The once venerable Cold War U.S. media outlet, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty unfortunately sunk to a new low when it wrote on the recent anniversary of 9/11. RFERL translated and posted an article by one Aleksandr Ryklin titled "Dmitry Medvedev's Laughable Call For Reform" which it accompanied with the rather disingenuine disclaimer that the article did not represent the view of RFERL's editors.
In fact, this sophomoric article was translated from the Russian website of the liberal Yezhednevny zhurnal (Daily journal) and printed because it agrees with RFERL leadership. The article was disdainful and cynical in its attitude toward the Russian president in a way reminiscent of how many Sovietologists rejected out of hand that Mikhail Gorbachev might institute serious reforms.
Let's take a look at some of what the author scribbled: "My first reaction when I read the piece was a desire to copy it and rework it a bit. For example, maybe put it on a pink background and decorate it with flowers here and there. To mark out particular paragraphs with lipstick kisses and others with smiley faces." Does this sound like serious journalism? It captures the article's overall smug attitude, 'analytical' approach, and low intellectual level. Just because this article appeared on a liberal Russian website is no excuse to reprint it. The article contains no serious commentary or analysis.
The intent of the author was to criticize Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's article "Forward Russia!" posted on Gazeta.ru on September 10. He found the president's article "funny" and charming," and that is all.
Stretching one's standards to the bare minimum one might be able to accept this adolescent presentation if the author had been writing about an unimportant entry on the president's blog or for a media organ that never had the stature that RFERL once had and deserved.
Serious analysts both in Russia and the West, including the present one, regard Medvedev's recent article as perhaps seminal. It is being interpreted as yet another sign that Medvedev may very well be serious about reform and a radical, if gradual departure, from the Putin presidency.
Let's examine what was in fact so "laughable" about Medvedev's article. Was it laughable that Medvedev laid out his vision of a democratic Russia? "Russia's political system also will be maximally open, flexible, and internally complex. It will be adequate for a dynamic, advanced, transparent and multifarious social structure and respond to the political culture of free, well-off, critically thinking and confident people. As in the majority of democratic states, the leaders in the political struggle will be parliamentary parties that periodically replace each other in power."
Further in the article, referring to this year's minor political reforms, he stated that we began movement towards creation of such a political system. Further down, he stressed: "Democracy needs protection, as do the basic rights and freedoms of our citizens need protection; protection first of all from corruption, which produces arbitrariness of power, non-freedom, and injustice. We have only just begun formation of such a protection mechanism." He then placed the courts and judges at the center of such a mechanism.
What is interesting about these statements is that the Russian president neither states nor insinuates that Russia IS a democracy, as Putin sometimes has done. He says Russia WILL BE a democracy and stresses that movement toward democracy and a law-based statement is really only now just beginning.
Medvedev's targeting of corruption was honed more sharply to include broad political and social reform that would step on the toes of much of the Putin era elite. In fact Medvedev specifically sent a bold warning shot over the bow of that elite in his article's closing paragraph:
"They are trying to hinder our work; influential groups
of bought bureaucrats and don-nothing 'entrepreneurs. They are well positioned. They 'have everything.' Everything suits them just fine. They plan to squeeze out revenues from the remnants of the
Soviet industry and squander the natural riches that belong to us all. But the future does not belong to them. It belongs to us. Those like us are in the absolute majority. We will act. (We will act) patiently, pragmatically, thoroughly, and prudently. (We will) act right now. Act tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We will overcome crisis, backwardness, and corruption. We will create a new Russia. Forward Russia!"
This reads like a declaration of war against the state oligarchs from the FSB and other siloviki who rose to the summit of political and economic power under Putin. I wrote well over a year ago and since then ROPV has been demonstrating that Medvedev and Putin either have different visions about re-democratization or are agreed that one is needed. I also argued over a year ago that Medvedev was in fact already beginning a gradual thaw ("Is A Russian 'Thaw' Coming?" Russia: Other Points of View, 18 April 2008). Significant if less than bold reforms began with the electoral system reforms, the campaign against corruption, and limited judicial and more recently police reforms.
However, if RFERL and Ryklin are right that Medvedev is only about words and not deeds, then this is no less significant. The Soviet leadership also claimed to provide democracy, justice, peace, and all manner of human, political, and civil rights. When the dissident movement began to 'take them at their word' and implore the Kremlin to carry out the empty stipulations in the Soviet constitution and the promise implied by the Soviet leader's signature on the Helsinki accords, it gravely damaged the Soviet communist regime's prestige. This, in part, prompted Gorbachev's perestroika. Therefore, Medvedev's promises of democratic political and judicial reforms will have an earthshaking political impact by demonstrating either the vacuousness or veracity of the Russian leadership's pretensions of unity and democracy. Even in this way Medvedev's article is no joke.
