The Moscow Times reports:

Swiss director Eric Bergkraut doesn't expect his latest film, "Letter to Anna," to go down well in Russia, or even to make it into theaters. But in an interview after the premiere of the feature-length version at the Hot Docs International Film Festival in Toronto, he said he didn't want his film to be perceived as "anti-Russian."

"One can be very critical of Mr. Putin's politics without being anti-Russian at all," Bergkraut emphasized. "I am not sure if that is understood in Moscow today."

"Letter to Anna" is a documentary describing the life and death of the independent-minded Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was often treated with suspicion by the Russian authorities, and indeed by no small number of ordinary Russians.

Politkovskaya was best known for her critical writing on the wars in Chechnya, which appeared in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and in her books, "A Dirty War," and "A Small Corner of Hell."
She was shot to death in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006.

Bergkraut first met Politkovskaya in 2003, while he was working on his documentary, "Coca: The Dove From Chechnya," a film about a Chechen woman who had filmed human rights abuses in the republic.

Bergkraut asked Politkovskaya to appear in the film, and she agreed.

"My first impression of Anna was that she was very busy, very focused on her work, and that she was afraid of wasting her time. But once we started talking, we had very long talks, much longer than we had intended," Bergkraut said.

"What I liked was that she was always on the side of the weak person. I never had the feeling that it was about good Chechens and bad Russians. She was not naive at all. She just found the way the Russian government was dealing with the conflict not very intelligent."

Bergkraut assembled "Letter to Anna" from footage of Politkovskaya left over from "Coca," as well as footage which he shot in Russia after her death.

The film includes interviews with Politkovskaya's son Ilya, her daughter Vera, her ex-husband, Alexander Politkovsky, and makes clear that Politkovskaya's family feared for her life.

"Her family wanted to stop her. The only person who did not want to stop her was her daughter, Vera, who had a deep understanding for what her mother did. All the others -- and it's very understandable -- tried to stop her, but it was not possible."

The idea of living in exile was impossible for her, he said. "She did not want to leave the country. That would have been in total contradiction to who she was and how she lived."

Expatriate Russian billionaire and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky is among the Kremlin opponents Bergkraut interviews in the film, which is one reason he expects to have difficulties getting it screened in Russia.

"The film could do without Berezovsky, but why should it? Why is it impossible for Russians to see Berezovsky?" Bergkraut asked.

"He is a kind of Mephisto in the film. He is not the good guy. He has to be in the film because, [Russian Prosecutor General] Yury Chaika said at a press conference that [Politkovskaya's] murder could only have come from abroad, from oligarchs. It is quite clear that he was pointing at Berezovsky," he said.

Another possible obstacle to the film's presentation in Russia might be Politkovskaya's characterization of the war in Chechnya as "genocidal."

"She gives a very good argument," says Bergkraut. "Do you know how many people have been killed in Chechnya? We do not know the figures. Maybe only 80,000. Maybe 150,000. Maybe 300,000. It's really a tragedy. Chechens are a very small community," he said.

"But every single Russian soldier and his family is a tragedy too, for me. It's not necessarily that I share [her] judgment, but I wanted to show it," he added.

"Letter to Anna" also includes appearances by Garry Kasparov, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov, and other colleagues and acquaintances of Politkovskaya.

Bergkraut regrets that he was not able to represent "official Russia" more thoroughly in his film.

"I tried very hard to get an interview with Yury Chaika, but it was not possible. I am trying hard to understand [his position]. I would have loved to have more official Russian voices," he said.

Bergkraut also laments that no one from "official Russia" has attended any of his international screenings.

"At all the screenings of my film, I was expecting that some day someone from the Russian embassy would come, and we would have a discussion. Nobody ever came. It's a pity. My last film has been shown in about 30 countries, but not in Russia. Isn't that strange?"

After winning the International Human Rights Film Award for "Coca" in Berlin last year, Bergkraut was approached by several film stars who expressed interest in collaborating with him. As a result, Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve, and Iris Berben provided the narrations for "Letter to Anna" in its English, French, and German versions, respectively.

Bergkraut's film was also honored by Vaclav Havel when it screened at the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Prague earlier this year.

"Festivals and television stations are now approaching me because they want to show "Letter to Anna," but no one has come to me from Russia," Bergkraut said.

"A discussion [about Politkovskaya] -- which may be controversial -- would be interesting and somehow natural. The best thing would be if a Russian television channel bought "Letter to Anna. Maybe one day. Things can change."

In a devastating embarrassment for Vladimir Putin's foreign policy, Georgia held elections this week and delivered stunning knockout blow to Russia's efforts to retain influence and control in the former Soviet republic.

In parliamentary elections that were judged as "good or very good at 92 percent of the 1,500 polling stations visited" by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Georgian voters supported the party of the pro-West president Mikheil Saakashvili (shown above) by a landslide margin. The OSCE found that the quality of Georgia's elections had improved markedly from the last outing: "These elections were not perfect, but since I was here in January for the presidential election, concrete and substantial progress has been made," said Joao Soares, head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly mission.

Saakashvili's party dominated its pro-Russia opponent by a stunning margin of nearly three to one. The people of Georgia spoke loud and clear, saying that they wanted no part of their country's Soviet past and domination by the Russian Kremlin. Instead, they overwhelmingly favor alliance with the West, NATO membership and an independent course. Faced with repeated neo-imperialist efforts to unseat him, President Saakashvili has responded courageously and even heroically by simply calling election after election to let the people decide and winning each and every one.

Let's be clear: The United Opposition Movement headed by former presidential candidate Levan Gachechiladze is a real opposition party, harshly critical of Saakashvili and seeking to oust him from power. It was allowed to campaign aggressively and it won a large number of seats in Parliament. No such thing occurred last December in Russia. By contrast, not one single seat in Russia's new parliament is held by a party opposed to the dictatorial rule of Vladimir Putin.

It's more than a little telling that Russian "president" Dimitri Medvedev's first state visit after becoming "president" was a trip to China. Russia's relations with its former Soviet neighbors in Europe are imploding like a house of cards (just ten days ago, Russia received a similar poke in the eye from it's "little brother" in Serbia), and rather that seek to repair them it appears the Kremlin has simply given up hope and is trying to shore up its Far Eastern front.

