Well said, George

[Reza_Rahmani]

Couldn't have said this better myself. Comments?

Back in the U.S.S.R.

By George F. Will
Sunday, September 3, 2000

As the tragedy of the Russian submarine Kursk unfolded, Vladimir Putin's government responded with mendacity, lying about many things and suggesting that some other nation's submarine had collided with the Kursk. Which is to say, the government behaved like what it is, a cabal run by a third-generation apparatchik. Putin, whose grandfather was in Lenin's and then Stalin's personal security details, and whose father was a Communist Party functionary, was a KGB careerist before converting--if you think as the Clinton-Gore administration evidently does--to democracy.

The nature of Putin's government is pertinent to America's presidential choice. Al Gore, much more than George W. Bush, adheres to the anachronistic idea that Russia must be treated as a great power--witness Gore's quest for Russia's permission for the United States to defend itself against ballistic missiles, and his passion to preserve the 28-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Gore should read in the National Interest quarterly Zbigniew Brzezinski's essay "Living With Russia," which argues that "there is no solid foundation" for Russia's claim to global status.

Russia's domestic conditions are "bordering on social catastrophe"--ruined agriculture, collapsing infrastructure and steady deindustrialization of the imploding economy. In 1999 direct foreign investment in China was $43 billion, in Poland $8 billion, in Russia $2 billion to $3 billion. Sixty percent of recent births are not fully healthy; 20 percent of first-graders are diagnosed with some mental retardation. Since 1990 male life expectancy has declined five years, to around 60.

Russia's demographic crisis--its population dropped from 151 million to 146 million in the 1990s--exacerbates its geographic crisis. To the east are 1.2 billion Chinese with an economy that is four times larger than Russia's and is lengthening its lead. To the west are 375 million Europeans with a surging economy 10 times the size of Russia's. To the south are nine Muslim states with combined populations of about 295 million Muslims (not counting Turkey's 65 million) seething about Russian brutality against Chechnya. By 2025 the population of the nine may be 450 million (plus Turkey's 85 million).

Nevertheless, Brzezinski's basis for "longer-term optimism"--very longer term--is that Russia's dilemmas are so dire that it has no realistic choice but to join a "Vancouver to Vladivostok" West. But for the foreseeable future, Russia's government justifies pessimism.

Unlike in the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe, there are, Brzezinski says, no former dissidents in Russia's government. It consists, "with no exception," of the sort of people--"former apparatchiki, criminalized oligarchs, and the KGB and military leadership"--who could be governing the Soviet Union if it still existed. Unlike Germany and Japan after losing a war, Russia after losing the Cold War was not occupied and reformed. And even though Putin's office has a portrait of westernizing Peter the Great, Russia's "renunciation of the Soviet past has been perfunctory"--the corpse of Lenin, founder of the gulag, is still honored in central Moscow.

Brzezinski contrasts Russia's stagnation today with Turkey's rapid modernization after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The slow decline of that inefficiently repressive empire allowed the development of a cadre of intellectuals and military officers--the Young Turks--eager to westernize. Turkey quickly adopted the Swiss civil code, the Italian penal code and the German commercial code. Russia's progress, says Brzezinski, will be delayed until "Russia's past imperial and global status will have become a distant memory rather than an entitlement."

Putin's talk of a Russia "which commands respect" as "a great, powerful and mighty state" is delusional. Alexander Lebed, a former general and current politician (who, granted, has an ax to grind), claims there are fewer than 10,000 combat-ready troops. Last year the Associated Press reported that fuel is so scare that pilots average 25 hours flying a year, compared with the Western air forces' minimum of about 200 hours. The Los Angeles Times reports that Putin says the submarine fleet may be cut to 10 and that last summer "the Baltic Fleet owed so much money to the Kaliningrad bread factory that the plant refused to supply any more bread." An indicative indignity occurred in 1995 when a submarine was stripped of its missiles and used to transport potatoes to Siberia.

The submarine Kursk was named for the city that had been supplying it with food and other supplies. That city's name also is attached to the great 1943 battle--history's largest tank battle--that guaranteed the survival, for a while, of the Soviet regime. The Putin government's response to the Kursk submarine's tragedy demonstrates how long and arduous is the crawl up from communism.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

[Sato]

Yes, Reza, I think the article corresponds well with facts.

Putin's recent performance in Japan is just another note in this dreary theme. Putin would do well to reflect on all that Yoshiro Mori could do in the sickroom of the Russian empire. A few islands one way or another won't make much difference.

