes he plans; Saakashvili then told me: ‘OK, let him come, but tell Naryshkin that we have just met with Condoleezza Rice [in Tbilisi on July 10] and we are in a good situation now.’ That is what he told me on a phone and it was not a secured line…

Of course this visit by Naryshkin was thwarted; of course this visit could not have any results, because there was no readiness from the Georgian side as well for having any results. On June 19 Iakobashvili said in my presence and also in presence of other Georgian participants of the meeting that was held in Moscow [referring to a meeting co-organized by Institute of Contemporary Development], including Zurab Abashidze, former Georgian ambassador to Russia and Davit Aprasidze [chairman of the Tbilisi-based think-tank Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development], that the Georgian side was capable of taking over Tskhinvali in three hours; when I told him that Russia would respond, Iakobashvili said: ‘Russians will not even move their fingers about it.’

 

The rest is known.

 

Russia seems to have caught a sort of contagion named anonymous exposures. During the whole past week the offices of the country’s biggest media outlets received detailed accounts of the “corrupt practices” of the director of Moscow Museum of Architecture, Irina Korobyina. The letter, signed by an obviously fictional Aphonasy B., tried to attract the attention of the media (and, in this way, obviously that of society and government) to numerous irregularities in the museum’s work, carrying copies of letters, statistics, amounts of misspent money etc. Similar stories happen every day in Russia, but this exposure was exceptionally well prepared. An insider’s hand could be guessed behind it.

 

Irina Korobyina said it was “below her dignity” to comment on anonymous accusations. In 1989-1993, when Russia had full democracy, she would be 100 percent right. In the beginning of his democratization campaign, perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev declared anonymous complaints no longer eligible for the authorities’ review and reaction, and this was a step in the right direction. However, there was an important replacement that Gorbachev found for the Stalinist practice of “purging” society’s evils by secret complaints to police, KGB and communist party bodies. It was the institution of “workers’ collectives,” which under perestroika even had the capacity to elect their plants’ directors and to distribute social benefits.

 

When one has an opportunity to speak up openly, there is indeed no need for anonymous letters to the authorities – at least, for an honest person. But what if there is no such opportunity? Or if speaking up leads not only to losing your job, but also to what the Germans call Berufsverbot – a prohibition to occupy any positions inside your profession, for example in museum sphere or in media? Here I have to break my old rule and quote the anonymous letter of Aphonasy, in its ideological part:

 

“Unlimited power, given to the heads of the state-financed organizations, was probably designed for the people with high moral qualities and professionals in their sphere… unlimited power, however, gives rise to arbitrariness and corruption.”

 

I couldn’t agree more. Modern communications, so much eulogized in the West, provide new tools for arbitrariness, since they help to locate and blacklist the open dissenters years after their actions or thousands of miles away from these actions’ initial locations. But the modern communications also provide great opportunities for anonymous dissemination of information, and the honest and not very honest whistle-blowers seize upon the opportunity. Instead of an ancient Agora which we had under Gorbachev, we have a bad spy novel played before our eyes on various levels. One can imagine what an atmosphere is now reigning in the Museum of Architecture.

 

Let me now disappoint the Western commentariat: this atmosphere did not come with Vladimir Putin. The situation changed for the worse already under Boris Yeltsin, who had little respect even for those “workers’ collectives,” which actually made his democratic rise to power in 1989-1991 possible. He ignored cries for help from the staffs of Izvestia daily and RTR television during the 1990s, when these then important media outlets were seized and changed beyond recognition by a coalition of oligarchs and government-appointed “effective managers.” These events, much more tragic than the heavily publicized “destruction” of NTV in 2001, did not attract any attention from the West, which did not see much use in non-oligarchic media as long as the “democratic Boris” was in power. NTV, ruled by the iron hand of the “liberal oligarch” Vladimir Gusinsky, which destroyed the very notion of workers’ collective inside his media empire, became a darling of the West precisely because it was an oligarchic media. No leftist deviations, the amounts of criticism or praise for the authorities on NTV were regulated by “effective managers” depending on the authorities’ concessions to the oligarch himself and his Western supporters.

 

By the end of the 1990s, Russia started to be ruled by “effective managers” from bottom to the top. The very notion of “workers’ collective” became anathema in Russia, it was ridiculed and declared outdated by both the liberal and conservative media.

 

The result is devastating. This time, authoritarianism comes to Russia not “from the top” – not from some utopian ideology or a group seizing power, as it was case in 1917. This time, it comes “bottom up.” A good example is the billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov who is running his liberal party the Right Cause as if it was a business project, easily trashing whole regional organizations without as much as asking a rank-and file member for his opinion. One can easily imagine what a president or prime minister he is going to be.

 

Internet is inundated by anonymous letters, which little by little squeeze out the denunciations made by “open” whistleblowers, such as a disgruntled Novorossyisk policeman Alexey Dymovsky, who denounced his superiors via an Internet video – only to be fired and persecuted.

 

The “effective managers” shrug their shoulders and pretend not to notice, much in the way of Irina Korobyina of the Architecture Museum. But the truth is that only a free worker (or, better, “workers’ collective”) can be innovative and productive. I hope Mikhail Prokhorov understands it by the following election. The next one he already lost.

 

 

 

The arrest of the former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in Kiev for contempt of court is sure to provoke a lot of talk both in the West and the East. The West will most likely restart the familiar tune about the “authoritarian trends” of the “pro-Russian” president Viktor Yanukovich. Russian press will continue to dwell upon the colorful personality of Yulia Tymoshenko, her Soviet youth inside the communist establishment and the currently hard human predicament. The remaining impartial Ukrainian media will entertain their readers with investigations on the subject of who was the person which made the Russian gas so costly for Ukraine.

