No Face, Mr. Putin? I’d Be Happy to Lend You One of Mine – The Many Faces of Russia’s New Ambassador

Uncle Volodya says, "Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there's some evidence that they don't read them, either."

Masha Gessen is energetically promoting her new book, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin“, which is apparently yet another daring and edgy exposé of the man who is featured – complete with face – on the cover. Presumably psychic, Gessen is fond of characterizing Putin’s facial expressions as, for example, “a thuggish smile” when she was not even present at the event described, as if Putin’s face changes colour like a mood ring so that you can tell when he is thinking brutal thoughts. Not to mention the difficulty associated with displaying any kind of smile when you don’t have a face.  Surprisingly, fellow Russophobe Amy Knight – who is nearly Gessen’s equal as a disingenuous hack – gave it a somewhat rocky review in the Globe and Mail. Although the sisters of the coven agree that Mr. Putin is “corrupt and ruthless”, Knight discourages the”speculation” introduced by Gessen that the FSB was responsible for the bombings of apartments in Moscow, that Putin acted in concert with the terrorists who took hostages in Beslan and Moscow in order to “maximize bloodshed” and ordered the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, because Gessen “provides no new documentation”. Knight then goes on to speculate – without introducing any new documentation – that Putin is reportedly worth !!!Billions!!! and is the unacknowledged owner of the palatial Black Sea mansion supposedly built for him by his friends with secret funding. There is no substantiation for either, or Knight would have cited it.

Anyway, we’re not going to spend any more time on batty Masha Gessen or Amy Knight; I merely needed the title of Gessen’s book for the lead-in. If Vladimir Putin is without a face – and wouldn’t mind looking like Michael McFaul – Russia’s new Ambassador for the United States of America is a man of many faces, and could doubtless spare one.

Après moi, la Désintégration: Alexander Motyl Does Putin’s New Russia

Uncle Volodya says, "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?"

Once upon a time – say, back in 1993, when his Dilemmas of Independence; Ukraine After Totalitarianism was published – you might have been able to reason with Alexander Motyl. I mean, he’s obviously not a stupid guy: he’s published a ton of books, both fiction and non-fiction, he writes poetry, he paints – from what I’ve seen, quite emotionally – and hints of his life suggest he’s a sensitive man who feels things deeply. He speaks several languages fluently and can get around in a couple more, one of which is Russian. He was – and is, so far as I know – a professor of Political Science and Director of the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers. But back then, a review of  Dilemmas suggested it advocated “gradual reforms for post-Soviet states”. Good enough; We’re there, right? Who thinks those regions would not benefit from gradual reform? That’s what I thought.

Any such illusions of inclusiveness are dampened with the first sentence of the introduction – “Unlike most of the other Soviet successor states, Ukraine matters.” Well: not a lot of grey area there, is there? A possible agenda for Ukrainian greatness is furnished in the second – “It is important for a variety of reasons that ensure it a central role in the future of Europe and thus in the foreign policy of the United States.” While some of his material might lead you to believe he is Ukrainian, in fact Alexander Motyl is American; born in New York, although he is of Ukrainian descent.

And while we’re forming a 5-minute picture of Motyl that doubtless does not do justice to his complexity, this might be a good time to bring up what it is that he loathes about Russia: the secret police. “I went into Soviet studies with a mission: I wanted to understand this criminal state and to be able to write about it in ways that would weaken it and advance human, national, and civil rights. This is very clearly related to my background – my family is Ukrainian, and several relatives had been murdered by the Soviet secret police – and so it has a personal and a political component.”  Got that? Motyl sees his education as an obligation to avenge his dead relatives by doing what he can to weaken the present  Russian Federation, thereby punishing its “secret police”, of which the Russian Federation’s new leader happened once to have been a member. Once again, I’m sure that doesn’t encompass the entire complex human that is Motyl, but there’s only so much we can do in less than 3000 words, and we don’t want to spend all that talking about what a complicated guy he is.

