Sean's Russia blog is showing remarkably low standards for excellence in journalism these days. First it praised the lunatic ramblings of ex-eXile sociopath Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone (of all places) and now it lauds the crazed drivel spewed forth by Russophile nutjob Boris Kagarlitsky (pictured, left -- quite a beard, isn't it?) in the Moscow Times. It's a real indication of the depleted resources of the rabid Anti-American crowd that this is the best they can come up with for heros. Who's next? Vladimir Zhirinovksy?

Long ago, La Russophobe exposed Kagarlitsky for the crazed Russian nationalist that he is. Sean says that Comrade Boris is the director of the "Institute for Globalization Studies" but he doesn't care to tell his readers what that is. And most of them couldn't find out by following his link, because it's in Russian, but there is an English variant he doesn't give in case you are interested. If you check you his resume at IGS, you find out Kagarlitsky brags about lecturing on "modern Marxism" in the late 1990s and about being a regular contributor to the crazed left-wing partisan screed The Nation. Despite this, IGO describes itself as "a Moscow-based non-profit, non-governmental and non-partisan agency with the main purposes of applied scholarly research, public policy advocacy, and political project-building." The Russian idea of "non-partisan" is remarkably flexible, isn't it? He's so famous that he doesn't have a page in Wikipedia, not even a stub. But he hates America, freedom, democracy and capitalism (IGO's mission statement includes seeking to undo "ruinous neo-liberal economic policies" that they say destroyed Russia in the 1990s -- no mention of Russians electing Politburo members to the first Duma), and apparently that's good enough for Sean.

Here's what Comrade Boris has to say about Ukraine: "Without Russia, Ukrainian industry makes no sense, while for the Russian raw materials economy Ukraine represents not only a transit corridor but also an important staging area -- an advance outpost on the road to Europe." It's a broad-minded, friendly view, isn't it? Clearly, a model for maniacal American imperialists to emulate (let's try to imagine George Bush referring to Mexico as America's "staging area"). Speaking of America, here's what he has to say about it: "Comparing Chernobyl with [Hurricane Katrina] makes one think that the modern American society copies the negative traits of the late Soviet system, ignoring, however, its positive aspects. The Soviet government was lying constantly, instinctively, even when the lie was absolutely useless or harmful. Well, at least it could provide order and food. American government of today is also lying permanently, but it can’t and doesn’t even try to provide security for the citizens." Yup, America, the world's most powerful country, is not even close to being as good as the Soviet Union which no longer exists because it destroyed itself. Of course, it's not quite fair, because after all the USSR murdered millions of its citizens, so it was not burdened by the need to provide "order and food" for them. But after all, since America is such an evil country, it's clearly not entitled to fairness. Kagarlitsky thinks (this word must be used quite loosely where Kagarlitsky is concerned) Stalin should have been "understood and forgiven" rather than condemned. In other words, Kagarlitsky is a neo-Soviet madman.

But let's turn to what he said that so impressed Sean's Russia blog. Sean, you may remember, has recently attracted Russophile maniac Mike Averko as a commenter after he declared that America is not a democracy and is a threat to Russian security. So it's perhaps not surprising that he and Kagarlitsky would find much to sympathize about. And the thesis that attracts Sean's attention is that Vladimir Putin's government is too corporatist and capitalist, not nearly socialist and/or communist enough, in fact in many ways "no different that [sic] in Germany or America." Amazing, isn't it, that such a profound insight could only find outlet in a vehicle as modest as the Moscow Times? How long can it be before this man gets his just desserts, a Nobel Prize in economics?

Kagarlitsky's grand conclusion is that, surprise surprise, capitalism is fundamentally unstable and bound to break apart (now where have we heard that before?) and that when it does "it is out of these potentially irreparable cracks that Kagarlitsky hopes a popular opposition movement will arise." Boy, what a thing to contemplate. A whole hoard of brand spanking new, fresh-faced communists and Marxists "crawling out of the cracks" and infiltrating the scheming bourgeouis hierarchy, building a socialist utopia and burying the United States.

Do you have an odd sense of deja vu?

To his credit, Sean admits that "One many [sic] disagree with Kagarlitsky’s splitting of economics and politics into two distinct spheres as if one can be held without the other.
Sean's suggestion? He says: "I would purpose [sic] that instead of looking at them as in a static equilibrium (the political = the economic) or even a static hierarchy (the political over the economic or vice versa), it might be more fruitful to think of them as in a shifting relationship where in some instances, the economic trumps the political while in others the political subordinates the economic."

Do you have an odd sense of deja vu? Doesn't that sound like how a certain someone used to talk, you know that guy whose statue used to be all round Russia pointing at things, a bald-headed short little guy, with a short little name? He babbled a whole bunch of incomprehensible things, confused people, took power, turned power over to one of history's greatest mass murders and then . . . oh yeah, they've got him stuffed like a goose on Red Square.

But hey. It was fun the first time, so why not go for a second spin?