Another defensive, justifying, even lachrymose blog from Vadim Nikitin, although I thought "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears." In a spasm of self-pity, it's called "Who Cares About Russia"? Is there something I'm not understanding about how young Russians are educated these days? Do they still read Solzhenistyn and Sakharov, or not? What *do* they read? Chomsky? Kagarlitsky? Say, do they ever read Herzen? Berdyayev? Who is responsible for their book and media diet these days? The Russian Orthodox Church?
In my blogs in recent days, I've accused Vadim of being too soft on the craven Kremlinated Russia Today, not on "Russia itself," but I might come to that conclusion if I read through all his back pages. What I see is that each time he gets talking about something bad in Russia, he often has to wrap it first in a politically-correct and morally-equivalent pita, then put it into a baggie filled with a huge sense of victimhood. I don't find that persuasive. Even a story seemingly only about Russia, only criticizing Russia for the fact of the killing of the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya has to have a politically-correct pickle -- "The Politkovskaya case drew a bigger reaction in the West than in Russia” -- a definite implication that the West does this merely because it likes to gleefully write bad things about Russia.
I'll never forget one of those many books in the 1980s by American correspondents in Moscow, I believe it was David K. Shipler. The reporter went to cover a fire. A man fleeing from the burning building told him not to write about it. Writing about a fire is a normal journalistic activity, of course, and could help bring to justice shoddy landlords or a negligent housing agency that let this happen, or perhaps merely the rampant nature of alcoholism, and careless drunks falling asleep with cigarettes. But no. This couldn't be done in the Soviet Union. Why? "Because foreigners might laugh at our misfortune," said the man.
The correspondent was stunned and profoundly touched by this unwitting explanation of Russian insecurity and fear -- predicated, as we know, on the kind of spite that rules in Russia when someone is down and out (the flip side of Russian sentimentality can be Russian cruelty). Laugh at Russia's misfortune? Of course not. A foreigner would only feel pity and a desire to help people caught in a fire. The idea that they'd *laugh* belongs to some twisted realm of a Dostoevsky tale. Where does this stuff come from?!
Or take the ketchup put on the critical sandwich here, about Artyom Loskutov, a performance artist in Novosibirsk. The purpose of this story about the seeming limits of people power would seem straightforward -- if not for the sauce in the center, quoting the analysis of Chto Delat, "a coalition of anti-capitalist and anti-Putin intellectuals". Yes, we like our anti-Putinism in Russia -- but it's gotta come in an anti-capitalist shrink wrap or it can't stay fresh...
Or take this serving up of the story of the Youtube Cop, an amazing "people-power" story from Russia. It can't be told without a side order of anti-Western coleslaw, which this time takes the form of a reference to the dystopian novel Clockwork Orange, about British society gone wrong in the future when droogs-turned-police officers stomp Alex, because that's what police do in capitalist societies, right? So they aren't so different than Russia, right?
Or how about this all-you-can-eat buffet o' bad stuff on Baikal, where the story seems to squarely criticize the Soviet, then Russian governments for the horrible devastation of the lake. To be sure, evil oligarchs were to be blamed for everything now -- more than the Communist government who set the stage and did the worst of the damage. But understood, oligarchs are more of a creature of post-communism corruption than of Western capitalism.
I sensed something was "off," but I had to read it through twice before I finally found the anti-Western seasoning in this other-wise anti-Russian-government tale: turns out that the reason all those Soviet factories had to run full tilt and pollute the environment was due to the arms race -- as if the Soviet Union never did anything bad in and of itself, but ONLY in reaction to the evil imperialist Western military-industrial complex: "Whereas the Soviet pollution of the Baikal was driven by the prerogatives of the arms race..." says Vadim, the current government is motivated only by greed and securing the loyalty of the oligarchs; the last thing it is interested in is loosening the grip of big business. Right. Especially since the oligarchs often trace back to all the Party and KGB and military bosses of the previous era. But I thought the problem with pollution of Lake Baikal began with a celluloid plant? Was the Soviet military making paper airplanes all that time we were nuking it up?!
