[moki]

Russia is certainly more free than it used to be, but there are indeed reasons to worry that Putin's rule will continue to slide into autocracy, not democracy. Does the rest of the world care?

Given the silence regarding the war in Chechnya, one wonders whether people would rather pursue the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance rather than focus on real issues of depriving freedoms and oppression.

from: http://www.economist.com/displaystor...tory_id=431698

.....

How free is free?
Nov 23rd 2000 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition


On paper, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a splendidly democratic place. But there are increasingly ominous signs

DEPENDING on where you stand, you can be elated by Russia’s democratic progress since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago, or depressed by its shortcomings; or even both at once. By Soviet standards, Russia is incomparably freer than it used to be. By the standards of western democracies, there is some cause for concern; and those concerns are growing, rather than diminishing.

Begin with celebration. After 70 years of one-party rule, isolation, repression and bouts of mass murder, Russia is now governed not by Communist ideologues but by rulers who profess democracy. Compared with the Soviet era, most people can choose where they work and live, travel abroad, meet foreigners, try to get rich without being punished for it, worship freely, set up political parties, and complain individually or with others about most of the country’s plentiful problems. Some can even send their children to private schools. For anyone familiar with the horrors of the past, it is a cause for great rejoicing.

But historical perspective does not answer the most important question: what is happening to Russian democracy now? Are its current ills—menaced media, fixed elections, an over-mighty security service, harassment of the opposition, xenophobia and racism, to name just a few—just temporary wobbles, or do they mark a slide towards something new and nasty?

Start with the way Russia runs its elections. These are free and multi-party, and it is hard to argue that the man who emerged from the last round of parliamentary and presidential elections, Vladimir Putin, was not the candidate most Russians wanted. Mr Putin was his predecessor’s nominated heir; but so, too, were John Major and Al Gore. What is more worrying is that the most important bits of the media—state-controlled television stations—were biased in his favour. As in the current batch of local elections, the Kremlin also used the courts, the tax police, and blackmail against its opponents: many of whom, admittedly, would have done just the same given the chance.

The Chechen war helped too. Some Russian journalists and politicians suspect that the authorities had a hand in the mysterious bombs, in the autumn of 1999, that were its ostensible justification. There is no hard evidence either way: Mr Putin calls the very suggestion “immoral”. But the media’s exaggerated portrayal of the war as righteous self-defence against international Islamic terrorism certainly helped Mr Putin, who was then an obscure, newly appointed prime minister, to gain popularity quickly.

The Moscow Times , an English-language daily, recently published a lengthy investigation into ballot-rigging in the presidential election in March. Few doubt that Mr Putin, with all his other advantages, would have anyway beaten his lacklustre Communist opponent in the run-off. But it may have been phantom voters, forgeries and other fraud that helped him win a narrow outright victory in the first round. According to the Moscow Times report, about 1.3m extra voters mysteriously appeared on the election rolls in the three months before the election; and it seems strange, to say the least, that Chechnya went so heavily for Mr Putin.

There was no response to this report. No other news organisation picked up the story. The few Russians who heard about it shrugged cynically. No official bothered to refute the details. Contrast that with the current fuss in Florida, and it highlights another problem. Democracy is not just about elections: it is also about how wrongs are righted. In a healthy system, politicians, courts, journalists, independent officials and trade unions are strong and interlocking. A scandal broken by a newspaper may well be raised in parliament, persuade the public prosecutor to take action, lead to a public inquiry and prompt a resignation or a new law.

In Russia, these institutions, groups and processes are weak. At best, the watchdogs bark. They rarely if ever bite. As a result, human rights are easily abused. On paper, Russia subscribes to all the international norms. In practice, it is often a different story.

Muffled voices

The press in Russia has all the appearance of being free. It is not difficult to start a website, or a small newspaper: something unthinkable ten years ago. But the more effectively you criticise the authorities, the more difficult life becomes. In the provinces, your competitors will be subsidised, either through cheap paper and premises, or directly. Officials may stop talking to your journalists. You risk regular, disruptive investigations by the tax, hygiene, fire or labour inspectors. You may be sued for defamation, with little chance of acquittal. You may find distributing your paper and selling advertising very difficult.

At national level, the Kremlin tolerates, more or less, independent newspapers and magazines (which typically sell a few tens of thousands of copies, in a country of 140m). But it does not like national television channels that it cannot control. Two leading tycoons, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who had built up powerful media interests, are now in exile, facing fraud charges. Other tycoons with equally questionable records, but better relations with the Kremlin, are flourishing unhindered.

