Minding Russia

Radio Liberty and Voice of America Should Broadcast Here at Home to Emigres and Americans

My great idea today after pondering the problems of the Board of International Broadcasting AND the problem of the occasional jihadists that turn up among the former-Soviet emigre population was that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America and other broadcasters for overseas audiences should all broadcast at home.

This would help engage new immigrants in particular but also help compete against the active propagandists at RT, Al Jazeera and other foreign stations that are increasingly capturing both emigre and American audiences with their "line".

Back in the Cold War, a law was passed called the Smith-Mundt Act which barred these radios from broadcasting at home, because it was worried about "blowback" -- the effect of broadcasts made for war and intelligence purposes overseas, and how they would sound at home or affect audiences here.

This is now described in a skewed manner, it seems to me, by the CJR, which claims the motivation was fear that Communists could infiltrate at home and that would affect the broadcasts needed to fight the Commies abroad. That doesn't make sense to me.

The fear was always about "blowback" -- you know, don't piss in the wind sort of thing.

This was kind of ridiculous even in the era before the Internet, simply because the content of the programs got around -- in samizdat, that was then reprinted abroad, in various articles, in the radiios' publications issued overseas but available in libraries, and so on. The imperative of the anti-blowback laws seem to me to have been motivated more about how certain things sounded when said abroad, and how they might sound at home when in warfare. This disconnect may have subsided after WWII and the Vietname War.

Even so, I remember when I helped Ludmila Alexeyeva, the chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, who was its Representative in Exile in the 1970s and 1980s, to compile her critical study of bias and problems at RFE/RL and VOA, in order to analyze some of the scripts she knew existed and knew were problematic (extremist, nationalist, antisemitic, etc.), she had to arrange for staff to mail them to people in Canada, and then have Canadians mail them back to us in the States. I am not kidding. This is what we did to technically comply with that law.

This became even more ridiculous to enforce in the Internet era. I worked for two years on two publications on the Internet at RFE/RL that were visible to audiences in the US, not only overseas. There were programs broadcast in Russian that were put up on the Internet that I or any other writer could quote from -- any of these could be read or used or reprinted here. It really became a fiction to police "blowback" and few bothered.

So I came up with my idea -- there really is a problem with anti-Americanism among both students and professors visiting the US that is only exacerbated on some of their lefty college campuses; there really is a problem with alienation and even hostility among emigre populations -- and the cases of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Uzbeks Mukhtorov and Kabilov really bring this home. Obviously the overwhelming majority of students and emigres aren't hostile to their temporary or permanent host country.

But a lot are, and I find a fair number of students and young adults with this mindset because they've grown up in Eurasian societies with zombifying televisions -- and they don't read samizdat, or listen to foreign broadcasts, or read even opposition Live Journals.

Today, I'll get into a Facebook fight with an Uzbek studying at the taxpayer's expense here in the US about her admiration for the propagandistc video "Collateral Murder" -- she simply won't grasp that her emotions have been manipulated and the context stripped away. Or I'll get into a Twitter fight with some Kazakh loyalist or Kyrgyz nationalist who discounts the human rights violations in their country and doesn't accept somebody else on Twitter as an authority. But what if VOA and RFE/RL could be heard, or better yet, not merely accessed, but which targeted people specifically in the emigration?

I first began to see this problem about 20 years ago when I asked all the members of a delegation led by Grigory Yavlinsky for the "500 Days" economic program sponsored by Yeltsin if they had read either Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn.

Most of these reformers in their 20s and 30s had not.

All of Brighton Beach watches Russian-language TV that they get as cable or as a radio combined with American stations that translates some of the programming for them. A lot of the people simply watch Kremlin TV. Or if they watch some emigre-based station, it's one that focuses more on entertainment than on politics.

I always think when I ride in a cab in Washington or New York how it's funny that cab drivers who just got off the plane from Uzbekistan or Belarus are listening to NPR or some extremist right- or left-wing radio talk show host they barely understand, or sometimes one in their own language that isn't anything remotely like the VOA or RFE/RL content.

So why not make it available? So that taxi drivers -- truck drivers and pizza deliverers! -- have it to listen to.

This wouldn't cost a lot more money, but it would mean some re-purposing. I just think that visitors and new arrivals need more *debate* about their world views, plus more *information*. Propaganda doesn't work, people tune it out. But people will watch talk shows with point/counterpoint and they'll listen to news with weather on the ones.

I think this is necessary to counter what I see as the top ten or dozen propaganda planks that Russian intelligence services flak very hard around the world (as do Chinese and Iranian), which include the following false or misleading concepts:

1. America has killed the most people in the world.

2. America sponsored bin Ladn

3. America killed most of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. America arms Al Qaeda in Syria.

5. America is racist and has numerous hate attacks against Muslims.

6. Ameria invades countries for their oil.

7. America is backward and stupid as its falling test scores illustrate.

8. America is closing its doors to visitors and emigres after 9/11 and even more after the Boston bombing.

9. Bush is responsible for 9/11

10. America is run by Jews who take orders from Israel.

Well, you get the idea. Every one of these notions is factually untrue on the face of it, or misleading in that it doesn't take into context things like the great innovation of America with companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook, even if some groups of young people's scores are still poor in math.

In any event, the radios need to get *debate* on these topics circulating more with more information to make better informed citizens of their country and the world.

And it turns out that my great idea is one that also, of all people, President Obama has had, because he has now worked to undo the ban on internal broadcasting by the radios. What do you know!

Now, some are very worried that his motivation for doing that is nefarious, as he wants to propagandize Americans at home the way ostensibly they are propagandized abroad.

I think the original fears that prompted the law were misplaced even then, because only certain broadcasts were propagandistic in nature; the radios have in fact strived to be professional and unbiased in newscasting, particularly since their reform and removal from the CIA back in the 1970s.

Whatever Obama's misuses are, I think the transparency we would get from the broadcasting and their presence in the media scene to compete with RT, which has far too much mindshare, and Al Jazeera, is really vital.

Both RT and Al Jazeera are virulently anti-American and tendentious, and while they don't broadcast all of the 10 falsehoods I mentioned as typical, they don't counter them and their comments and opinion pieces are filled with this dreck.

 

Where's Pavel Durov? And I Guess His Manifesto Isn't Working Out

What's going on with Pavel Durov, the head of Vkontakte, the "Russian Facebook"?

He hasn't tweeted since April 24th, where he said this:

Pavel Durov ‏@durov 24 Apr

Рекомендую новоиспеченному акционеру VK воздержаться от комментариев по поводу активности СМИ вокруг ВКонтакте http://vk.cc/1sv06x

"I recommend the newly-baked sharehold of VK to refrain from commentary aregarding media activity around VKontakte."

Then there's the question in the tweet above from Denis Ryabokonov -- "Pavel, have those numerous attempts gotten to you yet of "shareholders" to pressure you in order to turn #VK into OK and grab more money?"

And what he said was in answer to this (see above):

"There is, a little."

And that's worrisome. I asked three different Russians how they understood this somewhat cryptic phrase, as I wanted to test with a native speaker what I thought it meant -- which was 'Yes, there's a little pressure" not "Yes, there's a little money."

And since then...nothing.

Kevin Rothrock has a very long and complex post about Durov and his problems, but for some reason doesn't mention his cryptic last tweets. This paragraph seems the most relevant and likely:

Just days later, on April 22, Kononov himself weighed in on Durov’s current crisis, offering five potential conclusions [ru] to the story. In the most probable scenario (which Kononov amusingly assigns a “95% likelihood”), Vkontakte’s majority shareholders sue Durov over his Digital Fortress project (which turns out to be a sleek instant messenger app), and Durov must sell off his remaining Vkontakte shares at a depreciated price to pay the legal damages.

Because at the end of the day, whether in America or Russia, these platforms are businesses. They aren't Your Personal Army, as the Anonymous kids say. They aren't for revolutions. They're for a few people to make money from, a lot of people to upload cats on, and a relatively few to express dissent on. So far, the KGB's successors and their people infiltrated or turned in these social media platforms are content to let people chatter because then it makes less work for them trying to bug their phones or follow them to see what they are doing.

Social media -- why, it's like what the Belarusian trade union leader Ivashkevich explained to me back in the 1990s: "Glasnost is a cow bell. They tie around our nexts so they can find us." Right!

Even so, there are probably limits, whether on the free speech side or the business side, and Durov is probably finding those out now. I do wonder how long you can realistically give the finger to Usmanov, one of the most powerful men in Eurasia who owns a chunk of VK and guess what, of Facebook, too.

While he didn't hesitate to get the Belarusian opposition groups deleted as soon as they lost to Lukashenka -- he's not going to go to bat for the junior Slav brothers -- he did fight off other FSB attempts to close groups. But for how long? None of this lasts for ever in Russia -- and again, it's a business. It has to be run as a business, with profits, to pay for servers and employees, and that means it has to get along with the powers-that-be.

Rothrock argues with Miriam Elder, who explains these sorts of Internet problems with the obvious point that Putin wants to rein in the Internet by saying but oh, approved oligarchs already owned part of this for two years, and so what:

Nevertheless, almost half [ru] of Vkontakte has belonged to Mail.ru Group for nearly two years already, and Usmanov’s ownership has been above 30% [ru] since 2010. In all those years, Durov’s reign over the company, however colorful and rebellious, has depended entirely on the support of Russia’s richest oligarch [ru]. That being the case, what does the Kremlin gain from engineering “black PR” attacks on Durov? How does defaming Vkontakte for FSB collaboration “tighten the Kremlin’s grip on the Internet”?

Um, because it does? Because maybe he does? Because this has to end without him losing at least some of his business, so he'll compromise? It's a business, not a social project.

And if Durov survives, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a liberal and force for good. He will likely compromise. And while Rothrock doesn't comment, his views are that amalgam of great Russian politics and populism and various far-out ideas that people like his have that are the usual mixture of libertarianism and corporativism. As I've noted in the past, he blocked me on Facebook when I challenged his "vision" for society because it sounded unattractive.

Unfortunately, because this libertarian Internet freedom fighter and web mogul has me blocked, I couldn't find his manifesto on Facebook right away, but then I found one of his adoring fans who summarizes it and reprints it:

The manifesto lays out a rationally sound proposal that takes a giant leap away from some of today's universally accepted but agreebly outdated social and economic models. The manifesto is a list of the top 10 things that Russia must do to become a major entrepreneurial nation and strengthen the economy. They are progressive libertarian views emphasizing human freedom, personal growth, open boarders, and prioritizing innovation in the small business segment. Durov's manifesto is the quintessence of the world view of modern IT geeks, the 'information people' who embrace openness, community, and boarder-less collaborations.

Border-less. Also, there were going to be popular votes for judges.

Here's the full manifesto, and you'll see what I mean -- and of course, he isn't bothering with this now, having more pressing problems:

One
Rid society of the burden of obsolete laws, licenses and restrictions that spawn corruption. The world is evolving too fast for regulators to adequately respond to its changes in the 21st century. The best legislative initiative is absence.  

Two
Create a fully open, transparent and distributed jury system. All judges and the servants of the law on the ground should be elected directly by the public, rather than officially appointed. In the 21st century, the choice of arbitrators is more important than the election of deputies.  

Three
Dramatically increase taxes on all industries associated with the production of raw materials. The country needs to get rid of the Dutch disease, which pulls the country into the abyss for decades. The excess material in the 21st century is a satellite of stagnation.  

Four
Eliminate taxes and restrictions on everything connected with the informational sphere. Russia must become the first major global information center that will attract the most progressive and talented people in the world. This is a century of free information and we must embrace it.  

Five
Exempt the population from taxes, which ultimately always pays the consumer. We have a duty not only to raise the level of affluence, but also to reduce the conditions that undermine the chances of domestic business to succeed in global competition in a global market.  

Six
Provide the regions of Russia with fully autonomous organizations, with small uninhabited areas which will be leased for 100 years to create a system of mini-states. The output of hundreds of projects are effective and free to taxpayers. The 21st century is a century of decentralization and networking.  

Seven
Allow the free circulation of gold and any electronic currency 100% backed by gold. Russia has become fertile ground for free and reliable means of payment. The national currency is anachronistic; it is a tool of the plunder for the population, and inflation. The 21st century is a century of free non-state currency.  

