Just because five fascists regimes sent their troops into the Soviet Union 66 years ago, it doesn’t mean that the Russian leadership today would distain studying fascist systems of government and selecting what was useful for them out of that.

Katz:
Sadly, you are right about Estonia …… in Heaven’s name, why did they do it????

And the Estonian government, by sticking its thumb in the Russian eye, has made Russia angry.

Was this provocation necessary? I don’t know enough about Estonian politics to argue for or against the proposition that a government in trouble needed a galvanising event to stir up Estonian nationalism. Moreover, I don’t know whether and to what extent the EC were party to this decision, seeing it as a convenient time and place to shoot a cannon across the bow of Putin’s Russia.

Was anything gained by this gesture? Is it likely that anything will be gained by this gesture?

Does Estonia want to be the venue for a proxy war between Russia and the EC?

Does Estonia know what to do with its large Russian population? It’s a cinch they won’t be leaving Estonia any time soon.

Anger and outrage are useful only if you are willing and able to make good on the threats and promises provoked by them.

Neither Estonia nor the EC fit that bill in relation to Russia.

What’s the difference between totalitarian and “populist authoritarian�? Just take out the ideology.

which is why I disagree with Dave Bath calling Putin a neoStalinist; a different description might be more appropriate..

Wonder if Vladimir Putin will take a leaf out of Lee Kwan-yu’s book and stay on as Senior Minister after stepping down from power. After all, his experience and insights and advice would be available immediately to the incoming President ……

“Paul Ivanovitch,� Selifan said, “the horses require shoeing.�

“Blockhead!� exclaimed Chichikov. “Why did you not tell me of that before, you damned fool? Was there not time enough for them to be shod?�

“Yes, I suppose there was,� agreed Selifan. “Also, one of the wheels is in want of a new tyre. Also, the body of the britchka is so rickety that probably it will not last more than a couple of stages.�

“Rascal!� shouted Chichikov, clenching his fists. “For these three weeks past you have been doing nothing at all; yet now, at the last moment, you come here stammering and playing the fool! You must have known of this before? Did you, or did you not, know it? Answer me at once.�

“Yes, I did know it,� replied Selifan, hanging his head.

“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?�

Selifan had no reply immediately ready, so continued to hang his head while quietly saying to himself: “See how well I have managed things! I knew what was the matter, yet I did not say.�

…

And you, Russia of mine—are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake? …
Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer comes—only the weird sound of your collar-bells.

Just so, Sir Henry.
While Mr. Fischer behaves in a manner that observers have interpreted as being “just a little bit different”, this does not preclude him from “occasionally coming up with a fairly spot-on insight”. From barber shops to think-tanks, humanity writ large comes up with fairly spot-on insights all the time.

Sometimes the Eureka moment is a light bulb, on others a tom-thumb, or even a double-happy. But every now and then some genius goes off like a three-penny bunger.

Granted, the GULAG organisation is no more. But on the other hand, like an old lag, the Russians, like a lifer out on parole, have been thoroughly insititutionalised. Anyway, GULAG was on its way out by the time Andropov rolled around. Even Beria released a few million after Uncle Joe’s demise.

I am not so sanguine about civil rights in Russia, about which Katz gets lyrical towards his rather cogent piece. I can’t see Chekists relinquishing power any time soon, particularly as they never let go of it in the first place: see Litvinenko and Felshtinksy, “Blowing up Russia - The Secret Plot to bring back KGB terror”.

Katz:
Spot on.

al loomi:
The US putting missiles in eastern Europe is deliberately [and stupidly] provocative. If Iran was the main worry then such missiles could be placed on Diego Garcia or a few dozen other very suitable sites around the region. Have to agree with EnemyCombatant about the US [its upper echelons, not the majority of its ordinary people]; the last 7 years have shown the regime is no longer Christian but AntiChrist..

Everyone:
1.. Never never never underestimate the power of Russian national spirit.
2.. The West, including Germany, lost a golden opportunity to bring in an era of unprecendented peace and prosperity by full-on co-operation with the Russians while Gorbachev was still in power. Instead, we pandered to a tiny bunch of spiteful sore-losers and ratbags in New York and Washington. All that did was to turn potential friends into potential enemies …. quite apart from it helping the Russian kleptocracy plunder the country and handing Russia to China on a plate.
3.. Of course Kosovo is important. Russians do give a damn what happens to their Serbian brothers and sisters …. and any Serbians I have met felt likewise about the Russians.

The question remains for the outside world: how should a cashed-up but increasingly totalitarian Russia be handled?

In the period after Napolean Wars it was Willhelmine Germany used was the strongest counter to “the Russian Steamroller“. But a stupid dispute over Alsace Lorraine destroyed the world as we know it. So the German card really isnt an option these days.

