The WTA is conducting a tennis event this week in Warsaw, Poland -- the tiny tier II J&S Cup. More humiliation for Russia? Of course. The tournament's number 5 seed, world #9 Russian Nadia Petrova, was eliminated in easy straight sets in her second match of the tournament by an unseeded Italian not ranked in the world's top 30 players. Meanwhile, the WTA website ran a poll which asked: After three runner-up finishes, will Svetlana Kuznetsova win her first J&S Cup title in Warsaw? To do so, she'd have to get post the two top Belgians, Kim Clijsters (who crushed Kuzentsova in straight sets in last year's final) and Justine Henin-Hardenne, and she needed three sets to get past her first opponent in the tournament, a lowly Ukrainian qualifier. That's to say nothing of having to beat Venus Williams in her next match, after the unseeded Williams thrashed number 7 seed and world #13 Yelena Dementieva in easy straight sets (two of Russia's four seeded players in the tournament failed to even reach the quarterfinals). Over 4,000 visitors have voted on the poll so far, here are the results:

After three runner-up finishes, will Svetlana Kuznetsova win her first J&S Cup title in Warsaw?

13% Yes 87% No

Total votes - 4042

(1) Another Original LR Translation: The Law of the Nerd

(2) Pow! Bam! Boom! The Hammer Falls on Russia

(3) Violent Protests are Just Fine in Russia . . . As Long as You're Pro-Kremlin

(4) Annals of Neo-Soviet Self-Delusion

Vova Khavkin offers the following column by noted Russia commetator Andrey Piotkovsksy surveying the gloomy landscape of the neo-Evil Empire. Blogger Robert Amsterdam posts a review of Piontkovsky's new book, click on the image above to read it.

The Law of the Nerd

By Andrey Piontkovsky

Grani. ru

April 27, 2007

Translated from the Russian by Vova Khavkin

I’ll say it frankly: Not every one is happy about the
path forward towards sustainable development of our country.
There still are those who craftily manipulate pseudo-democratic rhetoric
and would like to turn back the clock… so as to be able to pilfer
the national treasure and rob both the citizens and the state

Vladimir Putin. Address to the Federation Council, 26 April 2007

* * *

The whores—they “snatched” it^†

Viktor Gerashchenko. Address. 27 July 2006

At times Providence generously endows the world with a constellation of bright talent. In the 1920’s six future Nobel laureates were attending the same school in Budapest at the same time. And in the early 90’s in the same century several bureaucrats in Piter’s City Hall (Albert Einstein, by the way, also started as a clerk in a municipal patent office) set up a cottage coop—“Ozero” [Lake]. Today its “capitalization”—the assets controlled by coop’s members—is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.

It’s natural that in the new free Russia the same phenomenally talented people have predictably rose to top positions in the country and are controlling its cash flows, enforcement agencies, mass media, and football game broadcasts with their firm and clean hands.

They differ favorably from their historical predecessors—the members of the Soviet Politburo. When those “Evil Empire” rulers started traveling abroad they discovered to their horror that their material wellbeing was lower than that of a provincial American professor.

The struggle with their woeful privileges (hotdogs in the Kremlin canteen, deer skin hat—one per year) awoke the whole vast country which percolated with meetings for three years.

The spoils of this Great Political Appointee Revolution went to the current bunch—the former mediocre einsteins from Piter’s patent office. Now they have Teutonic Chancellors serving as butlers.

These powers that be no longer have to rock their own boat, and they do have things worth defending: With nightsticks in the streets, with handguns in doorways, and—in deference to exquisite postmodernism—with polonium in the expanse of Europe.

However, the need to travel to G8’s, to davos, courchevel, and nice, as well as to store securely their foreign currency notes in foreign banks calls for performing some “democratic” rituals. But even this tedious duty can be approached creatively, with zest and security agent’s sense of humor.

A group of democratically challenged nerdy intellectuals are going to rain upon the scheduled inauguration of the coop’s chairman of the board by nominating a “candidate of united opposition,” which requires that two million signature be collected.

An upfront solution would be appointing an obvious squeaky clean crook as chairman of the vote counting board. But the coop members found a bearded Shukshin’s Nerd^* for this occasion.

This “physicist” has spent four years as a Duma member from [Zhirinovskiy’s] Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, which in itself is a symptom—we know the diagnosis. But the most intriguing thing emerged in an interview given by this naïve Nerd to the coop’s court jester. It turns out that for the past fifteen years he’s kept generally busy by catering to lakeside banquets and yelling at the top of his lungs from behind the bushes in a scary voice “AND HEEEEEERE COMES VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICh PUTIN!!!”

As a result something in his head turned into an organ-grinder who is endlessly repeating “Putin is always right!”—Nerd’s First Law.

Therefore, when the vote counting board chairman receives, e.g., 2,346,142 signatures (if one gets them through the doorway of course), and a call comes from the board of directors, saying that there are actually only 1,999,999 signatures, he will speak with total sincerity and conviction with the voice of his favorite organ-grinder:

“Putin is always right”

“If you diss us, you won’t last three days”

“We’ll circumcise you so nothing will ever grow back”

“Knocking off in the election committee office”

“It sank”

“Insurance bullet into the head”

__________

^†A play on words. The Russian word ‘stealing’ also denotes vagina. A reply by the former Central Bank chairman and Yukos director to a question about what happened to Yukos and its money live on Moscow Echo.

^*A character in a novel by Shukshin, a popular Russian writer and movie director

Today is World Press Freedom Day. To commemorate it, Russia faced a massive three-front attack this week over it's outrageous attacks on Russian media.

First, the United Nations declared it would give a posthumous award to Anna Politkovskaya as "the person who made a notable contribution to the defence of press freedom."

Next, Freedom House issued its annual report on international press freedom and declared Russia to be "unfree" and describing a neo-Soviet "information curtain" descending across the continent.

Finally, the U.S. State Department, hardly a bastion of hawkish beligerance, praised both the U.N. and Freedom House actions and declared that Russia is among the seven worst offenders in terms of press freedom, along with Afghanistan, Venezuela, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt and Lebanon.

Russia continues on its crazed neo-Soviet path to once again alienate the entire world. The Associated Press reports that the Kremlin has no problem allowing violent protests, as long as you are pro-Kremlin. If you are Other Russia doing this stuff, you meet 10,000 stormtroopers.

Young Russians staged raucous protests in Moscow on Wednesday to denounce neighboring Estonia for removing a Soviet war memorial from its capital, and the Estonian ambassador said pro-Kremlin activists tried to attack her as she arrived at a news conference. Sweden said its ambassador also was assaulted as he left the Estonian Embassy after a meeting Wednesday, saying protesters surrounding the compound kicked his car and tore off a Swedish flag. The protests were the most disorderly in Russia since Estonian authorities took the bronze statue of a Red Army soldier from a downtown square Friday. The monument, which commemorates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, was put in an Estonian military cemetery this week.

Ethnic Russians also have rioted in Estonia over the removal, which they see as the latest discriminatory move by ethnic Estonians since the Baltic nation broke away from the Soviet Union. The action has worsened tensions between Estonia and Russia. Estonian Ambassador Marina Kaljurand summoned journalists to the offices of a Moscow newspaper to demand that Russian authorities increase security at the Estonian Embassy, which has been besieged by activists since late last week. She was met by a crowd of protesters, and she said her bodyguards had to use a pepper-style gas to protect her. The news conference was delayed for an hour while police dragged protesters from the building. “Apparently the attack was aimed against me, but nobody got through to me. Nobody touched me,” Kaljurand told reporters. Protesters earlier tried to block Kaljurand as her car left the embassy compound, not far from the Kremlin, chanting “NATO lackeys, hands off the Russian soldier!” As she arrived at the Argumenti I Fakti newspaper, dozens of activists with the youth group Nashi and other groups mobbed her and stormed into the building. A newspaper official said several youths broke into an editor's office, ransacked it and shouted: “Let's get her.” After the rowdy protests, the European Union urged Moscow to honor its obligations under diplomatic treaties to protect the Estonian Embassy. European Commission spokeswoman Christiane Hohmann criticized violence at the embassy.