Crimson and Clover: Charles Clover on Putin’s Russia, Reprised

Uncle Volodya says, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

George Eliot, from his lofty seat of Victorian wisdom, once advised the world, “Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact“.

Excuse me; I should have said, from her lofty seat of Victorian wisdom, because George Eliot was, in fact, a woman. Mary Anne Evans adopted a masculine pen name “so her work would be taken seriously”, as female writers of the late 19th century confined themselves mostly to “lighthearted romances”. Her novel “Middlemarch” is acclaimed by some reviewers as the greatest novel ever written in the English language.

In any case, she certainly saw Charles Clover coming without ever seeing him at all, and the quote I led off with perfectly encapsulates his “Putin Builds Walls Round Kremlin“. Before you conclude that Mr. Putin has taken up bricklaying to while away the hours of idleness, Mr. Clover is speaking figuratively. But he must have been stuck for a title, and just went with a “Strashniy (scary) Putin” theme.

A Russophobic Rogue’s Gallery, Act II

Uncle Volodya says, "A great many people believe they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

As promised, we’re going to move on with the remainder of our Rogue’s Gallery; having a look at their stock in trade, poring over their smug prognostications and speculating on what might make them so virulently opposed to people who have done nothing to them and who do not threaten their lifestyle or security.

Now, as at other occasions, it strikes me that no people are so burdened with the constant requirement to provide proof of their intentions, only to have it mocked or derided. Have you heard the expression, “A woman must do everything twice as well as a man in order to be thought half as good”? I’m sure all the women have. This seems to me to apply with particular emphasis also to the Russian people. If they say the economy is improving, the topic is switched to their life expectancy or some other measure in which they come off poorly. If they say an election was clean, all the attention is offered to dissidents who say it was not. If they complain that ballistic missile systems to be located close to their borders are designed to cancel out their nuclear deterrent, they are told that the systems are to guard against attack by an enemy who currently has no weapons that could reach the nations the systems are supposedly designed to protect, and they are scolded for not happily accepting those assurances. Nothing is ever good enough, and their behaviour is consistently portrayed as unreasonable.

Setting unrealistic standards that nobody else is expected to maintain is one thing – just making shit up is something else altogether. An excellent example of the latter is offered by Nicholas Eberstadt, whose report, “Drunken Nation: Russia’s Depopulation Bomb” quickly became a go-to reference for all the self-congratulatory pseudoacademics disposed to believe the nonsense in it. Mr. Eberstadt, by most standards of measure, is too smart for this kind of ignorance, being the holder of the Henry Wendt chair in Political Economy, Harvard-educated and a demographer.

Would you be a little disappointed if the computer tech you hired to reformat your hard drive came credentialed from MIT and had written a couple of books on computer repair, and then you came into your office to find him dressed in hyena skins, ululating at your hard drive on the floor while sprinkling it with handfuls of little painted bones? That’s the kind of gap between education and performance illustrated by Drunken Nation. Let’s take a look at it.

A Russophobic Rogue’s Gallery

Uncle Volodya says, "A liar should have a good memory."

I realize all everyone wants to talk about right now is the presidential election in Russia, and although it has yet to be run as I start this post, it might well be over before I finish. But I am fairly easy in my mind that Vladimir Putin will win on the first ballot, and fairly sure that the Russian liberals will try to whip up massive protests on the grounds that his win was fraudulent although even the most virulent I-hate-Putin sources have said  he will win on the first ballot even if there is no cheating at all. Who knows – maybe that’s a devilishly clever western trick, to lull Putin into a false sense of security, so that he won’t cheat and Zyuganov will win. Kidding.

