So what if Levada registers as a foreign agent? The fact will remained buried in the paperwork. Clients won’t care, so long as the sociological work is good.

Or it can simply refuse foreign financing, which according to Gudkov himself accounts for 1.5%-3% of its total.

The only danger to Levada is if it openly defies the law, and commits seppuko out of spite, so to speak. Which is not impossible, if very unlikely.

This does not however mean that the application of the foreign agents law to it is justified. As Gudkov himself argues, political research is not politics, period. While I do think comparisons of Russia’s law to FARA are valid, on paper, the application of them is not. Can you imagine US prosecutors going after the likes of Gallup or PEW if they do some contracts for foreigners?

The reason the witchhunt is stupid (in addition to being wrong) is that Levada actually supports the Kremlin’s record. 70% approval ratings for Putin coming from a state-backed pollster like FOM or VCIOM is one thing – the same numbers from a private pollster that gets money from Soros or the NED is a whole other level of credibility, at least so far as Western audiences are concerned.

If Bastrykin was wise and aware, he would waste no time reigning in the enthusiastic lower-level prosecutors going after Levada and other non-political NGOs. I am not sure he is either though.

But it is finally here. The Russian Spectrum – translating everything worth translating from the Russian media.

I’ll keep it brief.

(1) We need translators! If you can proficiently translate from Russian into English, I will be very happy to have you on board.

First, the bad news:

• You’re not getting paid, as I’m currently running the site out of my own pockets and spare time.

Ouch! That’s pretty bad. What’s the good news, then?

• Each post has the translator’s name attached to it, allowing you to quickly build up an online portfolio of your work (e.g. here’s mine).
• Hundreds of daily readers from the get go! Vast publicity! Or at least more publicity than they’d get if you post your translations in various discussion threads with hundreds of comments. (you know who you are…)))
• As I’m not paying the piper, you get to call the tune: Translate what you like, when you like, however often you want to.
• Let the world know about the diversity of the Russian media, and points of view that are ignored in the Western media.
• Get paid after all! Well, as soon as I get funding, which I honestly think is more likely than not. Loyal, reliable, and competent volunteers will get first dibs on any paid positions.

If you are interested, please contact me and I will make you a Contributor account at The Russian Spectrum. You’ll be ready to go in no time.

(2) Explore the site! There are already 36 translations of the site. Some of them you will be familiar with from here, but almost half are unique to The Russian Spectrum. Furthermore, my aim is to add at least two translations a day, with output set to expand if volunteers join in.

(3) While I don’t like to beg, and usually don’t – at least not on my regular blogs – I will make an exception for The Russian Spectrum. To ensure the reliability and security needed to foster its smooth growth and development, I decided to go with the best hosts and software for a small media organization. Total projected costs for a year at its present scale are on the order of $400.

So to cut to the chase, yes, I’d appreciate some change. Thank you.

Or more specifically, reviving an old project – the “English Inosmi” concept of translating articles and blog posts from the Russian media for a Western audience. The only problem was that I was perpetually dissatisfied, even if at a subconscious level, with the name: RossPress*. An elementary problem which I had somehow overlooked was that the double “s” is simply incorrect. And “RosPress.com” is already taken.

But apart from that, I was focusing my efforts not so much on translation, as on getting funding. Which isn’t all that easy for some random guy with a blog. It’s much easier if you also have a random NGO, but setting up said NGO is quite a lengthy procedure. So while that’s in process I thought I might as well restart work on the site and even offer a few translations. At the least, it would tie in well with The Russia Debate**.

But I still need a good name for it.

The RussoSphere: Solid, distinctive name – less than 2,000 Google hits on it, amazingly. Logo can be of a “sphere” with images of Russian newspaper front pages wrapped around it.

The Russian Spectrum: Another solid name that sounds respectable as a newspaper name, while at the same time alluding to its mission – translations from a wide variety of ideological viewpoints***.

Right now I’m slightly leaning towards The RussoSphere.

* Sorry Craig.

** You don’t know what is The Russia Debate? It’s a forum for discussing Russian politics and history. Come, comment, conquer!

*** Unlike the recent “Interpreter mag,” which as Nils van der Vegte rightly points out might as well call itself “The Interpreter of Novaya Gazeta.”

In other words, it needs a forum, and as nobody else seems willing, I am happy to step step up to the plate with The Russia Debate.

Getting a forum going isn’t the easiest thing in the world, so just in case the excitement of political debate and settling in virgin online territory isn’t enough for you, anybody who makes at least one post at The Russian Debate throughout the rest of this month will be placed in a random drawing for the following prizes:

1. A $25 Amazon gift certificate.
2. Five separate vouchers for a free copy – in print or digital – of my upcoming book THE DARK LORD OF THE KREMLIN (scheduled for publication this October).

