Wednesday, December 5, 2012, the Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha advocated granting Albanian citizenship to all Albanians, wherever they reside. This statement was made during a visit of the city of Vlora where the independence of the Albanian state was declared, only 100 years ago. At the time Albania had just liberated itself from Ottoman rule.

This declaration follows a separate statement, collective this time, that Sali Berisha had made with his Kosovar counterpart Hashim Thaci a few weeks ago, promising the union of all Albanians. The place was, I must say, well chosen since the vast majority of the inhabitants of Kosovo today are of Albanian origin, which has not always been the case.During the Balkan War in 1913, Serbs still constitute the majority of the population. In 1941, Kosovo is attached to the Greater Albania (already) fascist Italian protectorate. After the war, Tito would prohibit Albanian immigration since Yugoslavia, according to him, could be strong only if Serbia were as weak as possible. In 1974, it is he who attributes to Kosovo autonomous province status which would be removed by Slobodan Milosevic in 1989, while the Serbs already composed no more than 15% of the population. 

When in 2008 Kosovo declares independence, nearly a decade after the Western military intervention, few commentators call attention to the dominant «Albanity» of this new small state. On the contrary, it is a time of real celebration for that supposedly oppressed people who finally gained freedom. In most Western countries and the European Union, the recognition is instantaneous, without any question being raised about the treatment of the Serb minority and the future that awaited it, despite the terrible precedent of 2004, when Christians were victims of pogroms, burned down churches, and the violation of their most basic human rights. It is true that Europe, sorry the European Union, at that time had other priorities: the essential organization of gay pride in Belgrade. It took only 4 years for the farce of Kosovo’s independence to finally emerge publicly.

Only 4 years for the Albanian Prime Minister to prove the Serb nationalists right when they consistenly maintained that it was not Kosovars (the inhabitants of the Kosovo region being Serbs) they were facing but well and truly Shqiptars, in a new episode of the ancient conflict in the Balkans that has pitted for nearly 6 centuries the Orthodox Slavs against the sons of the Ottoman Empire converts. Western support for the creation of Kosovo and hostility against Serbia may seem completely inexplicable. Yet from 1991 to 2008, U.S. strategists have been led by a single logic: the destruction of Serbia, to debilitate her as much as possible for the inevitable historical moment in the future when she would again turn to Russia.

Of course, it was necessary at the same time to also devitalize Russia.

If, from 1991 to 2000, a military and media war was waged against Milosevic’s Serbia with the aim of annihilating it, an economic and moral war was being unleashed against Yeltsin’s Russia. The crusade against the communist world has turned into a crusade against the Orthodox world, and essentially against its most sovereign political nerve center: Russia. The theoretician of Russia’s containment in Eurasia, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said himself in 2007 that «After the collapse of the USSR, the main enemy of the USA will be the Russian Orthodox Church.» The creation of Greater Albania can probably be seen in this historical and geostrategic light. It is like tossing a new match, one that could create a spark and start a new fire in the Balkan inferno.

This fire would result in the further weakening of Europe, but also deepen the destabilization of the Orthodox world (Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia …) and curb its rapprochement with Russia. Indirectly, it is Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe that would be challenged, and therefore its rapprochement with Western Europe.

In doing so, the United States would once again achieve their primary objective: to prevent a rapprochement between continental Europe and the Catholic and Orthodox worlds.

The original article was published by Ria Novosti

* 

good friend of mine recently told me how disappointed he was when he learned that new French president Francois Hollande had dismissed his minister of ecology Nicole Bricq.  She had recently been promoted until when she wanted to interrupt Shell’s drilling for ecological reasons.

My friend concluded that our President had submitted to the powerful energetic lobby and that this proved the French political class could not afford anymore to fight any powerful economic lobby.  