No, I thought I would do something like the “Top Russia Blogs” sort of post, only this time I would showcase the most barking mad, snake-handling, rolling-in-the-dirt loopy, frothy Russia haters I know of.  Among them, the vast majority are know-it-all foreigners who fancy themselves near-psychic academics who can predict the future of Russian politics and affairs, and who are never called to account when they are wrong. Only two are Russians living in Russia; Julia Ioffe does not count as such, since she left Russia as a small child and grew up in the United States. Anyway, let’s get to know my rogue’s gallery of Russophobes, and I’ll try to tell you a little bit about them – maybe you’ll think of some I forgot or missed, or will disagree that some of those listed are actually Russophobes. In no particular order, here they are.

Dancing With Delusion – Military Strategy 101 with Yulia Latynina

Uncle Volodya says, "Yulia Latynina recently interviewed Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. When asked what it was like to talk with a crazy person, Ahmadenijad replied. "It wasn't so bad."

Everybody knows someone who is terrible at a particular hobby or chosen field of interest, but who stubbornly continues their pursuit of it in the face of considerable evidence that they have no aptitude for it. Motorhead and music, for example. Steven Seagal and acting. Sarah Palin and public speaking. Anybody from the Indianapolis Colts and football.

To the list, add Yulia Latynina and military strategy. Yulia Latynina and psychology. Actually, Yulia Latynina and everything to do with writing except for fiction, at which she is allegedly not bad.

It’s been some time since Yulia Latynina and this blog crossed paths; ‘way back in August of 2010, to be precise. On that occasion, as on this one, Yulia showcased her largely imaginary familiarity with military affairs. The effort resulted in an exemplary departure from reality which saw Yulia excoriating Viktor Bout for being a shitheel unscrupulous arms dealer while rapturously praising the CIA for giving Stinger missiles to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. It proved extremely hard to draw any conclusion from her angry barking other than that Viktor Bout is a filthy criminal because he is a Russian, while the CIA is a good example of responsible social engineering because it is American.

Have the intervening months marked a sobering of judgment in Ms. Latynina; a more even-handed approach to international affairs and domestic politics? Not so you’d notice. By way – with thanks – of Moscow Exile, here is Yulia’s recent Moscow Times piece, in which she attempts to persuade the reader that Vladimir Putin intends to go to war with Georgia immediately after the March 4th presidential elections in order to silence his opposition with a patriotic distraction. I wish I were making that up, but I’m not.

The Regime Change Special; Derailed By Travesty

Uncle Volodya says, "The most reliable indicator of a sociopathic serial bully is not a clinical diagnosis, but the trail of devastation and destruction left behind throughout their life."

Although this blog deals mostly with Russian politics, political figures and issues, occasionally the connection is purely peripheral. So it is today, when we’re going to talk about Russia and China’s veto of a UN Security Council Resolution centered on the situation in Syria. The fact that Russia is one of the countries which vetoed the resolution is largely secondary to the hysteria going on in the western press as a result of it, the fascinating glimpse of diplomatic maneuvering it offers, and the brass boldness of the western plan for Syria after the cataclysmic wreckage of Libya – brought about by the same regime-change blueprint.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flipped her wig over the veto – to be more specific, she said, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty”. America’s U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went further, pronouncing herself “disgusted” with the vote and, if gossip is to be believed, swearing at Russian Ambassador Vasily Churkin. In a totally unsurprising glimpse of why the vote had been held even with the likelihood of a Russian/Chinese veto (because the framework of the resolution is known long in advance so negotiation can iron out any no-go issues and so the arm-twisting can take place behind the scenes: the actual vote is about as exciting as Little House on the Prairie reruns), Ms. Rice intoned for posterity, “Any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands”.

That kind of struck a familiar chord with me; I thought, where have I heard that before? And I remembered – in a discussion with the always-interesting Patrick Armstrong, a fellow Canadian, at Russia; Other Points of View. On that occasion, coincidentally enough, we were discussing the U.N. Security Council Resolution on Libya, which might have served as a copy-and-paste template for the Syrian one which aimed to push Bashar al-Assad off a cliff like Gaddafi.