The Accidental Russophile

Charles in Space

Not to steal any thunder from Suzy’s Russian Space Blog, but Dr. Charles Simonyi has started a website and blog documenting his experiences and training for his traveling to the International Space Station via a Soyuz TMA spacecraft with Soyuz-FG launch vehicle (big big rocket to you and me).

As of today, he has only a single entry in the blog, announcing that he’ll be writing more in the coming weeks. Anyone interested in such things should definitely check this page out.

One of my favorite websites, The Straight Dope, has written about Che Guevara today. While not exactly a related topic, I thought it was worth providing a quick link to the article.

Dear Straight Dope:

A lot of people are using and promoting the image of Che Guevara, selling shirts, etc. What does anyone really know about this guy? What impact or achievements did he have? How does “history” regard him and what he did? Was he much like Fidel? What did he want for the Cuban people/peasants of the world and the USA? What’s the real deal on this guy? –Biff, Planet Earth

SDSTAFF Bricker replies:

Che Guevara was a self-sacrificing revolutionary who gave up a comfortable bourgeois existence to fight for the impoverished and oppressed, a staunch believer in the cause who rejected the trappings of power to return to the battlefield.

Or he was a violent, cold-blooded killing machine, a sociopathic hooligan who exulted in the death of his enemies, mismanaged the Cuban economy, and won battles by bribing his opponents to surrender in advance.

Like other polarizing political legends, the “real deal” about Che Guevara depends largely on whom you ask, and through what political lens your source views the world.

For those interested, the rest of the article is here.

A synchronicity of articles by Mark Ames, Sean Guillory, and Tim Newman has led to our discussion today regarding the erosion of the “free press” … not just within Russia but worldwide. I doubt that either Americans or Russians will like the direction that each news media seems to be turning. The annual Reporters Without Borders report discusses the relative ranking of each nations press freedoms. Sean Guillory has a discussion on this topic today as well (and gave me the kick in the pants to complete this article that I started on Sunday.)

The Russian problems with maintaining a free and independent press and news media are well documented. I could try to reiterate those problems, but Sean explains them admirably:

Russia, which suffers from a basic lack of democracy, continues slowly but steadily dismantling the free media, with industrial groups close to President Vladimir Putin buying up nearly all independent media outlets and with passage of a law discouraging NGO activity.

Each year several journalists are murdered in Russia with complete impunity. The person who ordered the July 2004 killing in Moscow of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, remains publicly unknown. The murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in early October 2006 is a poor omen for the coming year.

When put into context, the decline in the free press in Russia is symbolic of a global phenomenon. The index also notes that even traditionally high ranked countries like France, the United States, and Japan has seen press freedom deteriorate. Since 2002, when the ranking was created, the US has fallen from 17th to its current position of 53rd. It dropped seven ranks in the last year. RWB explains the drop in the US as a result of, “Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.”

To put a really fine point on the similar issues with the American free press, we have thd recent article by gonzo (I can only imagine he would enjoy the comparison) expat writer/journalist/editor Mark Ames of eXile.ru – Where Is America’s Politkovskaya?:

The West has used poor Anna Politkovskaya’s corpse to do exactly what she fought against: whipping up national hatred, lying, and focusing on evils committed safely far away, rather than on the evils committed by your own country. The West has exploited her death with all of the crudity and cynicism of an Arab mob funeral…only at least the Arabs use their own people’s corpses to demonize an enemy that actually kills them. Whereas in this case, the West stole another country’s corpse, then paraded it at home in order to whip up hatred against the corpse’s birthplace. It would be like the Palestinians slipping into Tel Aviv, grave-robbing Rabin’s corpse after his murder, then parading it around Gaza City, ululating hate towards Israel for allowing the great peacemaker to get killed.

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…

If you ask me, what is most significant for us in the West about Anna Politkovskaya’s death, and her courageous life (btw, a big “fuck you” to our [Russian] nationalist readers who don’t agree with this), is not so much what it says about Russia — it doesn’t say much new at all, to be honest, but instead is another chapter in an increasingly depressing story that started under Yeltsin.

Rather, what is significant about her death is this: Why doesn’t America have an Anna Politkovskaya? 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?

