Russia: Other Points of View

Perspectives on Russia: June 2015

Hi Friends, 

In the narrative I wrote about the Volgograd trip, I'd hoped you could get insights that were wrapped into the stories mentioned. A few questions have arisen, so it seems appropriate to share my personal "take aways" from this trip last month. 

FYI:  Our group of 20 citizen diplomats was composed of several travelers who had NEVER been to Russia. For them the trip was a new travelogue with Russian faces, discussions, home visits, and businesses appearing every few hours for the entire trip. I think all would say it was a real eye-opening experience. For others who had been there one or more times, they were shocked at the physical changes in Russia and the Russian people since they last traveled there.  For several who have traveled to Russia multiple times over the past dozen years, they had kept up with Russia's progress, and were fascinated to see into small and large private businesses, think tanks, have frank discussions with many new Russians––even for these watchful observers, Russia is still changing for the better.  Last for me, it was intriguing to see how ordinary (and not so ordinary) Russians are faring under the US sanctions and the loss of European trading partners. Of course, depending on with whom one talks, one gets different points of view. The following represents the opinions of the bulk of those Russians with whom I spoke.

1.  The most startling fact for me is how well Russian people are withstanding being cut off from their normal long-standing markets and trading partners in Europe––and how they are faring since their ruble lost about half of its value in the past year. They were concerned about how long this period might last, but none registered serious fear or diffuse apprehension.  Unlike us, Russians have gone through so much worse in their past. This is apparently rather small by comparison. 

2.  Next, how healthy and vibrant Russia looks today. Not in my 32 years of traveling around Russia has this country looked so prosperous and orderly.  It definitely doesn't look like an isolated country under sanctions. It looks like a healthy, robust place with a great deal of modernity present everywhere.                                        

3.  There is a definite pride in Russia's citizenry that I had not seen previously. Today Russians respect themselves and their country, as opposed to the former years when, when to one degree or another, they seemed burdened with insecurities and self-doubt. 

4.  Russia's structures, from 18th century buildings to today's skyscrapers, are well kept these days. Unlike yesteryear, streets and sidewalks are clean.  We traveled by metros, minibuses, and cars inside these cities––and across the countrysides by train and occasionally by cars. Highways are finally in good shape, city streets also, and they are as well marked as ours––this is new. Pedestrians have the right away with traffic now! We saw few dilapidated houses, except for rows of original wooden houses in Volgograd.  Russia's villages are disappearing which is a great loss to those who still revere village life. Khrushchev's five-story apartment buildings are being razed with numerous elegant residential buildings going up in each city. I counted 19 cranes from one vantage point in Ekaterinburg. 

5.  Beauty and Russian classicism "are back" in Russia.  Having survived the ugliness of the Soviet period, the bleakness and breakdown of the 1990s, Russian designers and architects have finally come upon classic styles for new building construction and decorating. 

6.  It seems to me that Russian people have found their comfort zone.  They don't aspire to be like Americans or Europeans or anyone else.  They feel good about being Russian and belonging to Russia. I think this is due to finally settling into their "national idea" of themselves (a combination of classicism from the Tsarist era including the re-emerging Russian Orthodox faith, built-in social services from the Soviet era, plus a renewed sense of Russia's cutting edge scientists and the Russian nation rising in the world. They have been searching for "what" Russia would become since the 1980s and no doubt even earlier. They appear to have internally settled this issue for the present.

7. Russians are open and honest that they have a long road ahead of them, seeing that there is much to do to refine civic responsibility, law and order,  health care, social issues, democratizing issues and to get corruption under control. 

8. Russians know they are a major country coming up in the world, yet one gets no sense that they are hungry for power.  They aspire to be part of a developing multipolar world, where nations cooperate as opposed to break into competing alliances. I agree, this is the only way that makes sense at this juncture of our world's evolution. Russians are still a modest people, and not given to grandiosity or exceptionalism, in private or in public.

9.  Russian people are still questioning what system will be best for them to develop.  Is it American Democracy? No.  Is it full blown Socialism? No.  Is it full Capitalism?  No.  Is it private sectorism,  yes, definitely.   It is some combination of these with plenty of safeguards to support excellent education, culture, the needs of children, the disabled and pensioners, etc.  