Eight
A de-standardized education system. Today’s schools were created in the industrial age and resemble factories, which are imparted to the conveyor belt mentality. Specialists of the 21st century can be prepared only in non-standard educational institutions. The 21st century is a century of unique schools and unique specialists.  

Nine
Allow taxpayers the right to choose direct cost projects, which are funded by their taxes. Projects can be at any level – from a playground in the neighborhood to a program of colonization of Mars. A party may advise the taxpayer, but not decide for him. The 21st century is a century free of exploitative tax.  

Ten
End the registration, a passport as a separate entity, visas, conscription, and other vestiges of feudalism. Attempts to restrict the right of movement and recruit young people to Russian Armed Forces is a slavery that leads to an outflow of the best minds to other countries. The 21st century is a century without feudal boundaries.

Silicon Valley tycoons would love to have a corporativist vision like this in which they get exemption from taxes just for being fabulous, don't pay into the social coffers, and then destroy society's institutions and replace them with "projects".

That's what I mean by corporativism -- blocs or groupings in society based on a theme or a profession or a role that are autonomous but...limited because they are broken up and stuck in their theme or class. That's how fascism is able to take advantage of society.

Then, that Big List of Things to Do, as the Lindens touchingly called it, and tax-payers, instead of paying for things they don't care about like welfare for single moms or roads they don't happen to use would just pick the projects they like. So you'd just have a nation of Kickstarters, you know? Doing their thing. Lovely!

A year ago, I predicted that he would have problems unless he caved to Putin.

He swore that he would keep his service independent and resist pressure, but I didn't believe him. The only way you could do something like that is to really declare war -- and have the means to overthrow the government's siloviki (power ministers). And he doesn't. The Internet geniuses of Russia have always been about caving in the name of having their own power base and have always sneered at free speech.

Durov didn't hesitate for a moment to block me because I asked him why he allowed the Belarus opposition group to be deleted (Sannikov's support group of 8000 people) and then criticized that manifesto.

Some of these tweets below are creepy -- there's one that says he came online and spoke of Zuckerberg's marriage (which occurred after Facebook IPO'd), and says "It's time for Durov to marry," but then he says ominously, "It would be easier to kill him."

 

1. Sergey Predko ‏@SergeyPredko 9 May

   Сегодня 9 мая 23.59. Павел @durov заходил 2 мая в 1:58. То есть неделю не был ВК. Волнуюсь.

   Retweeted by CatherineFitzpatrick

   Expand
2. 

   Conspiracy Theories Are Flying About The Investigation Of 'Russia's...

   By Adam Taylor @mradamtaylor

   VK founder falls foul of government.

   View on web
   4:30 PM - 9 May 13 · Details Flag media Flagged (learn more)
   " data-mentions="businessinsider" data-retweeter="catfitz">
   JJ Duling Int. ‏@JJDulingInt 9 May

   Conspiracy Theories Are Flying About The Investigation Of 'Russia's Mark Zuckerberg' http://www.businessinsider.com/pavel-durov-in-big-trouble-2013-5 … via @businessinsider

   Retweeted by CatherineFitzpatrick

   View summary
3. Антон Понкрашёв ‏@ponkrashev 11 May

   Вскоре он [@durov] наткнулся в твиттере на запись «#Цукерберг вступил в брак, теперь пора Дурова женить» и ответил: «Проще убить».

   Retweeted by CatherineFitzpatrick

   Expand
4. #880088 ‏@ozalup 14 May

   WHERE IN THE WORLD IS PAVEL DUROV?

   Retweeted by CatherineFitzpatrick

   Expand
5. Anton ‏@bogatiy9 14 May

   Павел Дуров – история успеха: Павел Дуров, небезызвестный создатель социальной сети «ВКонтакте» – эт... http://bit.ly/19qvNMj #rufollow

   Retweeted by CatherineFitzpatrick

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The Boat Note

So, right on cue, just when it is needed most, arrives the Boat Note -- it turns out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has scrawled a goodbye note on the boat where he was hiding, wounded and bleeding, before the police got him. Maybe he thought that his favourite Russian rap tune, Budu Pogybat' Molodym [I Will Die Young] was going to come true.

The note fits perfectly into the lone-wolf/self-radicalization/America's war chickens coming home to roost concept (which I will abbreciate as the Rooster Theory) -- because he just happens to have written exactly the same thing as what he replied to the FBI when he was interrogated in his hospital bed. That he and his brother got the idea for their deadly act from the Internet, from reading Inspire magazine, and "How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom", that jihadist cult classic. The answer was so pat, and so fit the "progressive" theory of the case, that you had to wonder if they asked leading questions.

The note says he and his brother were mad at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and considered the deaths of people in terrorist acts the "collateral damage" that had to be inflicted on America, for having "collateral damage" in their wars.

Never mind that this sort of thinking has never been manifested by Chechen resistance leaders, terrorists in the North Caucasus, emigres from Chechnya and the North Caucasus abroad on their various websites and social media.

Never mind that the overwhelming number of civilians killed in the Afghan war have been killed by the Taliban and its allies.

It fits the narrative the Obama Administration has about terrorism -- which is that it is homegrown  (even when it is abroad), not a war, just a tale of unhappy childhoods that can be fixed by Development.

Of course, if the narrative is true, you wonder why these jihadists don't cut us some slack, since our Nobel Peace Prize winner is actually winding down America's wars -- he withdrew troops from Iraq and will be out of Afghanistan next year. Right?

I guess it's like those Palestinian boys who throw rocks at the IDF to provoke them. Or maybe it's that the jihadists feel that America is down and out, weakened after these expensive wars -- expensive in people's lives above all and in treasure and credibility -- and they feel they can lash out when the US is admitting defeat. But then, wait, that would mean the homegrown Rooster Concept wouldn't be so true as another notion, which is that Islamism is a war, or that Islam is a cover for a thuggish movement of jihadists trying to come to power opportunistically all over the world who will stop at nothing.

In any event, I can understand how people get attached to conspiracy theories. Once you've rejected a narrative you feel is contrived, every new fact that comes in feels wrong and doesn't fit, and the mind casts for another answer.

But...what can you do if you don't believe the constructed narrative? If the feel of the construct is just too artificial?

I feel as if the Administration needs like air the Rooster Theory because they need to keep justifying the finishing of the wars -- and most importantly, not starting new ones. And so they need this note to exist. But wait, am I saying they made it up? Well, no, if it exists -- and there are two law-enforcement agents leaking the fact to CBS that it exists -- it's a question of how relevant it is.

Likely the prosecution will make it highly relevant, because the beauty part is that it is outside the Miranda zone. It's not something Dzhokhar said when they were questioning him under the public safety law and hadn't Mirandaized him -- something that a lawyer or judge might throw out. This is something he wrote, and they found, like a blog -- and it was in a place where he was hiding from the law, this man's boat, so there isn't any 4th amendment notions here. It couldn't be better, eh? No fourth amendment, no privacy issues, no Miranda, no nothing.

Of course, gosh...you know, I always make sure I take a pen with me whenever my brother and I decide we have to just set off two bombs and kill 3 people and maim more than 200 people, then wander around for 3 days, smoking pot, and then decide to kill a policemen and set off some more bombs and steal a car...and then if my brother was shot and I decide to run over him, then, filled with bullet holes myself and bleeding dangerously, I decide to make sure I have that pen with me, in case I need to write a note. Yep, I always do that.

Or hey, if I don't do that, I always make sure I can be sure to find a pen in the bottom of a...boat...with a tarp over it in somebody's driveway. Because you never know, I might have to write a Rooster Theory note before I die...

Okay then. There was a pen, er, I accept that, like I accept the wigs and the compass on the guy in Moscow. There probably were wigs and a compass. Or something. Money and a map. Whatever. Spy stuff. And so there was probably a pen in the boat or maybe in a backback or something.

So here we all are, the perfect note, under the perfect conditions, you couldn't have scripted it better, the case is closed, nothing to see here now.

The only other explanation is that if Dzhokhar, even at his tender age, was brainwashed, or conditioned in a cult, or pledged in a secret society or cell, that he would give this cover story, as he fulfilled the script of someone else, some other agency or group, possibly for money, possibly just to help out his bro.

In any event, I just hope there are people somewhere still keeping an open mind, even though they are surrounded by people who want to shut theirs, and somebody asks, "Where did you get the pen?"

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Grand Designs: Chechen bombers are the natural by-product of Western strategy in the Caucasus.

Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Left Message In Boat Before His Capture, Called Victims 'Collateral Damage'

Boston suspect 'left note about collateral damage'

CBS News: Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Left Note In Watertown Boat

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scribbled note inside boat where he was hiding, sources say

RadioBDC: How note can be used in case

Wait, What Else is the FSB "Helping" the FBI With Besides the Boston Bombing?!

So here's this really odd-duck American spy case in Moscow, the fly in the ointment of new, improved cooperation between the US and Russia on delicate matters. We don't even protest but just shrug and focus on our ever-so-helpful *cough* talks with Russia on Syria.

Then there's this really weird scripted set-piece from RT. The actors even move to their marks -- you can almost see the little pieces of tape on the floor. Their faces are carefully scrambled but maybe some blogger will recognize the voices.

But get this -- the Boston bombing case isn't the only case our two countries are cooperating on.

There's a strange fumble at the 3:16 mark, where the faceless FSB officer says:

The FSB is actively assisting the investigation of the explosions in Boston and also on other...on other information which carries a threat to the security of the United States of America.

Now stop right there. He says, in Russian, "po drugim" in the dative masculine case as if he were going to say "po drugim delam"  -- "other cases" or "other matters". I'm going to bet "cases".

What other cases? What other matters?!

He stops himself there and then immediately changes to the femine and says "po drugoi informatsii" as if he caught himself in time speaking of something he shouldn't have been speaking of (my theory).

But either way, what information? What else is a threat to the United States that the Russians are "helping" us with and possibly only giving us partial information as they did on the Tsarnaevs?

This really bears more scrutiny.

The voice goes on with grave indignation about how awful young Fogle has messed things up for this nice...condiminium recently established. He describes the recent visit by the FBI director, Mueller, and speaks of an agreement for "active cooperation of resistance to this evil of Islamic extremism and so on".

Then he mentions that "Obama and Putin also made an agreement to cooperate on intelligence."

So two agreements, one verbally on the phone between Obama and Putin, and possibly one formal agreement made while Mueller visited Moscow, perhaps a signed MOU or something.

But just "when relations are strengthening," scolds the voice, "an American diplomat commits a state crime against the RF" despite this "new level of understanding". How could he?!

It's funny, Anna Chapman and the other Russian spies in a nest uncovered by the FBI were expelled in  February 2011.   July 2010.

I wonder why, if the FSB knew about Fogle starting in January 2011, they didn't expel him in a tit-for-tat sooner. In fact, there weren't any Americans expelled from Russia back then in 2010-2012, were there? (Update: I can't find any!)

Who was that other spy who was expelled in January 2013?

 

State Wimps Out on that Weird American Spy Case in Moscow

 

Ryan Fogle's alleged taped phone conversation aired on RT -- but it sounds like him reading a text in stilted Russian.

OK, we've all seen how weird this story is about the arrested American spy in Moscow.

There's the way his target for recruitment in fact judo-flipped him and pinned him down on the pavement and called for back-ups to get him arrested. There's the fact that he just happened to follow the North Caucasus, you know, the place where the Tsarnaev brothers are from, but no, the FSB "is not inclined to connect these two events," says The New Times, quoting an intelligence source, because they were on to him all along. Not only did they have his phone tapped, they brought along a camera crew to film the arrest (I wonder -- was it NTV-Surkovskaya Propaganda who then handed it to others? Or RT straight up?)

Then there's his odd collection of props and gadgets -- the wigs, the compass and a Russian-made map of Moscow --  not one of those good German maps, odd, because everyone knows the KGB deliberately distorted all the maps of Moscow to foil spies (oh, maybe that's what happened...don't they teach people these things any more?!)

