Tag Archives: protest

Natalia Zubarevich – The Four Russias

Posted on by

Natalia Zubarevich’s concept of “The Four Russias” is one of the most reasoned and perceptive political analysis from the liberals, and as such I think it important enough to translate it (mostly I disagree with its core assumptions and conclusions though I do think it is a useful way of envisioning Russian politics). As such I am translating Четыре России from Vedomosti (there is also a longer version, translated here).

The Four Russias

Natalia Zubarevich

The events of 2011 demonstrated that the authorities’ habit of looking at the country through a “vertical incision” played a cruel joke on them. In reality, there is not one Russia, but rather three or even four. And this is a reality with which both the government, and the opposition, will have to come to terms with.

The Four Russias: First Russia – urban, educated (white); Second Russia – urban, industrial (blue); Third Russia – rural, apolitical (green); Fourth Russia – ethnic, poor (red).

The First Russia is a country of big cities. They aren’t great in number, but the 12 city-millionaires as well as Perm and Krasnoyarsk, which have close to a million residents, constitute 21% of the country’s population, i.e. every fifth Russian, while Moscow and Saint Petersburg by themselves account for 9%. In the past 20 years, the biggest cities cities ceased being industrial – only in Ufa, Perm, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, and Volgograd do Soviet industrial enterprises continue to dominate the economy. Although the fastest post-industrial transformations are observed in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk  and Rostov-on-Don, all the city-millionaires have seen a change in employment patterns: The percentage of qualified “blue collar” workers rose, there appeared more employees of small businesses, and even the public sector attracted more qualified workers. There is quick adoption of the metropolitan model of consumer behavior, even though earnings are 1.5-2x lower than in Moscow. It is precisely in the bigger cities that we see a concentration of those middle class “disgruntled urbanites.” Migration flows in Russia are directed towards these bigger cities, so their share of the population is growing. The only difference is that the two federal cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and their adjoining agglomerations, attract migrants from all over the country, accounting for up to 80% of net migration in Russia, while the other big cities for the most part draw migrants from their own regions.

Continue reading →

The Guardian’s Pussy Worship

Posted on by

From their latest Editorial / anti-Putin rant, via Mercouris. It is not with the ideological rhetoric that I have an issue with; it’s The Guardian, after all. Nor am I especially interested in defending Pussy Riot’s prosecution (my own views on the matter jive with Kononenko’s). I do however have an issue with the The Guardian explicitly misrepresenting or outright lying to support its agenda – a modus operandus that is now all too common to it and makes a mockery of the “facts are sacred” values it claims to uphold. In this “fisking”, I will only highlight the most egregious violations of basic journalistic standards.

“Their protest is not made of slogans and placards, but is crafted from art, dance and performance. Putin and his henchmen know how to deal with the former – the hundreds of thousands who have spilled into the streets in the last eight months – but their handling of the these women is much less assured.”

The Protests for Fair Elections got at very, very most 100,000 at the biggest such rally, the one on Prospekt Sakharova in December – a count made by Russia’s most liberal mainstream newspaper. (Other estimates ranged 60,000-80,000). That is, they numbered in the tens of thousands. If they want hundreds of thousands, they had better look elsewhere… say, Spain.

“The trial takes place in the same courthouse where alleged fraudster and billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former boss of the Yukos oil company and Putin’s political enemy, was tried.”

Not an alleged but a CONVICTED fraudster, in a judgment ruled sound by the ECHR.

Continue reading →

Alexander Mercouris – The Guardian And Putin

Posted on by

Two months ago I wrote an article in which I used data and statistics to show that Russian journalists today under Putin are, contrary to extravagant claims in the Western media, far safer than in several acknowledged democracies such as India or Brazil; far safer than ordinary Russians; and indeed, far safer than they were under Yeltsin. Why then does one get the exact opposite impression from reading the Western media on this subject? Mainly that is because they lean on rhetoric and hyperbole over fact; they deny the utility of comparative perspective; and in some cases, they outright lie or make things up. The Guardian is an example par excellence of all this. On reading a certain Guardian editorial, longtime DR commentator Alex Mercouris noticed that its figure of 200 journalist deaths under Putin clashed irrevocably with ALL estimates from reputed press freedoms watchdogs, most of which converged on a figure of 40 deaths or less. Did The Guardian just make up its own facts? Unable to rest without an answer to this question, Mercouris embarked on an investigation to find out the origins of this massively over-inflated figure… and why The Guardian left it up on their site unchanged for SIX MONTHS after having become aware of their mistake. I am happy to present:

The Guardian and Putin

Alexander Mercouris

As readers of the British newspaper the Guardian know, the Guardian has conducted for many years a fierce campaign against Vladimir Putin.  This began almost from the moment of Putin’s appointment by Boris Yeltsin as Prime Minister in 1999.  I still remember an editorial the Guardian published at the time which called on Yeltsin to sack Putin just a few weeks after he had appointed him.

On 18th December 2011 the Guardian published another in its long line of anti Putin editorials under the provocative title “Truth is being murdered in Putin’s bloody Russia.” The language used in this editorial was extreme even by the Guardian’s standards.  I was particularly shocked by the final sentence, which referred to the Russian state as “slack, slimy and savage”.  Such language seems to me completely inappropriate in an editorial in a serious newspaper with an international readership.

The editorial appeared in print form in the Guardian’s Sunday supplement the Observer and online in the Guardian’s website on “Comment is Free”.  The timing of the editorial on 18th December 2011 is important.  Parliamentary elections took place in Russia on 4th December 2011 over the course of which the pro Putin party United Russia suffered a substantial loss of support, triggering protests amidst allegations of vote rigging.  An unauthorised protest took place in central Moscow on 5th December 2011, which turned violent.  A much bigger peaceful protest took place in Moscow on Bolotnaya Square within sight of the Kremlin on 10th December 2011.  This was followed by a further big protest in Moscow on Sakharov Avenue on 24th December 2011.  The editorial therefore appeared at a tense time in Russia, when the protest movement in Moscow against Putin was at its height and when the Russian and international news media were buzzing with speculation that Putin might be on his way out with rumours circulating of troop movements in Moscow and of a violent crackdown being planned against the protest movement.

The editorial was supposedly written in connection with the murder in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan in the northern Caucasus of a journalist called Khadzimurad Kamalov.  In emotional and angry language the editorial condemned Kamalov’s murder, which it linked to the murder of what it said were “around 200” other journalists who had supposedly been killed in Russia since Putin came to power.  Amongst the murdered journalists named in the editorial was the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was killed outside her apartment in 2006.  The editorial accused Putin and his government of complicity in these murders as part of a “bloody” campaign to “murder the truth”.

In other words at a time when Putin was facing a challenge in Moscow from the protest movement and at a time when speculation of a violent crackdown on the protest movement in Moscow was rife the Guardian published an editorial that accused Putin and the Russian government of complicity in the murder of “around 200” journalists and which referred to Russia as a “slack, slimy and savage” state.

Continue reading →

The World’s Sleaziest Magazine Plumbs New Lows

Posted on by

I really can’t figure what this Economist editorial reeks more of: Hypocrisy, mendacity, or pure delusion?

That is as it should be, for since his decision last autumn to return to the Kremlin, Mr Putin has been stridently negative and anti-Western, most recently over Syria (see article)

Being anti-Western is “negative”, even for daring to oppose Western-backed Islamist crazies who will back-stab their handlers as soon as they’re able to.

But the reset was based in part on two misplaced hopes: that Dmitry Medvedev, who had been lent the presidency for one term by Mr Putin in 2008, would genuinely take charge of the country, and that some in his government had sound liberalising, pro-Western instincts.

Note how “liberalizing” and “pro-Western” are conflated, because one can’t possibly liberalize without kowtowing to Western interests too. Furthermore, bear in mind the unspoken assumption that normal relations (“the reset”) are only to be rewarded for said kowtowing to the West. The concept of equality and reciprocity is alien to the minds of Western chauvinists.

Continue reading →

The “Last Hurrah” Of The Liberal Bloggers And Hipsters

Posted on by

For all the hype the “March of Millions” was missing a couple of zeros.

(In the video above, the left pane shows the march along the Yakimanka on February 4th, where there were about 56,000-80,000 protesters; the right pane shows the “march of millions”, in reality about 20,000-30,000, along the same street on May 6th).