10. Political system: They seem to still be searching for what's best for Russia ….  but are comfortable with their current trajectory at the moment.  Putin's approval rate in the Levada independent poll this week is  89%––probably the highest in the world for a Head of State.  Are there those who dislike Putin, who think he should vacate the presidency and make room for someone younger without a KGB background?  Definitely.  Frequently they are the younger educated males in the major cities who believe that Putin is the root of all of Russia's challenges in the world. Those with whom I had long discussions have a lot of holes in their perceptions.  They are a thin minority but it's good for Russian society for them to exercise other points of view––even if most won't agree with them. 

11. Personal freedoms:  Most Russians have the main freedoms that they cherish.  Remembering communism, they feel great that they can travel abroad at will, be safe in their homes, safe on their streets, choose any kind of work they wish, move wherever they want, educate their children as they please, read whatever they like, have whatever friends they wish, and they are glad to lead a normal life in Russia. There are Russians who push for more freedoms, they too are good for society. However, those who do such acts as desecrating the National Cathedral are not among them. Average Russians don't respect exhibitionism in any form.

12.What would Russians change, if they could?  First of all they wish for fewer taxes, less bureaucracy, less corruption and more incentives for private business.  They want a more highly organized and efficient society. They want to better understand how to innovate and instigate new levels of Russian production.

13. Russians want to build the great society for themselves and for anyone who comes there to live. They don't tolerate outsiders' ideas of how to build their country. They are frank …. if you come to Russia to live, you are expected to learn the language, live by Russian laws, work and support yourself. You don't go to Russia in order to change it. Russians themselves have the right to change Russia, but foreigners do not.

14. Russians want to help develop a more egalitarian world, one that supports growth and also takes care of societies' less advantaged peoples. 

15. Russians and their leadership in the Kremlin and elsewhere have ZERO interest in taking over more land.  Nothing would cripple them more quickly than having angry Estonians, Latvians or Ukrainians under their roof.  In addition, Russia has more land than they can use. They have more natural resources than they can extract and use/sell over the next 50 years. As far as Crimea goes, they and the Crimeans have understood themselves as the same people for centuries.  But for a drunk Khrushchev who gave Crimea to Ukraine without consulting the Crimeans in 1954, Crimea would have been part of Russia up to this day.  Rumors that Russia will take any of the Soviet space back into Russia, including Ukraine, are pure fabrications to benefit the objectives of those who are trying to reduce Russia's ability to be competitive in the world. 

 Sharon Tennison

June 2015

NEMTSOV'S MURDER

Friends,  

I want to get a note out to you as the publicity mounts over the Boris Nemtsov murder.

Secondly, none of us have any idea who ordered or carried out the killing of Nemtsov––and we may never know.

We do know that America's mainstream media will construe this as a murder instigated by Vladimir Putin.

I will give you my thoughts on Nemtsov and this tragic happening.

I've watched Boris Nemtsov since he first came on the scene as a seemingly "brilliant" young Governor from Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in the early 1990s.  He came to Moscow where he tried his hand at various posts and activities surrounding the Yeltsin government and was one of the many Vice Premiers.  At that time numbers of active young Russian men (and a few women) were vying for the different new positions that were opening up in Moscow.  The competition was fierce and the movement was constant.

I had such high hope for Nemtsov!  He was very verbal, always out in front founding one organization or another.  After a while it became clear to me that Nemtsov could be a good front person, but he couldn't seem to come up with rational, organized proposals for bringing the New Russia into some semblance of order and stability.  In the 1990s both were imperative.  Russia was a wild, uncontrolled, increasingly criminal place following the implosion of the USSR.  Old laws were gone, new laws were yet to be written, the ruble was worthless, corruption was rampant,  murders were occurring daily.  Russian people were forced to survive on bartering of anything they had, that someone else might want.  The country was in dire straits and the situation begged for solutions -- or proposals for how to survive this mass chaos, lawlessness and criminality. 

Nemtsov was always out in front making speeches, getting attention, but short on planning or solution making.  Many of us realized this and scanned the scene looking for other young personalities who might be sufficiently organized to get Russia moving beyond its deep mire before it collapsed and fragmented.  

It seemed to me from there on, Nemtsov was passed over, yet he was still around making himself known. He gravitated toward becoming an opposition voice where he remained until his demise, I supposed due to the fact that was the only role open for him.

