The Toronto Star reports that Anne Applebaum (pictured, left), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, spoke at Thursday's Grano lecture series in Toronto:

"That's the great thing about computers," Anne Applebaum says with a laugh. She is explaining how it is that she can be a columnist for the Washington Post while living outside the Beltway. Far outside – as in Warsaw, Poland, where she is the wife of the minister of national defence. Or rather, her husband, Radek Sikorski, was the minister until last Monday, when "ongoing issues" with the Polish prime minister persuaded him to resign. Sikorski, a former Solidarity activist, remains a senator, however, and Applebaum, 42, recently committed to living there full time with their two young sons.

Though Washington-born and bred, Applebaum has spent most of her working life in Europe, starting as Warsaw correspondent for The Economist in 1989. The Byzantine workings of the former Soviet Union and its six Eastern Europe satellites have riveted her ever since. Which isn't to say she doesn't range further afield on occasion, there being "a limited appetite," as she puts it, "for Eastern European coverage in Washington." She recently attacked the Kyoto Treaty as "absurd" for exempting so-called developing countries China and India. Likewise the futile war against poppy growing in Afghanistan. Cultivation for medical use should be legalized, she argues, as was done with Turkey.

Last week, Applebaum was briefly back on this side of the Atlantic to speak at the Grano dinner, the high-profile speakers series that this year is focusing on Europe's future. Europe and its giant bear of a neighbour, Russia. On that subject, few can compete with Applebaum. Her 2003 book, Gulag: A History, six years in the making, is now considered the gold standard, winning a Pulitzer Prize and eliciting rave international reviews. "Magisterial," applauded the Times Literary Supplement. "A book whose importance is impossible to exaggerate." Meticulously researched in the Kremlin's newly opened Gulag archives, the book was a full-on condemnation of the Soviet Union's use of isolated labour camps and colonies to suppress political dissent. Between 1918 and 1991, 18 million "enemies of the state" passed though them. Another 7 million were exiled.

But in post-Communist Russia, it is often as if they never existed. As Applebaum wrote: "The past does not haunt Russia's secret police, Russia's judges, Russia's politicians, or Russia's business elite." It should, she says. It must, if there is ever to be a clean break with the Soviet past. "I don't say there has to be trials but perhaps a truth commission like in South Africa. A public investigation, a formal inquiry, a public debate. One in every six people went through the Gulag system – everybody knew someone, was related to someone who had."

Attention was briefly paid by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, Applebaum says, but after the Cold War ended in 1991, Russia changed radically. Capitalism at its crudest led to the emergence of oligarchs and gangsters and the glaring fact that the scoundrels of the Communist era had gone unpunished, were still safe in their state-supplied apartments and country dachas.
As the book noted, it seemed to most Russians "as if the more you collaborated in the past, the wiser you were. By analogy, the more you cheat and lie in the present, the wiser you are."

In the 1990s, "people suddenly had other things to do," she says. "They also had to get used to the idea that `we were a great superpower, and now we are not.'" She points out that the post-Communist political elite, including "very disturbing" President Vladimir Putin, are all former KGB officers who don't want their own, or the secret police's, past revealed. During Putin's seven years in power, Russia has become more repressive. It isn't a totalitarian system or a police state "yet," she says, but it is highly controlled and often paranoid. She describes it as a "managed democracy" that gives the appearance but not the reality of political freedom: "You can't cross certain lines."

As the veteran journalist Anna Politkovskaya knew full well. The searing critic of the Kremlin's policies in Chechnya was shot dead in her Moscow apartment last October, a murder that remains unsolved. "No one but the Kremlin had a motive to kill her," says Applebaum, shaking her head. "She was an extremely brave person, but she was aware of the risks."

Similarly Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB defector and Kremlin critic who died a month later in London from polonium-210 radiation poisoning. Another unsolved killing. "It's like a Cold War novel, isn't it?" But she has no doubt Putin was responsible. Not that he gave an "actual order to an actual thug," but in the sense that he presides over a web of former intelligence operatives and approves of their methods.

Then too there is Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Once head of the YUKOS oil giant and Russia's wealthiest citizen, he's been in a Siberian prison cell since 2005, serving eight years for tax evasion. He was further charged last week with money-laundering and faces another 10 years. The Kremlin has fabricated the charges, he says.

Applebaum wouldn't be surprised. "I'm not saying he didn't launder money or evade tax, but he was imprisoned as an example to the others. He was a guy who had Western contacts, who gave money to pro-democracy groups. One of the lines you don't cross in Russia is getting involved in politics." That Khodorkovsky is imprisoned in a Gulag-style Siberian jail when the Gulag system of political repression is supposedly long gone "is creepy," she says. "It's scary." With his term of office limited to eight years, Putin must resign the presidency next year. Theoretically. "But will he leave or will he arrange it so he controls his successor? Nobody knows because the succession process in Russia is still a mystery. A lot of people are interested in keeping things the way they are."

Applebaum will be back in Moscow this year to research a new book on how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created "on the ground" after World War II. It will focus on individual stories of people struggling with radical changes and the dilemma they faced – to flee, fight, or join the new political order. She intends to return to the Gulag archives. There was no problem accessing them a decade ago. But that was before her book turned a glaring spotlight on the full horror and tragedy of the system. "I don't know if they'll let me in," she says with a sigh. "I'm not overly optimistic."

RFE/RL: The first question we would like to post to both of you – what do you think, after everything that happened on November 7, does Georgia still have a chance for a European future, democratic future?

Applebaum: Yes, absolutely! Georgia has a chance for European and democratic future, and I think the interest that's been shown in Georgia – and what's been happening in Georgia for the last few days is an indicator of that – the enormous amount of concern in western capitals is an indicator of how much people have invested in Georgia, and how much people were hoping to see change in Georgia, and how much they hoped Georgia would eventually be a proper member of the West, proper part of Europe. I don't think anyone thinks that there has been some kind of a fatal reversal that can never be changed, that anything that's happened ends anything. I think on the contrary, people see this as a kind of growing pain, and they very much hope that Georgia will come out of it.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, what would you say about the prospect of Georgia's European future?

Socor: I think Georgian democracy has successfully defended itself – and is successfully defending itself – from challenges that reflect immaturity on the part of opposition groups, and direct threat to the security and stability of the state from one single all-powerful oligarch, with possible support from outside. Any state, especially a democratic state, is entitled to defend itself against subversion and threats to the democratic order. Western sympathizers of Georgia have an obligation to tell opposition parties that they are proceeding in an undemocratic way, that they are seeking to overturn a democratic order and a democratically elected government. Instead of catering to this opposition, and encouraging it in its mistaken ways, westerners should mentor it. The sad reality is that Georgia does not have a viable, democratic opposition. I know about most of these opposition leaders, I have been following their activities for many years, and they are no democrats – most of them, with few exceptions. And, with respect to their political and financial leader, Badri Patarkatsishvili, this is a case in which one, extremely rich, all-powerful oligarch – perhaps too big for this small country – is attempting to hijack democracy in Georgia.

RFE/RL: We will return to Mr. Patarkatsishvili later on, but now I would like to ask Ms Applebaum – your recent article in The Washington Post conveyed a conviction that through forceful dispersal of the protest rallies, and imposition of the state of emergency, President Saakashvili did if not irreversible - like you just described - then at least a very big damage not just to his country, but to American democracy promotion project in general. However, there are voices – and Mr. Socor is one of those – that defend Saakashvili's decision, even calling it a "brave" and "necessary" one. They say that at that moment, Georgia's very sovereignty, its statehood was at stake, and statehood should come first, before democracy. How would you respond to this kind of interpretation of the recent events?

Applebaum: I would sort some of these things into different categories. If you had a large, violent demonstration that was marching on the presidential palace – then of course you are entitled to use tear gas, and defend yourself. However, some of the moves that Mr. Saakashvili chose to use – smashing up a television station, for example – strike me as above and beyond what you would expect. Whatever happens, destroying the television station, wrecking the equipment, and taking all television off the air cannot be the right way to defend your state. The right way is to have more television stations, more sources of news, if you feel that one is becoming dominant. The right way can never be to remove the news, and to remove free access to information and the media. That Georgia is in an extremely difficult position, I do not deny. That Russia is very interested in undermining Saakashvili, I would not deny either. That he faces challenges of the kind that most western democratic leaders in Europe and United States would never face is absolutely clear. There is military, there are financial attempts to undermine Saakashvili, coming from Russia, [and these] are extraordinary. Nevertheless, the way to fight them is not by removing the media; and the way to fight them is not by breaking up what appeared to have been, in fact, peaceful demonstrations. I'd like to return to a point that Mr. Socor made, which was about the opposition not being mature – that is absolutely the case. There is no disagreement; I've never heard anybody say that Georgia has a clear-minded, well-organized political opposition. Part of the reason for that is that Mr. Saakashvili himself has been so successful, that the flower of the Georgian intelligentsia prefers to work for him, than to oppose him. There's no question about that. But what seems to me is that since what we are talking about more generally is U.S. promotion of democracy, if Georgia does not have a democratic opposition, then one needs to be encouraged. Part of having a democracy is having more than one political option from which people can choose. American money, and foreign interest, help, assistance and so on, should go not only to Mr. Saakashvili and his government, but it should also go into the strengthening of the parliament, strengthening of parliamentary institutions, helping the opposition become real, as opposed to being supported by a single oligarch. Part of Georgia's development is going to have to be developing viable political alternatives. Saying that is not intended to diminish achievement of Georgia, but that's part of what it takes for Georgia to become a normal country. It needs to have a normal opposition, and Mr. Saakashvili needs to encourage, to allow for the evolution of that, and western foundations, western governments also need to be thinking about that. Because the creation of the situation in which Mr. Saakashvili is the only person who is the guarantee of Georgian independence and Georgian democracy is incredibly unhealthy. Something could happen to him, or he could make big mistakes. There has to be political alternatives.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, how would you respond to all this, and especially to the claim that these demonstrations were indeed peaceful?

