EU Referendum

Things happen in other parts of the world. Honest. They are often worse than anything that happens here. That is hard to accept but this report might just convince a few of our readers.

A few weeks ago the Interantional Federation of Journalists produced a detailed reports about journalists in Russia who have died in violent or dubious circumstances. At the time they announced that Russia was the second most dangerous country in the world for journalists and media workers, the first being Iraq.

As Iraq is still going through a serious upheaval while Russia is, theoretically, at peace the first should surely be avoided to the latter.

The report is "based on the impressive work of Russia’s two media monitors, the Glasnost Defense Foundation and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations" and adds:

For years the response from the Russian law-enforcement agencies has been inadequate. Investigations into murders of journalists have led to only 35 court cases (and 29 convictions). No information is to be had from police or prosecutors concerning over fifty other shootings, beatings and stabbings. There is an evident climate of impunity surrounding the cases where a journalist was killed for his or her professional activities. Investigations of the forty killings in this category have led to only three convictions.

The database is of some interest not least because it shows that Chechnya has claimed relatively few journalists (possibly because most are not allowed there). The biggest casualty rate is in Moscow. What more needs to be said?

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Labels: Russia

There seems to be a lot of kerfuffle around because President Putin has made some more hard-sounding statements in preparation to the G-8 meeting this week-end in Germany. His target, if one may use that expression, is the proposed missile defence system, which is likely to include several former Soviet colonies, with the Czech Republic standing first in line.

As Pravda reports, the testing of new missiles to overcome or destroy the NATO defence systems has begun. Then again, it is fairly useless to ask Pravda whether they have been successful. Just like old times, really.

As President Putin knows all too well, this is a defence shield, not rockets. Therefore, it is, at the very least, disingenuous of him to talk about Russia seeing this as an offensive act. Nor do I find myself particularly impressed by his threats of another Cold War (for most of us that started some time ago) or of pointing Russian missiles at Europe. Were they every pointed anywhere else? Well, I assume there must be some pointing at China but apart from that?

The big questions are how good are those missiles still and how stable. In other words, would they get off the ground and are they leaking nuclear material?

Of these, the second is a far greater danger to all, especially the people of Russia. In the first flush of Russia’s friendship with the West there were several projects to decommission nuclear instalments in the former Soviet Union and to make them safe. The plans came to very little.

In fact, the famous Court of Auditors report about corruption in ECHO and other Commission institutions that eventually led to the resignation (for a couple of hours) of the Santer Commission, used the Russian and Ukrainian decommissioning programme as one of the examples. The money had disappeared even before it arrived in Russia. Any amount that may have made its way there from other sources was never accounted for.

Interestingly enough, Putin was supposed to have promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he would tone down the anti-Western rhetoric, though possibly she merely demanded that he stop referring to the United States as a Nazi state. (That sort of thing is done only by left-wing bloggers such as the various contributors to the Daily Kos.)

Clearly, Putin does not see fit to tone down his rhetoric as far as the West in general is concerned. Prime Minister Blair has expressed disquiet, pointing out that the West needs Russia in a more constructive mood. President Sarkozy is promising that he will have a "frank" discussion with President Putin this week-end. Let us hope that they will have a press conference afterwards.

Meanwhile RIA News has reported [link in Russian] that the demonstration by “The Other Russia” for June 11 (day before Russia Day) will not be allowed to go down the Tverskaya (one of Moscow’s main streets, known in the Soviet period as Gorky Street.) They will be allowed to hold a meeting but not to march.

So, as we have said before, Putin continues to whip up fear and hatred in his own country. Russia, according to the Putin doctrine is surrounded by enemies who wish to destroy her, presumably by moving bronze soldiers around and building defence shields against such countries as North Korea and Iran. They want to undermine Russia’s faith in herself and her destiny by asking for the extradition of people accused of murder and – this is the crunch point – by supporting oppositional forces who are, by definition, traitors to the government.

With parliamentary and presidential elections coming up, the ever stronger sound of that old slogan, “La Patrie en Danger” is becoming more and more sinister.

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Labels: Russia

Not the least of the puzzles that surround yesterday’s EU-Russia Summit, which ended with a spectacularly “frank and open” press conference, is why it took place in Samara, a fairly large city on the Volga, whose history goes back to the sixteenth century. In fact, the Summit was outside Samara, in a sanatorium called “Volzhsky Utyos” (Volga Cliff, a direct reference to a popular Russian song).

The one thing everyone agrees on is that the EU-Russia Summit was unsuccessful. Whether it shows that there is a crisis in the relationship or merely business as usual has divided opinion. Nor is there any agreement as to whether the EU or Russia won the battle of words.

There does seem to be a general consensus in the media that Russia is now showing her renewed strength and vigour. We beg to differ. A long piece on Russia, EU and what it might all portend is here.

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Labels: Russia

To demonstrate beyond a shadow of any doubt that it is not the problems of the Russians in Estonia that bother President Putin but the need to create the image of a beleaguered Russia, it was announced on Russian Centre TV that a new piece of legislation has been proposed.

Last Friday [4 May] the Russian Defence Ministry announced that a presidential decree was being prepared to protect [Soviet] war graves abroad. It should be signed by the end of May. A representative office will be opened in Russian embassies abroad consisting of four to six people and will deal with the protection of [Soviet war] graves and monuments. They will work in the main problematic zones: Poland, Hungary, Romania, Germany, the Czech Republic, China and the Baltic states. For these purposes 1m dollars will be spent every year.

The report raises all kinds of horrible scenarios, some real, some possible, some imagined. It seems that the Polish Ministry of Culture intends to dismantle monuments of the Socialist period but, it has been emphasized by the Minister, not the memorials to the Red Army. Russian Centre TV clearly does not believe these assurances. After all, have the Poles not taken down the memorial to Marshal Konev in Krakow?

