The Buie Knife

Music Video: Billy Joel Singing Leningrad

Seeking Out News from Russia

Since good, consistent international news, especially of Russia, has always been hard to come by in the American media, the Internet provides a great resource for people (unlike most Americans) really interested in international news. I particularly like the BBC news web site, and its country profiles, particularly of Russia, which even includes an audio clip of the Russian national anthem. I found interesting material on Chechen singer Liza Umarova, who hopes that her music calling for peace will win over audiences on both sides of the conflict.

Bush Too Soft on Putin's Attempts to Spread Authoritarianism

"That Mr. Bush has not said such words [that elections within Ukraine have got to be free of Russian influence] to his friend Vladimir only makes him look weak -- and raises the risk that Ukraine's democratic revolution will yet be turned back." -- Washington Post editorial.

Ukrainian Revolution Will Be Blogged

I visited the Ukraine once many years ago, and I have a special empathy for those wonderful people. My son Matthew had a fantastic visit there a couple of years ago visiting the family of his friend Oxana, as the pictures on his blog attest. He just IM'ed me that Oxana is in Kiev, demonstrating with her sister Olesia and tens of thousands of other citizens (latest estimate, 100,000) out in the freezing cold -- demonstrating for their country's freedom, independence, for democracy, and for honest elections. He's trying to ping her cell phone with IM, from the cruise ship he is working on in the Caribbean. Ain't technology incredible?

Our thoughts and prayers remain with Oxana, her family, and other Ukrainians. May freedom and democracy win out against totalitarianism!

For an on-the-ground report from a Ukranian blogger, click. "The Revolution Will Be Blogged." For insightful analysis of the situation, read Daniel Rezner's blog.

Russia, A Deeply Conservative Society

On the surface, the former Soviet Union has a history of sudden, radical change and transformation -- in 1917, the czarist regime was toppled and Bolsheviks ruthlessly seized power. In the early 1990s, communism collapsed, Russia ceded superpower status to the United States, and democracy supposedly was victorious.

But as I have observed in two trips to that fascinating and mysterious land, in many ways, below the surface Russia has not changed much since czarist days. That famous prayer of Topel in "Fiddler on the Roof": "God bless and keep the czar...far away from US!" still represents many Russians' historic view of politics -- political involvement brings mostly trouble.

You will find far more Russians who exhibit 19th century values, who are more nostalgic for the past than looking forward to the future, than you'll find Americans who exhibit 19th century values, who would choose a return to the past over the future.

Ironically, arch-conservatives in the United States, ostensibly suspicious of foreigners and particularly disdainful of former communists, may actually find today that they are sympathico and share values with Russian aparachniks, former communists, about the desire for ORDER, respect for TRADITION, comfort with funneling contracts and largesse to "our kind of people," an elite, establishment class of friends and cronies who have always run things, who are far less concerned with giving equal opportunity to new people, minorities, people of color, far less interested in economic democracy and political diversity than progressives in the United States.

Perhaps this explains why President Bush gets along so well with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul." Bush famously said of the former KGB head.

I was struck by what a basically CONSERVATIVE society Russia is, how slowly real, broad systemic change occurs, how tightly the citizenry holds on to their own notions of "traditional values." In my first trip, in the late 1970s, when anyone who visited the Soviet Union was suspected of being a radical leftist, I noted ironically that the Russians I met were as apolitical and indifferent to political activism and civil rights as the most conservative, change-averse traditionalists in the United States.

Whither Russia? Democracy or Autocracy?

My view of Russia as essentially a conservative and slowly changing society is confirmed in a new book, BETWEEN DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform, which addresses the question of where Russia is headed: toward democracy and openness or reverting back to its autocratic traditions.

Russia has made a lot of progress toward democracy since the Soviet era, but far less than what was projected in the optimism of the early 1990s. The authors suggest Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is moving back in an autocratic direction, according to a review by Richard Pipes, in today's New York Times.

Civil society remains under-developed; non-governmental organizations are weak; Russian political parties are weak. Members of the media have evolved since the early 1990s from "spokespeople for democratic change under perestroika to tools in internal power struggles among the political and business elite in the latter part of the 1990's. Currently the media have for the most part reverted to one of the roles they played under the Soviet Communist regime: the government's propaganda apparatus."

Legal institutions value order over freedom, hierarchy over democracy. Russians "have a high degree of tolerance for blatantly undemocratic phenomena, such as administrative lawlessness" and "unpunished violations of human rights," assert the chapter authors, Vladimir Petukhov and Andrei Ryabov.

The initial appeal of a Western-style governmental system was the economic prosperity it would bring to Russia. "When democracy promptly failed to bring prosperity, disenchantment set in, and today no more than 10 percent of the people continue to favor democracy," Pipes writes.

The authors might be more optimistic about Russia's future if they focused more on the de-concentration of wealth in the hands of the state and into the hands of the people of Russia, Pipes suggests. Is that truly occurring? Or is the wealth of Russia transferring primarily to a relatively few capitalists or "entrepreneurs"?

The Russian perspective on democracy and capitalism can be explained by Russian history, Pipes says. "If Russians mistrust democracy and the independent press, or if they set higher value on order than on freedom, the reason lies in experiences dating back to czarist days," Pipes observes. "Bewildered by a world in which they have been unable so far to find a secure place for themselves and perplexed by the uncertainties of freedom, Russians are instinctively withdrawing into the familiar universe of autocratic rule. Since experience has taught them they can have no influence on affairs of government no matter what the regime, they are willing to let their rulers do as they please so long as they allow them to pursue their private interests. They are profoundly apolitical because they can see little that government can do for them or they for the government."

Pipes quotes a specialist on Russian law, Stephen Holmes: "Those at the top neither exploit nor oppress those at the bottom. They don't even govern them; they simply ignore them." And that's the way the Russian people like it -- to be left alone. Because through bitter experience, they have learned that not to be left alone by government may actually be much worse.

Ironically, Russians in ways have a far more skeptical view of government than Americans, who join advocacy and lobbying groups and associations in droves, to get a larger piece of the economic pie from a far more responsive and less bureaucratic American goverment.