The often good publication, Yezhednevny zhurnal, where Ryklin's article appeared in Russian, represents in part a certain traditional trend within the radically liberal Russian intelligentsia. For some good reasons, such as the Russian authorities' traditional distance from the people, this wing of the intelligentsia is rabidly cynical and uncompromisingly predisposed to the authorities and anyone even tangentially associated with them. In the course of Russian history, this radical trend has always preferred revolutionary change to reform. It brought Russia the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881, just hours after he had approved a series of reforms that would have transformed Russian autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. It brought Russia the assassination of Russia's great reformist Prime Minister Pytor Stolypin in 1910, the demise of whom helped produce the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks' rise to power. It brought Russia and the Soviet Union, through its support of radical and opportunistic state apparatchiks in Moscow and elsewhere, Boris Yeltsin's chaotic and in many ways irresponsible revolution from above in the early 1990s, fomented against the reformer Gorbachev. Few would support the view that these revolutions brought Russia a better outcome than the reforms they scuttled might have.
Now the Russian intelligentsia's perhaps understandable but no less unhelpful cynicism is set to deprive Medvedev of the support he will need if he seeks to mobilize the population against the bureaucracy through the strengthening of democratic institutions. Instead, it is poised to jump on any opening to conduct mass rallies, probably demanding Putin's and Medvedev's resignation. This will only strengthen the bureaucracy's hand, especially that portion responsible for 'law and order' - the siloviki, scuttling yet another Russian attempt at democratic reforms. The alliance between such Russian radicals and some Western governmental and non-governmental organizations represented by RFERL's publication of Ryklin's article only serves to further strengthen the siloviki.
Westerners would do better to ally themselves with moderate
liberals who genuinely support Western style democracy but who also do not reject
out-of-hand cooperation with albeit limited, albeit, number of reformist
authorities across Russia. The
potential of such an alliance is reflected in Medvedev's publication of his
article on the liberal website, Gazeta.ru, his visit with Novaya gazeta's
editor and Mikhail Gorbachev in spring and much else. Otherwise, the outcome for both Russia and the West is
likely to be another tragic story of lost opportunity and a world split apart
along the Russia-West fault line.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ARTICLE IN QUESTION
RFE/RL September 11, 2009 Dmitry Medvedev's Laughable Call For Reform By Aleksandr
Ryklin Aleksandr Ryklin is a Moscow-based commentator. The views
expressed in this commentary, which originally appeared on the website
"Yezhedenevny zhurnal," are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL So the president of Russia continues his effort to conquer
the Internet space. Dmitry Medvedev's article "Russia,
Forward!" which appeared on gazeta.ru on September 10, is charming. Its
charm is unqualified and unconditional -- I'd even say that it is
absolute. At least it would be hard for me to imagine anything more
charming. My first reaction when I read the piece was a desire to copy
it and rework it a bit. For example, maybe put it on a pink
background and decorate it with flowers here and there. To mark out
particular paragraphs with lipstick kisses and others with smiley
faces. After completing the article, my reaction was a feeling of discomfort. For myself mostly. (After all, he is writing to
me! It says right there in the preface: "The article being
published today was written to convey to you, to all citizens of
Russia...") Why did I read it? Don't I have anything better to read? Why, for his sake, of
course. After all, no grown-up, self-respecting person should appear so pathetic.
They shouldn't so openly and publicly display their own
helplessness. On the other hand, people shouldn't so brazenly and with
such open, unconcealed cynicism demonstrate their complete contempt and
spite for the intellectual abilities of the population temporarily
under their power. He isn't taking just me for an idiot, but
everyone in the country. So I also felt discomfort on behalf of the
country. Playing For Laughs As soon as I read it, I was asking myself: What is this? A
cry of the soul? A suicide note? A letter to Vladimir Putin? To his
wife? To posterity? To historians? No, no, my friends. This letter is
addressed first and foremost to idiots. But you and I are
not idiots. At least, not all of us. That's why it's just funny for us to read: "The global
economic crisis has shown that the situation here is far from ideal.
