Under New Management – A Progress Report on Ivanishvili’s Georgia

Uncle Volodya says, “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. but if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it’s time“
Lorne Michaels

On October 1st, 2012, it was time. And the show went on. The increasingly-autocratic and dysfunctional government of Mikheil Saakashvili was swept away by the giddy tide of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s cobbled-together coalition, Georgian Dream.

You might say this emphatic rejection of the ruling party, Saakashvili’s United National Movement, and the thrusting into the ring of Georgia’s prodigal son and allegedly-eccentric billionaire – Bidzina Ivanishvili – was greeted in the west with the enthusiastic welcome normally reserved for a turd in the punch bowl, or a cockroach on a wedding cake. The west, not to put too fine a point on it, doted on the Columbia-educated, multilingual Georgian president (which he still is, until this October) as one of its own; a bold reformer and tireless advocate for western-style democracy – a fiction kept breathing by regular infusions of Georgian-taxpayer money to western lobbyists and PR firms, who sang the saccharine praises of Saakashvili the west loved to hear.

So says Lincoln Mitchell, in his punchy “What’s Next For Georgia? The End of the Rose Revolution“. My favourite outtake from this piece is, “Thus, this election did not end the Rose Revolution, because the Rose Revolution was already over. Rather, it defeated a regime that had used the imagery of the Rose Revolution to stay in power.” Amen, Mr. Mitchell. Full disclosure; Lincoln Mitchell was an “informal adviser” to the Georgian Dream party in the last election.

To the great surprise of no one, articles quickly proliferated which suggested Ivanishvili was a Russian stooge. Yulia Latynina – living proof of the chestnut that the wise speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something – cast Ivanishvili as “Georgia”s Chavez” (Hugo Chavez had died recently at the time, and our Yulia went on a bit of a Chavez bender for a couple of weeks). According to her, Ivanishvili would “destroy the state machinery that President Mikheil Saakashvili created that had done such a good job of serving peoples’ interests”, and had better get busy thinking up a distraction so Georgians would not remember his “grossly exaggerated campaign promises”. Julia Ioffe, like many western sources, focused on his reclusivness, his outsize home and his zoo of exotic animals to portray him as a kind of semi-political Michael Jackson.

The Iron Lady and the Young Reformer

Uncle Volodya says, “The way Boris Nemtsov believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic times when so many believe in no God at all.”

The last post is getting too comment-heavy for easy loading, I’m afraid, and while I don’t lack for inspiration for a new post – God knows there’s always enough material, from the strange please-everyone contortions of Michael McFaul to the possible avenues to be explored between the USA and Russia to avoid a takeover by China of Russia’s Primorye region. For those who like to laugh, comedy abounds, while I am still awaiting a debut from JLo on what it can be like to live as an American in Moscow if you view it as a positive experience rather than a sentence to purgatory and wonder what you might have done to be punished in this manner. I’m also interested in a possible joint project with Kievite to take apart the motives that might have been behind Michael McFaul’s appointment as Ambassador to Russia, given his previously-expressed views.

However, what I don’t have right now is time. This is our last weekend in the house, and next week is Moving Day; packing on Wednesday, loading on Thursday, and the shift from one property to another on Friday. I’m afraid that leaves no time for the research necessary to do a full-length post.

Still, the opportunity for a juicy field trip presents itself. The last one we did was a thoroughgoing success; although I worried my own traffic would drop because I was sending everyone to another site, it didn’t slump noticeably. The one improvement I would ask this time is that visitors try to leave a comment on the blog that we are going to visit. Especially this one; the level of commentary, at least at present, is far above “looks like the FSB must have stumbled across some money hidden in the cellar, because there are lots of paid trolls out today”, although it is strongly adversarial. I enjoy comments and discussion here, of course, but one of my main aims in dreaming up the field trip concept was the fantasy of unleashing some of the powerful intellects who regularly comment here against subjects I felt deserved a good whipping.

Without further ado, then, let’s go visit Vladimir Kara-Murza. Mr. Kara-Murza interests me; he is plainly a white-ribbonist liberal with deep sympathies for the opposition, as was his father before him. However, he appears extremely intelligent and sensitive: his written English is remarkably good, and he actually got into a fairly blunt argument with La Russophobe in an earlier post, in which he brusquely brushed off her insults against Russians with a spirited defense of “his country”; he seems a patriot according to his own lights, although I of course believe he is overlooking real progress in Russia in favour of a pie-in-the-sky vision of liberal utopianism, in which the much-admired western nations he admires as models would be altruistic friends rather than exploitative partners.

This particular bit features an adulatory look at the recently-toes-up Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, as a perceptive and visionary leader who knew just what would fix Russia. This, by extension, extolls the Russian leaders she intuitively saw as being those with whom England could do business – Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin. Somewhere toward the middle, it goes into a queer little novelette about the “Economic Miracle of Nizhny Novgorod”, as delivered by that sexy Slavic dreamboat, Boris Nemtsov Of The Curly Mane.

