Ghosts of Communism and Stalin Are Roaming Around Russia
This column is written by a Russian friend about Russia and Georgia, but it's even more about the current political system in Russia. While there are many different views about the situation on the border of Georgia – and about who provoked whom – it is clear the Russian response to tensions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia was overkill. Please read what a Russian has to say about the conflict and Russia's current regime.
Spasibo, thank you.
Dear Ellen,
Maybe you remember our conversation in 2007 about the possibility of a third term for Vladimir Putin in the elections in 2008. I remarked that "they (the powers that be) will invent something to ensure Putin's presence in power." Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. Now some people say we have two Presidents in Russia or we have a Prime-President.
My comment that I want to share with you now is about the so-called peace-keeping mission of Russia in South Ossetia. It is not based on information received from official Russian TV channels or the Western news agencies. When the war started, I was in our summer cabin (80 km from Moscow) without access to the TV or Internet. I only listened to my favourite Echo of Moscow radio station and Svoboda. Echo of Moscow is the only democratic radio in Russia (unfortunately it has only 1 million listeners, if I am not mistaken).
A context of some events that preceded the war with Georgia:
Since Putin's era started, I haven't expected anything good. Putin's team of "chekists" (KGB/FSB officers) was gaining momentum during his Presidency. Now they (including representatives of militia and army) compose about 42 percent of the political elite, according to a sociologist, Olga Krishtanovskaya.
Recently some visible conflicts between competitive groups of the "chekists" happened. By the way, it's a new phenomenon here -- public arguments among the representatives of the chekists. One of the chekists published an article about the "chekists' hook" (chekistskii kryuk) on which the country is being hung and is being saved due to chekists' corporations. In his opinion it's good for Russia. There are two kinds of chekists: good guys that are "warriors" and bad guys that are "merchants".
It's a tragedy for Russia that Putin and his team have hung Russia on the chekists' hook. During the last several years, nationalism is being spread among the ordinary citizens, especially the youth, and becomes more aggressive. More and more non-Russians were murdered in Russian cities in this period.
The war against Georgia is an example of a "little victorious war" (malen'kaya pobedonosnaya voina) needed to consolidate power in the hands of the present elite. The "little triumphant war" in Chechnya was used to mobilize Russian society and raise Putin's rating, as the public polls showed in 1999. And now I am sure the war will contribute to raising President Medvedev's rating.
Anti-USA aspirations have continually gained momentum in the country, but during the Georgia-Russia conflict, the US became for Russia as infuriating as red flag for the bull. Many Russians used to accuse the US of double standards, but this war has showed that not only the Kremlin but also the majority of Russian citizens demonstrated double standards.
On the 14th of August this year Sergei Kovalev, a famous human rightist repeated Andrei Sakharov's words: There are big empires, but there are small empires too. Andrei Sakharov meant Georgia and its conflicts with Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia in the beginning of the 1990s. Georgia in its attacks against SO used methods that were practiced by Russia in two wars in Chechnya, using terrible weapons like Grad rockets against peaceful people. But even if you concede that Georgia attacked SO "to restore the constitutional order" (the Kremlin used the same expression to justify the wars in Chechnya) and that Russian peace-keeping forces had to respond (as the official stand says),
There are still questions:
1) Why did Russian peace-keeping forces react after a delay of years?
2) Why did the Kremlin not address international organizations like the UN?
3) Why did the Kremlin condemn the formation of Kosovo, yet support the peoples of SO and Abkhazia in their wish to become independent states?
4) Why did Russia provoke Georgia, providing the citizens of SO and Abkhazia with passports of the Russian Federation long before the present conflict?
As one of the listeners of "Ekho of Moscow" said, "Imagine that the USA gave passports to the people of, say, the Perm region (the Ural mountains). Many people would get them willingly, but that doesn't mean that the USA can come to Russia to defend its 'citizens.'"
There is the letter of the law and the spirit. If one admits that the letter of the law was observed by Russia (though I think not) and the people of SO needed immediate help from the Russian army, then all the same, it's hard to see Russian tanks on the territory of a foreign state, Georgia.
It reminds me of Czechoslovakia.
My conclusions:
1) The presidential term (two consecutive four years at a maximum) shouldn’t be "prolonged" as happened in Russia when the former President became the Prime Minister. The government remains too influential, given there is no strong civil society, no political (parliamentary and party) institutions to oppose his politics.
2) The “chekists' hook" is too dangerous for Russia. The mentality of the chekists is too far from "new thinking" and general human values.
3) Not only the Kremlin, but also the ordinary citizens support imperial chauvinistic thinking: about 75 percent of respondents want the Russian army to stay in SO
4) Gas and fuel became the weapon for Russia to put pressure on Europe. Some authors think that gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea was the aim for bombing to defend the interests of the Russian gas state corporations.
5) Russia is in isolation in international politics after the invasion of Georgia. That's bad. As political scientist Oreshkin says, in practically all former Soviet republics, there are Russian citizens (as in SO and Abkhazia) and nobody in the former Soviet republics wants the Russian army to intervene and to form independent states within the borders of the former republics.
6) To understand the Kremlin's policy and the situation in Russia read (in English) "Russian Diary" by Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed almost two years ago.
7) I don't want the worsening of relations between Russia and the West, Russia and the USA.
In 1989 I won a contest organized by one of the Soviet journals and became a participant of the project "Soviets Meet Middle America". The project was initiated by the Fund for Social Initiatives in San Francisco. I was so impressed by what I have seen in the USA. The Iron Curtain was raised for me personally (for the first time in my life) and I don't want to pull it down again. Our cultures are so different in many ways. How to understand each other? About 20 years passed since perestroika has been started. Why is there mistrust and hatred yet? Who is responsible for that? What can we do? We must find a common language to talk to each other.
Lots of what she says about the faults of the Russian leadership,ound just like what we say about USA leadereship. We are two sides of the same "Cold War" coin!
But I'm really disturbed by the US and Georgian roles in all of this and by some of the American rhetoric. Many American commentators have sounded as if Russia is an aggressive dictatorship while Georgia is a democracy that did nothing to deserve this. My view is that Russia and Georgia are about morally equivalent. The only difference is that Russia is a lot more powerful, so it can do more damage. Both Russia and Georgia are democracies in the narrow sense that they have elections. But both also have numerous violations of democratic norms, like freedom of speech and elections free of manipulation. Both want to suppress a much smaller neighbor - or, in Georgia's case, two neighbors. SO and Abkhazia. (Russia, at least, acknowledges Georgia's right to independence.) Both use military force to ensure their dominance. This time, Georgia started the fight, but Russia overreacted.
Russia's overreaction is understandable when you consider the US is pushing for Georgia and Ukraine, both former SSRs, to join NATO and has already succeeded in bringing 3 other former SSRs and half a dozen former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. This is about equivalent to the Soviet Union pushing to have nearly a dozen Latin American countries join the Warsaw Pact. The US has claimed this entire century as its sphere of influence since the Monroe Doctrine was promulgated in 1823. This was long before we were any kind of international power. Why are we challenging Russia's dominance of its traditional sphere of influence and even of countries that were historically for centuries part of the same nation-state?
The US of all countries should understand why Russia might want to act like a great power in its traditional area. We have no basis for acting morally superior. We also have no basis for angling to get into another damned war. McCain's statement "We are all Georgians" (implying we should consider ourselves attacked) is pretty frightening to me.