Monthly Archives: December 2006

Litvinenko mania continues. A web of personalities, events, investigations, analyses and conspiracy theories has been woven so intricately that it is difficult to make any sense of it all. I think it’s time to consult the tea leaves and chicken bones. Maybe the gods can tells us who killed Alexandr Litvinenko and why. But since the gods don’t seem to be answering their phones, or maybe my tea leaves and chicken bones are a bit too weathered, I suggest a few articles below to catch up (or is it confuse?) those interested (if there is anyone left!) on unfolding details on a story that seems will never die. One thing is for sure in all this mess, Litvinenko was clearly involved in some shady business that is not fitting for a fierce critic or saintly dissident many tried to paint him to be. ..read more

By Daut

In what Moskovskii Komsomolets calls “an echo of the explosion at the Cherkizovskii market,” five Moscow militsia officers and a police dog named Steve were injured by a homemade bomb intended to kill 20 year old antifascist activist Tigran M. According to newsru.com, Tigran’s problems with local nationalists started after he went to Saint Petersburg for slain activist Timur Kacharava’s funeral. Soon after that, graffiti reading “Tigran, tell Timur we said hi” appeared on the wall of his podyezd.

On Friday as he was leaving his apartment, Timur noticed a swastika drawn on the wall and a sign on the heater outside his door that read “Black assed khachi (a derogatory word for people from the Caucuses) live in apartment 231″. He was about to remove it, when he noticed that it was attached to a plastic bottle filled with liquid and powder. ..read more

The “March of Dissent” has certainly come and gone. The demonstration was modest and certainly ineffective on a political level. And while I don’t think the event should be overblown, I do think the March does raise some interesting questions about the Russian state, how it deals with opposition, and perhaps how it understands its power. In this sense, the “March of Dissent” continues to haunt.

From news reports, it appears that a smorgasbord of Russian security forces were on display for the “March of Dissent”—OMON, MVD, militsia, plain clothes police. Estimates put the citywide deployment at 8500, with 1000 of them at the march. The march itself was with little disturbance. Leaders from the Other Russia coalition simply made speeches denouncing Putin. Few demanded or attempted to break the ban on marching. “We decided to spare your ..read more

The “March of Dissent” continues to generate opinion and discussion. I especially liked Julian Evans’ description of how the Other Russia and Nashi rallies provide an interesting contrast as well as serve as symbolic testaments to the state of Russian youth politics. Here is an excerpt:

TWO RUSSIASJulian Evans, Moscow

Two rallies in Moscow weekend – one by the new opposition movement called The Other Russia, the other by the Kremlin-funded Nashi youth group – provided a stark contrast.

I was walking up Tverskaya, through Pushkin Square, when the police started. A long, long row of Ministry of Interior (MVD) police, the foot-soldiers of the Russian state, which seemingly has an infinite number of them to dispose of at any given time. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a green line stretching 600 metres to Mayakovskaya, where an opposition ..read more

Three days ago, Russian MVD commandos raided the offices of Garry Kasparov under the auspices of the “On combating extremism law.” The law, which was passed in July of this year, expanded the definition of “extremism” to include public slander of officials, as well and include acts of vandalism, racism, and other forms of political extremism. The law was originally passed to target the far Right, but hearings held by the Federation Council in October argued that the law should be expanded to include the far Left. A report prepared by the Prosecutor general’s Office for the hearings stated, “members of such informal groups of extremism inclination as skinheads, Russian National Unity and the National Bolshevik Party not only spread the idea of national, racial and religious enmity and hatred, they commit crimes on those grounds against the lives and health of citizens that cause public reaction.” ..read more

Friends at UCLA have been asking me about this interview with Perry Anderson what was published in Kommersant in October. The Russian version can be accessed here. I provided them a synopsis of it, but inquires continued to the point where I just decided to translate it. I provide it here for the rest of you non-Russian speakers to read. — Sean

The Future of One Illusion

Kommersant

31 October, 2006

Twenty years after the collapse of communism leftist ideology has neither lost its actuality nor its political perspective, argues Perry Anderson, a scholar of contemporary Western Marxism, professor at University of California, Los Angeles, and editor of the New Left Review, who was brought to Moscow as part of the “Russian Debates” project. Kommersant columnist Igor Fediukin spoke with Perry Anderson about Hugo Chavez’s regime, the “New Left” in China, ..read more