It’s going to be fun. Join me, won’t you?

Neighbouring Giants Edge Closer

Uncle Volodya says, “The European Union encourages contributions from the rich and votes from the poor under the pretense that it is protecting them from each other.”

The world is closing in;
did you ever think
that we could be so close
like brothers?
The future’s in the air,
I can feel it everywhere;
blowing with the wind
of change…

Although German metal band The Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” burst on the rock music scene in 1991, and endures today as Germany’s 10th-best-selling single of all time, it was actually written in 1989 by Klaus Meine, the band’s vocalist. The band was visiting Moscow, and the song was written as a celebration of glasnost, and the end of the Cold War. Tensions eased, and Germany and Russia were friends.

What happened?

The still-not-over Cypriot banking crisis and attendant bailout showed a different side of Germany, as German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble peevishly insisted depositors bear a share of bailing out the failed banks, Frau Merkel dug in for a tough reelection fight in which bailing out wealthy Russians would be a non-starter, and many of the European Union’s leaders chortled that nobody would get hurt but Russian gangsters, money launderers and crooks. Prior to the implementation of what became known as “The Cyprus Haircut”, officials pretended that a levy of bank depositors was not even on the table. They then used a bank-holiday weekend to strike, without discussing it with Russia at all, while analysts claimed Russia did not intervene because it was too weak.

Don’t Forget Your Lunch

Uncle Volodya says, “Chavez drank too much. When he gave blood last time, there was an olive in it.”

I have been persuaded, because the large number of comments on the last post is causing the post to load slowly, to move on somehow. A “stub” was recommended, which is really just a title page with no content, but I didn’t really want to do that. Still, I need to buy some time while I get the next post together, and I remember I once discussed with Anatoly (we were talking about doing a kind of forum post which would feature, in this case, three authors; Anatoly, somebody else and I, I can’t remember who the third one was now. Anyway, it would be called “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, and each of us would take and defend a different government model. Because it was my idea, I would get to defend Autocracy. It’s actually pretty similar to what happens in discussion groups) the idea of a “Field Trip”. Actually just an extension of what happens when somebody posts a link on the blog, in the case of a field trip we would all go to that blog post, read it and leave our comments there. I thought it would be a good way to promote blog posts that are in the public interest to read, and it would also be a way to express collective displeasure at a particularly ignorant point of view. Of course, if there are a large number of adverse comments the blog author or author of the article is likely to accuse us all of being Kremlin stooges or in the pay of the FSB, but what the hell. I’ve been called worse.

Accordingly, the post I have chosen for our first field trip is crazy Brillo-head Yulia Latynina’s “Warning for Putin in Chavez’s Hospital Stay“, in which she…well, it’s best if you see for yourself. As usual, she opens her mouth, and the bullshit starts to flood out. She mocks and disses Cuban health care just as if she knows what she’s talking about, when in reality it is internationally recognized for its excellent standards, although Cuba is a very poor country. As usual, Latynina’s position is to leave readers wondering if perhaps Chavez might be alive today if only he had not chosen to go with Kommie Health Kare and went to one of those fancy American clinics, where doctors are naturally much smarter just by virtue of being American. Any American feeling down in the dumps, really, on any subject, would be well-advised to spend a half-hour talking with Latynina – she would blow so much sunshine up his ass that he would leave with the ability to fry eggs with the rays shooting out his eyes. Unbelievable.

Anyway, I left a comment there already this afternoon, and although The Moscow Times did not used to permit comments before, it does now. They have actually adopted an enviable format – I’m not quite sure how they do it – which allows the author of the comment only to edit it later if you discover you have made a spelling mistake, something like that. Nobody sees the “edit” command (at the bottom of the comment) except the original author, because obviously if it were available to all, people would alter each other’s comments. Anyway, take a look, see what you think, and if you feel like it, please leave a comment there. Of course you are free to comment here as well. Come on, bring your lunch, and let’s go. I hope you remembered to put on clean underwear; you never know when you might be hit by a bus.

Warning: Explicit Same-Sex Content. Fifteen and Under Welcome.

“What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope. It is not a reflection of all religious people.”

The recent hysteria over Russia’s latest legal introduction, a law which forbids the imparting of “homosexual propaganda” to minors in Russia, has all the familiar holier-than-thou hallmarks of manufactured outrage, and it very likely is – the Anglosphere perceives that a distinct group – homosexuals – might be split off from Putin and pushed into arranging advocacy marches and protest actions based on the belief that the west supports their recognition. Then western media can run loving coverage of angry rainbow-haired protesters carrying signs with irreverent slogans and unflattering pictures of Putin, and inflate the numbers by the usual factor of three or so in the comforting knowledge that viewers can’t count, or don’t care as long as somebody is protesting Putin’s freedom-strangling authoritarian rule. If it wouldn’t be indelicate to mention it, this comes at just the right time for fans of such spectacles, since Russian protest actions are not only pretty thin on the ground, but starting to become poorly-attended and are essentially just going through the motions. The upcoming March of Dozens arranged by Left Front leader-under-house-arrest Sergei Udaltsov was offered Sakharovsky Prospekt, but turned it down on the grounds that the large venue would make the leanness of their numbers painfully obvious.

