Gullible Western Liberals and The Other Russia

Opinion in the West on Russia tends to support those who oppose Vladimir Putin on the absurd basis that fronts such as The Other Russia are sterling and heroic democrats fighting a new dictator or authoritarian hardman by recourse to a selfless commitment to promoting human rights.

Susan Richards writes in The Observer today,

In Soviet times overseas support for "dissidents" acted as a significant restraint on the authorities. But today, western governments offer no support to opposition figures: they have agreed a Faustian pact with Putin, over energy (in Europe) and the "war against terror" (in the US).

In this context Strategy 31 – a civic movement bringing together old-style dissidents, intellectuals and young people fresh to politics – has emerged to defend article 31 of Russia's constitution on the right to free assembly. Supporters convene at 6pm on the 31st of each month, in a number of Russian cities.

In Moscow, they have been assembling in Triumfalnaya Square, from which they have been repeatedly banned.

They might have been banned from the square but, then again, they target places they know they will be banned from simply to make the point in front of the camera and on the Internet that Putin is some evil Soviet style leader against whom they are fighting for freedom.

Western liberals uncritically lap up that agenda without much questioning of the hidden agenda behind it and the reality that most "oppositionists" are working for the return of oligarch power and a "liberalism" that really means freedom for the wealthy and privileged.

In short, The Other Russia is a front for moneyed oligarchs to advance a power game, often supported by politicians who have worked for Putin in the past and did not oppose human rights abuses or freedom then or under Yeltsin but suddenly liked the idea when it could be used to support their ambitions and interests.

Strategy 31 is not exactly what is appears and is yet another fake designer revolutionary initiative tied to The Other Russia which does receive funds from the USA and is led by Garry Kasparov whose mission it is to make Russia safe for the oligarchs again. He is a chess playing tactician and work to promote US interests and, in the process, his own.

Sadly, the idea that the average worker would get anything should these people even stand a chance of power is farcical-the result would be simply anti-Putin oligarchs and a return to the 1990s. There is no doubt that anybody who understands the reality in Russia knows that, though opposition parties pretend that they are for 'the workers'.

Western Liberals such as Susan Richards need to understand that because no matter what workers in Russia might hope for, a network of NGOs and think tanks are essentially promoting nihilistic strategies in wanting power at any price and have no more regard for Russian people than under Yeltsin.

This is one reason why respected political commentator and historian Anatol Lieven has termed such people who turn up to staged demonstrations dressed as Santa Claus ( witty student style pranks that do not go down well with Russians ) and, who are funded by the USA, as "limousine liberals".

Even worse, Richards fails to mention something that would shock the average Guardian liberal in the UK: The Other Russia has been allied with Eduard Limonov of the Natzbols or National Bolsheviks and he remains a key supporter.

The Natzbols are a neo-Nazi group with explicitly parades in fascist insignia with their flag being red with a white circle and a hammer and sickle inside it.

Why it is that "liberal movements" in Russia are still led by those in Yabloko and other political fronts dominated by family members connected to those who rammed through shock therapy in the 1990s such as Maria Gaidar ( daughter of Anatoly ).

The neoliberal reforms that led to colossal mortality rates, that is premature deaths, and which entirely merits the title "Market Bolshevism" both for its callousness and contempt for the lives of Russians who, as so often in history, were treated as nothing but dirt.

All of this has been documented in Peter Reddaway's and Dmitri Glinka's Market Bolshevism: The Tragedy of Russia's Market Reforms.

The greed to grab Russia's riches for themselves again and to serve the agenda of "democratic geopolitics" motivates those in The Other Russia: the weakness of Putin's record on human rights is seldom contrasted to Yeltsin's despite his crushing of popular protests in 1993 with military force in a coup.

The sheer hypocrisy of these shrill reedy voices piping up about human rights when they always defend the record of Yeltsin or, at best, euphemise or glide over his record shows the pervertion of truth that follows wherever "pro-Western liberals" are willing to serve US funded fronts at the expense of the majority of people in their own country.

The Other Russia has Limanov positioned in a major role and only recently agreed to ban him at the Kremlin's behest, proving the idiotic propaganda that Putin is a "Fascist" was silly, though the Edward Lucas peddles this drivel in his propaganda "The New Cold War".

