Other Russia translates Yulia Latynina from Yezhedevny Zhurnal:

Last week, at a meeting in Nizhny Novgorod, Prime Minister [Vladimir] Putin came down hard on a company which was damaging Russia’s economy with its work.

It turned out this company was by no means Baikalfinansgrup, which bought Yuganskneftegaz at a non-competitive auction on credit provided by the government. And it wasn’t the Gunvor group, which belongs to a friend of premier Putin and receives 70 billion dollars annual income from the export of Russian oil. And not RosUkrEnergo, whose right to deliver gas to the Ukraine using non-transparent arrangements is whole-heartedly defended by Russian bureaucrats at the highest level.

It turned out to be Mechel, condemned for selling coal abroad at prices two times lower than domestic ones. The company’s owner, Igor Zyuzin, did not appear at at the meeting, citing illness. “Of course, illness is illness,” premier [Putin] said, then recommending a speedy recovery for Mechel’s owner. “Otherwise we’ll have to send him a doctor to clear out all these problems.”

Putin’s promise to send Zyuzin a doctor cost Mr. Zyuzin 5 billion dollars — it was exactly this amount by which Mechel’s market capitalization collapsed that evening on the New York exchange.

The reason why Mechel in particular dissatisfied the premier was such: The largest Russian metallurgical giants, including the Novolipetsky [NLMK] and Magnitogorsky metallurgical complexes, buy up coal on the side, and as a consequence, are interested in long-term contracts for coal delivery during times of sharp price increases.

Mechel, which supplies them with coal, is a coal extracting company, and is accordingly interested in spot contracts for coal delivery, which allow it to maximize sales profit; And, should the opportunity arise, to use the deficit of coal as a lever to gain control over small factories (Gubakha, for instance).

It is clear that giants like NLMK and Magnitka are much closer to the Kremlin, and especially to Vice-Premier Sechin, who now oversees industry. It was precisely Sechin, who, with active participation of the metallurgical giants, prepared the report that has raised so much attention.

It sticks out like a sore thumb that this is already Premier Putin’s second attempt at direct interference in the economy. A week ago, high prices for jet fuel elicited his discontent. If earlier, during his presidency, President Putin underscored in every way that “the Yukos affair” was an exception, then now, it seems Premier Putin is making it clear to everyone that he is intent on directing the economy by hand.

Mechel, which was worth around 15 billion dollars just last week, recently laid out around 2.5 billion dollars for a controlling stake in two large coal companies –Yakutugol and Elgaugol –and in doing so, beat out the state-run ALROSA. Yakutugol has been online for a long while. Elgaugol is simply a section of taiga, and several billon dollars are needed to develop it.

It is obvious that in the near term, it will be hard for a company that paid money for non-operational assets in an open auction to raise the means to develop them. If Mechel goes bankrupt, and its assets are sold for peanuts, Mechel’s shareholders (I’ll remind you that the company had its IPO and lists its shares on the New York Stock Exchange), may well file against Premier Putin in the New York City court.

And if the Yukos shareholders, in filing their corresponding lawsuit, expect to prove that precisely Vladimir Putin or Igor Sechin are guilty for their misfortunes, then everything is available right here. It is hard to imagine George Bush, threatening to “send a doctor” to Bill Gates. One doesn’t speak to businessmen this way in the free world. Crime bosses speak this way to an out of line merchant. Usually, proof of these threats is obtained in a strategic way, wrapping oneself in microphones. Here the threats sounded right on the television.

One question –how much will this affair cost Mechel? Although in my opinion, something else is far more interesting –how much will it cost the Magnitka and Lipetsky [metallurgical plants]. What has happened comes out as the classic illustration of the proverb: don’t call a wolf to help you with the dogs. The metallurgical giants turned to Vice-Premier Sechin, to help him fight with inflation by forcing Mechel into long-term contracts. The general fall of the market has already cost Russia’s steel sector far more than the losses from spot contracts, by which Zyuzin sold coal. After all, zealous bureaucrats will now be checking everyone, not just Mechel. It is always this way with chekists and bandits: if you ask them for a favor, it’s uncertain if they will accommodate it or not. But you’re still certain to owe them.

But the most interesting part –how much will this affair cost Premier Putin? It isn’t a question of whether business will start to speak up in Mechel’s defense –no one has any illusions here. Business will be tearing chunks out of Mechel, and its mouth will be busy. But then Mechel will likely run for protection to President Medvedev, and there aren’t any reasons why President Medvedev wouldn’t provide it with protection. If nothing happens with Mechel, and prices for airline tickets don’t fall, this will mean that Premier Putin can’t regulate the prices of either jet fuel, or coking coal.

And this is very bad, when the premier sends a doctor every week, and the doctor just doesn’t arrive. This way one can quickly tumble down to the level of Premier [Mikhail] Fradkov, who every week would loudly censure [German] Gref, or [Alexei] Kudrin. But for some reason, he could never do anything to them.

The always brilliant Robert Coalson, writing for Radio Free Europe:

The question of the purpose and role of international election monitors, one would think, should be a pretty easy one. They are sent as impartial observers to judge the conduct of elections in terms of democratic values such as transparency, fairness, access, and competitiveness.But at a conference at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna this week, the Russian mission offered a competing vision, one that seems part of a larger effort by Moscow to fracture the admittedly weak sense of shared values in international law and politics.

Election monitors, Moscow's representatives argued, should primarily "respect the laws of the states holding elections and show respect for the national organs of power, including the electoral organs." This "respect" for the host state, according to the proposal, should take the form of letting it determine the format of the mission, its leader, the number of monitors, the period of monitoring, and "all other questions touching on the sovereignty of the country."Such a view, it should be noted, has long been the norm at the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). CIS election monitors have been hard-pressed to find a post-Soviet election anywhere -- from Belarus to Russia to Turkmenistan -- that wasn't to their liking. Their effusively congratulatory election postmortems are routinely ridiculed outside the CIS -- if they are noticed at all.

The Russian proposal comes in the wake of tense relations between that country and the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which organizes OSCE election-monitoring missions. After ODIHR monitors declared the 2003 Duma elections in Russia "free, but unfair," Moscow imposed such onerous restrictions on future missions that the OSCE declined to send delegations to the 2007 Duma elections or the presidential election in March.It should be noted as well that the OSCE has sometimes shot itself in the foot. Its monitors praised Russia's elections during the era of Boris Yeltsin, despite massive evidence of their shortcomings. Such reports feed Moscow's assertions that the organization is politicized in its judgments and operating under double standards.But Moscow's dissatisfaction runs deeper still.

The Kremlin fumed at what it perceived as the OSCE's role in fuelling the so-called colored revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, countries where manipulated and falsified elections were exposed and massive protests ensued. In fact, Russia has long taken umbrage at the OSCE's emphasis on human rights and democratic development. A Moscow-inspired anti-OSCE tirade submitted by six CIS countries in 2004 stated baldly that the OSCE "does not respect such fundamental...principles as noninterference in internal affairs and respect for national sovereignty."The OSCE bills itself as a 56-member "community of values."

Its governing 1990 Charter of Paris commits members to "build, consolidate, and strengthen democracy as the only system of government of our nations." It further defines democracy as "based on the will of the people, expressed regularly through free and fair elections. Democracy has as its foundation respect for the human person and the rule of law. Democracy, with its representative and pluralist character, entails accountability to the electorate, the obligation of the public authorities to comply with the law and justice administered impartially. No one will be above the law." The document, which heralds "a new era in democracy, peace, and unity," continues in this vein for many pages, obligating members to help one another make democratic gains "irreversible."Russia in the era of President Vladimir Putin has increasingly presented a challenge to this "unity" and this "community of values" not only in terms of its actions, but on the plane of ideas as well.

Moscow has repeatedly defended its antidemocratic domestic policies by arguing Russia has its own "path to democracy," and that all nations must build democracies that are unique to their cultural heritages.While some observers expected this sort of divisiveness to be toned down after Dmitry Medvedev -- who rarely misses a chance to point out that he is a lawyer by training -- became president, it has in fact been ramped up in recent weeks. Moscow has renewed its calls for phasing out The Hague war crimes tribunal, saying it is fatally "biased."Perhaps most importantly, the quasi-official Russian Orthodox Church last month adopted its Basic Principles of the Russian Church on Human Dignity, Freedom, and Rights.