 Reality, however, is more contradictory and more complicated than these three visions suggest. In order to understand the situation, one needs to shed some of the stereotypes – a thankless task in our age, when media became a subdivision of show business.

 First, there was a good reason to arrest Tymoshenko. Her conduct (refusal to stand up and face the judge during the trial, constant bickering with the judge and some of the witnesses) was indeed contemptuous. Besides, testimonies of the former head of Naftogaz of Ukraine Oleg Dubina, as well as of his deputy Igor Didenko, reveal that there was at least some truth in the accusations which made Tymoshenko responsible for the signing of the controversial contract with Russian Gazprom on January 19, 2009. “Directives of the Cabinet of Ministers” which she presented to the negotiators from Naftogaz on the day of the signing, proved to be of her own making. Just like in so many other cases, Tymoshenko exceeded her powers in the heat of the moment. The result was bad for Ukraine – it still has to pay for Russian gas a higher price than even some West European countries.

 Second, Tymoshenko was unmasked in court not only by witnesses traditionally considered to be Yankovich’s supporters, but also by some of the “orange” politicians from former president Yushchenko’s entourage. Former prime minister Yuri Yekhanurov said in court that the price negotiated by Tymoshenko was exceedingly high and was immediately verbally attacked by her for saying that. Tymoshenko’s conduct was changing depending on the attitude of the witnesses. When a testimony was good for her, she listened attentively and by her own hand gave the speaker a glass of water from her table. When the testimony was bad for her, she was indifference, contempt or fury itself.

 There was, however, one point where Tymoshenko was certainly right. When cornered by the testimonies of Dubina and Didenko who indeed exposed her real motive for signing the bad contract – the desire to defend the interests of the sponsors of her future presidential campaign of 2010 – Tymoshenko accused Yushchenko and his followers of doing the same. The testimonies of the former “gas czars” of Ukraine make it abundantly clear that Yushchenko’s 2009 claim that he “had nothing to do with these stinky gas interests” were not true. He was connected to the controversial company Rosukrenergo, the shadowy intermediary between Gazprom and Naftogaz.

 So, who is the bad pro-Russian traitor of Ukraine here, my dear Western journalists? Indeed, Tymoshenko’s total defeat and Yanukovich’s absolute victory would be bad for Russia, since it would put in question the acting contract, signed by Tymoshenko in 2009. So, Yanukovich is not the bad pro-Russian guy. Nor is Tymoshenko the squeaky clean hero of anti-Russian Maidan rallies of 2004. Nor is Yushchenko an honest Ukrainian patriot cornered by the evil populists and Moscow agents. Isn’t your world vision crumbling?

 The truth is that the old simplified ideological formulas just don’t work in modern Ukraine. The Soviet communist ideology is dead for good, but an average Russian still views Ukraine as a fraternal (not just friendly) nation and is surprised and saddened by an avalanche of anti-Russian statements and whole theories coming from Kiev and Lvov. This is not “imperialism,” it is a warm and natural human feeling, and its denunciations by Ukrainian nationalist media and Western journalists reflect THEIR OWN souls better than the soul of an average Russian.

 The old Western bet on Ukrainian nationalism also proves to be short-sighted, to say the least. Racist, vengeful and hopelessly provincial, this nationalism in the vast majority of cases has nothing in common with the civilized and generous nationalisms of Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Ghandi. We saw it during the ugly brawls of Ukrainian nationalists with World War II veterans in Lvov this May and on many other occasions. We see this nationalism’s ugly business side during the trial in Kiev.

 Isn’t it time for the West (by which I mean the politicians of the USA and the EU and their mainstream press) to open its eyes to this nationalism’s defaults and defects? And to stop blaming everything on Russian “provocations”? If the West doesn’t do it, Ukraine will continue to disappoint it. And we shall see more nationalist prime ministers who happened to be “not up to the task” and more “democratic experiments gone wrong.” The truth is that the real tasks of these prime ministers were never what the West imagined them to be and the experiments envisioned by Ukrainian nationalists are rarely democratic. 

 

 

Reading your friends’ columns is a potentially dangerous pastime. Especially if your friend is a foreign journalist. You always have to walk the tight rope balancing between a desire to expose his or her penchant for stereotypes about Russia and insincere compliments. The problem is made worse by a strange tendency among both foreign and Russian journalists in Moscow: the staunchest critics of Russian state among them tend to be hypersensitive to any criticism of their own writings. I knew one such journalist whose all stories started with a refrain “In another blow to Russia’s democracy.” He broke his tradition only once – in a published response to an angry blog about his writings. This time, the story started with a somewhat more promising “In another feat of Kremlin-inspired Nashi-like “patriotic” fury…”

So, it is with a rather grave feeling that I subject to my humble scrutiny a story by my friend and former Russia Profile colleague, Shaun Walker. My only hope is that my modest historical observations will be a useful footnote to one of his Moscow reports in The Independent. And if they are not or in a feat of Solzhenitsyn-like (but, by Jove, not Kremlin-inspired!) patriotic zeal I hurt any one of Shaun’s delicate feelings, let all of my so called doubts end up in the vortex of oblivion.  

