Russia’s Last Hope

Washington , D.C. , February 28, 2008 : “The New York Times is now full of all kinds of idiot stories about the fictional Holocaust. This must be in advance of the new legislation being proposed to have Bush declare a National Day of Atonement wherein all Americans will have the chance to reflect on the Great Sufferings of the Jewish People.

We now see references to Anne Frank Diaries which is pathetic since the German government proclaimed these famous tear jerkers as stone fakes some years ago and of course the new German comic book designed to “sensitize” German school children to the evil ways of their fathers.

I wonder why no one ever talks about the Great Armenian Holocaust of 1916? Many, many more Christian Armenians were butchered by the Turks than Jews died during WW II but we never see any mention of this well-proven slaughter. Why? Because Israel is friendly with the Turks who do not want anyone daring to mention their nastiness and since the Jews own all the media in America today, we see nothing. Of course the newspapers are a dying institution; everyone gets their news from the internet and no one can control the internet, not even the evil CIA or the AIPAC, so the National Day of Atonement, coming up soon, may help fill the coffers of Our Best Ally.

If you study the psychology of mass actions, you will note that the public always seems to back the winner. Obama has a very good political action team, a good deal more money than anyone else and has established a very powerful forward momentum. The public does not like a loser and note that Hillary has been losing ground, and important delegates at an increasing rate.. If you are perceived as successful, you will be successful. They way the candidates for the Democratic nomination are being civilized with each other indicates that a ticket with both of them is not an impossibility. Obama's best asset, outside of himself, is his wife. Hillary's worst asset, outside of herself, is her husband. Neither one of the Clintons likes to lose and they show it. No grace under pressure.

Frantic right-wing commentators, used to eight years of Karl Rove-type malice, lies and innuendo, are getting very close to calling Obama a nigger and if and when they do, they will discover that the black community has not forgotten the ugliness of Katrina or many years of social repression. I have known many very many far right, rich Republicans and the words "kike" and "nigger" are often used in what we would like to think would be the best company.

When one of my rich east coast establishment friends said, "My God, you can't vote for that uppity coon!" my response was that I would vote for the white half. He was not amused, but I was. “

There will be major elections in Russia coming up. It doesn’t take a Harvard graduate to detect great official anger in the United States , directred against Vladimir Putin. Is predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, was a drunk and in the pay of the U.S. Putin, a former colonel in the KGB, took over from Boris and began methodically to either stop the sale of Russia ’s immense oil and gas fields or, if contracts had been let to eager western oil companies, cancel them.

The so-called ‘Oligarchs’ were a group of exclusively Jewish Russian gangsters who were conniving with the aforesaid oil companies.

Putin not only stopped this looting of Russia but he persecuted the Oligarchs, driving most of them to safety in Israel (who never extradites any Jew, regardless of the alleged crime involved) Not only were the oil companies livid at their huge losses (they had shipped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new equipment to the Russian fields, equipment which Putin simply took over and put to good use…for Russia, not western oil interests.) and the Jewish business community took a decidedly negative view of Putin and his actions.

This led directly to official anger in the White House and the media. In fact, Vladimir Putin has done an excellent job in bringing order to a chaotic Russia and, on a more direct note, brought huge sums of money into his country, raising the standard of living to a high level.

Now, Russia has staked out drilling areas in the Arctic , areas American oil interests are frantic to obtain. If the oil companies are frantic, Bush obediently upbraids Putin and tries to find some way to annoy him, such as missile sites being located in Poland . (Two are already in place as I write) The world in general, and the United States in particular, would be far better off if God in His wisdom called George W. Bush to His bosom.”

Russia’s Last Hope

February 29, 2008

by Victor Erofeyv

New York Times

Moscow- If I recover from a bout of stomach illness by Sunday, I will cast my ballot in Russia ’s presidential election. But there’s no need to rush to get well, because my vote will make no difference.

There was a day when it did seem that my vote mattered. In 1996, I found myself in Ireland on Election Day and made a huge effort to go to the embassy in Dublin and vote for Boris N. Yeltsin, because I feared that the Communists could return to power under his opponent, Gennadi A. Zyuganov, and I would again have serious problems. Mr. Zyuganov is running for president again this year, but I no longer fear him. He will lose.