The document, which was partially drafted by Kremlin insider and Eurasianist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, called for a "reexamination" of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It says Western notions of human rights do not apply to Russia and should be replaced by Orthodox principles. It also asserts that civilizations "should not impose their lifestyle patterns on other civilizations." The document clearly prioritizes the rights of society over the rights of individuals.As the Vienna conference on election monitoring shows, Moscow's assertiveness in the realm of ideas can have serious consequences. Organizations like the OSCE and the UN are already cumbersome institutions that often have difficulty acting decisively.

The Kremlin's challenges to the fundamental assumptions and values of international organizations will only magnify those difficulties.Conferences such as the one this week will be reduced to discussions of basic principles -- of whether they even exist -- and issues of implementation will be crowded off the agenda. And achieving that goal is enough to satisfy those whose domestic policies and institutions fail to stand up to scrutiny from the perspective of values that have been recognized internationally since the end of World War II.

The Moscow Times reports:

In a basement studio in northern Moscow, singer Valentin Ayedonitsky screeches about his broken heart, his asymmetrical bangs flapping with every beat. "Things have become so lonely, nothing interests me anymore / Daylight, but light is lacking, around there is only dark night." Dressed in tight jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and skull-adorned Vans, Ayedonitsky, 22, looks more Brooklyn than Moscow. But he and his band, MAIO, are part of the country's burgeoning emo scene — a subculture coming under increasing government scrutiny.

Teens sporting emo couture — black bangs, eyebrow piercings, pinned shoulder bags — have become a ubiquitous sight on the Moscow metro and at popular youth hangouts like Pushkin Square and the All-Russia Exhibition Center. But State Duma deputies, Public Chamber members and social conservatives have hammered out legislation aimed at heading off the spread of emo culture, which they describe as a "dangerous teen trend." The Duma last month held a parliamentary hearing on a raft of proposed amendments contained in a document called "Government Strategy in the Sphere of Spiritual and Ethical Education," a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times. Among other measures, the proposed legislation calls for heavy regulation of emo web sites and for banning young people dressed like emos from entering schools and government buildings.

Sitting at a table with scattered cans of Red Bull and packs of Marlboro Lights, MAIO drummer Dmitry Gilevich, 21, was indignant over the bill. "Expressing psychological emotions is not forbidden by law," Gilevich said. "I believe every individual has that right." At the heart of the emo backlash is widespread ignorance of culture, Gilevich said. "People think it's an aggressive subculture for youth who cut their veins every day," he said. "First and foremost, emo is not a culture of the soul, but of music."

MAIO bassist Alexander Kulikov, 22, said emo music has a therapeutic effect on teens. He discovered the emo band Aiden when he was 17 years old and credits their lyrics for helping him persevere. "Those bands really helped me survive my difficult, neurotic age," Kulikov said. Ayedonitsky loves the energy of the music. "It's not just that you like it and want to listen to it. It gives you goose bumps. You want to scream, to run," he said. "You want to push the pedal, get up and dance in the traffic jams," added guitarist Dmitry Sergeyenko, 23.

Like many youth trends in Russia, emo culture is a Western import. Born out of 1980s "emotional hard-core" rock in Washington D.C. (and undergoing a rebirth in 2000), emo culture arrived in Moscow in 2003 after droves of young Russians began downloading foreign music on the Internet. Hard-core rock about love infiltrated the independent music scene as bands like The Used and Finch were on heavy rotation at Funkysouls.com. "These groups showed up in our country years after they were popular in the United States, and teens caught this wave," said Pavel Shumilov, 21, co-founder of the web site Emokids.ru. "Since then, the emo underground music scene has faded into a mainstream style."

Created in 2005, Emokids.ru has 6,000 registered members in its forum and gets more than 500 original hits per day, Shumilov said. With Keds borrowed from the skaters, piercings from punks and a love of all things black from goths, emo style in Russia has become at once indefinable and everywhere. The lawmakers who drafted the proposed legislation, however, have spelled out their own definition. Emos, according to the bill, are from 12 to 16 years old and wear black and pink clothing. They have black hair with long bangs that "cover half the face," black fingernails, black belts peppered with studs and pins, and ear and eyebrow piercings, the bill says.

The "negative ideology" of emo culture may push young people toward depression and social withdrawal, and the movement carries a significant risk of suicide, especially for young girls, according to the bill. Dasha Larionova, 21, who listens to MAIO and My Chemical Romance and has an affection for emo fashion, believes that the association between emo culture and suicide is just a stereotype. "There are way too many emo teens to have one general characteristic," Larionova said. "The government doesn't know what they're talking about."

The bill also outlines what it calls a "spiritual and ethical crisis" facing Russian youth, including the high rate of alcohol abuse, teen abortions and "negative youth movements." Emo ideology encourages and justifies drug use and sexual relations among minors, according to the bill, which also lumps emos and goths together with skinheads. "The point of the bill is so that by 2020, Moscow will have someone to rule its government," said Alexander Grishunin, an adviser to Public Chamber member Yevgeny Yuryev, one of the bill's three coordinators. "This is the first step in the public discourse." The bill's sponsors hope that it will be passed into law by the end of the year.

This is not the first time emo kids have been targeted as a danger to society. In November, the Novgorod regional education department issued a letter to all schools in the region with a description of emo culture, saying the "dream of every [emo] is to die in a warm bath from the blood of cutting their wrists." The branch distributed the letter at the behest of the regional branch of the Federal Security Service, according to the bill's footnotes. One school in Chelyabinsk has banned emo attire, saying it violates the Constitution because it promotes "violence," the news agency Novy Region reported.

Igor Ponkin, one of the bill's authors and a member of the Interior Ministry's public oversight council, described emo culture as a "social danger" that demands measures such as dress codes in schools, Internet regulation and state-sponsored after-school activities. Ponkin said emo kids exchange photographs showing off their slashed wrists. "This type of behavior is a crucial part of emo ideology," he said. "Of course there are emo teens who just listen to their music. But our actions are not directed at them but rather at those who also hurt themselves, commit suicide and promote those acts," Ponkin added.

Not all psychologists agree with Ponkin's analysis, however. "Suicide is not a symptom of emo culture. I work with other teens too, and every group has emotionally troubled kids," said psychologist Inna Cherkova, who has worked with local teenagers, including emo kids, for 15 years. Many subcultures can, in fact, help children mature into adults, psychologist Alyona Filippova said. "Many kids seek those with the same perspective and problems and, through this, they can enter general society," Filippova said. She said, however, that those who cling to subcultures do have a higher risk of psychological problems.

But the emo movement may fade into obscurity before the proposed bill ever becomes law. The anti-emo backlash is almost as prevalent as the culture itself. Many bands who were formally identified as emo are quick to distance themselves from their "earlier" emo period. Sergei Vel, the lead vocalist in rock band Radio Cambodia, which is heavily featured on Emokids.ru, says he no longer listens to emo music. "Even those who play emo music will not admit that it's emo, because it's not in style anymore," Vel said. "It used to be honest and real. Now it all faded and merged into the mainstream. I can identify with emo culture, but not the kind that is now being offered in Russia."

Andrei Shmorgun, 28, said he loves the emotional quality of emo music, but that in Russia, "this style is not accepted as it should be." "They ruined the stereotype of emo and turned it into some kind of suicidal trend," said Shmorgun, a member of the metal band Arda. Kulikov, the bassist for MAIO, said it was natural that emo culture is spawning enemies. "The more popular the wave, the more antagonists will rise — in any music," Kulikov said. "If someone is saying something negative, he probably has no idea what we or our music are about."

Reuters reports:

A Russian court has banned a book about Adolf Hitler by the late historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, saying quotes attributed to the Nazi leader insult Russians and Jews, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Under anti-extremism laws the court banned the 1953 book "Hitler's Table Talk: 1941-1944", which records Hitler's sometimes racist ramblings on a wide range of topics.

Trevor-Roper, Regis professor of history at Oxford University between 1957 and 1980, wrote what is considered one of the classic accounts of the fall of Nazi Germany: "The Last Days of Hitler".

Russia's Prosecutor-General said in a statement that texts published in "Hitler's Table Talk" are of "an anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic character".

"A host of statements by A. Hitler in the book insult the dignity of Russian and Jewish peoples who are presented in quotes as inferior and primitive people because of their nationality."

The Prosecutor-General said certain Hitler quotes in the book -- such as "Russians are beasts," "Slavs are a mass of inborn slaves" -- had caused offence.

The book will now be put on a national list of extremist works that are banned and owning or distributing it would then be illegal.

Trevor-Roper, one of the leading scholars of his generation, became Lord Dacre after being made a life peer in 1987. He died in 2003.