The moral foundation of US foreign policy is really crazy now. They are promoting democracy where they should demote it (in-bred tribalistic, sectarian fundamentalist Iraq). And they are demoting democracy where they should promote it (secular, capitalistic, quasi-Christian Russia).

The geo-politics of CIS-USA policy are even more silly. The USA military-industrial complex gets its missile defence system to play with, to counter the mock threat posed by Russian nukes.

In return the CIS military-industrial complex gets the Putin dictatorship consolidated in order to rake off the profits from the energy boom and pay offs for looking the otherway when mobsters shakedown business.

Meanwhile nukes from Russias aging arsenal are left unaccounted for. Possibly to fall into the hands of terrorists looking for the ultimate follow up to 911.

What a sick joke.

Russia is the only great power capable of acting as a bulwark against the ring of “Trashcanistani” hornet nest states that gird its southern border. Someone has to keep these nuisances down.

Some Russians are certainly benefitting from the oil-fuelled economic boom. But this is mostly confined to the rich elite living in the major metropolitan areas.

Russia is in collapse according to Solzyhenitsen. It is in the midst of a long term demographic collapse unprecedented in modern states.

This has came about because Russian political, financial and cultural elites have feathered their own nest whilst wantonly wrecking national institutions that integrate the people.

Now crooks run Russia and have so since Stalin, the biggest gangster, liquidated the law. A nation cannot prosper when it is run by gangsters. In fact it becomes a source of infection to other nations, particularly in E Europe, Israel and latterly the US and US.

Therefore the correct policy towards Russia is risk-managing law-enforcement: quarantine. Hopefully the Russian nation will recover its powers of self-sustenance.

Then the Russian mobsters will finally realise one can make more money for more people by “going legit”, as Michael Corleone might say. Rather than milking it dry and then beating it to Chelsea.

Katz sez: “People like Kasparov are ineffectual pinpricks. But Putin can’t tolerate them and the Russian people don’t care.”

Yeah, Putin pulled Gazza’s passport this morning, thereby attempting to pin the dissident intellectual to the motherland.
I remember Arthur Koestler writing somewhere about the tournament that Kasparov played against Uncle Sammy’s contender, Bobby Fischer, in the “World Championship of Chess” in Reykjavik, early seventies. The Cold War at that time was in the low Kelvins. Throughout Russia chess was culturally embedded, the passionate recreational pursuit of millions. America mainly rooted for Fischer because they thought they were on a winner, and with the Vietnam War another hegemonic disaster, a spot of triumphalism was just the ticket.

Bobby won the tournament, but later lost his marbles, denounced his country and is holed up in somewher in Asia, last I heard, completely crackers.

Now, these two former cerebral rock-stars are considered pariahs by the nations that once used them for propaganda purposes. No wonder so many young people in the USA and Russia today are bionically bonded to the instant gratification offered by ipods, mobiles, and vid games, rather than being enthralled at the prospect of learning/playing the greatest one-on-one mind game of them all.

al loomi sez: “for a selfstyled christian nation, the usa is strangely ignorant of the value of the ‘golden rule’.”

Nothing strange about it at all, al. It’s because most Americans are hypocrites, religiously, a condition which facilitates doublethink, politically. Consent manufacturers and rube finessers have relied upon traits like these for yonks.

They had a good article on Kasparov and the politics behind him here.
Russian Protests: The Deleted Scenes.
Short version:
* Kasparov is a neo-con tool (which is how a minor Russian player he gets in so much western media), but also has a point.
* Ordinary Russians are starting to feel a little bit tired of authoritarianism. This is actually a pretty amazing development. The disgust that Russians feel at capitalism and democracy after the Yeltsin years, and hence the popularity of Putin’s authoritarianism is not often appreciated in the west

There are two other articles which will give you alot of context on why Russia is acting the way it is and explain what Washington is up to in the region
Freedom’s Just Another Word For Fascism
How Dick Cheney Got His Cold War On

These go over some areas that you would never know about reading western press, even the more off beat left wing sources don’t really cover it. Major points:
* Russia’s oil system almost ended up in the hands of western oil companies.
* The neo-cons still see Russia as a cold war enemy and would love to get control through pink/magenta/whatever coloured revolution (What? you thought that rainbow of revolutions throughout Eastern Europe were spontaneous risings of he people? Yeah and exit polling is a standard part of Ukrainian politics.)

These views all come from the same source so treat with caution. But your only alternative at the moment is to get your news from people like the BBC’s Russia correspondent who is so clueless about the most basic facts of Russia that when he went to cover Yeltsin’s funeral he was surprised that only a hundred people showed up.