Socor: Well, I agree in large part to what Ms Applebaum just said, I welcome a far greater balance in this comment compared to her Washington Post editorial that I read a couple of days ago. First, a general point – there is no inherent tension between democracy and stability. We should never get into a situation when the two come into a conflict. It is Badri Patarkatsishvili, political groups that he is financing, and probably behind them in some way Russia, who are interested in creating a situation in which democracy and stability come into conflict. And, it seems to me that the government has balanced the two considerations in a very effective and democratic way. The government tolerated, for several days, large-scale unlawful demonstrations without reacting. I was in Tbilisi during those days. I saw that the police did not carry riot gear, and the police was there in small numbers, with their hands in their pockets, in a rather benign mood. It all degenerated on the final day, when the die-hard opposition elements, bereft by that stage of public support, tried a desperate move – namely, to set up a permanent tent camp in front of parliament. This could never have been allowed, and I support the Georgian government's decision to clear the square.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, if I may...

Applebaum: But smashing up the television station...

Socor: Although, admittedly, there were cases of excessive and indiscriminate use of force, and that needs to be investigated, and those responsible do need to be brought to account. There was no smashing of equipment at Imedi.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, may I interrupt you there – it seems that smashing of equipment did take place at Imedi, there is evidence of that, there are pictures, one even published on RFE/RL website. Even Mr. Semneby, the EU representative who visited Imedi headquarters, stated that there were obvious traces of damage.

Socor: Yes, right. But no smashing of equipment. Certainly not systematic or deliberate smashing of equipment.

RFE/RL: There are a lot of eyewitnesses who say that the smashing did take place.

Socor: I prefer to believe Peter Semneby and the other Western diplomats who were with him. I understand the French ambassador was with him, and they made a public statement after that. They are credible in my view.

RFE/RL: Yes, but there is one perhaps interesting detail – Peter Semneby and the French ambassador had to wait for two days before they were allowed to go to Imedi's headquarters. But let's not go into this – I believe Ms Applebaum wanted to add something to our discussion.

Applebaum: Yes, I wanted to agree with Mr. Socor about the Russian provocation, and Russian attempts to unseat the Georgian government. But, to reiterate simply – there are ways to deal with that that will work and there are those that won't.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, would you say that Georgian government has produced credible evidence that in this particular case Russia was really planning a coup, an overthrow of the government, and there indeed was a conspiracy?

Socor: I think this would be an oversimplification – certainly we have no evidence, and it may well be an oversimplification to say that Russia was planning a coup.

RFE/RL: But that's what Mr. Saakashvili has said on numerous occasions, it seems.

Socor: No, he said it in a far more nuanced way. What we do know, and what the President and other officials have been saying, and what the government has been presenting as evidence is that several opposition leaders – I think maybe three, or four of them – were in contact with the Russian intelligence. And so what we know – although we don't know for sure, we cannot know for sure – it may well be that Russians jumped into this act only after the trouble had begun. That is also possible. But the bottom line is the following – the Russians want to overwhelm the Georgian government by staging a lot of hostile operations at the same time. In Abkhazia, internally, internationally on the diplomatic front. And the Georgian government's manpower resources and other resources are being overwhelmed. The Russians are infinitely superior in that regard. They can handle all these operations against Georgia, at one and the same time. And we don't know what really is happening. Is Badri Patarkatsishvili acting on Russia's behalf? Is he their agent, has he become their agent willingly or unwillingly? Is he being blackmailed? Does he have business interests in Russia? Do the Russians have a terrible "kompromat" on him? We don't know any of these things. And it would be crucial to know these things.

RFE/RL: But would you say that justifies forceful dispersal of tens of thousands of demonstrators that might be protesting to simply demand better social conditions?

Applebaum: Can I just jump in here? That there is Russian interference, there is no question about it. However, there are ways in which Mr. Saakashvili can behave that would win him an enormous Western support, and will also win him credit within his own country. Clearly, thousands of people on the streets are not all Russian-paid agents. I'm sure, there is no doubt that some of them are. But that thousands and thousands of them are is very unlikely. And for him to dismiss them all as being that is not credible. And so he needs to act in ways that are credible, that will win him an outside support, and will draw positive, instead of negative, attention to his country to his enormous achievements.

Socor: Just a minute – the thousands of people, their numbers demonstrate that these particular opposition parties do not have a social base. The numbers plummeted dramatically - from the first day of mass attendance, the numbers kept going down and down. And by the final day, November 7, there were less than one thousand people there.

RFE/RL: So why disperse them violently then?

Socor: Because of the declared goal to set up a permanent tent city in front of the parliament.

Applebaum: Can I interrupt? This happened in Hungary in the last couple of years – I won't go into detail here, but there was a similar wave of popular unrest, there were big demonstrations...

Socor: Yes, but Hungary…

Applebaum: Let me finish, and they set up a kind of a tent city exactly like that, in front of the Hungarian parliament. And over years, day after day after day it got smaller and smaller, and became a kind of joke. Because of what you said – because it did not have popular national support. And if that was the case with this movement, than that was the right way to deal with it. Set up your tent city, let it marginalize itself, and go home.

Socor: I agree with you – except that there was this attempt to set up a tent city that could not have been allowed. This is what started the trouble, and then of course the question of Imedi…

Applebaum: Let it set itself up - if it does not have popular support, it won't have any impact.

Socor: It was a recipe for trouble that Georgia could not afford at this time. Remember, all the concurrent challenges that Georgia is facing are a form of Russian operation. A prospect of a possible small "victorious war" that Russians are in the habit of staging at election time; the upcoming vote on Kosovo and then Russian reaction in Abkhazia…

Applebaum: I agree with all of that, but…

Socor: So, to have a tent city in front of Tbilisi government building amid all of this…

Applebaum: Let it sit there! When it gets cold, they'll go home! If you don't have popular mass support for overthrowing the government, then people won't come out and sit there day in and day out. Just as Hungarians did.

Socor: You cannot take that chance. Hungary is in a far safer situation.

Applebaum: I know that, I recognize that, but nevertheless, there are ways to deal with this kind of opposition that will work and will have a long-term effect of strengthening Saakashvili and his government, and there are [also] ways to deal with it that will create trouble further down the road. He has now done something that nobody thought was possible – he has united the Georgian opposition against him. No one thought it could be done!

Socor: No, because Georgia is being held to higher standards. Remember, a democratic state is still a state!

Applebaum: No! Saakashvili has been given an enormous path on all kinds of issues…

Socor: Oh yes, that's very true. But up until now. Remember, a democratic state is still a state. Georgia is not a no-man's land anymore. You cannot afford anarchy in Tbilisi. Especially by elements that clearly intend to subvert the constitutional order.

Applebaum: I'm not disagreeing with that! But there are ways to deal with that that will win you an outside support, and will strengthen your government. And there are ways to deal with it that will weaken it in a long-term. And I think what he's just done is to weaken himself.

Socor: Well, I think the weakening comes from excessive editorial reactions from West – which, by the way, are becoming more balanced.

Applebaum: I don't think there've been excessive reactions at all! In fact, I think the American government's reaction was almost too mild, generally speaking…

RFE/RL: President Bush has not commented so far on the events in Georgia.

Applebaum: Not at all!

RFE/RL: To move on – Mr. Socor, you just said that Georgia could not afford trouble at this time…

Socor: It could not afford unlawful actions.

RFE/RL: That's right. But in the end, we might be facing much worse situation than during those demonstrations. In order to become a normal democratic country, Georgia certainly needs western support, as Ms Applebaum just said. And the criticism Georgia has been getting from the West during these last weeks is very strong and almost unanimous. The international community is criticizing Georgia on its actions on November 7 and also afterwards. Do you think this criticism is productive? Could it be sending a wrong message to Georgians – and maybe also to Russia?

Applebaum: From what I know, the criticism has been helpful. We see now that Saakashvili has lifted the emergency declaration – the state of emergency. I am told that he is beginning to react to it, and he is beginning to understand that you have to have television on the air and you can't just run soap operas all day. It may be having a positive affect. If in the long term he learns how to deal with his opposition, and learns how to help the development of a normal opposition, then I would say it would be positive. I don't think there's been excessive criticism of Georgia at all. In fact, most of the articles have commented on how successful Saakashvili has been in restoring the economic and political fortunes of Georgia, most of them have acknowledged that he is under huge pressure from Russia. Most of them have acknowledged that he has achieved a great deal, and have simply mourned the fact that we thought he had moved beyond this kind of behavior. I don't think it has been excessive at all, and as far as I know, it's had a mostly positive reaction, and it's slowly having a good affect within Georgia. But you all may know better.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, do you have anything to add to this point?

Socor: Yes. First, I'm noticing with satisfaction that the tone of Western editorials is becoming more balanced. After the first article in The Economist, which was completely unbalanced, yesterday's article is far more balanced. The reason being that the correspondent went to Tbilisi. Unfortunately, the editorial coverage of Georgia in Western newspapers is in the hands of non-specialists, people who are not familiar with Georgia. All too often they oversimplify the situation, and believe this to be a conflict between a government – a democratic one largely – and a democratic opposition. This is not the case at all. The situation is infinitely more complex than Western editorialists - who are not area specialists and don't personally know Georgia - can grasp. But, as I said, the tone is becoming far more balanced. Not only in The Economist, but Ron Asmus had a very balanced editorial in the Financial Times the other day. Now the initial lashing out at Georgia and "Misha", was it productive? I don't think so. For what I know, the Georgian leadership is confident of its course – namely, defending the democratic institutions from an undemocratic challenge. This is the bottom line. The challenge to democratic institutions is being mounted by undemocratic groups. Now, we need an evolutionary development in Georgia also with regard to the opposition. The opposition needs mentoring. But these opposition leaders are beyond mentoring. Many of them are simple troublemakers, leftovers of the 1990s, and they have immeasurable personal ambitions. There is not yet a sufficiently rooted consciousness of statehood in Georgia...