Initially an expert on the 16th and 17th centuries, he drew on information gained while serving as an intelligence officer in World War Two to write "The Last Days of Hitler", considered a classic of Hitler scholarship.

His reputation took a knock in 1983 when he was briefly taken in by diaries purportedly written by Hitler that turned out to be forgeries.

A few months ago Russian opposition leader Oleg Kozlovsky was drafted into the Russian Army. Then, a short time later, he was un-drafted.

It's no flight of fancy to say that this blog (a term that certainly includes you, the reader) had a something to do with his release. Because of our leadership in covering the story, it made it into both the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, and from there into a number of other forums and the attention of significant world leaders. What was obviously a plan to crush Kozlovsky with dedovshchina torture fizzled like a cheap firecracker and went up in smoke.

It would be a mistake to think, though, that the malignant forces of evil in the Kremlin saw that as much of a setback. The real point of moving against Kozlovsky, after all, was to intimidate, threaten and silence others, not just him. And the Kremlin's action hasn't even been declared illegal in a lawsuit, nor have damages been paid to Kozlovsky. Until that happens, the Kremlin will conclude it accomplished the lion's share of its objectives.

But the lion's share isn't total victory. Kozlovsky lived to tell the tale and he did tell it -- on the storied pages of the Washington Post in his own editorial, while he was sitting in jail on yet more trumped-up charges. He hasn't been silenced or intimidated; in fact, the Kremlin's action has given him new credibility and may ultimately blow up in its face, just like British action against Gandhi and Southern action against Martin Luther King did.

And now, there's more bittersweet news along these same lines to report.

Back in August, we were the first in the English-speaking world to tell the full story of blogger Savva Terentyev, who had been arrested and faced two years in prison for a comment he wrote on another blogger's post. Just imagine what his fate would have been for an actual post on his own blog!

Now the Moscow Times reports that Terentyev has been tried and convicted for the act of writing a comment on a blog post. His only consolation is that he received not actual jail time but a 1.5-year suspended sentence -- meaning that for the next year and a half the Kremlin can chuck him into prison any time it wants if he's not a really, really good boy. As Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, told Reuters: "This was an absolutely unjustified verdict. Savva for sure wrote a rude comment, but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody." The Kremlin's chilling message has been sent out loud and clear, far and wide: "If we'll do this to a mere commenter, just imagine what we'll do with the actual bloggers themselves."

But still, a suspended sentence isn't nothing. Just like with Kozlovsky, it shows the Kremlin knows its own weakness, that it can't risk doing what it wants and has to move in careful, baby steps down the road to dictatorship. We played our part in bringing sufficient pressure to bear on the Kremlin that Savva is still at liberty to blog again, if he's got the guts. It will be a drawn-out process to liquidate the last vestiges of civil society in Russia, and that means its defenders have a chance.

But not much of one, unless of course the forces of good in the West, led perhaps by John McCain and others who clearly see our peril, use these victories as a springboard towards a confrontation that will ultimately force back the tide of repression now sweeping over neo-Soviet Russia.

Paul Goble reports:

The Kremlin has dispatched its own “agents of influence” to political forums on the Internet both to portray itself as having more support than it has and to suggest that its opponents who would like to see a more democratic Russia with closer ties to the West are an ever more marginal group, according to an intriguing online analysis. In a three-part study, the Independent Consumers Association (ICA) noted a striking difference between those who post on these sites and those who take part in surveys where it is possible to vote only once from a single computer.

Having noted that the percentage of forum participants with liberal and democratic views formed 70 to 80 percent in 1999 while four years later, their opponents, who backed more anti-democratic positions constituted 60 to 80 percent of those posting messages, the ICA asked what could explain such a change. And what it found was that “such a sharp quantitative jump did not correspond to the spectrum of public opinion and essentially diverged from the data of Internet voting on key problems of contemporary Russian life” – and moreover diverged along a single anti-democratic and anti-Western axis.

Today, the ICA analysts note, “80 percent of the authors on all web forums very aggressively and with unanimous curse the United States. But in voting on those sites where it is possible to vote only once from a single computer, 84 percent of the Russian-language users of the Internet support the United States.” This divergence between the content of the forums and voting of this kind is found “everywhere,” the ICA analysts say, an indication that a relatively small number of people are flooding the forums with messages listed under various screen names in order to distort the picture of Russian opinion online. “In liberal and neutral social-political forums of the Russian segment of the Internet, the activity of an extremely large number of similar personages has grown” to the point that they sometimes come to define the core of that forum, especially since they share so many common features that set them apart as a distinctive group, despite their claims of diversity.

The ICA analysts refer to members of this group as “the agents of influence of the siloviki” or “Commando G” [for “gosudarstvenniki” or etatists] and point to a number of their common characteristics, both in terms of the approaches they adopt and the specific positions they put forward in their posts. Among these are “round-the-clock presence on the forums” rather than during peak hours as is the case with most users, a close tracking of the positions of the Russian government no matter how often they change, “unlimited devotion” to the Russian leader, and positive characterizations of the Soviet and Russian security services. The ICA analysts then list some more specific attitudes of Commando G including their specific and consistent attacks on opponents of the regime, the “low cultural level and characteristic language” of its members, and the tendency to denounce anyone who disagrees as “an enemy of Russia.”

Many of these Commando G types frequently change their screen names or use more than one, the ICA study concludes, all the better to suggest that there are more people who agree with them than is in fact the case and what is probably even more important that there are far fewer who disagree with the Kremlin line. The ICA study also provides additional evidence of specific links between Commando G and the Russian security agencies and acknowledges that the Russian government, given its desire to control all the media, has no choice but to adopt such innovative measures in order to try to bring the Internet forums to heel.

Obviously, ICA is not able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt in the sense that many of the attitudes and patterns of behavior it points to could in fact be true of the rapidly growing Runet itself. But its conclusions are not only intriguing but suggestive of some of the innovative ways researchers may be able to track government involvement online. However that may be, the ICA study concludes on what is an optimistic note for all those who care about media freedom, the basis of democracy and an open society. What the Kremlin and its security agency allies have been doing, the ICA analysts say, is generating some countervailing forces the Russian leadership did not expect. “People on Internet forums attempt to defend and support one another” whenever they are confronted by a coordinated action of groups like Commando G. That act of cooperation is highly empowering, as is the fact that however much power this pro-Kremlin group may have there are ways to post a response, including reports like the one ICA has prepared.

Yevgeny Kiselyov, a political analyst and political talk show host on Ekho Moskvy radio, on Russia's football frenzy and how it apes the Franco dictatorship, from the Moscow Times:

For three glorious weeks, football ruled in Europe. But that is all behind us now. Spain won the championship, and passions have died down -- that is except in Russia, where football fever is still gripping the population like some form of mass madness.

There is a good reason for that excitement, of course. To everyone's pleasure and amazement -- including mine -- Russia's team rose from its initial standing in 16th place after a dismal showing in the qualifying round to finish in third place overall.

Now even housewives who never cared about football before know that nothing like this has happened since 1988, when the Soviet team last made it to the European championships. Soccer coverage dominated the airwaves almost as much as Putin's Plan did before the presidential election.

But we heard much less about the fact that Spain last made it to the finals in 1964, when they beat the Soviet team. But it is worth recalling some of the events from that period, a time when Spain was locked in a duel with the Soviet Union. It was foremost a political battle. Spain, which hosted the championship game in Madrid, was still haunted by the memories of its civil war from 1936 to 1939. The republicans, supported by the Soviet Union, lost to Francisco Franco's nationalists. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wanted the Soviet team to trounce Spain in full view of the Spanish dictator. Just the opposite happened. In an intense game, the Soviet players missed the decisive goal in the final minutes and lost to Spain 2-1.

Khrushchev was beside himself with rage. His team lost to Spain in front of the caudillo himself. The defeat brought shame upon the red flag and dishonor to the Soviet state. The head trainer, Konstantin Beskov, who had assembled one of the best teams in the country's history, was immediately fired.

Objectively speaking, Spain's team was the strongest in Europe, with Real Madrid winning five consecutive European championship cups from 1956 to 1960. No team has since matched that accomplishment.

Spain's total obsession with football began in earnest under Franco in the 1950s -- a period during which Spain was viewed by most of the world as the "sick man" of Europe. It was a rogue state, one of the last dictatorships in Europe, scorned and criticized by other countries. It was poor, backward and stagnant. Its glory days as an powerful empire -- one that earned the world's respect for its amazing military victories, great voyages and geographic discoveries -- had long passed by the mid-20th century. Therefore, Spain found its much-needed self-esteem on the football field.