One reason why is because they risk getting killed not only by Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists, but also by the highly efficient American forces. (Not that this stopped Politkovskaya, but it stops America’s righteous Politkovskaya-bearers.) And even if they get the story out, it gets quashed by the mainstream press, you lose your job, and you get met by a hostile, even bloodthirsty public who doesn’t want to hear about it.

Perhaps you don’t believe that the American military might specifically target journalists. It doesn’t mesh very well with Americans self-image of our free country. Certainly, as Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert discusses regarding the death of Terry Lloyd, some of these increased deaths in Iraq are due to reporters blatantly and foolishly putting themselves in harms way:

From what I could gather from the initial reports which came out at the time, Lloyd and his crew had disappeared into the battlefield area well ahead of coalition lines, unescorted and without telling the coalition soldiers of their plans. They came across a small convoy of Iraqi soldiers, most of whom were bearing arms, and decided in their wisdom to join them as they headed towards American lines. There is speculation as to whether the Iraqis were planning to surrender, but it seems that no white flag was raised or armaments abandoned to indicate such intentions. Nevertheless, Lloyd and his hapless crew stuck with the Iraqi column as it sped towards American lines. Unsurprisingly, the Americans believed the armed Iraqi soldiers to be attacking and opened fire, and somehow Lloyd was hit by either an American or Iraqi bullet. Lloyd was then transferred to an unmarked minibus which was being used as an ambulance, along with four Iraqi soldiers. The Americans then opened fire on the vehicle, killing Lloyd and the other passengers.

Far from being a deliberate murder of a journalist on the part of the Americans, those responsible for the killing were more likely dumbstruck at the stupidity of a civilian press crew accompanying an Iraqi military convoy which was, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, carrying out an attack.

However, this circumstance doesn’t explain all 85 journalists deaths in Iraq. There have been many other cases of reporters killed or “discouraged” in Iraq, often while conducting investigations into unsavory deeds and under circumstances that beg questions. Not enough questions have been asked about some of these well-known attacks. Mark Ames again provides bloody details:

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.

Salihee was killed; the American sniper was cleared; and Knight Ridder washed its hands, declaring “there’s no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work.” Imagine an analogous situation in Chechnya, the hue and cry from the Applebaums — it’d be as inversely loud as the silence over Salihee’s death. At least even the Kremlin admits Politkovskaya was killed for her reporting.

Indeed Salihee is just one of a number of journalists killed in Iraq, by far the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. 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. But no one wants to hear that — so these kinds of reports stay on the margins. Journalists were targeted and killed at Al Jazeera; at first, reports that the Americans targeted them were dismissed as “conspiracy theory” talk, but recently, admissions that Bush, Blair, and a former Blair minister all explored ways to bomb Al Jazeera during the war are finally raising questions. Well, not really. Should be raising questions, leading to impassioned editorials by the Post and Anne Applebaum. But they’re not, because they’re too busy demonizing Russia.

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.

Italian TV later discovered evidence that US forces had used an illegal WMD, white phosphorus chemicals, during its destruction of Fallujah the year before. In spite of all the evidence, including burned corpses whose clothes were still intact, eyewitnesses, and even friendly Iraqi ministers who denounced it, the American media largely ignored it. Why the fuck did Italian TV, and not American TV, break this story? Where was Anne Applebaum on the atrocities in Fallujah?

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.”

Yes, he was a wrecker and a Trotskyite, and he begged for forgiveness. Because the man was dead — in America, losing your job like that, after bad-mouthing America, means you’re as good as dead.

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.

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.

The overwhelming message is, that in a world-wide society that is becoming increasingly polarized and politicized, speaking out against your government’s or citizenry’s “official” or popular point of view is becoming more and more hazardous. Careers and lives are being lost in the free reporting of ideas and many citizens are becoming increasingly intolerant of differing points of views. Those opinions that remain free to be spoken are increasingly under large corporate or government influence, in a manner that stifles free expression. When those who have the most to lose by exposure, own the free press, the results are not likely to be good for the general population.

There is good news, of course. We have a tool for free discussion that scarcely no one could have imagined even 20 years ago – the Internet. Tied in with our increasingly wired and high-tech world, the Internet can provide free range for a multitude of ideas and rapid development of stories – with all the pluses (mobile phone photos and videos of incidents) and minuses (flash mobs) that brings.

