Window On Eurasia: Russian Bureaucracy In Some Ways Worse Than Soviet Predecessor, Kagarlitsky Says
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posted by eagle on July, 2009 as Imperialism
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 10 – Not only is the Russian bureaucracy now larger than the Soviet one it replaced, but it is more Kafkaesque, with those who must deal with it far less certain about who decides what or even whether there is anyone who can decide anything, according to a leading Moscow social critic.
In an article for the Orthodox portal Stoletie.ru, Boris Kagarlitsky, the director of the Moscow Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, notes that everyone knew “that the Soviet Union was a bureaucratic kingdom,” in which “power belonged to the functionaries” with whom Russians hated to have anything to do.
But it had two chief virtues in comparison with its post-Soviet Russian variant: It was smaller, and “what is the main thing, each [Soviet citizen] knew precisely where to go with his ...
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Window On Eurasia: Draft Evasion By Russia’s Rich And Powerful Angers The Less Well-Placed
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posted by eagle on as Imperialism
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 10 – The Russian military has achieved the Soviet goal of becoming a true “worker-peasant” army, the result of widespread draft evasion by the children of the rich and powerful and a trend that is infuriating those who are forced to serve and fraying what was one of the most important links between the Soviet leadership and people during World War II.
In that conflict, the sons of senior officials in the Communist Party and Soviet state – from Stalin himself on down – served in the Red Army and in many cases were captured or killed, an indication that they were not in many cases given the kind of special treatment that children of the post-Soviet elite appear to view as their due.
In an article in this week’s “Argumenty nedeli,” Nadezhda ...
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Window On Eurasia: Moving Toward Novocherkassk - 2009
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posted by eagle on as Imperialism
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 10 – The Russian Federation today moved another step closer toward the kind of violent confrontation between angry workers and the country’s armed forces that Moscow sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher warned about in his November 2008 article, “Novocherkassk – 2009” (www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2008/11/06/167542).
Workers from five plants in the Altay Republic blocked a highway between Novosibirsk and Mongolia in the hopes of attracting attention to their economic plight and possibly a visit by a senior official like the much-publicized one Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made to Pikalevo last month after workers there took a similar step.
But instead of that reaction, the authorities this time sent heavily armed OMON forces who pushed the workers off the highway and detained those the militia believed were behind the action on administrative charges. However, if as seems likely, those detained cannot pay the fines, they ...
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Window On Eurasia: Hackers Assume Larger Role In Russia’s Online ‘Religious Wars’
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posted by eagle on as Imperialism
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 9 – Hacker attacks against sites maintained by political opponents of the Russian government have received a great deal of attention, but increasingly, hackers are turning their attention to Runet sites operated by religious groups, a reflection of the importance of the Internet in Russian religious life and of the ability of hackers to get away with such crimes.
In an article in today’s “Novya izvestiya,” Mikhail Pozdnyaev says that among those who have suffered from hacker attacks are “representatives of all confessions, official and independent information agencies which write about religious news, and popular missionaries” (www.newizv.ru/news/2009-07-09/111589/).
Because of the diversity of sites and the difficulties involved in determining why a site may have failed and in tracking down those responsible, there are no reliable statistics available on just how widespread this trend is. And ...
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Window On Eurasia: Moscow Special Services Again Play The ‘Jewish Card’ against Ukraine, Kyiv Writer Says
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posted by eagle on as Imperialism
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 9 – For entirely understandable reasons, there has been much speculation but little serious discussion about the specific role Moscow’s intelligence services have played in relations between Russia and the former Soviet republics in the internal politics of these states, and in the relationship between these countries and the outside world.
A notable exception to this dearth of discussions is provided in an article by Moscow State University expert Aleksandr Karavayev entitled “Methods of Adopting Political Decisions and the Role of the Special Services in Russian Policy in the CIS” that was posted online this week (www.ia-centr.ru/expert/5181/).
But an even more intriguing if necessarily more narrowly focused consideration of this question was offered by Moses Fishbein, a Jewish Ukrainian poet, in a commentary entitled “The Jewish Card in Russian Operations against ...
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