But just in case, like me, you had to read this "anti-Russia" story twice to actually find the anti-Western salt that leavened the entire piece, there's more Mrs. Dash at the end: "Meanwhile, in an article by Tom Balmforth, Carnegie’s Nikolai Petrov said: “I think it is almost inevitable that the Kremlin will repeal the decision. If you bear in mind that very little can be done by the government in order to pacify the protestors, and if you look at the history of the protest of the oil pipeline – they were a constant headache for the Kremlin”.
So...terrible-awful-thing, there's Putin following decades of Soviet evil pollution and righteous demonstrators today picketing greedy oligarchs (which, um, have no relationship to Putin of course) yet -- not to worry, kids, the Kremlin will repeal the decision. OK, watch this space...
Just about everything Vadim the neo-perestroika-liberal (still trying to find a better term!) writes works like this: "Russia is bad because of the West; Russia is as bad as the West; the West is actually worse than Russia as it has no excuse of an unhappy childhood" etc.
Now, to the lachrymose part.
Vadim asks why we should write about Russia, as if it's the noble avocation of the saints. I can see I need to blog about Russia more to improve my virtue quotient. He asks if people would be motivated by "A shot of post-Cold War schadenfreude?" Yeah, it's a lot like that guy asking the Russian correspondent not to write about the fire, because foreigners will "laugh at our misfortune". Sad...
Vadim rings the victimology chime further (like there are really bloggers out there who write like this!)
A little Roman holiday from our Western malaise to jeer at that vanquished basketcase Russia - the pathetic neighbourhood bully with its smooth-chested comedy-villain president and imperial nostalgia, its impotent bluster, violence and weird taxidermy fixation, its Oriental backwardness - hoping the freak show would make us quit worrying and love our tolerant, peaceful, democratic, free-market selves?
My!
If that’s your bag, then this blog will disappoint; Anne Applebaum and her ilk have long since cornered that used car market.
Station break: as if Anne Applelbaum actually writes like that? Just in case you got lost there going not to an actual Anne Applebaum piece, here it is, because what you find at that other link is this curious statement:
"Applebaum simply lied about the circumstances of her murder, and quite consciously so, when she essentially blamed Klebnikov's inconvenient death, as well as other provincial journalists killed for investigating local corruption, on Putin."
Well, wait. Why isn't Putin responsible, in the sense of any head of state or prime minister with the overwhelming powers of Putin, where governors aren't elected but appointed, prosecuting a war against a minority of that state, who is not ensuring that killings of journalists are prosecuted? In a system with the kind of vertikal that Russia has, Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn't have to put a black stocking over his head and poke out the eye holes and go shoot somebody himself.
By contrast, this blog has tried, however incompletely, to understand why Russia does what it does, rather than simply condemn its actions as the work of some irrational Other.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that some things Russia appears to be behind do seem irrational. Like the nuclear poisoning of Litvinenko. That seems like overkill. Of course, we're told Berezovsky did it. But then, I've always thought Stephen Shenfield's analysis about this was interesting, in that he thought it plausible that the way the Kremlin lets the UK and the West know that it really REALLY is behind the assassination of an FSB defector is if it uses a substance that normally only states can get ahold of, because otherwise, you might think it was just some shadowy cabal of rogue FSB agents freelancing...or something.
Such an approach frightens those people who equate empathy with sympathy; those who see it as a gateway drug that would turn us into Kremlin-operated Manchurian candidates, or those American exceptionists who fear it will erode their faith in ‘my mother – drunk or sober’.
See what I mean by a tear-jerker? I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Wait a minute. I write a protest letter to Putin in the belief that he has oversight and accountability for murdered journalists, and I'm on an Oriental Express to becoming a Manchurian candidate? But I do have empathy with the Russian people. I especially have empathy for one individual Russian person, Anna Politkovskaya, whom I knew and translated for once. I have sorrow for her being killed, and for her relatives and colleagues. Can't that count?
It emphathises with Russia’s rejection of democracy and capitalism after a decade of untold suffering at the hands of Yeltsin, his free-market cronies and their Harvard mentors; without sympathising with its embrace of Putin’s macho authoritarianism.
I told you this was going to be a three-hankie movie. I'm not going to accept that "Harvard mentors" as the only piece of the post-Soviet puzzle -- and I guess I'm a little more...sanguine about the Yeltsin era. I lived in Russia then off and on, and translated Yeltin's books yet I also held him accountable for the war in Chechnya. The question is whether under Yeltin, there was this "untold suffering". I'm not seeing it. I'll never forget rushing to Moscow in 1992 to work for the CBC to cover the "starvation" that was going to occur because of price floating and price hikes. Certain Sovietologists had warned us of the reoccurence of breadlines. We were worried, and thought we'd find hungry pensioners. I'm telling you, we went all over hell's half acre trying to find the marks of crisis that the UN finds in other countries where there is real hunger and...