At this point one must mention one or two facts about Marshal Konev, who had fought in the Red Army during the Civil War under Klim Voroshilov, Stalin’s closest mate. This meant that the ferocious purge of army commanders in 1938 -39 passed Konev by. In fact, he was rapidly promoted.

During the Second World War his record was so-so but eventually he did find himself commanding the First Ukrainian Front and being in charge of the liberation of Ukraine, Poland and some of eastern Germany. He it was, who stopped the Red Army from crossing the Vistula to support the Warsaw uprising that was put down by the Germans with great brutality.

This strategic decision ensured that the Soviets swept across the country as liberators with no troublesome help from the locals and proceeded to impose their own puppets on Poland as government and, above all, judges. The first post-war trials were of those who had survived the Warsaw uprising.

Marshal Konev subsequently was put in charge of Austria and East Germany, was demoted by Stalin in 1950, supported Nikita Khrushchev in the post-Stalin power struggle (not stupid) and distinguished himself once again by commanding the Soviet troops in Hungary in 1956.

Definitely the sort of person whose memorials one must protect.

Then there are the Bulgarians who are also demonstrating a failure of memory as “most of Europe” has done in the last twenty years.

The city authorities of the Bulgarian town of Plovdiv twice attempted to dismantle the [Soviet] stone Alesha [memorial] and only the country's Supreme Court was able to save the Russian warrior.

The Hungarians, who, incidentally, have taken down most of the Socialist era statuary and put them all into a special theme park just outside of Budapest, are no better from the Russian point of view. (Hey, they remember that Stalin statue and the boots left behind.)

In April this year the World Union of Hungarians collected signatures for the removal of the monument [below left] to Soviet soldiers from Freedom Square in Budapest.

Well, it’s still there but gets vandalized from time to time. Maybe the new protection officers will prevent that in the future.

The only reliable ones are the Germans.

After the monument to Soviet soldiers in [Berlin's] Treptow Park [see top picture] was removed for restoration in 2003, rumour had it that it would not return to its former place. But everything turned out well that time: the German authorities spent 1.5m euros on the [monument's] restoration.

Though even there one cannot be too certain and there will be a new protection office in Germany as well. And in China. China? Are there monuments to Soviet soldiers in China? Seems a little unlikely. Maybe it is the Chinese propensity for turning such toys as the “Minsk” aircraft carrier (below) into a tourist attraction that is annoying the Russians.

OK, joke over. Let’s be rational here. Most of the mentioned memorials have been moved rather than destroyed and similar events have happened in Russia and other CIS countries. Or is it the graves that are to be protected? Surely, it is better for soldiers to be buried in military cemeteries than in the centre of various cities and towns. Ah yes, but those graves were essential to show the benighted East Europeans who was master.

When it comes to rewriting history, few countries are as adept at it as the Soviet Union was and, it would appear, that the present Russian authorities are happy to live with that and happy to let the people of the country to believe that, which means the people will not know for some time to come what has been done to them, by them and in their name throughout the twentieth century.

Finally, an interesting point is raised in the report. Exactly, what will those protection groups do if there is an attempt to move either the remains of Soviet soldiers or a memorial to them? Will they become involved in the ensuing squabble? That might cause an unpleasant international incident. All but one of the problem countries are member states of the European Union. It looks like Javier Solana might once again be reluctantly dragged into this messy dispute.

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Labels: Russia

After the first flutter of excitement that big changes are coming in France, no matter who wins the presidential election this Sunday (and please remember that the President of France is also a member of the real UK government) things have settled down a bit. Maybe there will be no changes after all.

Not so, says Moscow Times. There will be changes for Russia. Judging by the noises that the two candidates have been making they do not seem to share President Chirac’s (or, for that matter, Chancellor Schröder’s) unbounded affection for President Putin.

Nicolas Sarkozy who is, let us not forget, the son of a Hungarian refugee from the Soviets, has been talking about events in Chechnya in a way that is not entirely complimentary to Russia, pointing out that a great country ought not to be handling matters that way. On his return from a visit to Washington he said:

When I think that those who disapprove of my visit with Bush are the same ones who would shake hands with Putin, it makes me quietly laugh.

Reminds of Hercule Poirot talking of things giving him furiously to think.

Ségolène Royal seems to have been reminded of two things. One is that foreign policy is, in the French constitution, rests with the President. Therefore it would be a good idea if she had some policies on foreign and security matters. So far she has limited herself to telling the world and the French electorate that she wanted to see a strong France within a strong Europe and European defence integration is a good idea.

The other point is human rights. After her unfortunate comment about the Chinese legal system being superior to the French one in speed, she has tried quite hard to promote herself as someone to whom human rights matter. During her debate with Sarkozy she has called for the boycott of the Olympics in China unless that country drops its opposition to international action in Darfur. Hmm, not quite there yet.

She was on stronger ground when she praised Anna Politkovskaya and talked of her assassination. Again, not too good for the Russian government.

The way Moscow Times presents it, Chirac was the greatest impediment to European integration, particularly when it came to defence matters and this suited Russia very well, as Putin and others prefer to deal with European countries separately, in order to play them off against each other. There is a good chance that Chirac’s successor will be more interested in promoting European defence and, in the case of Sarkozy, that may well be together with the United States. Certainly, he has made it clear that the question of the missile defence shield was not simply a question for Poland or the Czech Republic to face. It was one for all of Europe.

Meanwhile, Mme Royal seems determined to prove France’s exceptionalism in one respect. In the past, whenever there was a serious woman candidate for a top political job in any of the developed countries, she tended to win. Then again, Mme Royal seems to conduct most of her campaign on the basis that she is a woman and everybody who opposes her does so from the standpoint of the phallocatie.