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, if I may stop you there – most of the opposition that was protesting now were prominent players in movement that led towards the Rose Revolution. And in the first months after the regime change, they were standing there side by side with Mr. Saakashvili.

Socor: Some of them were. And here is a distinction. Indeed, some of the opposition activists are veterans of the Rose Revolution. The Rose Revolution was a work of a coalition of politicians and groups – some of them system-oriented, others anti-system. Opposition leaders, such as Tinatin Khidasheli and other Republican leaders – and of course the Gamsakhurdia brothers, Shalva Natelashvili and others – are by definition anti-system figures. Some of them took part in Rose Revolution in keeping with their personal, anti-system leanings. Then there was a split in their ranks. Saakashvili and the group around him – who are impeccable democrats in my view – set out to build a state system and state institutions.

RFE/RL: Would you call Salome Zurabishvili, for instance, an anti-system element?

Socor: No, she is not an anti-system element, and I know Salome Zurabishvili well. I respected her greatly when she was Foreign Minister. It seems to me that she never recovered from her fall from the office, and I think that her ambitions are out of proportion with her social and political support.

RFE/RL: Coming back to the western coverage of Georgian events, Ms Applebaum, do you think the fact of storming of the headquarters of Imedi, which is co-owned by Rupert Murdoch, can somehow influence the mood of western media while covering Georgia?

Applebaum: If you mean - "Will Murdoch's papers write about this differently?" – yeah, probably. Everybody certainly noticed that it was a Rupert-Murdoch-owned television station. And that made people sit up and pay attention. I don't know that it's an important enough part of Murdoch empire for Murdoch himself to turn all his forces against Mr. Saakashvili and I don't actually see that happening. But, as I said before, I think, in a way, the attack on a television station and the removal of free media, free television media of Georgia from the air, was a lot more damaging – I mean, a bit of tear gas in the streets, although he apparently overdid it with 500 people in hospitals, still doesn't do nearly as much damage as a removal of television from the air. And, yes, I think, probably most western media picked that up partly because a lot of us spent much of our time writing about the destruction of private media in Russia and the manipulation of television media in Russia. And one of the hopes of many of us for places like Georgia and Ukraine is that they would be able to develop some kind of independent television media culture, different from what we see further to the east. With one blow he did a lot of damage to that hope. So, yes, I do think it was an important [issue], many people noted that detail when they wrote about the situation.

Socor: I would like to respond to that point. The case of Imedi is no longer a case of media freedom; it is a case of defending media against abuse by owning oligarchs. Imedi Television used to be – and I know it personally, because I watched it many times – an opposition station in a normal sense of the word. It departed from that mission a few months ago when it became simply the political instrument of Badri Patarkatsishvili, of the opposition and went down to instigate political trouble and instigate calls for the unconstitutional overturn of the government. In the case of Imedi the standards of free, democratic media need to be defended against the corruption of such standards by an oligarch like Badri, by irresponsible opposition leaders. When Imedi reopens – and I'm sure, I hope and trust it will reopen soon – it needs an independent board of advisers, drawn from the media environment of Georgia, drawn from among Georgia's NGO community. Georgia has a wonderful NGO community – sophisticated and westernized and profoundly democratic. Imedi needs a competent, professional, independent board of advisers to protect Imedi from the corrupting influence of an oligarch, his political interest and from covert political agendas.

RFE/RL: To bring the discussion around Imedi to an end, just one short question: Would you agree with the notion that without Imedi the Georgian media environment would remain one-sided?

Socor: Without a station that reflects in a balanced way all the political points of view – of course. It does not need to be Imedi, to be called Imedi, does not need to be owned by Badri or by Murdoch. Of course, Georgia needs balanced, independent television. Of course, if – and when – Imedi reopens (I think, I hope – as soon as possible), it should have that board of advisers. And, by the way, I noticed the statement of Matt Bryza – he picked up on that theme. I made that suggestion in Eurasia Daily Monitor about a week ago and shortly thereafter Matt Bryza said something very similar. He said that Imedi AND Rustavi 2 – both of them – would need independent, competent, professional boards of advisers to ensure their objectivity and integrity. And I completely agree. I said this about Imedi, Matt Bryza said both Imedi and Rustavi need it.

RFE/RL: May we turn your attention to a bit more general aspect – there are people who have speculated that perhaps the reason why things went wrong in Georgia is that from the outset, starting with the Rose Revolution, Georgia was celebrated almost unanimously in the West – especially in the U.S. – as a "success story", and was also put under spotlight somehow - the West was watching, so to speak. So would it be possible to say that Georgian leaders were perhaps denied a chance to run a "normal" country with "normal" problems – real problems and real challenges? Maybe the praise was too much, pressure too big and the young and inexperienced Georgian administration found all this too difficult to endure?

Applebaum: I think, there's a lot to that. Absolutely, Georgia has been held upon a kind of pedestal – in some ways correctly. The achievement of Georgia, as I say, is considered quite extraordinary even to this day. I think, part of the problem is the kind of western attention, which was all focused on the personality, and person of president Saakashvili. The aid all went directly to his office, the advisers all went directly to him, the western focus was all on him and what he was doing. There was not much thought about: shouldn't we also pay attention to who the opposition is? If we're talking about democracy, shouldn't we think a little bit about planning the next transition of power? President Saakashvili is not going to be alive forever, he's not going to be popular forever, there has to be something to which he hands over, whenever it's going to be – in two years, in four years or ten years. I think the attention was focused in a wrong way. The United States has a bad habit – and this was as true in Ukraine and, actually, in Central Europe ten years ago, as it is today in Georgia – of kind of declaring victory. You've had your first democratic election, you're democrats – goodbye! That's not helping, that's not how things work. As I wrote in my article, in Central Europe ten years ago there was a great wave of enthusiasm. Then everybody went home and a few years later many of the central European countries elected quite corrupt, nasty, communist regimes to power, which was totally unexpected – everybody thought communists were finished. However, in the following decade much of that reversed itself and we are now seeing in many of these countries more or less a return to normality – not everywhere but in many places. And we made the same kind of mistake in Georgia. We had the Rose Revolution, Saakashvili is in power, that's it, we won – end of story! The idea that democracy was not an event but a process, that it was something that was going to take a long time and we had to think about institutions like the parliament and the opposition as well as the presidency, is something everybody's realizing only just now.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, would you agree with what Ms Applebaum has just said?

Socor: Ms Applebaum identified a real problem: in terms of western mentoring, especially American mentoring of political forces it's very true. It is equally true that western editorial perceptions or media perceptions of countries in our part of the world, including Georgia, are often oversimplifying and superficial. Because, as I mentioned earlier, expertise on the region is in short supply and people who write these pieces are usually not experts on the region and the country.

Applebaum: [???] editorializing on the region is, actually, very important or influential. But, anyway, I don't think it has much effect on American foreign policy.

Socor: Yeah, I agree with you. It has a relatively small effect. Still the State Department sometimes has to fine-tune its positions to take accounts of editorials in...

Applebaum: That’s not what happened in Georgia though. That’s not what happened.

Socor: But I also think that Georgia – both in government and in opposition – overrates the importance of editorials in western media.

Applebaum: That’s true to all small countries.

Socor: Of course.

Applebaum: Hungarians and Poles are also obsessed about what is written about them abroad even if it’s only one tiny editorial once a month.

Socor: Yes, they overrate it. But I’d like to point to a number of deep-seated problems that the government must now address perhaps with greater attention than previously. One is to identify viable interlocutors within the opposition camp. The opposition is very diverse. Its parties and its leaders have quite varying interests. Certainly the authorities can identify viable interlocutors within this multicolored camp of the opposition. Secondly, it seems to me that the Georgian presidency, the government need to have a more orderly and more institutionalized advisory process, starting with the formation of a western-style National Security Council. This has long been missing. And as a result top level decisions have often been reactive, spontaneous, taken on a short term basis, they’ve even borne a stamp of improvisation. The Georgian leadership needs to institute a regularized advisory process. Thirdly, it seems to me that there needs to be a more clear separation of powers between the executive and the legislative. Nino Burjanadze has displayed outstanding leadership abilities in this crisis and not only in this crisis. It seems to me that the President and the Chair of Parliament can form a very effective team that could jointly decide on further steps regarding the opposition. Also, it would be necessary in my view to abandon the winner-take-it-all approach to the question of parliamentary elections. For example the electoral system regarding the ten electoral districts that coincide with Georgia’s ten territorial provinces could be amended in such a way that the proportional system would also apply in those ten so-called “majoritarian” districts. Rather than have a winner-take-it-all system in the majoritarian districts as well.

RFE/RL: We have two more questions left if you allow: One is with regard to Georgia's NATO aspiration. You probably know that Georgia was hoping – and possibly is still hoping - to get the so-called Membership Action Plan at Bucharest NATO summit next April. Do you think with the recent developments these prospects have decreased, or even vanished? How do you assess the situation in this regard at the moment?

Applebaum: Yeah, it hasn’t helped what’s happened in the last two weeks. It didn’t contribute positively to Georgia’s image as a possible member of NATO. However, there is still lot of time to reverse that and a lot would depend on what Mr. Saakashvili does in the next few days. I think, ultimately the decision about NATO membership depends on a lot of things that happen outside of Georgia, like: What exactly is the new French policy towards Russia? And is Angela Merkel who is more skeptical of Putin really in charge of foreign policy, or is her foreign minister from the opposite party in charge? All kinds of things that really have nothing to do with Georgia and have more to do with western policy towards Russia are probably more important. But I do think it behoove Mr. Saakashvili to concentrate in the next couple of months on how to repair some of the damage that the actions of the last ten days have done. If this is what he is still interested in.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, please.

