I have little love for Russian liberals. Readers of this blog probably know that well. Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov in particular, as one can sense from my take down of their 2008 anti-Putin screed for the now defunct and sorely missed The eXile. I even giggled when Nashi threw piss in Nemtsov’s face.
The dynamic duo is back with a new Putin obsessed treatise, elegantly entitled Putin. The Results. Ten Years. So much for creativity. It is sure to get more media attention than it deserves. I have yet to read it, and probably won’t. I’m sure my eXile piece applies just as well to this one. According to reports in the Russian media, the text evaluates Putin’s decade long run and the tandem’s two year performance. Vedomosti writes that Nemtsov characterized the text this way on his blog:
In Russian society there are persistent myths imposed by official propaganda. There are many: the myth that Putin pacified the Caucuses and defeated terrorism, the myth about the increased birth and decreased mortality rates, the myth that he defeated the oligarchs and successfully solved the social problems of society. In our report all of these false claims are debunked with figures and facts from available sources.
Boring. Somehow I can’t help thinking that I’ve heard this song before. But, hey, I’ll let you be the judge. A million copies have been printed up and shipped off to Moscow and Petersburg.
Well, make that 900,000 copies. The Russian news is reporting that police seized a shipment of 100,000 copies in a traffic stop in St. Petersburg, for, get this “irregularities in the documentation for cargo.” Reports Gazeta, citing the police:
A truck with the MAN make with Smolensk plates was stopped by traffic police at 9:30 am on Shpalernaya Street (a Yabloko branch office is located there). The cop issued a ticket for the violation of the article 16.12 of the Administrative Code (the violation of traffic signals or road markings): Heavy vehicles are prohibited from entering the center of St. Petersburg without the proper permits,” the police department stated. “When the inspector went to check the load, it became clear that the invoice on the copies stated a Smolensk printing press, while the publishers imprint on the actual books was a the Moscow press. The goods will be temporarily detained and checked.
Not sure why the discrepancy between the invoice and the copies matters. Nevertheless, it was enough for the cops to pinch it. I can see tomorrow’s headlines: “Putin Impounds Critics.” Yep, because no one gets pulled over for traffic violations in Russia. Or harassed for not have the million stamps and forms needed to do anything. And, well, opportunists always have their shit together because they are, like, honest and principled just like us in America. One would think they would have their papers in order considering the big target Russian liberals have on their back. They do, after all, live in Russia. Despite how silly all of this sounds, we should score one for Nemstov and Milov. The cops just gave them the best advertising in town: claims of repression.
Update
It’s funny how things become clearer in just a few hours. Now Gazeta.ru is reporting that the cops have finished their check of the 100,000 copies of Putin. The Results. Ten Years and dutifully shipped them off to the MVD’s Center “E” for inspection. For those who don’t know, Center “E” is the outfit devoted to combating “extremism.” Nemtsov and Milov may be a lot of things, but being extremists is definitely not one of them.
This means that my above cynicism is now dashed, making me actually think that something is indeed rotten in St. Petersburg. I hate it when the Russian authorities’ sheer idiocy and paranoia make me sympathize with the liberals. I just hate it.
And if you need more proof that this seizure is convenient, not to mention downright suspicious, check this out: It comes a mere day before the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Over the next few days, Medvedev is set to hobnob with businessmen from around the world to ensure them that Russia is worth their bucks. Apparently the chance that one of Nemtsov and Milov’s pamphlets falls into an unsuspecting businessman’s hands and they learn there’s mass corruption (shock!) in Russia is just too risky. As Dr. Smith used to say in Lost in Space, “Oh the pain. The pain.”
This whole incident also proves that Nemtsov can be right every once in a while. “In his opinion,” says Gazeta, “now the report will be read by more than a million people.” All too true. Score: Team Solidarity 2 : 0 Putin.
Thanks, Sean. Perhaps, the Russian liberals are not really Russians? On their demonstrations they carry posters written in English and, apparently, do not know what to do when stopped by the Russian traffic police…
Cheers
Yes, it’s propaganda alright. While there are several caveats to the rising birth rates, portraying this fact as a “myth” is an exercise in myth-making of its own.
I also don’t believe that “official propaganda” exactly says that Putin “successfully solved the social problems of society”.
I read the demographic section of their work. The level of disingenuous usage of statistics and sources is frankly amazing. First example: Russian population lost 1.6mn people 1992-2000, 5mn people 2000-2010 (ergo Putin = bad), with no mention being made of immigration (of ethnic) Russians being much higher in the 1990′s.
“Every year there are fewer and fewer Russians, alcoholism, smoking, traffic accidents, the lack of availability of many medical technologies, and environmental problems take millions of lives. And the emerging rise in births has not compensated for our declining population.”