I always thought of him as having an excellent"out there" personality, but not enough instinctive skills to meet Russia's need at the time––and it was unfortunate that he became somewhat of a "poor loser", criticizing others who had gone on beyond him.  However, this was true of quite a few Russians who floated around the periphery at that time.  It seems this is not uncommon for people who have extrovert personalities, loud voices and large aspirations, yet don't have the well-honed instincts to move up the ladders to positions for which they yearn. 

Would Putin have wanted Nemtsov dead?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

He would have done anything possible to prevent  it -- along with the sordid accusations that invariably will come from the West.

Nemtsov was a nobody to Putin and the Russian population.

Anything he complained of had been complained about by others over and over -- it was old stuff. 

Information about corruption around Sochi events?  The pros/cons on this are old and well rehearsed by many.

Stopping the demonstration in Moscow?  It was to be tiny -- why would Putin be interested in this?

In my opinion, Nemtsov's murder was either some unknown personal vendetta, a business deal gone sour or perhaps something surrounding the 20-year-old he was with ….

…. but more likely this murder contract was carried out to create more negative publicity with which to demonize Putin. 

So let's watch how it plays out.  

All the best,  Sharon

UKRAINE: Unwittingly becoming sponsor of neo-fascist terrorism in Ukraine?

Friends,  

Terrorist-expert, Dr. Gordon Hawn, explains the grave danger in Washington's sponsorship of "neo-fascist or neo-nazi" terrorism in Ukraine. This group of West Ukrainians were of European extract, their parents fought in WWII with the Nazis, and their families were caught in Ukraine in 1945 when the post-war spoils were being divided up and new defining country lines were drawn. It is  understandable that they were outraged to find themselves inside the USSR and forced to stay there.  However, that doesn't give them the right today to force their will upon East Ukrainians who have been for the most part satisfied with their 300-year Russian history, culture, language and mentality.  Please read carefully to understand what numerous other articles have alluded to, yet didn't explain so carefully.

Sharon

http://geostrategicforecasting.net

May 18, 2014
Terrorism in Ukraine
By Gordon M. Hahn

The West, in particular the U.S. government, is in grave danger of unwittingly becoming the sponsor of neo-fascist terrorism in Ukraine. Neither the Barack Obama administration nor U.S. media have focused a single word on the neo-Nazi terrorist threat hanging over Ukraine and its neighbors. In fact, in a recent hearing when U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the architect of Ukraine's chaos and impending demise, to denounce the neo-fascists allied with the Maidan provisional government.  Nuland refused, muttering words about grandmothers and children who in her mind led the Kiev's Maidan revolution.

RUSSIA: NOT ENEMY OF WORLD PEACE AFTER ALL

COMMENTARY

by Patrick Armstrong

Ukrainians have lately been subjected to a barrage of propaganda and speechifying, especially from Americans. From John McCain’s end of the American political spectrum (“the destiny you seek lies in Europe”) to Victoria Nuland’s (“the United States stands with the people of Ukraine”), they have appeared in Kiev to encourage Ukrainians to sign up for the EU association. Obviously these two believe that Ukrainians agree that Moscow is a hostile troublemaker and not the destiny they seek and that the USA is their friend and standing with them. Or something like that.

We have an poll that sheds a little light on how the world really regards Russia and the USA. For some years WIN/Gallop International, an association of some of the biggest opinion polling companies in the world, has conducted an End of Year survey. For 2013, surveys were run in 65 countries with a total sample of about 66,000. The country-by-country results may be found here. The eighth question asked in each country was: “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”

The results are quite interesting. Overall 24% of the world’s population named the USA as the greatest threat, well ahead of second-place Pakistan at 8%. Russia was so far back in the running, it wasn’t mentioned in the summary reports.

54% of Russians named the USA as the greatest threat to peace. The anti-Russia mob will of course spin this as ineluctable proof of Russia’s eternal hostility (number-one geopolitical foe and all that) but one consideration alone should hold them: Putin did, after all, prevent an American military operation in Syria that, based on the Libyan time line of 226 days, would still be bombing away right now; Russians have heard a great deal about that diplomatic achievement. So it shouldn’t be surprising that after that (and Libya and Iraq, NATO expansion, missile defence and all the rest) Russians might feel that way. By the way 3% of Russians named Russia itself, in fifth place behind China, Iraq and Syria.