This discussion took place a few weeks ago as recently, a very interesting debate took place in a famous French television show called ”Ce soir ou jamais” (Tonight or never). This show is animated by broadcaster Frederic Taddei and the debate reminded me of the discussion I had had with my friend in a small cafe near Trubnaya  square. One of the guests of the show was Marie France Garaud, one of the most famous Gaullist French intellectuals. She explained in her own way, the brief History of French politics after the war. Her explanation probably surprised young French generations.

According to her, the modern political two party system that exists in France today between left and right wings is a very recent phenomenon. Before that, there was on one side the President’s party (the Union of all the French who trusted General De Gaulle), and on the other side some nostalgic people who wanted to get back to the 4th French Republic and its political system made of small political parties.  

The “two party system” hat later appeared in France was based on one simple single simplification: the left wing was supposedly closer to the working class while the right wing was more conservative and bourgeois. But from 1999 the Gaullist heritage was betrayed and the French sovereignty was cheaply sold off via, in particular, the European integration process. A new split appeared very quickly, that divided the right wing as well as the left one. In each of those blocks, a Europhile majority emerged, as well as a minority in favor of national sovereignty. Both co-existed chaotically and continue to co- exist chaotically.

  The sovereignty partisans, whether they were leftists or rightists, viewed the two parties system as allowing in theory a political change of power. But this was only in theory, because the leaders of the two ruling Europhile parties agreed on almost everything. For them no matter which Europhile side ruled, as long as the transfer of the French state sovereignty in the direction of the European Community authorities increased, would it be political, economic, financial or about border control.

Consequently, France today cannot be seen as a nation anymore, as it is now facing a total lack of sovereignty, while sovereignty is the most essential attribute of a state. Can one imagine a sovereign nation without a sovereign state?  

Most of the sovereign state’s attributes are endangered today in Europe, like the right to control its borders, to strike coins, to deal out justice and to decide whether or not to go to war. Unfortunately for the European populations, their political elits have recently voluntarily engaged in a political system where they will not even be able to control their national budgets. One could discuss for a long time, why and how this happened. Yet de Gaulle summed it up very well, while at the end of his career, this helpless two party systems already appeared, saying: “The tragedy of France is that the left wing is not about working class anymore, and that the right wing is not national anymore.”  

While the European integration happened by diluting the sovereignty of the states, Russia, since the beginning of this century, seems so far to follow another road. Much have been said in the foreign media about Russia’s non-compliance to human rights or about the violence with which the state has resolved the war in Chechnya.

But little has been said for example about the fact that this war was above all an internal and regional conflict aiming at restoring the Federal sovereignty and at crushing the separatist risk. That same separatist risk threatens a lot of European states today. Also, little if nothing has been said by the foreign press, about Russia’s economic policy and its obsessive refusal of external debt. And though this political choice is a hard one, there is no doubt that the future Russian generations will thank their present Russian politicians for it.   Whatever the western mainstream says, Russian businessmen who were imprisoned for embezzlement (some of the famous oligarchs) illustrate a very clear message: nowadays in Russia, the politic rules over the economy, and not the contrary, despite all the shortcomings that this can cause. The Pikalevo lesson in 2009 coud set a legal  precedent. The massive restructuring plans of the army or the nationalization of the two largest energy companies in the world demonstrate that the Russian state wishes to remain fully sovereign as well in front of the Russia
capitalists as in front of the multinationals. The “Russian multipartism” (i.e. the governance of only one main political party including many various political trends) might be called the Party of the Majority, and could easily be compared with the rule of the majority Gaullist party in France under General De Gaulle, at the moment of the founding of the 5h Republic.

This comparison is not new, as the visionary French Sociologist Emmanuel Todd already envisaged this Russian Gaullism in 2002.

In his book After the Empire, he predicted the slow fail-out of America and wrote: “At the time of the debate on globalization and on universal interdependence, Russia could emerge, in the most optimist scenario, as a huge democracy balancing its external accounts and having an energetic independence, that is to say, being in a world dominated by the United States, the incarnation of the Gaullist dream.”

Many French speaking readers have asked me, via Facebook, details of the relationship between the street demonstrations of the past three months, and those that followed the presidential election.