This may well have been true about her Socialist rivals but Sarkozy, much to her annoyance, has been very careful not to give her any ground on that. Even when she made one blunder after another during her foreign trips he refrained from criticizing her thus preventing her from playing the self-righteous card. It might be a good idea for Hillary Clinton’s opponents to take note of that. The Senator is not above using the gender card. (But then, she is not above using the race card either.)

In today’s interview with RTL Royal went completely over the top, warning France that if Sarkozy is voted in there will be a civil war in the country.

It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won).

To me that sounds horribly like the desperate words of a loser but one can never predict in a democracy. That, presumably, is what annoys Russian politicians about western countries.

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Labels: France, Russia

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe Mart Laar, the former Prime Minister of Estonia and a devoted free-marketeer, had an article entitled “Imperially Deluded”[subscription only]. In it he analyzes President Putin’s more or less imperial ambitions, his desire to reunite what was the Soviet Union or, at least, the Russian Empire and his turn away from the attempts made under Yeltsin to understand twentieth century history. All of this is very worrying for Europe and the world and, as Mr Laar rightly points out, for the Russian people. It is also fraught with problems for President Putin and his successor, whoever he may be.

The article also corrects the various accounts of Estonia’s liberation that are and have, for the last sixty odd years, been put about by the Russian authorities. (Incidentally, one does wonder yet again about those youngsters and their supposed rage. They look to me to be in their late teens and early twenties. Yet they are screaming about their grandfathers being called gangsters. Given how early people marry and bear children in Russia, I’d say they are talking about great-grandfathers at least, possibly great-great-grandfathers.)

This is what Mr Laar says:

All this agitation comes over a monument that not only was not destroyed but that most Estonians view as symbol of over four decades of Soviet occupation. On September 22, 1944, the Red Army “liberated” Tallinn not from German forces, who were nearly gone, but from a legitimate Estonian government. The Estonian flag, not the German swastika, was taken down from government buildings that day.

The swastika had been removed by Estonian soldiers, some of whom died in the fighting. The Soviets arrested the Estonian government, shot some of its members and sent others to the gulag. So the Estonians shared the fate of the leaders of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, who were also hunted down and killed by the NKVD after putting up a valiant fight against the Nazis.

These are the facts that official Russian ignores, and most ordinary Russians are not even aware of. Members of Estonia’s 1944 government haven’t even been rehabilitated in post-Soviet Russia, whose Supreme Court still considers them “enemies of the state”, as the USSR branded them.

Official Soviet behaviour was similar in other liberated countries with a great deal of effort going into ensuring that local resistance to the Nazis was side-lined and exiled at best, murdered, judicially or otherwise, at worst. On the other hand one cannot blame the soldiers and officers involved. They were undoubtedly told that these were all fascists, Nazis and the enemy in general. What did they know? What do the journalists who have been foaming at the mouth in the last couple of days know?

Some Soviet soldiers realized what was going on and brought stories home. Quite a few of them found themselves transported to the gulag as well. A very large proportion of the victorious Red Army celebrated a number of Victory Day anniversaries behind barbed wire in Siberia.

So much for the history that is still unresolved and is causing so much anguish. What of the present and the future? It is true that until you know and understand the past you cannot move forward to the future. This seems to apply to Russia, a potentially great country but, apparently, doomed to go round and round in historical circles.

This time round, however, there is a new kid on the block – the European Union, who has insisted that the only relationship it could have with the former Communist countries is for them to become members. Estonia is, thus, a member state as is Latvia, which was being bullied, though not so spectacularly, last year.

Russia, as the Estonian government has pointed out, is interfering in Estonian affairs, inciting riots in the country, attacking Estonian diplomats in Moscow. Should the EU not make a stand?

We have already documented the mewling response the European Union has produced. It has sent a delegation to Moscow. Nor has it exactly been active in lifting the blockade on the Estonian embassy that has finally gone, according to Kommersant.

It seems that members of Molodaya Gvardiya and Nashi, both pro-Kremlin organizations, controlled and supported by the Kremlin, have lifted their siege, much to the local militia’s relief. One can imagine that the militiamen were itching to deal with that lot the way they usually deal with demonstrators but were restrained by the knowledge that this spontaneous action was entirely favoured by the authorities.

It seems that the Estonian ambassador’s scheduled holiday was used as an excuse to call back the hooligans, who departed, enormously pleased with themselves and shouting nasty and stupid abuse at Estonia, the Estonian ambassador and the Estonian people in general. At some point, Putin will have to deal with these youthful cadres, who may well get out of hand. That will not be pretty.

Meanwhile, some businesses have decided to boycott Estonian economically.

Although the Russian authorities did not proclaim any economic sanctions against Estonia, regional businessmen and some companies took it upon themselves. Thus, Severstaltrans holding suspended the construction of a car-assembling factory in Estonia, which was to assemble up to 120,000 off-road cars annually (the investments into this project reach about $80 million). Akron chemical holding decided to suspend the funding of investment projects in Estonia. Bashkiria’s chain Universal-Trading stopped selling Estonian goods in its stores. Owner of Kalev confectionary Oliver Kruuda said on Thursday that “the Russian market is closed for Kalev”. According to Estonia's Aripaev, Kalev’s sales in Russia made up €260,000 monthly.

It seems unlikely that these businesses merely decided to cut off their noses to spite their faces. One is justified in suspecting a certain amount of government pressure behind the scenes.

On the whole, Russia prefers to deal with individual member states, knowing full well that some of the older ones like France and Germany will probably find ways of accommodating it. Unfortunately, this crisis has been too big and too public. The EU had to step in as has NATO, possibly, once again seeing that the EU will do precious little.

The EU is now threatening to withdraw its support, bought by Russia reluctantly signing up to Kyoto, for that country’s membership of the WTO unless it stops trading sanctions on Estonia, resumes the supply of oil and stops hassling her diplomats. As the United States was never that keen on Russia joining, it seems quite likely that this will be put on the back burner again.