They tried to compensate with paving stones and Molotov cocktails. In doing so, they lost what dwindling stock of sympathy they still had.

On the plus side, Navalny gets a bunch of homoerotic photos of himself getting arrested to decorate his Facebook with.

Far More People Protested FOR Putin Than Against, But You Wouldn’t Know It From The Western Media

Posted on by

The above photo, part of a photo report by Ridus, shows the Anti-Orange protest at Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow on February 4th. Does that look like 35,000 people to you, let alone 20,000 or 15,000? Because those were the most commonly cited figures in the Western media, apart from those cases where they ignored them altogether (The Guardian) or even tried passing them off as a ANTI-Putin rallies (e.g. Le Parisien).

Continue reading →

List Of Estimates On Fraud In Russia’s 2011 Duma Elections

Posted on by

Despite Olga Kryshtanovskaya’s disapproval, I thought it would be interesting and useful to compile a comprehensive list of blogger, pundit and “expert” opinions on the extent of fraud in the 2011 Duma elections. Interspersed among these opinions and analyses are results from federal opinion polls and other evidence.

In general, it seems we can identify three “theses” or “clubs.” The 0% Club holds the idea that falsifications were non-existent or minimal; it is advanced by Kremlin officials and supported by many opinion polls. Its polar opposite is the 15% Club, which is supported by several statistical analyses; its adherents include the liberal and non-systemic opposition. The 5% Club argues that United Russia should not have gotten a Duma majority, but many of their proponents believe that the elections are legitimate nonetheless. Estimates range from 2% to 10%, with a wealth of opinion polling and statistical analysis in support. Most of the systemic opposition and arguably most Russians belong to this club.

Continue reading →

Al Jazeera On Elections And White Ribbons

Posted on by

Russia’s winter of discontent? from Al Jazeera’s Stream. Overall, fairly balanced. I appear at 8:50 to ask a question about the suspicious timing - two months before the actual elections – of the creation of the website promoting the White Ribbon as the symbol of the anti-Kremlin protests.

Generally speaking, I’m skeptical about the more grandiose claims of foreign involvement in the discontent. But the White Ribbon does seem to fit the bill: It’s a nice memorable meme (i.e. a good revolutionary symbol), it’s site is under a .com domain, etc. But there’s one problem – whichever idiot came up with it didn’t bother tracking down its negative historic connotations. So no wonder it hasn’t really been catching on (despite the best efforts of our good friend Edward Lucas).

BRIC’s of Stability: Why Occupy Wall Street Isn’t Coming To Moscow Or Beijing

Posted on by

As repeatedly noted by Mark Adomanis, the Russian liberals and the Western media have predicted about 10 of the last zero Russian revolutions. Likewise, the “Jasmine Revolution” in China that was the subject of so much talk about a year ago has fizzled out like a wet firework. Meanwhile, the Arab world remains in the midst of convulsions, and political instability is spreading into the West – most visibly in Greece and the Med, but also in the guise of Occupy Wall Street and associated movements in the US.

This is no doubt disturbing and aggravating to Western supremacists (it is telling that that the media organization providing the most detailed coverage of OWS, RT, is both non-Western and the object of venomous bile from the American exceptionalism culture warriors). Doesn’t the West (and the US in particular) have democracy, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, free media, economic opportunities, equality under the law, etc. – things that are all starkly and completely absent in countries of the Other, e.g. Russia and China? What the hell are the hippies and liberals protesting? Are they doped up unemployed losers, useful idiots of Leninist agents of influence, or both?

I think the answer is far simpler than it seems. In Russia, younger people tend to be both higher earning (their skills are better fitted to a capitalist economy) and more economically optimistic than their parents, not to mention their grandparents. They are also far more pro-capitalist, and substantially more supportive of Putin and Co. than the older generations (who have not done as well under capitalism, and who have fonder memories of communism). In fact, in the minds of Russian youth – and in stark contrast to the picture drawn by uninformed commentators – capitalism, prosperity, and the Putin era are closely linked. Hence, no real Russian equivalent of OWS (at least for now).

Continue reading →