Good luck with that, Mr. Medvedev. Do you really imagine the Chinese don't realize the racist contempt in which they are held by Russians? Do you really think you can appease the Chinese the way Stalin tried to appease Hitler, and thereby prevent China from annexing huge swaths of Russian territory to house its massive population (now ten times larger than Russia, but with less than one-third the national territory)?

Russia's foreign policy under Vladimir Putin has amounted to total, abject failure. Putin has provoked a new Cold War with the world's only superpower, alienated and polarized Western Europe with energy terrorism, poisoned its relations with former Soviet bloc friends and left Russia standing utterly alone in the world, without alliances or even constructive working relationships of any kind. Russia's only fellows are rogue regimes like those in Syria, Iran and Venezuela.

And there is nothing at all surprising in this. Though the complain about "encirclement" by the outside world, the people of Russia bring their troubles on themselves by choosing to be governed by a proud KGB spy raised on the mother's milk of propaganda and paranoia that brought down the USSR.

Paul Goble reports on the amazing irony that, while cozying up to radical Islam in Iran and Syria, Russia is seeking to wipe it out within Russia itself:

Russian judges are now prepared to ban as extremist Muslim broadsides and Internet pages about the actions of the Federal Security Service FSB), the militia, and the courts in dealing with Islamic groups, so broadening the definition of “extremist” as to create a precedent for any effort to comment on the actions of the legal system or force structures. According to Islamnews.ru, the latest list of “banned” literature includes not just additional Muslim religious texts Abd Al-Aziz bin Muhammed’s “What One Needs to Know about the One God,” but also pamphlets and web pages about the actions of Russian officials like “How to Act when Dealing with the Special Services.”

Many Muslims as well as civil and human rights activists have been concerned by the increasing proclivity of Russian courts to ban books, an approach that most of these groups believe is not only immoral and dangerous but unconstitutional, ineffective, and counterproductive as well. And Muslim leaders across the Russian Federation have pointed out not only that the courts seem to come down on Islamic literature far more often than that of any other faith, even though there are radical texts in the others, but also that most judges and prosecutors lack the expertise to distinguish between extremism and anything else.

Over the last several months, an increasing number of Russian officials have come to agree, with a few suggesting that the government should get out of the business of banning books and a large number of others arguing that prosecutors and the courts should rely on Muslim theologians who will be able to analyze the texts more fully and accurately. Recently and despite the convictions of many Muslim leaders that banning books is a bad business – the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan, for example, disciplined a senior leader who appeared to back the idea by suggesting Muslims should burn the books Russian courts have banned – some Muslims were stepping forward with offers to help.

That makes the latest list especially disturbing. On the one hand, several of the works on it are more or less standard texts widely used not only in the Arab world but in Russian Islamic schools, an indication that Russia’s prosecutors and judges are not inclined to approach their content with greater care. And on the other, banning articles about how Muslims should deal with the authorities – and the one listed this time urges the faithful to ask that their rights be respected and to keep records of what officials say and do – and banning materials on the Internet in this way indicates that the authorities now feel increasingly free to violate other Constitutional rights of believers.

Given that the Islamic community in the Russian Federation relies more heavily on the Internet than on the print media – distributing materials via the web is both easier and cheaper – this expansion of judicial power opens the way to the closure of more sites – several have been blocked in recent days – or to the basing of Russian Muslim sites abroad. Moscow has demonstrated that it has the capacity to shut down sites whose content it doesn’t like – the perversely named www.islam.boom.ru site, for example, was closed last month – but the Russian government has not found a way to close far more radical ones, like those of individual jamaats in Daghestan and elsewhere.

Whenever the authorities have sought to shut these sites down, their owners simply move them to IP providers in Muslim countries, an action that often makes them even more radical than they were before. And there is no reason to think, given the nature of the Internet or the number of such sites that the Russian government will be any more successful in the future. Consequently, what the Russian authorities are likely to achieve by their latest actions will not to restrain extremism but rather to increase alienation among Muslims living in that country and to raise questions among both them and all those concerned about civil and human rights as to Moscow’s commitment to observe its own laws and Constitution.

On the fat, rich oligarch's leg is written the word: "CORRUPTION." A tiny pugilistic Medvedev sits on his knee as he smiles with amusement.

(1) EDITORIAL: Russia and Victory are Incompatible

(2) More Woeful Bad News for Putin's Russia

(3) AIDS Ravages Russian Women

(4) A Landslide in Georgia, Putin Poked in the Eye


NOTE: On Monday, this blog was pleased to publish its 5,000th comment.

There's something about success that breeds failure where Russia is concerned. It can make the best of them head right into the toilet, and the worst of them . . . well, you don't want to know.

Take, for instance, the cartoon shown above, drawn by "Ellustrator" Sergei Yelkin for the RIA Novosti news service. It shows a sniper's crosshairs hovering over a blood-red maple leaf that has five bullet holes in the bullseye, and is emblazoned with the words "WAY TO GO!" also in blood red.

Apparently, these five bullet holes are meant to represent the five goals the Russian team scored to narrowly defeat Canada in overtime at the World Ice Hockey championships earlier this week. It's been a long 15 years since Russia last won a gold medal in that event, which it should dominate. But in fact, Russia only won because of a freak penalty where a Canadian player accidentally flipped the puck out of the rink, just a happenstance. Shorthanded, Canada gave up the sudden-death goal in overtime to lose the match. Canada had dominated Russia in the first two periods of play.

It seems that even when Russians win, they somehow find a way to lose anyway.

Just imagine for a moment if you will how Russians would have reacted if the shoe were on the other foot. Let's say, just for example, that the U.S. had beaten Russian 4-3 and a leading American wire service commissioned a cartoon showing Russia's double-headed eagle with all four eyes shot out by bullet holes. Any chance they'd say that penalty was some kind of Russophobic conspiracy? What are they odds they would admit the U.S.A. had beaten them fair and square and deserved the gold medal, and deserved to gloat with such a cartoon? In any other country, circumstances like this might be cause for some sort of introspection and modesty. But not Russia.

"We are going to get drunk. We deserve this. It is great for our country," said Russian forward Alexander Ovechkin. Impressive level of sportsmanship, isn't it?

Even Mr. Yelkin, whose work is respected by this blog and often featured in our Sunday Funnies section, totally lost his mind with intoxicating arrogance. His cartoon is sickening in more ways than can be counted, and if something like that was done by a Westerner to a patriotic symbol of Russia, there would be hell to pay. But Russians have no problem with this sort of barbarism when it's aimed at those evil foreigners they despise.