Meanwhile the Finnish President, Tarya Halonen, has expressed what must be the thought in many an EU politician’s head: above all we must have joint line, no matter what that might be. The crisis with Estonia will not affect the EU-Russia Summit that is due on May 18 and only Germany, the President, can deal with the matter. The Estonians must be a little surprised by the Finns running scared but this may not be the general opinion in that country. Politicians, as we know, do not always express the general opinion in their country.

Both the EU and NATO have, apparently, offered support and solidarity to Estonia though their main concern is to defuse the tension with Chancellor Merkel particularly active in trying to ensure that the coming Summit is not derailed. So far, no member state has asked for a postponement but if the situation is not resolved this may well happen.

In any case, what can be achieved at the Summit? It is quite clear that Russia is determined to show her supposed stature as a great power by bullying anyone who appears to be a possible victim. Once these victims stand up to the bully, there is a retrenchment.

The EU has boasted mightily of its soft power and ability to influence other countries through it, unlike the nasty Yanks who always use force. Actually, even the second half of that is not true. Well, here is Russia, on the EU’s doorstep, that could do with a bit of influencing and soft power. All the EU seems to be doing is limp-wristed flapping and running up Angela Merkel’s phone bill and all because that famed common foreign policy has no real aim or purpose. All it ever wants to achieve is peace and quiet and everybody getting along. If that means giving in to bullying, well, so be it.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: common foreign policy, Estonia, Russia

It really did look like the story of the Bronze Soldier would die. May 1 was quiet in Tallinn, though the, no doubt, spontaneous pickets in Moscow outside the Estonian embassy continued. There was also a demonstration outside a press centre where the Estonian ambassador was due to hold a press conference, though she was, for a while prevented from leaving the embassy compound.

At one point, while the militia was looking elsewhere, about 25 of the picketers quite spontaneously broke into the building and smashed up a good deal of the furniture.

Now Russia seems to be doing what it does best: bullying. Of course, it might be a coincidence but all of a sudden, the state owned railway company has decided to carry out maintenance on railways leading to Estonia, thus preventing the export of both oil and coal. Well, actually, the coal has been halted because there are not enough wagons, it seems, in the whole of Russia and the Estonians could not find substitute ones immediately.

The sudden cessation of oil exports is likely to have a knock-on effect as much of the produce is then re-exported to northern Europe.

This is sadly reminiscent of Russia’s reaction to what they view as recalcitrant behaviour in other former Soviet republics or, in the case of Poland, just colonies.

The European Union and the holder of the presidency have found themselves drawn into the fray as Estonia is insisting that the EU should make a stand. Russia is, as they say, interfering with the internal affairs of one of the member states.

Chancellor Merkel has expressed her concern and the European Commission will send a delegation to Moscow to discuss the matter. “The dispute,” Reuters says in what must count as a serious understatement, “is likely to cast a cloud over an EU-Russia summit to be held in Russia on May 18.”

The question one cannot help asking is what is Russia hoping to achieve. There has been a good deal of bleating in the western media about this being a newly strengthened, confident Russia displaying its prowess. Confident? A country that pretends to a threat from another one that is about one thousandth its size? A country that can offer nothing to anyone except economic and political bullying or the odd bit of strafing from the air, as in the case of Georgia?

A truly strong, secure and confident Russia would, in my opinion, be a good thing. I have always maintained that the most frightening development could be a continuation of Russian instability and feeling of insecurity. Frightened – whether for good reason or not – Russia becomes a completely unpredictable force. President Putin is working hard to prove to the Russians that there are enemies inside and outside the country who need to be browbeaten (or just beaten up). One wonders where this is all leading. A change in the constitution, perhaps?

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Labels: Estonia, Russia

Could the story of the Bronze soldier and his peregrinations together with the Russian deliberate over-reaction be coming to an end? One can but hope, though, if past history is anything to go by, President Putin or his ministers will find some other excuse to try to stir up trouble in the former Soviet republics.

Both the BBC Russian Service and RIA News have reported that the statue would be open to visitors today in its new place. The latter is ahead of the Beeb with a photograph (it looks real) of the Bronze Soldier in the new position though the wall has not been reconstructed behind him. The official opening will be on May 8, VE Day or the eve of Victory Day, depending on where you are.

Meanwhile, the accusations have started flying back and forth. The Estonian Foreign Ministry has accused the Russian government of deliberately fomenting the protests in Tallinn and Narva and has protested against the continuing picketing of the Estonian embassy in Moscow, in the process preventing the Estonian ambassador from leaving the building.

The same news item on the BBC website tells us that the coffins of 12 Soviet soldiers have been found near to where the memorial had stood until this Friday.

Meanwhile the Russian parliamentary delegation has arrived in Tallinn. According to the Estonians discussions will centre around the scores of Russian citizens who were arrested during the riots and the one Russian citizen who has died of knife wounds.

The delegation seems to have a different view:

The Russians will call on Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip to resign, delegation chief Nikolai Kovalyov told the Baltic News Service before leaving Moscow.

They also want the statue of the Bronze soldier at the centre of the row to be returned to the central Tallinn site from where it was removed last week, he added.

Since neither of these things are likely to happen, they might as well discuss what to do about the various Russians from Russia.

The EU has finally noticed that something is going on around its eastern border. Chancellor Merkel has spoken to President Putin about the Estonian problem among other matters and Ilkka Kanerva, the Finnish Foreign Minister has called for the maintenance of a joint line on the subject. Of course, that begs the question of what that joint line might be and, it would appear, that the attitude of the new intake, especially the Baltic States and Finland could be somewhat different from that of other member states. But that’s just attitude.