However, there is evidence that the internet actually might increasingly polarize peoples opinions and serve as a tool of intolerance. Certainly, the biggest bigots on the planet suddenly have a weapon in the internet to smite upon ideas that they don’t appreciate or outright hate.

For comparison, we have below a compilation of journalists deaths during prior wars of the past century. Information is from Committee to Protect Journalists and Freedom Forum:

• Algeria (1993-96): 58
• Colombia (1986-present): 52
• Balkans (1991-95): 36
• Philippines (1983-87): 36
• Turkey (1984-99): 22
• Tajikistan (1992-96): 16
• Sierra Leone (1997-2000): 15
• Afghanistan (2001-04): 9
• Somalia (1993-95): 9
• Kosovo (1999-2001): 7
• First Iraq war (1991): 4
• Central American (1979-89) 89
• Argentina (1976-1983) 98
• Vietnam: (1955-1975) 66
• Korean War: 17
• World War II: 68
• World War I: 2

You know Americans used to have the right to be very proud of the fact that our president was an absolute boob when speaking impromptu. It was a certain fact that our dear Dubya might open up his mouth and say any number of kooky or strange tongue twisting words or remarks. There was even a word invented for them … Bushisms.

Remember “strategery”?

Remember when he joked about Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times wearing sunglasses indoors – apparently not realizing that Mr. Wallsten is blind?

Remember earlier this year when he referred to UK companies as “Great British compan(ies)”.

Well, lately Putin has been making Bush look like a Rhodes Scholar. If he keeps this up, we’ll have to define a new category of crude jokes and remarks to diplomats as “Putinisms“.

Of course, Russians are familiar with Putin making strong, borderline rude statements. It just seems that recently his tongue has become particularly unhinged. Starting with his lack of remarks and then boorishly sedated remarks regarding the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. His statements might reflect his true state of mind, but that doesn’t mean that as a leader and diplomat, that he isn’t obligated to assuage people’s fears and concerns. To not do so is coarse behavior and bad politics.

Then there was the statements reportedly caught on microphone, regarding the Israeli Presidents criminal charges for rape and sexual abuse. Привет передайте своему президенту. Оказался очень мощный мужик. Десять женщин изнасиловал. Я никогда не ожидал от него. Он нас всех удивил. Мы все ему завидуем. (Hello to your President. There was very powerful muzhik! Ten women has raped. I never expected from him. It has surprised all of us. All of us are envious.)

Today in Finland, we have the following remarks that were caught by the European news media:

Speaking during a summit with European Union leaders in Finland, Putin reportedly defended himself from charges that organised crime networks dominate business in his country by noting that ‘the word mafia was born in Italy, not Russia’, Spain’s El Pays reported Sunday. The remark was splashed out on the front pages of Italy’s leading dailies Monday and drew condemnation from government officials.

‘It was an incredible remark. Instead of speaking nonsense, Putin should explain what has happened with the murder of (Russian journalist Anna) Politkovskaya,’ Italian Foreign Ministry undersecretary Gianni Vernetti told reporters. [...]

While Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s office sought to play down the incident, saying Putin’s remark was meant to be ironic, other lawmakers called on the government to issue a strong reaction. ‘Italy should respond to the serious remarks made by Russian President Putin,’ said Angelo Bonelli of the Green Party, which is a member of Prodi’s centre-left ruling coalition.

Putin had come under fire during the summit over human rights violations in Russia and reportedly also accused many Spanish mayors of being ‘corrupt’.

Some other famous phrases and comments by Vladimir Vladimirovich:

• When the news conference had been running for two and a half hours, Putin suggested a toilet break. “I don’t suppose anyone put on a nappy (diaper) when they were dressing for this meeting so we should start winding this up,” he said.
• “These people deserve one, very brief, response: ‘To hell with you,’” Putin said when talking about critics of Russia who he said were still living in the Soviet past.
• “Sorry to be crude but we did not pick these prices out of our nose,” Putin said when explaining why Russia raised the cost of the natural gas it exports to its neighbour, Ukraine.
• Promising tough action against insurgents opposed to Moscow’s rule in Chechnya, then-prime minister Putin said in 1999: “If we catch them in the toilet, then we’ll wipe them out in the outhouse.”
• “If you really want to become an Islamist radical and go as far as getting yourself circumcised, I recommend you come to Moscow … we’ll do it so that nothing ever grows there,” Putin told a journalist after an EU-Russia summit in Brussels in 2002.
• “Why can’t we do things (like EU countries)? Because, pardon my language, we spend our time chewing snot and scoring political points,” Putin said in 2003.