As Mark Galeotti put it:

Who knows whether the hapless Mr. Fogle is indeed a spy or not; it’s by no means impossible. But the various props with which he was allegedly caught are much less credible. A wig? Maybe; sometimes you may need to change your appearance to throw off surveillance. An atlas of Moscow? Perhaps; it’s a big city and using your cellphone’s map and GPS apps invites electronic location-finding. A letter offering a million bucks? That’s what really looks suspicious to me; if he genuinely was carrying something like this around, then he must be one of the dumber spies around, and on the whole it’s the sharp, up-and-comers who get posted to Moscow.

The New York Times had a great time writing this one up. And even Max Fisher -- that same Max Fisher who was so snide about the Chinese dissident -- found it all just over the top.

I mean, the whole thing really seems to be -- as the Russian proverb has it about such cases -- sewn with white thread. You know, obvious spy catch is obvious. The officials with their masked faces recite set pieces on the RT videos as if they are columnists for Izvestiya (did Markin help them prepare their texts?)

Looking at that young suspected spy -- and maybe he is a spy if he has a title like "third secretary" -- he just seems like your neighbour on the way to the gym. He's so young! Has he ever read Smiley's People? How about Solzhenitsyn? How well are these people trained these days? Does he know Russian better than he sounds on the tape?

But here's an even more weird thing -- just like our ambassador and the State Department and the White House didn't protest (much, or at all) about the USAID expulsion or the searching of thousands of NGOs accused of being "foreign spies" if they got anything related to a US grant -- the State Department today just wasn't upset and soldiered on.

Here's what Patrick Ventrell had to say - just amazing wimpiness all the way around, and not even any archness in response to the Russian officials' characterization of this incident as "crude" -- when the crudeness has got to be in the way the Russians set this up and publicized it, you know?

12:50 p.m. EDT

QUESTION: Do you have any more information on the – this case of the U.S. spy in Russia? Is he still in the country? Has he left? Have you gotten more information from your bilateral meetings and your discussions with the Russians?

MR. VENTRELL: Well, Brad, just to reiterate what I said yesterday, that we can confirm that an American Embassy official in Moscow was briefly detained and was released and that we’ve seen the Russian Foreign Ministry announcements. We can also confirm that Ambassador McFaul met with Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov today. We’re not going to comment on the private, diplomatic conversation, but that meeting did occur.

QUESTION: Okay. But you now acknowledge the public announcement that he was declared persona non grata, correct?

MR. VENTRELL: Right.

QUESTION: Has he left this country, this unnamed U.S. official?

MR. VENTRELL: I don’t have any information for you on that one way or another, but we do comply with our Vienna Convention obligations and requirements when countries ask us to send someone home.

QUESTION: And then what about this other case now that the Russians are talking about and showing footage of regarding a January case? Are you aware of this? Did you comply with any requests at the time?

MR. VENTRELL: We’ve seen those media reports, but I have nothing for you on a January case at all.

QUESTION: Can you say whether you are planning to make any similar kind of tit-for-tat move?

MR. VENTRELL: We talked a little bit about the potential for reciprocity. I don’t have anything for you on that today.

QUESTION: At what level will that be decided? Would it be in this building or would it be over at the White House?

MR. VENTRELL: Normally issues of reciprocity are decided here at the State Department, but that’s just generally speaking. On this specific case, I don’t have anything for you.

QUESTION: In this case, would reciprocity go to a third secretary or would you have to find someone who you also accuse of similar acts of espionage? Or is --

MR. VENTRELL: Again, each instance of issues like this are taken on a case-by-case status.

Jill.

QUESTION: I know this building doesn’t like to talk about it, but the Russians are not holding back. And presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said that it’s extremely surprising that this happened at a time – he called it crude, clumsy attempts at recruitment taking place at a time that both the presidents have been talking about improving relations. Do you share that concern, that this comes up right at a moment that the two presidents and the Secretary and Lavrov have been talking about improved relations?

MR. VENTRELL: Well, Jill, as I said yesterday, I wouldn’t read too much into one incident one way or another. In terms of our bilateral relationship with Russia, our active diplomacy continues. And you know that the Secretary finished his bilat last night. He again was with his Russian counterpart in Sweden earlier today and you saw the press remarks that they made there, that this case didn’t come up in those meetings. They were specifically discussing Syria, and our intensive diplomacy on that – in that regard continues.

QUESTION: So what are we to read into the fact that they didn’t discuss it? What does that mean? Why didn’t they?

MR. VENTRELL: Again, I wouldn’t – as I said, I wouldn’t read into one case too much one way or another. We continue our broad diplomacy with Russia.

QUESTION: So it wasn’t that important?

MR. VENTRELL: Again, I think I’ve characterized it how we want to characterize it.

QUESTION: Russian National Security Chief Nikolai Patrushev is apparently going to visit the U.S. next week. Do you know who he might meet with and what could be discussed, what’s on the agenda for the talks?

MR. VENTRELL: I don’t have anything in – any information in terms of meetings in this building. I’d have to look into it and get back to you, Jo.

QUESTION: So the U.S. Ambassador to Russia was summoned on Wednesday. Any details about that?

MR. VENTRELL: I talked about that a little bit earlier, that I confirmed that he was – did have a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov but that I wasn’t going to get into the details of their diplomatic conversation.

QUESTION: They spoke about Syria only, I guess?

MR. VENTRELL: Again, I’m not going to get into the details of this, but we know from the public comments what the meeting was about.

Say, I wonder if they will do one of those reciprical spy expulsions, which has always been the norm with Russian even after the Cold War.

Funny that you can learn more about this from the Russian press than the State Department -- I guess the posture of the Obama Administration is to pretend that Russia is being "helpful" on Syria now (!) -- which isn't really true at all -- and therefore nothing, nothing -- not even this bizarrely crude staged propaganda fest by the Kremlin -- is going to get in its way.

It is so bizarre that one Twitter conspiracy-watcher wondered if the Americans set it up deliberately to advertise across the globe that they will pay $1 million for any information about the Boston bombing...or something.

Then there's Julia Ioffe's coverage. As I said, everybody finds it weird, but in an article where it first looks like she finds it strange, too, Julia methodically -- dutifully! -- goes about proving that every single total odd-ball thing is true because...some ex-spook says its so:

o Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer in Europe and the Middle East, agrees, regarding the wigs and compass, "“Yeah, the Agency has a tendency to do that." Regarding the gmail -- that should have been discredited with the Petraeus affair, "“That’s not surprising," he contributes.

o Peter Earnest, former CIA operations officer and executive director of the Spy Museum in Washington, says, ""I know everyone gets a kick out of the wigs and thinks that went out with the Cold War, but it didn't!"  He also said re: the compass ""fancy" hi-tech stuff is great, but is easily hacked into." That's why Osama bin Ladn used a medieval-style courier!

o Former Moscow CIA station chief Burt Gerber could tell us about the "pop-up kit" that pops up a fake passenger in a car after a spy slips out of it unnoticed (supposedly).

o Oh, and that spy rock that sounded so funny? The Brits confirmed it was real. AND an American specialist had this to say: "“The rock was a real improvement over what we had before,” says Robert Jervis, an expert in the field and a professor at Columbia.

And so on. In other words, it's not weird, it's all true because ex-spies and specialists are telling us.

AND, guess what! It's all the fault of the siloviki, who are now getting the upperhand (after those mean men got rid of that innovative Surkov):

Most likely, Fogle was caught red-handed—or blonde-wigged—and the increasingly powerful, increasingly visible hardline faction of the Russian government was just flexing its muscles, and showing that, though it’s cooperating with the Americans, it’s still stronger and wilier than the Yanks. One Russia analyst jokingly speculated that Fogle was a double agent working for the FSB, sent in to make the CIA look bad. “I’m only half-joking,” he added. 

Right.

"We Live Without Feeling the Country Beneath Our Feet"

Opposition member Boris Nemtsov issuing demands on behalf of the crowd at Bolotnaya, 6 May 2013. Video by Oleg Kozyrev

When I first listened to Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny's speech on Bolotnaya Square this week, when he said, speaking from an impromptu stage, that he realized "our voices can't be heard beyond 30 meters," I thought he was referencing Mandelstam's famous poem about the intelligentsia oppressed under Stalin:

We live without feeling the country beneath our feet,
our words are inaudible from ten steps away.

But upon a second listen, I concluded that he was merely speaking of the practical matter of speaking from a speaker's platform rigged on a truck.

Well, at least their voices are heard at 30 meters now -- which is progresss over the 10 paces they were heard in the Stalin era! 

"Foreign Agents" or the People's Judean Front?

The stage was hastily put together in place of a constructed platform after a worker tragically died putting it up before the big rally on May 6. The organizers of the demonstration decided to go ahead with the meeting -- a decision probably some of their detractors found added to their list of reasons to dislike them.

It's typical of the cynicism and sheer spleen about the Russian opposition that so saturate the mindshare in foreign policy publications and Twitter debates that in a piece appallingly titled "Foreigners in Their Own Land" (just when there is a crackdown on "foreign agents"), Julia Ioffe, now back from her long sojourn in Russia, decided that the moment of silence was for the defeated opposition movement itself, ostensibly crushed in the year since the last big Bolotnaya Square march of May 2012.

She writes:

This was reflected in the tired, usual-suspects line-up of speakers, and their staid, regurgitated speechifying. It was made all the more pathetic by the weak sound system: A mishap earlier in the day had killed a volunteer setting up the equipment, and speeches had to be delivered from the side of a truck rigged up as a stage. Sometimes, it reverted into farce, as when opposition journalist Oleg Kashin went dada and sang, a capella, a song called “It’s All Going According to Plan.” Some invoked the Stalinist purges of 1937—a common, if slightly inappropriate trope of late. Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister under Yeltsin and an opposition veteran, declared, “No more resolutions! This time, we have demands!” It was a cringeworthy, unwittingly Monty Python-esque moment, and it reflected the impotence of the large, angry crowd. It was the age-old Russian dilemma, incarnate: What is to be done?

Yet if you go and listen to the speeches of Navalny, Akunin and Gudkov and read some of the independent press, you realize that what Ioffe is writing is a terrible, jaundiced distortion. Far from being impotent and angry, or tired of the usual speakers, the crowd seems engaged and supportive, actually listening to every paragraph of the speeches and calling out answers. Kashin's tone-deaf song doesn't matter, it wasn't the most important. References to 1937 aren't so outlandish when they come in a call to *prevent* such periods of lawleness. Nemtsov's demands in fact only made sense and far from being "Monty Python" are more like Jon Stewart in his serious moments. They included:

o solidarity with the prisoners of last year's demonstration; release of all political prisoners and an end to such political cases

o condemnation of Putin's usurpation and falsification of elections and amendment of the Constitution so that no leader can serve more than two terms; new parliamentary and presidential elections

o increase of public oversight over government spending and investigation of the billions spent on the Olympics in Sochi, and bringing to account those guilty of pocketing funds from the construction

o an end to TV censorship

Now honestly, what the hell is wrong with that? Shouldn't good liberals and "progressives" and sturdy upholders of the right concerned about "reality" be conceding at least this much, like the Russian opposition, braver than they, do?

Would the reason you couldn't sign a petition with these same very, very basic human rights demands be due to Oleg singing off key? Why would anybody be pretending Russians are still asking "what is to be done" when they've called out the obvious, glaring debacle of the Olympics spending? There is an obvious thing to be done, and that's not send the president of the United States or even the Secretary of State to such a Monty Python show.

Endless Mockery

And although Ioffe was wrong about the moment of silence -- it was indeed for the worker who died -- she nonetheless had great sport with the vicious anti-opposition campaigner Kevin Rothrock for endless rounds on Twitter. Rothrock's incessant and intricate demolition of the opposition is a thing to behold on Twitter -- there's the cherry-picking nationalist trash-talk so that the entire opposition can be tarred with this brush and then the thoughtful thumb-sucking to ponder just how much daylight there might be between Bastrykin and Putin and thus suggest that he's not uncritical of Putin.

Rothrocks steady stream of mockery about the opposition begins to beg the question -- how can such bile be sustained for so long? How can anyone care that much to keep up the hate and amplify it daily in various contrived works on Global Voices? Then there's the conundrum: if these people are so insignifcant and pathetic and such losers, why do they deserve months of conniving demolition?