We can't help but be reminded of the classically Russian antics of Maria Sharapova's father Yuri at this year's Australian Open, which his daughter won. When she beat world #1 Justine Henin, one of the classiest and most noble players ever to grace the game -- and who has suffered a long history of personal trauma in her private life -- Yuri covered his head in his hood, making himself look just like the infamous Unabomber, and made crude, disgusting slashing gestures across his throat.

Russians win so rarely, and go down to humiliating defeat so often, and they hate foreigners so much, that it's perhaps understandable they would need to blow off accumulated pressure on the rare occasions when they succeed. But invariably, Russians go so far with this barbaric behavior that they destroy any good will or respect they might otherwise have generated in the West through their victory.

And meanwhile, instead of thinking "hey, we won, we can do this -- maybe we need some reforms so we can do it more often," Russians inevitably conclude "see, we're perfect, and whenever we lose it's just bad luck we can do nothing about, or evil foreign conspiracies." It's the same in the wide aspects of life, sports is a perfect metaphor for society where Russia is concerned. The whole charade is, in our view, utterly pathetic and disgusting.

And so it goes in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Just as Putin can't understand that when he persecutes dissidents like Oleg Kozlovsky he shows weakness rather than strength, Russians can't seem to realize how pathological their behavior makes them appear in they eyes of the civilized world. Only a greatly frustrated people, so well acquainted with humiliating failure, become so frenzied at any instance of success. All Russians do when they act this way is to remind the world of their long history of failure.

The Moscow Times reports more proof that Vladimir Putin is giving Russia the worst of all possible worlds: he strips away all their freedoms, but doesn't give them the peace and order that should go along with it.

Russia is one of the least peaceful places in the world, according to a new study, which ranks it among countries mired in drug trafficking, guerilla wars and political instability.

Russia took 131st place out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index, just below Colombia and above Lebanon, says the study, released late Monday. Iceland was named the most peaceful country, while Iraq came in last.

Several Moscow-based defense analysts questioned the objectivity of the study.

Russia scored low because of its high military spending, booming arms sales and poor relations with its neighbors, says the study, the brainchild of Steve Killelea, an Australian philanthropist and entrepreneur.

Also hitting Russia's ranking were "high scores for homicides, jailed population, distrust among citizens, violent crime" and a lack of respect for human rights, it said.

The study, which uses 24 criteria, was prepared by Killelea's Institute of Economics and Peace and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

While the study noted "increased stability in Chechnya," it pointed to Russia's "moderately tense" relations with its neighbors and extremely high arms exports.

"I am sure it's quite possible for Russia to improve," Killelea said by telephone from London, noting that Russia's ranking had improved a notch from last year, when the country ranked 118th out of 121 countries in the first-ever study.

Of the other global "military-diplomatic powers," two others also received poor marks, with the United States ranked at 97th and China at 67th, the report said. While European Union members each received a separate ranking, the EU collectively was ranked fourth, tying with New Zealand. Killelea said the poor U.S. ranking had caused "a lot of controversy" in the United States.

Defense analysts took issue with the study's conclusions. "There exists a huge number of misconceptions about Russia and other countries, and they are reflected here," said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a think tank that tracks security challenges and Russia's arms trade. "There is no doubt that this ranking reflects an Anglo-Saxon outlook on things."

Pukhov rejected a study conclusion that small arms are easily accessible in Russia. "In the United States, these weapons are available like diapers in a supermarket," said Pukhov, who sits on the Defense Ministry's public advisory board. "Here, it's very hard to obtain arms."

Alexander Khramchikhin, a senior researcher at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the methodology of these kind of studies baffled him.

"This has nothing to do with science," he said. "It has to do with ideology."

Russia tends to rank poorly in similar international studies, including in democracy, transparency, the environment and media freedom, to name a few.

Russian government officials have repeatedly complained that the studies are biased against Russia and do not reflect reality.

Russia's ties with its former Soviet neighbors have grown more strained in recent years, and the country has showed off its increased military might. During the Victory Day parade on May 9, tanks and nuclear-missile launchers rumbled over Red Square for the first time since the Soviet collapse, triggering suggestions of Russian saber-rattling.

Killelea rejected any accusation of bias in the latest report, saying the authors had used independent data and methodology.

He added that he had never visited Russia but that it was among the countries he hoped to see one day.

The Moscow Times reports:

When Moscow photographer Serge Golovach decided to present portraits of beautiful women for an HIV/AIDS awareness project, he was revealing a startling truth about AIDS in Russia today -- it is quickly becoming a problem with a woman's face.

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in Russia, those infected were predominantly male. Unlike in much of the rest of the world, the vast majority of AIDS cases in Russia and the CIS were the result of intravenous drug use -- a behavior usually associated with men. But of the 415,000 people infected with AIDS in Russia today, 135,000 of them -- 32 percent -- are women, according to the latest figures from the Federal Consumer Protection Service. A higher percentage of cases among women can be found only in Moldova or in African countries. In Moscow, the situation is even worse. Out of the 28,000 cases of HIV registered in Moscow as of January 2008, more than a half were women -- up 14 percent from last year, according to the Moscow branch of the consumer protection service. More disturbing, most of the newly infected women are young and in their best reproductive years, from ages 20 to 29. Around 5,000 of these women found out that they were infected while undergoing blood tests as part of prenatal care.

The ongoing feminization of the AIDS epidemic in Russia will no doubt affect the health and future of the nation. An increasing number of HIV-positive children born to these women are the predictable result. But there remains the disturbing question of why more Russian women are becoming part of this epidemic. Experts say it is a result of both the changing nature of HIV transmission in Russia and changes in gender-based social norms and sexual customs. While officials say intravenous drug use remains the main way of transmitting the virus, contracting HIV as a result of heterosexual intercourse is rising. The Moscow AIDS Center's web site says 86 percent of new cases of HIV are the result of intercourse. This change suggests that HIV is now affecting the general population rather than the marginalized elements of society, such as prostitutes or drug addicts, who have long been considered at high risk for acquiring HIV.

Of course, it remains true that mass unemployment and economic insecurity in the depressed regions of Russia sometimes force women into commercial sex work, which contributes to the rising numbers of HIV-positive women. Surveys of regional Russian cities show that most sex workers are between the ages of 17 and 23 and that condom use among these prostitutes is erratic at best.