In Tallinn, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves issued a statement urging Russia to calm the heat in the dispute over the monument “I turn to Russia, Estonia's neighbor, with a clear message: Try to remain civilized!” he said. Ilves also lashed out at cyber attacks on Estonian government Internet sites that he and Kaljurand said were being waged by computer hackers linked to the Kremlin. “It is customary in Europe that differences ... are solved by diplomats and politicians, not on the streets or by computer attacks,” Ilves said. There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin to the accusation. The leader of Nashi, Vasily Yakemenko, said activists barged into Kaljurand's news conference because organizers would not allow them to ask questions. “If we didn't come here today, our voices wouldn't be heard,” he said. Protesters have camped out on the sidewalk across from the Estonian Embassy, erected barriers trying to prevent diplomats from coming and going and staged loud demonstrations. Over the weekend, activists pasted mock “Wanted” posters with Kaljurand's face on buildings in the neighborhood.

Embassy spokesman Franek Persidski said some Estonian diplomats and their families were leaving Russia, but insisted that no mass evacuation was taking place and that the embassy continued to operate. The embassy's consular service has suspended operations. At the delayed news conference, Kaljurand said some of the cyber attacks against Estonian government Web sites have come from Internet addresses registered to the Kremlin. “Based on information of the Estonian side, the attacks are being carried out from IP address of the Kremlin administration, among others,” she said. “The European Union will take concrete measures with regards to Russia.” The head of the Russian Orthodox Church said Wednesday that it was immoral for the Estonian authorities to move the war monument. “Fighting against the dead, against the soldiers who have always been honored by all nations, is the most unworthy deed,” Patriarch Alexy II was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. “It is immoral to profane the memory of the dead.”

As the result of this barbaric Russian action, the EU is considering the cancellation of its summit with Russia. EUObserver reports:

Attacks on the Estonian embassy in Moscow have sparked a conversation in Brussels on whether or not to postpone the EU-Russia summit later this month, as prospects for launching talks on a new EU-Russia treaty become increasingly worse. "We are not excluding it. This might happen. It depends on the Russian reaction," the Latvian ambassador to the EU, Eduards Stiprais, told EUobserver on the summit postponement option after an EU ambassadors' meeting in Brussels on Wednesday (2 May) broached the issue. "It's difficult to understand how the Russian law enforcement authorities were able to disperse so effectively some peaceful protestors a few weeks ago, but are now unable to maintain law and order on the streets of Moscow," Mr Stiprais added. "The ball is in the Russian court." An Estonian diplomat explained that both Tallinn and the German EU presidency are still expecting the summit to go ahead at this stage, with Estonia "happy" the EU has shown solidarity and with Germany arguing the summit is the best forum for handling EU-Russia gripes. "We wouldn't like to veto anything, we are hoping for the best," the Estonian official explained. The question also came up at a meeting of the 27 EU commissioners the same day, with Estonian commissioner Siim Kallas briefing colleagues on remarks by Estonian foreign minister, Urmas Paet, who said on Tuesday the EU should give "full consideration" to putting the summit off. "A week is a long time in politics," a commission official said on the prospects for the EU-Russia meeting in Samara on 18 May. "I didn't sense any appetite for postponing the summit at today's commission meeting," he added.

Russia's predictable response: energy blackmail, cutting off oil shipments to Estonia. In other words, cold war all over again. The USSR, with twice Russia's population, couldn't handle the first one. Yet Russia wants a rematch. That's Russia in a nutshell. And we do mean nut.

RIA Novosti reports:

The Russian government has approved an excessively optimistic socioeconomic development forecast for 2008-2010.

According to its predictions, the Russian economy will grow by at least 5.2% annually despite possible changes in energy prices and sluggish demand for Russian goods.

The influence of oil quotations on the Russian economy has diminished, and growth is unlikely to be driven by energy exports. Instead, according to the government, the Russian economy should seek to increase domestic demand.

Nevertheless, oil prices are the key parameter of the development program for the next three years. According to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Urals crude will cost $53 per barrel in 2008, $52 in 2009, and $50 in 2010.

The government is shifting its focus from the oil and gas sector to the manufacturing industry, the consumer sector and a general growth in consumption. The food sector should increase sales by 27% in 2010 compared with 2006, the textiles industry should grow by 43.1%, and mechanical engineering by 20%-30%. Demand on the domestic market will determine the pace of economic growth.

Under a moderately optimistic scenario, GDP will grow by 6.1% in 2008, 6% in 2009, and 6.2% in 2010.

If we assume that the demand for Russian-made goods will not grow dramatically in the next few years, the federal budget, prospective financial plans and the inflation outlook should be based on the "inertial scenario." According to this, GDP growth will slow down from 6.5% in 2007 to 5.7% in 2008, 5.3% in 2009, and 5.2% in 2010. The figure for 2006 was 6.7%.

The ministry has forecast a growth in average monthly wages by 90% in nominal terms by 2010 compared with 2006, and a rise in real incomes by up to 27%. Wages in Russia are growing faster than labor productivity as it is, which is accelerating inflation and distorting the employment market because of a shortage of skilled labor.

The government intends to keep up a high rate of economic growth even in the most unfavorable scenario, for even the 5.2% growth in GDP forecast under the inertial scenario is impossibly high for many industrialized countries.

Apart from energy prices, the government will continue to monitor inflation as "a major trend characterizing the macroeconomic situation in the country."

Unfortunately, Russia is lagging far behind industrialized countries in this sphere, as consumer prices are expected to grow by at least 5%-8% a year until 2010. The reasons are the overpowering influence of monopolies and a considerable inflow of revenues from energy exports. The money is coming in faster than the government can sterilize it.

A high rate of inflation is not the only obstacle to the government's plans. Other very serious problems are the lack of a modern transport infrastructure, the overstrained energy system, excessive energy consumption per item manufactured, and high dependence on the commodities sector.

Most importantly, Russia is lagging behind industrialized countries and fast-developing emerging economies in terms of technological standards. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said the Russian model of economic development should be overhauled, because Russian business is largely uncompetitive compared with its foreign rivals.

The government must find a way to convince Russians to buy Russian. High-quality economic growth cannot be ensured through an increase in production in basic sectors without investing in up-to-date technologies and innovation. Even the promised wage rise will not convince Russians to buy Russian-made goods, for when their incomes grow to a certain level, they start buying high-quality foreign goods.

Russian leaders keep saying that the national economy should be diversified and realigned toward knowledge-based development supported by favorable investment opportunities and effective market mechanisms. These ideas have been incorporated in the government's outlook for 2008-2010. It looks good on paper, but the Russian economy will not become competitive until these ideas become reality.

The Associated Press reports on how, at long last, the language of oppression and exploitation in Ukraine (that is, Russian) is being opposed at ground level. Ukrainians are learning to speak their own language -- and there's not a thing Russia can do about it!

The fidgeting, wide-eyed girls and boys squeezed around a table in Elizaveta Moklyak's kindergarten class are helping lead a cultural and political revolution.

