Things are changing among Euro-American Putin observers. Even the New York Times today compares Putin’s antics in chasing photo-ops as a hard man with Bush’s.
3 August 2010
Putin responsible for forest fires in Russia
Yes, Putin’s power appears to be growing once again. Tonight’s evening news on ZDF has a piece on the catastrophic fires in Russia that are engulfing the forests and have also destroyed a whole village. In the story, blame is assigned to Putin, to his centralisation of control and the centre’s inability to co-ordinate the fire-fighting.
Medvedev? Apparently not relevant. The fetishisation of Putin continues in 2010.
24 February 2010
Russia Europe’s largest economy by 2050
New term to add to LEDC, NIC, LDC, etc. Someone recently termed Germany one of the NDCs: Newly Declining Countries. A recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers provides support:
PricewaterhouseCooper’s head of macroeconomics, John Hawksworth, believes by 2050, Russia will be Europe’s largest economy, while China, the US and India will lead globally.
PwC predicted that Russia would become Europe’s largest economy by 2020. What are the underlying assumptions of this forecast?
In terms of purchasing power parity, which corrects for variations in price levels, Russia’s GDP is already the second largest in Europe after Germany.
Germany’s economic growth, especially given its ageing population, is projected to be less than 2pc per annum over the next 20 years, allowing Russia to catch up by 2020. The price of natural resources should remain relatively high because of demand from India and China and should support Russia’s growth. (Report by Artem Zagorodnov on Russia Now.)
11 October 2009
The Yeltsin Scandal
Who’s ruining Russian democracy? Stephen F. Cohen has long been arguing that Gorbachev was the real democrat and it all went to anti-democratic hell with Yeltsin, long before Putin turned up, or Medvedev followed.
A recent interesting media analysis by William Dunkerley, media business analyst and consultant, points to a similar argument. The media scandal, says Dunkerley is “the Western press’ inexplicably lenient treatment of the Yeltsin presidency, especially in comparison to his successors”. Some extracts:
[The Yeltsin Scandal begins with a drunken Boris Yeltsin hailing a cab in his underwear across from the White House in Washington. But that’s just the beginning. This story includes murder, unthinkable acts of military aggression, and journalistic malfeasance. At its heart, it’s really a story about the media and how they have bungled the coverage of Yeltsin and his successors. You’ll never look at media reportage of Russia in the same way!]
Over the years, Yeltsin has been characterized variously as a hero who brought down communism, as the foremost proponent of Russia’s transformation to democracy and a market economy, and as a stalwart of Russia’s free press.
Beyond that popular imagery, however, there was a less attractive side. Yeltsin presided over a looting of state assets that created a circle of newly-minted tycoons that helped to protect Yeltsin. In addition, acting against the constitution, Yeltsin dismissed the duly elected parliament. And when the members refused to go, he brought in tanks to shell the parliament building in a confrontation that ultimately claimed approximately 150 lives. Somehow he was able to win reelection in a contest where he held roughly a 5 percent approval rating going into the election season. Ultimately, Yeltsin led the country into a financial collapse near the end of his presidency.
A Closer Look at Yeltsin
As a case-in-point, I examined the New York Times coverage of Yeltsin’s shelling of the parliament in 1993. That was one of Yeltsin’s most egregious acts. The Times ran a story entitled “SHOWDOWN IN MOSCOW: Tactics; Yeltsin Attack Strategy: Bursts Followed by Lulls.” Here are some excerpts illustrating how the Times covered the story:
“The assault on the Russian Parliament building today was a textbook example of the decisive application of military power…
“And as the daylong assault went on, it was clear that Mr. Yeltsin’s commanders had decided on gradualism…
“The Russian troops were looking for Bolshoi Devyatinsky lane … where the defiant lawmakers had maintained their headquarters…
“With the outcome of the battle never in doubt, the clear preference of the military was to scare the anti-Yeltsin demonstrators into surrendering and to limit casualties…
“The only question was the number of lives that would be lost. And that was largely left up to the rebels as they were alternately bombarded with shells and appeals to surrender.”
Just note how soft this coverage is. I’m not taking sides on whether Yeltsin’s actions were appropriate or not. But, the Yeltsin side is characterized as valiant and measured. The other side is characterized as defiant and to blame for its own fate. The story has a factual basis. The president really did launch a tank assault on the parliament. However, the circumstances clearly seem to be spun in a way that tempers that stark reality.