Socor: Well, the ultimate decision about Georgia’s Membership Action Plan, was going to be taken at the last moment, on the eve of the summit, and almost certainly – or certainly – as a political decision, a result of arrangements among the most influential countries within NATO. So, it was going to be a decision on knife’s edge, a very delicately balanced situation. Therefore the latest events have dealt clearly a setback to Georgia’s aspirations. However, there is a great deal of sanctimoniousness in Europe and to some extent in the United States about Georgia. Many Europeans will cite the existing internal situation in Georgia as a pretext or an excuse for denying Georgia a Membership Action Plan. That's why it seems to me that it’s very important for the Georgian authorities to engage in a more effective outreach to Europeans. It is necessary for Georgian representatives and not only government representatives but also NGO leaders to travel to West-European capitals and explain what happens in Georgia, not diplomats, but representatives of NGOs. You have wonderful NGO people, such as Ghia Nodia, Davit Darchiashvili, Levan Ramishvili, who are eloquent spokesmen for democracy, respected and credible in western Europe. I think they could do a good job of explaining to European public opinion, mass media and governments what’s really happening in Georgia. And this should be done well ahead of the April summit in Bucharest. It should be done immediately, it should be done during the upcoming presidential election campaign.

RFE/RL: The last question goes to Ms. Applebaum first. Your recent article in The Washington Post finished with what we all thought was an exceptionally poignant and very telling statement - that the West will be better off building and supporting institutions and not egos of individual leaders. However, on the other hand, if we’re talking specifically about Georgia, perhaps its cultural context would make this a bit difficult. First of all, because there is a clear need for a "leader" that almost the entire nation votes for, as it happened three times in the post-Soviet period. And, also, perhaps in transitional societies such as Georgia, it is precisely individuals that play an instrumental role in building of those institutions. What would you say about this?

Applebaum: It would have been difficult although a few minutes ago Mr. Socor gave a list of things that could be done to strengthen democratic institutions. He spoke about defying more carefully the roles of the executive and the legislature and so on. I think it would have been possible and still is possible to support Mr. Saakashvili and at the same time think about what’s going to happen after Mr. Saakashvili, because the danger is that even though he’s clearly achieved a lot, he is not gonna last forever. And there have to be means of transferring power which is accepted as legitimate by the society and which will produce somebody who is not either a Russian agent or incompetent, or somehow unacceptable. So, in a way we don’t have a choice. We might like to say – ok, let’s give all our money to Misha and let him be in charge. But I just don’t think that’s a long term plan. It just simply will not work over the duration. It will not last for ten years. It will certainly not last for twenty years. And we want Georgia to be a member of the democratic Western community forever and not just for as long as Misha Saakashvili is in charge.

RFE/RL: So then it is the individual leader - with or without a big ego – who is obliged to make sure that there are institutions or structures in place after he leaves power...

Applebaum: You know, really great leaders, really great even autocratic leaders have to have it in them to see into the future and what’s going to happen after them. If president Saakashvili wants to be remembered as the person who’s been a founder of a democratic Western Georgia he needs to think about who’s gonna come after him and how that transfer of power is gonna happen. Because that is incredibly important part of his legacy, really important. In fact, it’s probably more up to him and up to the people around him than it is up to Western outsiders and advisers. At the end of the day this is Georgia, this is their country, not our country. And it’s up to them to think through how their democracy is going to be sustainable over the long term.

RFE/RL: Mr. Socor, what would you say Mr. Saakashvili has done for his legacy?

Socor: Yes, I basically agree with all of this. But it’s a bit too early now to think...

Applebaum: It's never too early.

Socor: ...about the post-Saakashvili government when Misha still has one presidential term to serve assuming that he will be reelected on January 5, which is highly likely. But of course the latest events perhaps jolted us into realizing that it’s necessary to make arrangements for a post-Saakashvili period after president Saakashvili’s second constitutional term will end.

RFE/RL: We all agree that the necessity is there but perhaps you could be a little bit more specific and tell us what concrete steps, in any, you think Saakashvili's administration has undertaken to ensure the proper institutional legacy?

Socor: He still has one more constitutional term to serve assuming that he is reelected, as he probably will. It’s far too early to speak about legacy, or about post-Saakashvili period. The task at hand, as Ms Applebaum and myself mentioned, is to strengthen the institutions. And the prerequisites to that is internal stability, not allowing marginal opposition groups to assault the legal order as they did. They began calling since September for the president’s resignation, for the abolition of the office of presidency, for installing a monarchy, "Out-Out-Out!" was the slogan, and "Georgia without a President" was the slogan. All this began in late September, well before the demonstrations. I don’t think anybody called the opposition to account for this. The prerequisite to institutional development is stability; and that needs to be ensured as the basis for continuing institutional development.

Edward Lucas reports from Estonia:

The rebels of Red Square
Nov 1st 2007
From Economist.com

Thursday

THE Tallinn military cemetery is home to Estonia’s most controversial statue, the Bronze Soldier. A Soviet-era war memorial, originally in the centre of Tallinn, it replaced one blown up by in 1946 by Aili Jurgenson, then 14, and Ageeda Paavel, 15. Both girls then spent many years in the Gulag. It epitomised the view that the Soviets “liberated” Estonia (Estonians themselves reckon they replaced one occupation with another).

In April, for a mixture of reasons, good and bad, the Estonian authorities decided to move it to the cemetery, prompting rioting by some local Russians in Tallinn and a spectacularly counterproductive temper tantrum by the Kremlin.

Except for the lack of any public information (the Occupation Museum should organise a notice board showing the cemetery’s layout and history) the monument’s new setting is perfect.

The Estonian war memorials and tombstones destroyed by the Soviet occupants have now been rebuilt, and stand next to hundreds of Red Army headstones set in neatly mown grass. Small black slabs mark a score of British casualties in the War of Independence of 1918-1920 (when the Royal Navy helped Estonia fight off both the Germans and the Russians).

After the Soviets had destroyed the British headstones and ordered that the ground be turned over for new graves, the cemetery attendant of the time, the late Linda Soomre, pluckily camouflaged it with piles of swept leaves. The remains, forgotten, stayed undesecrated. Soomre received the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II in 1994 and died two years later.

An anonymous Latvian (or Latvians) showed similar spirit, safeguarding the brass nameplate of the prewar British legation in Riga for 50 years. In 1992, when the embassy reopened, someone walked in off the street, left it with a receptionist, but gave no name. A warm thank you is waiting if they get in touch.

A tasteful cemetery alone will not save Estonia. The current approach of smug passivity is a recipe for disaster. Policy towards Russia and local Russians needs pepping up, urgently. One new idea is to raise money to restore the cemetery in the Russian town of Ivangorod, a town that was part of Estonia in the prewar era. It is thus the only big cemetery in the Russian Federation that was not part of the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. It contains the graves of some distinguished White Russian émigrés, who wanted to be buried as close to their homeland as possible. Many are in shameful disrepair.

A wider plan—suggested by Anne Applebaum—is to highlight positive aspects of Russian history that the Kremlin ignores, such as the fact that it was Russian dissidents in the 1960s who invented the modern human-rights movement. A good place to start would be proper commemoration of the heroic but largely forgotten handful who demonstrated against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Just for the record (and for the 40th anniversary next year): on August 25th 1968 Tatyana Baeva, Konstantin Babtsky, Larisa Bogoraz, Vadim Delaunay, Vladimir Dremluga, Viktor Fainberg, Natalya Gorbanevskaya and Pavel Litvinov assembled in Red Square with a Czechoslovak flag and banners reading “For your freedom and ours” and “Glory to free and independent Czechoslovakia”.

They were arrested within minutes. Bogoraz was sentenced to four years in Siberia and became chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1989. She died in 2004. Delaunay was sentenced to two years in a labour camp. He emigrated to France in 1975 and died in 1983. Mr Litvinov was sentenced to five years exile in Chita. He emigrated to America in 1973 and still lives there. Viktor Fainberg was pronounced insane and spent five years in psychiatric hospital. It is nice that Tom Stoppard’s “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” is dedicated to him. But a more comprehensive memorial would be well-deserved.

Wednesday

AT A conference session in Tallinn, chaired by your diarist, the big donors who support good causes in eastern Europe were puzzling over the question of whether it was better to train lawyers and journalists, to hand out grants to charities and campaigns, or to promote “democracy” explicitly.

Given that President Vladimir Putin calls himself a pure democrat (comparing himself in all seriousness to Mahatma Gandhi), it is clear that the word risks losing its meaning. Some might think that happened some years back. The Soviet-occupied zone of eastern Germany declared itself to be the “German Democratic Republic”. The monsters in Pyongyang call their slave-state the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”.

Democracy also has specific (and largely negative) connotations in Russia. The myth assiduously stoked by the Kremlin is that the anarchy of the Yeltsin era proved that Western-style “democracy” (meaning a multi-party parliamentary system) did not work in Russia. Indeed, Russians sometimes use the punning term “dermokratiya” (shitocracy) to express their distaste for the looting and weakness that those years have come to epitomise. Worse, the costly failure in Iraq has discredited, in many eyes at least, the whole idea of “democracy promotion”. Pushing that hard in Russia risks backfiring.

So maybe it would be better to use other terms: the rule of law, political freedoms, environmental awareness, public spiritedness (or in the jargon term, “civil society”). It is, after all, not what happens at elections that counts, but what goes on in-between them. Elections can only be rigged successfully when public and private institutions are too weak to object. “Democracy” alone does not prevent mob rule, winner-takes-all sectarian rivalries, and the rewarding of campaign contributions from the political pork barrel.

The discussion ended, appropriately, with a vote. But this being Estonia, home of e-government, it was no mere show of hands. Linnar Viik, Estonia’s internet guru, coached the donors in how to use handheld black gadgets that he described as “Estonian comfort pillows: small and hard”. These allow the moderator to pose impromptu questions and get instant feedback from the audience. The result, projected on a big screen: democracy won, but only just.