PUTIN 2.0 - YEAR ONE

By Gordon M. Hahn

It has been just about a year since Vladimir Putin 2.0 was inaugurated in the Kremlin as Russian president.  He was succeeding his own interregnum successor Prime Minister Dmitrii Medvedev and the liberalization policy carried out under the Medvedev-Putin tandem, referred to be the present author first as a ‘thaw’ and then with deepening liberalization, ‘perestroika 2.0. 

Perestroika 2.0 left several tasks unresolved: democratization, market liberalization, and political instability characterized by opposition mobilization, splitting within the Putin elite, and a malaise among Putin’s constituency within the population.  With Putin’s return to the Kremlin, democratization and market liberalization were no longer near the top of the agenda; stabilizing politics moved unequically to the top.  This does not mean that democratization and marketization are off limits for the mid- to long-term, but rather that they will not be pursued as ends in and of themselves and without pressure from below exerted by the opposition or external circumstances.

With political stabilization at the top of the agenda, Putin needed to accomplish three tasks: weaken the street opposition, consolidate the elite, and re-mobilize his popular constituencies.         

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Adoptions. Putin would have been wiser to have vetoed the adoption ban and forced parliament to overturn it (Art 107.3): it has become the latest leitmotif of anti-Russia propagandists and has taken attention away from the equally absurd Magnitskiy Bill. But here we are. Protests in Moscow, St Petersburg and some other cities against it on Sunday attracted maybe 20K in total and have given the opposition something new to object to. There is said to be a petition calling for its ban and some opposition deputies are going to attempt to have it overturned in the Duma. And, as always in Russia, it’s far from clear exactly what the ban affects. However it wasn’t just a reaction to the Magnitskiy Bill: 19 adopted Russian children (out of about 40,000) have been done to death by their adopters in the USA (here’s one, another and an abuse trial) and there have been misgivings in Russia for years. (The usual “news” sources pretend the 19 are the total number of adoptees who have died). Putin complained that existing treaties are useless for allowing access by consular officials (federal-state jurisdictions are apparently the problem). So there is some background here.

Malfeasance. The OboronServis case continues with another arrest of a senior official and probably another one to come. Meanwhile the former Defence Minister refused to testify to the Investigative Committee, giving a written response instead. So this case is neither over nor is it being swept under the rug and nor is Serdyukov out of it. The St Petersburg corruption case has seen another arrest. Defence Minister Shoygu dismissed a senior military doctor following the deaths of some soldiers from pneumonia. Another police crime.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Putin. On the 12^th Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly and on the 20^th his marathon press conference (not such bad health, after all). Nothing new – principal emphasis on domestic issues: corruption, qualitative growth, infrastructure and transparency. Foreign issues are what we’ve heard for years: Russia will pursue its own interests and resist being pushed around. An understandable pride in the Team’s achievements: from the press conference, in the last ten years “we have nearly doubled the country's GDP… We have increased the real incomes of the population by several fold…. The birth rate is the best in 20 years. We are taking the necessary steps, it is not enough so far, but progress is evident in healthcare, education and so on.” And, as always, slow and steady is what he wants in Russia and in the world. Perhaps it would not be too much of a stretch to say Putin I was about stopping the downward momentum; Medvedev was about loosening things up and starting towards qualitative growth; Putin II will be a continuation of that and, perhaps, (quite a lot in the Federation Council speech) a heavy attack on corruption. But, I say again: same program, same team.

Dima Yakovlev Bill. So named after a baby who died from negligence, the bill passed both houses with heavy support and Putin signed it into law. It’s retaliation for the US “Magnitskiy Bill” (and in my opinion a rather ineffective and misguided one. Although some amusing reactions: “callousness unusual even by Vladimir Putin’s standards” and the US Senate is offended.). There are a number of adoptions already in the pipeline; it’s not clear what will happen in these cases but Prokhorov says his Civic Platform party (ie he) will pay $50,000 to Russian families that adopt one of them.

PUTIN AND RUSSIANS NEED A BREAK

REPRINTS

Should Russia copy the American model of democracy? Former U.S. Consul General in St. Petersburg John Evans explains why it shouldn't.