1 August 2009
Only 4% Ukrainians approve of government
Gallup has released data of approval rates of governments in 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics. Only 4% of Ukrainians polled answered yes, they approve of their country’s political leadership, whereas 77% approve in Azerbaijan and 71% in Kazakhstan. Russia comes in fourth at 56%.
Showing once more that statistics can be tied into any number of narratives and discourses, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reports the results under the headline “Gallup’s Index of Fear”, saying that it should be clear to all that these results indicate nothing more than the fear of voicing one’s true feelings about the government in these country’s which scored highly.
They may have a point. But the story does indicate that there is no possible way in which public events or comments in, say, Azerbaijan could be interpreted positively by RFE/RL. If they scored poorly, that shows that the leadership should be changed. If they score highly, that shows the leadership should be changed. Here’s to the future of self-reflexive journalism.
And as for Ukraine, RFE/RL echo the words of George W. Bush, when he said he was pleased that there was such vocal protest about the war in Iraq during his visit to London, since that showed true democracy was alive in the UK.
It’s true that Ukraine’s political situation is a mess. But at least people there aren’t afraid to say so. And that means something.
15 May 2009
Political / gas satire in Russia
And they say political satire in Russia is dead..
Option 1: it never died.
Option 2: it has been resurrected under Medvedev
…video thanks to oldag
31 March 2009
Projection onto Moscow
Here we are, in a time of crisis, and once again Russia operates as a space onto which “western” (in this case, German) fears can be projected.
Moscow, so the German state television channel ZDF tells its viewers (at prime time this evening), is a city of mega-rich and shockingly-poor. While the rich ignore the crisis and continue to party, drink champagne and eat caviar (fade in: image of ballroom dancing, tuxedos, etc), the poor get poorer (fade in: image of poor homeless couple, freezing, being picked up by the police).
The strong implication of the rhetoric in the opening minutes of this “documentary” is that these issues are specific to Moscow’s glittering elite.
Such excess would never be relevant in Germany or anywhere else in the West/North, now would it? Especially not during a financial crisis.
Or would it:
- Partyelite Berlin. Vodka only 60 € for 1 litre
- “JPMorgan Chase, beneficiary of $25 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, plans to spend $138 million for swank corporate jets and a new hangar”
- AIG’s infamous payout of $165 million in bonuses in this same crisis year. (Plus public backlash)
- Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension of £703,000-a-year. The former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s “departure from RBS was negotiated on the weekend of October 11/12 [2008] when the bank was saved from collapse by an injection of £20bn by the taxpayer.”
- “Bob Diamond, the hard-charging boss of Barclays’ investment banking arm [...] has suffered a brutal £4m cut to his annual remuneration – leaving him last year with a meagre £17m in cash and shares.”
- Josef Ackerman, Deutsch Bank boss, also took a massive 90% pay cut, leaving him with only 1.39 million euros ($1.89 million) earnings last year.
And at the same time:
- “Numbers of Homeless Increase as Nation’s Financial Crisis Continues” (USA)
- “From June 2007 through May [2008], PADS [Lake County's homeless shelter] saw a 17 percent increase from the previous year in new clients and a 48 percent increase in children.” (USA)
- Estimates place Germany’s number of homeless people between 300,000 and 860,000. (More on Günter Wallraff‘s experiences)
21 February 2009
Politkovskaya’s killers
Anna Politkovskaya’s sister rejects the idea that the Kremlin was responsible for ordering the killing of the critical Russian journalist on 7 October 2006. Channel 4′s report on the verdict of the trial of four men suspected of the killing can be seen for one week by going to Channel 4 News and scrolling down to “Thurs 19 Feb Part 4: Anna – CIA”. All four were found not guilty on 19 Feb.
Channel 4 provides extensive details of the case, the four men, the issues of impunity facing Russia’s legal system, the contradictory evidence, etc.
More importantly, it includes (minute 4:06) an interview with Anna Politkovskaya’s sister, Elena Kudimova, who thought that there was enough evidence to convict the four in court yesterday. She said, however, that she is not interested in who finally pulled the trigger, but in who ordered the killing.
She also pointed out that what Anna wrote about still continues today, i.e., that law enforcement officers are connected to organised crime. To which Jon Snow replied:
Jon Snow: Do you think the finger of suspicion actually extends right inside the Kremlin?