Now to business. Dear Shaun, in your report from Moscow published in The Independent and headlined “Putin Kicks off Campaign to Lionize a Ruthless Predecessor,”  you inform us that “Putin has launched a program to lionise Pyotr Stolypin, a Tsarist-era Russian prime-minister who was known for his ruthless methods.” Well, Stolypin was known also for something else. And you, Shaun, grudgingly admit it a few lines further, saying that Stolypin “tried to implement a series of social reforms, but at the same time was a staunch political conservative and cracked down on the left-wing revolutionaries who wanted to bring down the Tsarist autocracy.”

The facts are true, but since certain important details are not included in this passage, it is only half true. First, Stolypin not only tried, but implemented several reforms which modernized Russia. Thanks to him, 3 million Russian farmers got plots of land in Siberia, thus moving Russian colonization of this territory much further than during the whole Soviet period, which barely managed to keep 10 million people (out of the Soviet Union’s 250 million) living in the vast territory bordering the Pacific ocean. Second, the poor left-wing revolutionaries of 1905-1907 wanted something more than to “bring down the Tsarist autocracy.” They wanted to kill and to rob – and they did it with much success until Stolypin became the minister of the interior in April 1906. Nowadays, historians agree that the revolution of 1905-1907 was an abortive attempt to seize power by the same forces that brought about the October revolution of 1917 – the biggest misfortune of the 20^th century, whatever the intentions of its various participants. It was thanks to Stolypin that the Russia and the Western world didn’t have to face someone like Lenin 10 years earlier than it was scheduled by fate – in 1907 instead of the actual 1917. Lenin knew it full well, and this is precisely the reason why Lenin called Stolypin “a master of hanging, an organizer of pogroms, the head of the counterrevolution” (quotes from Lenin’s article “Stolypin and Revolution,” 1911).

Surprisingly, the terms used by Shaun for his further description of Stolypin echo Lenin's ones: “His reputation was so fearsome that the hangman’s noose became known as Stolypin’s necktie due to the hundreds of opponents that were executed during his rule.”

Again, only a half-truth. One should add that there were thousands of innocent people killed by the revolutionaries (not just opponents!) in 1905-1907. There were also hundreds of state officials and policemen, killed simply because of their status. When Stolypin reported to the first Russian parliament (State Duma) that the 90 revolutionaries executed in 1906 were guilty of terrorist acts that left 288 state officials killed and 388 crippled, these brave parliamentarians whistled and yelled that there were “too few” officials killed. This scene is described in detail in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel The Red Wheel.

As for Stolypin himself, he survived 11 assassination attempts between 1905 and 1911. The twelveth one, made by an individual anarchist terrorist Bogrov, was spectacular and successful – the 49 years old prime-minister was shot dead in a theatre, under the eyes of the Tsar and a large audience. Unfortunately, Stolypin was not the only casualty of the "acts" of his "opponents." The assassination attempt in St. Petersburg, in 1906, was especially bloody: terrorists, exposed by the guards, in despair, exploded their bombs far from Stolypin, killing 24 people, including themselves. Two of Stolypin’s children, a boy and a girl, became disabled for life because of this explosion.

One should add here the murder of general Sakharov, killed by a woman terrorist at Stolypin’s home, which she visited with the intention of killing Stolypin himself.

As for Stolypin’s “fearsome” reputation, it was indeed fearsome only for the people who later plunged Russia into a real bloodbath. They had reasons to want to make his reputation fearsome – it was against them that Stolypin directed his famous phrase: “You need great upheavals – we need great Russia!” Sorry, if this phrase applies also to some modern foreign journalists nowadays. That just shows how little has changed in Russia-West relations during the last 100 years. On September 14 we shall be remembering the centenary of Stolypin’s assassination in Kiev city theatre (the true reason for Putin’s “lionising” activity). Prime-minister Putin will most likely will be taking part in the ceremonies. It won’t bother me. I am sorry if that bothers you, Shaun.

The recent scandal in Georgia – two months of preliminary detention for three media photographers, suspected of being Russian spies – will be a test for the West. Will it buy this story from Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in the same way it bought his other stories? Or will it stop for a moment and listen – not believe, but just listen! – to other voices?

I won’t even discuss the intricacies of the “spying journalists” saga. I know about them no more than any other reader of newspapers. If my colleagues in the United states and Europe are prepared to believe that Russian intelligence services paid for the photos made by Saakashvili’s personal photographer Irakly Gedenidze and that what he did was an act of espionage, I can’t bar them from believing it. If they believe Gedenidze’s “confession” in jail, where he says he realized his colleague was a Russian spy because this colleague (also in jail now) asked him to provide Saakashvili’s photographs for a Russian photo agency, so be it. If Western journalists support the arrest of Gedenidze’s wife Natia (what did SHE have to do with Saakashvili’s photos), so be it. My only reaction to that will be a somewhat reduced enthusiasm for THEIR stories about their solidarity with Dmitry Zavadsky, an obviously kidnapped photographer of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who is still missing without trace ten years after his disappearance. Or is one dictator better than the other one simply because the first aspires for membership in NATO and the EU, while the other one limits his ambitions to the Customs Union with Russia?