S

[Dr_Woland]

What this article really proves is that if there is "old Cold War thinking" going on, then it's to be found amongst the supporters of George W. Bush, for whom this is presumably an advertorial?

>> the corpse of Lenin, founder of the gulag, is still honored in central Moscow.<<

I love the quality research that's gone into this piece. (Not). If this is America's most well-informed strata of society, one really fears for the rest of it.

"George F. Will - writing about a country he's never been, from the safety of a country he's never left."

But I think that good old cliches based on misinformation and bias are so much easier for people to digest, than anything that might cause them to have to rethink the little they learned - don't you?

Dr W.

[Reza_Rahmani]

Interesting, "Woland," that you have chosen a user name extracted from Bulgakov's vivid stories. You would do well to review Bulgakov's work and attend to what he communicated about oppression and tyranny, instead of being such a bleeding heart.

Your attack on Will's point of view is disappointingly weak and half-hearted; you are guilty of the aspersions you cast. That you are closeted in the rotting innards of a corpse (similar, as Will pointed out, to the expired Ottoman Empire), gives your rhetoric a bizarre cast. Perhaps you do belong in a Bulgakov novel (but certainly not as "Woland." Woland would be laughing his head off and pissing on the corpse).

RE US conservatism: it has its faults (and I don't care for Bush), but simple-minded or not, it was on the right side during the Cold War, and it retains certain abilities to call a spade a spade.

Reza

[oca]

Reza:

What a posting...Brace yourself for the backlash.
Interesting, I have read a few reports on same subject and saddly enough, the reports seem to concurr with today's presentation.
I wish Russia success and prosperity, but the Russian government must do its part.

[rodneymackinnon]

I doubt George W. Bush even knows who Putin is. If elected, he will probably be our least intelligent president ever (and there is tough competition for that title). I think George Will is guilty of a little exaggeration. I do agree with one of Will's points though. Russia is a country with a declining population, shaky government, and an abundance of natural resources. It is surrounded by overpopulated countries that need natural resources. Trouble in the making
.

[This message has been edited by rodneymackinnon (edited 05 September 2000).]

[Dr_Woland]

[prior to posting the piece below, I would like to point-out to anyone new to this board, that I have consistently found fault with President Putin, both before and after his election. I continue to believe he is a poor leader and Russia could have had better. My past postings will bear this out.]
________________________________________

Dear Reza

Now I've got it out of my system... I think this article is some of
the poorest journalism I have read in several months. Based on half-
truth, supposition, insinuation and guesswork, it is, frankly, rubbish.

But I would like to give you a critique of it, since you asked for
comments.... I not only think little of it, but I am prepared to say
why, and in some detail. If you are ready for detail? Because
almost every detail of this piece is wrong, and it's only by looking
IN DETAIL, that I can support my claims above! :-)

Let's start.

>> Sunday, September 3, 2000
As the tragedy of the Russian submarine Kursk unfolded<<

Look at the date? The sub affair was over several weeks ago. This is
not, therefore, a news story. We must assume that it comes as rather
late analysis - the WP has delayed "dealing" with the Kursk story even
longer than Mr Putin delayed on it.

>> a cabal run by a third-generation apparatchik <<

A cabal? Really? And your evidence, Mr Will? I don't see German
Greff exactly brown-nosing to his boss (I presume Mr Will knows who
Greff IS, exactly?).


>>a third-generation apparatchik<<
>>whose grandfather was in Lenin's<<
>>and whose father was a Communist Party functionary<<

Fairly desperate logic, isn't it?? So Mr Will has noticed that in a
country run by the Communist Party for 70 years, three generations of
this family were in, errrr, the Communist Party? Now, the fact that
Putin's father was in a wholly different line of work to his son isn't
going to worry a bigot like Mr Will - is it? Certainly not, "all
damn commies, and all commies are the same" says Mr Will.

Before we attempt to graduate from the Kindergarten class and move on,
we might POSSIBLY have noted that Putin's family have all come from a
solid "conservative" class within Russia - as might be said of, for
example, George W. Bush? And indeed, of most Republicans. This needs
mentioning, given the "pro-Bush spin" Mr Will has added to his piece.
George W Bush is another guy who's saying "let's get back to the good
old ways of doing things" - rather like, ehem, Mr Putin?? And we
can ALSO note, that Putin has a 10-year record as an achiever in
regional Government in POST-COMMUNIST Russia (or sorry, is that a
bit inconveniently contradictory to calling the guy a commie, George?)