Yet a Russian blogger Alexey Kovalev appeared yesterday to defend The Other Russia on this basis,

... let people say whatever they please and hang around wherever they find suitable. And we don't actually need anyone's support, thank you. The point of the 31 protest is to show that freedoms of speech and assembly exist, and they are not what Putin thinks they are.

This is nonsense, even if Kovalev might want to believe, at least if he does actively support The Other Russia. He lives in London, after all, and has not set up another rival group nor done much constructive other than support pseudo-arty groups in his homeland such as Voina which protests at Putin by putting huge graphic images of penises on draw bridges in Moscow.

The Other Russia is funded by US based NGOs filtering money from the National Endowment for Democracy. It's "the best democracy money can buy" and it has no real organisational roots in any labour movement nor grassroots activistm as did once genuinely democratic opposition in Central Europe like Solidarity.

There is no reason why groups opposed to Putin could not protest against the Kremlin without allying with those promoting "National Bolshevism", a term which was first used by those who supported a more "left" wing version of National Socialism in Weimar Germany. It's bizarre that Western liberals just ignore this.

In other words, Strategy 31 is not what some people, especially in the West think it is. Indeed it is curious, moreover, that veteran human rights supporter Lyudmila Alexeyeva of The Other Russia decided that the move to exclude Limonov could be accepted only very reluctantly. Indeed she was very much against the decision.

Strategy 31, as its desperate sounding name implies ( best to think of another PR technique there ) reflects the same interests represented by waves of protests choreographed by US funded groups who use Orwellian doublethink in exploiting Putin's record on human rights to advocate the return of the oligarchs.

Yet Russia needs its own domestic opposition to be free from the national power ambitions of the USA or too much meddling. It needs to be genuinely committed to human rights and democratic accountability: The Other Russia never tells people what it actually stands for other than 'not being lied to' as Kovalev puts it.

Unfortunately, The Other Russia itself seems to operate on the principle of falsehood, evasion, dissimulation and the cynical use of human rights failings to advance the power and ambition of those who want power at all costs at the expense of most Russians: its a power game using human rights as a pawn.

It is curious that Lydmila Alexeyeva was against Limonov being banned. Perhaps this shows her devotion to freedom of speech. But clearly the Kremlin used this demand to put The Other Russia on the defensive to prove its anti-fascist credentials and some decided he was a liability in this respect.

The point to note, however, is why The Other Russia should ever have allowed the Natzbol leader to feature as part of their struggle. Perhaps they were pleased to have his "populist" presence as just anything that could mobilise people against Putin was welcome. Hardly ethical.

In a statement posted Saturday on her blog, former Soviet dissident and Strategy 31 rally co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva indicated, albeit inadvertently, that she and fellow former dissident Sergei Kovalyov have decided to exclude National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov from the group of organizers who regularly apply for sanction with the Moscow mayor’s office.

The concession would fall in line with a proposal made by the presidential administration earlier this month to exclude Limonov and receive sanction as a result. At the time, opposition leaders – including Alexeyeva – strongly denounced the proposal.

No doubt these "debates" are meant to show, or can be interpreted, as evidence that Strategy 31 agreed on by The Other Russia ( though which "other" in Russia remains wide enough for people to think there are huddled masses yearning for their agenda if necessary ) is really "democratic".

Yet if these weird manoeuvres are part of the "democratic opposition" in some "New Cold War", it is odd that Alexeyeva is described as a "former dissident": why she is not still just a dissident if Putin really is some "neo-Stalinist" is strange. At best, she is just anti-Putin. That could co-exist with a defence of liberal democracy but not in allying with Limonov.

The Other Russia has called the accusation that Boris Berezovsky funded The Other Russia a "Kremlin lie" but the opposition is shadowy and hardly abides by the criteria of "transparency" it recommends for everybody else in Russia and excludes itself from. Orwellian doublethink indeed.

The Independent in 2007 reported

There is speculation now that Gary Kasparov's opposition grouping The Other Russia may be among the beneficiaries of the financial support Berezovsky says he gives to opponents of President Putin. Berezovsky is careful not to name the recipients of his largesse, however.

Essentially, The Other Russia is a front for those who want a return of oligarch power or who have fallen out with Putin. It has little to do with any genuine commitment to anyone other than the moneyed influence of the privileged who are chafing at Putin only because they are not benefiting as much as they think they should be .

One of its backers is Viktor Vladimirovich Gerashchenko of the Rodina Party who once received The Order of Merit for the Fatherland from Putin but then later decided his interests lay elsewhere. Of course, people have the right to oppose Putin later if they decide they oppose his policies.