With her pointer and colorful posters, Moklyak teaches Ukrainian to Russian-speaking children — ensuring that by the end of the school year, the language of their homeland no longer sounds like a foreign tongue.

Today Ukrainian has emerged from second-class status, slipping quietly into the chambers of government and popular culture. This is more than a cultural change: It could doom any hopes Russia may have of restoring its traditional political influence over the country.

Just two years ago, some Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine talked of secession, fearing dominance by Ukrainian speakers in the west. The language debate was one of the most divisive of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which helped oust Ukraine's pro-Moscow leadership.

While competition for political power continues, Ukrainian may already have triumphed in the language war.

"I think there is the sense that Ukraine has passed over the hump on this issue, that there has been a big, but quiet, victory," said Ivan Lozowy, a political analyst.

President Vladimir Putin appears deeply worried about the erosion of the use of Russian worldwide, and last week called for creation of a national Russian Language Institute. "Looking after the Russian language and expanding the influence of Russian culture are crucial social and political issues," Putin said in his state-of-the-nation address.

In countries like Ukraine, that influence is shrinking. The nation's Ukrainian-speaking west yearns to be part of Europe; the Russian-speaking east and south is the base of politicians who want to maintain Ukraine's historic ties to Moscow. Pro-Russia Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has said he would oppose aggressive "Ukrainianization." But even Yanukovych has brushed up on his Ukrainian and now uses it — not only at official meetings, but at rallies of his Russian-speaking supporters.

Some Russian speakers feel besieged. Mykola Levchenko, 27, secretary of the Donetsk city council, said Russian speakers like himself suffer daily insults, and some Ukrainians even question his patriotism. When he buys a Ukrainian-made home appliance, he says, the directions come only in Ukrainian.

"In world society, Russian is a major language, Ukrainian isn't," he said. "Why would we give this up?"

After Ukraine became independent, it declared Ukrainian the sole state language and switched over more than 80 percent of its schools. Nearly all universities now teach in Ukrainian; as a result, parents push children to study Ukrainian early.

"Without this it would be difficult for him in life," said Yulia Bondarenko, who speaks Russian at home to her 7-year-old son, Zhenya, but sends him to a Ukrainian-language school.

Ukrainian and Russian both use the Cyrillic alphabet and have the same linguistic roots, and it's not uncommon to hear people slip seamlessly from one to the other. Many words are similar — the Russian word for apple is "yabloko," Ukrainian is "yabluko" — but differences also are common.

For example, thank you in Russian is "spasibo;" in Ukrainian, it's "dyakuyu." And even simple words can be different: in Russian, yes is "da" and no is "nyet;" in Ukrainian, yes is "tak" and no is "ni."

Ukrainians in Kiev joke that if a traffic cop pulls them over, they'll curse in Russian, then switch to Ukrainian — which conveys an air of authority — to try to persuade the officer from writing a ticket.

"We have nothing against Russian, we all use it," said Yuliya Vladina, a 22-year-old DJ. "But we have a language — Ukrainian — so why shouldn't we promote that? It's progressive. It's hip."

Ukrainian's identification with pop culture appears to have been a key factor in its success, particularly among young people. Many popular bands sing in Ukrainian. Ivan Malkovych, director of a Ukrainian-language publishing house, rushed out a Ukrainian translation of the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series, beating Russian-language publishers. That success, he said, helped attract young readers to other Ukrainian-language titles.

Russian does maintain its dominance in some fields. Most national newspapers publish only in Russian, as do many magazines.

But every year, the demand for Ukrainian publications increases — propelled by readers who began learning the language in kindergarten classes like those taught by Moklyak.

(1) Another Original LR Translation: Everything Old is New Again

(2) Another Original LR Translation: Is the Kremlin Weak or Strong?

(3) The Mighty Moscow Times Blasts the Kremlin over Estonia

(4) Illarionov Remembers Yeltsin

La Russophobe's Original Translator offers another installment from the pages of Yezhedevny Zhurnal, this time a column by Maksim Blant (pictured) looking at the dismal prospects of the Putin regime. The article might just as well be titled to include the 1890s, in order to reflect Russia's apparent willingess to once again allow an obscene polarization of society between a tiny rich class and an enormous impoverished one.

Don’t Repeat the Mistake of the 1990’s

Maksim Blant

Yezhednevniy Zhurnal

In Russia the Power Model of governance has taken hold. The diagnosis has been made: Andrey Illarionov has with his usual thoroughness performed a fairly detailed analysis, presented with a wide range of materials, tables and graphics on the website of the Institute of Economic Analysis, which he heads. His recent column in Yezhednevniy Zhurnal (“Approaching Zimbabwe”) presented conclusions from a few of his investigations – conclusions which the authorities more than graphically illustrated the past Saturday in Moscow and Sunday in Saint Petersburg. The completely unwarranted and unprovoked use of force came from only one side – from the side of the government, directed at private citizens. The force was not used to uphold law and order, but quite the opposite, to prevent the people from exercising the rights and freedoms guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws of the Russian Federation.

There is no point in doubting that this regime will collapse. The leadership of the Corporation of Special Service Collaborators (KSSS) will be removed from power and, perhaps, placed before a court. But today the leaders, including the President, are nothing but “moles” and “stool pigeons”, operations officers and informers, who started their careers in the Soviet period, prosperously survived the 1990’s, and fit right into the current regime. Fitting right in as well were those who, at the end of the 1980’s and early 1990’s selflessly flailed the “democratizers”, “just following orders.”

The OMON police officers were also just following orders, beating people this past weekend, in the process committing crimes that are punishable under the criminal code (I personally witnessed a series of incidents that I am ready to testify about in any court). The Corporation depends on exactly these executors of orders, because these are what allow it, even after being beheaded, to resurrect itself and quickly resume its struggle for power.

Hiding behind their orders and their depersonalizing uniforms, specially trained and equipped with the “means for suppression”, these people nowadays feel themselves completely above the law, inasmuch as the monstrous government machine of today completely relies on them. And while there is some question as to whether following an illegal order is itself illegal, all of civilized humanity decided this question for itself over a half-century ago – at the Nuremburg trials – but in Russia for some reason many do not consider this truth to be obvious.

All of this leads to some unpleasant thoughts. Even if the current authorities are forced to leave, and this is more than a change in the window dressing, there is no guarantee that the Corporation will not return in time, putting to the forefront figures yet unknown and uncompromised to the general public. For this reason sooner or later we will have to do what was left undone after the breakup of the USSR – we will have to undergo lustration, cleansing the organs of state power of former and active “collaborators”, both clandestine and open.

This is in no way a call for a “witch hunt”, nor a desire to avenge and punish; those who have committed no crime have nothing to be punished for. This action is necessary in order to defend the power of the country from being monopolized by a well-organized, tight-knit and disciplined force, which has its own aims and interests. In addition, the country should place a permanent ban on the profession. No one is suggesting we should dissolve the army or abolish the intelligence or law enforcement agencies. They deserve our respect and admiration when they valiantly perform their proper functions. But not when they start working against private citizens. It is simply necessary to exercise civilian control over their activities, and people who are making a career or considering a career in the intelligence services must understand that the path into the organs of state control, or leadership positions in government companies, has been closed.

Translator Vova Khavkin offers the following translation of a post about the "Other Russia" crackdown by the Kremlin from blogger Dmitriy Shusharin. Russian speakers can click through the link to read the exenstive comments, and ultra-blogger Anton Nossik has commented here with approval, also with numerous comments from readers. Nossik's remarks are translated following the Shusharin piece.

