Russia: Other Points of View

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Libya. After Russia abstained on the UNSC resolution, allowing it to pass, the Foreign Ministry spokesman piously objected when the “no fly zone” enforcement began exactly as the US Defense Secretary had said it would two weeks before. Much as it may please some Russians to throw that fatuous word “disproportionate” back at the West, this is pretty hypocritical. Russia could have stopped it by veto. Meanwhile Medvedev has declared that Moscow is ready to mediate. That may happen yet: for all I know, NATO would still be fighting in Kosovo if Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari hadn’t stepped in.

Split in the duumvirate? Is there a difference between Putin and Medvedev on Libya? Putin said that the resolution reminded him of “a medieval call to crusade”; shortly afterwards, Medvedev said that to talk of crusades was “unacceptable”. Certainly Medvedev seems more comfortable (or less uncomfortable) with the operation than Putin does (not surprisingly given the number of times Putin was burned by the West.). Although, when meeting with the US Defense Secretary, Medvedev used the words “indiscriminate use of air power”. Which it is not (but then, the Russians don’t have JDAMs. See below). When Medvedev (in Moscow) made his formal statement, was he aware that Putin (in the Udmurt Republic) had given his “personal opinion” about four hours earlier? On the other hand the word “Crusaders” is commonly used by jihadists to describe the West and Gaddafi is using it too. So, coincidence or direct rebuke? Putin (in Slovenia) has denied any split: “We have a president in Russia who directs foreign policy and there can not be a split”. Yesterday he (in Serbia) eased off a bit more. What this incident does show is that the assumption that Putin is the puppet master and Medvedev the puppet is naïve.

ISLAM, ISLAMISM AND POLITICS IN EURASIA REPORT NO.36, MARCH 2011

by Gordon Hahn

Monterey Institute of International Studies

CONTENTS:

RUSSIA

• SUICIDE BOMBING COUPLE’S ISTISHKHAD TESTAMENT VIDEO
• THE CE OVKBK’S SOCHI VECTOR
• JIHADI OPERATIONS IN DAGESTAN IN EARLY 2011
• JANUARY 2011: MOST VIOLENT JANUARY FOR CHRI/CE IN A DECADE
• IS THERE AN ASTRAKHAN JAMAAT?
• THE CE’S DAGESTAN VILAIYAT ADDS THIRD WEBSITE
• UMAROV WEIGHS IN ON DEBATE OVER CE’S OFFICIAL LANGAUGE
• CE, AL QA`IDA, AND GLOBAL JIHAD IDEOLOGICAL-PROPAGANDA TIES

CENTRAL ASIA by Yelena Altman (unless otherwise indicated)

• EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS REGISTER UNDER FALSE NAMES IN UZBEKISTAN?
• THIRTEEN PEOPLE SENTENCED FOR ISLAMIST MEMBERSHIP IN UZBEKISTAN
• SECURITY IMPROVEMENT IN UZBEKISTAN
• KYRGYZSTAN PRESIDENT ROZA OTUNBAYEVA CALLS FOR A U.S. FUNDED ANTI TERROR TRAINING CENTER
• SECURITY EFFORTS IN TAJIKISTAN
• TERRORIST ATTACK ON MARCH 8^TH  IN DUSHANBE
• ELEVEN ISLAMISTS CONVICTED IN TAJIKISTAN
• CSTO COMPILING A LIST OF TERRORIST AND EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS

To access the full report, please click here  Download KAVKAZJIHAD_MonTREP_IIPER_36_Mar_2011