Lives Are Much Better and More Dangerous

A recent editorial from Vedemosti reprinted in the Moscow Times, discussing violent crime and murder in Russia, lays much of the blame at the feet of incompetent or corrupt police:

Dmitry Fotyanov, a candidate for mayor in the Far East city of Dalnegorsk, was murdered Thursday. The chain of high-profile killings continues. The murder of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov was followed by more in the banking sector and one in the political sphere — the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Have we returned to the criminal levels of the 1990s?

The answer is no — it’s even worse. High-profile murders are only drawing more attention to the problem. According to the State Statistics Service and the Interior Ministry, the number of murders registered annually in the country from 2000 to 2005 was, on average, 10.6 percent higher than for the period from 1992 to 1999. The killers haven’t gone away. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, there were 19 cases of violent death per 100,000 people, while under President Vladimir Putin the figure has been about 22. By comparison, during the 1980s, when crime levels peaked in the United States, the number of violent deaths per 100,000 people was 10.2. That number fell to five in 2000.

According to Supreme Court statistics, 1.2 million criminal cases were heard by Russian courts in 2005 (9.8 percent more than in 2004), of which about 27,000 were for premeditated murder (against 26,500 in 2004). The overall number of registered crimes rose from 2.7 million in 1995 to 3.5 million in 2005. And according to the State Statistics Service, the number of suspects apprehended for crimes fell — from 1.59 million in 1995 to 1.29 million in 2005.

The country has grown richer, but this hasn’t meant greater peace and order. The problem would appear to be in law enforcement. According to a number of different studies, the end of the 1990s saw a shift in the ‘protection’ business, with payments to the police and state security agent becoming more popular with businesses.

Even if you dismiss these studies as mere slander against the police, it’s hard to ignore law enforcement’s complete ineffectiveness. There are about 800,000 police officers in Russia, or more than 550 per 100,000 people. The figures for Europe per 100,000 people are less than two murders and slightly more than 300 police (according to statistics for 2000). That crime fighters here are either not fighting crime or not doing anything at all is supported by public opinion: According to polls by the Levada Center, the public confidence indicator for the police was minus 24 in September, minus 31 in March and minus 28 in September 2005 (calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents who said they had no confidence from those who said they had full confidence).

Of course, the police don’t invent the crime to begin with; however, the number of murders and violent crimes that remain unsolved and untouched speaks to a system that encourages such violence.

Sean’s Russki Blog also tackles this topic and its possible implications to the Russian Federation in depth.

Call Center Preparing Putin’s Interview Receives 450,000 Messages

MOSCOW, October 22 (Itar-Tass) — The unified call center, which is preparing a live interview with President Vladimir Putin, has received 447,972 messages from citizens of Russia and other countries.

Some 432,567 questions were asked by phone, and another 15,405 were asked on the Internet as of 6:00 p.m. Moscow time on Sunday, the website www.president-line.ru said.

The president will answer the most important and interesting questions on Wednesday, October 25. The fifth live interview with Putin will start at noon and be broadcast by Channel 1, Rossiya, Vesti, Mayak and Radio Russia.

The unified call center will be receiving messages until the end of the live interview.

Stationary and mobile phone calls from Russia will be received for free at 8-800-200-4040. A special line (7-495-645-1010) has been opened to receive questions from abroad. A toll will be levied on calls from abroad.

SMS-messages will be received at 0-40-40 starting from 6:00 a.m. Moscow time on October 25. The messages from any place of Russia will be free regardless the mobile phone operator. They must be in Russian and do not exceed 70 characters.

Internet messages will be received at www.president-line.ru. The website has posted verbatim records of the previous live interviews with Putin.