Just for context: according to the pro-Saakashvili online newspaper Georgia Online, all in all, more than 50 “Russian spies” were arrested and convicted in Georgia between the coming of Saakashvili to power in 2003 and 2011. The jail terms to which these Georgian citizens are sentenced, never fell below 14 years. The real figure of convicted “enemies of Georgia” is indeed a lot higher, since Saakashvili has an unprecedented ability to spawn coups and plots against his person. For example, the organizers of a “tank coup” at Mukhrovani military base near Tbilisi in May 2009 got the total of 225 years in jail. The officers’ guilt boiled down to some strange “declaration of disobedience” that Saakashvili accused them of making. Tanks never rolled out of the base, but Saakashvili’s judicial machine was set in motion within hours. In the end, the longest term handed by it was 29 years, and the shortest mere 19. Obviously, not too much for “a political beginner’s course,” as Saakashvili’s fellow Georgian Joseph Stalin used to say. At least, the Western press never questioned the trial’s fairness or the severity of the punishment – and why should it? Didn’t you know that Saakashvili worked as a lawyer in the United States and that he by all standards belongs to that cream of the crop of our planet – the young reformers’ club?! RIA Novosti’s correspondent was the only one to mention this 225 unneeded detail outside Georgia. The Western press was too busy bemoaning Khodorkovsky’s remaining 7 years. This great billionaire’s precious minutes are certainly more valuable than whole life spans of those nonentities in uniforms…

In the 1990s, Saakashvili’s political patron Eduard Shevardnadze survived two assassination attempts with little harm for himself, but long jail terms for opposition leaders (somehow, their connections to the assassins were investigated even before Shevardnadze had time to wipe blood from his face in front of television cameras, that were incidentally summoned to the spot of purported assassination attempt in 1995). Having come to power in 2003, apprentice Saakashvili quickly outdid the master, surviving twice more assassinations and coups in a twice shorter a period in power.

No wonder Saakashvili was called “a beacon of democracy” by George Bush Jr. and handed billions by the US and the EU in the framework of “reconstruction” from the 2008 war for South Ossetia, which he, of course, had no intention of starting. And the world press, headed by the British Economist, is trumpeting his economic success – finding some devoted listeners in Moscow. Echo Moskvy radio’s chief editor Alexei Venediktov, for example, said Russia should “steal” Georgia’s reforms. And some experts indeed see similarities between the new Russian police law and Saakashvili’s much adored “incorruptible” traffic inspectors.

So, why did Georgia succeed? This is the title of a small book by a Saakashvili enthusiast from Moscow, a young researcher from the Institute of Economic Analysis Larisa Burakova. Readings from her book are aired by Ekho Moskvy radio and gather audiences in Moscow’s most prestigious clubs. In her interviews, Larisa condescendingly tells us that her aim was not so much to see the roots of Georgia’s success, as to show us, the unenlightened ones, the reasons for Russia’s continued doom. She praises, for example, Saakashvili’s medical reform, under which Georgia’s state health care became an almost 100 percent private one. Investors were allowed to take possession of public clinics if they put some money into the state’s coffers as a guarantee.

The result? Burakova admires the shiny door knobs and clean sheets in Tbilisi’s private clinics, as well as ambulances for the poor. Maria Solovyova, a Russian who recently visited Tbilisi shows us the other side of the medal: “Despite Georgia’s having a relatively decent ambulance service, it is impossible to get medical treatment for free. If you are poor and have a heart attack, ambulance doctors will make you an injection, but they won’t take you to a hospital. Must have money for that.” Pills are sometimes sold by separate units – packages are too expensive for people to buy.

Sounds familiar? See the roots of Georgia’s success? Want to see more? Then you should have come on Sunday to a conference of young Russian leftists, organized by Boris Kagarlitsky’s Institute of Globalization and Social Movements.  The leader of Georgian Social-Democratic party, Gia Jorjoliani, had some special comments to make to Burakova’s book. I wish Saakashvili’s admirers read them.

First, on salaries. Indeed, salaries are high in Georgia, at least by post-Soviet standards – an average salary is about $350. But, according to Jorjoliani, only about 600 thousand people gets those salaries – in a country with a working age population of about 2.5 million. What do the others live from? From land – 90 percent of Georgia’s village households are operating according to the medieval self-sufficiency model. That means that people basically produce food for themselves, only a small share of the crop is sold at a city market or to one’s own fellow villagers. 40 percent of young Georgians are unemployed, young scientists prepare for emigration back at their first years in universities.

Second, on political change and democracy. According to Jorjoliani, Saakashvili’s love for multi-party democracy is reduced to parties searching for their place WITHIN the system. Parties seeking to CHANGE the system are denied registration and marginalized.

Third, on freedom. Georgia has the fifth biggest jail population in the world. Under Saakashvili, that population grew fourfold. This information was provided at a recent conference by Thomas de Waal – until recently not less an admirer of Saakashvili than Ms. Burakova. The reasons for the small country of 4 million being able to challenge the jail champions – US and Russia? All of the above. So, why did Georgia succeed?     

When president Obama recently made public his plans for a gradual withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, he might not know that he was quoting almost word for word Mikhail Gorbachev’s orders from the end of 1980s. Obama said bluntly: “America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.” This was exactly what Gorbachev told Yuly Vorontsov, formally the Soviet ambassador in Kabul in 1988-1989, but in fact Moscow’s special envoy with a delicate mission going far beyond Afghanistan;s borders. Vorontsov was ordered by Gorbachev to negotiate the withdrawal of Soviet troops with both the mujahideen and the initially pro-Soviet government of Mohammad Nadjibullah. The reason for the drop in Soviet enthusiasm for the Afghan “nation building” was the same as Obama’s – war losses and the desire to concentrate on home front, where a major political reform (perestroika) was getting out of control.

Remembering where Vorontsov and the Soviet generals were successful and where they failed makes sense, since so far American-led ISAF force in Afghanistan generally repeated the pattern of the Soviet stay in that country. Deceptively smooth initial invasion and an almost red carpet reception in Kabul; guerilla fighting with periodic losses of whole provinces to rebel forces; attempts to break resistance by massive use of firepower; search for political solution to the conflict via inner-Afghan reconciliation and massive training of local loyalists. The last stage is unfolding under our very eyes. President Obama is ordering the withdrawal of American forces at the same time justifying the speedier than scheduled pace of the troops’ withdrawal by a “receding tide of war.”

