Comments on: Klebnikov Murder Five Years On

By: Khabar

Khabar — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:20:46 +0000

Another Western demagogery.

By: Kolya

Kolya — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:20:58 +0000

Bravo, Sean. Thanks for the informative post.

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:14:24 +0000

Kevin Rothrock:

If you want my opinion, there’s no great difference between 90s and 00s. Whatever this might mean.

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:12:20 +0000

Kevin Rothrock:
Your point can be agreed on, but one point: “mass crime”. Murders of journalists don’t amount to “mass murders”, Holocaust or genocide of Armenians. Instead, they are barely noticeable on the background of socially important murders (including murders of Russia’s officials, outstanding police officers, etc.)

By: Kevin Rothrock

Kevin Rothrock — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:04:42 +0000

Anarchy/Russian democracy and the Power Vertical/’Totalitarianism’ are both pretty lousy.

I don’t think it’s illegitimate for you to prefer one over the other, but this is, I’d argue, just another page in those debates that produce nothing but humiliation for everybody involved. (“Who’s worse: Nazis or Commies? Who suffered more: Jews or Armenians?” etc.) Trying to prove that one mass crime is worse than another inevitably degrades into apologetics.

If Sean’s post criticized Putin for murdering innocent democrats (it doesn’t) and if he lauded the 1990s and Boris Yeltsin (he didn’t), then perhaps you’d be in the right place to sing from the mountaintop about how Putin is the lesser of two evils, or – as your comment about the “destructive inertia of the 1990s” might indicate – an innocent leader merely trying to steer his country to safety.

But since this isn’t a rewrite of the Black Book of Communism, I wonder if you shouldn’t calm down?

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:28:18 +0000

Kevin Rothrock:

Of course, it’s bad. What then? Without Putin it would be worse. The key trouble is not Putin, but the destructive inertia of 1990s.

By: Kevin Rothrock

Kevin Rothrock — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:42 +0000

We can all hope to enjoy the improvement that is graduating from anarchic journalist assassination to slightly less frequent, and more predictable journalist assassination. Call me a sentimentalist, but it all still seems pretty “bad” to me.

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:02:32 +0000

Kevin Rothrock:

And note, that you are shocked of an idea of journalists murders only because it’s an approppriate way in your society. It doesn’t mean it’s a true way. What about tens thousands of suicides a year in our countries, what about millions of traffic accidents? Ultimately, what about the idea that sooner or later all of us will die? Does it shock you?

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:58:26 +0000

Kevin Rothrock:
Unlike you, I’m easy with an idea that there are 1-2 journalist murders a year here. No, it doesn’t shock me. I accept life as it is. And the steady improvement I see here over the last years is not a bad thing IMHO.

By: Kevin Rothrock

Kevin Rothrock — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:22:54 +0000

Evgeny, you strike me as the kind of guy who is fascinated by arguing about which was the worst holocaust in history, or which was the worst -ism, etc.

Violence against journalists is always bad. That Sean here remembers one who died in the current decade isn’t to spit on those who died ten years before. Just calm down.