Perhaps Rothrock is simply too close to his subject -- he has obsessively, aggressively followed every twist and turn of the complicated Russian opposition politics on his own blog and Global Voices for years and at this point probably knows more about these beleaguered figures than they know about themselves. It's for this reason that people who should know better like Miriam Elder seem so chummy with him on Twitter.

But it must chafe his butt terribly that despite all this beautiful wickedness when it comes to artfully denouncing the opponents of the Kremlin every day, in one fell swoop, Bill Keller can come along and pour water on it with one column in the New York Times and get zillions more eyeballs and impressions... Keller in fact writes the sort of piece an old Moscow hand would be expected to publish with a certain admiration of Navalny for doing what he does: "A Blogger on Trial" is exactly the issue, because even Rothrock surely can't believe that the flimsy story about the lumber purchase in Kirov has any merit.

Yes, Navalny's a Nationalist

Yeah, we get it, we're supposed to curl our lip and turn up our noses at Navalny. Indeed, even before I pronounced the current opposition movement doomed long before anyone else did, I was paying attention to Novodvorskaya who was explaining vigorously in her Youtubes that there was an odour about Navalny...he was allied with right-wingers who marched with Nashisty...he was associated with people who thought the Caucasus shouldn't be "fed"...he was demogogic...etc. I took her at her word. Keller thinks it's shrewd to use "mild nationalism" to persuade ordinary Russians that he's not one of those foreign-funded misfits, but I think in the long run in this multi-national country it will fail.

I didn't see anything particularly attractive about Navalny but recognized that Russians did -- he is a lawyer, which counts less as a credential in their society but still counts as something; he was willing to stand up to corruption, which is something ordinary Russians care about more than the exoticisms of international standards for free speech or against torture; and he seemed to be a good organizer, getting people together enough to ensure that large numbers turned out on the square.

Long ago I said to myself -- hey, it's their country, they are going to do what they want and I'm not required here except to show solidarity as appropriate to what is appropriate. I think the frenzy that people like Rothrock get into over the Russian opposition is in part driven by the notion that if only they can incite enough indignation and even hatred, they will actually shame or compel people into changing -- either the opposition themselves, or their default supporters. They likely truly believe that Putin needs protection.

So hey, I get it about the opposition.  They're no angels; they have some iffy pasts; they are not effective; they fight among themselves; blah blah blah. But you know something? So do people in the State Department, about what to do about Russia -- which strategy to use. And so do people in the European Union -- there are huge splits over the issue of whether you coddle or curb Russia, or whether you foster capitalism or socialism, and how, and the role of religion or the secular state. So it's not as if the rest of the world is in fact any better about the central problem at hand here, the figure of Putin, which is a construct of "the Kremlin," as in "that fortified place".

Out of Place Morally

My own conviction, however, is that the animosity and malice toward the Russian opposition -- not even always part and parcel of an uncritical or even supportive attitude toward Putin -- is really out of place. Out of place morally, and even just out of place in terms of covering real news.

That's why I am glad to be part of the project The Interpreter, which is bringing translations and commentary from the independent media in Russia, and analysis of the pro-government media, which really are voices missing in the entire debate about Russia. When I think of how casually and easily Ambassador Michael McFaul was able to misrepresent what the opposition, in the person of Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and others, were really saying about the Magnitsky List (they supported it and he claimed they didn't), back when he was craftily looking for ways to sink it by referencing activists in Russia -- I really began to see the importance of trying to help get these voices heard more. This is all the more true given the serious filtration and skewing of the news that happens now at Global Voices, The New Republic, Forbes, Center for American Progress, the National Interest and scores of other homes for either "progressives" or conservatives with a pro-Putin tilt. It's really shocking to me to see how this empire has been built up in the last twenty years when you think of how such pro-Kremlin sentiment in the 1980s was unthinkable except for all but a small group of sectarians and hard leftists and a handful of right-wing Real-Politickers. There used to be this basic consensus in the American intelligentsia, such as it is:  whatever your differences with people like Solzhenitsyn, and they may be significant, you don't break faith with people being sent to the GULAG. You just don't.

Yet now, the sustained sneer that Rothrock and others on his wavelength can bring to Twitter, or the casual condemnation that Ioffe can bring to the brave marchers on Bolotnaya Square -- which she has left behind -- get all the mindshare. It's really time to challenge that.

Basic Truths Spoken By Opposition

Once you get past the fake claims that somehow Navalny hasn't cared about the political prisoners because he didn't mention them (others did, no need to repeat, everybody gets it); or that Akunin was "boring" (he wasn't, he made an eloquent plea to his fellow intellectuals in the arts who had not taken positions of conscience yet -- which really ought to include some of the journalists I'm referencing here); or Nemtsov as reading not slogans but demands (you know, like not having political show trials) -- well you realize that in fact the opposition, whatever its problems, is really saying the basic stuff that needs to be said to this regime.

Gudkov may come across as a Partorg when he talks about "ideological warfare" and chasing people down even in their smoking rooms to give them the gospel of Bolotnaya -- yeah, I get it.

But he also simply speaks the basic truths that need to be said -- for example, that there isn't an opposition in the parliament because no independent political parties have been allowed to get on the ballot. The manipulations around the party registrations -- the sort of exhaustive trees Rothrock would cover without seeing the essential politically-motivated forest -- are the kind that wouldn't happen in a normal country.  He noted the absence of an independent judiciary -- and who could argue with that when we see just how trumped up all these cases are, and with the same template? He talked about the rampant corruption -- and while people may be tired of hearing about the Ozero Dacha Cooperative, it does kind of say it all.

To be sure, he and others had unrealistic expectations of "throwing the bums out" and the only practical proposal of running in municipal elections -- which will be just as unfair and rigged as any in Russia. It would be great if the Russian opposition didn't imagine itself coming to power as a means of inspiration, but could expect a role of being the permanent alternative needed in a civil society.

But as I said, it's their country and they are going to do it the way they like.

Russia Will Be Free

What I really don't see as justified at all is the snottiness and snark directed at these people from the Putin-friendly blogosphere of Rothrock at Global Voices, Adomanis at Forbes, Ioffee, and others like Cory Welt endlessly finding excuses to support the "stability" of the Kremlin sort. People are going to jail unfairly and it's wrong; and of course there are far larger human rights dramas than the Moscow intellectuals and their demonstrations, when you think that 427 people disappeared in the North Caucasus by official admission along, and that last year, Russian forces killed or captured more than 900 reported extremist insurgents in Dagestan.

If for the bloggers like Rothrock the cheers of "Russia will be free" are seeming shopworn and threadbare after a year of dwindling numbers and Putin only reinforcing his position, the they'd have to concede that their sneers are staring to get as shopworn when in fact people are going to jail for no reason. There's such a thing as not kicking a man when he's down, but there's also such a thing as admitting that getting even 10,000 people on the square (it doesn't seem there were any 50,000) is actually quite an accomplishment, given that only three years ago, Lyudmila Alexeyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and her strange bed-fellow in insisting on Constitutional principles, Edvard Limonov, were only getting at most 100 in Moscow parks at their pickets.

In discussing Surkov's department, Rothrock has cited some speculation that he could start a second party outside United Russia and Just Russia that might actually amount to something. I don't see what the power base could possibly be or the source of financing unless they can get some of these big oligarchs whose funds are now all going to soccer clubs and charity to cook up an NGO that looks benign enough to pass scrutiny from vigilant Justice Minister bureaucrats -- let along a party.

Even so, some Russian political technologists have learned from Obama and friends that you can spend 20 years on "community organizating" from a socialist platform and work on single issues like "education" or "the environment" and arrive at the White House in the end.  So under the banner of "science" or "innovation" there may be some who have the foresight to start planning for the post-Putin world even now. One chit they should call in are the Silicon Valley companies like Intel or IBM that have invested in Skolkovo -- the people that McFaul once led to Russia on a tour called #rustechdel on Twitter that also featured investor/movie star Ashton Kutcher. Putin probably doesn't want to lose those people's money, so maybe there's a little leverage there, but likely not if the people involved aren't patient and savvy enough.

One thing that grated the opposition-haters -- and which I, too, also found grating even though I am church-going and celebrated Easter -- was the "Christ is Risen" sloganeering from the platform. At one level, it might be normal enough to expect people to issue this greeting on Easter Monday. But at another level, given that the crowds had to be very diverse, with Jews, Muslims, and non-believers as much as Russian Orthodox, it being Moscow, it seemed, well, odd. I dare say most of those people on the platform hadn't been to an actual church service the day before, anyway.

So as I said, I get it. Even so, in our time, nobody's voice should be stuck at 10 paces or even 30 meters when there are in fact many of them and the things they are talking about are indisputable -- the basic elements of civil society such as independent elections and civilian oversight of government spending.

The Russian intelligentsia in Moscow has always lived without feeling the rest of the country under its feet and if its own voice isn't heard at 10 or even 30 paces, it has never ceased to imagine the people "out there" and that their job as intellectuals is to "go out to the people" and hunt them down in every smoking room and communal kitchen to reach with a scripted message, instead of listening to what they say and incorporating in a national movement.

But all the changes, good or bad, in Russia have come from leaders from the provinces and it will be no different next time.

Why Did Surkov Quit? Some Russian Experts Speculate

Surkov at the LSE. Photo from government.ru

The Kremlin's gray cardinal Vladislav Surkov has been forced to resign from his position in the Russian government.

It's helpful to read about Surkov's rich past and remember (as Georgy Saratov was best at doing) that Skolkovo wasn't really about innovation. And yes, it's true Surkov, that dark prince, is half-Chechen, and even, it appears, a distant relative to Dzhokhar Dudayev, the leader of Ichkeria (independent Chechnya) for a time before he was assassinated. (Yes, it appears the suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Maraton bombing was named for Dudayev).

Surkov already seemed to be deposed when Putin completed his switcheroo again with Medvedev and took over the presidency again -- it seemed even back then that the more harsh Volodin was going to be responsible for "ideological construction".

But that didn't mean the "gray cardinal" was left without a cathedral, as he was still in charge of a bunch of portfolios where the state feels it must control everything -- religion, youth organizations,  education, science and "innovation" at Skolkovo. Surkov was credited with devising the "Nashi" youth movement (dubbed "Nashisty" for their fascistic behaviour).

As a Chechen -- a Chechen turned toward loyalty and not disloyalty regarding the Russian empire unlike other Chechens -- Surkov was said to be involved in relations with Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin's appointed leader of the Chechen Republic, notorious for his oppression.

But I don't think it's fair to say that Surkov was "in charge of" the North Caucasus writ large, as there were other officials, including the regional governors and federal viceroys put on that job. Someone more expert in this subject than me can comment.

Even so, the fact that a jihadist with permanent residence in America and family in the police forces *and* in the extremist movements could come and roam around both Dagestan *and* Chechnya for six months and come and go through Moscow -- and then go and set down backpacks with pressure cookers filled with bombs and nails in Boston -- well, perhaps someone thought Surkov could have done more to prevent that. Perhaps not in the direct sense -- that was the job of the FSB and the MVD and other "organs" -- but in the larger ideological sense, it was part of the overall failure to prevent jihad sentiments in all these young people who should have been happily bought off by sports or educated to be more loyal in the schools or happy with this "sovereign democracy" constructed for them. That is, it could have been said he didn't help.

So perhaps it was one among a number of reasons Surkov had to go. Just saying.

The immediate reason is said to be his defiant remarks at the London School of Economics. I have to wonder about that, as something like a forced dismissal would have to be in the works for awhile. There is this claim that a British official who went abroad and complained about Scotland Yard would be instantly dismissed, but it doesn't work that way.

Meanwhile, Ilya Ponomarev, the Duma deputy and Just Russia leader who is being investigated for $750,000 in lecture and consulting fees he received from Skolkovo -- Surkov's project --believes there won't be a criminal case opened in the affair (he's been told this by...Zhirinovsky, and I'm sure that means you can take it to the bank *cough*).

