Russia: Other Points of View

UKRAINE NEEDS THE WEST'S SUPPORT?

ARTICLE  CRITIQUE 

Response to Wall Street Journal "Ukraine Needs the West's Support - A European democracy sits uncomfortably close to Russia" by Matthew Kaminski, Jan 27, 2010 

by Gordon Hahn 

The article reviewed below is authored by a Ukrainian member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.  It is replete with the standard Western mainstream media biases, oversimplifications, misconceptions, and distortions aimed at isolating Russia.  From Russia, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board includes only the radical and unpopular opposition figure Gary Kasparov.

To access the full analysis, please Download WSJ_Kaminski_27_Jan_2010

Bashing Russia, Kowtowing to Beijing, and Avoiding Responsibility - One Russian Liberal's Formula for Failure

COMMENTARY

Response to Lilia Shevtsova's "The Kremlin Kowtow - Why have Western leaders and intellectuals gone soft on Russia's autocracy?" www.foreignpolicy.com, January 5, 2010.

by Gordon M. Hahn

In a recent article, Carnegie Endowment Moscow Center political analyst Lilia Shevtsova issues a complaint toward Westerners who cautions America's leaders 'not to put Russia's democratization' at the top of America's agenda for U.S.-Russian relations.  From her point of view, Dr. Shevtsova's complaint is natural.  Western-oriented Russian liberals have in the past counted on the U.S. to support their battles with the Kremlin.  However, today the West is burdened by grave security challenges for which it needs Moscow's help; it cannot risk further alienating Moscow.  Shevtsova's "values-based" pro-democracy model is a Cold War model which today could do irreparable damage to West-Russian relations.

The U.S. simply cannot uphold Russian liberals today as it once did Soviet dissidents, and we should not conceptualize Russian state-society relations as a modified version of Soviet state-society relations.  Russia has come along way from the Soviet totalitarian model.  The Soviet system's omnipresent repression and cruelty created state-society relations that Anna Akhmatova once described accurately in the early 1950s as two Russias confronting each other: one, the imprisoned - the other, their wardens. Thus, Western leaders had reason to suspect during the Cold war that hatred of the communist regime inside the USSR was such that, there was a thirst for democracy and freedom - and sooner or later, it would have to be quenched.  If and when the Soviet system opened up, movement to democracy and the market could be expected.

THE DIFFICULTY IN BEING WRONG

COMMENTARY

Response to New York Times "The Difficulty of Being Ukraine” by Mark Medish, 23 December 2009 

by Gordon Hahn

It is difficult to be wrong and more difficult to acknowledge it.  On December 23^rd the New York Times gave us at ROPV a Christmas gift of sorts by unwittingly vindicating what we have said regarding the one-sided Washington concensus on Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian relations, and NATO expansion.  Mark Medish’s “The Difficulty of being Ukraine” implicitly reiterates points ROPV has been making:

(1) that the Orange Revolution was not a revolution at all (Ukraine’s January “presidential elections” are “likely to spell the epitaph of the Orange Revolution”). 

(2) that the ‘revolution’ brought little, if any political or economic reform, and that Ukraine’s economy is no more market-oriented or transparent than Russia’s state capitalism (Ukraine “has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial meltdown, suffering a sharp currency devaluation and a projected 14 percent drop in G.D.P. this year.”)  Recall that Russia’s being hard hit by the crisis is heralded as proof of Russia’s unrestructured economy.

THE WASHINGTON POST CONTINUES TO DISTORT THE NORTH CAUCASUS

COMMENTARY

 by Gordon Hahn

The Washington Post once again distorts reality in Russia’s North Caucasus. The Post’s (and U.S. mainstream media’s) malpractice of covering the North Caucasus only within the context of Russian human rights violations continues (see “Russia's political murders - When was the last time that killings of human rights activists were so blatant, and so common?,” Washington Post, 29 August 2009).  At first glance Philip Pan’s October 30^th article “In Russia, an intensifying insurgency” seemed a turn for the better.  However, a close reading reveals conformity with the biased approach.

Russia's Economic Crisis and U.S.-Russia Relations: Troubled Times Ahead

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Heritage Foundation Executive Summary "Russia's Economic Crisis and U.S.-Russia Relations: Troubled Times Ahead" by Ariel Cohen and Richard Ericson

by Gordon Hahn

The article reviewed below is an executive summary of a set of proposals put forward by the Heritage Foundation’s Ariel Cohen and Richard E. Ericson. Although there are some commendable points made by the authors, it suffers from the usual Washington consensus bias that sees Russia’s role in international affairs as one that should serve primarily American and Western interests, regardless of Russia’s national and security interests.  No substantial concessions are made to Moscow.  Belated and therefore insubstantial concessions are made only to have their effect negated by putting new roadblocks in Moscow’s efforts to integrate into the global and Western economy.  The paper ignores NATO expansion – the pivotal issue impacting the relationship – and proposes to continue policies that dismantle and deny Russia a small sphere of influence in countries directly on its borders – while the U.S. reserves the right to add those same countries to its global sphere of ‘vital interests.’ 

