Window On Eurasia: Nemtsov Offers Moscow A Way Out On Sochi Olympics
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posted by eagle on March, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 23 – Boris Nemtsov, a leader of Russian Solidarity movement and currently a candidate for mayor of Sochi, has provided Moscow with a way to hold the 2014 winter Olympics in Russia despite all the scandals and delays that have plagued the Sochi venue over the last several years.
In an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev that was published first on his own blog (b-nemtsov.livejournal.com/37339.html) and then in today’s “Yezhednevny zhurnal” (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8910), Nemtsov suggests decentralizing the games so that most of the competitions could take place in facilities that already exist or that would be easier to build.
Noting that Sochi residents are “extremely concerned about the course of preparation for the winter Olympic Games,” Nemtsov points to five major problems. First, he says, “Sochi is physically not ready for the enormous construction, ecological, transportation and migration burdens” such construction would require.
Second, says, “the economic crisis confronts Russia with ...
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Window On Eurasia: Moscow Gains Another ‘Win’ In Georgian Campaign As Russian Soldiers Suffer Another ‘Loss’
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 23 – The European Union commission set up to determine the cause of the Russian-Georgian war has concluded that Georgian President Mikhiel Saakashvili launched the conflict in South Ossetia through a hitherto secret order, a conclusion that Russia media are spinning to suggest that Georgia, not Moscow bears responsibility for the broader conflict.
But even as Moscow pocketed its latest diplomatic success in convincing many in the West that Saakashvili’s movement of troops from one part of his country to another justified Moscow’s invasion of Georgia, the Russian government is being embarrassed by reports that it did not pay its own soldiers who took part in that operation.
In an article in today’s “Izvestiya” headlined “The EU Commission: Saakashvili Started the War,” journalist Viktoriya Leblan cites a report in yesterday’s German newsweekly “Spiegel” that the commission had been convinced on this score by secret order the ...
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Window On Eurasia: Moscow’s Latest Moves Make Revolution ‘Inevitable’ But Not Necessarily Soon, Activist Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 22 – Moscow’s decision to bring Mikhail Khodorkovsky to trial again is a clear indication that Russia will experience yet another revolution because this persecution of the former oligarch will “bury” any hopes among the liberal intelligentsia for “the peaceful evolution of the regime,” according to a leading democracy activist.
But if this makes a revolution inevitable, Yevgeny Ikhlov of the Movement for Human Rights argues, this observation does not mean that such an upheaval will necessarily take place soon given the resources available to the regime and the lack of organization and discipline among its opponents (www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=49C38386390D1).
Indeed, he points out, takes no great insight in order to make such a prediction given that a revolution at some point is “the fate of any non-democratic regime.” But having recognized that such a regime will break if it does not bend, he suggests, helps to focus attention ...
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Window On Eurasia: Re-Feudalization Threatens Russia’s Future, Delyagin Warns
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 22 – The Russian government is increasingly staffed by officials interested only in pleasing those above them and lacking any interest in understanding the wider world, a reflection of broader changes in the relationship between knowledge and status under conditions of globalization and specifically Russian conditions.
But in some other countries at least, including the United States and Great Britain, Mikhail Delyagin argues in an essay published at the end of last week in “Yezhednevny zhurnal,” this process has produced a return to feudalism in government and society already evident in Russia (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8902).
In an article in which he provocatively suggests that Russia’s “administrative system has gone directly from socialism, bypassing capitalism, to feudal times,” Delyagin says that this development is in the first instance the product of trends that are affecting many countries in a time of globalization and also some specifically Russian problems.
As “human activity has become so specialized,” he writes, ...
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Window On Eurasia: Record Spring Draft In Russia Seen Exacerbating Tensions
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 22 – Russia’s uniformed services will seek to draft more than twice as many men in April than they did a year ago even as they discharge an equally large number of those completing their year of service into the economy, creating at both ends of the process a situation that threatens to exacerbate existing social tensions in that country.
Col. Gen. Vasily Smirnov, the deputy chief of Russia’s general staff, announced on Thursday that “the spring draft will be the largest in terms of numbers [in many years] – with 305,000 young Russians being sent into the army, fleet and other forces,” up from 219,000 last fall and from only 133,200 a year ago (gazeta.ru/social/2009/03/19/2960830.shtml).
At the same time, more than 300,000 soldiers will be released from service, an exchange that reflects the reduction in the length of service to only one year but one that means these young people ...
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