We have previously documented on these pages the horrifying explosion of race-based violence in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. As ghastly as those developments are, though, something even more sinister is underway in Russia these days, something that makes it seem that Russia would better be referred to as the Neo-Soviet Union: It’s an attack on democracy itself.
Just as it was Britain, by means of Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain†speech, which warned the West about the rise of the original USSR, it is today British journalism that sounds the clarion call that warns of USSR redux. Three major pieces of journalism from Britain have provided a vital overview of the situation.
First, on July 9th, came a story from the Telegraph reporter Olga Craig. The story revealed, among other things, the chilling story of Aleksei Mikheyev, tortured by Kremlin henchmen for daring to oppose the authorities and recently awarded a judgment by the European Court for Human Rights against the Putin regime. Craig wrote: “For Mr Putin, it seems, no amount of money spent on spin doctors can hide the reality that the Kremlin is quietly reasserting the centralised control that was the hallmark of the Soviet era. The press has been muzzled, human rights movements harassed and anyone opposing the president politically shown the door of the State Duma. Businesses are beset by corruption and state-controlled companies now run 40 per cent of the economy. And then, of course, there is the brutal war against Chechnya.â€
On the same day, the Times of London fired its warning shot. Listing a broad range of Neo-Soviet activity including the seeming revival of the Komsomol, with Russian youth marching in Putin t-shirts and chanting political slogans, the Times noticed a “pattern of repression that has led western politicians to question whether Russia under President Vladimir Putin belongs in the G8 of democratic nations at all. Relations between America and Russia are at their lowest ebb since the collapse of communism.â€
Finally, the brilliant Edward Lucas, former Russia correspondent for the Economist, joined the fray on August 3rd, with an amazing story about the use of Soviet-style propaganda techniques by Putin’s Kremlin. Lucas reports on “the International Council for Democratic Institutions and State Sovereignty (ICDISS), a grand-sounding outfit that says it works on ‘result-oriented nation-building for new and emerging states’†which “produced a report in July supporting international recognition for Transdnestria, a breakaway region of Moldova that has had Russian support and Western disapproval since a brief civil war in 1992.†It turns out that the ICDISS is a total fraud, a Kremlin propaganda front designed to enhance Russia’s imperial efforts in the former USSR. How many other similar efforts are as yet undiscovered?
The unfolding of Soviet activity in today’s Russia has been swift and unrelenting. If we look back over the past few months, we see a breathtakingly brazen litany of arrests and prosecutions by the Kremlin of its political foes, in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Soviet days, which have gone unchallenged and indeed virtually unnoticed in the West.
Vladimir Rakhmanov, writer, arrested for writing a satirical article referring to Putin as “the nation’s Phallic symbol.â€
Valentin Danilov, scientist, arrested for daring to have contact with the West.
Alexei Barinov, Governor of Nenets region, arrested for being the last publicly elected governor in Russia. Putin now appoints them all Russia’s governors (and hence all the members of the Russian version of the Senate, the Federation Council, which is comprised of governors), but that doesn’t make those people safe either, not if they fail to toe the proper pro-Kremlin line. Just ask Senators Alexander Sabadash, Boris Gutin, Igor Ivanov and Levon Chakhmakhchyan, who have all recently been arrested for displeasing the Kremlin.
Yevgeny Ishchenko, mayor of Volgograd, arrested for failing to give the Kremlin sufficient guarantees of loyalty. Not satisfied with controlling all statewide offices, Putin is now going after the localities.
Having sent the message that any executive or legislative official is subject to arrest, the Kremlin is now moving on the judicial branch. Vladimir Bukreyev, the Rostov judge who convicted a Russian colonel of murder in Chechnya, was recently arrested in retaliation for the ruling.
Opposition leaders, of course, are particularly ripe for attack. In the run-up to the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg, there was a shocking direct assault on a meeting of opposition groups, with four opposition leaders actually being dragged out of the meeting by KGB thugs, who also seized the camera of a German photographer attempting to record the melee. The conference was led by chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, now campaigning for the presidency in 2008; Kasparov’s supporters have suffered a litany of assaults and arrests over the past few months.
A massive assault against journalists, especially foreign journalists, has been launched, including most spectacularly the recent censoring of Voice of America; in a classic Soviet action, all VOA reports by Russian radio stations have been banned. And it could be argued that those journalists who are only censored or arrested get off easy. Last year, the editor of Forbes magazine in Russia, Paul Klebnikov, was sensationally gunned down while investigating Russian official corruption, and there have been no convictions in the case. Most recently there was Yevgeny Gerasimenko, reporter for the Sartov newspaper Saratovski Rasklad, killed a few days before the G-8 summit while investigating political corruption.