And not only football. In 1968, Spain was beside itself with delight when the Spanish singer Massiel won the Eurovision song contest in Britain. With her eloquently named song "La, La, La," she beat out Britain's future rock 'n' roll star Cliff Richard, who took second place. Even then, there were rumors that the voting process was rigged. Now, 40 years later, those suspicions have proved well-founded. Spain released a film documenting how Franco had the contest's jury members bribed in order to ensure a win and the boosting of his country's international reputation.

I don't mention this story to cast doubt on our excellent finish in the European Football Championship, Dima Bilan's recent Eurovision win, Sochi securing the 2014 Winter Olympics, Zenit St. Petersburg's UEFA championship victory or Russia's hockey win after so many unsuccessful years. All of those performers and athletes deserved the glory and honor that comes with victory.

But when celebrations over victories in athletic or Eurovision contests reach the level of hysteria, Russia becomes very much like Franco's Spain.

In fact, the histories of Russia and Spain have a lot in common. The great 20th-century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset called the two countries "the two poles of the great European axis." If we take his famous book, "Spineless Spain," and substitute the word "Russia" for "Spain," the reader will find the numerous parallels between the two simply amazing.

The regime that former President Vladimir Putin's built is in some subtle ways reminiscent of Franco's regime during its era of decline -- when, like the Sphinx without the riddle, all that remained of the harsh, bloodthirsty dictator was the uniform of the generalissimo. It is no coincidence that the system almost immediately collapsed after Franco's death and that his hand-picked successor, King Juan Carlos I, played a leading role in returning Spain to democracy.

As for the euphoria following athletic victories or artistic triumphs, yesterday it was the Bolshoi Ballet, today it is Bilan. Communist propaganda touted the success of Soviet hockey players, figure skaters and ballet dancers as proof of "the indisputable superiority of the socialist system." And the same propaganda reacted very negatively when famous Soviet figures, such as dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov and figure skaters Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, defected to the West. They were portrayed as the worst kind of traitors to the state.

Rooting for the success of Soviet athletes gave ordinary citizens a way to feel like they were a part of some great cause. It also allowed them to forget for a short time about their lack of freedom, their meager Soviet standard of living and their limited opportunities for personal success or prosperity. On the other hand, when all other channels for self-expression were closed, the mass interest in football served as a substitute for a full and healthy social life. Direct broadcasts of football games were practically the only Soviet television programs shown live, and they were a rare glimpse of the real world -- one filled with the drama, passion and suspense of a live global sport event whose results were not preprogrammed by the state. The only other live broadcasts were of military parades, workers' demonstrations on Nov. 7 and May 1, funerals for Politburo members on Red Square and, of course, "Vremya," the stiff government nightly news program.

Football is an outlet to express the people's patriotism without nationalistic excesses or xenophobia. It also allows them to make nonstandard pragmatic decisions that in other circumstances might be considered politically incorrect, such as inviting a foreign coach to head the national team. Football is perhaps the only issue that is subject to serious, hard-hitting and impartial analysis by the pro-Kremlin media.

In 1964, when Franco's Spain went head to head with Khrushchev's Soviet Union in the finals of the European championship, the two countries were on equal footing. By 2008, however, democratic Spain, which has long since moved on from its past as a dictatorship, twice routed Russia, a country stuck in its authoritarian past.

Perhaps this should be a lesson not only for Putin but for the football team's coach, Guus Hiddink. The team is overly burdened when so much of the country's pride and self-worth rests on its performance on the field. With this huge weight on each player's shoulders, it makes it very difficult to compete against more nimble football teams from free and democratic countries.

The Moscow Times reports:

Propelled by a surge of oil and natural gas wealth, Russia has become the leading anti-democratic force in its region, the U.S.-based democracy watchdog Freedom House said in a report released Monday. Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the vision of a wider Europe "whole and free" remains unrealized, Freedom House also said in the report. "Over time, we have seen rising oil prices correlate clearly with sharply falling democracy performance, especially in Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan," the group's director of studies, Christopher Walker, said in an interview. "The resource curse is taking root."

As energy prices increased over the past decade, the three former Soviet states based their growth on natural energy resources, the report said. The period was marked by "a concurrent and striking decline in the openness and independence of institutions," the report said. By last year, it became clear that Vladimir Putin's era had ushered in a new elite that grabbed power, Freedom House said.

Experimenting in "authoritarian capitalism," an "Iron Triangle" of state power, industry chiefs and security services is leading a decline in the electoral process and increased control over political opponents and news media, the report said. "Independent voices of consequence have been muzzled and are unable to challenge or moderate the leadership's whims and excesses," according to the report. Courts, the backbone of the legal system, are targeted by dominant power-holders to make sure they cannot provide unbiased and independent justice, Walker said. As for the media, Walker said, influential power-holders "want to make sure their enormous assets and use of them are not scrutinized and not taken away, and that contributes to repression."

The growing authoritarianism is also shaping foreign policy, producing "a more assertive and often belligerent posture by Russia toward its neighbors," the report said. For instance, it said, Russia keeps trying to undercut reform in neighboring Georgia and is applying pressure on Estonia. While yielding the post of president to Dmitry Medvedev, Putin holds the post of prime minister and has assumed leadership of the country's dominant political party. The report said it is not clear how the still-evolving authoritarianism will fare without him directly at the helm.

When he took the oath of office in May, Medvedev pledged "to protect the rights and liberties of every citizen." He also declared that "human rights and freedoms … are deemed of the highest value for our society and they determine the meaning and content of all state activity."

Freedom House has also published a report recently called Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies 2008. Not surprisingly, Russia appears on their list of 20 nations and territories in that category.

La Voz, the newspaper of De Anza College in Cupertino, California, shows students there are right on top of their studies where Russia is concerned with the following editorial:

Putin's tactics disturbingly reminiscent of Stalin

Although former Russian President Vladmir Putin has supposedly relinquished power to new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin continues to weild significant influence over the country in his new position as Prime Minister.

Medvedev, who was previously Putin's chief of staff, was handpicked by the Putin to be his successor. Medvedev won the presidency by a large margin of around 70 percent. Medvedev has been accused of acting as a puppet and it seems Putin is not yet ready to hand over the reins of power.

During his presidency, Putin fostered increasingly acceptance of Joseph Stalin's political tactics, portraying Stalin as a national hero. Putin told schoolteachers in Russia that their history was "nothing to be ashamed of" and that it was their duty to make students feel "proud of their motherland." Stalin is described in some history books as "the most successful Soviet leader ever."

One of the more frightening aspects of Putin's Stalin-like tendencies has been his intolerance of critics in the media. During his presidency, Putin brought important media outlets, including some television and radio stations, under state control. In some cases he shut them down entirely

In addition, a slew of important journalists who were openly critical of the president were murdered during Putin's time in office, most notably Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who was killed while walking out of her apartment. Though her murder was never directly linked to the Kremlin or to Putin, the timeliness of her murder and the execution-like style of the killing raised many eyebrows in the international community.

During his tenure as president, Putin also tightened his authoritarian grip on parliament. He changed the rules, no longer allowing governors to be elected. Instead they were appointed directly by Putin.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an independent oligarch openly critical of 'democracy' in Russia, has been quoted as saying: "It is the Singapore model - it is a term that people understand in Russia these days. It means that theoretically you have a free press, but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice you are not able to exercise some of these rights."

Epoch Times reports:

Lidiya Talaizadeh (Lidia Louk, pictured above), an Epoch Times reporter and NTDTV correspondent, who was returning to New York City from Moscow, was released by Russian authorities after she mysteriously vanished in late May of this year. Ms. Talaizadeh was pulled from her plane before its departure by Russian officials.

On May 21, Russian Epoch Times reporter Juliana Kim dropped her colleague, Ms. Talaizadeh, off at Sheremetyevo 2 Airport so that she could catch the 3:30 p.m. flight to JFK. Later, Kim received a SMS text message from Ms. Talaizadeh saying, "They took me off the flight." Her friend tried to call her back, but the phone went straight to voicemail repeatedly, indicating that the phone had been turned off.

Customs and Security officials at the Moscow airport have a different story. They say they have no record of anyone being pulled off any flights or any flights being detained.

Aeroflot airlines would not confirm whether Ms. Talaizadeh had boarded the flight or not. They said they could not release that information to anyone but her husband, Mr. Amir Talaizadeh.