...we didn't find it. We found lots of people selling stuff all over on every corner and small businesses like music CDs springing up. We went and asked doctors in hospitals if they saw any signs of child malnutrition in the last year since the collapse of the USSR; any fainting old people being brought in who couldn't afford their medicine. No. They talked only about what *might* happen.
I'll never forget this...touching scene. I was instructed by my TV boss to give $100 US dollars (!) to the famous Soviet correspondent Artyom Borovik as a consultant for a TV program, in cash, as he came to the studio to be filmed speaking in flawless English about... the food store line he waited in that morning (!). It was one of the sleaziest things I've ever had to do in a job in my life.
Which brings me to my point about the Yeltsin era. A lot of the titles on the doors changed but the same people from the Soviet era were inside the offices. Or they made banks. There was a lot of corruption, and still is. Still, there was aore engagement and democracy in politics, and much more free media -- and those are real things. I happen to have inlaws who live in the poorest parts of Russia, and perhaps for that reason, my mother-in-law keeps a picture of Yeltsin as a flying angel in the bathroom to ridicule him. There were no doubt people impoverished by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Yeltsin Administration's mismanagement. But...I'll never forget how they admitted in the Kremlin that they couldn't try the Communist Party, or have any kind of lustration process like Czech Republic (or the German process of denazification) because 2/3 of the parliament would have to be fired...So it's a little more complicated than portrayed here with the big crocodile tears about "free-market cronies" who are really only yesterday's KGB agents and "red directors" of the Soviet industrial plants.
And say, big guy, if you don't sympathize with Putin's machismo, then I'm sure you'll see your way clear to admitting that holding Putin accountable for Politkovskaya's murder, as Applebaum and others do, isn't "a lie" but normal behaviour.
It emphathises with Russia’s sense of betrayal over Clinton and Kohl’s broken promises over Nato’s eastward expansion; without sympathising with its meddling in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
*Takes out map*. *Crackle, rustle, pop*. OK, Ukraine is still not a member of NATO. Check! Georgia, isn't either (Whew!) I thought maybe something happened last weekend I missed! Does "eastward expansion" mean Afghanistan? But does Russia formally support the NATO operation in Afghanistan, or...how does that work, exactly, really?
As for meddling in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, I guess that's a reference to Obama's renunciation of that ill-conceived Czech radar thing, which was the kind of unilateral initiative I always thought would be good for the U.S. to take to disarm the constant Russian hysteria about Western arms buildup that masks their own. Wait who's meddling in the Baltics again? And please, awful phenomena like this don't have to be solved by threatening Latvia's independence.
It emphathises with Russia’s anger at Western recognition of Kosovo, without sympathising with its retaliatory occupation of Ossetia.
I'm glad we've settled a debate here that often plagues UN liberal circles, where some diplomats buy the Russian line that this wasn't tit-for-tat -- when it clearly was. It's sort of a curious version of the man at the fire -- a belief that the West recognizes Kosovo not because of its cultural, linguistic and political demands, its suffering from Serbian forces, the long-time oppression it suffered in the Yugoslav Federation, and so on, but merely to piss of Russia and move a piece on the chessboard.
It empathises with Russia’s perception that the Western media is biased against it, without sympathising with its own attempts to curb freedom of speech or deploy government propaganda.
I'm actually not seeing the Western media bias, given that we have such a diverse media diet. I just linked to the Guardian. Is the Guardian biased against Russia? What is "the West" these days, anyway?
It emphathises with the 15 year tragedy of the Caucasus, carpet bombed into oblivion by Yeltsin, finished off by his protégé Putin and raped some more by Putin’s protégé Kadyrov; without sympathising with the suicide bombings or increasing religious radicalism.
