Category Archives: Putinism

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 ..read more

Contrary to what most people think, I see few signs of the neo-Sovietization of Russia.  What I have observed, however, is a return to Russian traditionalism, even a kind of re-embrace of Tsarist symbolism.  I’ve noticed this in several areas of Russian daily life: Christmas cards with the recently canonized last Romanov family, icons of the last Tsar sold in kiosks, large portraits of Petr Stolypin and Sergei Witte at the entrance of the International University, and book after book reevaluating the late Tsarist period, newly published volumes of Stolypin’s collected works, and the memoirs of not only Witte, but the diaries and biographies of princes and princesses in bookstores.

Let us also not forget the growing assertiveness of the Orthodox Church in cultural and political life, or the fact that Dmitri Medvedev’s inauguration looked like a Tsarist ..read more

Russian chinovniki are known for a lot of things–graft, ineptitude, oblomovism, and when necessary, zealous obsequiousness.  The latter is usually the only thing that seems to spur him off his perch, which is usually behind a desk, into some kind of action.  As any student of Russian history knows, the dynamic between the chinovnik and his superiors is usually one where the latter reigns down on the head of the former, often with a measure of force since this is really the only way to pull the bureaucrat out of lethargy.  Sadly, for the chinovnik this dynamic also entails that when he follows the often inept orders of his bosses, he, not the leader, gets blamed when everything goes to hell.

Being a Russian bureaucrat can be a precarious as much as it is a rewarding position.

Sometimes, the chinovnik takes preemptive action ..read more

Yesterday, December 1, was 75 years since the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization, and Stalin ally.  It was on the night of December 1, 1934 that a certain Leonid Nikolaev, a disgruntled party worker, shot Kirov in the secretary’s third floor office. Nikolaev was immediately caught and interrogated under Stalin’s personal supervision.  He was executed shortly thereafter.

Rumors have been circling for years as to what Nikolaev’s motives were.  Some have suggest that Kirov was having an affair with Nikolaev’s wife.  Others have suggested that he had a personal or work beef with Kirov.  These questions remain mostly unanswered.  Partly it is because they are unanswerable. But also because the majority of historians believe that Nikolaev did not act alone.  For them, Stalin was the main culprit and wanted to get rid of Kirov because of his popularity.  Since Kirov has been held up ..read more

It looks like Nashi might have crossed a line in their campaign against Alexander Podrabinek.  According to Vremya, the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation made an official appeal calling for an investigation of Nashi’s “illegal and amoral” campaign to hunt down the journalist. The appeal reads:

The campaign to hunt the [Podrabinek] clearly violates existing legislation and demonstrates obvious signs of extremism: fomentation of discord and the violation of a citizen’s human rights and freedoms. There presently are signs of the violation of articles 23 and 25 of the Russian Constitution (the inviolability of private life and residence.) The violation of article 24 which prohibits the use and distribution of information about the private life of an individual without his sanction: it is unlikely that A. Podrabinek gave his address to anyone for the organization to picket his home.  Finally, and this ..read more

The results of the mayoral election in Sochi were as expected.  United Russia’s candidate Anatoly Pakhomov won.  No repeat of  the Murmansk mayoral contest allowed. The losers, Solidarity’s Boris Nemtsov and the Communist Party candidate Yuri Dzaganiya, have already charged massive fraud, dirty campaign tricks, and use of a variety “administrative resources” to hoist Pakhomov to victory.  Both candidates were systematically barred from local television, their billboards removed, and campaign literature confiscated.  Local Sochi tv even smeared poor Nemtsov with a 20 minute film claiming he was a South Korean spy. And what dastardly plot was he hatching for the east Asian nation? Conspiring to move the Olympics to Seoul.  As if.

Early voting served as the perfect opportunity for stuffing the box in favor of Pakhmonov. And if that wasn’t enough to tip the balance, then mobile poll buses were dispatched to the Abkhaz border.  Last week, Sochi’s ..read more