 Two questions often come back: “For whom did the street protesters vote» and “Who does truly represent the Russian opposition”?These questions arise especially as these demonstrations from the opposition demonstrations were not expected and that it was very difficult to find adominant political line within it. We saw a very large number ofpolitical leaders of various tendencies and a lot of different claims. 

To the question “Who does truly represent the Russian opposition”. I could answer that there is in the Duma (the Russian parliament) 226deputies of United Russia, 92 Communist deputies, 64 deputies of Fair Russia and 56 deputies of Liberal-Democratic Russia. But of course, the questions referred specifically to thisopposition that demonstrated in the streets. In the end, Johnasked me “about the arrests that took place during the opposition meeting on Monday night, the day after the election”. Were we attending a tightening up of the Russian power, and a totalrape of the freedom to manifest, that some peacefuldemonstrators were asking for, just like in all democracies worthy of the name? 

The headlines in the French press, which denounced a muscled repression from the power in place, could indeedsuggest so. Let us go back to these three months of demonstrations. Following thegeneral elections in December,some images of fraud looped in the media. Apart of the civil society but also some representatives of minority political parties decided to call for a demonstration of the elections’ results. They asked the Chairman of the Electoral Commission to resign, and called for the cancellation of the elections in order for some new and honest elections to be able to take place.   A huge number of websites and Facebook pages quickly set up through the Internet social networks, calling for a demonstration. 

This marketing buzz works pretty well and consequently a first demonstration was held on the Marais square on December 10, 2011, involving perhaps 35,000 to 40,000 people. The demonstration brought together side by side some of the Moscow gilded youth as well as dozens of sub-political factions that were not candidates for a national representation, i.e.radical nationalists, anti-fascists and political liberal parties but also communists. A second meeting was held on December 24, Sakharov Avenue, with 40,000 to 50,000 people gathering, and again with this new and unlikely coalition of disparate political movements andpeople from the civil society as well as opposition figures including some from the  show –business. 

An interesting fact that the press has not underlined much is that these two demonstrations were held without any serious incidents, if not at the end of the second meeting, when radicals from the right-wing attempted to climb onto the platform by force. Finally, on February 4,a third unitary meeting took place, on the Marais square again, gathering between 40,000 to 50,000 people. Who were these people who defied the cold to go demonstrate with so much cheerfulness? Sociological studies and surveys have shown since then that the majority of them were upset with the election results and wanted to have their voice heard. Their background was mainly the muscovite upper-middle class. The problem with this educated and at times, westernized class that grew rich during the last 10 years, is that it has not formed a political party to make its voice heard, and it has no leader whom to trust.

Those demonstrations though were attended by many political groups, as well as associations and historical leaders of the opposition like Boris Nemtsov, Gregory Iavlinskii or Garry Kasparov. For them it was the right occasion to take advantage of the events in order to to boost their popularity and emerge as leaders of this unhappy crowd.   None of them hasreally emerged, but new figures have appeared, for example Michael Prokhorov, the nationalist-liberal blogger Alexei Navalny or the extremist left-wing Sergey Udaltsov. Although they were part of opposing tendencies on the political spectrum, their «anti-Putinism» primary allowed them to a temporarily alliance.  

That’s probably where the rub is. 

The muscovite“upper-middle class” who protested for three months hasgenerally a high level of education and usually a good standard of living. It neither wantedto deal with far right or far left incidents, nor rehabilitate losers from another political era. This is probably the reason why most of the protestors have preferred not to participate tothe presidential elections but have probably predominantly chosen to support Michael Prokhorov, whom they considered as the most modern and reliable candidate. 

The results of the presidential election showed that Michael Prokhorov who is defending a rather liberal and pro-European political line, has easily seduced this “Europeanized” upper middle class as well as an electorate that wanted a constructive “anti-system” vote.    Undoubtedly, he is the big winner of the past three months’ wave of demonstrations, this demonstration being first of all legalistic and political. It will be necessary to see what Michael Prokhorov will now do, he who in the coming weeks should create a new right wing political party on the Russian chessboard. Now what about the arrests that occurred during the recent demonstrations and why did the latter gather less protesters? 