So now is your chance to write your question to Vladimir Vladimirovich. I’m fairly well impressed with the Kremlin’s attempts at technical saavy, if not exactly impressed with their execution. Questions from past have included asking VVP … what he was going to do about high gasoline prices in Russia, housing and infrastructure problems, complaints and questions about small pensions, and how he was going to bring meaningful jobs to the Russian economy. Predominantly populist or bread-and-butter politics, with a great deal of formal politeness.

Actually, in this sense it points out that when it comes to politics in Russia, thinking with your wallet is as common as in the USA.

Sharapova beats Hantuchova to Win Zurich Open

Red-hot 19-year old Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova (Мария Юрьевна Шарапова) earned her fourth title of the year at Zurich today, beating Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova 6-1, 4-6, 6-3. This win was Sharapova’s 14th career title. According to ESPN:

Sharapova, who won her fourth title this season, still has a chance to finish the year as the top-ranked player. She’d need to win next week in Linz, Austria, and at the season-ending Women’s Tennis Association Championships in Madrid.

Amelie Mauresmo, who withdrew from the Zurich Open with a shoulder injury, and second-ranked Justine Henin-Hardenne, who hasn’t played since mid-September because of a knee problem, still lead the U.S. Open champion in the rankings.

Mauresmo leads Sharapova by 630 points, but many of the Frenchwomen’s points will expire before this season ends. Henin-Hardenne would have to fail to reach the WTA final for Sharapova to finish on top.

Neither Henin-Hardenne nor Mauresmo are expected to play before Madrid.

“Becoming No. 1 is a huge achievement, but I don’t personally think ending the season as No. 1 is a huge deal,” said Sharapova, who was top-ranked in August 2005. “I honestly can’t remember who finished last year No. 1. You remember who won the Grand Slams and who has been No. 1, not who finished the year No. 1.”

Sharapova, who withdrew from the recent Kremlin Cup with a foot injury, said she was playing through pain in Zurich. She picked up her 14th career title, her other wins this season coming at the U.S. Open, in San Diego and Indian Wells, Calif.

Hantuchova had to save three break points on her first serve before Sharapova swept the next six games.

The lovely and talented Sharapova has won three of the WTA Tour’s top 10 events, including winning the 2004 Wimbledon Championship, beating Serena Williams of the USA. She was the third-youngest Wimbledon women’s champion in that tournaments history.

She also has the distinction of being Maxim Magazine’s Hottest Female Athlete of the Year for the past four years.

IFAW’s Animal Rescue Blog: Video Feature: Russian Winters are Cold Towards Brown Bears

IFAW has a video detailing the 5,000+ bears hunted every year in Russia. Many are killed by American and European trophy hunters, who pay as much as $1,500 to shoot brown bears for trophys. The video details the release of orphan bear cubs into the wild, once they have been raised to sufficient age by the Russian Bear Orphanage. Efforts like this continue to restore the population, despite heavy hunting of brown bears as trophies and for their pelts. The Russian Duma is considering new laws that would ban shooting of brown bears in the winter. But with brown bear pelts fetching almost $2,000, it is unlikely the laws would completely stop the hunting. According to IFAW, in some areas of Russia, and in Western and Eastern Europe, brown bears are already extinct. The bears being hunted in Russia are from the last healthy population in the world.

Vodka Bear Hunt Investigated

October 20, 2006 12:00am – Russian hunt organisers keen to make the visiting King of Spain’s chances of killing a bear easier reportedly provided a tame one drunk on vodka.

A spokesman for Vyacheslav Pozgalev, governor of the northwestern Vologda region said: “The governor has ordered a working group set up…to check the facts published in local press about the killing of the bear.”

National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda’s deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accused hunt organisers of plying a captive bear named “Mitrofan” with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain’s King Juan Carlos I.

“His majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with a single shot,” Mr Starostin wrote in his letter.

Russian hunt organisers are not complete strangers to such tactics. Keen hunter and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had trouble with his aim in his later years.

Some of the animals he liked to stalk were either tied to trees or plied with booze.

Royal Row Over Russian Bear Fate

A Russian official has claimed that a tame bear was plied with honey and vodka before being shot dead by King Juan Carlos of Spain. The official alleged that the king had killed the bear during a private visit to Russia earlier this year. “It’s not hunting – it’s murder,” Sergei Starostin, deputy head of Vologda region’s hunting resources department told AFP news agency.