You know, I'm not sure that getting Skolkovo to oversee is any prize. Maybe it's like Jack Kemp getting housing and having to go to Buffalo. Skolkovo has been something of a bust, despite millions pumped into it by overeager Americans and Europeans. Recently I asked some of the young Russian developers who showed up at TechCrunch Disrupt, some involved in some promising projects, what they thought of Skolkovo. They simply stared in disbelief. It had nothing to do with any live, growing tip of start-up ville in Russia. There was no money there for people who were independent of the state. Perhaps there were sometimes some receptions there where perhaps somebody might network, but it wasn't really about start-ups, but about big state projects.

But let's say that it was something potentially promising for future post-government connections for Surkov -- his cocky claims that Vekselberg wouldn't have any rationale for corruption, or that the amount given to Ponomarev was not significant in fact betray a frog-in-boiling-water quality that I also see in Ponomarev -- who seems unaware of how it sounds to be grilled for six hours about a mere consulting fee.

Both are right that these fees are nothing in the scheme of things -- Silicon Valley "thought influencers" and "thought leaders" like Tim O'Reilly get $50,000 or more per lecture. It's nothing to get $10,000 for a talk which in fact isn't just a lecture, but is a kind of structured influence peddling -- a granting of connections, a giving of advice about how to do business. There's nothing wrong with this; it's what the market will bear.

I am puzzled why the Russian probe about this is about what seem like large fees and not about the conflict of interest of both being the head of a parliamentary committee to oversee Skolkovo and innovation and getting a fee from it -- but that's just it, Russians see jobs like those (ever since the tsar's days) about gaining and selling influence, not preventing corruption. Even so, by US standards, Ponomarev would be seen as committing an ethics violation. In the US, Congressmen can take fees -- if they do not make up more than 15% of their salary.

Someone who is an expert on ethics violations can comment, but I don't think this would become a criminal case in the US.

Some good commentary on Surkov's release "to free floating" comes from a TV Rain talk show on 8 May

Rain says Surkov turned in his resignation back on April 26, and reported this to Kommersant, and Medvedev's office confirmed this. It wasn't for the first time, as he had apparently tried to resign before.

His knock in the LSE speech on the Investigative Committee as being "too energetic" was said to serve as the reason. Actually, Markin, in describing this, misquotes Surkov, possibly deliberately.

Surkov said (unless this version has been edited, which it may have been):

The Investigative Committee has some ideas about these relatively small amounts of money that, by the way, cannot be compared with the Skolkovo budget. This may be crime, but maybe not. It is necessary to take these matters to court and let the court decide whether it’s a crime. The energy with which the Investigative Committee is making its thinking public makes ordinary people feel that there’s been a crime.

Markin misquotes him (or quotes a different version?)

"The Investigative Committee is too hasty, loudly proclaiming abuses in Skolkovo. The energy with which the Investigative Committee is making its thinking public makes ordinary people feel that there’s been a crime."

Odd, that. What happened?

I think it's safe to say that this resignation didn't start with the London speech reaction and isn't merely about Skolkovo.

On Dozhd, Stanislav Belkovsky says the main opponents of Surkov in the Kremlin are Sergei Ivanov, and he remains as head of the presidential administration responsible for the power ministries, and the person who replaced Surkov in his former job, Vyacheslav Volodin, first deputy head of the administraiton.. "Surkov was inevitably in constant battle and under fire from the apparat". This speaks to the close relations of the power ministries and the president, of course, who himself is a former KGB agent. Belkovsky thinks that Surkov was better at internal politics and manipulations than managing the government apparatus and that his previous job was not an "organic" one for him.

When he made the move out of the apparat, Surkov was quoted as saying "I am too odious for this beautiful new world," when he had to leave the Kremlin and go to the (Russian) White House or government. "Alexei Chesnakov, a former member of Surkov's team, believes that in the current system, Surkov had no place, but the people who came into the president's administration are not politicians."

Rain recounts how first on the blog of Mikhail Prokhorov, a former presidential candidate, a comment about Surkov's departure appeared, "fish rot from the head down" and "it's time to throw out our fish," and this was said to have been penned by Stanislav Kucher who does most of Prokhorov's published texts, but then later Prokhorov himself disavowed the remark from abroad and asked for it to be removed and changed to "With the resignation of Surkov, the era of 'sovereign democracy' has ended. Whether you like it or not."

Marat Guelman, who himself has been an advisor to the government, said he thought Surkov would find it a "relief" to be let go finally. As long as you didn't openly challenge the government, you could internally have differing views - but this all changed with Volodin's arrival, he thinks -- "whoever is not with us is against us."

I think this is very good because the government is deconstructing itself. If Putin believes that the corruption he is fighting is just some infection on the body of the government, in fact, corruption is the very body of government. To be honest, I was happy when I learned about it. I was happy for Slava [Surkov], that he got out in time, and happy for us. Putin will be left in solitude. The Oprichina today isn't possible. This is not the Middle Ages. In the information society, the Oprichina as a metaphor is possible, but what they are trying to do now is make it literally a reality.

Oleg Kashin says Surkov's former functions are divided into three among Volodin, who does "old school politics" -- elections, the parliament, the governments; Bastrykin, who has been given the opposition -- "I think he really decides who to put in jail and who to promote," says Kashin; and Kapkov, who now is responsible for culture and creatives. Kashin thinks the structures Surkov built will live on:

He convinced us all that he is such a romantic figure, described by Pelevin. He is the creator of the school of Russian-style political PR -- elections in the regions, they arrested one candidate, they removed another from the elections, beat up a third, but then printed a million leaflets, stole money, won the elections, wow, we're such kick-ass PR men. He's the creator of this school, I do'nt think it will die with his departure.

Evgeny Gontmakher reminds us what this is really about, however, the terrible thing Surkov did to Russia after the freedoms that began under Yeltsin:

He has dealt colossal damage to our public life, to political life. These Putin phantoms that he had in his head in an inchoate form, Surkov managed to capture them and turn them into these techniques that Oleg describes. But it was all for harm. Now we see the systemic crisis in the country, the systemic crisis in society, it's all the achievement of Vladislav Surkov. I don't see anything positive.

Gontmakher may be exaggerating the effect that Surkov had mainly using Putin's oil-barrel powers, but he has read him correctly as a man who jumped from the train when he could. "I think we'll soon get a fruitful writer" out of Surkov, he concludes, with a reference to Surkov's writing an introduction about a thinly-disguised novel about a figure like himself.

I don't think we've seen the last of Surkov any more than we've seen the last of Gleb Pavlovsky, who also disappeared from the scene.

Just In Case There's a Fire...

...I'm going to reprint Vladislav Surkov's speech at the London School of Economics here, because now that he has resigned from government, it may be removed from this official Russian government site.

Since it's a government document it is in the public domain.

Vladislav Surkov: First of all I would like to say that there will be no lecture. I do not think it is possible for me to teach anybody here, but I am ready to answer questions.My recent biography has been briefly described here. I really worked in private business, including quite large companies, from the very first days of reforms in Russia, then I worked in Russian television, at the main channel for a while. After that I worked at the Presidential Executive Office for 11 years; I was involved in issues of development of the domestic policy, the electoral system, religious relations, the regional policy. And since 2012 I have been working at the Government, in charge of issues of state service and innovation development, as well as modern culture.

If you would like to ask me something, I am ready to answer any questions. I believe this kind of conversation will be much more interesting that a lecture, because I am still not fully aware of what you are interested in.If you give me a topic, I can read you a lecture, but I think it would be better to have a conversation.

I will be using headphones, since my English is not good enough to understand you right away. I will be speaking Russian, I beg your pardon for that, because I am Russian.

I am ready for our conversation. Let's begin.

Moderator: I propose asking questions related to any aspects of work in Russia. I’ll take questions, perhaps two or three at a time. But if you (addressing Vladislav Surkov) wish to interrupt and answer some question in full, please go ahead. 

Question: It was mentioned in your biography that you are a trustee of the Skolkovo Foundation, and back when the whole project was started you wrote a big editorial with Vedomosti describing all plans related to it, plans to bring people together and perhaps produce some sort of miracle of innovation in Skolkovo. I’m not sure whether it has been produced, but of course you know recently in Skolkovo a representative of Intel was detained with his passport taken away and then he left Russia quickly, and the fact that Skolkovo has been investigated for handing outside of 750,000 dollars for a series of lectures by Ilya Ponomaryov. So I just wanted to ask how this project is progressing, and specifically we have a situation with the foundation handling so much money for the reasons that the law enforcement is alleging, and we have a situation where a law enforcement officer decides based on whichever reasons he has that a fee paid by the foundation is correct orincorrect…

Moderator: Do you have a question? 

Remark: My question is whether the constitutional structure is conducive to innovation, or perhaps some changes are required to it.

Question: I also have a question about Skolkovo. Don’t you think that development of Skolkovo and similar projects would actually draw results – and by results I don’t actually mean only financial results but also administrative and human capital results – away from the Russian science?

Question: First of all I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate you on the 1st of May. It is celebrated in Russia today and it’s a special day for Russia.Now the question: Nowadays a very large proportion of discussions about the development of Russia is dedicated to discussions of pouring investment into Russia, ways to encourage foreign investors to invest money in the Russian economy and I wanted to ask you not just as an deputy prime minister, but also as the person who introduced the term of “sovereign democracy” to the Russian politics. Do you feel that there is a potential danger that this devotion to attracting foreign investment into the Russian economy can potentially lead to violating Russian sovereignty because foreign investors or generally Western parties can use their position in order to influence the domestic or foreign policy in Russia in order to secure this investment?

Vladislav Surkov: These are very big questions, so I will still have to resort to a lecture after all, because it is difficult to answer them quickly. And I will answer them in the order they were asked.

First, about the situation in Skolkovo. I think I need to tell what Skolkovo is, because I am not sure that everybody knows. In fact, several years ago an idea was proposed, in which I participated very actively, to create the Skolkovo innovation centre in Russia. Actually, this was not some unheard of innovation; this is a rather typical project for modern innovation policy. It is an attempt to create an innovation ecosystem in a single place, quite a concentrated one, with a very high density. Because it is considered – and practice reflects this – that a “chain reaction” takes places where scientists, students, business people, interested parties, of course, the state to a certain degree (depending on the country) gather together: new ideas are conceived, they turn into new products, become commercialised, and new markets, new products and new services emerge. 

Actually, Silicon Valley, where everything I’ve spoken about here is concentrated in a single place, is often cited as an example. It was an organic process. Many countries replicate it and build such facilities at new locations. This is normal and natural. It was done in the United State. Today, for instance, we visited the QMB Innovation Centre at Queen Mary University here in London. This is a large centre that brings together biomedicine, a huge clinic, scientists, the university and large companies, and all of which is partially supported by the government. This centre was built with the help of the government. There is nothing really new about that.

The miracle is not reproducing this classic model for creating a large technology park. The miracle is if it succeeds, because, like I said, you can gather everything together in a single place, but life will not necessarily bloom there.

We decided to build an innovation centre in Russia as well, to build it in an open field, from scratch – to do it like China, Singapore, Brazil and India, and even the United Arab Emirates and many other countries. Again, it’s all been done before. There’s nothing exotic about this idea. It is just as common to build such centres today as it is to build schools and hospitals. To emphasise, this is an international trend.

Our plan for such a centre was dictated by the need to concentrate the quite disparate, divided intellectual forces that we possess in a single place; to take something from the Academy of Sciences (I will return to this later), take the best from there, from universities, provincial cities, and gather it all together so as to have a critical mass of intelligence per unit area. And, of course, to attract international companies there. And you have to build a new city for this with a new architecture, because architecture also matters. The main thing that needs to emerge in Skolkovo is a new environment and atmosphere of collective creativity, where people will be able to find and communicate with each other, experiment and find business applications for new ideas.  

This is why building the new centre is important. It is not as large as it seems. We plan to have about 6,000-10,000 people living and working there, which is not a lot. China has centres with hundreds of thousands of people, even  a million or so (I have been in such centres in China). So 6,000-10,000 people is not a lot, at all.

In addition, the Soviet Union had a great amount of experience in creating science towns. They were created under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. New science towns were built outside big cities, including renowned science towns, such as Dubna and Sarov, to name a few.