Yet the way Russian politics is determined by the "ins" and "outs" or who has control of the media through money is hardly democracy in the way Western nations such as those in the US or UK understand it, though both nations have seen their own democracies change more in the direction of oligarchies.

The Rodina Party is yet another fake party which proclaims to be nationalist and socialist ( the " motherland party" ) but which has got in to difficulties as in 2005 when it put out an advert with dark-skinned Caucasian immigrants throwing watermelon rinds to the floor and ended with the slogan, "let's clear our city of trash".

Whatever one thinks of Putin it is important to note that oppositionists are hardly pleasant people themselves and will do about just anything to gain popularity: including xenophobia and racism, simply to outmanoeuvre Putin and pose as "real" patriots.

The cynicism is shown in the career of Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, now Russian ambassador to NATO, who was condemned by Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya for supporting a front originally,

'created by the Kremlin’s spin doctors specifically...to draw moderately nationalist voters away from the more extreme National Bolsheviks'

Former allies of the Putin keep popping back up as opponents of Putin depending on where their interests presently lie and are then hailed as sterling democrats by the West which wants more influence over Russia. Human rights are used to discredit Putin by those who do not give a fig about them either. They remained silent during Yeltsin's 1993 military coup.

In Leninist terms, "former dissidents" such as Alexeyeva are merely "useful idiots" who have long lost any moral high ground they could once claim. The Other Russia is a mere charade. It merely reflects oligarchs jockeying for power and the West's tactics to get rid of Putin. The cynicism of the means clearly belie the cynicism of the ends.

Indeed British historian and journalist Anatol Lieven, himself a liberal and an ethical realist, has condemned the "Limousine Liberals" in Russia in The National Review and said of those "liberals" attacking any reapprochement between the Medvedev and Putin led Russia with the USA that,

.....their criticism serves as a mouthpiece for the agendas of the most bitterly anti-Russian and geopolitically aggressive liberal interventionists and neocons who help maintain tensions between Russia and the West-and actually between the United States and the rest of the world.

And these tensions are extremely damaging to any hopes of the long-term liberalization and Westernization of Russia which these liberals want to further.

Do Piontkovsky, Shevtsova and the others seriously think that the U.S.-Russian rivalry in the Caucasus, and the war over South Ossetia which resulted, helped the cause of liberalism in Russia? Do they ever actually talk to any ordinary Russians, one wonders? Or do their duties briefing Americans simply leave them no time for this?

....figures like Igor Yurgens, a leading businessman and adviser to President Medvedev, are playing an extremely valuable role in resisting moves to further authoritarianism, centralization and nationalization in response to the economic crisis. They could do much better if they had bigger support within the population at large.

Groups such as The Other Russia only alienate many Russians, as does the fact that so many oppositionists still have their origins in the government and supporters of Yeltsin, a point made forcibly by Lieven who comments,

Tragically however, many Russian liberals in the 1990s-through the policies they supported and the arrogant contempt they showed towards the mass of their fellow Russians-made liberals unelectable for a generation or more across most of Russia; and to judge by these and other writings of liberals like the ones under discussion, they have learnt absolutely nothing from this experience.

They think that they form some kind of opposition to the present Russian establishment. In fact, they are such an asset to Putin in terms of boosting public hostility to Russian liberalism that if they hadn't already existed, Putin might have been tempted to invent them.....people who blindly back a U.S. democracy-promotion line are doing an injustice to the very liberalization they seek.

Lieven's case is similar to the one I have put forth here,

The truth of the matter is that like Ahmed Chalabi and other "democracy promoters" who have sought U.S. aid, these writers care neither for American nor for Russian interests, but only to enlist U.S. help in trying to bring themselves and the groups they represent to power and influence.

The Other Russia cares certainly for US interests in so far as they coincide with their own. Yet this is bound to backfire as Putin can portray liberals as traitors and Natzbols and by extension The Other Russia as Nazis, hardly an edifying image in a land that makes much of its sacrifice in World War Two.

With regards some liberal think tankers Lieven comments,

They may well wish for democracy-but not always or necessarily if it comes with unconstrained capitalism and the assumption that to be a democrat means sacrificing your national interests to those of the United States. In the case of Russia, these American assumptions in the 1990s helped lead to the reaction of Vladimir Putin. And Putin's Russia isn't the worst we could see by a very long chalk.