But what makes the changing situation alarming is that ordinary women are increasingly at risk in a country where sexual coercion and gender inequities are tolerated, and double standards make it acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners. While using condoms could be a solution in many cases, condoms have traditionally been extremely unpopular among Russian men. This is especially the case among the segments of the population with lower income and educational levels, where HIV is spreading most rapidly. The economic dependency of some women on their husbands and sexual partners leaves them with little bargaining power when it comes to negotiating condom use.

"Some women suspect their husbands have many sexual partners but fear to be abandoned or beaten if they resist their husbands' sexual demands," says Maria Ivannikova, the head of the informational department of the nongovernmental association AIDS Information Service.

Since women are biologically more vulnerable to acquiring HIV, it is two to four times more likely that a woman will contract HIV from a man than a man from a woman. The explanation is that women have a large surface area of reproductive tissue that is exposed to their partner's secretions during intercourse, and semen infected with HIV typically contains a higher concentration of the virus than a woman's sexual secretions. Specialists say young women are especially at greater risk, because their reproductive organs are immature and more likely to tear during intercourse, specialists say. Women also face a high risk of acquiring other sexually transmitted diseases, which increases the risk of contracting HIV 10-fold when left untreated.

The female condom could be a solution, since it is the only safe and effective HIV prevention option available that is completely controlled by women, but at the moment the method is mostly unknown in Russia. And even when women are familiar with female condoms, they have a hard time finding them. Pharmacies do not stock them because of their relatively high cost and a lack of demand, according to Igor Peskarev, the director of Humanitarian Action, a UNAIDS partner NGO in St. Petersburg.

"You may find women's condoms only in sex shops in our city, and the price will be around 3 or 4 euros, more than 100 rubles. It's relatively expensive for a one-time use item," he said.

Microbicides, which can be applied in the vagina for the prevention of HIV and other STDs, are still in the developmental stage, although Russian scientists are working along with others around the world to develop an effective one.

Every day, more than 100 new cases of HIV appear in Russia, and if current trends continue, women will soon make up a majority of the victims. And the fact that Russia is currently in the midst of a serious demographic crisis compounds the problem. According to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the combination of falling birth rates and rising death rates from chronic and infectious disease means that by 2025, Russia's population will fall from about 144 million to about 125 million. Add to that 5 million to 15 million excess deaths from AIDS, and the country may lose 20 percent of its citizens over the next 20 years.

In an attempt to raise awareness of this problem and help lift the stigma of people with AIDS, UNAIDS recruited 25 famous women from Russia and Ukraine who agree to be photographed. By displaying the photographs of women who are well-known and in the news, the organization hopes encourage both public and private discussions about HIV/AIDS, particularly among women. The exhibit, which will run for two weeks in Moscow, will then tour the country, and a selection of the photographs will be published as a 2009 calendar to be launched on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day.

The New York Times reports that Vladimir Putin has lost yet another big one:

As vote counts were still being tallied on Thursday, the ruling party in Georgia had a commanding lead in the Parliamentary elections held the previous day, cementing President Mikheil Saakashvili and his party’s place as the nation’s preeminent political force.

With two thirds of the polling precincts reporting, Mr. Saakashvili’s United National Movement party’s had more than 62 percent of the vote, Levan Tarkhnishvili, the head of the central election commission, said by telephone. The ruling party’s main opponent, the United Opposition bloc, had slightly more than 14 percent.

The opposition complained of irregularities and vowed to challenge the results.

But the wide margin suggested that Mr. Saakashvili — who has had his reputation as a democrat and a reformer tarnished by a police crackdown against unarmed protestors and an opposition television station last November — would maintain his unchallenged hold on the country’s politics and course.

Mr. Tarkhnishvili said he hoped that the full preliminary results would be released during the night. Both the opposition and the ruling party were awaiting the report on the conduct of the elections from the principal international election observation mission, from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Mr. Saakashvili, a lawyer educated at Columbia University in the United States, came to power after a peaceful revolution overthrew the government of former President Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003.

He has been staunchly pro-Western, seeking access to the European Union and NATO and sending troops to the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The country’s once stagnant economy has partially revived during his years in power.

But his opponents say that power has changed him, and that he has become arrogant and intolerant of dissent, and rules the country through a small circle of insiders, some of whom are corrupt.

Mr. Saakashvili’s Georgia, his critics say, lacks the balance of powers of a healthy democratic system.

Mr. Saakashvili has also pushed his small nation in the Caucasus onto the global stage, as tensions with neighboring Russia have surged during his presidency.

The tensions are related in part to his effort to pull Russian-supported breakaway regions in Georgia back under federal control. But they have also arisen because he has been a steady and vocal critic of both the Kremlin’s regional dominance and of the Soviet past.

The Parliamentary election had been framed by diplomats and analysts as an important test of whether Georgia’s ruling party and Mr. Saakashvili could restore their checkered reputations after the crackdown in the fall, and after Mr. Saakashvili’s victory in the snap presidential election earlier this year.

In that election, he received 52 percent of that vote — narrowly topping the required 50 percent amid allegations that his party had rigged the small margin of victory to avoid a potentially damaging run-off.

Giga Bokeria, a deputy foreign minister and one of Mr. Saakashvili’s closest confidants, said by telephone that the ruling party believed the Parliamentary election would be a step toward rebuilding international support.

“It was, as I hoped, better than the last election,” he said. “I think anybody who has more or less been closely following Georgia has been reassured.”

(1) EDITORIAL: The Evil that Russophiles Do

(2) Kozlovsky on Neo-Soviet Russia

(3) Lipman on the Puppet Press

(4) Sure Looks Like He's Still President!

(5) Putin Fails, and then He Fails Some More

(6) Woody Allen to Russia: Drop Dead!

NOTE: It's hard to overstate the heroic role being played by the Washington Post newspaper as it stands at the forefront of Western opposition to the rise of dictatorship in neo-Soviet Russia. As we report today it delivers haymaker after haymaker documenting the horrors unfolding behind the new iron curtain, leaving all other western newspapers in its dust. We offer our thanks to the paper for performing this vital service to humanity, and hope that history will record the paper's leadership accordingly.

Pity poor Edward Lozansky.

There he was on Monday morning about to open his sick, sordid little confabulation of Russophiles, seeking to dupe unwary Americans into dropping their guard and allowing Vladimir Putin to further consolidate his malignant rule over Russia. He'd lined up financial support for his dastardly enterprise from the Kremlin's propaganda TV network, Russia Today, and he was even given an op-ed column in the Moscow Times to publicize it. All the bedraggled Russophile garbage across the land was converging on Washington DC for his "World Russia Forum" including even the vile Yuri Mamchur of Russia Blog.