Gorbachev would have gladly picked that metaphor of a receding tide in 1989, if it had not been for the disillusioned Soviet public which showed less and less inclination to be fed metaphors instead of bread and butter.

THE SOVIET WITHDRAWAL: HAPPY FEBRUARY AND BITTER APRIL

In fact, the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 was so initially successful that its authors certainly deserved praising metaphors. Vorontsov had indeed met representatives of the 7 main mujahideen groups in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and secured their pledge not to attack the Soviet troops when they would be most vulnerable – on the way to the Soviet border. When the last remaining Soviet troops were leaving Afghanistan on February 15, the Soviet authorities made every effort to avoid giving this operation the look of a humiliating defeat. If you look at the now historic pictures of the last Soviet tanks crossing the bridge connecting Afghanistan with the then Soviet Uzbekistan, you will see festive faces, lots of red flags and obviously jubilant officers and soldiers. Symbolically, February 15 was celebrated in Nadjibullah’s Afghanistan as the national independence day. But it also became a holiday for the Soviet Afghan vets and for anti-Islamist Afghans (the Islamists later preferred to celebrate the anniversaries of the fall of Nadjibullah’s government on April 28, 1992). Indeed, what happened on February 15, 1989, made everyone happy.   

As late Yuly Vorontsov told me in an interview in 2002, the Soviet did not plan by their withdrawal to abandon Nadjibullah to his own devices. On Vorontsov’s insistence, Kabul was well stocked not only with arms and munitions, but also with food supplies which allowed the Afghan capital to hold out a long siege even if the mujahideen managed to cut the supply routes leading from Kabul to the Soviet border. Support dried up in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But even then Nadjibullah’s army proved to be strong enough to resist pressure of mujahideen forces for 3 more years, until 1992. And even then it was defeated primarily because of the betrayal of one of the key commanders – general Rashid Dostum. The ultimate failure of Nadjibullah’s regime in April 1992, however, serves as a bad historic omen for the planners of the American withdrawal. It shows how vulnerable an anti-Islamist government can become once the “big Satan” stops support. The Russian or American incarnation of this big Satan makes no difference for the Islamists. Believe it or not, for them Russia is a part of Western civilization.

So, Obama would probably make a right decision, if he learns from this ultimate failure of an initially successful Soviet withdrawal maneuver.

LESSONS OF WAR

During my recent visit with a group of Russian journalists to the NATO headquarters in Belgium, we heard a lot of regrets of the NATO officers about the West’s failure to learn from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. So, hopefully, Russian advice is not unwelcome any more. Then my advice would concern history – the sphere closest to my heart among Afghanistan’s topics.

Here is my advice to Europeans and Americans in Afghanistan: do some soul searching on what you perceived as “the forces of progress” in Afghanistan. It became so fashionable in the West to lambast the current president Hamid Karzai for being “weak on warlords” that some people obviously forgot that some Westerners were instrumental in putting these warlords next to Karzai. 

Take the example of the glorification of the former Tajik warlord Akhmad Shah Massoud, killed by fellow warlords on the eve of the American invasion in September 2001. Before his death Massoud had been the main beneficiary of American arms supplies in the 1980s under Reagan doctrine and the darling of anti-Russian European intellectuals, especially the French Bernard Henri Levy. The recent diplomatic recognition of Libyan opposition by France (which triggered the unending NATO intervention) was brokered by this same Levy, who called Sarkozy from Benghazy with the ominous words: “You must see these Libyan Massouds.”

And only several courageous Afghans, such as Malalai Joya, formerly the youngest female member of the Afghan parliament, threatened for her accusations against the warlords, don’t stop reminding Americans of some uneasy truths about Massoud. The problem is that Masood commanded the artillery which destroyed Kabul in 1992, during the internecine fighting between various groups of mujahideen. “In the 1990s, the main destruction was visited upon Afghanistan by the former anti-Soviet mujahideen fighting each other, not by Taliban,” remembers Iftikhar Murshed, the Pakistani ambassador in Afghanistan at the time. “Massoud, this supposedly pious Muslim, while being holed up in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, took money from heroin traffickers and illegally exported precious stones recovered from the mines in Panjshir,” Malalai Joya writes in her now famous book “Raising My Voice,” a tale of futile attempts to open the eyes of American officials in Afghanistan to ugly truths about their “allies” in that country.

DON’T LOVE THY WARLORD

Why do I consider this important? Because the habit of enamoring oneself with anti-Russian warlords with embarrassing consequences stayed the pattern of much of the Western policy and especially much of the Western media attitudes. Here is how the above-mentioned “philosophic diplomat” Bernard-Henri Levy describes the Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in the wake of his bombardment of Tskhinvali in Le Monde daily: “He is young. Very young. His youth reveals itself in the impatience of gestures, the fever in his eyes, brusque laughs and the habit to gulp down bottles of Red Bull as if it was Coca-Cola… He is a Francophone in love with France. Passionately interested in philosophy. Democratic. European. Liberal in both the American and European senses of this word. Of all the resistance fighters that I met in my life, of all these Massouds and Izetbegovices, he is the most visibly hostile to the universe of war, to its rites, its symbols, its culture. But he has to wage a war.”