It is important not to exaggerate the immediate effects of this. Mr Gusinsky’s television station is still broadcasting, and still much better than its competitors. Things are much worse in most of the rest of the former Soviet Union. The Russian authorities’ hostility to the idea of a free and effective press is only a shadow of the treatment meted out to publishers of samizdat in the Soviet Union. Russian media proprietors are not comparable to the heroic dissidents of the past, who used their television channels ruthlessly to fight their political battles. Russian journalism is often indefensibly sensationalist and corrupt.

But as Mr Putin consolidates power, the likelihood of greater state control of the media is growing. The government is toying with a law that would restrict the operations of foreign-owned media in Russia, such as the Russian language services of Reuters, a news agency, or Radio Liberty, a broadcaster financed by the American government. In a healthy democracy, annoying the authorities is how many journalists make their careers. In Russia, it is a good way to become unemployable; many of Mr Gusinsky’s journalists hastily left for other jobs when he got into trouble.

The authorities’ motives in all this are mixed. Partly it is just convenience, or the belief that such measures are temporarily necessary. Partly it reflects Russia’s continuing obsession with national security. A critic is often portrayed as a saboteur, and one with foreign friends is a spy. When he was president, Boris Yeltsin muffled the xenophobic reflexes of the Soviet system. Under Mr Putin, they seem to be returning.

(continues)

[moki]

As head of the FSB (the domestic-security successor to the Soviet KGB ), Mr Putin bluntly dismissed environmental groups as fronts for foreign intelligence gathering. He has also worried publicly about “unauthorised” contacts with foreigners. It has now become quite risky to be a foreign researcher or businessman in Russia if your field of interest includes anything that a spy-catcher could possibly construe as secret. Recent practical examples include civil-military relations, arms exports andpollution by the armed forces.

The victims are still very few: one American businessman is currently on trial on flimsy-sounding espionage charges. A handful of Russians are in a similar pickle. Grigory Pasko, an environmentalist, told Japanese television about the navy’s mishandling of nuclear waste. After a court decision on November 21st, he faces a new bout of pre-trial detention. Another American businessman is also currently in jail, on trial in a different case. Mr Pasko’s charge that the “spy mania”’ is sweeping the country sounds overblown. But once you start blaming outsiders for your problems, it may be difficult to stop.

Second-class citizens

This whiff of xenophobia is matched by racism. Although Mr Putin had a well-publicised lunch with the doyen of Soviet-era Jewish refusniks , Natan Sharansky, anti-Semitism in Russia provokes rather mild official objections. In September, masked right-wing extremists stormed into a Jewish school in Ryazan, terrifying the children and breaking furniture. The police have done next to nothing. The recently elected governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Mikhailov, said his fight against Jewish “filth” was supported by the president. The Kremlin rebuked him, but merely for “foolishness”. Mr Putin’s own local representative said he was convinced the remarks were not Mr Mikhailov’s “ideological position”.

Jews in fact enjoy considerable religious freedom in Russia. For other religions, especially smaller and foreign-sounding ones, official obstruction is an increasing nuisance. The Salvation Army, for example, which feeds around 6,000 hungry Russians every month in the winter, has had to waste tens of thousands of dollars in legal fights over registration, and the Catholic church has had trouble getting visas for its foreign clergy.

For ethnic minorities in Russia that lack the Jews’ powerful allies abroad, life is often difficult. In official rhetoric, the words “Islamic” and “terrorist” are interchangeable. Efforts by non-Russian nationalities to preserve their languages and cultures risk denunciation as “separatism”. When the Chechen war started, thousands of Chechen residents of Moscow were simply rounded up and thrown out of the city. Anyone with a dark skin (as plenty of foreigners have found to their cost) risks harassment from the police that can range from a tiresome document check to detention, or worse.

The Chechen war itself, now 15 months old and with no end in sight, overshadows all other problems with Russia’s democracy. Of course, democracies do fight wars, sometimes very bloody ones. Anyone wanting to stress the uniqueness of Russian crimes in Chechnya needs to bear in mind comparisons both geographical (Turkey and the Kurds) and historical (France in Algeria), as well as the Chechens’ own kidnap industry.

For all that, Russia’s conduct of the war, especially in the treatment of prisoners and refugees, has been revolting and counter-productive. A lengthy new report by Human Rights Watch catalogues the tortures inflicted on Chechen detainees, including women, young people and the elderly. Many Chechens are arrested and abused for no better reason than to extract a ransom. “If it were possible to gain access to Chechens detained in Russia one would probably have a list of political prisoners running into the thousands,” says Alex Anderson of Amnesty International, a pressure group.