And what happens? He opens up his morning edition of the Washington Post and what does he find? An op-ed column by none other than leading Russian dissident Oleg Kozlovsky (shown above in the loving embrace of Vladimir Putin's neo-Soviet goons), a column accusing his benefactor of turning Russia into a giant neo-Soviet gulag! We republish the column below, together with a second op-ed from the post on Russia in as many days, this one from Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Center decrying Russia's lack of a free press.

And it wasn't just any op-ed. It ran in the upper left corner of the hard copy of the paper and included the above photograph of Kozlovsky -- not one but two distinct honors for the column, showing the Post's influential editors stood behind Kozlovsky 1,000 percent.

Ouch. Miracle if Lozansky wasn't rushed to the emergency room with a nasty case of acid reflux. Lozansky is well known to regular readers of this blog; we've exposed him repeatedly in prior posts as the fundamental fraud he is. Reading Kozlovsky's terrifying words, its impossible to see Lozansky as anything other than a modern Neville Chamberlain.

Lozansky claims that presidential candidate John McCain is "alone" in his stark opposition to Russia, but in fact it's neo-Soviet collaborators like Lozansky that stand alone, surrounded by their truly ridiculous, detached-from-reality, neo-Soviet lies. In a classic bit of Soviet dishonesty, he claims that the U.S. needs Russian uranium to run its nuclear reactors; in fact, Russia itself just inked a deal to import uranium from Australia, without which it couldn't run its own reactors. Moreover, the idea that the U.S. should ignore Russia's barbaric desecration of the institution of democracy just so that it can get hold of Russian energy resources defiles the very foundations of American civilization. This man is truly beneath pond scum.

Lozansky claims that Russia needn't worry about McCain's threat to oust Russia from the G-8, because the other members wouldn't go along. Apparently, he thinks McCain is crazy and off the reservation. But if that is so, why is Lozansky so worried? The fact is that McCain can, with the stroke of his pen, make the G-8 choose between the U.S. and Russia as members. If he does that, the nations of Europe won't have to think twice before siding with their NATO ally.

The only person Lozansky actually names as disagreeing with McCain is the senile lunatic professor Steven Cohen, whom this blog has, like Lozansky himself, repeatedly discredited for the ridiculous gibberish he spews from the radical Nation magazine published by his own wife. The fact that Lozansky is insane enough to believe that Professor Cohen's opposition means that one of the most powerful figures in America's foreign policy establishment stands alone is proof positive, all by itself, of what a ridiculous fraud Lozansky really is.

And then, in classic bit of Russian insanity, he completely contradicts himself. He states:

To be fair to McCain, the other two presidential front-runners, Democratic Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have not offered a positive-thinking agenda for Russia either, pledging to be tougher with Russia than Bush and endorsing further NATO expansion by accepting Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance. All three presidential contenders have promised to expand the Bush administration's effort to "spread democracy," a policy that an overwhelming majority of Russians see as a thinly veiled smoke screen to strengthen the U.S. position in the world at the expense of Russia.

Hmm. So then, it seems that McCain isn't really so alone after all, now is he? No wonder Lozansky is getting desperate.

In his MT op-ed, Lozansky complains that he'd invited McCain to attend the Forum and debate his hard line on Russia and was apparently surprised to find that McCain was ignoring him. Of course, Lozansky doesn't say a single word about his failure to extend any Forum invitations to any Russian opposition figures -- such as Garry Kasparov or Kozlovsky himself. Though Mr. Lozansky's forum made a place for pro-Russian propaganda from Russia Today and many other sources, no such place was laid for the United States -- nor did his column say a single word about any changes any Russian leader needs to make to accommodate the U.S.

We can't help but wonder how Americans would have reacted in 1938 to a forum sponsored by a state-owned Nazi TV network and calling for "economic, political and military alliance" with Hitler's Germany. Since the sponsor of Lozansky's conference is Russia Today, Putin's propaganda network (recently condemned by the New York Times), one would hope Americans will be just as suspicious of his effort, kicked off by the Russian ambassador. Does Mr. Lozansky, a card-carrying Kremlin shill, really believe Americans might be foolish enough to believe he's concerned about their national security interests as well as those of Russia?

Simply put, Americans can't trust Kremlin mouthpieces like Mr. Lozansky to look out for their best interests, and won't do so no matter how much Kremlin money greases the skids. Fool me once, Mr. Lozansky, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

Oborona opposition leader Oleg Kozlovsky, writing in the Washington Post:

Vladimir Putin hails stability among his greatest achievements as president of Russia. But stability in Russia exists in appearance only, supported by enormous oil revenue and massive propaganda from the government-controlled mass media. Behind the facade lies an unprecedented increase in corruption, a population largely mired in poverty, and a bureaucracy and domestic intelligence apparatus whose power is unchecked.

Putin's stability is the stability of the gulag, where wardens ensure that all the prisoners have their allotted rations, reward the most obedient and punish potential troublemakers to preempt disorder. The difference between Russia today and the Soviet gulag is that most Russians have never known another type of government, so they do not realize that they are confined.

As you read this, I am in prison in Russia. I am a leader of the youth movement Oborona ("Defense"), which advocates nonviolent resistance to oppression by the authorities. Before my arrest this month -- I was picked up while walking on the street and charged with civil disobedience -- my last encounter with the government had occurred in December, when officers of the FSB (as the Federal Security Service, a successor organization to the KGB, is known) forcibly placed me in the army under Russia's draft.

My activities with Oborona have long caused me problems with the government. At age 23, I have been arrested more than a dozen times, have twice served short terms in prison and have been fired from a job at the FSB's request. The government could never find a reason to imprison me for the long term, so it has yet to get rid of me completely.

Late last year, the intelligence services took a different tack. On Dec. 20, I was once again arrested. Despite health problems and the fact that I am a student, both of which should have exempted me from conscription, I was sent to the army to serve as an enlisted soldier. FSB officers escorted me to a military unit in a forest about 150 miles from Moscow and told me that I was expected to serve for one year.

My trip into the army took only a few hours, but getting out took 2 1/2 months. I was finally freed on March 4, two days after Russia's presidential "election" was held. Military authorities have acknowledged that I was inducted into the army illegally, but no one has apologized to me. Shortly after my release, the Moscow headquarters of Oborona was raided by the police. I and 10 others were arrested and threatened; some of us were beaten by the police, who confiscated our leaflets, papers and a computer.