Across the corridor Anne Applebaum, the author of “Gulag”, was in full swing. Her Estonian publishers had not bothered to sell copies at her talk; everyone has read it already, they say. That may be true: “Gulag” has been a big hit in the Baltic states. Afterwards, Ms Applebaum and your diarist (who were both Economist stringers in eastern Europe in the late 1980s) headed to the Occupation Museum. On the site of what used to be the Soviet military headquarters in Tallinn, this is a model of its kind, and all the more powerful for the restraint it shows. Visitors are not bombarded with tales of suffering and heroism, but left to infer them from the images and artifacts on display. A dozen cabinets, each with a trilingual video display, tell the story of what seemed to be inevitable national extinction.

“It was the West’s failure to support the Hungarian uprising in 1956 that really broke morale. People realised that the white ships were not coming”. Mart Laar, an historian by training before he ran governments that introduced Estonia (and the world) to flat tax and e-government, has arrived. He and Ms Applebaum have long admired each other from afar: face to face for the first time, they got on famously. This was most gratifying to your diarist, who arranged the meeting. Before taking us to lunch, Mr Laar pointed out tiny, fabric patches in faded blue, black and white fabric: banned Estonian flags, made by Gulag inmates and kept as talismans even at the risk of hellish punishment if caught.

Tuesday

FIVE years ago London was no place to be a Russia specialist. These days the meetings and cabals are so plentiful that, if you are an anti-Kremlin voice, you get unlimited coffee and biscuits; if you are pro, you get caviar and champagne.

The subject of the morning seminar at which your diarist spoke recently was, “What should the West do about a resurgent Russia?” The likely answer is “nothing”. But old cold-war hawks are finding that their beaks and talons, once dismissed as anachronistic, are back in fashion. Ideas that would have seemed outlandish only a couple of years ago are discussed seriously: suspend Russia from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), ban “Kremlin Inc” from Western capital markets, end the farce of the G-8 meetings, crack down on visas, and so on.

A senior Conservative foreign-policy figure at the meeting took another line, floating the idea of a grand bargain. The West should give Russia a guaranteed say in the future of Ukraine and Georgia (along the lines of post-war Austrian neutrality) in return for co-operation on Iran. He did not, quite, use the word appeasement.

“Are British Conservative politicians working for the Kremlin, or are they just stupid?” A few hours later the discussion was over a lively liquid late-evening seminar in Tallinn with a bunch of worried Russia-watchers. It is damaging enough that the British Conservatives have such neurotic hangups about the European Union, explained a gloomy top official. But now they are going to put in a former KGB man as head of PACE.

PACE is a misleading moniker. The assembly should really be called DRAG. It is a talking-shop even less relevant to the continent’s future than the European Parliament. But it sounds important, and having the top spot will be a most useful pulpit for the Kremlin to denounce Europe for its hypocrisy, arrogance, weakness, Atlanticism, greed, malevolence and general failure to follow the constructive, reasonable and disinterested policies of the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

The reason for this bizarre behaviour by the British Tories is chiefly their phobia about co-operation with the continental Christian Democrats (dangerous federalists to a man). In the European Parliament the Tories are joined with the Christian Democrats in a loveless marriage called the European People’s Party. The chief reason for the Tories staying in is the perks they would lose if they went off on their own.

If one is being charitable, another reason may be the embarrassment some of them might feel by sitting alongside the nutters and deadbeats of the parliament’s right-wing fringe. But in PACE they have more options. There the Tories are in another grouping of right-wing parties, the European Democrats, of which the biggest member is the United Russia. That party’s list of candidates for the December parliamentary elections is headed by Vladimir Putin.

The PACE presidency is usually allocated on the basis of rotation between the parties (yes, honestly). Now it is the European Democrats’ turn. That is excellent news for Mikhail Margelov, the grouping’s candidate. A former KGB language instructor, highly articulate in both English and Arabic, he is a formidable representative for the Kremlin in any international forum. His likely victory is less good news for the Baltic states and Georgia, which already feel that they are on the sharp end of Russian propaganda attacks (and more besides).

The gloom of a Tallinn winter evening deepened over the assembled Swedes, Finns, Balts and exiled Russians as they heard news of the morning seminar in London. “Would a British Conservative government support our NATO application if the Russians objected?” asked a plaintive voice from a neutral country. Once you start making grand bargains, they may become a habit. Conversation then became detailed and revealing on the similarities between the Saudi and Russian approach to subsidising allies and neutralising critics. Names were named, but English libel laws do not permit their publication.

Well, Mark Ames is at it again. This time, it's a 3,100-word diatribe about Anna Politkovskaya. As if assassin's bullets weren't enough for her to contend with. La Russophobe has already thoroughly discredited Ames' last ridiculous screed, attempting to explain America's policy towards Vladimir Putin as being based on jealousy of Russia's sub-60 year male adult lifespan and $300 per month salaries. Now, just hearing Anna's name pass his serpent-like lips forces us to delist him from our blogroll and file him away under "yawn, how boring" with the likes of David Johnson. So very predictable. If you want to understand the essence of Ames and the eXile, just try to find the placd in the paper where, like the Washington Post or New York Times, the eXile admits and corrects its mistakes. When you can't find it, ask Ames why. When he's done cursing at you and discussing your mother's sexual practices, he'll tell you it's because the eXile doesn't make mistakes.

To nobody's surprise, from reading his article about Anna it turns out that Matt could care less about her (he doesn't discuss any of her writing in detail). All he really wants is any opportunity he can sink his hobnailed toe into in order to trash America, the place he couldn't make it, that had the temerity to reject his briliance and send him spinning into the land of incompetence where he can feel like a king (and buy vodka real, real cheap -- "women" too!). One has to admit, though, that every time Ames opens his mouth he does provide convincing evidence that there must be something wrong with America somewhere, if it could produce a troll like him. But the hypocrisy is truly breathtaking. It's just fine for Mark to bash America unrelentingly, but if anyone dares to criticize Russia then he labels them freaks and liars. This is exactly the kind of pathetic, empty-headed hypocrisy that has destroyed Russia and got Mark kicked out of every decent country in the world, so that now he's reduced to spewing out his crazed, childish ideology of bitter envy from Russia while financing it by helping lonely foreign guys like himself pick up Russian brides for a fee.

Here's a brief review of some of the most odious aspects of his "analysis" (his words in bold, LR's commentary below).

The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was one of those horrible events which trigger the worst in everyone, when all the wrong lessons are drawn, and all the spite and savagery explode.

That's for sure. And Ames is proof positive. Is this guy really arroagant enough to think that HE knows what the "right lessons" are? Yup, he's arrogant enough. In fact, he's got plenty to spare.

Even by the 21st century's already sub-vile standards, her assassination managed to inspire an entirely new level of hysteria, opportunism and tactlessness so sphincter-twisting that it makes you wonder if it wouldn't just be better to hand the entire Judeo-Christian world over to the Chinese now, rather than waiting another agonizing 20 years. At least the Chinese have tact, for chrissakes.

So, boys and girls, if you want to be tactful, just follow Uncle Mark's example. Are you taking notes?

On one side of the Global Toilet was President Putin, normally an impressive politician, but who, at critical times, cannot contain his own viciously raw vanity. By keeping silent for two days after her murder, and then finally speaking out only to minimize her importance, Putin came off looking like a regular asshole.

Tact Lesson #1: "Global Toilet." By the way, that's a boldfaced lie. Putin said Anna was an enemy of the state, he didn't merely "minimize her importance." Marky might as well be a Kremlin henchman.

Big, unexpected events reveal the smallness in our leaders.

Also our self-important pseudo journalists. By the way, do you recall Ames saying anything about Politkovskaya when she was alive? Well, he made a joke about her being poisoned here and here. Other than that, the only thing the eXile ever wrote about her before 2006 was when it said her poisoning was #31 on the top 100 reasons why Russia is fascist. Not exactly a full plate of credentials, now is it?

But if you read the Russian internet, you'd realize that Putin came off as a weepy liberal: a good part of the "active" community only wished that Politkovskaya had been killed far more slowly, much sooner, and that they could have perhaps been part of the hit team who did it. Nice, really fucking nice.

Take that, you Internet fanatics! LR bet's they'll never do it again, now that they've been told off so firmly by Uncle Mark.

On the other side -- the side that matters far more to me -- was the West. Unlike Putin, the Western media wasted no time in seizing Politkovskaya's corpse for their own purposes, parading it around and milking it for every ounce it was worth.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. See, he could care less about Russia one way or the other. What he really wants is a chance to bash America . . . just what Anna would have wanted him to do!

What exactly was Anna Politkovskaya's bullet-riddled corpse worth to the West? No surprise here: A juicy opportunity to demonize Putin and Russia.

Didn't he just say they wanted to kill her slowly? I guess his standards for demons are quite high . . . would they have to have said they wanted to eat her flesh, or what? Notice how Mark shows why the West shouldn't take the killing as a "chance to demonize Putin and Russia" by taking the killing as a chance to demonize Bush and America. Compelling brilliance, isn't it?

Immediately after her murder, Reuters showed how her death was going to be spun with the headline, "Outspoken Putin Critic Shot Dead In Moscow." The implication was obvious: Putin ordered it. Articles noted that she was killed on Putin's birthday, implying that it was a gift to himself. On the eve of his visit to Germany to close a big energy contract. Can you imagine Putin actually ordering the hit on his birthday, just before meeting Merkel for a key energy summit?

It's actually quite easy. You just first think about Putin's barbaric attitude towards rape, and then you think about his attitudes towards race, and then it becomes quite miraculous that he allowed Anna to live as long as she did. But, quite likely, Ames admires those views of Putin, just thinks he needs to learn how to express them a bit more "tactfully."

But that was just the beginning. The notoriously Russophobic Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post published an editorial that more directly implicated Putin: "It is quite possible, without performing any detective work, to say what is ultimately responsible for these deaths: It is the climate of brutality that has flourished under Mr. Putin." This is a cheap way of saying that Putin is responsible, but like most Russia-haters, they leave out some obvious contradictions. Such as, for example, is Putin also responsible for the hit on Paul Klebnikov, who was profoundly pro-Putin? And what about all the journalists murdered during Yeltsin's tenure? Did Hiatt or any of the others ever blame Yeltsin -- the one who truly introduced the brutality, corruption and lawlessness into Russia? No, of course not, because Yeltsin did The West's bidding. Crimes committed while being pro-American simply do not exist.