A Spanish monarchy spokesman said the claims were “ridiculous”. “We have no comment to make because this story is totally ridiculous and the source is sensationalist,” a palace spokesman told AP news agency.

The palace said it would not confirm or deny that the king had been on a hunting trip during his visit to Russia.

About 100 NGOs Suspended in Russia

Of course, those of us interested in such things have been waiting to see how the NGO laws in Russia would play out. Even C.J. Chivers of the NY Times took time away from his busy schedule of discussing trout and salmon in Russia, to write about the NGO suspensions. While much had been made of the new laws and how absolutely terrible they would be (insert hand-wringing here), it was widely acknowledged by those with knowledge about laws governing NGOs, that the Russian laws were not more restrictive than long-standing NGO laws in other countries. From a February 15, 2006 NGO Watch article:

Despite sizzling criticism from leading human rights groups, the new law on nongovernmental organizations is not as restrictive as similar legislation adopted by France, Finland and other developed democracies.

What makes it potentially dangerous, however, is a lack of clarity over how it will be enforced at a time when the Kremlin is methodically tightening its grip on every area of public life and courts are not generally viewed as independent.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed to laws governing NGOs in France, Finland and Israel when he defended Russia’s legislation in an open letter last month. He said worries raised by Russian human rights organizations were “inspired by an incomplete understanding of the situation in the given field of the legislation of leading Western democratic countries.”

A review of legislation in France, Israel and Finland shows that they indeed are more restrictive. In France, an NGO must report all donations and bequests and can collect the money only with authorization from the head of the local administration, who first must examine the group’s activities. Russian NGOs, in contrast, will have to report only donations from abroad.

Also, a French NGO is required to submit on request its accounting records to both the local administration and the Interior Ministry. In Russia, authorities will be permitted to carry out a financial check on an NGO only once a year.

Russia’s law empowers authorities to examine whether an NGO is spending money on its declared program, while the French law only allows authorities to review whether an NGO’s economic activities are unfairly competing with the commercial sector.

Russian NGOs have complained that the law uses vague language to describe the reasons a Russian branch of a foreign NGO can be denied registration. The list reads “threats to sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity, national unity and originality, cultural heritage and the national interests of the Russian Federation.” Most of those terms are left unexplained, opening the door for arbitrary interpretation on the part of bureaucrats.

But the French, Finnish and Israeli laws are nearly identical in their language. In France, an NGO can be denied registration or shut down if it is found to operate “contrary to the law, morals or integrity of the territory or the republic.” Finland’s law says almost the same thing.

In Israel, an NGO’s purpose must not contradict the law, morality or public order. Public associations there are also prohibited from undermining Israeli democracy or serving as a screen for illegal activities.

Well, now we come to a deadline in the registration of NGOs in Russia, and it seems almost 100 were suspended. Is it a Russian crackdown … or a self-fulfilling prophecy by NGOs who didn’t get their act together in time? From the AP article:

Western governments have expressed strong concern about the law, which imposed strict limits on all NGOs but especially Russian ones, as likely to curtail civil freedoms. The State Department on Wednesday urged Russia to speed up the re-registration process and to allow all NGOs to continue operating.

But Justice Ministry official Anatoly Panchenko said authorities were unable to process the registrations of 96 NGOs by the midnight Wednesday deadline, although he promised they would do so as soon as possible.

“We will do our best to process them as quickly as possible so they can resume their work,” he told the AP.

He was later quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying that the number of pending applications had fallen to 93. The Danish Refugee Council, an aid group active in Chechnya that has had uneasy relations with the Russian government, said it was told that its permit would be issued Friday.

However, medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said it had to halt some of its humanitarian work in Chechnya and a program in Moscow involving homeless children because two of its three offices – those based in Belgium and France – had not obtained registration.

The law obliged foreign-based groups to complete the procedure by the deadline or suspend their activities.

“We attach paramount importance to the principle of freedom of association and we hope the NGO law will have a positive rather than negative impact,” European Commission spokesman Pietro Petrucci said.

An official from the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading human rights body, urged the Russian government to issue the necessary permits. “We deeply hope that the authorities will very quickly give registration to organizations such as Amnesty,” Annelise Oeschger said.