When it comes to the joint line, it seems to consist of a general agreement that this is a bilateral problem (aren’t they all?) and the EU need not interfere. So much for a common foreign policy though the German Foreign Minister is desperately warning about a renewed Cold War. Given what has been going on in the last few weeks and months, the words horses, bolting and stable doors spring to mind.

The oddest reaction came from Javier Solana, though this seems to have been reported only by RIA:

The EU's leading foreign policy and security official said Saturday he was concerned by the use of force against protesters following the removal of a WWII statue in Tallinn Friday.

In a telephone conversation with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana urged Estonia to avoid violence and defuse tensions, Solana's press secretary said.

Apparently, Solana confirmed that he did not think this was an EU issue but a bilateral one between Estonia and Russia (just as he thought Poland’s problems with Russia were no concern of his). The question is why Solana? If the story is true he was commenting on something that is not part of his portfolio. He deals with the EU’s foreign policy while the behaviour of the Estonian police is internal EU policy.

Is Solana making noises because this is, after all, a matter for the Common Foreign Policy Supremo, there being the problem of Russia interfering with the internal matters of an EU member state? If so, why not say so? Or, perhaps, he did but RIA did not report it. Then again, no-one else seems to have reported him either.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Estonia, Javier Solana, Russia

On my last visit to Moscow some years ago I went with a friend to a church and the nearby graveyard. It was explained to me that the graveyard was now minute because of the huge construction efforts throughout the Soviet period but before that it had been a large military cemetery where many of the Russian and allied soldiers and officers were buried during the First World War.

In the post-Soviet years attempts had been made to put up monuments to various Russian officers of that period. It was an interesting experiment since the fate of the various men had been different. Some had joined the Red Army and some the White; some went abroad and died there or, possibly, were handed over for belated settling accounts at the end of the Second World War; some disappeared in Stalin’s purges in the thirties and some actually survived to die in bed to be buried with honour.

This applied to a few senior officers only. For the most part no trace was left of the several hundred Russian and allied soldiers who had been buried in that military cemetery during World War I.

This does bear some relevance to the present problems that surround the question of the Bronze Soldier and the Soviet soldiers buried in the nearby graves (though there is some talk of there being older burials there) and this rather peculiar picture supposedly of the desecrated memorial, though it is obviously photoshopped.

Graveyards and cemeteries do not remain untouched for ever. Anyone who has ever worked on an archaeological dig would know that the dead had been dug up and unceremoniously reburied or simply dumped in the past. One may argue about the rightness of it but not about the facts.

The problem is not so much Estonia as Russia. As I have pointed out before, there was never any suggestion that the Bronze Soldier should be destroyed or that the exhumed soldiers should not receive proper re-burial. It would have been perfectly possible for the Russian government to insist on full military honours for them. Instead, this seemed like a good opportunity to stir up hatred against the West and particularly against the countries that have definitely got away, the Baltic ones.

A longer piece on what has been going on in Russia and Estonia can be found here.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Estonia, Russia

According to the BBC Russian Service website (usually more reliable than the rest of the BBC) there were 44 demosntrators injured and 13 police officers, most the wounds being caused by flying glass. One man is dead, a victim of a knife fight between two gangs of demonstrators, according to the Estonian authorities. 273 people have been arrested.

At an extraordinary meeting the government decided that the Bronze Soldier needs to be removed immediately as in "police custody". Presumably the excavations will carry on when the situation calms down.

It is not quite clear whether this is what the Russian authorities wanted. At the moment there is a great deal of huffing and puffing, with the Foreign Ministry thundering on about "sacrilege" and "inhumanity" and the Speaker of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov, accusing the Estonian authorities of mocking the dead and those who had liberated them from fascism.

On all sides there are suggestions that the President should break off diplomatic relations with Estonia. The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper and it is, kind of, though not as much as it used to be) says that there will be a meeting outside the Estonian embassy in Moscow. No doubt one of those old-fashioned "spontaneous" meetings.

Actually, there is no pretence even that this is spontaneous. It is being organized by the Moscow City Council and the participants will be activists from the "Young Guard" movement (presumably called after the well-known and somewhat turgid novel by the Soviet hack, Konstantin Fadeyev, about a group of youngsters who organized a resistance movement to the German invaders in Krasnodar) and from "One Russia" party.

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Kommersant quotes the Estonian newspaper Postimees, which said that "activists from Russia's Nashi movement have moved into the Meriton Grand Hotel Tallinn (69 euros a night) a few hundred meters from the monument". One wonders (though not too hard) who paid for this indulgence. It would appear that there is considerably less support for the "Night Watch", the self-appointed defenders of the Bronze Soldier, among the Estonian Russians.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Estonia, Russia

Not so long ago we wrote about the plan to move the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, the memorial to the Soviet Liberators (or, as all these memorials are popularly known, to the Unknown Rapist). The plan seems to be to excavate the nearby grave of 14 Soviet soldiers (we do not know for certain that they are actually Russian) and to move them together with the memorial to a military cemetery.

This has upset the local Russian population and the big neighbour to the East, where Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister and Mikhail Kamynin, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman warned Estonia, no later than today that the dismantling of the monument, excavating of the graves and moving the whole lot will cause serious problems between that country and Russia. Russian newspapers have been writing continuously about the outrageous attitude of the Estonian authorities who are denigrating the great achievements and sacrifices of the Soviet army in the Second World War.

Even the Chief Rabbi of Russia has been roped in:

We know that extremist forces are raising their heads in some European countries, nursing plans to rehabilitate the Nazi ideology. We know that totalitarian regimes, among them the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran, have made the negation of Nazi crimes a central tenet of their propaganda.

One wonders how much of this Rabbi Berel Lazar believes. After all, it is his own government that has been particularly friendly and helpful towards the Ahmadinejad regime.