So, go ahead, check it out, create an account, and start populating the boards with your arguments and ideas. There are already ongoing active discussions about the Israeli strike on Syria and the May 6th rally. Looking forwards to seeing you there!

Now, onto the demography. In contrast to the first 3 months of 2012, when both mortality and birth rates saw big improvements, they have now gone into reverse for the same period in 2013. Namely, births have decreased by 0.8%, deaths have also risen by 0.8%, and the rate of natural decrease widened from 35,000 in 2012 to 43,000 in 2013. Mark Adomanis notes that this is a “pretty worrying development,” with “2013 is shaping up to be the year in which Russia’s streak of improving demography comes to an end.”

That is true enough if current trends continue. The operative word being “if.” But as I cautioned in my last post, extrapolating from a month or even a few months is a risky proposition, given the sharp seasonal swings in mortality. This is particularly true for extrapolations from winter months, in which there is an additional strong independent factor in the form of the influenza/pneumonia situation (which, on average, is worse during colder winters) and climatic factors (e.g. all else equal, Russians tend to drink more during colder winters). Now we know that this year’s has been exceptionally severe in Russia, so let’s look at the detailed breakdown for causes of mortality: -3% for infectious diseases, -1% for cancers and heart/CVD diseases, +18% for pulmonary diseases (e.g. pneumonia), no change in digestive tract diseases, -5% for deaths from external causes (but a +1% rise in alcohol poisonings), and +14% in deaths from sundry causes.

Now on the surface this now looks quite a lot better. Despite a harsh winter, deaths from heart disease (the biggest killer in Russia) continued to decline, as did deaths from external causes (which disproportionately affect the young and thus have an especially negative impact on life expectancy). The additional 3,000 increase in deaths from pulmonary diseases will have mostly accrued to elderly deaths from pneumonia, most likely due to the season swings typical of its epidemiology. The major, overriding question is this: What are “deaths from sundry causes” (прочие причины смерти)? I don’t know. But we can speculate. In old age, it is frequently unclear which of a panoply of ailments finally do someone in. And harsh winters are associated with mortality rises, especially among the elderly. Perhaps a large part of that 7,000 rise in deaths from “sundry causes” were simply a result of more elderly dying due to general winter causes and not being precisely classified.

In any case, I submit that three months is too short a time period to make any meaningful conclusions as to the final trajectory for the year. Again, I refer to Sergey Zhuravlev’s graph as a graphic demonstration of why that is so. Russia’s improvements in mortality are not a steady process, to the contrary they look like a series of intermittent sharp declines followed by steady periods of up to a year’s duration.

Then there is the decline in birth rates. To be fair, it is increasingly unrealistic to expect further rises in crude birth rates, because the “echo effect” is real (if often overstated, because of a failure to adjust for birth postponement/rising age of mother at childbirth). Russia’s total fertility rate started plummeting around 1991; the girls born then are now in their early 20′s. The average age of the mother at childbirth is now about 27 and rising, and up by 2 years since the 1990′s. Nonetheless, despite that counteracting effect, the fact is that the demographic “chasm” of the 1990′s continues to gain on women at their peak fertility (even if the age of peak fertility continues to increase) and it is a deep chasm, with women of the age of 5-19 making up just 61% of women of the age of 20-34 in 2012. So as there will be accumulating downwards pressure from changes in the age structure until the late 2020′s/early 2030′s we can now expect crude birth rates to start consistently falling from year to year.

This is not to deny that Chechens did not have an exceptionally hard time of it in the 1990s. That said, what strikes one is the pathological one-sidedness of some of the commentary, such as this vomit-inducing screed by Thor Halvorssen, a self-imagined human rights promoter from Norway. In their world, it is a simple morality tale of small, plucky Chechnya being repeatedly ravaged by the big, bad Russian imperialist – and it is one that many people, conditioned in appropriate ways for two decades by the Western media, swallow hook, line, and sinker.

It’s not that simple. But rather than (re)dredging up many words and sources, let’s just suffice with one of the most telling graphs on the matter: The population graph of Chechnya since 1989.

Some people are certainly getting ethnically cleansed there alright, but it’s not who you might think it is. So this, essentially, is what the Russian “genocide” of Chechens boils down to: 715,306 Chechens & 269,130 Russians in 1989; 1,206,551 Chechens & 24,382 Russians in 2010. Russians almost entirely gone from there, even though the lands north of the Terek River – that is, about a third of Chechnya – were first settled by Cossacks during the 16th century and had never been Chechen until the 20th century. Those Russians (and other minority ethnicities) were terrorized out of Chechnya during the rule of “moderate nationalists” Maskhadov and Zakayev, whom the likes of Halvorssen describe as the “legitimate government of Chechnya,” with several thousand of them murdered outright. This ethnic cleansing continued unimpeded into the 2000s with the complicit silence of the “nationalist” Putin regime.