 There is one refreshingly bitter sequence of names in this otherwise sickeningly sweet “confession d’amour.” Massoud and Izetbegovic. Afghanistan and Bosnia. Two tragedies, to which South Ossetia was recently added thanks to the people like Bernard Henri Levy. Read these sweet confessions and look at the consequences. May be, this is the main lesson the world can draw from the Afghan campaign.

 

 

Ira Strauss, one of the most knowledgeable Russia watchers, came out with his expectedly brilliant analysis on Putin, Medvedev and the Kremlin’s “signals” about Khodorkovsky’s release. I am proud that it was published on our Experts’ Panel http://russiaprofile.org/experts_panel/38338.html

What impressed me most was Ira’s coining a new term – the “Media West.” This is an interesting approach which actually helps us to clear a lot of points in the list of misunderstandings between the West and Russia. By the West I mean the United States and the EU – the only two Western bodies which wield real power and strive for some kind of a stand on relationship with Russia. Ira introduces this notion in a very interesting context. He tries to predict the consequences of an eventual release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky by president Medvedev, who, under existing laws, has the possibility to free Khodorkovsky by presidential pardon. Unlike the vast majority of Western “advisers” to Medvedev who simply say: “Just do it!” Ira Strauss is trying to calculate the political repercussions of such a move.

“Of course, the nationalists… would attack a release as a concession to the West. They would be helped in this by Western media or what we might call the “Media West,” which, being also the Audible West, tends to get mistaken in Russia for the West per se.”

Here follows the most crucial phrase, the one that explains it all: “The Media West has hyped the case in a way that not only exaggerates, but manages to answer Putin’s dishonesties with its own, e.g. pretending that Khodorkovsky was jailed for funding the democrats. His own spokesman says he did that with Putin’s support and that he was jailed for funding also the communists,” Ira writes.

At last, the word! To present Khodorkovsky’s during his heyday years between 1988 and 2003 as an idealist searching for ways to fund the country’s fledgling democrats is a simplification – to put it mildly. What would the Western press write today about a Russian businessman who became rich after a brief tenure as the country’s deputy energy minister; who financed the communist party together with the liberal Yabloko and God knows whom else in order to get a foothold in the Duma; who used offshore accounts to run his projects; who ruined a good newspaper, Moskovskie Novosti, in 2003-2004 by first buying its stock and then withholding financing and putting incompetent people, treating journalists as pawns, in charge?.. Don’t you think the Media West would heap anything but scorn on such a person? So it did – until a certain momnt! Read the Western press reports about Khodorkovsky before his arrest in 2003. A “robber baron,” an “opportunist of the worst kind,” a “man of dirty tricks” – these are just a few of the names that it had given to Khodorkovsky before the year 2003. What changed the tone of the Media West overnight?.. Yes, it is as simple as that, it was Khodorkovsky’s quarrel with Putin – the person whom Ira Strauss rightly calls Media West’s “enemy-designate.” “An enemy of my enemy is my hero” - this is the stance of the Media West.

This is what I particularly dislike in Media West – its ability to change attitudes overnight and to declare yesterday’s villains today’s heroes.  The other reason for my dislike of it is Media West’s black and white vision of the world, where bad “enemy-designates” face the idealized Western community of nations, with its quasi-religious adoration of journalists and human rights activists as the new kind of missionaries on the “enemy” territory.

REAL INTERESTS

Ira Strauss is right to note that the propaganda fervors of Media West very often diverge from the major real Western interests in Russia. And you know what? Putin has never been an enemy of these interests. Even the much bemoaned “backslide on democracy” in many ways helped Russia swallow the bitter pills of the West’s expansion which Russia would have literally “vomited out” under Yeltsin.

Take the much contested issue of NATO expansion. Can you imagine the hysteria NATO’s expansion to the Baltic states in 2004 would have caused under Yeltsin? The speeches in the truly independent Duma, the concerns of the military translating themselves into an active buildup of defense and attack capabilities with possibly risky consequences for everyone?  Under Putin this expansion was barely noticed. The economic cooperation between Russia and the West (primarily the EU) also grew – and the credit for it goes primarily to Putin and not to the West with its endless talk of “energy independence” from Russia, attempts to “unbundle” Russian companies and Western markets, open sabotaging of Russia’s WTO entry, etc.

The statistics published by the embassy of the European Commission in Russia on the eve of the Russia-EU summit in Nizhny Novgorod indicates that the Russia-EU trade almost reached the pre-crisis levels. The exports of the EU countries to Russia dropped from 105 billion euros in 2008 to 66 billion in 2009 and grew back to 87 billion in 2010. The same paradigm is visible with imports. The EU imports from Russia dropped from 178 billion in 2008 to 118 billion in 2009 and then grew back to 158 in 2010. Despite all the skepticism of critics, Putin’s economic policy proved to have legs.

OBSTACLES TO DEMOCRACY

I don’t want to idealize Putin, who indeed created in Russia a mechanism of “hands-on” rule, which both Medvedev and probably himself find unmanageable in the long run. More democracy would certainly be a better solution. But in my view there are two real obstacles on Russia’s way to democracy, and they have little to do with Putin’s authoritarianism or Medvedev’s opportunism.

One is the continued pressure from the Media West, with its newly found and basically racist division of countries into democratic ones and non-democratic ones, with Russia inevitably falling into the second category. The mentality of a besieged fortress is bad, but living in a besieged fortress and not having a siege mentality is entirely idiotic. All indicators of an ideological (and not only ideological) siege are there. (Let me cite just two. First, the continued military buildup on Russia’s Western border. Second, total oblivion in the West of the World War II alliance with Russia against Nazism – the lamentable failure of the EU to condemn Estonian Russophobes in the story with the Bronze Soldier and the more recent failure to condemn the violent action of the veteran bashing youths in Lvov, with modern Ukrainian nationalists acting as true successors to the Ukrainian butchers of Jews in the days of war.)