Mr. Talaizadeh in New York called Aeroflot twice to confirm that his wife had boarded the flight. The representatives at Aeroflot refused to release any information without a confirmation number, despite Mr. Talaizadeh reminding them of the legal requirement to release information to the immediate family.

Seeking help from the Russian Consulate in Manhattan, Mr. Talaizadeh was told the only thing he could do was to fill out a form stating what had transpired. The form would be responded to, at the earliest, in 10 days.

According to Mr. Talaizadeh, "It was clear to me that the Russian Government had detained her and was controlling, from behind the scenes, the information that Aeroflot released."

Mr. Talaizadeh believes he knows the reasons for her disappearance. "My wife practices Falun Gong, he explained, "and that practice is being severely persecuted in China; she was being detained because the CCP has close ties to the Russian government and is trying to export the persecution to other countries such as Russia.

"Other Russian practitioners had been detained before and several Chinese practitioners who held UN refugee status were illegally deported back to China."

Tailing and Intimidation

Mr. Talaizadeh explained that Ms. Talaizadeh had gone to Russia in order to act as the host of the Shen Yun Chinese Spectacular show in St. Petersburg, which was to be held the first week of April.

In late March, Ms. Talaizadeh and the contact people for the show in Russia were informed that they could not hold the show unless they removed the content about Falun Gong. Eventually, it was decided by NTD that they could not guarantee security for the dance company and NTD staff, and the show was cancelled. Ms. Talaizadeh was trying to resolve these issues.

She had also been working on an appeal process to Article 8. Article 8 is a treaty that was signed by then President Putin and then head of the Communist party Jiang Zemin. Within the treaty, there was language that specifically states that any organization banned in China would be banned in Russia.

"My wife had met with several attorneys, " continued Mr. Talaizadeh, "and a number of government officials regarding Article 8 and the persecution of Falun Gong in China. As a result of this, and her initial work with the organization of the Shen Yun Show, she noticed she was being followed by Russian agents.

They were not being inconspicuous in any way and made their presence known to her by giving her eye contact when each began his shift, and subsequently followed her wherever she would go as an obvious 'tail.' It was an obvious that the Russian Government was trying to intimidate her while also observing what she was doing."

The detention on May 21 was not the first for Ms. Talaizadeh in Russia. She was detained for holding a Falun Dafa Hao (Falun Dafa is Good) banner at the Olympic Torch Rally in St. Petersburg.

"No reason was given for the detention, says Mr. Talaizadeh. "Several other practitioners who were also at the event without any identifying Falun Gong dress were nonetheless identified and pulled out of lines at the event and also detained for several hours and released.

"Individuals within the Russian Government know that Falun Dafa practitioners are good people, yet the way the Russian Government reacts and follows orders from the CCP is wrong, illegal, and puts its future in jeopardy—after all the CCP itself is collapsing inside China," Mr. Talaizadeh continued.

Mr. Talaizadeh is grateful for his wife's imminent return, but wonders how Russia can successfully abide by a "crazy" law to appease the CCP regime, while still looking sane to the rest of the world

The New York Times reports that Putin's opponents are being made to vanish from Russian TV, a neo-Stalinist purge that ought to send chills down the spine of any reasonable person. The Times has published a translation of the article on its Russian blog as part of an ongoing series, and generated a number of comments from Russian which it has also translated. One Russian reader wrote:

There is room on TV only for those who work to strengthen the country. If your actions are destructive, i.e. you do not support the unidirectional progression of your country, then there is no place for you there. I really want to say: write in newspapers and on the Internet, but TV is too strong a tool to hand over to everyone. TV should be for propaganda.

On a talk show last fall, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail G. Delyagin had some tart words about Vladimir V. Putin. When the program was later televised, Mr. Delyagin was not.

Not only were his remarks cut — he was also digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily, leaving his disembodied legs in one shot.)

Mr. Delyagin, it turned out, has for some time resided on the so-called stop list, a roster of political opponents and other critics of the government who have been barred from TV news and political talk shows by the Kremlin.

The stop list is, as Mr. Delyagin put it, “an excellent way to stifle dissent.”

It is also a striking indication of how Mr. Putin has increasingly relied on the Kremlin-controlled TV networks to consolidate power, especially in recent elections.

Opponents who were on TV a year or two ago all but vanished during the campaigns, as Mr. Putin won a parliamentary landslide for his party and then installed his protégé, Dmitri A. Medvedev, as his successor. Mr. Putin is now prime minister, but is still widely considered Russia’s leader.

Onetime Putin allies like Mikhail M. Kasyanov, his former prime minister, and Andrei N. Illarionov, his former chief economic adviser, disappeared from view. Garry K. Kasparov, the former chess champion and leader of the Other Russia opposition coalition, was banned, as were members of liberal parties.

Even the Communist Party, the only remaining opposition party in Parliament, has said that its leaders are kept off TV.

And it is not just politicians. Televizor, a rock group whose name means TV set, had its booking on a St. Petersburg station canceled in April, after its members took part in an Other Russia demonstration.

When some actors cracked a few mild jokes about Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev at Russia’s equivalent of the Academy Awards in March, they were expunged from the telecast.

Indeed, political humor in general has been exiled from TV. One of the nation’s most popular satirists, Viktor A. Shenderovich, once had a show that featured puppet caricatures of Russian leaders, including Mr. Putin. It was canceled in Mr. Putin’s first term, and Mr. Shenderovich has been all but barred from TV.

Senior government officials deny the existence of a stop list, saying that people hostile to the Kremlin do not appear on TV simply because their views are not newsworthy.

In interviews, journalists said that they did not believe the Kremlin kept an official master stop list, but that the networks kept their own, and that they all operated under an informal stop list — an understanding of the Kremlin’s likes and dislikes.

Vladimir V. Pozner, host of “Times,” a political talk show on the top national network, Channel One, said the pressure to conform to Kremlin dictates had intensified over the last year, and had not eased even after the campaign.

“The elections have led to almost a paranoia on the part of the Kremlin administration about who is on television,” said Mr. Pozner, who is president of the Russian Academy of Television.

In practice, Mr. Pozner said, he tells Channel One executives whom he wants to invite on the show, and they weed out anyone they think is persona non grata.

“They will say, ‘Well, you know we can’t do that, it’s not possible, please, don’t put us in this situation. You can’t invite so and so’ — whether it be Kasparov or Kasyanov or someone else,” Mr. Pozner said.

He added: “The thing that nobody wants to talk about is that we do not have freedom of the press when it comes to the television networks.”

Vladimir R. Solovyov, another political talk show host, said Mr. Pozner was complaining only because his ratings were down and he was looking for someone to blame if his program was canceled. Mr. Solovyov, a vocal supporter of Mr. Putin, said he had never been bullied by the Kremlin.

Yet last year, his show, “Throw Down the Gauntlet,” regularly featured members of opposition parties. This year, the only politicians to appear have been leaders of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, and an allied party.

Asked why he had not invited opposition leaders lately, Mr. Solovyov said: “No one supports them. They have nothing to say.”

Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, a liberal and former member of Parliament who used to appear on the show, said Mr. Solovyov was covering up for the Kremlin.

“He lies, of course,” Mr. Ryzhkov said. “My programs with him were among the highest rated programs of any in the history of his show.”

Mr. Ryzhkov said he was usually allowed to appear in lengthy segments on only one major channel: Russia Today, the English-language news station, which the Kremlin established to spread its viewpoint globally.

“I can go on Russia Today only because they want to make it seem that in Russia, there is freedom of the press,” he said.

After the Soviet Union’s fall, several national and regional networks arose that were owned by oligarchs. Though they operated with relatively few restrictions, their owners often used them to settle personal and business scores. One network, NTV, garnered attention for its investigative reporting and war dispatches from Chechnya.

Mr. Putin chafed at negative coverage of the government, and the Kremlin effectively took over the major national networks in his first term, including NTV. Vladimir Gusinsky, NTV’s owner, was briefly arrested and then fled the country after giving up the network. From that point on, executives and journalists at Russian networks clearly understood that they would be punished for resisting the Kremlin.

All the major national and regional networks are now owned by the government or its allies. And since the presidential election in March, neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Medvedev has indicated any interest in loosening the reins.

“Our television is very often criticized,” Mr. Medvedev said in April. “They say it is boring, it is pro-government, it is too oriented towards the positions of state agencies, of those in power. You know, I can say that our television — in terms of quality, in terms of the technology used — is, I believe, one of the best in the world.”

Valery Y. Komissarov, a former host on a state channel who is now a governing party leader in Parliament, said television coverage was a convenient scapegoat for opposition politicians and antagonistic commentators.

