Category Archives: Colored Revolutions

I don’t claim much knowledge on the intricacies of the explosive situation in Moldova.  For anyone who has been asleep the last few days, Moldovan students are attempting their own “colored revolution.”  On Tuesday, over 10,000 students ransacked the Moldovan Parliament demanding new elections after a Communist Party electoral victory on Sunday.  The Communists won around 50 percent of the electoral, beating out their fractious liberal rivals, and claimed a super majority of 60 seats in Moldova’s 101 seat parliament. The students claim mass vote falsification. But unlike the innocuous colors of orange, tulip, and rose, the Moldovan youth appears to favor blood red.

Anyone interested in unfolding events from a variety of sources should check out Scraps of Moscow.  Lyndon’s knowledge of Moldova is impeccable.

For an breakdown of why the Communists won, see Vladimir Socor’s “Ten Reasons Why the Communist Party Won Moldova’s Elections Again” from the Eurasian Daily Monitor. ..read more

There is a specter haunting Russia–the specter of colored revolution. Or so says Vladimir Putin. Clearly having no qualms about beating a dead horse, Putin told a Moscow campaign rally that shadowy Westerners are supporting oppositionists with hopes of returning Russia to the dark days of the 1990s. Here some quotes the Guardian has supplied:

“Unfortunately there are those people in our country who still slink through foreign embassies … who count on the support of foreign funds and governments but not the support of their own people.”

“There are those confronting us, who do not want us to carry out our plans because they have … a different view of Russia. They need a weak and feeble state. They need a disorganized and disorientated society … so that they can carry out their dirty tricks behind its back.”

“They are going to take to the streets. They have ..read more

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the Russian liberal opposition.  Not only do they seem to be out of touch with the sentiments of the population, or seem to offer any alternative to Putinism, they also appear prone to something I call historical transfiguration.

Take for example, what “parallels” Grigory Yavlinsky of Yabloko, Leonid Gozman of SPS, and Garry Kasparov of Other Russia see between the Russia of 1917 and Russia of 2007.  Yavlinsky said that some of those parallels are “the dominance of corruption   and  bureaucracy,  the  absence  of  inner  mechanisms  for modernization,  the  absence  of economic and political competition, the absence  of a mechanism for the government’s renewal, and the absence of the chance to form a responsible and efficient opposition.”  Gozman thinks that like in 1917, today’s rulers have an “absolute feeling of stability, and the tsar also  had  it.  In addition, the opposition is being ousted ..read more

As Duma and presidential elections approach in Russia, the Kremlin and its supporters like Nashi have amplified their charges that the United States is funding Russian opposition movements. In his 26 April “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly,” Putin added his own take about the increased influx of foreign money into Russia’s political system. “There has been an increasing influx of money from abroad being used to intervene directly in our internal affairs,” he stated. “Looking back at the more distant past, we recall the talk about the civilizing role of colonial powers during the colonial era. Today, ‘civilization’ has been replaced by democratization, but the aim is the same – to ensure unilateral gains and one’s own advantage, and to pursue one’s own interests.”

Given Putin’s own democratic record many have panned his analysis as just another means to justify his authoritarianism. ..read more

I’ve been debating whether to write something about the events in Kirgizia, but have decided to defer to those who can untangle the complexities surrounding the protests calling for President Kurmanbek Bakiev’s resignation.

Wally Shedd at the Accidental Russophile has provided some initial news reports along with recommendations for further reading. More authoritative resources for news, analysis, and voices from the ground are Registan, Eurasia.net, and New Eurasia.

One article I found that examines the geopolitical context around Tulip Revolution Part Two is M. K. Bhadrakumar’s “Kyrgyzstan Caught in US-Russia Squeeze” in the Asia Times. Bhadrakumar writes: What can be regarded as common between Nicaraguan presidential candidate Daniel Ortega and Kyrgyz President ..read more

Revolution are often written backwards. An event may be declared a revolution from the outset but whether that event actually becomes the social phenomenon we call “revolution” can only be assessed after the fact. The result of narrativizing revolutions backwards has left us with very few revolutions in human history. For example, the French Revolution of 1789 was a major revolution, if not the model for the world. But the French Revolution of 1852 appears to us now as a blip on the historical screen. It is interesting for sure. After all it inspired Marx to write one of his most beautifully written and analytically difficult texts, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. However, 1852 is so forgettable because it was a restoration rather than a revolution. Because of, rather than despite of mass peasant revolt, Louis Napoleon became Emperor of France. ..read more