I am just one of the many political activists in Russia who face repression. Others include Maxim Reznik, the prominent leader of the Yabloko political party in St. Petersburg. He was arrested after being falsely accused of beating up three police officers and was held without trial. He is still alive, though. In December, a member of the Other Russia coalition, Yuri Chervochkin, was beaten to death; it is thought that his killers were employees of a special police unit.

Over the past two years, the scale of repression in Russia has reached a level similar to that in the worst years of the Cold War. The regime's clampdown and strategic mistakes made by previous opposition leaders have brought us to the point where traditional political parties have lost any influence in this country. Old illusions about how democracy advocates might achieve power through the vote were smashed with the results of December's parliamentary "elections." Old parties are unlikely to return to Russia.

The recently inaugurated president, Dmitry Medvedev, is an old friend of Putin's and is part of the system. Hopes that Medvedev will ensure a more open future are misplaced. Far from having interest in liberalizing Russia, Medvedev well understands that any such attempt would lead only to a loss of control, which would present a fatal threat to the corrupt heights of power in Russia.

The only real possibility for changing the political regime in Russia today is through grass-roots pressure. Nonviolent resistance on the model of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is the last option available in the arsenal of pro-democracy advocates. This has already become clear to some of the most open-minded politicians, such as those in the Other Russia coalition.

To be successful we must first analyze our mistakes, learn to work together more effectively and rouse society from its apathetic state. For this we need groups such as Oborona, a union of sincere young people striving not for power but for change in their country. The mission of those planning an uprising in the modern Russian gulag is to not become the next wardens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Post reports:

Having recently handpicked the new president's cabinet, Vladimir Putin shows no sign of relinquishing his stranglehold on Russian politics, nor, it seems, the luxuries of office. For not only does he still reside at the fabulously opulent Konstantin Palace, in St Petersburg, a privilege that should have ceased when he stopped being head of state, he has also bagged some of the state's art collection to decorate its walls.

Many of the works, 400 in total, were donated to the country by the oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who owns nearly a quarter of Arsenal football club, back in September last year. The idea was that they would be shown in Moscow's Tretyakov gallery or the Hermitage in St Petersburg. However, all of them are in the Konstantin Palace, known to locals as "Putin's palace on the sea".

Said one of the artists whose works is on display, who for obvious reasons declined to be identified: "The Kremlin claims it has preserved these treasures for Russia. Yet they are basically being used to decorate Putin's walls."

No one can deny it is a fine setting for the paintings. The palace, which overlooks the Gulf of Finland, was originally built in the 18th century by Peter the Great, but almost totally destroyed during Soviet times. It was rebuilt on Putin's orders in 2000 at a cost of more than £60 million.

Last week Russia lost Serbia to Europe. This week it lost Cyprus. The Financial Times reports:

A Cyprus court has refused to extradite a former senior Yukos executive to Russia, saying that the case is politically-motivated.

Judge Alecos Panayiotou refused Russia's request to extradite Vladislav Kartashov, a former manager at the Russian energy group, because "there is a real risk that his right to a fair trial will be flagrantly violated".

The judge also said "the charges faced by the respondent in Russia are tainted with political motives" and said he could not be extradited while he was seeking political asylum in Cyprus.

The ruling is another international defeat for Russia as it seeks legitimacy for its legal onslaught against Yukos.

"I was there for about two hours and I went to the travel agency in the hotel and I said, 'Get me the first reservation out of here, I don't care where it goes.' That was my memory of it: that I had a terrible terrible time when I was there.''

-- Director Woody Allen, on his experience in Russia

(1) Another Original LR Translation: The Oborona Show Trials

(2) Editorial: Russian History Takes Another Beating

(3) Welcome Back to the USSR

(4) Russia Leads the World . . . in Alcohol Mortality

(5) Annals of the Neo-Soviet Nightmare

(6) Putin's Neo-Soviet Star Chamber

(7) Luzkhov, Run Amok

(8) Russian "Dominant" Tennis Plays to Form in Rome (Zenit? So what!)

NOTE: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, Oleg Kozlovsky is free at last! And he's in the Washington Post (again)! Take that, Mr. Putin! Publius Pundit has the details.

NOTE: Kim Zigfeld reviews Boris Nemtsov's white paper on Putin over at Pajamas Media. Check it out, and feel free to leave a comment in support of Nemtsov's pathbreaking and valorous effort.

IN THE REPORT WE TRUST

Posted on the Website of Oborona 15 May 2008

On May 14 the Basman Court of Moscow levied a fine of 1000 rubles against the Oborona activist Ivan Simochkin for walking along Chistoprudniy Boulevard on May 6.

The court reached its verdict despite the testimony of six eyewitnesses for the defense, who testified that unknown individuals dressed in civilian clothes and showing no identification detained Mr. Simochkin without warning. The ruling of the court indicated that the testimony of the witnesses was not taken into account, because “the witnesses were called only to mitigate the punishment of the accused.”

Following is the speech which Ivan Simochkin read in court.

Your Honor,

I have absolutely nothing to request forgiveness for. Neither I, nor my associates, nor the passers-by who happened to be on Chistoprudniy Boulevard on May 6 did anything wrong, and we do not deserve even a reproach, let alone long terms in jail.

Moreover, I wish to inform the court about a series of criminal actions that we endured at the hands of identified and unidentified individuals, that should be examined under the laws of the Russian Federation. The individuals who perpetrated these acts should be punished under the administrative and criminal codes of the Russian Federation.

Firstly: On May 6, at 6:00 p.m., a group of citizens, myself included, were peacefully and quietly walking along Chistoprudniy Boulevard when we were subject to a violent assault by unidentified individuals dressed in civilian clothes. The attackers, pursuing whatever objective they had, did not identify themselves, made no requests of us, and in general said nothing, but flung themselves on my associate Oleg Kozlovskiy and tried to drag him away by force to an unknown location.

My natural reaction was to try and prevent the criminals from kidnapping my associate. I will tell you further, regardless of what sentence the honorable Basman Court may impose on me, if I ever again see unidentified, criminal-looking individuals attack a pedestrian on the street, I will not fail to do exactly the same thing - come to his aid.