So, how’s it exotic? There’s nothing new here. Russia has always built science towns, I’ll say it again, from scratch. There’s nothing surprising or unusual about this, either. Nevertheless, this idea was met with scepticism right from the beginning, even thought it was clearly something we needed, and it immediately had supporters and detractors. The detractors say: “Why spend so much money to build a new university, a new technology park, or a new town?” (In fact, the issue is about building a small town with a very special atmosphere). Why not take this money and give it to existing universities or poor people, build new roads or do somewhere else rather than spend it on building this town?

Other people say: “Why make this project an open one?” (It’s an open project involving the participation of the world's largest companies. We’ve partnered up with MIT to build a university in Skolkovo.) There are people in Russia who say: “This is wrong. Why do we need foreigners on this project? We are not going to share our scientific achievements with foreign companies for nothing. It’s just not right.”

The project, anyhow, has run for two years, which is not a lot for a project like that. As you may be aware, a research grant is usually issued for three years in order to get any results, including negative ones. But it’s only been two years. We are going ahead with the construction, funding is being allocated, and we will introduce the first phase of this town in 2014, and the rest, I hope, in 2015. The university and several infrastructure facilities are being built using budget funds. Housing is being built by private companies.

We are already actively funding R&D activities. I invite everyone who’s interested in innovations to join us, because the terms are quite favourable: the state covers half of the corporate costs involved in research on an irrevocable basis. The state gives these funds as a gift to these companies to encourage their research activities, because Russia's economy is based not on innovation but on commodity exports. We have two kinds of big business in Russia: exporting commodities and importing finished goods. Only these two areas are big money makers. We haven’t made much money on inventions. We don’t have people like Steve Jobs; we don’t have companies like Kodak; we don’t have people who have invented something, created a new market based on this invention and made large fortunes.

We would like to turn this trend around. We need at least one success story, where a Russian billionaire made his billion dollars not by selling lumber, oil, or iron ore, or by selling sneakers imported from the Great Britain. That’s not bad, either. Someone has to be out there selling sneakers, but we must also do something intellectually advanced as well.

For this to happen, we have already started financing such works. Though we provide half of the money to companies, we ask for only three things. First, we want the technology to be truly innovative, not something built on existing ideas, otherwise the money will be wasted. Second, we want a foreign participant in such a project. We insist on this, because we believe that Russia can evolve only if it mixes its  culture with the culture of advanced economies. We believe that only an open economy is capable of innovation-based growth; therefore, the presence of foreign experts in the project is a prerequisite for funding in Skolkovo. It is very important for us to acquire skills that are simply non-existent in Russia. Few of our researchers are capable of commercialising their designs; we have no research managers, either. There may be a few, but they have no bearing on the economy. In order for us to have such people, it’s not enough just to read books. We need to create international teams. People learn faster when they work together. I don’t believe in virtual workplaces. I don’t believe it when they say that thanks to the Internet researchers don’t have to work side by side, because it's expensive. Let one researcher sit in China and the other one in San Francisco and work on scientific problems.  Things like this are advanced by people who themselves bunched together in great numbers in California.

They sit there together and tell everyone else to part ways and do research separately. That’s not the way to go, and it’s been proved. So we certainly need Skolkovo. The third aspect is cooperation with Russian universities. This must be done as well, because we believe that universities, students, and graduate students should be actively involved in research. This kind of work is also in its infancy in Russia.

We have already disbursed about eight billion roubles for research over the past year or two. We have British and major international companies working there. The Skolkovo board has people like Eric Schmidt from Google and the CEO of Siemens. Our key partners in the Skolkovo project include Honeywell,  Nokia and other leading companies, including major Russian ones. They are serious about this project and enthusiastic about it, too. For example, people such as Mr Chambers from Cisco are active supporters and advocates of Skolkovo. This is very important for us. People have faith in this project. The research board in Skolkovo is led by Mr Kornberg, a distinguished Nobel laureate, and Mr Alfyorov, the board co-chairman, the only Nobel laureate in Russia..

Eight billion roubles is about 160 million pound sterling. That’s a fair amount of money to finance research. Regarding how clean the financing is, you know that government spending, or any major spending for that matter, is fraught with fraud. It can happen.

I believe that Skolkovo is one of the cleanest projects in terms of potential abuse for one simple reason: Skolkovo is managed by Viktor Vekselberg, one of the richest men in Russia. When I was looking for a manager to head it all, I thought that a major businessman with so much money that he wants something from life other than money would be a perfect fit. A man who has made enough money, who isn’t too young and who thinks about what will be written and said about him after he’s gone. It was important for him to be rich enough so that he’s not tempted to steal. We have found such a man. It’s Viktor Vekselberg. You know, he recently sold his stock in TNK-BP for several billion dollars. It's very unlikely that he’ll be tempted to steal the paltry hundreds of thousands of dollars which you just mentioned. I’m sure he won’t be tempted to do so, he doesn’t need to. I'm not poor, either. I worked in business for 10 years and I might continue to work, if need be. I was successful in my area of business, which was advertising, public and government relations. That’s a fact that you can check for yourself. There are written records to that effect available. This was before I started working in the Presidential Executive Office. Even then I was successful as one of the industry’s leaders. So I don’t need to get involved in this, either.

They say in Russia that a fish rots from the head. Our head here is not rotten, and so the body is much cleaner than in many other Russian projects. Is that an iron-clad guarantee that no one has stolen anything in the process? Of course not. But then again, haven’t there instances of theft in large corporations? There have. On many occasions. I can name them. They made headlines around the world. Executives were arrested and put behind bars. These were major multinational companies. So what? These companies are still there. They haven’t been closed and they have partners to do business with. The banks that were caught red-handed still have customers who keep their money with them, including you. What happened? If some pig tarnishes your reputation, it doesn’t mean that all of your business should come to naught, right? You just have to kick the pig out and continue to work.

As for the current situation in Skolkovo, there’s no single case of proven fraud. The Investigative Committee has some ideas about these relatively small amounts of money that, by the way, cannot be compared with the Skolkovo budget. This may be crime, but maybe not. It is necessary to take these matters to court and let the court decide whether it’s a crime. The energy with which the Investigative Committee is making its thinking public makes ordinary people feel that there’s been a crime. It's just the energetic style of the Investigative Committee. Let them prove that these people are guilty of a crime, and we'll see whether they can prove it, with all due respect. This is a slippery slope for Skolkovo, since this project is hypersensitive to reputational damage. I believe it’s way too early to talk about possible violations before a court weighs in. What I mean is that we should talk, but it’s a question of how loud we’re talking: I believe we should turn the volume down.

If the Government cares about the projects that are just getting underway ... This project is  just two years old. That’s not a lot for a human being, it’s even less for a new university and nothing for a new innovation centre. If we start bombarding this very fragile entity with artillery fire then, of course, we may suffer, as the military say, unacceptable damage, because there’s always someone who will make a political story out of it, which is probably what your question was about. Any question can be tied in with politics and become part of legal proceedings or an inspection, which are absolutely normal and legitimate. Government spending should be monitored. If there’s abuse, it should be immediately stopped and the culprits should be punished. The only question is whether a crime has been proved and the attitude to such projects. I believe that we should be sparing and delicate with regard to such projects, because if we get tough, the project will come under threat. It is quite obvious, and everybody, including our partners and journalists, are asking such questions. I’m absolutely convinced that everyone should be equal before the law, innovators and non-innovators. However, findings should be made public at the end of proceedings, and reporting in the media must be unbiased.

However, I’m absolutely confident that Skolkovo and its philosophy will live on and evolve. Russia absolutely needs this project. A lot of people have come aboard, and I very much hope that this project will be completed successfully within the timeframe that I mentioned in my interview. I said back then we can expect the first substantial results 10-15 years from now. All those involved in such a work should understand this. Not a single university can produce results quickly, not a single scientific school takes shape instantly. You and I realise this, and I believe that the project will be judged correctly and continued into the future. The project should be able to remain active for as long as needed in order to produce the results which I absolutely believe it will achieve.

Some wonder whether Skolkovo will nab researchers from the Academy of Sciences. It will, and a certain number of researchers will go to work at Skolkovo. The Academy of Sciences is working with Skolkovo, and a number of academic institutions have signed agreements with Skolkovo. We just don’t call this “nabbing.” Instead, we call it integration. This is an issue of perspective. Skolkovo  already has joint projects with academic institutions, and I very much support the Academy of Sciences and strongly support the cooperation between Skolkovo and the Academy of Sciences. Of course, researchers from the Academy will work at Skolkovo, but talented people from Skolkovo will move to the academy, if needed.

With regard to foreign investment and sovereignty, you mentioned my favourite theory of sovereign democracy. It has to do with, first, understanding sovereignty in the modern sense of the word, not as isolation. By the way, the term "sovereign democracy" came to us from the West. It has been used by major US and European politicians. We did not come up with it ourselves. In introducing it to Russia (I remember well the discussion), we have tried to prove that one can be a sovereign and open country at the same time. The point was that an open country's tools for preserving sovereignty are somewhat different from the tools to protect the sovereignty of a “closed”country.

For us, as a country that is going through a period of transformation, this is important. I don’t think it’s important for British democracy. Things are pretty much clear here, and there’s nothing to discuss. But in a country that just thirty years ago was totally “closed” to foreigners and understood sovereignty as isolation, it was important to clarify that there may be a different kind of sovereignty and that identity can be preserved in other ways. Our goal was to prove that foreign investment poses no threat to the sovereignty of Russia. On the contrary, it’s beneficial for Russia. Still, Russia has several strategic industries that are off-limits to foreign nationals and we have a Government commission (of which I’m member) that takes decides whether to allow certain foreign investments. That includes such sensitive things as nuclear energy and medicine (and vaccinations, in particular). We recently refused an offer by a US company to buy a Russian company, because we believe it’s still premature. But this is a fairly narrow sector, and such commissions exist in all countries. Take a look at the way things are done in the United States (not to mention Britain). There's a lot of rejections, and the president may take unilateral decisions with regard to a number of industries. He may decide not to allow the sale of a US port to a particular country. Why? Because. No explanation is provided. The answer is: “We believe that we shouldn’t sell it.” This is a normal way of doing things, but the number of such industries should be limited. These are the industries that the country believes are of critical importance for its survival and where it’s concerned about potential damage. Most of the industries and sectors of the economy obviously should be as open as possible.

Question (via interpreter): More than two years ago, you said that the best part of Russian society, or at least the most productive part of it, deserves respect. And I think this part of society, of Russian society, will determine the success of Russian innovation. What has the Russian Government done since to address these concerns, and what has it done for the most productive part of society?

Vladislav Surkov: Thank you. As a matter of fact, what we are discussing, including Skolkovo, is also a concern for that part of society. Innovation in general means strengthening or creating institutions that can tap the potential of this most productive part of society, the productive minority (if this is a relevant and correct term).

That’s why we have taken certain steps towards greater openness in the Government. We have drafted a lot of documents and regulations that say that the Government basically cannot take a decision without prior discussion with the expert community. We are simply obliged to do it. The Government cannot pass certain documents unless there is a certificate attached to them saying that they have been discussed with stakeholders. This is true of major acts and routine regulations. I think we are doing enough today to engage in dialogue that part of society which has something to say.

Question: Good afternoon. Russia is such a big country, and some remote regions often do not share in the success of the Moscow Region. What sort of impact, in your view, will Skolkovo and other innovative projects have on these remote regions?

Vladislav Surkov: They’ll have a positive impact on certain regions. I think all the projects that open up new opportunities for our country have a positive impact on all regions. Some regions have raw materials, some provide infrastructure services and some provide intellectual services. Russia has different regions and each of them contributes to the prosperity of other regions. I don’t see why the rapid development of the Moscow Region where Skolkovo is located should pose a problem. It is a region that attracts investments. Moscow is expanding. A huge metropolitan area is emerging. I see no harm being caused to other regions (if that is what you are hinting at), because a richer Moscow means a richer country.    

Question (via interpreter): Reuters. Supporters of Vladimir Putin say that he's brought stability to his country. But his opponents say he's brought stagnation. What do you say to opponents who say that Vladimir Putin has been in power too long? And could you tell us, what do you think the biggest political risk is for Russia's development? Thank you very much.