Vadim. That seems like a rather fast-forwarded Youtubed version of the Yeltsin era, which included his stopping the first war, and signing that treaty in Khasavurt in November 2006, then the second war which began in August 1999, with Putin becoming president in December 1999 and continuing it. I thought Putin had done some carpet bombing, too, and other bad things in Chechnya. You would not know that the way the sandwich above was constructed with the usual pickles - Yeltsin did the worst thing, Putin did something less, Kadyrov did something even less.
I'm trying to think of anybody in the West who sympathizes with the suicide bombings or increasing religious radicalism (from the Orthodox as well as the Islamic, I'll add, although I don't morally equate them). Ok, I thought awhile and I didn't think of anybody. The media and blogosphere doesn't consist of "those who condemn Yeltsin and Putin both for the Chechen war" and "those who sympathize with suicide bombings" but people who condemn both.
You know, I'm reading iran.ru now, trying to find a condemnation of the suicide bombers, but I didn't get scrolled down that far yet, I guess, because there's so many stories about Iran's burgeoning chicken industry and the historical importance of the Iranian revolution and that scary story about "Democrats Pushing Obama toward War With Iran" (!) which is actually an interview with conservative Pat Buchanan who doesn't seem to call for war in this piece...
It emphathises with socialism’s promise of justice, equality and compassion, without sympathising with the methods and policies employed by the USSR in its name.
I'm the kind of person who tends to emphathise not with socialism's *promise* of justice, equality, and compassion, but capitalism's *delivery* of those goods, but that's just me...
As the late, great British statesman Michael Foot said of Margaret Thatcher: “She has no imagination, and that means no compassion”.
Why are we talking about Margaret Thatcher? She's not my cup of tea, but I thought we were having a blog here about the "biased Western media coverage of Russia"?
And that’s where this blog’s alleged ‘moral relativism’ fits in.
I was hoping you'd explain where your moral relativism comes from!
Better understanding Russia’s actions involves deploying imagination to draw a parallel with one’s native America, to create the effect of putting oneself in another’s shoes.
Well, let me simplify my answer a bit: I like to put myself not only into Vladimir Putin's shoes (which I've done); I like to put myself into Anna Politkovskaya's shoes, too. Fortunately, Russians take their shoes off by the door, so you don't have a problem getting into them.
It is obvious, except perhaps Catherine Fitzpatrick, that such comparisons between the US and Russia require an act of imagination precisely because the two countries are very different. One is a developed (/decaying?) democracy and the other is a developing, still-authoritarian state.
So, Vadim, let me get this contortion I'm supposed to go through clear: even though I can see with my unarmed eyes, so to speak, that Russia and the United States are very, very different, I "must" engage in some sort of Tyutchevian "act of the imagination" to morally equivocate them. Why? And how does this work -- democracies always decay and never develop despite massive infusions of new young people and immigrants, and authoritarian states always get to stay fresh? Pass me the Saran wrap please...
But the two countries are neither so different nor act so differently as to render such comparisons absurd or false. Both are sprawling, multi-ethnic, culturally formidable and militarily assertive nuclear-armed capitalist powers of European extraction, with wide spheres of interest and global reach.
I'd like to go over that "capitalist" part for describing both America and Russia these days, but we can do that another time. I'd like to go over the European extraction part, too, when you get a minute, but I'll wait. I'd like to hear more about Russia's global reach these days, too -- BUT it's a big topic, let's table that thought.
Both struggle with high levels of inequality, racism, cultural arrogance and insularity; both imprison more of their own citizens than any other country; both contain oligarchic tendencies and a residual belief in manifest destiny, bully their smaller neighbours, invade Muslim lands and suffer the terrorist consequences.
Well, with Obama, the first black president, and Surkov the Chechen in the Kremlin, I guess we need to study the "high levels of racism" in our two countries some more, or perhaps account for poverty in other ways. As a diligent moral equivalizer and propagandist, Vadim, because that's what I'm understanding you to be now, you should know that Amerika imprisons MORE people per capita than Russia! Of course, I'm not so sure that the Russians are counting prisoners correctly, as they can have people in that doznaniye stage forever without counting them, and can put people in the LTP and call it "health care" and stuff like that. But, for the sake of a good discussion, let's say that America's imprisonment is *worse* per capita. So let's get on to the next level of this discussion: can you point to some people in the U.S. who are unjustly imprisoned, the way you can in Russia? Start with some big businessmen who are in jail in America but who might really be victims of gross violation of due process and politicization of their case, like Khodorkovsky, ok?