Twenty years of stormy transformations have still not ridded our
country of its humiliating dependence on natural resources." Was
this really not obvious before the crisis? That's why it's funny for us when we read: "Democratic
institutions as a whole have been formed and stabilized, but their
quality is far from ideal. Civil society is weak, and the level of
self-organization and self-management is low." After all, isn't it you,
Mr. President, and your team (which, of course, is not really yours but
Putin's) who have been trampling those very "democratic
institutions" and smashing into the asphalt the sprouts of our "civil
society" all these last years? And now you act surprised that "their quality is
far from ideal"? That's why it's funny for us to read: "With each year,
there are fewer of us." Indeed -- with each passing year there
are more of YOU and fewer of US. List Of Ills That's why it's funny for us to read: "An ineffective
economy, a semi-Soviet social sphere, an unformed democracy, negative demographic tendencies, an unstable Caucasus. These are very
big problems, even for a state like Russia." And after this
apocalyptic account, we hear the following darling phrase: "Of
course, one shouldn't lay it on thick." But maybe we should lay it
on thick? Maybe we should name those who are to blame for all these
unexpected misfortunes raining down on our long-suffering country? That's why it's funny for us to read: "Bribe taking,
thievery, mental and spiritual laziness, drunkenness -- these are the vices
that shame our traditions. We must rid ourselves of them using the most
decisive means." To whom are you attributing these vices, which are so
offensive to YOUR traditions? To you yourself? To your family? To your
friends? Oh, I see, you are talking about us. Well, then, of
course... That's why it's funny for us to read: "We are living in
a truly new time. And not only because it is moving forward, like time always
does." I'm even embarrassed to explain why this is funny, but it
had me laughing my ass off. That's why it's funny for us to read: "We really are living
in a unique time. We have a chance to build a new, free,
prosperous, strong Russia." This is funny because we perfectly well understand that with
you around there is no such chance _ never has been and never
will. Russia, probably, has a chance, but without you. Only
without you. That's why it's funny for us to read: "Talented people,
striving for renewal, capable of creating something new and better are
not going to fly down to us from some other planet. They are here,
among us." Of course, they are here for now, among us, but they are in
a plastic cage. And pretty soon they'll head back to their prison camp
in Chita Oblast. Who's Protecting Whom? That's why it's funny for us to read: "The
dissemination of modern information technologies, which we will do everything
possible to facilitate, give us an unprecedented opportunity to realize
such fundamental political liberties as freedom of speech and of
assembly." Here we are simply laughing ourselves to death. One just
wants to add one little detail to his amazing sentence. Something like,
"the dissemination of modern information technologies among
agents of the security services..." That's why it's funny for us to read: "We must also rid
ourselves of our contempt for law and the courts, which, as I have said
many times, has become our sad 'tradition.'" Here he is
talking about HIS tradition. We haven't had the chance to despise our judges.
Maybe if one were given a real prison term, then we'd be happy to
despise him. That's why it's funny for us to read: "Many times, it
was Russia who extended protection to small nations who encountered threats
of enslavement or destruction. This happened again quite
recently, when the Saakashvili regime launched a criminal attack against
South Ossetia. More than once the aggressive plans of those who
sought to dominate the world were destroyed. Twice Russia was in the
forefront of great coalitions -- in the 19th century, to stop Napoleon
and in the 20th, to destroy the Nazis." But such things
probably aren't funny to Putin. He probably isn't too happy that Medvedev
put Saakashvili on a par with Napoleon, who -- if my memory
serves me right -- Tsar Aleksandr I first promised to hang by the
balls. (Calm down, committee on the falsification of history. That was
just a joke.) That's why it's funny for us to read: "I invite
everyone who shares my convictions to cooperate. I invite those who do not agree
with me, but who are sincere in their desire to change things for the
better. Some people will try to hinder our work. Influential groups
of corrupt officials and entrepreneurs who produce nothing.
They have it good now. They have 'everything.' They are content. They
intend to live until the end of time by squeezing profits out of what is
left of Soviet industry, by pillaging the natural riches that
belong to all of us. They don't create anything new. They don't want
to develop _ they fear it. But the future does not belong to them. It
belongs to us." Actually, this already isn't funny anymore. It is
repulsive. To be honest, I'm not very sorry for Medvedev. Because I
don't believe for a second that he is sincere. He wants to
"cooperate"? Then he can start by firing Putin, by dissolving the Duma,
and then we'll see. He can't, you say? Then what is he pretending
for? So that maybe someday something will happen? It would have been
better to stick his letter into a time capsule and bury it under the
biggest Kremlin tower than to humiliate himself like this in front
of all honest people.
1. No surprise from RFERL - Radio Free Mendacity has long been a nest of corruption, censoriousness and fecklessness. See http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/08/16/translation-radio-liberty-mendacity/ for evidence from an insider.
2. Today's liberasts do indeed have the same cultural and ideological foundations as the old Bolsheviks, i.e. hatred of Russia and a penchant for radical solutions in the forms of "great leaps forward" into Westernization. E.g. see Trubetzkoi's work on this (http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/09/08/struggle-europe-mankind/).
Posted by: Sublime Oblivion | September 18, 2009 at 05:09 PM