Monthly Archives: October 2008

The Putin cult continues.  Even though he’s no longer President, he’s still the man. Russians are still curious about Putin’s many movements, appearances, and events reports the Moscow Times.  Where will he be today?  What did the vozhd say on his working trip to Kazakhstan?  Just who are those lucky personages graced with his exalted presence? What a better way to follow the goings on of “Mr. Erotic Dream” than to give him his own website! To quote, Italy’s Gay TV host Alfonso Signorini, “Won-der-ful!”

Putin’s web site, which will be located at www.premier.gov.ru, promises to offer detailed information on Putin’s activities. For example, visitors will be able to click on a horizontal timeline to find out where Putin is at that moment and what he is doing, while an interactive map of the country will show where he has been and where he is planning to ..read more

The Russian media is abuzz with reports on the 90th Anniversary of the Komsomol.  Local celebrations, museum exhibits, and conferences are planned all over the country to commemorate the youth organization. In Pskov, the local office of the Committee for Youth Policy and Sport has organized festival called “My Komsomol Youth.”  Arkhangelsk has a series of events planned through November 4 “to give an objective judgment of the activities of the League, remember old friends, and impart our experience to young people,” says Arkhangelsk governor Ilya Mikhalchuk. “On these days we will celebrate the organization, which without exaggeration, gave us admission into life.”  The Volgograd provincial museum will host an exhibit titled “Milestones Glorious Path of the Komsomol.” Other cities holding events include Nizhni Novgorod, Cheliabinsk, Amur, Novosibirsk, Kursk, and Irkutsk, to name a few.  The biggest event was held on Sunday in the State Kremlin Palace in ..read more

Ninety years ago this week, 194 delegates from youth groups from all over revolutionary Russia met to consolidate themselves into an all-Russian youth organization.  Of the 194 delegates, 176 had voting rights, (the rest had the right to speak but not vote).  The voting delegates claimed to represent 120 different youth groups with a total membership of 21,000.  The core groups were two pro-Bolshevik groups, the Socialist League of Worker youth based in Petrograd and the Third International from Moscow.  Of the delegates, half (88) were Bolshevik Party members, 38 were communist sympathizers, and 45 were non-party youth.  Also present were three Social Democratic Internationalists, one Left Socialists Revolutionary, and one Anarchist.  The week long conference, which ran from 29 October to 4 November finalized the creation of the Russian Communist Youth League, or Komsomol.

To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Komsomol, SRB will follow the history, reminiscence, and celebrations ..read more

The BBC aren’t the only ones still sorting out South Ossetia.  Mark Ames dismantles the NY Times coverage in “The Cold War that Wasn’t“.  Like most American media, the Times was fully on board with the Russia = bad, Georgia = good crusade.  That is until facts made it too difficult to blindly sustain that line.  Even then, the Times made no overt self-criticism, and instead opted for articles showing that maybe Georgia wasn’t the glowing democracy that we all were made to believe it was.  A good correction, though horribly academic when it was published two months after the conflict was over.  Taking this as a cue, Ames rhetorically asks, then answers:

It’s interesting that the Times published this exactly two months after Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia–a military decision so off-the-scale idiotic that to call it a “gamble” is an insult to struggling addicts like Bill Bennett.

The real question, ..read more

What happened in South Ossetia? The war may be over but questions linger.  Who started the war?  Was there ethnic cleansing of Georgians?  What role did South Ossetian militas play in the conflict.  BBC has made available the first part of Tim Whewell audio documentary on South Ossetia where he uncover more pieces of the puzzle. Here’s BBC’s program description:

This summer’s war in Georgia sparked the biggest crisis in east-west relations for 30 years. When Russia sent its tanks across the border, its intervention was denounced around the world.

Reporting from Moscow and Georgia, and with rare independent access to the disputed territory of South Ossetia, Tim Whewell investigates allegations of ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages, and counter-claims that Georgia’s army was guilty of war-crimes against Ossetian civilians.

I recommend giving it a listen.

When I blogged on the “poisoning” of Karinna Moskalenko last week, I asked, “Was this a murder attempt, a warning, or just paranoia?”  Well now we definitively know: It was paranoia.  The French newspaper La Figaro reports that an investigation into the mercury that made Moskalenko ill was not planted there by a nefarious Putinite agent to sully another potential “fierce critic.”  Strasbourg authorities now say that the mercury came from a broken barometer left by the previous owner.  Moskalenko bought the car in August 2008 and just didn’t clean it.

One hopes that Moskalenko will now retract her statement “People do not put mercury in your car to improve your health.”  No people don’t, but it doesn’t help that when they do, they don’t clean it up.

I’m afraid that no matter what corrective Moskalenko provides, the damage as been done.  The articles echoing another Alexander Litivinenko scandal have already circulated ..read more