Ummm, is LR missing something? Was Yeltsin a career KGB spy with a secret resume? Is he the one who abolished the election of governors and seized control of all the TV stations? Do you notice how, despite 3,100 words, Ames couldn't provide a single quote from Klebnikov to establish how "profoundly pro-Putin" he was? This is the way journalism OUGHT to be done, as only Super Ames understands. If only the Columbia School of Journalism would return his a calls . . . well, they're obviously just a pack of rabid fascists.

Anne Applebaum, one of the Post's resident neocons, went the extra sleazy mile when she got ahold of Politkovskaya's corpse. In her October 9th column, "A Moscow Murder Story," Applebaum simply lied about the circumstances of her murder, and quite consciously so, when she essentially blamed Klebnikov's inconvenient death, as well as other provincial journalists killed for investigating local corruption, on Putin.

Does Mark Ames have proof that Putin didn't order these killings? Yikes! Stop the presses! If so, that means he knows who did! Gosh, he must be saving this scoop for an extra special day, like his birthday! LR can hardly wait to read it! Get the feeling he might have made submissions to the Post's op-ed page that didn't quite get acted on?

No person could be as far from Politkovskaya as Anne Applebaum. Given all of Applebaum's influence and access, she only uses that power to demonize Russia and whitewash America's fascism. Politkovskaya, on the other hand, speaking from extreme weakness and danger, used what little influence she had to risk all for the victims of her own goverment's cruelty, fighting from within.

No person? Not even Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler? Ah yes, now the point. Politkovskaya was killed which proves that . . . America is a fascist state! And only the ultra perspicacious Ames is able to see through the haze to divine the truth. Isn't it amazing that nobody will hire this genius? Must have been rather embarrassing, though, for Ames to see both houses of the U.S. Congress move into the Democratic column. Hard to pass that off as a brilliant fascist ploy by George Bush. But it's a known fact that all the truly great geniuses are victimized by bad luck.

Easily the most absurd Politkovskaya article was by the notorious Brit hack Olga Craig, in her piece in the Sunday Telegraph titled "Cross Putin And Die." It begins with an obviously manufactured story of a terrified small-time journalist supposedly fleeing for his life from Putin's Russia -- the invented journalist is given a pseudonym, "Zakayev," he's apparently so scared... and from there, well, you can fill in the blanks yourself. His alleged crime is that he criticized the disgusting crackdown on ethnic Georgians--and yet, there was vicious open criticism of the crackdown as fascistic all over the Russian print and internet media. But supposedly, this guy had to flee for his life -- "Now 'Zakayev' is convinced that someone, most probably a hired hitman with links to the Kremlin, is already stalking his movements." It's pure cartoon bullshit, one of the worst made-up hack stories you'll read in your life.

Except for what you find in the eXile, of course. After all, takes one to know one, right? Think old Mark would have the guts to move to Britain and write that, and face the resulting lawsuit? Nah. Problee not. But it's a really neat trick to be able to just read a newspaper article and instantly know that it's been faked. Must be one of the great American tragedies that Mark is not editing the New York Times. He must have blown Jasyon Blair the first time out, didn't he? Hmmm . . . .

But the knockout blow was yet to be delivered. Politkovskaya's corpse could not be buried before the Western press squeezed it for the biggest prize of all: Pure, total demonization. The "F" word. Yes, the Economist declared, "It is an over-used word, and a controversial one, especially in Russia. It is not there yet, but Russia sometimes seems to be heading towards fascism." If Fascism means gas chambers, then all talk of it is utterly meaningless and empty--it's the most over-abused epithet, and simply by acknowledging that doesn't excuse the Economist of rank historial distortion. However, if "Fascism" means what I think they mean -- violence and lies and hate -- then America, which used a lie as a pretext to invade a country on the other side of the globe, completely leveled a city of 300,000, and killed half a million citizens, all the while violently suppressing the truth and anyone who tries to get it out -- is guilty as charged.

So, just in case you missed it, America is fascist and Russia isn't.

That's kind of how Russians reacted when they saw that the West crudely exploited Politkovskaya's murder. The West's crude reaction only increased Russia's crude counter-reaction...

See, all those people saying they wanted to torture Anna slowly, that's America's fault too. America is baaaaaaaad. Yet, for some reason Mark isn't afraid of America retaliating against him. That's because he's a SUPER hero!

Why doesn't America have an Anna Politkovskaya?

Translation: Why, oh why, won't America make me a rich and famous journalist? I SO deserve it!

Why don't we have someone as courageous as she was to tell the story of how we razed Fallujah to the ground Grozny-style? How we bombed to smithereens and ethnically cleansed a city of 300,000 people in retaliation for the deaths of four American contractors? Where is the American Anna Politkovskaya who will tell us about how we directly killed roughly 200,000 Iraqis, and indirectly are responsible for about half a million Iraq deaths since our invasion? Why isn't there a single American willing to risk almost certain death, the way Politkovskaya did, in the pursuit of truth and humanity? Take the case of Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi correspondent for Knight Ridder. Salihee was shot by an American sniper with a bullet to his head on June 24, 2005. At the time, he was gathering material for an investigative piece about how the US was training death squads -- the very same death squads which are now responsible for the savage civil war that kicked into high gear this year.

Lot's of news here. Iraq is fighting a civil war, it seems. Also, it's not enough for an American publisher to hire an Iraqi journalist. To avoid being fascist, you have to go with an "American" reporter who wouldn't know the country as well. And there's no information in the American press about how many civilian casualties there have been in Iraq. Apparently, there's more ant-war activity in Russia than in America, and Chechnya was a bigger issue in the last Russian election than Iraq was in the last American election. In fact, Vladimir Putin lost control of the Russian Duma years ago and is a national laughing stock! If only Mark would take a job at Harvard teaching journalism . . .

Indeed Salihee is just one of a number of journalists killed in Iraq, by far the most dangerous place in the world for journalists.

Notice how Mark doesn't tell us how many journalists have been killed, much less compare the data to any other environment? Does this guy really think he's a journalists? Well, you can't spend your time learning how to count and document facts when you're busy saving the world from American fascism, after all. He also doesn't tell us how many times HE'S been to Iraq . . . .

And it's not all the insurgents' fault either. Some more marginal journalists, from Robert Fisk to Dahr Jamail, have written about how US forces in Iraq target journalists for murder.

Hey wait a minute . . . didn't he just say there WERE no such people as Robert Fisk working on such stories? Must be a misprint! Well, the eXile donates so much money to Russian charities that it probably can't afforda reall good proofreader. Or is he saying that Anna Politkovskaya was mainstream? Did she get on RTR or ORT without LR noticing? Damn!

Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was kidnapped last year in Iraq and freed by an Italian intelligence agent, was shot and wounded (the agent was killed) by US forces when she was returning to freedom. She insisted that US troops deliberately targeted her. A smear campaign in the US press -- labeling her a Communist and an anti-American with Stockholm Syndrome-- effectively nullified her story, but even pro-Bush Berlusconi was so incensed by the incident that he started to back away from Bush's war.

But if there is such a vast right wing conspiracy in America, why did the Democrats just take over both houses of Congress?

The case of Eason Jordan, CNN's longtime superstar news chief, might explain the mainstream American media's silence. This is what happens when you're a mainstream American media man who dares to tell the ugly truth about Iraq. While hobnobbing with the Global Aristocracy at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January of 2005, Jordan made the mistake of telling his fellow elite what was really happening in Iraq: American forces were "out to get journalists, and some were deliberately targeting journalists."Within two weeks, the longtime CNN honcho was out of work. His resignation came complete with a Stalin-esque confession that's chilling to read today: "After 23 years at CNN," he wrote, "I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq. I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise."

He lied and got fired. For Mark, that's the first sign of fascism as long as Mark himself didn't approve the decision in advance (and as long as CNN won't return his calls . . . or at least interview him on the Iraq tragedy, damn it!). No wait, not fascism, Stalinism, right?

A number of journalists have had their careers destroyed for not following the Party Line: Peter Arnett, Ashleigh Banfield, to name two of the most prominent. Meanwhile, the editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post who pushed for war, who spread lies about WMDs and helped bring about the 500,000 deaths reported today (a figure that of course is being attacked and demonized by the same people who cheer an organization's "courage" when such figures are arrived at in Chechnya), get to keep their jobs.

Didn't he say America didn't have any Politkovskayas? Must be a misprint! Well, the eXile donates so much money to Russian charities that it probably can't afford a really good proofreader.

You can see now why we have no Politkovskaya, as badly as we need one. If you go against the "fascist" tendency in your home country, you're targeted for death and career destruction by the government and a bloodthirsty right-wing population. Just as with Chechnya, Iraq has been made too dangerous to work in, and the American government has put a perfectly air-tight lid on information, not even allowing photographs of the coffins of dead American servicemen.

Whoops, now we don't have one again. Damn!

The way Putin managed to bring the media more tightly under his heel than Yeltsin managed during his tenure was by a combination of brute intimidation and career-intimidation. Media heads were pressured, critics were harassed and ruthlessly mocked. Putin also managed to tap into a growing nationalist backlash against the anti-government criticism in the liberal media, much as Republicans constantly tap the American public's rabid patriotism and hatred of the "liberal media" for criticizing or questioning right-wing, militaristic policies. All of the good Russian journalists I know got out a few years ago because it was a bad career, unless you were going to do the equivalent of FOX News, which most refused to do. American journalists, on the other hand, manage to stay working under these circumstances because they can comfort themselves with homegrown lies, such as, "Sure I'd like to print something else, but I don't want to risk it. But the difference is, at least we have the RIGHT to publish what we want about Iraq."

Hmmm . . . seems like Russia doesn't have any Politkovskayas either, doesn't it?

