Monthly Archives: January 2009

For those interested in Nashi, I recommend listening to this interview with Dr. Regina Heller from the University of Hamburg Institute for Peace and Research (a recent article of hers on Nashi can be found here).  I think Heller’s discussion serves as as good primer for understanding the many aspects to the pro-Kremlin group.  I find it puzzling that the interviewer is surprised that the state is mobilizing youth for support.  She seems to think that youth are somehow inherently against the state and for change.  This must be some kind of post-1960s myth because historically youth have more often than not been used for rallying nationalist and pro-government support.  Groups like the Boys’ Brigades, Boy Scouts, Wandervogel, Hitler Youth, and Komsomol were not known for their anti-government rhetorics.

One issue Heller timely takes up is whether Nashi’s days are numbered since it’s “served its purpose” and is now “politically obsolete” ..read more

I don’t even know what to make of this.  Nashi announced on its website that the Iraqi Electoral Commission has recognized it as election monitor.  That’s right Nashi. As the “only Russian organization” granted such a role, Nashists will join the 800 international observers there to oversee Saturday’s vote.  Nashi’s self-designated task will be to make sure Iraq is as democratic as the US says it is. Says Konstantin Goloskokov, who will lead the Nashi delegation,

“The elections in Iraq are a test of real democracy.  We have serious reasons to doubt that America has built a democratic state in Iraq in the last six months. It is important to verify this with one’s own eyes whether Iraq has passed this test of democratization.”

Nashi is well versed in the intricacies of “managed democracy” so I can’t imagine that their standards will be too high.

There has been alot of criticism of President Medvedev’s and Prime Minister Putin’s silence  in regard to the murder of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova.  Dimitri Medvedev has finally responded.  But not in a overtly public manner but via a meeting with Novaya gazeta Editor-in-Chief Dmitri Muratov and former Soviet President and Novaya shareholder Mikhail Gorbachev.  According to an interview Muratov gave to RFE/RL about the meeting, Medvedev appeared to be monitoring the situation and was concerned about the murders.  As to why he didn’t make a statement about the killings earlier as some, including myself, hoped, Muratov said the following:

Mr. Medvedev said he absolutely did not want to make any statements [on the killing of Markelov and Baburova] because he knew very well how things work in the administration — he worked as chief of the presidential administration for many years. And he said he understood perfectly well that ..read more

Here’s something that should wet the palates of scholars and induce wet dreams among the necrophiliacs of Soviet history.  Ukraine announced that it plans declassify the entire KGB archive dating 1917-1991.  The number of documents stamped “secret” and “top secret” is estimated at 800,000. The announcement comes after the law “On the declassification, promulgation, and study of archival documents connected with the Ukrainian Liberation Movement, political repression, and famine in Ukraine” was signed by Viktor Yushchenko on 23 January.

Among the documents are “Cheka instructions, execution lists, deportation maps, albums with photographs of fighters of rebel armies, reports of the KGB to the Central Committee on the development of the Ukrainian dissident movement.” Interestingly, this declassification is so sweeping that it will even go against normal archival practice in protecting living individuals. “Not a single agential file or report that possibly contains information about current politicians will stop the process of ..read more

Yaroslav Kuzminov, the head of the Higher School of Economics (VShE) in Moscow received a disturbing letter from the Main Department of Internal Affairs (GUVD). The letter strongly recommended that the dean expel “politically unreliable” students, reports Nezavisimaya gazeta. “Politically unreliable” in the police’s opinion, are those youth who participated in last December’s Dissenters March sponsored by “Other Russia.”  Six students from VShE’s Economics and Political Science departments were detained as they were leaving the Mayakovskaya metro station on their way to the demonstration.  They never made it.  Now the police recommends that the university consider expelling them. NG reports:

The most specific passage of the document is: “Participation in unsanctioned protests are one type of extreme activity and have a high level of social danger that demands security organs to take the adequate measures of reaction.” GUVD asked “to examine the question about removing conditions that contribute to the perpetration ..read more

With Labor set to go down in flames in next month’s parliamentary elections in Israel, what is a beleaguered Ehud Brarak to do to pump up his tough image among crucial Russian voters?  Why, “Putinize” himself, of course. As Lily Galili reports in Haaretz:

In a bid to gain the vote of the Russian immigrants in the elections, Labor leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will quote Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s statement about killing Chechen terrorists “on the toilet.”

“As you people say, they should be whacked when they’re on the toilet,” Barak will say in a radio election broadcast intended for Russian speakers. Labor, which is launching its campaign among the Russian speakers this afternoon, will ask them to support him, as they did when he last ran for prime minister 10 years ago.

Galili goes on to explain that Barak’s Putin plagiarism is his way of “fashioning his image after ..read more