There is a specter haunting Russia–the specter of colored revolution. Or so says Vladimir Putin. Clearly having no qualms about beating a dead horse, Putin told a Moscow campaign rally that shadowy Westerners are supporting oppositionists with hopes of returning Russia to the dark days of the 1990s. Here some quotes the Guardian has supplied:

“Unfortunately there are those people in our country who still slink through foreign embassies … who count on the support of foreign funds and governments but not the support of their own people.”

“There are those confronting us, who do not want us to carry out our plans because they have … a different view of Russia. They need a weak and feeble state. They need a disorganized and disorientated society … so that they can carry out their dirty tricks behind its back.”

“They are going to take to the streets. They have learned from western experts and have received some training in neighboring [former Soviet] republics. Now they are going to start provocations here.”

On the one hand, I get the hyperbolic pontificating. Much of electoral politics is about conjuring a bogeyman in hopes to scare the public into voting for you. And inciting public panic over orange clad revolutionaries, “islamo-fascists,” immigrants, homosexuals etc works well to mobilize voters. Demonizing the Other and then linking your opposition to it is a proven political tactic.

On the other hand, I can’t help chuckle at the Putin and United Russia’s excesses. First they ensured that the OSCE pull out of monitoring the elections. Limiting the number of observers, stalling visas, and placing restrictions on observers made the OSCE cancel their plans. Now Russian Electoral Commission chief Vladimir Churov claims that OSCE’s decision was their own, or more specifically the decision of the United States, which he says controls its Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or ODIHR. Again more bogeymen.

Plus Churov was quick to note that while the OSCE bowed out, other election monitoring organizations didn’t. Russia’s Duma elections will be “observed” by 300 monitors from Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Commonwealth of Independent States. That’s about 25 observers per Russian time zone.

All of this points to the Russian propensity to overstate their efforts. The truth of the matter is that Russia can be flooded with election monitors and United Russia would still win. Even if the United Russia parliamentary margin will be less that desired, “Plan Putin” still maintains hegemony over Russian politics. No opposition party in real contention seeks to radically change course. Even the Communists are acclimated themselves to Putin’s Russia.

Sure, there may be something to Kremlin’s claim that they don’t need their elections verified by anyone and that sovereignty means not succumbing to outside meddling. But what all of this rhetorical and bureaucratic maneuvering really says to me is that Russia still hasn’t learned the democratic game. First, the game requires using money and advertising not so much to pummel your opponent, but control the boundaries of political discourse. The former is well done, the latter not so much. Here they might want to sneak a peak at the American Republican Party’s play book. They are masters at it. Second, the game requires the adept use of the law to mask corruption with good legal arguments. Lawyers have a knack for making something clearly illegal appear perfectly within the boundaries of the law. Postmodern politics have made armies of lawyers much more effective than detachments of police. Lastly, the game requires challenging anyone who criticizes you to do something about it. Yes, one aspect of sovereignty is about preventing meddling. But real sovereignty is when you have the confidence and fortitude to just ignore whatever critical salvos tossed at you.

So in the end, Russia should have let the OSCE come and monitor. And when the OSCE would make the inevitable cries of foul, Russia should just shrug its shoulders and promise to better next time. That’s what any other real democracy would do.

I attended the AAASS National Convention this past weekend in New Orleans. I participated on two panels. A roundtable titled “Youth’s ‘Janus-Face Nature’: Youth and History in Russia/Soviet/Russia” and a panel called “Looking into the Past, Preparing for the Future: Civil War, Generations, and the Militarization of Soviet Youth, 1918-1941.” (The convention’s full program can be found here.) I co-organized both with Matthias Neumann, a young scholar who works on the Komsomol from University of East Anglia in Britain. Both panels were well received, though not well attended. This is expected since each of the conference’s twelve sessions, which spanned from Thursday afternoon to Sunday noon, had so many panels, that low attendance is a given unless you are a big name or work on some ultra-trendy topic. There was a visible increase in panels on media–film, television, and radio. Panels on Imperial Russian history were few. The Soviet period dominated in history. Predictably, the those that featured gore and ultra-violence were heavily attended. Panels on the Terror, Collectivization, and violence in Russia in general were packed. Especially if scholars like Lynne Viola, Ronald Suny, Norman Naimark, Sheila Fitzpatrick, J. Arch Getty, and other “celebrity” scholars.

Academic conferences are odd places. You really get a sense of how small the Slavic scholar community really is. More importantly, you realize how compartmentalized it is in regard to period, topic, theme and discipline. Panels are rarely multidisciplinary. Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Russia tend to not cross paths. There is a growing Central Asian and Caucuses contingent but they seem to still be looking for where they fit in all this. Many of them go to the Middle East Studies Association conference, which is unfortunately at the same time as AAASS. Though general attendance was probably well over 1000, you quickly realize that the topics are either so specialized or esoteric that they could only appeal to experts. Conferences in general are probably one of the few places were so many people with shared interests, though with divergent opinions, are concentrated in one place. But I guess that is the point.

There is nothing too exciting to report. The conference is far to large to give an overall impression. Plus the whole thing is quite exhausting. Though it was nice to see some friends that I only get to see this time of year, I’m glad that such an event is only once a year. One high point was Sunday morning at the book exhibits. Despite promises that I wouldn’t buy any books, I took advantage of 50% discounts many publishers offer on the last day of the convention. Of the several books I bought, the ones that excite me the most are Alexander Rabinowitch’s third installment to his trilogy on the Russian Revolution, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd, Abby Shrader’s Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia, and Douglas Weiner’s Models Of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia.

As for New Orleans itself, time didn’t permit me to take in the city as much as I hoped. However, a walk through the French Quarter is enough to see that the city is still recovering from Katrina. The city is depopulated. Many restaurants and shops in the Quarter still remain shut down or open intermittently. When and if they are open, they tend to be empty. I thought of going on a “disaster tour” but refrained because I couldn’t morally justify paying money to view misery. The few looks I did get of the city, it made me want to read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism even more.

At any rate, a shout out to all my friends. And apologies to all the people I didn’t see or didn’t give ample time. See ya all next year in Philly.