This not only reassures me, but also leads me to think about how President Vladimir V. Putin, in his eight years in power, managed to destroy Communism. He finished it off so brutally that it’s silly to even think about the possibility of its return. Yet some people outside Russia believe that Mr. Putin did away with only the democrats, the liberal parties and the independent news media. No, he also threw out power-seeking oligarchs, who are very unpopular with the Russian people, and he rid the country of chaos and instability, which, he tells us, were rampant in the 1990s.

No matter how you look at it, President Putin also brought order to Chechnya : at least they’re no longer flying young Russian soldiers back in body bags every day. And if television is offering more humorous programs and songs from around the world instead of political discussions, people only welcome this. As for opposition parties, the real ones, they quarreled among themselves and became so indistinguishable in their radical demands that the people, with President Putin’s help, stopped taking note of them.

For the majority of Russians, Mr. Putin will enter history as a positive figure. That during his rule he actively relied on his K.G.B. colleagues doesn’t bother a lot of people. Whom else should he lean on in his struggle to impose order? He worked with the human material that came to him from the depth of Russian history, people who to this day drink, steal and consider politics a source of personal power and enrichment. If Mr. Putin preferred not to be trusting, it was because he clearly sensed the rot in the national gene pool.

That he went too far in some things, that he irritated Europe , that he was sometimes vindictive — these are separate matters. His friends in the K.G.B. were raised on hatred for the West. Now, at least, they limit themselves for the most part to negative rhetoric about the West. So there is progress. Mr. Putin gave his people faith in tomorrow: It’s no accident that Russia today is full of packed restaurants, game parlors, casinos, discothèques, cars and books about everything from Buddhism to homosexuality. Mr. Putin was lucky all eight of his years in office: oil prices rose, Russia grew rich and life became good. Private life remains remarkably free.

His biggest mistake was his longing to make Russia the successor to the Soviet Union : this gave rise to the imperial discourse that so frightened neighboring countries, his defense of the Soviet Union ’s aggressive foreign policy and the damage to Russia ’s image in the world. What’s worse is that our next president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, whom President Putin chose as his heir as if he were a czar, will have to deal with the Russian weaknesses that were hidden from the population under propaganda slogans. The failure to modernize industry or agriculture, the growing corruption in government, the ubiquitous drunkenness, the record numbers of murders and suicides, the terrible state of Russian health care and the problems that come with a shrinking population will fall on Mr. Medvedev’s young shoulders.

Nobody, probably not even President Putin, knows Mr. Medvedev’s real goals and values. He was never a public politician — though the talk on the street, not shared by dissidents, makes him out to be liberal, cultured, moderate and even pro-Western. As a young man he fought for democracy on the side of the future mayor of St. Petersburg , Anatoly Sobchak, and he was never noted for professional connections to the secret services. Yet his close ties to his current chief speak, at least, to limitless patience and self-limitation.

Whether Mr. Medvedev emerges as a new Khrushchev, ready for an ideological thaw, or a new Gorbachev, who also came to office without his own team, is impossible to say. Mr. Putin has not died, as Stalin and a series of aged Communist leaders did when they gave up power. He is there, smilingly holding Mr. Medvedev by the hand. The king is not dead, and it is too early to shout: “Long live the new king!”

Once again the future of Russia is wide open and unpredictable. Will there be dual rule? Will there be confrontation between two leaders or will they peacefully coexist? Might Dmitri Medvedev disappear along the way, leaving power once again to Vladimir Vladimirovich? I have no answers. But I will say this: For better or for worse, Mr. Medvedev is the last hope for me and for the Russia I love. If he proves to be a false figure of history, then Russia , no matter how hard it tries to look like a superpower, will sink to the depths like that submarine Kursk . Dmitri Anatolevich, the choice is yours.

Victor Erofeyev is the author of the short-story collection “Life With an Idiot.” This article was translated by The International Herald Tribune from the Russian.

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