“These are people who are not interesting for society, who are not interesting for journalists,” Mr. Komissarov said. “But they want publicity and perhaps they want to explain away their lack of creative and political success by the fact that they are persecuted, that they are included on the so-called stop list.”

While the Kremlin has focused on TV because it has by far the largest audience, many radio stations and newspapers also abide by the stop list, either ignoring or belittling the opposition.

There are exceptions: a few national and regional newspapers regularly publish critical news and commentary about Mr. Putin and comments from those on the stop list. In addition, the Internet is not censored, and contains plenty of criticism of the government.

A small national network, Ren TV, pushes the boundaries, as does a national radio station, the Echo of Moscow, which has become the voice of the opposition even though Gazprom, the government gas monopoly, owns a majority stake in it.

The Kremlin seems to tolerate criticism in such outlets because they have a limited reach compared with the major television networks. The nightly news on Channel One, for example, is far more popular than any of its counterparts in the United States. It regularly is one of top 10 most-watched programs in Russia.

Mr. Delyagin, the political analyst edited out of the talk show last fall, said he was surprised to have been invited in the first place. He said he last appeared on a major network several years ago, before he began attacking the Kremlin and supporting the opposition.

“I thought that maybe she forgot to look at the stop list,” he said, referring to the program’s host, Kira A. Proshutinskaya.

(Last week, after a Russian-language version of this article was posted on a blog run by the Moscow bureau of The New York Times, Mr. Delyagin was invited to appear on a show on NTV.)

Ms. Proshutinskaya’s program, “The People Want to Know,” had been censored before.

Mr. Ryzhkov, the liberal former member of Parliament, went on the show last year, but its network, TV Center, refused to broadcast it.

In an interview, Ms. Proshutinskaya conceded that Mr. Delyagin had been digitally erased from the program. She said she had been embarrassed by the incident, as well as the one with Mr. Ryzhkov, explaining that the network was responsible. The Kremlin had so intimidated the networks, she said, that self-censorship was rampant.

“I would be lying if I said that it is easy to work these days,” she said. “The leadership of the channels, because of their great fear of losing their jobs — they are very lucrative positions — they overdo everything.”

The management of her network would not comment. But the network’s news director, Mikhail A. Ponomaryov, said journalists and hosts of talk shows had no choice but to comply with the rules.

“It would be stupid to say that we can do whatever we want,” he said. “If the owner of the company thinks that we should not show a person, as much as I want to, I cannot do it.”

Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Centre, writing in the Washington Post:

During Vladimir Putin's presidency, tight control of the mass media evolved as one of the Russian leadership's key political resources. It will be equally indispensable to newly inaugurated President Dmitry Medvedev.

To understand how journalism here changed under Putin, consider two book projects.

In 1999, Natalia Gevorkyan and Andrey Kolesnikov, two reporters at Russia's best daily newspaper, Kommersant, interviewed Putin for a book that was to introduce the president-to-be to the public. Excerpts printed in Kommersant before the book's publication revealed an angry exchange over Andrei Babitsky, a Radio Liberty reporter who was being held incommunicado in Chechnya. The journalists voiced the suspicion, shared then by many in Russia, that Babitsky was being held on state orders. They demanded that Putin release Babitsky and said bluntly that they didn't believe his responses.

The second book interviews involved Medvedev and occurred shortly before he was elected president. This time the excerpts were published on the Kremlin Web site. Medvedev was queried about what the words "great Russia" mean to him, his conception of democracy and his attitude toward private property. The journalists were friendly and respectful, and Medvedev's answers were long and uninterrupted.

If the interviewers, a husband and wife, had wanted to discuss journalists in trouble with the government, they wouldn't have had to struggle for examples. Last year, reporter Natalia Morar' was deported after a weekly magazine ran a series she wrote alleging that high-ranking officials were siphoning huge sums out of the country. Manana Aslamazian, director of Internews Russia, a mostly U.S.-funded organization that since 1992 had trained television journalists and supported independent broadcasters, fled the country fearing arrest; Internews Russia was promptly destroyed. The assassinations and mysterious deaths of several high-profile journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, Yuri Shchekochikhin and Paul Klebnikov, remain unsolved.

But in today's Russia, journalists don't press top officials. In fact, apart from the interviews with Gevorkyan and Kolesnikov, Putin, as president, never publicly faced a single unfriendly question from a Russian reporter.

During Putin's tenure, television broadcasting was honed to perfection -- as a tool to shape public opinion. Coverage of political and public affairs is now tightly controlled through a coordinated effort of the national channels' top managers and Kremlin aides. The result is that any event, person, group or movement may be boosted or played down in the public eye in a way that would best suit the Kremlin's desires and designs; anyone deemed an adversary of the government may be discredited or vilified.

Polls indicate that the public is highly responsive to television brainwashing -- whether the campaigns are against Georgia, Ukraine or the West, or are intended to influence voting preferences. In contrast to Soviet times, the government's most effective media tools are also highly profitable. Each of the two biggest channels reaches almost all Russian households. While stations don't compete in news coverage -- news shows differ little from channel to channel -- other competition for viewers and advertisers is fierce. The result: first-class soap operas and other entertainment programs that keep people glued to their screens. Advertisers, attracted to large audiences, eagerly commit their budgets to state-controlled television.

This business model and the controlled political content are inseparable and mutually beneficial. The Kremlin-designed television diet is easily digested: Bland information is supplemented by exciting entertainment shows. As he completed his second term, Putin granted special letters of commendation to the top managers of the national channels.

The government has radically curtailed broadcast freedom, but it does not totally control speech. Some broadcast, print and online outlets with smaller audiences have maintained relatively independent editorial lines, which serves to let off steam. These outlets may create an appearance of media freedom, but they are tightly insulated from national television, effectively marginalized and kept politically irrelevant.

Shortly before his inauguration this month, Medvedev disagreed with the view that there has been "regress" in the way Russian media are regulated. He told the popular weekly Argumenty i Fakty that the "mass media develop not badly at all." "In its quality and the means used," he continued, "Russian television is among the best in the world" and is not "pro-government." This is blatantly untrue. People who work in television privately admit that they operate under tight government control. Some have even said so publicly. Prominent TV journalist Vladimir Posner said recently at a public meeting that "on television and not only on television [there is] no press freedom." During recent parliamentary and presidential election campaigns, Posner added, some issues were "entirely banned" and certain public figures could not be invited on air.

Whether or not Medvedev believes his statements about Russian television, he'll have to draw on the system of manipulative politics -- and its key element, the state-controlled media -- that Putin's Kremlin created. The national TV channels are a political resource of uncontested might. However power-sharing between Putin and Medvedev may evolve, they will have to share the power of television as well.

Paul Goble reports:

More than seven out of ten Russians say that trusting others is an “impermissible luxury” at the present time, an attitude that not only makes it far more difficult for them to organize themselves but also limits their ability to take advantage of the assistance others may be ready to offer them, while leaving them open to exploitation by others. The Public Opinion Foundation, which enjoys the reputation as one of the best survey research firms there, recently conducted a poll about the levels of public trust among Russians. The results have sparked a lively discussion as to their meaning for the country’s future.

In an article published in “Novyye izvestiya” this week, Anna Semenova summed up the poll’s results in the following way: Russians “consider that trust is an impermissible luxury in our time. If necessary, [they] will turn for help to relatives, friends and colleagues” but not to neighbors or to social organizations like the church. According to the Public Opinion Foundation, 71 percent of Russians now say that they believe that the level of trust in Russian society had declined sharply over the last 20 years and that everyone around them at the present time is “insincere,” “dishonest”, “egotistical,” or “mean as a dog.” Contrary to what many might expect, levels of trust are lower among village residents and poorer groups in the cities and higher among those with higher education and larger incomes, with Muscovites, who enjoy the reputation of being “indifferent egotists,” being 10 percent more trusting that villagers. And if they do have problems, 76 percent of Russians say they will turn to relatives, 59 percent said they would rely on friends and acquaintances, 35 percent on colleagues at work, 28 percent from neighbors, and 12 percent on religious groups, but only five percent said they would turn to public organizations for help.