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Anniversary. Twenty years today the USSR held a referendum on whether to support the proposed New Union Treaty. The new setup would have given much more power to the republics; the word used to describe it then was “confederation”. I recall much brouhaha about how the referendum would be a bust and even some “experts” claiming that no one knew what they were voting on (despite the fact that all the iterations of the treaty – 3 as I remember – had been published in the Soviet press). In the event there was a decent turnout and a strong support for continuing in the new arrangement. This was the pre-Internet days and I have lost the detailed results but the overall results are here and more detailed here. (Both sources are disingenuous, taking their numbers not from the whole population of potential voters but from those who actually did vote; in several areas not voting was voting “no”). The three Baltic SSRs, the Moldavian, Georgian and Armenian SSRs did not hold votes, on the grounds that they had not legally been incorporated into the USSR in the first place. But the Abkhaz ASSR voted by a small margin to stay in. The Chechen-Ingush ASSR voted to get out as did the Nakhichevan ASSR (the last I suspect being part of Heydar Aliyev’s manoeuvring to get to Baku). So, some hints of the future were given. The proposed signing date was set for 20 August but the coup attempt on the 19^th (not unconnected of course) intervened. In the event the leaders of the Ukrainian and Belarussian SSRs and the RSFSR (55.7% of whose registered voters had voted “yes”) simply declared the end of the USSR in December (the three Baltics had been let go in September in what turned out to be effectively the last official act of the USSR). And that was that. I still believe that the bulk of the USSR could have transformed into the New Union; if so, a lot of suffering would have been avoided. Three quotations are instructive: "The recent dramatic events [ie the coup attempt] showed that our republic is absolutely unprotected... " (Kravchuk 1991); “if Ukraine really will not be in the Union, I cannot imagine such a Union” (Yeltsin 1991); “I believed that Ukraine is so rich that it provided for the entire [Soviet] Union” (Kuchma 1993). So Ukraine killed the New Union on the expectation that it would become immediately rich by stopping the imagined drain from the others on its “rich” economy. Ah well, divorce in haste, repent at leisure: a recent poll from Ukraine says half the population now regrets the breakup. I suspect that a lot of former Soviets do too. Indeed it would be very interesting to see polls from others of the fifteen; especially from those that were very glad to get out twenty years ago. But it’s too late, it’s gone.

NATIONAL INTERESTS, CHAMPIONING DEMOCRACY, AND MSM DOUBLE STANDARDS

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

The U.S. mainstream media is fond not only of criticizing Russia’s soft (in my view) authoritarianism––but also is fond of cozying up to, and defending authoritarian regimes elsewhere.

To the point, a January 11, 2011 New York Times editorial titled “Lukashenko’s Gulag” castigated Moscow for supporting Belarus’s autocrat Alexander Lukashenko: “Mr. Lukashenko clearly thinks that his improving relations with Russia means he can thumb his nose at the West. The Kremlin, of course, said nothing about the stolen election and has enabled him with recent oil and gas agreements. Europe and the United States must now push back hard. There is little hope for democratic change in Belarus unless Mr. Lukashenko is forced to pay a stiff price for his abuses.”

But as the U.S. has been reminded recently in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen, and elsewhere, they too have been complicit in foreign authoritarian regimes, including by way ‘enabling them with oil and gas agreements.’  Parapharasing the NYT, substituting a few key words, highlights the hypocrisy: The U.S., of course, did nothing for decades about the repression of opposition in Saudi Arabia. It enabled the Wahhabi regime with recent oil and gas agreements. One can say the same about the repression of dissidents in China while enabling the communist regime with lucrative business ties.

ANALYSIS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES " THE LANDS AUTOCRACY WON'T QUIT"

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

by Gordon Hahn

The following New York Times (NYT) article by Clifford Levy offers an inaccurate and, by all appearances, a deliberately distorted perspective of Russia’s place among the post-Soviet states in terms of the level of democracy or authoritarianism of their regimes.  Most shocking is Levy’s claim that ‘Putin’s Russia’ is “the strongest of the post-Soviet strongmen.” There is not a single parameter – whether in terms of level of democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, media freedom, corruption, or economic freedom – in which ‘Putin’s Russia’ ranks last among the post-Soviet states.

Download NYT_Levy_Mar14,11_26Feb2011

CONSEQUENCES OF THE “ARAB UPRISING”

The Unsettling Dust: Russia Should Get Prepared To Face Consequences Of The “Arab Uprising”

by Eugene Ivanov

This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines 

Conventional wisdom suggests waiting until the dust settles before drawing conclusions from the events of the past, but the “dust” generated by the public unrest in North Africa and the Middle East is so thick -- and shows no signs of ablation – that in this case, Russia can’t wait.  It needs to watch the uprising in the Arab world carefully, and be prepared to face the consequences of the rapid geopolitical changes in the region.    

The first, most obvious and, at first glance, not-so-unpleasant of these consequences is the rising price of oil.  After steadily climbing overthe past two years, oil prices shot through the roof at the end of February, when the “Arab revolution” spread into oil-rich Libya and threatened to engulf the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia. 