Well, what does the law actually say? Hard to tell, really, because it’s still in draft form, but it recommends administrative punishments (fines) for “promotion of homosexuality among children”. The article cited points out that changes need to be made to the bill which will either define “homosexual” or eliminate mention of it, and more closely define “homosexual propaganda”. Note that report was dated January 25th. Yet, today and in past weeks, the Anglospheric press continues to label it an “anti-gay” bill (Thanks, Mike, for the link). Various world policymakers are appalled at this outrageous trampling upon the face of human rights.

The Voice Of I’m Better Than You

“We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.”

A lot of people on both sides of the debate say that anti-Americanism is on the rise in Russia. Although the cause of international harmony is by no means lost yet, I’d have to agree that sentiment has some merit. And there are few such sea-changes which take place over a short time, geopolitically speaking, for no reason. So there is likely to be a reason. Who’s to blame? Is it Russia, and Putin’s supposed crackdown on civil society? If so, I’m bound to inquire why only a handful of civil-society organizations – chiefly those in the pay of foreign democracy-activist agencies – and the usual liberal bobbleheads are complaining, while the new laws generally draw support from those Russians who are politically engaged. Of course the new laws draw zero support in the west, but until the west participates in Russian elections – openly – it has zero to say about how the country is run. Is the west being particularly accommodating and trying to understand Russia’s position? Well, you tell me.

Here’s an excellent example of Anglospheric detente, drawn to my attention by Mike Averko a couple of days ago. The Voice of Smug.

All right, let’s go through Mr. Brooke’s Reality Check item by item, what say? I should mention before starting that I received a nice email from Mr. Brooke, informing me that he had posted my comment – which, at time of writing, is still not posted at the relevant article – and that it was good to know the anti-American fringe was still active. Since I have no way of showing you what that comment was, I decided to move the discussion over here.

So, let’s get started. This series of chest pokes is supposed to answer the question, who needs the other more – the United States of America, or Russia? Mr. Brooke opens with population, for some reason I’m damned if I can fathom. He says by 2038, Americans will outnumber Russians three-to-one. That would be nice if every Russian wanted his own American; there would certainly be no quarreling then, would there? A virtual embarrassment of choice. Otherwise, how does that illustrate that Russia needs the USA more than vice-versa?

The Astounding Stupidity of Optimism

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.”

“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism“

I confess to a fondness for Oscar Wilde which extends far beyond his delightful nuttiness; he more or less wrote the book on cynicism. And cynicism, much more than negativity, is the polar opposite of optimism. Therefore, it is with a cynical eye that I’d like you to help me look at a couple of things I ran across which interested me, because I think you’ll agree there’s an awful lot of pretending-to-be-good going on over there. It’s instructive to remember what underrated comedienne Lily Tomlin had to say on the subject; no matter how cynical you get, you can never keep up.

“Over there” is a series of three articles over at Open Democracy Russia; all in some way connected with the new law regulating the conduct of NGO’s in Russia, all by different authors and all from a different perspective. I should mention, before we get too far from the title, that I am a believer in optimism, and hope. But I would be disingenuous if I did not point out that those who do not include cynicism in their portfolio along with optimism and hope seem to get taken for a ride far more frequently than might be accounted for by simple coincidence.

I should mention also that all three authors are involved, in some capacity, with NGO’s. Anyway, without further ado, let’s get to it. The first, by Almut Rochowanski, is rooted in the opinion that perhaps Mr. Putin should be thanked for the new NGO law, since it forces those civil-society organizations to wake up to the reality that the foreign lolly is all gone, and that they should be looking immediately to how they will get funding. The author is a co-founder and coordinator of Chechnya Advocacy Network, a U.S-based NGO, and argues at least to a degree from the foreign perspective; Russia’s recent spate of new regulations is a retaliatory measure against the U.S. Sergei Magnitsky Act, and as such, “reeks of mean-spirited hostility”. While the author does not attempt to pass off the Magnitsky Act as a noble piece of idealistic human-rights legislation, it is simply not accounted for at all. It is a given that the Russian government is being mean-spirited, without any mention that the Sergei Magnitsky Act was both unnecessary from an activist point of view – since plenty of legal boilerplate already provided for the denial of entry to anyone the U.S. government chooses to deny entry to and/or seizure of assets held in the USA – and a spiteful, mean-spirited measure to get a substitute for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment on the books so the USA could go on punishing Russia after Jackson-Vanik was sunsetted by WTO law. The temerity of Russia, to spit back after having its face spat in.