Elena Kudimova: No, I don’t think so. Anna wrote about many other people, especially in the Caucasus, who also quite disliked her writing. I don’t mean necessarily Chechnya, it is also Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria and Ingushetia.
I was waiting to see how Jon Snow would follow up on this, and perhaps expand on her suspicions. But his next question draws attention back to Russia’s political/legal systems:
I mean, are you surprised that it even got to a trial at this point? And is there a chance that another trial, of more important people, might be held?
Multiple discourses in any one text, indeed.
20 February 2009
Russia’s Free Press Hoax
Interesting piece by William Dunkerley on opednews.com. In Russia’s Free Press Hoax, he responds to a recent New York Times editorial, one of numerous such articles which claim that Vladimir Putin stifled Russia’s free press. Dunkerley argues that there was no free press to stifle in the first place.
His evidence:
1. The Yeltsin administration nipped press freedom in the bud. It imposed laws that gave media companies little hope of operating profitably. And without profitability, the press had no way of achieving independence. Instead, the media companies became dependent, not free, and most remain so today.
2. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists [CPJ], 15 journalists were murdered during the period of Putin’s presidency. What the “murdered journalist” stories fail to report is that in the previous 8-year period, there were 31 murders! In other words, under Putin, the number of journalists killed was more than cut in half.
While I’d phrase the criticism differently (less emphasis on “mis”information and more on “a particular perspective on” information), I agree that there is a definite shift in the attention paid to killed journalists under Yeltsin (not only CPJ, but also Reporter sans Frontiers (RFS) give a similar number of killed journalists, which they report as having decreased under Putin).
What I find crucial to this discussion is the desired aim. Ignoring hard news for the moment, what do editors hope to achieve when they blame Putin for the deaths of journalists? Putting this more discoursively, what is the function of such editorials; what ‘action’ do they carry out? Editors – and the commentariat in general – generally make recommendations for change, whether explicit or implicit.
If the reason for the deaths is Putin, the recommendation must be to reduce his power. The trouble is that
- (i) according to the CPJ and RSF websites, the majority of journalists who were killed were investigating stories associated with organised crime and/or business corruption,
- (ii) this means that when grand sweeping statements are made about these journalists being critics of the Russian regime and/or Putin, the editorial in question completely loses credibility in the eyes of the Russian public and politicians. This in turn means that
- (iii) no-one feels the need to tackle the problem.
The core problem, according to CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia programme researcher Nina Oganiova, is that murders of journalists are not followed up in the legal system. This is a serious issue in Russia, but it seems hypersimplistic to report this as Putin’s control over the media (although, again, this is not “mis”information, but a particular perspective on a piece of information).
*
Finally, I must jump to the defence of the journalists (as a proper anthropologist I might say “my” journalists) criticised by Dunkerley. There is a strict distinction to be drawn between
- very well informed, thoughtful, perceptive and/or insightful foreign correspondents based in Moscow,
- deadline-driven, desk-based, non-expert journalists who turn agency news into printable news stories often in less than 45 minutes, and are therefore thoroughly embedded in locally accepted knowledge of what Russia is doing at the moment and what meanings are to be assigned to these journalist deaths, and
- Washington Post editors (who seem to have some particularly deep axe to grind; see the discussions on Johnson’s Russia List).
*
And very finally. my personal favourite of the NYT editorial comes nearer the end:
So far Mr. Obama has been quiet about Russia’s latest efforts to bully its neighbors. He will have to find his voice. After its war with Georgia last year, Russia defied international law by recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Do we really need to go into who bullied who and who started what in Georgia again? Perhaps we could just refer to an old NYT article for details about what could as easily be called Georgia‘s war with Russia. Other articles discussed the hypocrisy of the debate on the legitimacy of recognising the independence of some former communist states but not others.
1 February 2009
Israel’s “disproportionate” response
Today sees the discursive tactic of “reframing” in action. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that there would be a “disproportionate” response from Israel to rocket fire from Gaza:
“We’ve said that if there is rocket fire against the south of the country, there will be a disproportionate Israeli response to the fire on the citizens of Israel and its security forces,” he said.
The discursive tactic at work here is to take a generally extremely negatively evaluated term and to turn it into a positive descriptor. Cf. “queer”. Note that, as Judith Butler has said, a discursive tactic which has the potential to be subversive need not invariably be used in a subversive way.