“An 'Other' View”

Russian Blogger Dmitriy Shusharin

It’s a new publication. They asked, so I spoke my mind.

I’ve heard that it’s been published. The editors came up with the title of their own. I don’t know what it was.

Generally, it’s about what people have been talking the whole week and will keep on talking about.

“In interpreting the events around the ‘Dissenters’ Marches’ which are (please note the present tense) taking place in various Russian cities, the following views prevail—to wit, that the authorities got scared, are showing weakness, and are despicable. Needless to say, I am talking about an interpretation of the current events by their participants and by those who are on their side. Or at least assume that no one has yet repealed the Constitution, although we are moving in that direction. So here it is: We are indeed moving in that direction. And this course of events does in no way attest to the authorities’ weakness; rather—to their decisiveness, assertiveness, and strength. The last word is certainly the key here, and it was uttered before me by Andrey Illarionov who spoke quite recently about a model of coercive government.

The only thing that might be added to this is that the coercive model is characterized in that the state institutions and statutory bodies become coercive. Thus, the Central Election Commission becomes a coercive agency. And what drives the activities of the supposedly public youth movements is not demagogy, which right in front of our eyes is being reduced to the logic of “Thank you, Comrade Putin, for our happy life,” but rather belligerent street actions. They are still confined to the streets, but the project “Dump the boss” reminds us of the Maoist “Fire on the staff” [炮打司令部] and, of course, oprichnina [extra-judicial rule by a violent inner circle during the time of Ivan the Terrible].

And keeping in mind that the cliché about the West’s support for the “dissenters” now goes hand-in-hand with the argument that Mikhail Kasyanov has maintained his links to Russia’s oligarchs and bureaucrats, one can expect that we should soon hear something similar to [Stalin’s] notion of intensification of class struggle as we progress towards socialism. The key here is “intensification of struggle” rather than the words “class” and “socialism.”

The initial impression is that the government’s actions are hysterical and obviously excessive. But I suppose that this is a false impression. The ruling clan has so far been able to get what it wants. Andrey Illarionov’s arguments miss the key point: An evaluation of the government’s actions from the viewpoint of the government itself and within the scope of the mission they themselves have defined. And if you use this approach you have to admit that all the objectives have been achieved. And now you have to exploit the gains.

It they will be exploited—through force and force alone—without any regard to the public opinion or the international community, without any concern for the legal or ethical standards; moreover, by rejecting, first and foremost, any moral obligations to the members of the political elite. If you look at it, they are already disregarding it—who are these Berezovskiy, Khodorkovskiy, and Kasyanov, if not former “kinfolk?”

Only the elite itself is capable of counteracting this—if it finds the strength to go beyond internecine squabbles. Lacking this, all marches and all street actions will simply be a part of the government’s confrontational game. Don’t console yourselves with the notion that the authorities are supposedly setting a trap for themselves. Those who consider themselves to be the opposition may end up in the trap—unless they are already there.”

Here's the take of uber-blogger Anton Nossik on the piece:

Strength or Weakness?

April 23, 2007

Blogger Anton Nosik

Dmitriy Shusharin posted on his LiveJournal blog page a column about the logic of the Russian authorities’ behavior regarding the dissenters’ marches. In his column the author argues with those of the “dissenters” who tend to interpret the disproportionate use of violence against peaceful demonstrators as a manifestation of the authorities’ fear and weakness. In fact, Shusharin argues, “this course of events does in no way attest to the authorities’ weakness; rather—to their decisiveness, assertiveness, and strength.”

Andrey Illarionov’s proposition that a coercive state is being built in Russia cannot be called either new or original. One does not need to attend any marches but simply listen to the Government’s paid propagandists who speak their master’s mind. Indeed, the enforcement bloc in the [power] “vertical” has long ago become superior to the economic [bloc]. And the further we go, the greater its role will be in all social processes, be that elections, rearing the young generation, mass media, Internet, or foreign trade.

Unfortunately, however, this does in no way obviate the fact that the authorities are paranoid, and therein is their weakness.

All totalitarian regimes, whose deeds are—one way or another—mentioned in Shusharin’s article, have been led by clinical paranoiacs fit to be tied: Both Russia in Ivan the Terrible’s time, and Stalin’s [Soviet] Union, and Mao’s China.

Supreme power’s paranoia is the root cause of the continually strengthening role of enforcement structures in the state—the security services first and foremost—whose mission is to identify and suppress domestic enemies. Because the paranoid authorities’ perception of their numbers is greatly exaggerated vs. the reality of it, the security services are given a mission which is quite consistent with their own interests: To breed enemies in a vacuum and concoct seditious conspiracies for the sake of subsequently unmasking them. This, first of all, is easier to do than fighting real enemies, like the terrorists who are well armed and fairly clandestine, and secondly, government’s “request for procurement” to multiply the number of public enemies is an excellent pretext for the enforcement agencies’ bloated staff, budget, and authority. As it was during Ivan the Terrible’s time, today this helps them, inter alia, greatly improve their own wellbeing.

So dealing with real threats—something for which the enforcement agencies have no time left—could simply be reduced to an information blockade which prevents the public at large from learning about their existence. Just as the public never knew at the time they happened about either Chernobyl or the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk [now Yekaterinburg]. It’s been observed—by others—a long time ago: Troubles in the country happen because mass media report them…

The Mighty Moscow Times blasts the Kremlin's hypocrisy over Estonia with a trutly withering salvo. Are they next on the Kremlin's hit list?

As indignation and anger among ethnic Russians in Estonia has peaked over the last couple weeks, Moscow's rhetoric against Tallinn has been abhorrent. This was made clear Tuesday when a group of Russian lawmakers laid flowers at the foot of the Soviet monument that caused all the fuss.

The memorial to slain World War II soldiers has been the scene of clashes between ethnic Russians and Estonians for years, especially on the Victory Day holiday on May 9, when Russia celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany. From the moment Estonian officials announced a plan to move the monument out of central Tallinn, Russian media, particularly the three state-run national television channels, have referred almost exclusively in their news reports to the "dismantling" of the monument. As viewers turned on their televisions Tuesday to the sight of the lawmakers visiting the monument at its new location, in a Tallinn military cemetery, many must have understood that they had only been given half the truth. They had been told about the removal but not the relocation, it would seem, to stoke public indignation against Estonia's "extreme nationalist" and "blasphemous" attitude. That indignation led to behavior that can only be described as "inhuman" -- a favorite Kremlin word -- by the Russians who participated in the Friday and Saturday riots that killed one man and injured dozens of others.

Put plainly, Moscow's conduct in the whole affair has been glaringly hypocritical. When the Kremlin or City Hall explains why opposition marches in Moscow have been banned, they usually cite concerns over unrest and disorder. When the Estonian government tries to avoid the unrest and disorder that usually spoils May 9, Russian officials describe this as "blasphemy."

At home, members of opposition groups who throw mayonnaise or pies at political figures are branded "extremist." But in Tallinn, members of pro-Kremlin groups who take part in demonstrations where Molotov cocktails are hurled at police officers and shops are looted are being branded "patriotic."

Moscow is regularly accused of refusing to respect the independence of countries that were once under its control. In some cases these accusations, including from Estonia, come across as overblown and a bit paranoid.

But if we apply Moscow's own standards -- and the idea of "sovereign democracy" so beloved by Kremlin political theorists -- to the case of the monument in Tallinn, there is no excuse for the course Russia has taken. Surely the Estonians have the right to decide where to put a monument in their own capital.

When anyone dares to question Russia's official interpretation of past events, they are immediately accused of rewriting history. By playing fast and loose with the facts surrounding the recent clashes in Tallinn, Moscow is attempting to rewrite the present.