>> Al Gore, much more than George W. Bush, <<

And here, of course, is what this ill-researched crud is REALLY about -
the ailing position of the Republicans in the Presidential campaign
in the USA. However, since I've pointed out that Putin is more
SIMILAR to Bush than Gore in style, this was maybe a wrong line to
pursue, and comes some of the way to explaining why this piece is so
very, very poor.

>> Russia's domestic conditions are "bordering on social catastrophe"--
ruined agriculture, collapsing infrastructure and steady deindustrialization
of the imploding economy. <<

The collapse of the economy in Sept 1998 was due to following the
economic policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund. It's not
only me that says this - the BBC said so in a huge documentary series
analysing the collapse, and The Economist magazine confirmed this
diagnosis. So it is, in fact, the result of an imposed WESTERN
economic policy that the economy is so damaged. I guess Mr Will knows
all the details of this? However, domestic conditions have taken
a sharp upward turn in the past 18 months, as can be demonstrated by
considering a number of indices and statistics. Pensioners are now
receiving double their previous pension. All State employees have been
paid their backlogged wages, and are continued to be paid on-time. The
armed services have seen their wages rise. And.... but do I need go
on? Because Russia is an OIL-PRODUCING country, and in the same way
that America has done just great on oil-revenues recently, so has
Russia.

>> its geographic crisis <<

Its, errrr, geographic crisis? Right, George, sure. Let's have
the country moved, as soon as possible. It's waaay too close to the
USA for you right now, I know.

>> To the west are 375 million Europeans with a surging economy 10
times the size of Russia's <<

Oooooh, now this is clever stuff. He's going to compare the populations
of whole continents with individual countries, and see if anyone spots the
"apples with oranges" problem. Let's see where this argument goes....

>> To the east are 1.2 billion Chinese with an economy that is four times
larger than Russia's and is lengthening its lead <<

Let's see... 145m in Russia, multiply by 4, I get 580m. So if we
compare the population sizes, it looks to me like the per capita economic
success of Russia is currently more than double China's. I could be wrong, of
course.

If, of course, the relative size of the population and economy of
ones neighbours are actually either (a) important or (b) the fault of
Vladimir Putin, into none of which are we treated to Mr Will's insights.

>> To the south are nine Muslim states with combined populations of about
295 million Muslims <<

For those of you struggling to keep up with this intellectual colossus,
that means that the citizens of Muslim states are Muslims. Don't you wish
YOU were as smart as this guy?

However, this enormous generality ignores the Sunni/Shi'a divide which has
kept several of these nations at war with each other for decades, and
makes the rather odd assumption that they will all think/act alike
BECAUSE THEY'RE MUSLIMS? Funnily enough, if they started to it would,
in fact, be a historic first! Because they never did before. And
Hitler's Germany attacked France and Poland, yet they were all Catholic
countries. In fact, you could just as equally start to draw-up
unions of Pepsi-drinking countries, or MS-Windows-using countries, and
you wouldn't find them all in peaceful unity either.

>> Muslims (not counting Turkey's 65 million) seething about Russian
brutality against Chechnya. <<

If it were not for the factual situation being the exact opposite, this would
be quite a good point. Let's see, who's condemned Russia for this,
raise your hands, guys? Iran? Iraq? Saudi Arabia? Uzbekistan? Kyrgyzstan?
Turkmenistan? Kazakstan? C'mon, how about the hard-line Muslims in
Pakistan and Tajikistan? What, none of you? So the only country to
issue a condemnation is in fact... the Taliban Militia of Afghanistan,
who are not the legitimate government, and are supported by Osama bin
Laden (I think we all know who HE is, right?).

Meantime... the Mullah of Dagestan issued a fatwah against Shamil
Basayev, the Chechen warlord, for gross desecration of Islam...
the Mufti of Uzbekistan has condemned the Chechen warlords too, saying
they have impiously and falsely used the name of Islam to further their
criminal and political ends. Come to think of it, religious leaders in
Kazakstan said the same.

So they're seething, all right. They're seething at Chechnya.

>> Unlike in the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe, there are,
Brzezinski says, no former dissidents in Russia's government <<

So you have to be a dissident to be any good? Brzezinski (whoever this
guy may be??) seems to ignore the existence of Gref, of Chubais, and
all the other reformers who dominate the financial positions in the
Government.