Vladislav Surkov: What can I tell Putin’s opponents? The debate over how many terms a president should serve seems rather meaningless to me and a bit contrived, in my opinion. Putin is serving a third term. Blair (Tony Blair, British Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007) was elected three times, if memory serves. Angela Merkel (German Federal Chancellor) looks set to become Chancellor for a third time, and this raises no questions. I once delivered a lecture on Roosevelt, who served four terms as president. What did he do that was bad for America?

Putin is absolutely legitimate. Incidentally, he could easily have changed the Constitution (I worked in the Presidential Executive Office at the time so I know what I’m talking about) and remove the term limit (no more than two consecutive terms). He chose not to, and instead took a very difficult step: he left his post and became Prime Minister at the peak of his popularity and at the peak of his powers. He deserves recognition for that.

As for “stagnation or no stagnation”, honestly, I see no stagnation. Life in Russia is vibrant and dynamic and very turbulent. We have many problems and many concerns. If we had stagnation things would be so quiet... We would be laid back: we would come to work late and come home early. But somehow we cannot get to stagnation. Even if we wanted to we wouldn’t be able to. You with your world crises, our own people in the Caucasus, this and that. Stagnation is just not the name of the game.

As to what the biggest risks are, I am convinced that the main and fundamental risk for Russia is the one I have already mentioned. We must embark on the path of innovation-driven development. If we need a regimented country where the main concern is to screen everyone, that’s one trend. If we need a country where one can be creative and free and make things, products and services that are useful for all, that is a totally different strategic choice. We should do everything to break out of the paradigm of a military power with a lot of raw materials and embark on the path of a post-industrial society, travel that path and take our place in the world division of intellectual labour. We must produce valuable technologies that others do not have and make our economy smart and intellectual. This is our main challenge. If we fail to meet it, I for one am convinced that Russia will not survive as a country. It is really an existential choice. It is not a matter of taste, it is a question of survival: either the country survives, or it does not because all the development potential will have been exhausted.   

Question (via interpreter): Financial Times. According to a Levada opinion poll this week, more than 50% of Russians now agree with the statement that United Russia is a "party of crooks and thieves" ("partiya zhulikov i vorov"). Does that not, even more than many other signs that we've seen in the last year and a half, show that the political system, of which you are quite often described as the architect in Russia, is broken, and needs replacing or reforming? If so, what kind of democracy does Russia need now?

Vladislav Surkov: Thank you. The system is not broken. It is not broken. That is wishful thinking. The system of which I have the honour to be a co-author is alive and well, it survived the 2011 elections. It was the same system at work. Do you really feel like the old system collapsed after the December 2011 rally? No, it has defeated the opposition, there is no doubt about it. The system must not be liquidated, it must not collapse, it must adapt to changing conditions. The system must change. Change within the system does not mean its liquidation.

Life changes and the political system must also change, there is no contradiction there. When it faced certain challenges and saw that there is discontent in society, profound discontent, it adapted itself. It took a tough stand, at long last, with regard to extremists. At last those who thought they could get away with beating policemen got the punishment they deserved. The situation in Russia before was  rather odd. If you broke the law during a rally it somehow wasn’t against the law. But why? Because people are expressing their feelings? Express your feelings, but do not break the law.

Here in your country when people caused some mischief, burned something in London, many of those who did it are still in jail. Why should we allow our people to beat policemen and throw stones at them? No, no. The system has shown that it can be tough. At the same time it has shown that it can be open. Think of the law that simplified the procedure of registering new parties. Many used to say that we do not have enough parties. Indeed, there were few parties, we were living through a period of cleaning up the political space, but once that was accomplished the law was drafted. I have to remind you that it had already been drafted  before these events. The system was already responding to tangible changes in society. Today there is essentially open registration for parties all over Russia.

The question about United Russia’s a significant negative rating is a legitimate question. I think United Russia must survive in a competitive environment. This is normal. Competition will increase. I am sure, for example, that Russia would benefit from having a second party as big as United Russia that could seriously compete with it; perhaps we should even help such a party to stand on its feet because this is a normal process. Why wait until something happens spontaneously? We see a normal process which reflects the evolution of society to the extent that it has taken place, no more and no less. It is dangerous to run ahead of organic changes in society (change happens all the time because society is a living structure): one can run too far ahead. But one should not lag behind society either. I am sure that our political system is marching in step with society. It is part of society for we have all its institutions in our heads. The political system that we have in Russia reflects the mentality and the soul of the Russian people.     

Question: Good afternoon. I’ll ask my question in Russian. There are many Russian students in Britain, including London, who study here, there are so many of them that a deputy education minister came here in October and urged Russian students to come back to Russia. But when it came to specific programmes, it turned out that nobody needs us in Russia with our English degrees: the Russian Foreign Ministry hires many more people who have graduated from MGIMO. Businesses, politicians and the state prefer people with Russian degrees. How does the Russian Government propose to change that? Will there be any concrete programmes, vacancies and the like?

And a very short question regarding VKontakte. Is control over a social network going to increase? There were rumours recently that it was going to be sold. These are my two questions. Thank you.

Vladislav Surkov: Thank you very much. VKontakte, for those who don’t know, is a social network in Russia similar to Facebook.

First about the demand for those who study here and the possibility of returning to Russia to complete their education or to work.  I think we are doing enough to make sure that the creative young people who study here, who have a bent for technology and science, the best, the most advanced of them come back to Russia. You cannot order them to come back, it is necessary to create conditions to attract them. But I can say that there is already a fairly intensive flow of specialists – not only foreign ones, but those who had left Russia to study and have now finished their course and are returning – a considerable number of people because the terms are comparable, sometimes even better. It’s not only about salaries; universities have sprouted laboratories, which is also important. There are things to do, contracts are available, that is, there is work for people in Russia.

As for jobs, I think there is normal competition. We are an open society. You have come here to study, you can find a job here or you can find one in Russia. Whether or not you will find a job has to do with your qualifications, your charm and the demand of the market. I think you should rely on yourselves. We are all liberals, aren’t we? Let us each rely on one’s own strength.

As regards VKontakte, I think there is some pot-stirring going on there; I don’t know the whole story, so I won’t stick my neck out for fear of misleading you. I know Pavel (Pavel Durov is one of the founders of the VKontakte social network) and I hold him in high regard. All sorts of things are being said, I don’t want to go into it, I don’t want to make any comments because I do not know what has really happened. But clearly there is a situation involving owners and new deals and so on. I am sure that it will survive in one form or another because it is a very popular network in Russia. Having said that, I think Pavel is the soul of that project. I very much hope that everything will turn out well. VKontakte has been criticised a lot over various things, but it is a fact that this is a very talented team which has created a very popular, one of the most popular networks in Russia. I very much hope that it will continue to be as talented as before.

Moderator: I would like to thank our speaker today. Thank you very much, we are glad that you found time to visit us and to answer our questions.

Vladislav Surkov: Thank you.

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Kerry Wimps Out on Opposing Kremlin's NGO Crackdown on Moscow Trip

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with representatives of Russian civil society during a meeting at the U.S. ambassador's residence, the Spaso House, in Moscow, Russia, on May 8, 2013. [State Department photo/Public domain]

Secretary of State John Kerry failed to stand up to the Kremlin on its crackdown against civil society during his trip to Moscow this week.

Despite making a token brief visit with NGO activists, Kerry did not make the kind of forceful public statement to the press in either the joint state press conference or in his own interviews with the media, instead, preferring to let the NGOs leak the fact that he claimed to have stayed up until 2:30 in the morning with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov talking about the NGO legal issues.

This sort of weakness was displayed despite the fact that US public and private foundations have supported some of these brave non-governmental organizations for decades, even before the collapse of the USSR -- and have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in doing so. There's no reason why development and overseas aid can't include human rights and democracy building -- the amount of funds that have gone to Russia's beleaguered independent sector is dwarfed by the hundreds of millions invested by big IT companies in Silicon Valley in the endangered Medvedev "innovation" project of Skolkovo, for example, not to mention other big corporate investments in Russia whose money the Kremlin is happy to take. So let's be clear on this.

The meeting with Kerry seemed awfully tame -- and felt like a sop to concerns about human rights without really raising them. I always feel as if the US diplomats are behaving like they are quietly visiting the sick when they go and quietly have these meetings, instead of standing up at the podium and speaking out even at the level of Europeans these days.

I wrote on Amb. Michael McFaul's Facebook post:

This was a nice gesture, but a robust, vocal, public denunciation of what the Kremlin is going to civil society, in many cases to groups supported by both US public and private funds, should have been what happened. I can never understand why Obama is so reluctant to do this, when even [the EU's] Ashton and the Germans have been able to publicly condemn this. [State Department spokesperson] Nuland's [off-handed characterization of the crackdown as a] "witch-hunt" was in fact freelancing off the script. This has always been the problem since 2009, Obama's refusal to confront the Kremlin for old DSA-style ideological reasons and then your having to follow that policy. Raising the problem privately; telling NGOs informally that you raised it privately -- that's just not the same as a full-bore press conference on the scene.

...and I got the usual RealPolitkers chastizing me for claiming that we can ever condemn Russia about anything.

In fact, even meeting with this big agent of a foreign power, these groups were adding to their already bulging police files. This week, Russian authorities have even accused Memorial in St. Petersburg of "foreign agent" status for a perfectly routine and lawful participation in the UN Committee Against Torture's review of Russia's report -- something NGOs the world over do for numerous countries. When "foreign agent" status comes from talking to...the UN (!) you realize how seriously messed up all of this is.

In a videotaped interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza on Svoboda, Memorial Human Rights Center's chairman Alexander Cherkasov described the meeting with Kerry. His organization is one of the many being subjected now to repeated inspections and threats of charges for refusing to register as a "foreign agent".

For some reason, in the 40 minutes they had, they didn't really talk about the crackdown, and as Lyudmila Alexeyeva told Izvestiya, there weren't any proposals coming from Kerry about this. He just listened.

Instead, they seemed to talk about the Boston bombing. Cherkasov monitors the North Caucasus closely for his organization, the largest human rights organization in Russia, now under attack by the prosecutor's organization.

"Everybody tries to remove responsibility for this bombing," Cherkasov notes aptly in this interview. The US wants to attribute the bombing to self-radicalization via the Internet and not organized Islamic resistance to America; the Russian intelligence services want to blame the American environment and the failure of immigrants to adapt.

This is bringing about a forced cooperation between US and Russian intelligence and law-enforcement which has only one precedent, notes Cherkasov: the Kennedy assassination.

Yet what these facile explanations do is distract from the very real problems in the North Caucasus caused by the Kremlin's fierce counter-terrorism crusade.

Cherkasov said that the acute problem for NGOs in Russia now is that there is a grave danger that there will be no independent monitors of the government, and particularly of the events in the North Caucasus. No civic experts will be able to have their voices heard beyond the official version with their human rights and humanitarian concerns.

Cherkasov doesn't think Kerry "gets it" about the Russian "foreign agents" issue. It's his first time in Moscow, and he isn't sure that Kerry, who himself comes from what Cherkasov says is a big bureaucratic institution, is able to fathom the workings of an even bigger bureaucratic machine in Russia.

The point is that if anyone who does even the most benign thing -- like the group helping cystic fibrosis patients -- is going to be hounded as some kind of suspicious "foreign agent" guilty of subversion and espionage in advance, then there won't be any restraint over the Russian government. There won't be that civic oversight which the Moscow Helsinki Group sought to bring into being when it was formed in 1976, and which many other groups have struggled to maintain in these last decades.

Putin will go below the level established at least by Gorbachev in the Soviet era in the late 1980s, when he tolerated the emergence of the nyeformaly or informal groups working on single issues like education and the environment.

Look at the list of the groups tarred with this "foreign agent" brush and see how many environmental groups there are! Why isn't the worldwide left, the environmentalists, the anti-globalists, why aren't they showing solidarity to their counterparts in Russia?!

Groups like this are now having their every movement watched by the authorities, says Cherkasov. "But if they are removed, who can independently monitor counter-terror operations?" he aptly asks.

The notion of the very vital relationship between civic groups being able to monitor -- and restrain -- their militant-minded governments -- applicable at home as well as abroad -- never seems to penetrate the Obama Administration. There isn't a grasp of the idea that disarmament and human rights are inextricably linked, and you can't have the former without the latter.