The MT editorial was followed by a second icy blast from columnist Yulia Latynina of Echo Moskvy radio:

Russia has once more affirmed its status as a great power and bolstered its authority in the world on President Vladimir Putin's watch. Shortly after the State Duma condemned the relocation of a World War II memorial in Tallinn, the valiant defenders of the Bronze Soldier provided us with a textbook example of how to fight injustice.

They looted the Wool & Cotton, Sportland and Hugo Boss stores late last week in the Estonian capital. They looted a wine shop and burned a few cars. One defender of the monument was stabbed to death during the riot. Dozens of people, including police, were injured. A female police officer's leg was broken. Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip received a death threat by e-mail.

There's nothing new about Russian attempts to implement policies aimed at restoring the country to greatness.

One recent example was in 2005, when thugs in Poland beat up the children of Russian diplomats and stole their mobile phones. Putin sharply criticized the actions of Polish authorities. A few days later, patriots beat up three Poles -- two diplomats and a journalist -- on the streets of Moscow.

Another case was in September 2006, when Georgia detained four Russian military officers on suspicion of espionage. Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili identified the officers as senior members of the General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU. The Defense Ministry immediately refuted the insinuation in the Georgian media that the GRU was involved in intelligence gathering. Then again, under Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, the GRU may well have been involved in some other activity, such as cactus farming.

Putin responded with a call for measures to protect the rights of native vendors in our markets. After that, Russia declared war -- not against Georgia, but against Georgians living in Russia. The crackdown dealt Georgians a crushing financial blow that benefited the cops, and the deportation process claimed several lives.

Now Estonia is feeling the heat.

It should be noted that Russia reacts to external challenges in a very selective fashion. The Kremlin saw nothing amiss last July when a North Korean missile landed in Russian waters near the Pacific port of Nakhodka.

When Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal arrived in Moscow for a recent official visit, he announced upon landing at the airport that his movement would not recognize Israel's right to exist, thereby rendering senseless Russia's attempt to draw him into the negotiating process. Once again, the Kremlin took the slight in stride.

In other words, Russia never takes offense when a so-called rogue state spits in its face.

There's no point even talking about the official reaction to events here at home. The parliament was unmoved last week when the remains of six Soviet World War II pilots buried at a memorial in Khimki were unearthed by a bulldozer, the gravestones were tossed around, protesters were beaten by police and the remains went missing. No one called for a boycott of goods from Khimki or for the mayor to be declared persona non grata.

Countries that were once part of the Soviet empire -- Poland, Georgia, Estonia -- are another matter entirely. When something happens there, the wrath of Putin, the Russian police and bands of curiously elusive avengers is always ready to rain down on those who forget the words of the old song: "Our armor is strong and our tanks are swift."

And this wrath delivers tangible results. After its diplomats were beaten up, Poland, for example, began talking about allowing the United States to install interceptor missiles on its territory, a move that infuriated the Kremlin. Georgia appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and the Kremlin still can't figure out why.

Both of these examples clearly demonstrate how Putin's foreign policy bolsters Russia's prestige and restores its former imperial greatness.

Writing in the Moscow Times, Andrei Illarionov, former economic policy advisor to President Vladimir Putin and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, remembers Boris Yeltsin:

Boris Yeltsin lived and died a free man.

The most important things he did in his life he accomplished on his own, right from the banya he built one log at a time with his own hands for his grandfather as a young man, to giving up his place in the Kremlin on the last day of the 20th century. This kind of independence is the mark of a free person.

Yeltsin was a dissident. Brought up in a family that had suffered Stalinist repression, he lived his whole life in defiance of it. In 1986, against all of the rules and traditions of Party bigwigs, he took to the streets alone to tour Moscow's trolley buses and stores, with no escort or fanfare. In the summer of 1991 he ordered the pilot of the plane bringing him back from Kazakhstan to land at a different airport, thus allowing himself and those around him to elude capture by the KGB agents waiting at the planned landing place. On Aug. 19 of that year, against the advice of his assistants and advisers he went to the White House, despite the uncertainty and real possibility that he could be killed.

Dissidence is a sign of a free person.

Yeltsin answered for his deeds. Both for his great accomplishments -- the victory over communism, the peaceful dissolution of the empire, the liberation of the economy and the introduction of a democratic constitution -- and for his gravest mistakes -- Order 1400, which dissolved the parliament in 1993, the first war in Chechnya and the falsification of the State Duma elections in 1996. He didn't hide behind anyone or try to shift the blame. He didn't just talk about taking responsibility -- he took it. Not only for his own errors, but for those of others. He didn't try to hide moments of incompetence, make excuses for his weaknesses or resort to meanness in blaming others. He took all of the responsibility on himself. Whether it was for those who lost their lives defending the White House, for hyperinflation and economic decline or the horrors of war, he took the heat for others, and paid for it with a fall in his own support and popularity.

To be able to shoulder responsibility and bear up under its weight is the sign of a free person.

Yeltsin made mistakes and, in keeping with his character, they were enormous. But he turned out to be the rare Russian politician who wasn't afraid to admit to them and, when possible, fix them. From the demolition of the Ipatiyev house in Yekaterinburg where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed came the erection of a monument on the same site. He began the first Chechen war and brought it to an end. As he left office, he apologized to the Russian people.

The ability to accept responsibility for your errors is a sign of real strength, and this kind of strength can only belong to a free person.

Despite his strong political instincts, Yeltsin could be remarkably naive. He could believe sincerely in the invulnerability of the ruble on the very eve of the 1998 devaluation, for example. But no matter how mocking, grinding and baseless the attacks in the press became, he never targeted them with a word of political rebuke or tried to restrict the activities of journalists.

Freedom of speech is only understood and valued by a truly free person. The idea of freedom of speech was central for Yeltsin.

Yeltsin loved and clung to power. It's hard to imagine anyone who fought so hard to achieve power and then to retain it. For him, it was a rare and valuable instrument. Its value was in what it could be used to achieve, and not just for itself. He didn't become a slave to power. He was greater than power.

Yeltsin needed power to use it for Russia. It was as if there was nothing he wasn't willing to do for the country. In striving for its freedom and prosperity, he performed great feats and made tragic mistakes. He clung to power and then surrendered it for Russia. He pulled the country out of communism, out of empire and out of its past -- for the future. He pushed it forward, toward civilization, openness and freedom.

Every person creates in his own image, and it impossible for an unfree person to create a free society. Russia is free because Yeltsin and those around him in 1991 were already free.

For his dear Russians, the result was always either something wonderful or something catastrophic. Perhaps he didn't have the necessary education, vision or experience. But it is clear now that this small-town boy from the Urals showed more consistency, patriotism and human decency than any graduate of a big-city university.

No slave can be a patriot. A slave belongs to money, assets, corporations, friends or power itself. A patriot belongs only to his country. Patriotism is in the character of a free person.

Yeltsin spent his whole presidency looking for a successor -- not to defend Yeltsin's interests, but those of the country. Prior to the 1998 economic crisis, he looked for this figure among his young economists. All of them, from Yegor Gaidar to Sergei Kiriyenko, failed the test. Following the crash, his focus shifted to young members of the security services, all of whom failed the test even more quickly. Vladimir Putin, the eighth figure to be examined, looked like the best of the lot. The choice was made and Putin was given everything: power, resources, emotional support and so on. Most of all, he was given one important and heartfelt command: "Take care of Russia."