The problem of the Bronze Soldier illuminates the difficulty of assessing twentieth century history and, in particular, the events of the Second World War in the eastern half of Europe. The truth is that the two halves of the Continent had different experiences throughout the century.

To the Russians (and, let’s face it, some Balts and East Europeans) the various monuments to the Soviet soldier symbolizes the great sacrifices and achievements of the Great Patriotic War and the glory of the liberation the Red Army brought to various European countries. The truth is that the sacrifices were enormous and the achievement was astonishing. It is the liberation that has become problematic.

To many East Europeans and the Balts in particular the monuments are symbols of near-fifty years of oppression afterwards as well as the horrors of that liberation. The Baltic States were invaded by the Red Army in 1940, followed by the NKVD, then by the German Army, followed by the Gestapo, then again by the Red Army followed by the NKVD. All in all, it has been estimated that a third of the three countries’ population disappeared into Soviet prisons, camps and exile.

At the same time one cannot help feeling that some agreement could have been reached on the fate of the Estonian Bronze Soldier, if Putin and Lavrov did not see this as a wonderful opportunity to wind up Russian nationalism in Estonia and to play on that feeling of victimhood that is never far from the surface of Russian thinking. The Estonian authorities have emphasized over and over again that they do not intend to destroy the Soldier, merely move him.

Yesterday, the monument was covered with a huge tent, the square cordoned off and the border with Russia temporarily closed to prevent possible trouble. Work was due to start. Instead the police had to deal with about 1,000 demonstrators who screamed “fascists” at the Estonian police and refused to move, despite accounts in the Russian press of their determination to keep the demonstration peaceful.

The police used tear gas, water canons and stun grenades, eventually having to break the windows of cars in which the demonstrators locked themselves in. It is, as yet, not clear why it was necessary to use all this weaponry against 1,000 people.

Some of the crowd broke away and (accidentally, according to Izvestiya) broke the windows of the National Library, taking their revenge to other windows, shops and cars. Eventually, they were rounded up. One of the buildings targeted was the headquarters of the Reform Party.

There were several arrests and a number of people, including police officers, were hurt. Here is a video of some of the goings on, the general impression being of hooligan behaviour (as the Russians would put it). Interestingly enough those involved seem to be too young to care very much about what happened at the end of World War II.

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Labels: Estonia, Russia

There will be many exhaustive obituaries of Boris Yeltsin, the first elected President of Russia and the man who oversaw with variable success the transition into the post-Soviet era. All we can do on this blog is to make a few points about him that others might miss.

Boris Yeltsin came from the Urals, whose people are among the most difficult in Russia and he certainly lived up to that. Born in 1931, he went through the trauma of seeing his father arrested at a very young age, Yeltsin senior being one of the victims of the Great Purge of 1936 – 39, arrested together with millions in 1937. Unlike many, he survived.

Yeltsin graduated from the Urals Polytechnic Institute and became a construction engineer in Sverdlovsk (now, once again, Yekaterinburg). Subsequently, after a relatively late membership of the CPSU, he became the senior party official for the region.

That, as some commentators have already pointed out, put him in charge of one of the country’s most important industrial areas but it is another episode from that period of his career that most Russians remembered.

Yekaterinburg, as every schoolchild knows or should know, was the city where Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were slaughtered in 1918, as the White Army was rapidly advancing towards it. It was Yakov Sverdlov, then Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), in effect, the country’s President, who ordered the slaughter (no, it was not an execution) and was, in gratitude, honoured posthumously by having Yekaterinburg named after him. What goes around, comes around.

For some strange reason Ipatiev’s House where the murders took place survived the Civil War and subsequent development, becoming in the seventies a place of pilgrimage to many people. Yeltsin’s response was swift and unequivocal: the house was knocked down in 1977. In the post-Soviet era a church was built on the spot.

It was Gorbachev who pushed Yeltsin forward, putting him in charge of construction in the Soviet Union, only to have the man complain about the slow pace of economic reform (perestroika) in the country. This was done at a closed meeting of the Central Committee (not that much glasnost there wasn’t) in October 1987 and within a month Yeltsin was fired as Moscow party chief, his position at the time.

He had a heart attack (as who wouldn’t) and spent some time in hospital. For all of that he was dropped from the Politburo. The “great liberal” Gorby did not like people criticizing him.

From then on Yeltsin went from strength to strength because he grasped an essential truth. The time for keeping rows and debates within the Party behind closed doors had passed. One had to go to the people.

As a matter of fact, that time had never really existed. As long ago as the late twenties, Stalin’s rivals found themselves outmanoeuvred largely because they did not have the courage to appeal to the populace beyond the Party. Possibly they knew that the populace hated them all impartially.

In March 1989 Yeltsin was elected to the Soviet Parliament and in 1990 he became Chairman of the Russian Parliament, the Republic’s effective President, the first one to be elected.

You would think that by this stage it would have become clear to the experts in the West that the Soviet Union was probably doomed. Not so but far from it. While many of us, interested in the country, realized this, the solid cohort of Foreign Office experts and academic sovietologists continued to extol Gorbachev as the country’s hope. Yeltsin was apparently dismissed from too many calculations even though he obviously represented the future with Gorbachev unable to keep up with him.

Then came August 1991 and the attempted hard-line coup, supposedly against Gorbachev. A good deal about that episode remains murky but the winner does not: Boris Yeltsin, who defied the hard-liners in his stance atop a tank.

December 1991 saw the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, announced oddly enough, on the same day (8th) as the final agreement had been reached at Maastricht, though the treaty was not signed till early 1992. As one of the new developments in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) was the elaborate notion of a common foreign and security policy, it is worth noting that the supposed reason for that cannot be correct.

The collapse of the Soviet Union did not force “Europe” into trying to assume the role of the second great power as the negotiations had been going on for some years while the USSR was very much alive though not always kicking.