The second obstacle on Russia’ way to democracy lies in complete irresponsibility and cynicism of the part of the Russian opposition sponsored by the West and the obvious penchant to extremism of the remaining part of the Russian opposition. In private talks, even the persons standing next to Nemtsov and Kasyanov on pictures for Media Western publications don’t speak highly of these persons’ integrity, diligence and intentions. One of the most corrupt elites in human history – the Russian elite of the 1990s – accusing its successors of corruption… Which sight can be more pathetic?

So, while applauding Ira’s newly coined term of Media West, I don’t quite agree with his Putin – Hyde and Medvedev – Jekyll parallel. R.L.Stevenson’s doctor Jekyll was not surrounded by enemies and detractors. On the contrary, his friends indeed wanted to help him and not “to roll him back into Asia.” And, as Nabokov rightly noted, we never learn what were the “vices” that Hyde indulged in when he shed his Jekyll garb. How do we know the vice is indeed there? Please, don’t quote the Pravda on Potomac as a source.

The sensational report of the UN commission on drugs which called on the world’s powers to end the “useless” war on narcotics, legalizing cannabis and decriminalizing the use of heavier drugs, is an omen to humanity. In a few years we are going to live in a world without sin. Not because sins will no longer be committed, but because sins will not be recognized as sins. They will be declared diseases – and not even shameful ones. The Satan himself could not dream of a better present for himself from the international community.

But there is one more revealing streak in the declaration of the 19 honorable UN gentlemen, former presidents of Mexico, Columbia and Brazil among them. Latin America is not simply tired of the “war on drugs” forced on it by the US – it is bleeding every day because of that war. The comments to the UN report revealed shocking statistics. 28 thousand people were killed in anti-drug operations in Mexico alone since the current president Felipe Calderon took the reins of power in 2006. Statistics on Columbia are not so readily available, but one can make some negative conclusions from the amount of money pumped by the United States into its Plan Columbia (series of operations aimed at breaking the backbone of the drug trading leftist guerilla movements). $6 billion in the last three years alone. Usually, Americans require Columbians to deliver some action on the receiving side of the “money tube.”

Former Columbian president Cesar Gaviria, former Brazilian president Enrique Cardoso, who signed the UN commission’s report, know what they are writing about. It was under Gaviria’s tenure (in 1990-1994) that Plan Columbia started gaining momentum. The amount of violence was so huge that it put Columbia in the headlines of world media for the next decade and more.

Disappearances of persons, extrajudicial executions, intimidation and threats to relatives of suspects… Sounds familiar? What does it sound like? Yes, the good old Ramzan Kadyrov! I hope, few of my readers would argue that the Islamist terrorists in North Caucuses pose lesser danger to mankind than the drug barons of Columbia and Mexico. But the former presidents of Latin American countries who blessed similar actions on US demand are now sitting on UN commissions and teaching us to live and let live. And Ramzan Kadyrov is made into a global bogeyman by the combined efforts of the American and European media.

Why? What is the difference? Ah, yes, because the Mexicans Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon were democratically elected. Oh, that magic touch of an electoral bulletin falling into the magic vessel of a ballot box! Ramzan Kadyrov won two REGULAR Chechen elections and could win a dozen honest ones. Yes, Chechnya is far from being an epitome of democracy, but even the worst hypocrites in the US do not require, say, Columbia to fulfill the democratic standards of Florida and California. Because these areas have slightly different histories. I am far from being Ramzan Kadyrov’s fan, but I would only let a person who pacified a former war zone and survived a hundred assassination attempts at himself and his father – only him I would let cast the first stone at Ramzan Kadyrov.

Are there many such people in modern world? There are very few, and those left frequently become targets of Western criticism and thus get disqualified from casting any stones. The life story of the former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori is a good example. And the devastation to which Chechnya was subjected by the Dudayev – Maskhadov – Basayev team was much greater, than the consequences of the terrorist actions of Sendero Luminoso in Peru.

So, why is Kadyrov bad and Cesar Gaviria or Alvaro Uribe good? Because Kadyrov got support from Moscow, not from Washington – that is why.

But let us return to the honorable UN Commission. So, now these former advocates of violence (besides Gaviria, we also see the destroyer of Ygoslavia, former NATO General Secretary Javier Solana in that team) – now they suddenly opted for almost Tolstoyan non-violence, declaring the war on drugs “lost.” And now they suggest to transfer the drugs problem from the realm of security issues to the realm of public health. Using drugs is no longer a sin – it is just a disease.

Life in a world without sin will be unbearable for an honest person. But it will be full of comfort and excitement for sinners of all kinds, they will exercise their HUMAN RIGHTS to full capacity. If humanity regains its senses in a few decades, this period will be looked back upon as the golden age of the sinners’ rights. The Christian principle – love the sinner, but hate the sin – is replaced by a new one. Love the RIGHTS of the sinner and love the sin if it does not breach anyone’s rights. Mr. Kadyrov is hated by the West in accordance with the same wrong principle. It is not important that he stopped the war, saving tens of thousands of lives. What is important is that he breached the terrorists’ rights in the process. Mr. Satan could not wish for a better gift from the Western hemisphere of his realm!