To access the full analysis, please click here Download Heritage_Foundation_Cohen_Ericso_Nov_09

Jumping to Conclusions: The Washington Post’s Unjust Coverage of Russia’s Murders

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

An October 29^th Washington Post editorial again continued to distort reality in Russia’s North Caucasus.  The editorial follows the Post’s and U.S. mainstream media’s perverted practice of covering the North Caucasus only within the context of’ Russian human rights’ violations.  The Polish Foreign Minister and former Defense Minister Radek Sikorski’s wife, Anne Applebaum, the Post’s main Russia ‘observer’, probably penned the article. 

The Post editorial jumps to judgment in concluding that a single hand is behind the murders of courageous human rights defenders Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova as well as Ingushetia opposition leader Maksharip Aushev, head of a Chechen children's charity Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband.  The Post claims that all the above were activists defending human rights in the Caucasus, and this common trait made them a target of forces dispatched or tolerated by Russian Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin. 

LOCAL ELECTIONS IN RUSSIA

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to New York Times "Why Russians Ignore Ballot Fraud" by Clifford J. Levy, October 25, 2009

by Gordon Hahn

The following New York Times article is correct only in its main point: It is true that the pro-Kremlin United Russia’s victory in Russia’s local elections (winning 60 percent of seats overall in hundreds of local mayoral and council elections, including the Moscow city council election) was exaggerated in the final results by the unfair playing field, the party’s access to ‘administrative resources, and various methods of ballot stuffing and vote count fraud.  Indeed, the last three sentences of the article relate an experience that I myself witnessed in the 2004 presidential elections.  Beyond the obvious and relatively belabored point of dishonest Russian elections, the NYT’s and author’s oversimplifications about the electoral and political system and their extreme prejudices about Russia and Russians taint the article.  It is yet another U.S. mainstream media article, masked as ‘news reporting’, functioning as biased opinion and providing no alternative points of view on the debatable points.  In short, it is a U.S. mainstream media classic.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download NYT_Levy_11_09

UKRAINE-RUSSIA TENSION IN CRIMEA?

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Washington Post "Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea - Kremlin Asserting Its Influence in Region" by Philip P. Pan, Oct 6, 2009

by Gordon Hahn

The Washington Post article reviewed below is yet another one from the paper littered with one-sided opinion masquerading as news.  The article is yet another that insinuates into readers’ minds the view that Russia is planning aggression against Ukraine and is solely to blame for the deterioration in relations between the two countries.  It contains numerous inaccurate statements, claims unsupported by data or facts, and a consistently one-sided perspective.  It should be noted that this article follows a summer replete with articles in the Post and other mainstream media and other news outlets purporting to show that Russia would attack Georgia this summer.  ROPV continues to wait and see when these predictions will be borne out in and whether anyone else will hold the U.S. mainstream media responsible in any way for its misleading reporting.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download WP_Pan_6_Oct_09

FEIGNING BALANCE: WASHINGTON POST MASKS ATTACK ON RUSSIA AS ATTACK ON OBAMA

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

The Washington Post recently produced a harsh and unprecedented critique of President Barak Obama’s early foreign policy steps written by Charles Krauthammer.  The harsh words, leveled against the liberal president on the pages of the liberal paper, were most striking.  Even more striking was the deal, implicit or explicit, that must have been cut.  In return for allowing Krauthammer to vent against the president, the Washington Post got an attack on its favorite enemy, Moscow.

Whether Krauthammer understood apriori that the vitriol of his article required attaching an additional critique that the Post’s editors would approve of, or whether there was a quid pro quo demanded by the editors remains unclear but in the end is unimportant.  What is important is a harsh critique of a liberal and non-Republican U.S. president appearing on the Post’s pages with the proper ‘compensation.’

The Krauthammer article delivered that and then some 462 words were devoted to criticizing Obama’s Russia policy and Russia, but only 288 were left for Obama’s other foreign policy mistakes.  Krauthammer focused particularly on “Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed.”  In the Post’s and Krauthammer’s mind, this ‘mistake’ outweighs Obama’s “national self-denigration” policy, Clinton’s dropping human rights in forming America’s China agenda and the absurdity of the Nobel prize Committee accepting Obama’s nomination as a prize recipient mere days after his inauguration and then awarding him that prize in lieu of any accomplishments.

OP-ED to NEW YORK TIMES and INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

by Nick Sluchevsky

In the contemporary world where mainstream media go out of their way to provide ‘balance’, it is truly extraordinary that the New York Times persists in its Russia reporting with such an apparent negative bias. For a liberal and intellectual newspaper that is expected to be a beacon of excellent journalism – which, for the most part it is – I continue to find this perplexing.

Clifford Levy’s recent article is a perfect case-in-point. The Oct.18^th lead informs readers that “Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party.” This is both sensational and completely incorrect. Frankly, I found it rather embarrassing. To begin with, China’s primary economic model is pure capitalism, as evidenced by their colossal success over the years. For an American audience this should prove to be a positive comparison. But that is not the comparison Levy seeks to make. The use of the pejorative ‘Communist Party’ clearly attempts to draw the reader to the belief that Russia – especially under Putin – has been sliding back to its Soviet roots. By extension, this approach seeks to establish a conflict situation between the US and Russia along ideological grounds.