That crazy Nemtsov! How dare he tell such blatant lies!!
Oops. . . that wasn’t Nemtsov it was Dima Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/modernize-or-marginalize/408544.html
So obviously,the president himself needs to be impounded and blockaded and censored and arrested and castigated as a fraud. Just can’t help but wondering when it is going to happen . . .
Why?
Honestly, I can’t really see anyone at the very top executing this kind of “raid” with the intent of snagging Nemtsov on extremist charges. I often wonder if it isn’t a middle or lower rank official trying to impress the boss with his loyalty, the belief that as leaders, they can’t just let this go unanswered, or the tried and true strategy of suppressing would be opposition by killing them with bureaucracy and annoyances, death by a thousand cuts-like. In this case, I wonder if it’s not a ruse, that someone just wanted to get their grubby little paws on it themselves, and hey, if it takes 100,000 out of circulation, all the better.
But at this point blatant persecution and censorship of opponents is a very futile strategy. The former will only give them fame, and the latter is impossible in our day and age. Putin might be corrupt, but he’s not a moron.
I’m convinced this is the result of a lower level police officer thinking too much. I’m sorry if I implied otherwise. I assume the materials will be released in a few days (after the economic forum). Still, the liberals will reap a lot of column inches of PR from it.
Sean, your prediction has obviously been proved totally wrong and you’ve admitted that therefore your original analysis was obviously bogus. Isn’t it about time you reconsidered your whole view of the Kremlin and the opposition, which is obviously entirely suspect given the absolutely false characterization of this situation that you gave originally, including in this comment?
Shouldn’t you at least in light of all this error on your part tone down your haughty condescending rhetoric?
Have you even met Boris Nemtsov once?
Are you at all jealous because his writing has been praised by the New York Review of Books and yours hasn’t? Could that jealousy be clouding your objectivity?
Why doesn’t either the ГБДД (or whoever seized the shipment) or the MVD’s Section E have standing orders to alert the highest authorities when someone considers applying an anti-extremism law to 100,000 copies of liberal paraphernalia? My only guess is that this is a yet another demonstration of the Russian’s government’s stupid, mean, and unfortunate vendetta against an entirely peripheral political force.
However corrupt the state or “not moronic” Vladimir Putin, avoiding incidents like these would be entirely possible, if only someone really high up unambiguously sent the message: stop harassing these assholes. While the liberals are themselves implicit in this relationship (refusing sanctioned protest sites, seeking out ways to be arrested and abused), this is undoubtedly a two-way street — an idiotic tango impossible without the власти’s ongoing conscious effort to fuck with and slap around the opposition.
That this continues is, I think, reasonable evidence that folks like Vladimir Putin (and indeed Dima Medvedev) aren’t always the calculating realists many would like to think they are. Maybe it’s the Power Vertical’s sad paranoia, maybe it’s a series of personal beefs with the always-tiresome leaders of Yabloko, Solidarity, and company? Whatever it is, the police need to chill the fuck out.
Why doesn’t either the ГБДД (or whoever seized the shipment) or the MVD’s Section E have standing orders to alert the highest authorities when someone considers applying an anti-extremism law to 100,000 copies of liberal paraphernalia?
This is the problem, right? There is no well defined definition of extremism. Taking the banned extremist material list as an example, what constitutes “extremism” is defined by lower courts. “Above” has virtually no role in controlling what is extremism, only the parameters of its elasticity. Don’t that this comparison too literally, but its just like “enemy of the people.”
Correction: ГИБДД*
“…Power Vertical’s sad paranoia…”
I think that’s a pretty powerful factor in cases like this.
I talked to a couple NatsBols hangers-on (not even actual NatsBols) from Podmoskovye who got scooped up by some Center E cops and hauled in for an “explanatory conversation.” They said the guy’s office wall was plastered with photographs of enemies of the people like Kasparov, Limonov, Kasyanov and Nemtsov. The dude heads up Center E for all of Podmoskovye.
Center E, by the way, is the new incarnation of UBOP, the Interior Ministry’s now-defunct anti-organized crime department. It was considered one of the most endemically corrupt divisions in the ministry. Now those guys are charged with stopping “extremism.”
It begins.
Being a person that doesn’t trust politicians in general, all “patting on the back” of the government officials looks like propaganda to me. Even them admitting their mistakes feels like PR.
Thank you for the article Sean. I’ve translated some excerpts from it and your earlier article on Exile regarding that “dynamic duo” as you’ve put it, and posted it in addition to discussion of recent Adomanis article on Nemtzov, for readers of Yabloko forum.
Any thoughts on Yabloko ( or links to your previous articles about it?)