The underlying problem is that Russia has not considered—or really even started discussing—what sort of country it wants to be. Is the Russian Federation basically a Russian empire, with a few non-Russians living in it as second-class citizens? In that case, conflicts with resentful or ambitious non-Russian nationalities are all but inevitable. Or can it become a multinational country where Russian just happens to be the main language and culture, but where Tatars, Kalmyks, and others, who make up more than a sixth of the population, can feel equally at home and respected—like, say, Latinos in America or the Swedish minority in Finland?

That might well have a better chance of working eventually, although even the most advanced and liberal democracies, including the United States, have made quite a hash of assimilating people of different races. In any case, most Russians, used to being the unquestioned top dogs in the Soviet Union, find it hard to take ethnic minorities seriously.

A second big shortcoming of the Russian political system highlighted by the war in Chechnya is the weakness of civilian oversight of the armed forces. Although the elected Duma, through its committees, and the media have some power to oversee and comment on abuses, the army, in many respects, is a law unto itself. Corruption is rampant.

This may improve a bit under the ambitious military reform plans announced earlier this month by Mr Putin. But—as with many other reforms—improvements are coming thanks to narrowly conceived orders from the top, rather than the popular will channelled through the political system. Mr Putin’s main complaint about the army is that it is wasteful and ineffective, not that it is brutal and lawless.

Reform of government is a similar example. Again, it is commendable that this is happening at all. Clearly, something had to be done about the corrupt and incompetent people running Russia’s provinces. Mr Putin’s answer, shortly after taking power, was to appoint seven prefects, each in charge of a dozen or so regions. These men, five of them with a military or security background, are meant to keep a strict eye on the governors, especially when they have imposed local laws that differ from federal ones.

(continues)

[moki]

The seven presidential representatives are proving quite good at biffing local tyrants. But they are showing little interest in putting something more democratic in their place. There is little contact with the public, no encouragement of independent media. The biffing is very selective: the city of Moscow, for example, has managed so far to maintain its unconstitutional system of residence permits, a huge source of graft and unfairness. The result may prove more orderly, and better for business. But it will not make Russia’s regions more democratic.

Few checks, few balances

All Russia’s problems of human rights and democracy come back to three things: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. None works as well as it should. Parliament passes laws in a hurry, and has neither the ability nor the will to call high officials to account. State officials abuse human rights (either on their own, or on orders from on high) and work with remarkable slowness and disorganisation. The courts almost completely fail in their role as the ultimate safeguard of freedom and order.

Russian parliamentarians largely see their job as voting the way they are told (or paid), rather than dealing with their voters’ grievances. The only post-Communist countries that have managed to build a decent state administration and the rule of law are those which had them before 1945. Russian bureaucrats behave very rationally: almost everywhere, the rewards for honesty and efficiency are tiny. So are the penalties for graft and laziness.

Judges are ill-trained, badly paid and under heavy outside pressure. Almost all criminal cases end in a conviction. There are jury trials in only nine of Russia’s 89 regions. Sergei Pashin, a prominent judicial reformer and judge, was sacked last month for criticising the conduct of the trial of a conscientious objector, and for giving out his telephone number during a radio programme. The Moscow board of judges said that his behaviour was “not fitting”.

There is very little sign of this changing. If anything, the consolidation of power in the past year has made it worse. “We wanted a stronger state to make bureaucrats obey the law, but Mr Putin sees a stronger state as meaning a stronger bureaucracy,” says Ludmila Alexeyeva, who heads a big human-rights organisation in Moscow.

The blame rests not only with Russia’s rulers. It also reflects public attitudes and behaviour. First, Russians themselves, quite understandably, think that many of their laws are bad and feel no compunction about breaking them. Second, they have little faith in formal ways of complaining. As a result, they seldom use them. “We have no tradition of living by the law,” says Mrs Alexeyeva. “Faced with a problem, people try bribes, personal connections or force.”

After decades of totalitarianism and centuries of autocracy, it would be silly to expect Russia to sprout a strong civil society and independent institutions like mushrooms. There are plenty of countries that are unpleasantly tough with pushy foreigners, ethnic minorities and the political opposition, but have a reasonably stable and competent government and manage to get a bit freer and more prosperous every year. Many Russians would think that sounded pretty good. It may well be what Mr Putin wants too. If he delivers it, many foreign countries would heave a sigh of relief.