September 17, 2012
by John Evans http://rbth.ru/articles/2012/

This past summer has been a dispiriting one for U.S.-Russian relations, and the prospects arising from the U.S. presidential campaign  now underway are even less encouraging. One of the many misconceptions that Americans had about Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union was that it would embrace Western democracy – preferably a two-party system like ours – and soon become something like, say, France.  We were wrong in our prediction.  Russia has always been on her own trajectory, just as every nation fundamentally is. 

Why do we think Russia ought to resemble the United States?  One would like to trace it back to what Alexis de Tocqueville said in “Democracy in America.” “Each of [these nations] seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the world,” but one doubts that is the source.  So why is it that we Americans are so obsessively interested – and usually agitated – by shortcomings we observe in Russia?  During the competition between two opposing social systems during the Cold War, it was perhaps understandable, but now?
 
First of all, Americans still confuse “Russia” and “Russians” with the “Soviet Union” and “Soviets.”  It is embarrassing to note the frequency with which speakers on Russian affairs here in Washington still – more than two decades after the collapse of the Soviet empire – make that simple slip of the tongue and refer to “Soviets,” when clearly “Russians” would be appropriate.  When a major presidential candidate declares that Russia is the “number one foe” of the United States, that is more than a lapsus linguae; however, the failure to distinguish between the two is part of a larger, and regrettable, pattern.

PERESTROIKA 2.0 AND THE MOSCOW SPRING

REPRINTS

This article was originally published by Fair Observer  on May 11, 2012

The fruits of Putinism and the Putin-Medvedev tandem.

As the Russian winter turns to spring, the country has seen a return to opposition politics, political competition, and dissent within the corridors of power, and the election of a more opposition-minded parliament and an all-too-familiar president. Regardless of what US mainstream media and academia have told you, the liberalization and re-democratization of the winter-spring transition from the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev to that of Vladimir Putin are nothing new. December’s watershed events were the logical outcome of a four-year-long process that marks Russia’s return to democratization and market reforms and perhaps a longer-term transition without revolutionary excesses preferred by Putin.

The pro-Kremlin United Russia party’s poor showing in December’s Duma elections, along with the mass demonstrations for free and fair elections and the re-democratization proposals introduced by Medvedev in their aftermath, should not have been a surprise. Sovietological groupthink made Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika 1.0, Boris Yeltsin’s revolution from above, and that revolution’s failure to quickly bring democracy surprising, and russological groupthink has left us unprepared for Medvedev’s long-denied thaw and Perestroika 2.0. The new Moscow spring and Perestroika 2.0 are real and need to be properly understood by presidential candidates and policymakers alike.

THE THAW AT THE POLLS: TANDEM'S LIBERALIZATION POLICY ROCKS THE VOTE

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

Sunday’s election to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, was stunning.  As I expected, it registered a sharp decline in support for the pro-Kremlin United Russia (Yedinaya Rossiya or YeR) led by President Dmitrii Medvedev and Prime Minister and Vladimir Putin, showed a significantly freer and fairer voting and counting process, but a continuing uneven playing field during the pre-election campaign favoring the United Russia (YeR).  Voters delivered a strong message of rebuke to the YeR for ongoing corruption, limited economic opportunity, and bureaucratic arbitrariness.  Perhaps more important though, the results appear to show that the level of fraud was much more limited than in past elections and cut across party lines, benefiting all parties more or less equally and thus not affording the YeR any significant advantage.  Less fraud and equal opportunity fraud helped shape the sharp decline in YeR support.

As usual, the Washington Post and New York Times produced knee-jerk, ready-made responses to the vote that reflected neither of the vote’s two main outcomes.  A Post editorial characterized the vote as nothing but a “farce” and focused on several of the most arbitrary administrative measures (“The Farce of Russia’s Elections,” Washington Post, 5 December 2011).  The NYT simply reported the OSCE’s assessment that there was an uneven playing field and significant voting irregularies, but it left out the first sentence and almost all the positive OSCE remarks in the following excerpt from the OSCE’s initial report: “The observers also noted that the legal framework had been improved in some respects and televised debates for all parties provided one level platform for contestants.  On election day, voting was well organized overall, but the quality of the process deteriorated considerably during the count, which was characterized by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including serious indications of ballot box stuffing.  

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