The lesson of Anna Politkovskaya's fearless journalism was completely lost on the West. It's up to Russians to figure out the significance of her murder to their culture and their civilization. But in a West increasingly drowning in lies, war, murder and hatred, the last thing her death should give us is the opportunity to create another enemy, another nation to hate, another regime to be changed.

So, Mark is betting that Russians will "figure out the significance" of Politikovskaya before the West does. But, how will they do that when Ames is the only one in the world who "understands" and he never writes in Russian?

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog expands upon Anne Applebaum's analysis (above) as follows:

Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible, as Anne Applebaum eloquently points out in the Washington Post.

But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies.

Russia is a sovereign state, and most (with important exceptions) of its clients are also sovereign states, with the right to enter into these international agreements. But it is time to stop pretending Russia’s interests are anything but extremely hostile to combatting Islamist terrorism, stabilizing key regions and ending regional conflicts that pose the real threat of becoming much broader wars.

The first is Russia’s ongoing supply of weapons to Iran and Hezbollah at a time when both are posing direct threats to U.S. interests in several regions, including Iraq and Lebanon. This has been well documented, including senior Israeli officials’ formal protest to Russia over the sale of sophisticated anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah used with great effect in last summer’s war.

This link to Hezbollah, in which Viktor Bout is alleged by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to be directly involved, has drawn little public comment from U.S. officials.

There are other cases cases much closer to home that have drawn little response from the Bush administration. The Chavez government in Venezuela has spent some $4.3 billion on weapons since 2005, placing it ahead of China ($3.4 billion); Pakistan ($3 billion); and Iran ($1.7 billion), according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Most of those weapons come from Russia, including the construction of a Kalashnikov (AK-103) assault rifle factory, combat helicopters, missiles and fighter jets. I recently wrote a paper on it for the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The sales come as Chavez has gone out of his way to court Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. The two presidents have held at least three face-to-face meetings in the past six months, and address each other as “brother.”

The growing economic ties between the two nations can be seen in the dozens of economic agreements the two leaders have signed in that time, and the mutual support for cutting OPEC’s oil production, which is significant given that the two countries are OPEC’s second and fourth largest oil producers, respectively.

The real impact of Russia’s weapons sales to Venezuela and Iran will be felt in several regions.

Chavez has long had at least tacitly support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the major drug trafficking organizations in the world. The FARC, when I used to deal with its members in the early 1990s as a Washington Post reporter, retained some vestiges of a true insurrection, whether one agreed with them or not. There was an ideological cohesion.

That has now devolved into an organization with little political agenda beyond making billions of dollars from protecting coca and poppy fields, moving cocaine and heroin and supporting the major cartels. They need weapons, and one can safely assume, I believe, that Chavez’s revolutionary support will extend beyond his own borders.

This risks destabilizing not only Colombia, but the rest of the Andean ridge, from Ecuador through Peru and to Bolivia.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad axis, with Russian weapons and support, will likely also have a direct impact on supporting the extensive Hezbollah network of money and operatives that flow through Latin America. Iran directly sponsors the group, Russia arms the group and Venezuela offers the friendly ground for operations. Not a pretty picture.

It is hard to imagine Secretary Rice really meaning what she said on Feb. 15: “I have a difficult time explaining that (Putin) speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.”

Unfortunately, the speech was a clear articulation of what Russia is doing around the world. Perhaps that is not the world Secretary Rice sees, but it is visible to almost anyone else.

Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post:

Before it happened, nobody imagined that the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo would set off World War I. Before the "shot heard round the world" was fired, I doubt that 18th-century Concord expected to go down in history as the place where the American Revolution began. Before last weekend, when Itar-Tass declared that the government of Georgia was about to invade Abkhazia, nobody had really thought about Abkhazia at all. As a public service to readers who need a break from the U.S. presidential campaign, this column is therefore devoted to considering the possibility that Abkhazia could become the starting point of a larger war.

Many Americans haven't heard of Abkhazia. It's a pretty safe bet that it's probably not the priority of many people in the White House, either, and it hasn't even been one of those "can you name the general who's in charge of Pakistan" trick questions in the U.S. presidential campaign. On the contrary, Abkhazia ranks right up there with Nagorno-Karabakh, Dagestan, South Ossetia and all the other forgotten Caucasus regions, cities and statelets that no one wants to think about too hard but where, occasionally, something really awful happens.

For the record, Abkhazia is a province of Georgia that declared its independence in 1992. A small war followed, and ethnic cleansing of Georgians from Abkhazia came after that. There have been some UN attempts to make peace, and Georgia has tried offering Abkhazia broad autonomy, but, mostly, Georgia and Abkhazia maintain an uneasy stalemate, which occasionally turns into an extremely uneasy stalemate.

Usually this happens when an atmosphere of extreme uneasiness is useful to Russia, which is Abkhazia's closest military, economic and political ally and has a long-term interest in the destabilization of pro-U.S., pro-Western, pro-NATO Georgia.

Thus, when Itar-Tass announces that Georgia is about to invade Abkhazia, it may mean that Georgia really is about to invade Abkhazia. But it might also mean, as everyone in the region understands, that Russia is about to invade Georgia -- as a "preemptive strike," of course.

Why would the Russians do that? Or even hint that they want to do that? Russian politics having become utterly opaque, it's hard to say. Some think Russia began stirring up trouble in Abkhazia in recent weeks to exact revenge for NATO's recognition of Kosovo -- or perhaps to be able to strike quickly, had NATO decided at its recent summit to offer Georgia a clear path to membership, which U.S. President George W. Bush vocally supported. Others think that recent Russian pronouncements, some of which come close to recognition of Abkhaz independence, are related to the inauguration this week of the new president, Dmitry Medvedev. Maybe Medvedev wants to demonstrate how tough he is, right at the beginning. Or maybe someone else wants to demonstrate how tough Medvedev is, on his behalf. In any case, someone, Abkhaz or Russian, has shot down at least two and maybe four unmanned Georgian military planes in the past six weeks in what looks like a pretty obvious attempt to create a casus belli.

It might not work -- and for the moment the Georgians say they have no intention of declaring war. But Georgia holds parliamentary elections this month, under the leadership of a president who might be grateful for a chance to look bold. If the provocation works, or if Russia does invade Georgia -- an emerging democracy, an aspiring NATO ally, a country with troops in Iraq and many implicit assurances of security from Washington and Brussels -- then the West will have to come up with a major response, if not military then political and diplomatic.

The timing couldn't be worse. There are many wonderful things about the U.S. political system, but one of the least wonderful is the amount of energy a presidential campaign sucks out of public life. Between now and January, the current president is a lame duck: Could he make any credible response to a Russian invasion of Abkhazia, should such a thing happen? Is anybody ready to debate a whole new part of the world? Last weekend, the U.S. media focused unprecedented attention on ... the Guam primary, in which 4,500 people cast ballots and Barack Obama won by seven votes.

Of course, from another perspective, the timing couldn't be better: If you wanted to attack a U.S. ally, or if you just wanted to destabilize and unnerve a U.S. ally, wouldn't this be the perfect moment? Perhaps if the Russians don't take the opportunity, someone else will.

Writing in the Washington Post on March 8th (a month before this little baby blog was born!), columnist Anne Applebaum implored the U.S. to spurn the G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg, as had numerous members of Congress. Applebaum exposed the perils of once more attempting to appease the Evil Empire and, as this post concludes, nobody can say they haven't been repeatedly warned about what is happening now in Russia. The rest is just a matter of intestinal fortitude:

Close your eyes and say it out loud: "G-8." Let the two syllables run across your tongue again: "gee-eight." What images drift into your brain.

If you are like most Americans, I suspect that this simple psychological experiment will produce something like, "stuffy statesmen, boring meeting, prepackaged conclusions." Or maybe, "screaming protesters, riot police, prepackaged slogans." Or even, "turn the page and read something else."

Maybe it isn't surprising. After all, the Group of Eight, once known as the Group of Seven, started life as a private meeting between the leaders of the world's largest industrial democracies. Off the record, they discussed the economic and political problems of the day. The only "message" produced was a statement to the effect that inflation was bad and oil prices were high.

Over the years, the G-8 evolved. Even as it came to mean less and less to Americans, it meant more and more to others. The Japanese, seeing the G-8 as a substitute for the U.N. Security Council they'll never join, spent lavishly, racking up a $750 million bill last time they hosted. The Europeans, leaping on the chance to set the international agenda, chose elaborate, crowd-pleasing "themes" to do with aid or technology. African, Latin American and Middle Eastern leaders showed up to bask in the reflected limelight. The Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, was allowed first to attend meetings and then to join, on the muddled grounds that making him a member, despite his country's lack of qualifications, would magically turn Russia into one of the world's largest democracies, too. It did not.

But now, having acquired ludicrous levels of significance and symbolism, the institution faces a genuine crisis. In July, the organization is going to meet for the first time under Russian leadership, in Russian President Vladimir Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg. And for the first time, a G-8 summit could produce, along with the bland communique, a political backlash harmful to all.

For by going to St. Petersburg, President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Jacques Chirac, and the leaders of Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan will in effect place their stamp of approval on the removal of political rights, the harassment of independent groups, the renationalization of energy and the censorship of media that Putin has imposed on his country since he took over from Yeltsin six years ago. They will also give their blessing to Putin's use of gas pipelines to threaten Ukraine, and to his ambiguous role in Iranian nuclear and Middle East peace negotiations. And after Bush goes home, the denizens of the Kremlin -- along with Venezuelans, Iranians, Arab leaders and others around the world -- will sit back, laugh and agree that the leaders of the so-called West merely pay lip service to the ideals of freedom and democracy; they don't really believe in them. If you have enough oil, they'll let you into their clubs anyway. The long-term result: The American president's ability to speak credibly about democracy and political freedom will be irreparably damaged.