Yet Russia’s current economic stability is perilously balanced on the high oil price. Most of the economy is still largely in ruins after the Soviet collapse and botched reform. Some Russians have been speculating that the government may be planning to move to a “mobilisation economy” in the event of a downturn, which would mean a much greater degree of planning and controls. If that happened, political as well as economic freedoms would suffer.

Second, the danger of silencing critics is that bad policies continue and frustration mounts. Harassing greens, rather than listening to them, means even less chance of salvaging Russia’s devastated environment. The difficulties put in the way of independent trade unions will keep Russian industrial workplaces in an awful state. Ethnic minorities that see their language and culture dying tend to start letting off bombs if no one listens to them.

Authoritarian temptations

Third, heavy-handed habits tend to grow on rulers, especially in countries where the bureaucracy is very incompetent. In general, Mr Putin seems keen to avoid the appearance of authoritarianism. “Our big hope is that Mrs Putin likes having tea with the Empress of Japan,” jokes one of Mr Gusinsky’s editors. “He won’t do anything that risks a scandal abroad.” Certainly Mr Putin delights in international respectability. On specific issues, such as Chechnya, he seems to choose to brazen out criticism from abroad, rather than overrule his own hard men. But he shows some sign of learning on the job, and, even if he has authoritarian instincts, they may be checked by experience.

In sum, there is a respectable case for optimism about Russia; but there is a case for pessimism too. When push comes to shove—at a time, for example, of national emergency—the gains of the past ten years will have to guarantee Russian democracy. “It is not so gloomy, because of what happened in the last ten years,” says Mrs Alexeyeva, a veteran of Soviet-era dissent. “Society can defend itself.” Cross your fingers.

[zigzag]

I've been to Russia and, while I'm no authority, I would say that as a whole it's an infinitely better place than it was, warts and all. The concerns expressed in the article are valid but they pale in comparison to what went before. It's almost a miracle that the place functions at all.

I would say that some freedom, even if accompanied by a good deal of risk, is better than no freedom at all.

[christ]

Originally posted by moki:
...Given the silence regarding the war in Chechnya, one wonders whether people would rather pursue the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance rather than focus on real issues of depriving freedoms and oppression.

Intriguing - whose silence?

Which people "would rather pursue the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance rather than focus on real issues of depriving freedoms and oppression"?

Who decides that "the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance" is not a "real issue"? Oh, that's right, you - the US, do.

Worthy article, unworthy moki editorialising.

[Troll]

Originally posted by christ:
Intriguing - whose silence?

Which people "would rather pursue the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance rather than focus on real issues of depriving freedoms and oppression"?

Who decides that "the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance" is not a "real issue"? Oh, that's right, you - the US, do.

Worthy article, unworthy moki editorialising.

Agreed, there's plenty of noise-making going on about Chechnya. Maybe not in the US, but elsewhere. There are specials on TV all the time here in France on Chechnya and just last week there was a big protest outside the Russian embassy. It's a bit difficult for the US to criticise Russia's actions in Chechnya though since Chechnya fits so nicely within the rhetoric of the War on Terror. Putin repeatedly points this out. Whenever he talks about supporting the eradication of terrorism, he drops in a "like Chechnya," and Bush has been quite happy to keep quiet to secure Russian support (the modicum that he has). Putin has pulled the same trick on Europe but from the opposite side. Europe is hesitant to criticise because he supports their anti-war effort.

[finboy]

Originally posted by christ:


Who decides that "the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance" is not a "real issue"?

Me; other reasonable people with a pretty good understanding of politics and history; those with a developed sense of perspective and responsibility; moki.

Oh, I thought you were looking for a list. Sorry.

[christ]

Originally posted by finboy:
Me; other reasonable people with a pretty good understanding of politics and history; those with a developed sense of perspective and responsibility; moki.

Oh, I thought you were looking for a list. Sorry.

I guess it all hinges on what an American means by 'reasonable', 'developed', 'perspective' and 'responsibility', which is generally (and specifically in your case) summarised as 'agrees with America'.

To precis your list, then: 'Americans' (or maybe more correctly 'some Americans').

Or even, as I put it (apparently accurately the first time) "Oh, that's right, you - the US, do"

But it's nice to have you agree with me, even if it is in a roundabout way.

[tie]

Originally posted by moki:
Given the silence regarding the war in Chechnya, one wonders whether people would rather pursue the boogeyman of the USA's world dominance rather than focus on real issues of depriving freedoms and oppression.

With America's unjustified war on Iraq, and human rights violations like Guantanamo, we have given up our moral leadership. We lack the credibility to sway world opinion against Russia.