No sooner had I done this, than the individuals in civilian clothes turned their attention to me, and I myself became the target of their attack. I loudly demanded that the attackers identify themselves and state the reason for their actions, but got not a word in reply. I loudly called for the police to come to my aid and stop these illegal actions of unidentified civilians, but the policemen stayed at a distance and passively watched what was happening.

Other passers-by also tried to stand up for those who were being attacked. Anna Chernobylskaya, the mother of a young child, tried to intervene on my behalf as I was being dragged down the boulevard. She yelled for the police to help and called on passers-by to witness what was happening, as a result of which the unidentified individuals then came after her. Anna Chernobylskaya was called as a witness on my behalf. And the episode I just described was captured on a videotape made by Dmitriy Borko, who was also called as witness.

Following the attack, the unidentified individuals forcibly dragged and threw us into a police van. And let no one be led astray by the fact that the attackers, as it later turned out, were acting in concert with the authorities. On the contrary, it would have been much simpler if this criminal attack had been carried out by some kind of unknown criminal group. In that case, we - as citizens of Russia - would have had the ability to call on the law enforcement agencies for help, and had a chance of being defended.

When crimes are committed with the criminal consent of law enforcement officials, or the police themselves, or at the direct order of those under their command (as is obvious to me was the case in the current situation), the citizen is left completely defenseless and without rights. And the state that commits such acts is a lawless police dictatorship.

Further: Unfortunately, the illegal actions committed against me and other citizens did not end here.

We were illegally and absolutely without grounds placed in the Krasnoselskiy precinct holding cell, where officers of the Anti-Organized Crime Directorate (UBOP) and riot police (OMON) openly fabricated their reports with absolutely false, fraudulent accusations against these illegally detained citizens.

All of the reports were written as if in carbon copy. Like the rest of those detained, I was accused of supposedly “participating in a protest, failing to respond to repeated requests by members of the OMON under Sergeant V.A. Gasheka to cease and desist, and continuing to commit illegal acts.”

Your honor, and honorable ladies and gentlemen, a multitude of testimonies by unbiased witnesses, as well as a multitude of photographic and video evidence from the site of the events under consideration, unambiguously show that these accusations are lies, from beginning to end, and you can be certain of it.

1) I and the others accused, now unjustly convicted, did not participate in any sort of protest, if only because in the area where the events took place no one was planning any sort of protest.

2) I and the other victims of this criminal attack did not have the chance to “obey” or “disobey” any sort of request, since no request was ever made of us by any of those individuals who illegally deprived us of our freedom.

3) I and the other citizens who were illegally deprived of their freedom could not have “resisted” or “not resisted” “police personnel”, since we were attacked by individuals dressed in civilian clothes, who categorically refused to either identify themselves or explain the objective or meaning of their actions, and I saw the police only at a distance, from which they had no contact with me.

Nonetheless, I can absolutely assure you that neither I nor any of those who joined in my misfortune offered any kind of resistance.

The records of arrest and administrative infraction were compiled under a mass of flagrant violations of procedure. Despite my request, I was not given a copy of the record of arrest. The time of arrest was improperly recorded - we were arrested at 6:00 p.m., but the records of arrest showed it occurring at 6:45 p.m. In the report of administrative infraction there is no signature by the so-called witness, OMON officer Fomin, to the effect that he had been informed of his rights and responsibilities.

I can imagine the reason why the so-called witness Fomin’s signature is not on the report. I would not be surprised if this so-called witness Fomin not only never held the report in is hands, but was not even present at the events described in it.

At the Krasnoselskiy precinct detention cell, my rights as a detained person were repeatedly and grossly violated. In the course of the two days I spent there, the people detained were never offered any food. The space where over 20 people were held was not equipped with any place to sleep, and we were given no blankets. We had to sleep on tables and the floor, often taking turns.

Conditions were worsened by the fact that during the two days we were in the cell the air temperature remained extremely low, to the point that I was extremely incapacitated due to low body temperature.

And finally, third: The illegal treatment of me and the other citizens was not limited to an attack by unidentified assailants on Chistoprudniy Boulevard, illegal detention in the Krasnoselskiy precinct holding cell, falsification of accusations and multiple violations of our rights as detainees.

The culmination of this flagrant abuse of power occurred right here, within these very walls. Fourteen times the honorable judge Skuridina heard the testimony of witnesses and agreed or refused to consider photographic and video evidence proving the innocence of the accused. Repeatedly, within these very walls, supposed witnesses for the prosecution - the authors of the police reports - appeared and every time were unambiguously exposed as being fraudulent, having irreconcilable contradictions in their testimonies, etc.

In spite of this, all 14 cases ended in guilty verdicts, and absolutely unfounded and unjust sentences and fines, handed down by the honorable judge Skuridina. Justice deserted us in these four walls; in its place came lawlessness and abuse of power.

From the Basman Court, Judge I.A. Skuridina presiding:

1. Oleg Kozlovskiy - 13 days (hunger strike announced)

2. Karen Makmuryan - 7 days

3. Aleksandr Vaynshteyn - 6 days

4. Maksim Polyakov - 5 days

5. Ivan Afonin - 6 days (hunger strike announced)

6. Vladimir Akimenkov - 6 days

7. Nikolay Novokhatskiy - 6 days

8. Vyacelslav Yeliseev - 5 days

9. Kirill Ananev - 4 days

10. Vladimir Michurin - 4 days

11. Vyaceslav Mertsalov - 3 days

12. Dmitriy Potapov - 2 days

13. Andrey Malitskiy - fine of 1,000 rubles

14. Anna Chernobylskaya - fine of 1,000 rubles.

I am absolutely innocent, and deserve only complete exoneration. But I have no objective reason to expect that consideration of my case will result in anything but anoter addition to the endless list of unjust sentences handed down within these walls. It is not in vain that the term “Basman Court” has become synonymous with injustice and abuse of power.

The ones who are really guilty in this abuse of power - to the last one - sooner or later will stand before a real court and answer for their crimes to the full severity of the Law.

Thank you for your attention.

NOTE: Our Original Translator also discovered the following short video related to the piece on the Grani.ru website. It's about the same farce of a trial, showing the names and sentences handed down to the Oborona activists, against a black background, while Medvedev drones on with a patriotic speech in a cathedral.