Perhaps you think it ridiculous to sound so apocalyptic about a meeting that most Americans find too boring to read about. But don't listen to me, listen to Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Putin before he resigned last year in disgust. Illarionov says that Putin invariably returns from G-8 meetings feeling strengthened and empowered in his political course -- and it is true that Putin's opponents have been arrested or put on trial in a summit's wake. He also says the G-8 is taken deadly seriously in Russia, and shrugs when told that Americans don't much care one way or the other. "What is important is not how you, in the U.S., view the G-8. You have to think how your participation will be viewed and used in the world." Nor does it matter that U.S. leaders have always met with Russian dictators, since, to the Russians and to others, this is much different from a bilateral meeting: "There is no case in previous history when you endorsed such policies at such a level, at the G-8 level."

I should explain that Illarionov is in Washington this week for a conference. I should also add that he says he's been surprised by how many people, both here and in Russia, have asked whether he's really returning to Moscow afterward -- "will you dare go back" being a question that no one even considered asking five years ago. It is tragic but true: Russia has once again become a place where blunt-speaking economists have to watch their backs.

There is still time: President Bush has four months to decide whether he wants to endorse this new Russia, four months to decide whether he wants to bestow on Putin the full approval of the West's most prestigious club, four months to decide whether he will destroy what remains of his credibility as a promoter of democracy and human rights. He can mitigate the damage -- he can stop in Vilnius or Kiev on the way, he can declare his faith in freedom to his Russian hosts -- but neither the Kremlin, nor the other opponents of democracy around the world, will care. All they will remember is that he was there.

In the July 8th issue of the American Spectator, which Applebaum edits, she continued the theme:

For sale, the advertisement might read: One very large Russian energy company. Estimated assets, including oil wells, reserves, refineries: $60 billion. Possible liabilities: four major international lawsuits, a part-time CEO who works full-time as President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff, and a certain — shall we say — lack of clarity about whether the company legally acquired most of those assets at all.

I am talking here about Rosneft, the very large Russian energy company whose shares go on sale in London next week. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Rosneft; it hasn’t been a very large Russian energy company for long. Much of its wealth was acquired recently — last year, in fact — when the Russian government forced another oil company, Yukos, into bankruptcy by demanding $30 billion in back taxes and sending its chairman to a labour camp. Only one bidder — a previously unknown company whose listed address turned out to belong to a mobile phone shop in an obscure town — showed up at the auction of Yukos assets. A few days later that mystery company sold its Yukos property to Rosneft for a pittance — which was not surprising, given that Rosneft’s major shareholder is the Russian government. Have I mentioned that the Rosneft CEO works as President Putin’s deputy chief of staff?

But the truly unusual, almost comic aspect of the Rosneft sale is the openness with which this extraordinary company has presented itself to the London Stock Exchange. When a prospectus was issued two weeks ago, it contained a few warnings, including some that are uncommon in the rarefied world of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and the other investment banks which are straight-facedly managing the sale. ‘Crime and corruption could create a difficult business climate in Russia,’ notes the prospectus, which also points out that the company is controlled by government officials ‘whose interests may not coincide with those of other shareholders ...and may cause Rosneft to engage in business practices that do not maximise shareholder value’. Translation: when the Russian government walks away with your money — as it walked away with Yukos investors’ money — don’t say no one warned you.

There is no pretence here. The Rosneft sale next week — scheduled for 14 July —will establish the principle that companies with illegally acquired assets can receive the imprimatur of the international financial establishment — as long as they are rich enough. But maybe that shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, on the following day Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George Bush and the leaders of Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Japan will meet in St Petersburg to help President Putin preside over the annual meeting of the Group of Eight. By doing so, they will establish the principle that authoritarian governments can receive the imprimatur of the international political establishment — as long as they are rich enough.

Admittedly, the G8 isn’t as serious an institution as the London Stock Exchange. Although it started its life as a private meeting between the leaders of the world’s largest industrial democracies, the organisation has lately come to resemble nothing so much as a very expensive circus. The Japanese, who consider the G8 a substitute for the UN Security Council they’ll never join, racked up a $750 million bill last time they hosted it. Others, the British Prime Minister included, have chosen elaborate, crowd-pleasing ‘themes’, such as last year’s save-the-Africans extravaganza, to boost their particular agendas. The first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, was allowed to attend meetings on the muddled grounds that making him a member would magically turn Russia into one of the world’s largest industrial democracies. It did not.

Nevertheless, President Yeltsin stayed in. His successor, President Putin, stayed in too, mostly on the equally muddled grounds that it would be too embarrassing to kick him out. Mr Putin has now taken full advantage of this muddle and turned the St Petersburg meeting into a major propaganda offensive, dedicated to the idea that Russia is still a superpower — an ‘oil and gas superpower’ — and a democratic, free-market one at that. Just last week he defended his country’s deployment of gas-pipeline blackmail to disrupt the Ukrainian elections on the grounds that Russia had merely been ‘using free-market principles in the gas trade with some of our neighbour states’. His top adviser held a rare public meeting to announce that Russia is in fact a ‘sovereign democracy’ after all. The Russian government has even hired a powerful American public relations company (Ketchum, whose clients include Disney and Pepsi). Ketchum’s job is to explain (as one Ketchum executive put it) that recent problems are ‘exceptions to the rule’, and more generally to encourage the Western press to join their leaders in ignoring President Putin’s transformation of Russia.

For those with memories as short as those of London investors, it’s therefore worth stopping for a minute to recall the highlights of that transformation. To start with, President Putin destroyed independent Russian television, which is now almost entirely state-controlled. He twisted election results to ensure that he and his allies won by landslides (not that, lacking media attention, his opponents would have won anyway). He recently passed laws designed to make existence close to impossible for Russia’s beleaguered human rights groups, environmental groups and other independent advocates. All the while, he continued his stunningly brutal (and now totally invisible) guerrilla war in Chechnya, which long ago moved beyond any legitimate repression of terrorism and into the realm of massive human rights abuse. The blatant illegality that accompanied the transfer of assets from Yukos to Rosneft — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Yukos CEO, was arrested, put through a macabre, Soviet-style show trial and sent to a prison camp where he suffers mysterious ‘accidents’ — put a permanent dent in national respect for the rule of law.

Much worse, though, for anyone who wishes Russians well, are the subtler changes in the Moscow atmosphere. Paranoia is back: recently, when the American Foreign Affairs magazine published an obscure article that idly speculated on the aftermath of a US nuclear attack on Russia or China, the city was instantly awash with rumours of impending nuclear war. Fear is back too: once again, my Russian friends are too nervous to be honest on the telephone. Some of them report visits — perfectly polite, it’s true — from agents of the FSB, the agency formerly known as the KGB, who are very interested in their foreign acquaintances and bank accounts. A Russian visiting America last spring told me that he was surprised by how many people, both in Washington and in Russia, had asked whether he’s really returning to Moscow afterwards — ‘will you dare go back?’ being a question that no one even considered asking five years ago. It is tragic but true: once again, Russia is a place where the blunt-speaking watch their backs.

All of these changes at home have, of course, coincided with Putin’s use of gas-pipeline blackmail in what Russia calls ‘the near abroad’ (and by extension Western Europe); his attempts to undermine the governments of Georgia and Ukraine and his increasingly ambiguous role in Iranian nuclear and Middle East peace negotiations. Yet none of these changes has prevented Bush, Blair and everyone else heading for St Petersburg, where the leader of the ‘oil and gas superpower’ with a ‘sovereign democracy’ and ‘free-market principles’ will welcome them with open arms.

And here is the real crux of the matter: it’s not the meeting itself that counts; it’s the context. President Putin has met with Western statesmen many times, and rightly so. Indeed, advocates of realpolitik are absolutely right to argue that we should have normal relations with Russia, that President Putin is a potential ally on many issues, that Russia is not North Korea. But a G8 summit is not a normal, bilateral meeting. The G8 is an informal gathering of the world’s largest industrial democracies. By allowing Russia to head it, we have accepted Russia as one of us.

And after everyone goes home? The Kremlin — along with Venezuelans, Iranians, Arab leaders and other oil tyrannies — will sit back, laugh and agree that the leaders of the so-called West merely pay lip service to the ideals of freedom and democracy; they don’t really believe in them. If you have enough oil, they’ll let you into their fancy clubs anyway. As Putin’s defence minister recently put it, ‘In the contemporary world, only power is respected.’ As Putin’s adviser recently put it, ‘They [the West] talk about democracy but they’re thinking about our natural resources.’

What is at stake here, in other words, is not just Russian–Western relations, but the West’s very ability to go on talking about democracy — in Russia, in Iraq, anywhere — and still get taken even remotely seriously. In a world where the promotion of democratic and liberal values is itself a realpolitik necessity — some form of political liberalisation is absolutely essential to the battle against al-Qa’eda and the ultimate integration of the Middle East into the global economy — that’s a pretty big problem.

Oddly, the only people who seem really worried about the long-term credibility of the West are Russians. In Washington a few months ago, Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Putin until his dramatic resignation last year, told me that Putin always returns from G8 meetings feeling utterly convinced of the rightness of his political course; more than once, Putin’s opponents have been arrested or put on trial in a G8 summit’s wake. By attending the G8 summit this month in St Petersburg, Illarionov said, Western leaders will show their approval of ‘the nationalisation of private property, destruction of the rule of law, violation of human rights and liquidation of democracy’. Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who dabbles in politics, has also said that the G8 will resemble ‘the Berlin Olympics in 1936’ and predicts it will be followed by the ‘equivalent of Munich 1938’ — the de facto acceptance of Putin’s Russia by the West.

But perhaps it is not surprising that Russians, not Americans or Brits, are the ones pointing this out. After all, it is they, not we, who really care about abstract ideas like ‘democracy’ and ‘free markets’ since it is they, not we, who will suffer without them. Russians also understand better the significance that the G8 — a dull bit of bureaucracy to most of us — has acquired in the rest of the world. When I told Illarionov that Americans and West Europeans don’t care much about the G8 one way or the other, he shrugged. ‘What is important is not how you in the US view the G8. You have to think how your participation will be viewed and used in the world.’

We, like the London Stock Exchange, have now been warned.