As usual, the road to sin is short and well paved by financial and security considerations. Indeed, it is cheaper to treat the already active addicts than to put them in jail for possession of drugs. No complicated legislation is needed: you just stop penalizing possession of a small amount of drugs. Two lines in the law – and you have a new Holland, with drugs served in cafes and hallucinogenic mushrooms on sale at supermarkets. It is so cheap, pleasant and human rights friendly – not to be human. Because when you stop hating your brother’s sin, you are no longer human…

The death of Sergei Bagapsh, the 62 years old president of Abkhazia, made me take a different, somewhat detached view of the conflicts between Georgia and its former Abkhaz and Ossetian minorities. 

The reason is a sudden coming to his wake in Moscow of several representatives of the Georgian community in Russia. Despite the fact that Georgia does not recognize Abkhazia, considering this small country of 250 thousand people its renegade province, these people came to pay their last respects to a man, who suddenly died of an unsuccessful operation on his cancer. They saw Sergei Bagapsh for what he was in the first place – a tragic man, a victim of dramatic circumstances trying to preserve his human dignity in a world that refused to recognize his very existence - from a legal point of view. 

For the Georgian media and for most of the global media, Bagapsh was just a separatist fighting a democratic state of Georgia – and thus a no-person, a political no one. Hence the absence of condolences from Western states and from Georgia – with a notable exception of Eduard Shevardnadze. The former Georgian president, formally in charge of Georgia when Tbilisi made its unfortunate attempt to bring Abkhazia back to heel in August 1992, had enough courage to look beyond ethnic divisions and wounded pride (Abkhazians defeated Georgians in a brutal war for independence in 1992-1994). So, Shevardnadze and several Georgians at Bagapsh’s brief wake in Moscow before the transfer of his body for burial in Abkhazia, were the only citizens of Georgia to show their human side in this sad affair. 

There are several facts about Bagapsh’s life which are almost never mentioned in Western press, since they don’t match the generally negative image of “pro-Russian separatists” inside Georgia. For example, the fact that this “illegal president” worked in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (a part of the USSR) for most of his adult life. He graduated from a Tbilisi-based land improvement institute, was married to a Georgian woman since early age and was one of the top people in Georgian Komsomol. This organization, meant to produce cadres for the Communist party of the Soviet Union, was dull and grim in its idea, but it hatched some of the Soviet Union’s most powerful administrators and later some of the most talented post-Soviet businessmen. Bagapsh was one such administrator. After making a successful career of a Soviet administrator, he took part in the war of 1992-1994. At the time, minorities in "democratic" Georgia were declared "non-existent" by the country's leadership. Abkhazians were fighting for survival - sometimes brutally, with expulsions of Georgian population. In the West, Abkhazians' victory was frowned upon as "one more Russian success." In the year 2005 Bagapsh successfully ran as an opposition candidate at the presidential election (in Georgia, we are still waiting for an opposition candidate replacing the incumbent in a democratic election, and not a coup or a counter-coup).

All of Bagapsh's life was work and fighting. In 1994-1996 hunger had to be added to his trials. At the time, Russia, ceding to Georgian pressure and being afraid of “helpers” coming to Chechnya, sealed the border with Abkhazia.

I have to tell you a terrible thing about the citizens of the state of Abkhazia, recognized only by Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. They feel nostalgic for the Soviet past! Don’t raise hell, they are not communists. They just miss the time when their small piece of land was one of the most peacefully multiethnic territories in the world. Not only the Abkhaz, Georgians, Russians, but also Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Lithuanians and Estonians – just about every ethnic group from the territory of the former Soviet Union had a community there. And they got along remarkably well. Invisible tension was sometimes simmering between local Georgians and the ethnic Abkhaz – a mountainous people of the North Caucasian origin which was and stays a numeric minority in Abkhazia. Even in this modest quality the Abkhaz were pushed to the sidelines by Georgians, especially under Stalin (whose real Georgian name was Joseph Dzhugashvili) and his henchman Lavrenty (Lawrence) Beria, who made Abkhazia an administrative part of Soviet  Georgia. So, in the early 1990s the Abkhaz did not miss the opportunity to secede from Georgia – just like Georgians at the same epoch did not miss the opportunity to leave the Soviet Union.    

Why did Abkhazians and Georgians fail to come to terms with each other when the Soviet system started to crack in the late 1980s? And why did small cracks degenerate into a brutal war in the early 1990s? The Georgian press, as well as the bulk of the press of the United States and all European countries,  blame the Russians. I heard this tune continuously during my trips to Georgia in the early 1990s. It is stunning how the Western journalists just never try to question it. 

Putting the blame on Russians is easy. But even if there is some truth to the stories about the departing Russian units leaving their arms to Abkhazians and Georgians alike, the brutality of the fighting between Georgians and Abkhazians in the early 1990s and the continued belligerent language on both sides speak against this affair being of Russia’s making alone. 

The severity of Georgian official comments on the deaths of Abkhazian leaders is especially revealing. There was not a word of regret about the passing away neither of Bagapsh, nor of the first Abkhazian president Vladislav Ardzinba, who also died in Moscow a year earlier.  

“No one has the right to conduct on Georgian territory separatist elections. Such elections are not legitimate from the point of view of international law” – such was the only comment to the death of a political foe from Nino Kalandadze, deputy foreign minister of Georgia. 

Not a very Christian attitude to a dead person – don’t you think?.. Luckily, Bagapsh won’t be disturbed by these comments from Tbilisi. He will be buried in his native Abkhazian village – his sweet home which he won with a weapon in hand.