As opposed to what a part of the French press’s headlines read, this is not the pseudo-repression that weakened the mobilization but rather the fact that the vast majority of the protesters in December 2011 did not identify with the extremist emerging leaders. In the last but one demonstration on Pushkin Square Monday March 5, Michael Prokhorov has indeed been booed by the few thousand protesters who were present. 

Last Monday, he did not come to the opposition demonstration on Arbat Avenue. Therefore it is no surprise that these demonstrations have been able to gather only and respectively 10,000 and 8,000 protesters.It is no surprise either that in both cases, the demonstrations have turned to a confrontation with the police, as the organizers refused to leave the premises at the end of the demonstrationand as they deliberately chose to let nationalist groups or radicals from the extreme left, walk to the Kremlin.   

The conclusion to all of this could be held in two words, the ones that the new President of Russia addressed to these same opposition factions on March 7: “Be serious”.

December 17, the liberal opposition party Iabloko gathered some 1,500 supporters, while the same day a thousand of supporters of the Eurasian movement and of the Union of Russian citizens (ПрофсоюзГражданРоссии)gathered to denounce the Orangemanipulations[3] and to remind the need of a strong state. The next day,December 18, nearly 3,500 members of the Communist party got together.

In the end, December 24th has only been a success for Moscow city. In the provinces and in other Russian cities, the mobilization has weakened compared with the rallies of December 10th. In Vladivostok, the demonstration brought together 150 people, against 450 on December 10. In Novosibirsk, 800 people marched, compared to 3000 on December 10. In Chelyabinsk in in the Ural, the demonstrators were less than 500 in comparison with 1000 on December 10, and in Yekaterinburg 800 people demonstrated while 1.000 did on December 10. In Ufa, 200 people gathered, as many as on the 10^th of December.

In the capital on December 24, three different meetingswere held. 2000 nationalists from the Liberal Democratic Nationalist Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky and 3,000 supporters of the political analyst Sergei Kourganian have demonstrated separately in order to respond to the “orange plague”. In the end, and above all, 40,000 to 50,000 people gathered to what was probably the biggest opposition rally of the

Besides, one can wonder why the numerous Western journalists present at the venue, did not notice that thousands of young radical nationalists whistled or shouted “Russophobic” toward some speakers of different faiths and chanted slogans such as “The ethnicRussians forward”, or “Give a voice to ethnic Russians”. The least[7] we can say is this is a surprising double standard.

The civic and political events experienced by Russia in the recent days have probably been, one more time, treated in an excessive and erroneous manner by the mainstream media. Russian spring, Snow revolution, weakening of the Putin regime, Arab revolution in Moscow…

The excessive critics which were often obsessively directed towards the Prime Minister are certainly in total harmony with a few slogans that I heard at the demonstration. But they are more than anything far from the reality on the ground and far from what the vast majority of Russians think. 

This time, the French speaking mainstream media did not equaled the English speaking one, when  one of the most important television channels commented the events in Russia by using images of the riots in Greece. Yet one knows how rare the palms treesare in Moscow and that the Russian police does not wear not Greek uniforms. Any additional comment is unnecessary: just watch the reportage[1].

Let us start from the beginning. Following the parliamentary elections on December 4, cases of electoral fraud have been identified. However, a serious and non emotional analysis shows that the differences between the surveys, the surveys following the vote, the etimate and the results[2], are only tangible in the Caucasus or eventually in Moscow, as I had mentionedhere. 