After the parade, Medvedev hosted a champagne reception at the Kremlin for veterans. Medvedev has also sent out congratulatory telegrams to the leaders of other former Soviet republics. In his note to Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, Medvedev warned him against any attempt to justify the Nazi crimes and "question the liberating mission of the Soviet Army," the Kremlin said. Many in Ukraine sided with Nazi Germany during the war, and Ukrainian veterans who fought against the Soviets have been recognized and praised under Yushchenko. Putin, for his part, sent out congratulations to the prime ministers of the same countries, and in his telegram to Tbilisi he wished peace and well-being to the Georgian people. Relations with Georgia recently sank to a new low after Moscow increased the number of peacekeepers in Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia, sparking fears of an armed conflict.

Andrei Richter, an Associate Professor at the School of Journalism of Moscow State University, responded in a letter to the editor as follows:

When I read this story, I was reminded of a recent trip to Kiev. While I was there, I picked up a copy of Kyiv This Month magazine only to be stunned by its column titled "History In Brief," which read: "1944 -- Soviet army occupies Ukraine again. In WWII, both German and Soviet armies were responsible for some 7 to 8 million deaths." When I wrote the editor of this magazine, I received a reply referring me to another web page from where this phrase was copied, almost word-for-word. To my surprise, the web page was taken from the official site of the CIA. I wonder what would happen if a Russian official web site wrote about, for example, French history something like this: "1944 -- U.S.-British army invaded Normandy. In WWII both German and Allied troops were responsible for some 600,000 French deaths." Wouldn't that cause uproar in the West? Why do our wartime allies believe they can twist history as they like?

Interestingly, Professor Richter had no interest in asking why Russians themselves believe they can twist their own history as they like. Last week, just for instance, we published Paul Goble's report on yet more evidence of the Kremlin's efforts to whitewash Russia's litany of outrages and glorify the Soviet past. Just click the "history" label at the bottom of this post to see a whole lot more such evidence.

Equally interesting, Professor Richter likewise didn't seem to notice the irony embodied in calling himself a "professor of journalism" in a country that simply doesn't know the meaning of the word. He works for a university that is run by the Kremlin that destroyed Anna Politkovskaya and a whole host of other journalists and has seized control of every major publishing forum in the country. Neither Russian history books nor Russian newspapers or television give Russians the remotest clue about the actual facts of history, either their own or anybody else's, and yet so many Russians, like this poor sap, arrogantly imagine they have the right to sit in judgment based on the ridiculous falsehoods they've been fed since birth.

But back to the point: Which is what, exactly? As we understand it, Professor Richter (who obviously finds expressly himself clearly in writing quite challenging) is saying that he once read in a Ukrainian magazine that Russians killed 7-8 million Ukrainians during the World War II period, roughly as many as the Germans killed when they invaded, and claims this is false. Apparently, that's not what Russian history books say, and according to him there's no chance they could be wrong. Russians, in other words, know the history of Ukraine better than Ukrainians do. Moreover, he believes that this magazine is engaged in some sort of conspiracy with the CIA to foist false information about Russia onto Ukrainians -- apparently, he thinks this is the reason that many Ukrainians hate Russians and want independence from them, something that he apparently thinks is totally unjustified.

But note well, dear reader, that Professor Richter makes no specific mention of the source of his information that these murders did not occur, though he has no problem citing with specificity the sources that outrage him with their alleged CIA propaganda. Is he suggesting that Russians would never murder their allies? Is it just a myth too, then, that after liberating Poland Russia murdered thousands of Polish military officers, in cold blood, in the dark corners of the Katyn forest? Is it also a rude foreign plot that Russians murder Russians, that the dictator Josef Stalin slaughtered at least 20 million of them in his gulag archipelago? Is Alexander Solzhenitsyn's epic text by that name in reality just a work of fiction?

Apparently, Professor Richter believes that the Ukrainian holocaust called Holodomor (known as the "man-made famine") is also just a frivolous fairytale. Apparently, it makes no difference what the Ukrainians say about it, because they're just dupes of the CIA; nobody in Russia, of course, has been duped by the KGB, and certainly not Professor Richter Moreover, reports that Russian soldiers murdered thousands of political prisoners in their jail cells are similarly based on nothing but CIA lies, as are any claims about political purges of the Ukrainian government by Stalin, such as this one:

Ukraine was among the worst-hit areas. Unlike the purges of 1933, during which opponents of collectivization and Ukrainizers had been purged, in 1937 Stalin decided to liquidate the entire leadership of the Ukrainian Soviet government and the CPU. […] By June 1938 the top seventeen ministers of the Ukrainian Soviet government were arrested and executed. The prime minister, Liubchenko, committed suicide. Almost the entire Central Committee and Politburo of Ukraine perished. An estimated 37% of the Communist party members in Ukraine - about 170,000 people - were purged. In the words of Nikita Khrushchev, Moscow's new viceroy in Kiev, the Ukrainian party "had been purged spotless."

And reports of similar activity by Russian soldiers in other countries are just as bogus. If Canadian scholars make such allegations, they too are simply stooges of the CIA.

Professor Richter might like to actually go to Ukraine some day, and visit The Museum of the Soviet Occupation in Kiev. As an article in Izvestia pointed out, the net impact of the museum's exhibits is basically to show that Ukraine was better off under the horror of Nazi rule than under the domination of the Russians. The Russian reporter for Izvestia bristles when the Ukrainians dare to blame the atrocities on "Moscow" rather than "Communism" as if Russians were as much victims as Ukrainians -- but if that is so, where are Russia's memorials to the outrages committed by "Communism" in Ukraine? Look hard, you will find none. Apparently, it has never occurred to Professor Richter that Ukrainians might have exactly the same attitude of outrage towards Russia that he (and many other Russians) has towards the West because Russia treats Ukraine with just as rudely as he perceives Russia to be treated by the West.

For the record, though we may be hapless dupes of the CIA, we'd like to note our understanding, widely documented by Western scholarship, that there was active underground resistance to the Soviet occupation of Ukraine until the early 1950s when it was finally liquidated by the Stalin dictatorship. Things were so bad in Ukraine just before the Nazi's invaded, as we understand it, that many Ukrainians actually welcomed and assisted the Nazi invasion.

In conclusion, we can only say that that we believe Professor Richter's pathologically malignant and insane remarks are indicative of the neo-Soviet character of the Russian state today. The country is run by a KGB dictator and its leading institutions of higher education are dominated by apes like Richter. What can be expected from such a situation other that exactly the same kind of collapse that crippled the USSR?

Come to think of it, though, perhaps we went to far with that remark about apes. It's an unforgivable insult, and we feel we should apologize. To the apes.

Paul Goble reports:

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

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

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