I really wish all the (non-Chechen) “Free Chechnya!” people could be reborn as minorities in 1990′s Chechnya in their next lives so that the likes of Halvorssen can experience firsthand the extent to which Chechens “share the democratic values of a Western civilization.”

To add a couple of things that are Russia specific:

(1) We now learn that the FBI had interviewed the older brother at the bequest of an unspecific foreign government – almost certainly Russia. Tamerlan had visited it for 6 months in 2011. I wonder if he established links with some of the Caucasus Emirate Wahhabi types while there – and if so, whether US suspicions about Russia’s “assaults” on human rights in Chechnya made them drop their guard on a man who, it is now clear, was by then fast becoming an Islamist radical. The one silver lining to this horrible event is that it will become even more obvious that the Chechen rebellion has now been completely subsumed into the global Islamist struggle – and by extension, it will encourage the West to take a closer look at its “friends” in Syria.

(2) The reactions of Russian liberals has as always been as hilarious as it is nauseating. They seriously believe that the FSB is behind this.

Vasily Gatov, state news agency RIA employee: “I am watching three TV channels and listening to the radio, and reading the Boston Globe, and I gather that the main task of the FBI is to take the suspect alive. There is a drama brewing between Watertown, Washington, Moscow, and Grozny… And who knows which other cities. But I’m sure that the greatest fear is felt in Grozny. Which is why he will be taken alive.“

Self-hating random Echo of Moscow commentator: “I will not be surprised if it turns out that the Tsarnaev brothers where recruited by Russian special forces for the execution of this terrorist act, because Russia will benefit from it. Why? Because this terrorist act will change American and Western public opinion – and hence, that of their politicians  - towards Chechnya. If before the Western public supported the Chechens’ independence struggle, it is now more likely that they will support the Russian government’s policy on the Caucasus. And this means that the Kremlin KGBists will be able to use still crueler and more barbaric methods to fight separatism on the part of the Caucasus peoples. In other words, this terrorist act will untie the hands of the Kremlin in its war against the peoples of the Caucasus.“

Here are the chapter titles to whet your appetites – as you can see, I spare no tired trope when writing about the Putin kleptocracy.  If it’s 40% done, that also means four of the ten chapters. Try to guess which ones.

Intro: “If It’s About Russia, It’s True”
1. The KGB Colonel
2. Mafia State
3. Kremlin Media
4. Potemkin Russia
5. Caviar Roads
6. The Dying Bear
7. Neo-Soviet Revanchism
8. Stalin Worship
9. Crimes of the Regime
10. Russia and the West

PS. It will also need a front cover. I’m thinking of something flippant like Putin riding a shark Nazgul steed in front of the Kremlin. If you have graphic design moxie please feel free to contact me, we can discuss price.

Other high profile names identified in the offshore data include the wife of Russia’s deputy prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, and two top executives with Gazprom, the Russian government-owned corporate behemoth that is the world’s largest extractor of natural gas.

Shuvalov’s wife and the Gazprom officials had stakes in BVI companies, documents show. All three declined comment.

So that comes to one Minister who has always been open about the wealth which he made in the 1990′s as a law firm manager and then multiplied by leaving it in a blind trust invested into the Russian stockmarket; and a couple of top executives at one of the world’s biggest companies, are the two most prominent names that have been dredged up.

Rather underwhelming, TBH.

Incidentally, in most countries there is nothing particularly illegal about having offshore bank accounts. Morally questionable? Perhaps. For some, yes. And I can understand why countries like Germany (mistakenly, IMO) might not want to contribute to bailing out alleged tax havens like Cyprus, or why the US demands Switzerland reveal the identities of Swiss secret bank account holders to the IRS.

But is keeping money offshore illegal? No, it isn’t. Not in the US, not in Russia, not practically anywhere else. Not in any country that supports the principle of basically free movements of capital. Now if said money is suspected to have been laundered or otherwise acquired illegally then yes, investigations can follow. But the past few years of pressed government budgets have seen the big countries lean heavily on alleged tax shelters to reveal more information about their clients so it is arguably a much smaller problem than it was, say, a decade ago.

The non-illegal nature of offshore banking is the reason why Romney isn’t being prosecuted for his $250 billion stash in the Cayman Islands, and why revelations that many wealthy Germans keep bank accounts in Panama has led to a lot of media noise but no legal proceedings. Is it because Germany is a kleptocracy in which the elites corruptly protect their own? To ask the question is to mock it.

But funnily enough whenever it comes to Russia even otherwise neoliberal or even Randian commentators start frothing at the mouth and demanding populist, Bolshevik reprisals against any Russian – that is, if he isn’t opposed to Putin – with money abroad.