Sociologists believe, “Novyye izvestiya” reported, that these high levels of distrust are a product of the early 1990s “when everyone had to rely only on himself.” But they have been boosted since that time among those who have suffered from the collapse of pyramid schemes and the failure of politicians and others to keep their promises. But in comments to that paper, Mark Sandanovsky, a Moscow psychologist, pointed to what he said was a “curious” situation: Russians trust others far less than Europeans or Americans do but they fall victims to confidence games far more often, a product of their general lack of trust and willingness to trust too much they decide are their friends. That is a problem, but a far more serious one is that many Russians today, because they do not trust others, are unwilling to work together either as volunteers or as members of social and political organizations, a situation that postpones if not precludes the evolution of that country in the direction of a civil society. And members of this small sector of Russian life told the paper that negative media coverage of the activities of these public groups was reinforcing Russian attitudes about these important components of an open and democratic society rather than helping residents of that country to overcome it.

The Daily Mirror reports:

It is the first place thousands of English football fans will see when they arrive in Moscow for the Champions League final. But for one young British visitor, Moscow Airport's cavernous customs hall was the start of a living nightmare he was lucky to survive.

Tig Hague, 35, was on a business trip in 2003 when, misunderstanding a request for a backhander, he was pulled to one side to have his bag searched. Just one more irritating inconvenience, he thought - until the guard found a tiny lump of hashish in a pocket, the remnant of a recent stag weekend. By nightfall the banker from London found himself in Moscow's infamous Piet Central jail, accused of being a drug smuggler. Later sentenced to four-and-a-half years in the gulags, he was soon on the way to the notorious Zone 22 prison camp in the remote wastes of Mordovia.

Issuing a warning to fans travelling to the all-English final on Wednesday, Tig says: "I was incredibly naive and I would hate for someone else to make the same mistake. Anyone travelling to Russia needs to be extremely careful."

It was just hours after Tig had kissed his fiancee Lucy goodbye on the morning of July 17, 2003, that his life descended into hell. He was five yards from the airport exit and could see a driver holding a card with his name on it. He recalls: "A customs official shouted at me to join another queue to have my bags X-rayed. I'd taken whisky for my clients and some Western cigarettes. The official started telling me I couldn't take them through and asked if I had any money. "With my English head on, it didn't register with me that a bribe was in order. Because the penny didn't drop, he decided to search my case."

As the official picked up a pair of jeans, Tig froze, remembering the events of the weekend when he'd met friends on a stag do and, after drinking heavily, had decided to buy some cannabis. Tig says: "The world went into slow motion as I watched him run his hands through the pockets. Then he barked something in Russian and guys with submachine guns started running towards me." Wrapped in a Rizla paper, the tiny amount of dope was enough to warrant a slap on the wrist in the UK. But Tig was far from home. "I was frogmarched to a room, strip-searched, and made to sign a statement which was all in Russian," he says. "I managed to text Lucy and call my boss back in London on my mobile before my things were taken away. "Hours later I was lying in a dirty, damp cell in Piet Central jail, sobbing uncontrollably."

Back home, Lucy's world fell apart just as dramatically. She says: "I was shopping in my lunch break when I got a text message from Tig which read, 'I love you more than you will ever know, forever in your heart'." A few minutes later she saw Tig's boss on his way to find her. "He told me he could be away for seven years and I collapsed in a heap, dropping my shopping bags on the pavement."

Tig was refused bail and put in the foreigners' cell of a Moscow prison where he remained for two months. He quickly learned how to survive in the harsh environment where guards would subject prisoners to random beatings. A mobile phone, smuggled in by an African cellmate, provided a lifeline, allowing him to make a few brief phone calls to his family.

Lucy says: "In September I went to visit Tig with his mum. I was shocked at how thin and ill he looked. As soon as I got out of there I burst into tears."

Despite his family's best efforts - and a £30,000 bribe - Tig was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in the notorious gulag Zone 22. "Lucy bribed a guard Û500 to spend five minutes with me. I just clung to her, sobbing, saying, 'Don't leave me, don't leave me. I was then herded on to a train for the 500-mile journey. I was terrified." But the prison camp was even worse than Tig expected. In winter inmates froze in temperatures as low as -35C and in the summer the heat was unbearable. Sadistic guards meted out indiscriminate beatings and disease was rife.

During his incarceration his parents - a builder and a housewife - shelled out more than £100,000 in bribes and also provided him with enough chocolate, coffee and cigarettes to buy his way out of trouble. Tig says: "It was medieval. The buildings were riddled with cockroaches. They put me to work in a sewing factory. The material was saturated in chemicals and we'd get welts and fungus all over our bodies. My eye swelled up so much they came close to removing it."

But the most torturous part was when Lucy came to visit. Because they weren't husband and wife they had to sit at opposite sides of the room. Desperate to spend time together Tig and Lucy decided to tie the knot. The ceremony took place in October 2004, followed by a 48-hour "honeymoon" in a dirty cell with two beds pushed together. "Those two days got me through the rest of my sentence," Tig says. "But we don't speak about the wedding day. It's still far too painful."

Tig was finally released in March 2005 after clocking up points for good behaviour and paying off two prison officials. He now has a new job and the couple have a 15-month-old daughter, Isabella. Two years since his ordeal finally came to an end, Tig has this advice for football fans: "Don't take any risks with anything. Bribery is endemic so always carry Û150 to bribe your way out of trouble. "Don't go anywhere without photo ID. And if you do get into trouble, don't sign anything, insist on seeing a lawyer and speak to the embassy. "Don't do anything that, like me, you may regret for the rest of your life."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Hoover Institution's David Satter ably exposes the horror of Vladimir Putin as dictator for life.

Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in Wednesday as president of the Russian Federation in the Great Kremlin Palace. But the Russian political elite has no idea whether Mr. Medvedev will be the real president or only a figurehead. Neither do the voters. Amid signs of instability in the country, this situation is causing anxiety.

Formally, the Russian president has enormous power. He is commander in chief of the armed forces, can hire and fire the prime minister, appoint ministers, dissolve the parliament, and set the main lines of the country's foreign and domestic policy. But Mr. Medvedev may not be free to exercise his authority.

Vladimir Putin promised he would retire from politics in 2008. But everything now indicates that, as a result of agreements between the various power groupings, he will continue to play the main role in the government.

In February, Mr. Putin laid out development goals for Russia through 2020. Last month, he was named chairman of the United Russia party, which has a majority in the State Duma sufficient, should the need arise, to impeach the president. Yesterday he was confirmed by the Duma as prime minister. Meanwhile, the Duma is working on a bill that will transfer administrative tasks to lower-level bureaucrats and leave the prime minister free to focus on strategy.

If, as is widely expected here, article 32 of the law on government is amended to transfer authority over the military and security services and the foreign ministry to the prime minister, Mr. Putin will have the authority to continue to rule Russia regardless of the president. Postcommunist Russia can thus be ruled in reality (as opposed to appearance) by someone not elected as president, even in flawed elections.

Meanwhile, there's already a growing impression that Mr. Medvedev is a pale reflection of Mr. Putin. During his recent visit to Moscow, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak noted that the images of Messrs. Putin and Medvedev are merging into one. "When I went to a meeting with Mr. Medvedev in the Kremlin," he told Mr. Putin (as quoted in Reuters), "and saw you on the television at the same time, I found myself wondering who was who."

But the manipulation of the political system – amid the fights between ruling clans for money and power – can only create the conditions for an eventual, systemic crisis in Russia posing a danger for the world.

According to Transparency International, the only country with more measurable corruption than Russia (as a percentage of per capita income) is Equatorial Guinea. Under Boris Yeltsin, the Russian economy was dominated by oligarchs who amassed fortunes on the strength of corrupt connections to government. Now, government officials are the oligarchs.

Mr. Putin filled top leadership positions with his friends from St. Petersburg; men who, in addition to their government duties, sit on the boards of the most powerful state corporations and have access to their cash flows. Charges that they are stealing billions are ignored.

In 2007, a Zurich tribunal ruled that Leonid Reiman, the telecommunications minister, is the beneficiary of $6 billion in telecommunications assets. This inspired no action in Russia beyond an attempt to censor the news. According to published accounts, Gennady Timchenko – co-founder of the oil trading company, Gunvor, through which a third of Russia's oil exports are sold – has a net worth of $20 billion, half of which belongs to Mr. Putin. According to a report by Vladimir Milov (a former deputy minister of energy) and Boris Nemtsov (the former Russian first deputy prime minister) published on the Web site, grani.ru, while Mr. Medvedev was the head of Gazprom, 6.3% of the shares worth $20 billion disappeared.

Since government officials can use the organs of law enforcement to ruin their competitors (as occurred most famously in the Yukos case), offers from companies connected to government officials to buy out other private businesses are seldom refused. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy can extract endless bribes. One Moscow businessman described to an investigative reporter how he paid $1.3 million in construction costs and $1.8 million in bribes to erect a building for his office. Similar stories are legion.