But initial doubts eventually turned to questions, and these questions ultimately turned into objections. Yeltsin reacted painfully to the betrayal not of himself, but of Russia. But there was nothing he could do to halt the march backward. His private concerns and his public appeals were cut off quickly. It had turned into his biggest mistake.

All that had been done in those years, in the course of an immense struggle that claimed so many victims, was lost. Everything created by Yeltsin in the name of Russian freedom has been systematically and methodically destroyed.

What could he do once the awful mistake had already been made? When nobody was guilty aside from Yeltsin himself? When he no longer had the power, health, time or even the opportunity to speak out and try to reverse the error. What could he do? Could he just sit back and listen to, tolerate and resign himself to what was happening? Could he have reconciled himself to it and, by his silent agreement, sanction the destruction of the free Russia he had created? That would have meant fighting for freedom all your life and, at the end of it all, helping bury it. Not a chance. Yeltsin refused to play along. Trapped at a dead end, Yeltsin found a way out -- the exit for a free person.

Yeltsin made the most important decision in his life himself. His heart couldn't stand the pain of today's Russia.

So he left.

As a sign of protest

As a sign of refusual.

As a sign that he would not accept what was happening to in the country.

He never surrendered his freedom to anyone. He remained free. Forever. A free man of a free Russia.

(1) Another Original LR Translation: The Savior of the Motherland

(2) Essel on the Russophile Mindset

(3) Russia Strangles the Oily Goose

(4) Russia: "Do ya wanna go to the moon, America?"

Translator Vova Khavkin offers the following rumination on Russian patriotism by columnist Ilya Milshteyn (pictured) of Grani.ru.This is a topic of great importance and interest. So often in Russian history, those in power are Russia's greatest enemies, and they label Russia's greatest heros as traitors. From Pushkin and the Tsar through Brezhnev and Solzhenitsyn to Putin and Politkovskaya, this is a horrible, tragic theme of Russian history that has brought the nation to the brink of ruin.

Thinking Aloud About my Motherland’s Savior

Ilya Milshteyn

Grani.ru,

April 24, 2006

At the Kalininskiy market bread was “dumped” once every half hour. This was a strange type of bread: Some mongrel-looking types with large nostrils of unimaginable shape, as if made by a spiteful drunk baker as a revenge for his damned life. The people were grabbing them, scooping up the monsters off the counter. Then an invisible aunty-type woman’s voice was heard shouting from behind the empty counters: “No more, break it up!”—and the dense crowd moaned and quieted in a stupor. It was in a winter evening during the last Soviet year.

One had to be able to digest this, smoking a Java [cigarette] from the Ducat [Tobacco Factory] in the December wind. They ran out of bread for good in the central store downtown, in USSR’s capital. And this meant that with that there was no more food in my own country, in this freaking state. No food to feed the kids. No food to feed the family. No food to feed yourself. The words “we are f**ked” were spelled across the grey sky in yard-sized fiery letters.

I had never experienced such horror in my life. Not in August 1991—not too far from this place in Tchaikovsky Street—when at dawn a new wave of tanks was moving from Mayakovski Square towards the tunnel. Not in October 1993 near the White House and the Moscow City Hall. Generally speaking, hunger is scarier than war. Because it means them all—war, poverty, jail, and death in a back alley.

Unimaginable last loaves of bread—as if twisted with a poke—was all that was left then as a legacy from the communists. This was their farewell practical joke and parting shot. To a country that at the turn of the century was exporting bread to the whole world while they were arguing at their clandestine party congresses.

This is the country which Yeltsin inherited when he pulled the throne from under Gorbachev and proclaimed Russia to be an independent and democratic, you see^*, state—and went on putting this country together from rusty bolts lying around in the backyard. This was the economy he endeavored to cure together with Gaidar-Chubais with the help of a treatment the people referred to as “shock therapy”—something that even the reformers themselves agreed with.

It is hard to tell where this definition came from. The life itself was shocking, expecting a catastrophe and humanitarian assistance every day. The people rambling by in shock with red banners near the stores where food reappeared all of a sudden in a flash: It was expensive but real. The bosses who let a huge and vastly endowed country slip away were shocking. What was also shocking was the fact that there were people among those mid-level bosses and heads of laboratories who grabbed the impoverished and miserable Russia by the hair and started pulling her from the swamp.

The Yeltsin phenomenon was shocking.

A poorly educated, stubborn, and brutal man who had spent half of his lifetime sitting in the same offices where all human traits are exorcised from the very first day, he displayed an inexhaustible reserve of courage and spiritual power and barely sensed the power and personal responsibility for Russia. For a nation that of all the skills during the last half century preserved only its ability to “communize” [i.e., steal] all that’s not nailed down. For the reputation of a state which for 70 years evoked nothing but fear and disgust in the rest of the world except for a short break for the war.

He was like a born-again, this former civil engineer, a political appointee, and a Politburo member; a staunch democrat for whom the freedom of speech was above all printable and nonprintable abuse directed at him—from the TV screens, in the newspapers, and in graffiti on the walls; a staunch Liberal for whom the notions of “freedom of enterprise” or “market” or “private property” were sacrosanct; a staunch anti-communist for whom the gods from the old testament of party booklets turned to be the demons reeking of sulfur and blood. Like any neophyte, he was laughable when discovering the truths knows even to children in Russia, but this did not make people laugh—because it originated in his childish naiveté which, together with his hunger for power, pride, and anarchic explosive temper, he maintained all his life.

During his time (and only during his time) Russia rose from her knees—in one leap from destitution and shame. From communistic feudalism—to wild capitalism; from a Soviet siege economy—to Chicago of the 1920’s because Russia had no other way to go no matter what the proponents of “gradualism” and “slow convergence with the market” would want to say; had they had their way, the country with an empty treasury would have gone under in less that 500 days. The cornucopia on the store shelves and almost convertible ruble, factories and oil refineries rising from the ashes, gaudy restaurants, travel agencies, banks, banks, and more banks… all this was created during his reign, during the reign of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, during the early years of his rule and at the time which has become inextricably linked to his name.

Then he became worn out. Later under the strain of tiredness and the age-old Russian remedy to rid oneself of fatigue he began to display at times the worst of a regional party secretary’s traits. Despotism coupled with trusting the scoundrels woke up in him: This is how the fist Chechen war started. He developed great-power phantom pains: Then he started to threaten his “Friend Bill” with nuclear missiles and give medals to the [Kosovo] Pristina assault operation personnel. After all, he was too spontaneous as a market reformer and democrat: He didn’t like the oligarchs but tolerated them, didn’t tolerate but liked the thieves from among his inner circle. He took to drink trying to reform the country. He got well for a long time after he retired. In a well-known interview with Nikolai Svanidze he admitted that his life had not been an entirely happy one. And he only became happy now in his old age, being at rest.

This, by the way, is hard to believe in because Boris Nikolayevich himself gave plenty of reasons for doubts—on rare occasions he did respond to the leaden news from the life of sovereign Russia, and did so with noticeable despair. For example, when the man he himself anointed as his successor brought back Stalin’s national anthem or made a cynical grab for power after Beslan. And here the script became worthy of a tragedy. A sick Yeltsin who mistakenly saw in Putin an heir to the glory of past achievements was doomed, together with his countrymen, to live out his hallucination—in Russia which he chose for himself; and together with the bewildered compatriots watch how his political gains were slowly—but surely—being destroyed.

By the way, there aren’t many [gains] left. Even Russia’s second president remembers this; he once muttered through clenched teeth: See, no matter what you think about Yeltsin, but it was during his years that “[T]he people got what matter most—freedom.” It also turned out that its value is also incontrovertible for Putin himself, at least during the moments when he is speaking about Yeltsin.