But deeds whilst in Government seem to count for less with Wills than
burning t-shirts whilst students. Possibly because he is not trying to
make an economic point, but merely try as hard as he can to point with
an out-stretched finger whilst jerking his kness involuntarily.

>> It consists, "with no exception," of the sort of people--"former apparatchiki,
criminalized oligarchs, and the KGB and military leadership"-

Total and utter crap, of the kind latched onto by ill-informed bigots
on an increasingly desperate hunt for material - even wholly inaccurate
material - to support a conclusion to which they leapt from a great
distance, and are now having great difficulties in sustaining credibly.

>> who could be governing the Soviet Union if it still existed <<

It DOES still exist. In Mr Will's mind, it's alive and well.

>> Unlike Germany and Japan after losing a war, Russia after losing the
Cold War was not occupied and reformed. <<

Firstly, the "Cold War" was not a "war" in the same sense (as if anyone
with a brain bigger than a pea needed this fallace pointing-out), and
even if we let such blather pass for the sake of a quiet life,
we must say secondly that neither, ehem, were Poland, Czech Rep, Slovakia,
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.

>> And even though Putin's office has a portrait of westernizing Peter the
Great, Russia's "renunciation of the Soviet past has been perfunctory"--the
corpse of Lenin, founder of the gulag, is still honored in central Moscow. <<

a) Lenin didn't found the gulag, it was founded by Tsar Ivan the Terrible
and the Oprichniki in the C16th, was built-up under Alexander I to raise
a labour-force for the industrialisation of Siberia (see the revision to
the Russian Penal Code, 1761, for illustrations of how even minor offences
("jews in arrears of taxes", "snuff-taking") were amended to be punishable
by hard labour in a Siberian camp). Finally it was "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky
who took the 200-year-old Tsarist Labour Camps and turned them over to use
by the new Communist administration.

b) Lenin is not "still honoured in Central Moscow". The Mausoleum is open
for Americans and other gawping tourists (no Russians bother to go) on three
mornings per week only.

The crass stupidity of Mr Will's remark marks a low point in an already
abysmal article. To claim that Lenin's Mausoleum exercised any kind of
influence in the Russian national psyche even under Communism would have
been fatuous. To claim that it does today marks Mr Wills out as possibly
the most idiotic author in a supposedly intelligent publication. And
furthermore highlights the fact that he's never, obviously, been to
Moscow to check his faulty facts.

All statues of Lenin have been removed from central Moscow (they were taken
away over ten years ago), and the few that remain are in a specially-built
amusement park so that you can have a laugh at the relics, called "The
Pantheon of Fallen Heroes".

It's reporting of the emptiest, stupidest and most bigoted, to try to
extrapolate a tendency towards a return to Communism from the existence of
this Mausoleum.

Putin has made no statement that he intends these things. Mr Wills hero,
George W Bush, has made public statements against abortion, in favour of
a wide range of backward-looking policies, is known to be in the control
of the Religious Right (truly a cabal!) and calls journalists (like Mr Wills)
"*******s" (so I suppose at least even George W. gets it right sometimes!).

>> Turkey quickly adopted the Swiss civil code, the Italian penal code and
the German commercial code. <<

And just as quickly ignored all three of them.

And remains the country with the worst Human Rights record in the world,
in which police murder, rape and torture of detainees is not only accepted
but condoned, and.... need I go on? Or do you agree with Mr Wills,
that Turkey is such a living heaven that it's a wonder people stay in the
USA instead?


>> Putin's talk of a Russia "which commands respect" as "a great,
powerful and mighty state" is delusional. <<

I see nothing wrong with these goals towards which Putin intends to
strive. Any nation would want the same. He said that was where he wanted
to GET TO - not where Russia was at the moment. To say otherwise is a
total misrepresentation, and further proof that Wills stinks as a
journalist - if further proof were needed.

>> An indicative indignity occurred in 1995 when a submarine was stripped
of its missiles and used to transport potatoes to Siberia.<<

Wow, really? How terrible!!

It's a pity, of course, that Siberia is over 1000 km from any stretch of
water except a few lakes, but probably they have special tunnel-going
submarines, the sneaky commies!

Never mind, George - keep banging the rocks together!

AND THE REAL MESSAGE FROM MR WILLS IS....

... Oh no, George W Bush is doing bad in the polls! Quick, let's
stir-up some international hatred against the Russians, and try to
smear Al Gore with it, after all, he must be a pinko too, right?
Let's write anything. ANYTHING. ANY CRAP AT ALL. But get Gore.

Dr W.