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute, both U.S.-based organizations that promote democracy, were also affected by the suspension order – which lets NGOs keep paying staff and remain in their offices.

Officials have accused NGOs of filing their applications too late, saying many only began the process in July, although the law came into force in April.

But the NGOs complained of shifting guidelines and onerous red tape; one requirement stipulated that organizations had to submit personal details on their founders, even if they were dead. Some devoted lengthy time to searching for death certificates or affidavits from widows.

A Western NGO activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing the registration process, accused authorities of deliberately seeking ways to obstruct the applications.

Panchenko said 107 groups completed the procedure in time. The Justice Ministry had earlier estimated the number of foreign groups in Russia at between 200-500, but Panchenko said only about 250 were probably working in the country.

Russian NGOs face even more onerous controls under the law, which allows authorities to ban financing of specific NGOs or projects if they are judged to threaten the country’s national security or “morals.”

So it would appear that more than half of the NGOs were able to complete their required registration on time, and those suspended appear to be so only temporarily while they are allowed to complete their registration. However, as these groups are supposed to be professionals and they have known this date was coming for quite some time – I have very little sympathy for their suspension.

Russian Civil War, 1918-1920

This is a topic that likely most students of history remember, but most Americans never learned – The Russian Civil War of 1918-1920 and the Allied intervention on behalf of the White Army forces. Even fewer Americans are likely to remember that we committed almost 13,000 troops to the invasion forces and that 275 Americans lost their lives on Russia soil.

The Regiments website is a military historians dream page, with extensive detailed descriptions and dates of various wars in which the British Empire was engaged. There is information on uniforms, regiments, and formations as well.

But for our purposes today, we are interested in the Russian Civil war. The Allied Forces at the end of World War I. As Regiments discusses the causes of the civil war (which might be debatable from the Russian point of view):

Russian military reverses, heavy casualties, and economic hardship contributed to the Russian revolution which withdrew the country from the First World War, releasing German forces for an offensive against the other Allies on the Western Front. Chaos led long repressed nationalist aspirations around the perimeter of the Russian empire to declare independence. Bolshevik excesses soon began to coalesce various factions, and civil war broke out. Japan was the first to exploit Russian weakness with an apparent view to annexing the maritime provinces in the East.

The British, French, and Americans hesitantly and fitfully intervened with a four-fold goal:

1) prevent Japan from creating an empire in the East,
2) prevent massive Allied stores originally sent to the tsarist armies from falling into German and subsequently Bolshevik hands,
3) assist the White Armies in overthrowing the Bolshevik regime and bring Russia back into the war against Germany,
4) rescue the Czechoslovak Legion trapped in central Asia so that they could rejoin the war against Germany.

Allied intervention joined White armies on four fronts:

1) White Sea ports in the north,
2) Black Sea ports in the south,
3) Caspian and Caucasus region, and
4) the Far East.

The plans of some Allied politicians called for advancing with the Whites on all these fronts to link up in the centre and crush the Bolshevik regime.

To paraphrase Vizzini: They fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous … never get involved in a land war in Asia …

But I digress. Regiments provides a detailed chronology of the Allied forces invasion and eventual withdrawal from Russia two years later. 160 Americans were killed in action and another 168 died by other means (disease, cold, famine, STDs). All wars are chaotic – the Russian Civil War perhaps more chaotic than most, as Regiments explains:

Although the civil war fronts fluctuated wildly, the Bolsheviks gradually developed discipline, and had the advantage of defending the central Russian homeland. Opposition White forces never developed military or political cohesion, and were hampered by appearing to be the tools of foreign imperialist interests. The civil war did much to harden the Bolsheviks from a relatively democratic party into a ruthless and draconian regime, which eventually reunified much of the splintered Russian empire by force.

Allied intervention was insufficient to provide meaningful support to the Whites, and the November 1918 armistice on the Western Front removed much of the raison d’etre for intervention, namely to bring Russia back into the war against Germany and protect stores from falling into German hands. Motivated in part by fear of world communism, Allied occupation of Russian territory did much to sow the seeds of distrust which grew into a fifty-year Cold War between the Soviets and the West.