Obama, in his entire time in office, has never had a single word of support for Russian civil society and the very large role it should play in fact in our own security. Remember when he got off to such a terrible start on his first trip to Moscow, conceding to Medvedev that the Khodorkovsky trial was "an internal affair" -- when of course the Helsinki process repudiated that old communist notion and replaced it with the valid appeal to international standards by which both Russia and the US are bound.

None of us are more secure when the Kremlin has its way, and the Kremlin's enormous onslaught against the peoples of the North Caucasus has now directly contribute to the terrorism in Boston. This connection can't be denied.

Amb. McFaul and Kerry and others no doubt think they've "done a lot" by having the dissidents to Spaso House, and letting it be known to the press that they "talked until 2:30 in the morning" about issues of concern to NGOs -- althought the Russian government version of this story differs.

The fact is, it isn't enough: a robust denunciation with more consequences should be in order.  The Magnitsky List should be unabashedly continued and extended. There should be more rhetorical pushback on the NGO crackdown and obvious points made such as the fact that tens of thousands of Russian students and visiting workers as well as immigrants -- legal and illegal -- are in this country and are not viewed as foreign agents by any default -- despite the fact that in 2010, in fact the FBI did catch a nest of spies and had to turn them out (remember Anna Chapman?). The Kremlin propaganda news station RT freely saturates the mindshare of the liberal intelligentsia in the US without even a comment from the White House although it's often peddling outright lies.

In real reciprocity, the US needs to remind Russia that a high level of Russian official and non-governmental involvement in our political and social space is tolerated as a matter of course in a liberal democratic society -- and we expect the same even of this authoritarian state. Remember, the crackdown didn't hardly exist before the Magnitsky List, which takes a long-awaited and much-needed stand against criminality. We should see it for what it is: thuggish taking of hostages in a dirty war.

What should be the US response in the face of this crackdown, besides rhetoric -- which can't be expected to remove the Russian crackdown but can at the very least remove us from moral collusion with it?

The US should make it clear that all USAID money previously spent inside Russia is going to go into support of genuine civil society projects (not state-to-state exchange) from abroad -- payment of costs abroad for websites, for example, or payment for attendance of conferences with per diems. This is how it was done in the years when Gorbachev was only opening up Soviet society and that much has to be done again. Organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House need bigger budgets now, including for publishing the works of Russian civil society experts abroad.

In the Soviet era, we could not directly give grants to groups inside the country without getting them in trouble. But we could give them laptops or tape recorders or i-phones during visits to their country or while they were abroad, and we could provide the moral support of attention and publication and expression of solidarity.

Above all, we should restore RFE/RL and VOA to full strength, hire back those who were fired and bring them abroad if necessary, and counter the ideological warfare that is now waged by this regime with plurality of free discussion and debate as well as independent coverage of the news.

UPDATE: I'm told that the re-hiring may be in the works. Recently BBG members Susan McCue and Michael Meehan visited Moscow and:

urged acting Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) president Kevin Klose and his management team “to continue their timely outreach now under way to all the former Radio Liberty journalists, whose expertise could assist in providing important insight and valuable analysis of the inner workings of Russia today.”

That doesn't sound quite like a re-hire directive, and with budget cuts, it may not be possible, but watch that space.

Meanwhile, it costs the US nothing to show solidarity to those who are like-minded in Russia. Yet sadly, Kerry ducked this historic opportunity because he was serving Obama's directive to engage in dialogue-oriented diplomacy that only left the US looking weak, with its Secretary of State humiliated, waiting on the tarmac.

Kerry walks past the Stalin monument in Red Square. Say, can't protocol officers figure out how to give this murderous tyrant's statue a wider berth?! Photo by State Department.

I Don't Find the "Self-Radicalization" Notion Very Persuasive in Tsarnaevs' Case

The theory of the "self-radicalizing" or "lone wolf" terrorists is not one I find very persuasive.

I realize there are people who have done very serious and extensive research into terrorism -- which I haven't done -- and they find it persuasive. My hat's off to them for their credentials and their experience but...I don't buy it. Not on the Tsarnaevs' story, or others (like Muhtorov from Uzbekistan).

I just have too many questions and am not persuaded. I see us being driven as public toward this version of the story, and I think it is too soon, and too lacking in facts.

In a news analysis piece Home-Made Style of Terror, Jihadists Push New Tactics with the HTML header of Terrorists Find Online Education for Attacks, the New York Times has crafted the quintessential "self-radicalization" piece. It makes it seem as if, Khan Academy-style, disaffected young men can just watch jihad videos that Google hasn't managed to delete from Youtube and become organized for violence. While I'm the first to speak up about the influence of the violence-inciting Internet and its affect on real life (in cases like Newton or Colorado), I have to point  out that it's not just "the Internet" and somebody has to make the videos in an organized way.

I think it fits the "progressive" narrative to be able to accomplish a number of things at once: excuse Obama's FBI for not catching these suspects; accuse "America's wars" (by which they mainly mean Bush's war on terror) for having "blowback" or "chickens coming home to roost"; distract attention from very real organized Islamist threats as a way of minimizing terror, and making it seem as if it is a socio-economic problem for which the US bears responsibility.

No sale.

My comment at the Times:

This news story is an artful construction of the new narrative arriving just in time for Obama's winding down -- with good reason -- of wars in Iran and Afghanistan. It soothes the public into believing that we don't need any wars against people who in fact do make us their enemy first, but can just use localized crime control and not even worry about the spread of extremism. It also dangerously undermines the First Amendment by suggesting that television coverage spawns copy cats and therefore implies that consideration should be given to controlling it, even as it indulges in print media version of the same thing spreading the idea of the Lone Mujahid Pocketbook.

Yet the same saturation coverage that worries anti-TV liberals who wants a pass in their own form of coverage is what enables the community to be alert and be strengthened in their determination not to be afraid and to support victims with solidarity.

There's also the moral equivalence of putting up home-grown bombers not related to Islamism next to those who are -- although worldwide, there are far, far more cases of Islamist extremists killing far more people than white militias and a foreign and domestic policy is in fact needed.

As for the Tsarnaevs, the hand of Moscow is big in this case, with many unanswered questions of why Russian intelligence didn't arrest an American resident in touch with at least one or more militants *assassinated* by Russian forces. When were they going to tell the FBI *that*?

* * *

another comment I added to the discussion on the Times which is mainly running toward "blame the victim chickens-roosting" theorizing and exoneration of Islamists -- with a few exceptions:

I'm glad you spoke up about this reality, it is grating to hear the readiness with with the "progressive" mind discounts the very real war waged against the US by Islamism. This article frankly seems to be in that vein.

What I find perplexing about this new narrative of the "self radical" is how such persons can be decoupled from the very real industry of financed, planned, and dispersed videos of jihad. They aren't made in a backyard; some of them have very high production values. These videos take organization and discipline and work, and that means they are the products of organizations. If someone contacts such an organization and keeps watching their videos and chats with their operatives on Youtube or other social media, how is that "self" radicalization?! It is radicalization due to the planned and perpetrated incitement of imminent lawlessness that is jihad. This raises the question of whether Google shouldn't just remove videos but notify law enforcement of patterns of jihad videos that they both remove or don't remove. Yet the geeks would not countenance CISPA, a law intended to achieve just such cooperation between Internet companies and the government.

Now, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has a thoughtful and informative piece delving into the psychology of the jihadist here on his blog.

My comment:

I appreciate the academic rigour you are bringing to this topic.

Whatever one’s criticisms of the NYPD approach, it has worked. You can’t beat that with a stick. We may not have the luxury to adopt more idealistic/ideological approaches that pretend ideology isn’t a factor, as the ex-FBI-turned-ACLU advisor is telling us (see NYT piece).

Christian Caryl has accomplished what no other journalist has done and contacted the mysterious “Misha,” which is a diminutive of the name “Mikhail” and therefore is just as much his “real name”. But from the sound of it, he didn’t have much time with him and spoke with him outside his home, for perhaps 20 minutes. It doesn’t sound like he sat down with him for 4 hours. So while I respect that he made a judgement that Misha “wasn’t Salafist,” we can’t be sure. And I’m not sure what the “10 ways you can recognize a Salfist instantly” are anyway. Beards? Quoting certain prophets?

I’m troubled by the way in which we are all being driven to this “self-radicalizing” narrative that seeks to minimize the role of organized terrorist groups so opportunistically just when Obama needs to wind down two big wars against Islamic countries.

Religious cults of any stripe usually have two key features: a) pressure to advance yourself spiritually by recruiting others, and therefore having to proselytize aggressively not just out of zeal but out of an imperative to advance in the organization b) a demand to think from the cult’s ideas and discard old ways of thinking, i.e. love of music as proof of progress.

But both of these factors need a personal bond or connection, it seems to me, and can’t just make do with a Youtube. For one, the “youtubized” theory seems to overlook that in fact very organized, funded, resourced, determined, planned operations are the ones making persuasive videos and disseminating them — and also socializing with people in comments on Youtube and forums that go with the video. For two, the obvious sequence of the video account beginning *after* the trip to Dagestan seems to be underplayed.

The tendency with either the “self-radicalization” or “Islamist plot” hypotheses is that they completely leave out the possibility of a staged Russian intelligence operation which isn’t some wild conspiracy theory when we take into account that Kadyrov ordered a Chechen leader assassinated in Vienna and former FSB agent Litvinenko was murdered with polonium 2010, pointing to the state as actor. These and many, many more incidents involving hired Chechens or turned Chechens or mysterious assassins sometimes posing as Islamists means that you have to keep an open mind about this option, as both Putin and Kadyrov could be motivated against the US for revenge, both over the Magnitsky List and the larger issue of the war in Syria and US support of rebels there.

But whatever the version of the story, there likely had to be a person or persons who mentored Tamerlan, even if they didn’t train him formally in some camp, and this person doesn’t have to be a Salafi to push him toward more rigid thinking (and that may have been Misha’s role). Someone has to give him the moral green light to kill and overcome what would be a natural conditioning of conscience not to kill — and Misha spent enough time with Caryl to let us know that if he had been Tamerlan’s teacher, he wouldn’t have countenanced violence. So likely there are others (or Misha is misleading us).

There’s an awful lack of curiousness about the glaring hole in the Russian intelligence story to the US. Here’s the Dagestanti anti-extremism center of the MVD (police) telling Novaya gazeta (a deliberate leak) that they know Tamerlan was in touch with Nidal, the 18-year-old jihadist killed by Russian forces, and yet Moscow neglects to tell the FBI *that* — and talks only about a Youtube account? A man from America is in touch with at least one or maybe two jihadists in Dagestan (there are multiple jihadists discussed as possible contacts), and nobody questions him? He is allowed to leave the country without incident? Really, guys?

We keep hearing about the two incidents in the Cambridge mosque as somehow exonerating this mosque of radicalism. Yet reportedly Tamerlan met Misha at this mosque in 2009 when it opened, and his family members described him as becoming more radicalized after this meeting; he was also not expelled from this mosque but returned again after these incidents, so perhaps *some* of his thinking was more radical than the black Muslims in the mosque who wished to honour Martin Luther King, Jr., but was exactly in line, for example, with other hate concepts, i.e. with at least some members’ radical rejection of the Jews and Israel, as you can see in this video:

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2013/04/the-angry-young-men-in-tamerlans-mosque.html

At the end of the day, the entire “self-radicalization” theory hinges on watching Youtubes or joining in Internet fora. Yet Tamerlan made his Youtube with the radical jihadist films, some of which were removed by Google, in *August 2012* which was *after* he returned from his six months’ sojourn in Dagestan, which also included side trips to Chechnya and started and ended in Moscow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/22/tamerlan-tsarnaev-youtube-jihadist-radicalisation

So how was he self-radicalizing via the Internet before that? Perhaps the FBI’s forensic studies of his Internet use may shed some light on this question. Until then, I’m going to continue to look for clues in the Russian side of this story where there are contradictions and gaps, and not just listen to former FBI agents and Harvard psychologists recruited by the Times to fit a narrative they’ve constructed. Any narrative is a construct, but I think we should challenge those that are designed to sooth us into complacity and fit White House foreign policy after the fact rather than reject those that seem too awful to contemplate.