It is hard to summarize the Yeltsin years in a few paragraphs but looking back, we may be able to describe that period as the height of democracy and liberalism in Russia. At the time it looked like a bit of a mess, politically and economically, what with Yeltsin often indisposed (a good deal of that was genuine illness); the state monopolies privatized at extraordinarily low prices with many shares going to people who had been near the centre of power themselves; the first Chechnyan war started and ended ignominiously with no political development following it; prime ministers hired and fired with remarkable speed; and finally the promotion of an unknown middle-ranking KGB agent, Vladimir Putin.

Yeltsin’s re-election was rather shoddy, with a good deal of money being pumped into his campaign from all sources but such was the fear of resurgent Communism that this was not much questioned at the time inside or outside of the country.

The growing power of the “oligarchs”, most of them former Soviet officials, now Russian biznyesmeni, who were asset-stripping the whole country soured Russian attitudes to capitalism and, sadly, to democracy, as too many of the so-called democrats, zealous in privatization, were linked in various ways to the new rich or “new Russians” as they were known.

Bringing them to heel was the basis of Putin’s popularity, though it is the completely unnecessary and still continuing second Chechnyan war that propelled the man into real prominence. Of course, all that happened was that Putin substituted the previous oligarchs with his own, but these are, in one way or another, state officials.

There we shall leave the subject of this extraordinary man, not least because he, in the end, lived to the age of 76, unusual for Russian men, anyhow, but particularly unexpected for someone who has had quite so many health problems, self-inflicted or not.

One more comment needs to be made. In my opinion, the best way of understanding Russia in the twenty-first century is to look at her history in the eighteenth. The country has no political parties and did not really have them under Yeltsin either; what it has is a number of high-ranking officials whose rise and fall takes their followers up or down, all presided over by a powerful and unaccountable ruler (except through assassination in the past).

As then, so now, Russia is centralizing and integrating power and flexing her muscles, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so, but always uncertainly against the West. She will never be a true friend, no matter what any Western politician thinks but, one day, she might become a reasonable and close acquaintance.

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Labels: Russia

While everybody is watching the developments in the United States (and yes, this blog will have a summary of what has happened so far) let us not forget that another country, one considerably closer to us geographically, which has a greater influence on European development because of its reserves of gas and oil. I am, of course, talking about Russia where a presidential election is also due in 2008.

Unlike the vulgar Americans the Russians are not likely to have any razzmatazz. There will be an election and the man nominated by President Putin will win unless there will be a change in the constitution and he will stand again as a saviour of his country.

The BBC reports that former KGB officer, close Putin ally and until recently pugnacious Defence Minister, Sergey Ivanov, has been promoted to the position of first Deputy Prime Minister. This puts him on par with the front runner, the other first Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev. What jolly Cabinet meetings they must have.

The BBC also suggests that Ivanov is at present unpopular as Defence Minister, because of the many problems with the armed forces, in particular behaviour within the army. This would indicate that the BBC thinks all Russians have an extremely low IQ and are likely to forget within a year who the Defence Minister was for a long time.

The truth is that it does not matter. Whoever is anointed will be elected. Even our next Prime Minister, groomed for the post as I write, will have to stand in a real election some time.

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Labels: Russia

Two items of news from Estonia, apart from its unexpectedly high position in the European crime charts: Andrus Ansip, the Prime Minister has finally decided not to bother to negotiate a border treaty with Russia and the Russians are accusing the Estonians of nurturing neo-Nazism because the parliament has voted to remove the bronze statue of the Soviet soldier from the centre of Tallinn to a cemetery outside the city.

Those border treaties between the former Soviet Baltic republics and Russia have been somewhat problematic since the Balts would like some kind of an acknowledgement of the fact that they had existed as independent states between 1918 and 1939, were then invaded by the Soviet Union twice with a Nazi invasion sandwiched between the two.

The Soviet invasions, at least one of which is called liberation, have been responsible for the destruction through death and deportation of roughly a third of the population of the tiny Baltic States. When the Russian population of those countries complains about being discriminated against one must not forget that most of them moved there or were moved there to take up the jobs and homes of those who had gone east.

Convinced that they were there to rule for ever the Russians did not bother to learn the languages of the republics they lived in. The break-up of the Soviet Union did cause a great deal of displacement and bewilderment but of them all, the Russians in the Baltic States deserve less sympathy than many others.

What went wrong with the agreement between Russia and Estonia?

The two countries signed border agreements on May 18, 2005, and the Estonian parliament ratified the documents on June 20, but with additional demands linked to the 1920 peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Estonia.

On September 6, Russia notified Estonia that it was revoking its signature from the treaties because the 1920 document was no longer valid.

Moscow said the new provisions in the ratification law could be seen as legally entitling Estonia to make some territorial claims on Russia.

Moscow proposed including a provision "that all the previously signed agreements and treaties in bilateral history outlining the border are invalid" in mid-2006, but Estonia replied that it had no intention of resuming negotiations.

So that seems to be that, though as Mr Ansip points out, it is perfectly possible to live next to a country and have cross-border co-operation without any formal agreements. Most likely President Putin agrees with that and will go on doing so until it becomes convenient for him to blame the Balts for something or other.

That brings us to the bronze soldier. After the second invasion … sorry, liberation … of the Baltic States, there were referendums in all of them and by an overwhelming majority they all voted to become part of the Soviet Union. Presumably, even the people who went off into the forests to fight a ten-year long civil war, also voted to join.

To celebrate the liberation of these countries and all East European ones, large monuments were erected to the Soviet soldier, popularly known in most of those places as the monument to the unknown rapist.

The Estonians would like to remove their bronze soldier to a cemetery outside Tallinn and President Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Mironov, speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, one and all see this as a development of neo-Nazi ideology in Estonia.