Of course America’s mistreatment of its minorities, dissidents, women and immigrants, or its army’s mistreatment of foreign civilians, is nothing as bad as Russia’s. American CEOs are not neatly as ruthless as Russian oligarchs. America uses smarter bombs on her enemies and her soldiers don’t (any longer) rape widows or steal the watches off the dead bodies. America silences her critics by ignoring rather than poisoning them. America executes her death row inmates only after anaesthesia, rather than with a bullet to the head. America’s gulags are cleaner than Russia’s ever were.
You know, I keep thinking of poor Katrina, consigned to that onion-skinned samizdat called The Washington Post -- oh, the pain, silenced and ignored! And I guess that mistreatment of minorities, women, and immigrants explains why more immigrants keep coming, and Hillary in the State Department is a good example of "America's mistreatment of women," although women are able to use the justice system constantly to defend themselves against dometic violence, for example, and soon, perhaps Hill can take Bam to court for breaking her arm!
Yet these differences, significant as they are, are mainly of degree; quantitative (America tortures fewer people than Russia) rather than qualitative (America is nicer than Russia).
I look at this rather differently. When America is responsible for torture, it has remedies and these remedies are used to stop it. The justice isn't as much as some of us would like, but it's better than something like reversing a general's conviction after he was found guilty of murdering a Chechen woman.
Rather than making us feel smug and superior, seeing the crimes and abuses of Russia - which does its dirty out in the open for all to see - should impel us to scrutinise our own countries, whose crimes and abuses are all too obscured behind the walls of development, democracy, wealth, media bias and the our universal human preference of criticism to self-criticism.
Again, I missed that part where there were people feeling smug and superior. Am not seeing it. I'm also missing the preference of the *American* media to criticize Russia before it criticizes the U.S. government. Please show me those parts.
I'm going to have to leave channeling Steven Lukes for another day, because I'm getting nauseous. But this kind of stuff doesn't make sense to me:
Thus, these parallels are not designed to excuse or explain away Russia’s crimes, not to be less harsh on Russia so much as impel us to be harsher on ourselves; so that by studying Russia, the West can confront many things about itself, and, hopefully, improve.
I think the West has plenty of ways of confronting bad things about itself *and* improving them that aren't at all hitched to Russia. I think you're stretching, Vadim. I think you're making stuff up!
In a previous post, I insisted that the things observers “criticise in modern Russia are not some kind of gross aberrations from Western norms: instead, they lay bare the problems and contradictions of Western society, civilization and culture”.
Well, in one sense, all countries are made up of humans are tend to be pretty much the same everywhere. But, I do think there are some profound differences -- and outcomes -- of the greatest mass murder arguably of Western civilization, by the Nazis, and the greatest mass murder of Eurasian civilization (not Western civilization) by Lenin and Stalin. I bet we're not going to agree on that subject, however; I find those who engage in moral equivalency of Russia and the West have a hard time ever equating Hitler and Stalin, let alone finding the Soviet Union worse in its crimes.
“The suffering of Russia”, writes British academic Peter Duncan describing the idea of Russian messianism, “just like the suffering of Christ or the suffering of the Jewish people, leads to the redemption of the world as a whole. In its more moderate forms, it can mean that Russia simply exists to show the rest of the world a lesson which can be either how to do things, or how not to do things”.
Russia is no messiah. But for the West, it can serve as both a mirror and a warning. That’s why we ought to care about it.
Vadim. I can't light the candles and incense with you here. I've come this far, but now I have to say: you are too far gone. Happy Easter, though!
What's with all the food metaphors? Perhaps you should have taken a writing break and popped into the kitchen for a pita, a pickle, or a sandwich. Or dare I say, all three? By the looks of it, it might have improved the content of your article.
Posted by: Bob Nugget | April 07, 2010 at 02:08 PM
This commentary was cleverly stupid. Ah, the West and capitalism, beacons of hope for humanity! Myopic to say the least.
Posted by: Homelesseus | April 17, 2010 at 06:11 AM
I guess the immigration figures for the United States and the EU countries would tell the story better than my blog, and the beacon of hope for humanity persists even with your cynicism. It's a 7-lane highway going out to those countries, and a cowpath going back.
Posted by: Catherine Fitzpatrick | April 17, 2010 at 11:28 PM