Actually, freedom still lingers in the country: “Yours and our freedom”—freedom of speech which has migrated to small-circulation newspapers and mass-circulation Internet. Freedom to demonstrate embodied in the banned marches where the “Other Russia” is defending her right to disagree in a city occupied by stormtroopers; the freedom to rally for human right—rights limited by the lawlessness of the Basmanny^**-like courts and the overall environment of senile spy mania.

On the other hand there is freedom to move about the world. At least the Russians—whether at home or in emigration—can wittingly today, together with the rest of the world, commemorate their first president for all the good things he’s had the time to do, and forgive him for his unwitting yet grave sins. For in these mournful days the image of Yeltsin the Liberator and Reformer eclipses all the mistakes of the sinner and at times irrational and inebriated man named Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.

He will live in the memory of the generations to come as one of the most honorable heads of the Russian State. For if History were to make any sense it would be for the yearning of nations for freedom. In Gorbachev’s footsteps, Yeltsin took over this yearning and pushed ahead as long as his strength allowed him, and did not hold on to power when the strength failed him, and repented at the end, and with rising concern watched how events were unfolding in a country which he loved and which he wanted to become like himself—free, magnanimous, and strong. Until illness and unfulfilled hopes made his heart stop.

____________

^*"You see" – Yeltsin’s trademark interjection

^**Basmanny court where Mikhail Khodorkovsky was tried and convicted, an epitome of Russia’s “telephone justice”

In LR, we get to read plenty of what the small proportion of well-informed and thoughtful Russian intelligenty think and are sometimes able to say in the remnants of the free media in Russia. Sadly, this is to be found mostly on the internet, safely unavailable to the vast majority of Russia’s population.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that that it would be useful for non-Russian-speakers to see the sort of bilge that is fed to normal non-English-speaking Russians. To that end, today I took a look at Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia’s mass circulation papers with the vague idea of analysing a day’s issue. It turned out that this would be trying to bite off more than I can chew and furthermore would require me to wallow in Soviet-style mind-lessness for longer than would be fun.

However, since the general atmosphere in that paper was the same on whatever issue I read, a single example, selected more or less at random (and also because it caught my interest) can perfectly well serve as a general illustration of how the government press (there can really be no other description for it) presents matters to the Russian public, most of whom have no other source of information.

My example is the issue of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn. My sources are the BBC, the offi-cial website of the Estonian Government, and the odious, as you will see below, Komso-molka.
In the centre of Tallinn there is a monument to the Soviet liberators. That last word alone is a prime example of Commie double-speak. I don’t think there is much to choose between a Nazi yoke and a Soviet one, although stuck between a rock and hard place, I would go for Soviet. Add rightful independence to the selection and it’s no contest, of course. Even with membership of the EUSSR thrown in.

Let us accept that, to put it mildly, this monument is contentious, bound to offend the na-tives but also, it would appear, pleasing to Russians in Estonia and even more so to great-power chauvinist Russians in Russia itself.

The monument itself is in the usual Soviet style, that is to say that its artistic value is not high. However, it also a war grave, having been erected over some human remains, pos-sibly actually of Soviet soldiers, possibly killed during the ejection of the National Socialists and their replacement by Soviet Socialists.

Civilised people do not spit on graves. In France, German war dead from two world wars rest in cemeteries neighbouring on cemeteries for the fallen French and British. After death has intervened, respect is shown.

Quietude is a part of such respect. The Bronze Soldier in Tallinn rather contravenes this last point, since the monument stands in the centre of Tallinn and seems to rather spit in the faces of the locals, in an act of post-mortem political spite and in contradiction of the respect and quietude due to the dead.

It seems to me, therefore, entirely reasonable, to say that the relocation of such a monu-ment and the remains beneath it to a more suitable place would be a generally good thing.

The Estonian Government says this on its website:

Estonia has a moral and international duty to safeguard war graves and accompanying monuments and to keep them sacrosanct and dignified places. To this end, the Protection of War Graves Act was adopted on 10 January of this year. The war graves committee was formed on the basis of the Act. Its function is to make proposals to the Minister of De-fence with regard to protection of burial sites for war dead and possible reburials of re-mains.

The Minister of Defence formed the war graves committee at the beginning of this year, approved its rules of procedure, and appointed a chairman. The seven-member committee consists of the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Jus-tice, the Minister of Culture, an individual appointed by the Estonian War Graves League and two individuals appointed by the Minister of Defence.

On 27 February 2007, the Minister of Defence asked the war graves committee for an evaluation of the suitability of the location of the Tõnismägi war grave. In evaluating the suitability of the location, the Minister of Defence asked the war graves committee to take into consideration the disturbances that have occurred at the site as well as the political tensions and whether these could be considered consistent with the principle of allowing the dead to rest in peace.

On 9 March of this year, the war graves committee recommended to the Minister of De-fence that the remains be reburied, noting that the dead cannot rest in peace in the current location. To ensure that they may finally do so, the committee proposed that the remains near the Bronze Soldier be relocated to Tallinn’s Siselinna Cemetery. The committee found this cemetery to be a worthy location for allowing the dead to rest in peace, honour-ing the principle of dignified treatment of war graves.

I could not agree more. Everything properly stated, explained. This is how grown-ups speak.

And this is how to train a nation to think stupidly, how to inflame passions where it is inde-cent to do so, how to be maundering and sickly-sentimental, self-loving to the point of egomania, how to abuse the war dead.

Speak, Komsomolka:

The Bronze Soldier in Tallinn Is No More
The Estonian authorities today demolished the monument.

On Thursday at 4:30 a.m., the Estonian authorities attacked the Bronze Soldier Monument in Tallinn. Evidently, the former instructor of the Tartu City Committee of the [Communist] Party and now prime-minister of Estonia Andrus Ansip, who has been heading the shame-ful campaign against the monument, paid attention in class when he was little and remem-bered that wars are started in the morning.

Practically every other word of this opening paragraph is tendentious and vile. Goebbels could have done with lessons from this ‘journalist” in the abuse of emotive words and at-tacks ad hominem.

During the night, three activists from “Night Watch”, an organisation for the protection of the Bronze Soldier monument, had stood guard. Launched against them was a whole army of Estonian policemen (by some accounts, fifteen hundred in number!), recalled from leave and bused into Tallinn from all over Estonia. The car in which the “night watchers” – Larisa Neschadimova and two helpers, Andrei and Valeri – were sheltering was sur-rounded by special forces: its windows were broken, its tyres punctured, and they were dragged out and handed over to the police, who detained all three for 48 hours. Larisa Ne-schadimova’s are was hurt; this event is on record at the first aid centre.

A great piece of one-sided reporting.

Following on behind the police, the workers set to. The flowers and candles which over the last days had burnt continuously at the memorial were dumped into rubbish bags, the square was cordoned off with a metal fence and work began on erecting a metal carcass. By evening, the monument was covered by a large tent to prevent people from seeing precisely what was going on inside.

Wordiness is always the downfall of Soviet journalists. I love the flowers which had been burning continuously over the last days and hope the workmen remembered to extinguish them before dumping them in the rubbish bags. And what a great insinuation of unspeak-able abuse of human remains within the fence and tent! This is a work site and human re-mains are to be exhumed, examined, and moved. Perhaps the dead are treated differently in Russia?

So the public will never learn whose remains the archaeologists find. According to Esto-nia’s minister of Justice, Reina Langa, the mass grave contains stones and rubbish while Prime Minister Andrus Ansip came up the other day with a story of drunken Soviet tank men who got run over by their own tank...