Estonian arguments that Nazi insignia has been legally banned in the country cut no ice. Just to acknowledge that the Soviet invasion of 1944 was not the liberation longed for by the local population shows that the country is becoming neo-Nazi.

The EU has an interesting problem on its hands. Presumably, if the German proposal for making the denial of racist and xenophobic genocide illegal will go through, nobody will be allowed to say that the Nazis had murdered Jews and Slavs in the Baltic States. But, given the scale of Soviet activity, it, too could be called genocide. Was it on racist and xenophobic grounds? Did they simply feel the need to destroy large parts of the Baltic middle classes, intelligentsia and peasantry? Or did they really hate the Estonians? Some lucky lawyer is going to have to decide these matters.

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Labels: Estonia, Russia, World War II

Last year when the Russian parliament was passing the legislation that, in effect, imposed a much stricter control on all non-governmental organizations and charities, there was an outcry about the western ones, such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Seemingly, Putin relented and eased the controls.

Of course, the real target was never the western NGOs but the Russian organizations that wanted to preserve their independence from the state and might even have found themselves in opposition to it.

The Russian Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that shut down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. This organization, whose survival until now is astonishing enough, was funded by the European Union, the National Endowment for Democracy (US government funding) and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.

That would have been part of the problem. The other part is that it challenged the Kremlin’s interpretation of what was going on in Chechnya and around it.

Let us recall that journalists are not allowed into Chechnya and those who manage to break through come to a bad end. See Politkovskaya. Incidentally, the official enquiry into her murder seems to have stalled. I wonder why.

Last February Stanislav Dmitrievsky, the society's co-chairman, published in a newsletter Aslam Maskhadov's call for negotiations to end the Chechen conflict. Maskhadov was blamed by the authorities for the Beslan horror, though it was Shamil Basayev who gleefully claimed "credit" for it. One of the many investigations that should be happening but is not is into the Beslan siege and how it could have gone so wrong. Nobody in Russia or Dagestan believes the official version and all of us have seen enough footage to know that there were many actions there that need to be looked at. To say this, however, is to risk the wrath of Kremlin.

For his pains Mr Dmitrievsky was charged with inciting racial hatred, tried and given a two-year suspended sentence.

The article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal Europe [subscription only] continues:

The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society was later prosecuted for failing to remove Mr. Dmitrievsky from its board and membership roll. Moreover the society was supposed to publicly denounce Mr. Dmitrievsky within five days of his conviction, which it refused to do.

How wrong we were to assume that the days of required public denunciations have gone.

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Labels: Russia

The beginning of 2006 saw Gazprom throwing its weight around and raising gas prices to Ukraine, citing "market forces" as an argument. Unfortunately, that meant an immediate decrease in the amount of gas Ukraine was sending on to various other European countries and the EU was in an uproar (well, a small uproar). A very swift agreement was reached and, while the price Ukraine paid was raised (unarguably they had been underpaying but that was part of the deal Putin had promised to Yanukevich who proceeded to lose the election once the counting was sorted out) but Russia, Putin and Gazprom did not quite get all they wanted.

In the immediate aftermath of those events there was a great deal of talk about alternative energy sources, pipelines being built and more thought given (though not in Germany) to nuclear power. Little of it came to anything, though pipes are being constructed to various other former Soviet republics.

In the last few months Gazprom has consolidated its control of natural gas and, even, oil production in Russia, forcing Shell to "renegotiate" its contract and cede control of Sakhalin-2. It is beginning to look as if Gazprom, run by various buddies of Putin, is beginning to gnash its teeth at BP. One possible outcome of all this is a gradual dropping off in foreign investment and Russia not being able to fulfil her various contractual obligations to supply energy to European countries.

That could be a disaster for Putin and his possible successor, since the Russian economic boom, such as it is, relies entirely on export of oil and gas plus a few other natural resources. There has been no sign of investment in industry nor any attempt to develop and diversify Russia’s economy.

This year started with another Gazprom attack of the vapours – this is becoming a bit of a tradition. But because this particular attack was on Belarus, led by "Europe’s last dictator", Aleksander Lukashenko and a country through which considerably less gas flows to the West than through Ukraine, the EU and its members remained shtumm.

It seemed rather odd to have Gazprom (or the Russian government, whichever one thinks of first) bullying Lukashenko, who has been Putin’s most loyal ally. He will not take his country down the Western road, unlike the leaders of Ukraine and Georgia. So, why is he being bullied?

Well, some of it is money. Belarus has agreed to an increase in price from $47 to $100 per thousand cubic metres, to be raised again by 2011 to something like $300 per thousand cubic metres. Whether Belarus will be able to afford this and what will happen if it does not, remains to be seen.

Of course, the original price was extremely low. But it ought to be pointed out that it had been negotiated, if that is the word, as a bonus for Lukashenko’s unwavering support. Furthermore, as the Wall Street Journal Europe pointed out two days ago [subscription only], we cannot talk about such things as market prices when Gazprom exercises complete monopoly and refuses to open up to foreign investors.

In any case, the money is not the most important part of the deal and, it would not be altogether surprising if those terms were loosened up at some later stage. What Russia was really after is the 50 per cent stake in Belltransgaz, Belarus's gas pipeline monopoly.

Gazprom’s openly avowed aim is to control and consolidate the production and distribution of gas to all its clients. Russia refuses to ratify the International Energy Charter, under which signatories have to allow free access to pipeline networks.

Nor is Russia particularly happy with the proposed EU liberalization of the energy market, which will break up the existing Continental monopolies but will also prevent gas suppliers to own pipelines. And vice, as they say, versa.

This is most definitely not in Russia's interests and the last few months have shown us quite clearly how that country and its state monopolies understand the expression "market forces". Briefly, it amounts to "what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable". At the barrel of the gun, figuratively speaking.

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Labels: Belarus, energy, Russia