DECEMBER 2009

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2009

Window on Eurasia: ‘GeRussia’—the New Strategic Partnership between Berlin and Moscow

Paul Goble 

Vienna, December4 24 – A new term is circulating in European capitals – “GeRussia” – to designate the rapidly expanding strategic partnership between Berlin and Moscow, an alliance that one Moscow commentator says will conform to German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle’s call for ties between the two powers “without any ‘ifs’ or ‘buts.’” 
Westerwelle’s statement, made during his recent visit to Moscow, Moscow commentator 
Viktor Krestyaninov argues in today’s “Argumenty nedeli,” represents an effort to restore the close ties that Russia and Germany had until the early years of the last century, ties that some are now calling “a Moscow-Berlin axis” (www.argumenti.ru/news/2009/12/23/44029).
Indeed, the “Argumenty nedeli” political commentator says, “many analysts are even beginning to speak” not simply about the appearance of such “an axis” but about a new political formation – “GeRussia,” that is “Germany plus Russia,” in which the economic power of the one and the political weight of the other will ...

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Obama Views Russia as a Third World Country, Moscow Analyst Says

Paul Goble

Vienna, December 24 – Russians who think Barak Obama is a “more suitable” partner for Moscow than George W. Bush was are deceiving themselves, according to a Moscow analyst, because unlike Bush who always took Moscow seriously even if he opposed it, Obama views Russia as a third world country that Washington can largely ignore.
“This was not our year,” Russian commentator Vladimir Pastukhov writes in an essay posted online today. “And it was not our president who was featured on the cover of magazines.” Instead, “Obamamania has seized the world,” and one of the places where this has happened is in Moscow (www.argumenti.ru/news/2009/12/23/44004).
For many in the Russian capital, he continues, “Obama seemed a more suitable partner,” but Pastukhov insists, this is “a deceptive impression” because in fact “Obama relates to Russia not better than Bush but more realistically.” And “in the long term perspective, this does not bode ...

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School Texts in Post-Soviet States Present Russia as the Enemy, Study Finds
By Paul Goble
Window on Eurasia, December 1, 2009

With the exception of only one country and the partial exception of a second, ten post-Soviet states are now using textbooks that present Russia in all its historical forms as the enemy of the peoples of these countries, a pattern that is likely to make it more rather than less difficult for these countries to cooperate in the future.
That is the conclusion of a 391-page report released today in Moscow on "The Treatment of the General History of Russia and the Peoples of the Post-Soviet Countries in the History Textbooks of the New Independent States" (www.nlvp.ru/reports/doclad_hist_02_light.pdf; a summary is available at www.news.km.ru/v_shkolax_sng_iz_rossii_delayut).
Supported by a grant from the Government Club Foundation to the Moscow Center of Social Technologies, a group of researchers examined 187 school history textbooks and teacher guides from 12 non-Russian countries (books from Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are not included) to see how schools in ...
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