I’ll need sources, please, O writer of inflammatory bilge! Meanwhile, I find the dignified statement to be found on the Estonian government website more believable: “The prepa-ration work for the execution of identification procedures of the war graves at the Tõnis-mägi green area is beginning today, in the morning of 26th April. Archaeological excava-tions and identification procedures have been scheduled subsequently in order to posi-tively identify the persons possibly buried at the site and their exact numbers.”. Note, Komsomolka, that if the Estonians, actually are lying and your improbable version is the truth, they’ve beaten you and outclassed you 100% on the propaganda front.

The police brought in from all over Estonia will not let anyone anywhere near the monu-ment. As soon as the text messages sent by the “night watchers’ from their mobiles started being received, people from all parts of the town rushed to see how the Soldier, who over the last year had become a symbol of remembrance, honour, and dignity, was disappear-ing behind the ironwork. Edgar Savisaar, Tallinn's mayor, attempted to reason with the au-thorities, reminding them that 57% of Tallinn's citizens were against moving the monu-ment!

Source of poll, please. And explain why the Beeb says: “Most Estonians view the Red Army as enforcers of Soviet oppression, correspondents say.”

Furthermore, the Protection of War Graves Act, on the basis of which the Ministry of De-fence is undertaking the dismantling, has been appealed against in the city court, which has not yet reached a decision. Thus yesterday’s outrage has no legal foundation!

Unfortunately it does so have. The move is being done under a legally passed Act which “sets forth the procedures for forming the War Graves Committee, which is in charge of evaluating the suitability of war grave sites, necessary identification procedures, reburial, the placing or removal of grave markers, and other such issues.” This is mere prevarica-tion.

“I will never forgive you this barbaric behaviour. Don’t expect me to support you!” is the cry Estonians are hearing for local Russians who feel they have been insulted.

Evidently, yesterday’s bacchanalia on Tõnismägi Green will have consequences for the Estonian Republic, both economic and foreign political. And international too, because last night night Estonia with its own hands created an internal enemy for itself.

Meanwhile, the official spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called yester-day actions of the Estonian authorities “inhuman” and emphasised that “all this we be borne in mind in the structuring of our relations with Estonia.”

And like all bullies, there’s no better finale than a round of posturing and threats.

One can hardly call this journalism. In fact, the article is probably in breach of Putin’s new law against political extremism, not that this “newspaper” is in any danger of having it used against it. It’s not for Komsomolka that the law was designed.

So stand up, Galina Sapozhnikova, proud correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda. I don’t suppose you have it in yourself to blush for the trash you write and for helping to make your country what it is, instead of the great place it could be.

The Moscow Times reports that, once again, the Kremlin is sucking the blood of the country and destroying its chance for decent future:

The three largest independent firms in the oil and gas sector came out with earnings reports this week, and all three disappointed. The industry's future has begun to look downright grim.

TNK-BP's net income in the first three months of 2007 fell 60 percent year on year, and 11 percent compared with the previous quarter. LUKoil also saw an 11 percent drop in revenues from the third to fourth quarters of last year, revealing weakness that was "far more serious than the market expected," Alfa Bank wrote in note to investors Wednesday. On Monday, Novatek revealed 2006 earnings growth that was 15 percent below consensus expectations, and 34 percent below those of Renaissance Capital, urging the bank to reassess the gas firm's value.

"The tail end of 2006 was just not a good time for the sector," said Alexander Burgansky, oil and gas analyst for Renaissance Capital. "The dropping global prices and growth of taxes really spoiled the market environment. The taxes are the biggest strain."

Export duties on oil are adjusted bimonthly in Russia based on the price of Urals crude over the previous two months. This means that if oil prices are high, firms can expect higher taxes in the months ahead. Such was the case in the fourth quarter of last year, when oil giants were feeling the tax hikes from soaring prices that summer and fall.

"But because of the lag built into the system, taxes are going to drop in the second quarter [of 2007]," in reaction to the low prices during the first, Burgansky said. "This should bring some relief in the short term."

In the longer term, officials signaled this week that the burdens would only get worse, however. Because crude prices have of late been buoyant, averaging near $61 per barrel since the beginning of March, export duties will rise by roughly $6 per barrel as of June 1, a source in the Finance Ministry told Interfax on Thursday.

The hoped-for shift of the tax burden onto the gas sector also seemed to slip farther out of sight last week. Though various top officials said Wednesday that proposals on raising gas production taxes had been drawn up, no one could say when a decision might be reached, and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said it had not worked with the Finance or the Industry and Energy ministries to resolve the matter.

"The uncoordinated decisions by the various ministries imply that the fight over gas taxation is poised to intensify," Troika Dialog said in a note Thursday.

Anton Tebakh, chief strategist at UralSib, concurred, adding that gas tax hikes would not be implemented until 2009. And Burgansky added that even after they were implemented, there would still be no real easing of the oil sector's burden.

Spot prices for gas on the unregulated gas market, established by Gazprom in November, have been falling since the start of the year, with their premium over the state-regulated gas tariffs dropping from 56 percent in January to 36 percent in March and 30 percent in April, MDM Bank said in a note Monday.

The gas price reacts with a six-month lag to the price of oil, said Peter Westin, chief economist at MDM, so it is now just beginning to feel the impact of the slump in crude prices that began at the end of last year.

The Central Bank, which released its guidelines last week for the next three years of monetary policy, appears to have accepted that oil and gas will soon be unseated from the center of the country's economy.

Its guidelines said the foreign trade surplus would drop to $10.3 billion by 2010 from the $139.2 billion seen last year, meaning that the value of imports will nearly outpace the value of exports in three years' time.

For the past eight years, the Central Bank's main role has been to curb inflation, first by means of letting the ruble appreciate -- to the gall of Russia's exporters -- and second by soaking up excess liquidity from the oil and gas revenues that were flowing into Russia.

A negative trade balance, which the bank expects sometime in 2010, would coincide with a new monetary policy -- that of supplying liquidity by giving discount loans to Russian firms.

Analysts have doubted whether the bank's vast bureaucratic machine can provide these loans effectively, but most agree that this role will be vital for Russia if it manages to kick the petrodollar habit and diversify into emerging industries.

Russia sells weapons to Venezuela and Iran, gives money to Hezbollah and Hamas, kicks American firms out of the energy sector and spews out anti-U.S. rhetoric daily. Yet, it is "shocked, shocked" when not invited to America's parties. The Associated Press reports:

The chief of Russia's space agency said that the United States has rejected a proposal by Moscow to explore the moon jointly, a Russian news agency reported. NASA announced in December that it would establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024. Officials with Russia's Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, later said they had hoped to join NASA's program with Russian technology and experience. But Roscosmos chief Anatoly Perminov was quoted by the Interfax news agency Sunday as saying that the United States had rebuffed the offer. "We are ready to cooperate but for some reasons the United States has announced that it will carry out the program itself," he was quoted as saying. "Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the program," Interfax quoted him as saying. [LR: Apparently not THAT short] There was no immediate comment by NASA to the report. Perminov also said Russia had signed a $1 billion contract with NASA for Russian cargo ships to deliver goods to the international space station over the next three years — an indication he said of the competitiveness of Russia's space services. "If we had been uncompetitive, such contracts would not be signed," Perminov was quoted as saying. Russian space craft have been the workhorses of the international space station program, regularly shuttling cargo and people to the orbiting station — in particular after the U.S. space shuttle fleet was grounded following the Columbia disaster in 2003. NASA will end the shuttle program in 2010 with plans to return to the moon in a new vehicle.