Let’s remind that the traditional and conservative Chechen structure (like the role of the teïps for example) may be a voting factor rather difficult to understand. The other frauds that were denounced essentially concern Moscow,where the score of United Russia was apparently inflated according to an exit poll survey published by the FOM institute[3] during the counting of votesand that was a hornet’s nest. Oddly enough this survey is no longer online on their site todaybut it was published again on many blogs. And what is easier to manipulate than an exit poll survey realized by an institute? The demonstration movements have therefore mainly concerned Moscow and St. Petersburg, who collected the ¾ of the country’s demonstrations.

In fact, what aboutthe denounced fraudpropagated on the Internet, through social networks, Youtube, and that the Western journalists keep quoting restlessly since the elections? 7,664 incidents[4] of various types have been identified covering all the polling stations during the elections (in Russia and abroad).

Among these incidents,the number of reported cases of frauds in the counting of votes is of 437. Now let’s have a look at what the website of Golos, an“independent” association specialised in election monitoring. Golos counts 66[5] cases showing a difference in the counts of  observers compared with the final results. Each time the difference of votes was around 100, 200 or 300 depending on the case. The analysis is the same forVedemosti which publishes a detailed analysis[6] of Moscow’s election in which about 30cases were reported by the Iabloko observers (opposition party) for the entire capital.    Can anybody imagine that those 20,000 votes in dispute (at the highest estimate) may allow United Russia to double its score in Moscow?

Has anybodynoticed that the “independent” observers orthose of Golos or Iabloko have found no fraud whatsoever in the rest of  the 3,374 polling stations of the capital? Can anybody believe that these fewcases of fraud throughout the country could  have completely reversed the election’s outcome? One can seriously doubt it. 

Since the elections, no one challengedthe irregularities, the frauds and the systemic failures identified by the different observers, political parties and associations. But of course one cannot compare Moscow toChicago, where 100,000 votes had disappeared[7] during an electionin 1982.    In addition, many international observers havevalidated the Russian elections, whether you look here[8],here[9] or there[10]. The Golos association (that is very involved in the frauds denunciation in Russia) was funded by the very powerfulAmerican associations USAID[11] and NED[12].    Golos was recently caught in theact so to speak, asthe Russian  press justpublished an email exchange between the head of Golos  and some USAID officials, asking them how muchthe association could charge (at the moment of the previous elections in Russia) forreporting frauds and abuses[13].  

But the excitement on Internet regarding rigged elections worked very well and about 35,000 people gathered at a large demonstration last Saturday in Moscow (a demonstration I also attended[14]), asking for new elections. The demonstration was called the Snow revolution and participants wore white carnations[15]but also flowers[16]. This combination of symbols is a strange reminiscence of the symbols of the revolutions of colours (also called Flowers revolutions) that took place in Serbia in 2000, inGeorgia in 2003 and in Ukraine in 2004. Even stranger, the site of the mysterious and new association which organized the movement was also called BelayaLenta[17]. This is an Internet domain name that was filed in the United States in October 2011. 

I personally found the demonstration extremely interesting. It brought together heterogeneous political movementsand associations. A number of people came to see what was going on and were surprised of the size of the rally. I would describe the average participant as the Moscow upper middle class. Those rather young and mostly male participants were convinced that their vote was stolen, or were attending the demonstration simply to express their hostility to the Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin. 

The meeting was co-organized by the eternal liberal opponents Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Milov and Michael Kasyanov and federated within the Parnas[18], as well as Sergei Udaltsov[19], the leader of the far-Left Front. Sergei Udaltsov was also a former member of the liberal / communist coalition “Other Russia”[20], which brought together ultra left-wing, national-Bolsheviks and pro-Western liberals.  Liberal and pro-Western associations were also present, just like the Communist Party and Fair Russia and a various far-left movements: the anarchists, the Left Front and Third World movements. But another totally unexpected element for a foreign observer was the strong presence of the extreme right: neo-Nazis[21], nationalists or even monarchists. Foreigners reading this text may wonder how people who are so different could walk peacefully side by side.  

There were a lot of anti-Putin slogans, but no rioting demonstrators at the end of the demonstration. This animosity in the slogans towards the Prime Minister was therefore expressed in very different fields.  For some, Putin is an autocrat, for others on the contrary, he is too nationalistic, too liberal or too little left wing.

