Posted by Sean on May 2, 2008
I stumbled across Shaun Walker’s “No Laughing Matter: Cartoons and the Kremlin” while perusing Kompromat.ru. I only realized after a few minutes that the article was originally published in the Independent and translated for InoPressa.ru (interestingly without the above caricature).
No laughing matter indeed. As noted Russian cartoonist Mikhail Zlatkovsky tells Walker, what was once permitted under Gorbachev and Yeltsin is taboo under Putin. Zlatkovsky’s satires of the vozhd’ abruptly came to an end after Putin’s inauguration in May 2000. It was then that his editor at Literaturnaya gazeta informed him, “Misha, we’re not going to draw Putin any more. The young lad is very sensitive.” Zlatkovsky’s drawings of Putin haven’t appeared in the press since. And soon after that neither did his and many other cartoonists’ satires of ministers, Kremlin aids, Chechnya, and military brass. Even a drawing of Patriarch Alexy II “prompted ..read more
Posted by Sean on May 2, 2008
Sandwiched between the Dalai Lama and Barack Obama on Time‘s 100 Most Influential Leaders and Revolutionaries is, for some, a rather unlikely figure: Vladimir Putin. Time already ignited insult and outrage in December when it had the gumption to name Putin its Person of the Year. (The hawks in Washington were hoping for General David Petraeus, seeing his possible recognition as praise for their “surge.”) It’s likely that naming VVP as one of the most influential will elicit similar condemnation. I’m sure some of the more paranoiac among the chattering classes will think Putinites have infiltrated Time‘s editorial offices.
Also intriguing is the fact that Madeleine Albright wrote Time‘s blurb for Putin. Albright, who in 1999 and 2000 described him as “shrewd, confident, hard-working, patriotic, and ingratiating,” sees Putin as someone who has become after eight years in office “more confident” and for his Western counterparts, “less ingratiating.” ..read more