THE SEMIOTICS OF PERESTROIKA

COMMENTARY 

by Gordon Hahn

As Mikhail Gorbachev moved toward the political reforms that put perestroika on the map as a major reform project, he seized upon several models and anti-models from Soviet history pointing out the democratic direction in which he sought to move.  He promoted Nikolai Bukharin, who was killed in Stalin’s purges, and Vladimir Lenin’s quasi-capitalist New Economic Policy (NEP), which was killed by Stalin’s forced collectivization and industrialization and the Great Terror.  On November 7, 1987 Gorbachev condemned Stalin and his “crimes” in order to pave the way for the CPSU’s adoption of political reforms.

Similarly, as Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev continues to push forward his economic modernization and political liberalization program or ‘thaw’ forward along with his tandem partner Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin he also needs historical models and anti-models from Russian and Soviet history to hold up as lightbeams pointing both to and from where he plans to take the country.

THE MEDVEDEV THAW AND EARLY REGIME ELITE SPLIT CONTINUE

COMMENTARY 

By Gordon M. Hahn

There can be no doubt that the thaw under the presidency of Dmitrii Medvedev we foresaw three years ago has occurred.  Several recent changes have reconfirmed the liberalizing trend.  With the new law ‘On the Police,’ a first step has been taken in refoming the police, and subsidiary laws and reforms are set to follow.  Medvedev is moving to amend his anti-corruption legislation for the fourth time.  This time a truly major measure has been proposed: bribe-taking and bribe-giving will be punished by a fine of up to one hundred times the amount exchanged in any one bribe.  A Russian official caught taking a bribe will either have to pay 60 to 80 times the amount of the bribe and be banned from holding public office for three years, or pay 50 times the bribe and serve a prison sentence of five to 10 years.  Bribers will be fined 15 to 60 times the bribe.  Bribes in an amount over 1 million rubles will pay a fine of 80 to100 times the amount of the bribe­ or 70 times the bribe and a prison sentence of 8 to 15 years.  Fines for any one bribe cannot exceed 300 million rubles.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Police Reform. The new law took effect on Tuesday (see here for a discussion of its provisions). As if in celebration, Medvedev dismissed seven high ranking police officers from around the country. And high-ranking they are indeed. No reasons were given. He had a meeting with Interior Minister Nurgaliyev and signed a number of decrees moving the effort forward. Something I have often wondered about is how one gets from here (an institution with a culture of corruption and incompetence) to there (something much better). It appears (but the wording of his instructions to Nurgaliyev is not clear and this is my best guess of what Medvedev told him) that all members of the present force (“militia”) will be, as it were, passed through a sieve and either dismissed or allowed to join the new force (“police”). Senior officers will be examined by the Head of the Presidential Administration, Sergey Naryshkin, and approved by Medvedev. So, it would appear that everyone’s job is at risk. The examinations are to be complete by 1 June which, only two months away, seems an unrealistically early date. Given the existing corruption as well as the powerful resistance all bureaucracies present to change that threatens their “corporate will”, this is a very tall order and certainly all the crooks and incompetents will not be weeded out by then. But one assumes that if someone slips through the sieve by bribing his superior or by lying and is caught, he will be subject to instant dismissal. Those who are interested in reforming intransigent and locked-in bureaucracies run mad, should watch this experiment carefully.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

US-Russia. US Vice President Biden is in Moscow. He says that Russia’ accession to the WTO is a top priority, (although hinted that it depended on Russia’s human rights record) and may have made approving noises about ending the absurdly out-of-date Jackson Vanik Amendment. He reportedly told Putin that visa-free travel between Russia and the US was “a good idea”. Well, we’ll see. As to the WTO, it is quite absurd that Russia is not a member. During the time Russia has spent trying to get into it, Oman, Côte d’Ivoire, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe and others have entered. No problems with “human rights” there apparently. Russians could be forgiven for thinking that the WTO is not the economic organisation that it purports to be but really a political organisation. Members appear to have a quasi-veto and Tbilisi is quite happy to use its. A Russian official claims that Biden said that Washington had tried to talk Tbilisi out of opposing Russian membership. But I wonder how much influence Washington has on Tbilisi these days over what is the only pressure point on Moscow that Saakashvili has.