A symbol that was absent from the demonstration was the blogger AlexeiNavalny, who seemed thoughto be the perfect and unexpected synthesis between liberals and right-wing radicals. This very popular blogger (he is more popular in the West than inRussia) is a former member of the Iabloko liberal movement. He is at the origin of theslogan “United Russia, party of crooks and thieves”, which is used by the opponents of Vladimir Putin and of the slogan »Vote for anyone except for United Russia».

He also participated this year in the “Russian march”[22], the march of the far-right
movements in Russia, congratulating himself “to have the chance to educate this radical youth».    But his mailbox was hacked, which helped to demonstrate that he was[23] (like the Golos association) an employee of the American Association NED (one of the essential supporting  structures to the revolutions of Colour over the recent years and inside the post-Soviet space).

AlexeiNavalny is also closely related to AlexanderBelov, the representative of the former DPNI, a far right-wingstructure viscerally anti Kremlin. Apart from the influence of Golos and Navalny, one should note that the U.S. have recently promised to increase their aid to the  associations operating in Russia, assuring that this aid is not intended to undermine the country’s political stability – which one can sincerely doubt about.

I attended this demonstration and two main thoughts come to my mind.   First, the rally ended peacefully[24]: it was a demonstration of maturity of the Russian society, from both the demonstrators and the state. 

From now on, the constantlyemphasized myth of the repressive state is no longer valid. The protesters respected thelegal framework, everything went smoothly without any serious incidents.Second, the serious and constructive claims of manydemonstrators (asking for free medicine and a reform of the education, for example) seemed to fit the demands of an electorateclose to the Communist Party or to the party of the new left block “Just Russia”. 

This left block will occupyapproximately one third of the new assembly and seems to be the real opposition force that emerged from the electionsofDecember 4, more than a hypothetical and fantastical orange / brown / redcoalitionreunited in a meeting  organized by eternal losers or by leaders of small groups.It is now plausible that the Russian political life will structure itself around two main blocks: a center-right: United Russia, and a left wing mainstream. 

These two observations make me think that the Russian political life should thus keep its stability, while the U.S.purpose of Color revolution in Russia will sink into oblivion.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zacVsn-uYNk [2] http://darussophile.com/2011/12/08/duma-elections-opinion-polls/ [3] http://fom.ru/ [4] http://www.kartanarusheniy.org/ [5] http://www.alexandrelatsa.ru/2011/12/2011.html [6] http://www.vedomosti.ru/tnews/geo/elections-discrepancy [7] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/04/where-theres-smoke-theres-fire-100000-stolen-votes-in-chicago [8] english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/05/61568822.html [9] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/international-observers-comment-on-the-validity-of-russian-elections-135015558.html [10 http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/05/61568822.html [11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOLOS_Association#Relationships_with_USAID [12] http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/russia [13] http://www.lifenews.ru/news/76604 [14] http://www.alexandrelatsa.ru/2011/12/la-revolution-des-neiges.html [15] http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RqdF-7Zw0JI/TuSU–5KWXI/AAAAAAAAF6E/x63u-kN8qag/s1600/DSC_0474.JPG [16] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sADJP7FhLwA/TuSU5NJ5C7I/AAAAAAAAF58/_vdFg3jX9_Q/s1600/DSC_0473.JPG [17] http://www.belayalenta.com/ [18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Freedom_Party [19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Udaltsov [20] http://www.theotherrussia.org/ [21] http://ridus-news.livejournal.com/449071.html [22] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2057649/Nazi-saluting-nationalists-Take-Russia-march-Moscow-Muslim-migrants.html [23] http://slon.ru/russia/kompromat_na_navalnogo_vse_tayny_vraga_kremlya-692390.xhtml [24] http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pmZa9u3417Y/TuSYryogg7I/AAAAAAAAF_c/ppYdOq1O62Q/s1600/DSC_0589.JPG