The Kremlin (and the Russophile contingent) will of course seek to cover these obviously political arrests by claiming that they are part of a much-needed crackdown on official corruption in Russia. They will accuse anyone who questions these arrests of being a hypocrite, lambasting Russia for corruption and then lambasting it when it tries to do something about it.
But this argument won’t wash, because it is impossible to identify any strong supporter of the Kremlin who has been subjected to this treatment, so unless the Kremlin would like to suggest that its adherents are incapable of corruption (as Putin once incredibly said that there was not one single member of the state security forces who could have intentionally planted bombs in Moscow apartment buildings so as to blame it on Chechnya and whip up support for the war). Everyone knows, and even many Russophiles will admit, that there are dozens of businessmen in Russia who have committed “legal offenses†exactly the same as those committed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who in perhaps the most flagrant Neo-Soviet act we have yet seen is actually reposing in a jail in Siberia – yet none of the businessmen favored by the Kremlin have been subjected to any such charges. Moreover, the Kremlin has done nothing to establish a countervailing force to support the development of critical media and opposition parties.
And there is a much wider sweep to the Neo-Soviet activity than direct assaults on individuals, as the British reporting makes clear. Non-Governmental Organizations are facing direct assaults on two fronts; first Kremlin-sponsored legislation severely restricting their activities and second Kremlin-initiated tax harassment similar to that faced by Khodorkovksy.
Perhaps most troubling of all, the Kremlin has been willing to revive and utilize the crudest and most discredited artifices of Soviet power, such as attempting to physically controlling entry to and exit from the country — just as in the “Iron Curtain†days of the USSR. For instance, it intervened to prevent famous opera diva Anna Netrebko from obtaining duel citizenship in Austria, thus greatly inhibiting her ability to leave the country, and it refused to issue entry visas to a group of Lithuanian students who wanted to pay their respects to victims of Soviet oppression. The Kremlin also denied visas to the vast majority of those who wanted to visit St. Petersburg to participate in protest actions against the G-8 during the summit, resulting in the quietest time for the G-8 at such a meeting in years, and it summarily denied visas to unfavored journalists when it hosted the World Newspaper Congress in June.
In an even more blunt and classically Neo-Soviet gesture, Russia was caught red-handed bribing shills to participate in protest actions in New York against the Chechen rebels. As if that were not extreme enough, the Russian press has even recently accused Amnesty International of being a CIA front operation.
A Neo-Soviet foreign policy seems to be emerging. Even as Fidel Castro passes from the scene, Russia seems to be attempting to create a new Cuba in Venezuela, providing warplanes and mountains of assault rifles which Venezuela, facing a U.S. arms embargo, plans to export to destabilize Bolivia. Can a new Cuban missile crisis be far behind? It has even been reported that Russia has been caught providing technology to North Korea that could help it disguise its nuclear arsenal. Russia has maintained close ties with North Korea’s dictatorial regime, and a Russian newspaper claimed that its dictator actually paid a secret visit to Russia to plot strategy as the West applied pressure over his nuke force.
There are even explicit signs of direct approval for the Soviet past. At the Turin Olympic in Italy this year, whenever a Russian won a gold medal (which was rare), the Soviet National anthem played in the background as it was presented. The anthem was written to glorify the dictator Josef Stalin, whom a majority of Russians now say was a “wise leader.â€
One would think that, at the very least, all this Neo-Soviet activity would be the cause of some controversy in Russia. After all, the Soviet Union ended in a spectacular failure and no longer exists. But if Russians have any qualms about the road Putin is taking, they don’t say so. In July, Putin’s favorable opinion rating increased to 79% from 75% in May. This is the same kind of support that Soviet leaders used to enjoy in their “elections†and bespeaks either a horrifying endorsement of a return to a failed past or a perhaps even more terrifying totalitarian control over information by the Kremlin.
Despite all these warning signs, the world has been surprising slow to respond. An urgent bipartisan plea has been made by former U.S. presidential candidates John Edwards and Jack Kemp, and a second cautionary salvo was launched by John McCain and Madeline Albright. The Bush administration, once friendly to the Putin regime, is now clearly having second thoughts. It blocked Russia’s WTO admission, imposed sanctions on Russian exporters of arms to Venezuela, and said it will not recognize a Russia-Belarus Union. But both the U.S. media and political establishments seem to have been caught with their pants down on Russia, and there is urgent need for realignment and focus.
On the Rise of the Neo-Soviet Union
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