Forced to pay bribes, small- and medium-sized businesses are discouraged from investing in anything not immediately profitable. Without confidence in the future, Russia, despite a highly educated population, lags in the development of high technology. And if the price of oil falls, many Russian businesses face ruin: The weight of bribes to feed the bureaucracy will become unbearable at the same time a war will break out between bureaucratic clans for the remaining bribes, under the guise of a battle with corruption.

The alternative to all this, of course, is the rule of law, to which Mr. Medvedev seems sympathetic. In an interview with the Financial Times, on March 24, he described Russia today as a land of "legal nihilism." But even if Mr. Medvedev would like to act on his liberal pronouncements (which is far from certain), he has authority only according to the law; whereas Mr. Putin controls mechanisms able to assure that the law does not operate.

In the end, the self-serving operations of Russia's elite are based on a single assumption: The high prices for energy will last forever. But the decision of a society to count on its raw materials instead of its people is fraught with grave consequences.

Oleg Deripaska is a 40-year-old magnate who rose to the top of Russia's aluminum industry and is, by most press accounts, Russia's richest man. He has been quoted in Reuters that he was confident that Vladimir Putin would rule until at least 2020. Mr. Deripaska may be right. But Russians will pay a high price for this rule – in xenophobia, apathy, inverted moral principles and a stunted future.

Writing on Kasparov.ru and translated by Other Russia Victoria Rabotnova, a St. Petersburg based journalist, decries Vladimir Putin's crackdown on the Russian press. She completed the Journalist Faculty of the Leningrad State University in 1984. Since then, she has worked for a number of publications, and has been widely published around Russia. From 1991 to 2005, she was the parliamentary commentator for the Nevskoe Vremya newspaper. At the present moment, she serves as a columnist for the Novaya Gazeta, and is a staff writer for the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya Segodnya (Russian Federation Today) magazine.

Long ago, when I first started working at a newspaper, relatives would constantly congratulate me with our professional holiday. Now they don’t offer congratulations: they simply don’t know when, and most importantly, for what.

As to May 5th –the Day of the Soviet Press—I personally have fond memories. The relaxed editorial get-togethers and the inevitable bonuses truly made the day festive for all the journalists and newspaper-writers (employees of radio and TV had their own special holiday on May 7th). During the years of Perestroika, a significant part of newspapers came out of the control of the [Communist] party organs, but this didn’t affect attitudes toward May 5th. The jokesters, truth be told, did suggest renaming it to the Day of the Anti-Soviet Press, but no one wanted to break traditions and renounce the favorite holiday. Yet as a bit more time passed, the traditions broke on their own.

Understandably, after the putsch happened, it became sort of indecent to celebrate the day of the first issue of the Pravda newspaper. So May 5th was changed to January 13th, which took root slowly and with grumbling. But this is beside the point.

Honestly, I don’t remember if we marked the Day of the Press in 1991. This was a time when all the standing journalists wrote much and earned enough to not depend on the holiday’s bonuses. And we sat in the editorial offices well into the night every day, because the newspapers went to print late at night: there was simply no time to sit around a festive table, because we needed to monitor the news, finish writing or rewrite articles, create pages… in short, to work. And the work seemed so much more interesting than some holiday sit-arounds.

The May 3rd Day of the Free Press was definitely never celebrated. This seemed pointless during times when [the Press] was indeed free every day. Today, when the space for freedom has contracted like pebbled skin, this isn’t just pointless, but even cynical –the same as celebrating innocence in a brothel. According to a Freedom House rating, Russia is in 164th place for the degree of media freedom, letting not only Moldova and Kyrgyzstan pass by, but even Iran and Afghanistan. In the previous year, I’ll note, we were slightly higher – in 158th place. [note: The most recent 2008 assessment by Freedom House ranks Russia as 170th.] How is it that [Vladimir] Vysotsky put it? “You can’t hold on at the top – you’re plummeting down”?

Obviously, the Russian press did not become restricted immediately – we are speaking of a protracted process, spanning a decade, the start of which was rooted as far back as [Boris] Yeltsin’s times.

Of course, economic reasons played an important role in this. In the 90s, printed publications, sent floating into a liberal economic voyage, ran into serious troubles. Prices for paper, typographical services and mailings were mushrooming, while the number of subscribers was falling. Those people that had formerly subscribed to three or four newspapers could no longer afford such a luxury. In substance, many publications ended up on the brink of closing, and their leadership, clutching at straws, grabbed at the offers of collaboration coming from the business structures.

The businessmen were willing to finance the newspapers, but under the condition that the controlling stake of shares ended up in their hands. Naturally, they assured the editors and journalistic collectives that they wouldn’t interfere with editorial policy. And as a rule, they actually didn’t interfere… at the start. But afterwards, it turned out that the esteemed shareholder was interested in keeping up nice relations with the authorities, and categorically didn’t want to support a publication that kept him from doing so. That’s why critical materials about bureaucrat A (B, C, D – make your selection) must be removed from the newspaper’s sheets. And instead of them, write and print a different, praiseful article.

The need to keep earning funds quickly increased the role of advertising departments, who were searching for and finding clients. The interests of these clients, if they were looking for a long-term campaign, would also have an affect on editorial policy: It was clearly explained to the journalists, that you can’t bite the hand that feeds you, and so no critical speech regarding businessman or politician A (B, C, D – make your selection) were allowed at the moment. But to write something positive about them is actually very needed. It’s worth noting that orders from the advertising department (just like the special assignments of shareholder), were paid with a special rate, and that those willing to write them were always easy to find. And those, who categorically did not want to do this, sooner or later started to feel like “superfluous people” in the editorial offices.

Of course, you could stand by your principles, refusing to write “as needed” and continuing to write what you were thinking. But more and more frequently, such principled behavior would lead to a simple result: articles were lain on the editorial “table” and remained there forever. And then it came time to receive your wages – and involuntarily, many thought: isn’t it worth the sacrifice? That is, isn’t the income (necessary to live yourself, and often to feed your family) worth enough to assuage your commitment to your principles and go for the compromise? Ultimately, there are more than enough topics which you’re allowed to cover –and you can always choose less biting ones, or simply don’t walk out “past the flags.”

Truth be told, there was another choice –to try to change one newspaper for another, where the editorial policy was different. At first, many did just that –since different media depended on different commercial structures, which had different interests. But afterwards, a growing number of these structures began to themselves depend more and more on the authorities. And critical overtones in their corresponding media became less and less frequent. The number of newspapers where you could freely state your opinions was rapidly melting away — and consequently, so did the number of work-places where you could transfer when it became completely odious…

And afterwards… afterwards a news generation of journalists grew up. And those, who didn’t go to a PR-service or a political consulting structure directly after college, but stayed in journalism, already perceived “the air of non-freedom” as the only one they were used to breathing. Many journalists of the previous generation came to peace with [the situation] as well – some grew older, some became tired, some decided that it was impossible to spit against the wind their whole lives, some changed their topic –for instance, to cover sports, where it is still possible to speak absolutely freely, where, as-yet, no teams, sportsmen or trainers exist that are closed off from criticism. Possibly, however, this omission will soon be corrected.

And what’s left in the outcome? Well, that people believe less and less what the majority of newspapers (and television all the more so) [are telling them]. The reader-viewer is not quite so stupid and naïve as they possibly assume in the power structures, where they are so interested in narrowing the “extent of freedom.” [The reader] sees that one life is happening around him, while much of the media are telling him of a completely different one, as if they’re speaking of some parallel world. He takes the Peterburgsky Dnevnik (the St. Petersburg Journal) newspaper, published by the St. Petersburg administration with a circulation of 200 thousand, out of his mailbox and sees, for instance, that “the news of the week” from the 9th to the 15th of April 2007 is the approval of a new draft law by the city government, which bans gambling machines starting in July 2008. The violent crackdown of the “March of Dissent” on April 15th, which proved to be at the center of attention of the majority of the world media, isn’t considered as news of the week by the paper. It isn’t even mentioned. This event just didn’t happen…

At one time, in the distant Soviet past, there was a popular joke about a person who visited a psychiatrist with a complaint. He says, “I see one thing around me, but on the television – it’s completely different.” “We don’t cure socialism,” the doctor replies to the poor fellow. Can it be that we’re reverting?

Altogether, we have nothing to commemorate on May 3rd, because you cannot be free only one day of the year. You are either free all the time—or constrained every day…