In the first part of his interview, Sergej Chelemendik, PACE member from Slovakia, spoke about the impact of the global financial crisis on Europe, about Russia’s image in European eyes and liberal superstitions influencing European mind. In the second part of his talks in Bratislava with RPMonitor’s senior staff writer Marine Voskanyan, Mr. Chelemendik presents his view on Russia’s potential role in the post-crisis world and ideas that Europe could borrow from Russia under new historical circumstances.
Q: What do you think Russia could propose to the post-crisis world as an idea, and what is its advantage before neoliberalism?
Sergej Chelemendik: I believe Russia could propose the idea of a strong, organized and militarily supported power that protects its part of the world from rivals. That is what China and the United States cannot propose. China is a self-locked civilization which is uninterested – at least today – in active foreign policy and export of any ideology. China’s ideology is to be China. In the United States, imperial ideas, once imported from Britain, have got into the hands of illiterate and ambitious persons who have distorted its essence. In this degenerate version, this imperial idea is reduced to printing dollars and buying up resources of other nations. Today, their exchange commodity is good for nothing: with banknotes, you could at least fire a stove.
I guess Russians don’t quite understand the change that happened – that money in the definition of Marx does not exist any longer. America has created a world of substitutes. America’s ideology is Coca Cola: we sell you poisoned water and you give us money.
Q: Still, the United States continues to export democracy and the image of “American dream”. Can Russia propose an alternative to this commodity? In fact, Russia has not yet formulated an articulate national idea even for domestic use.
S.C: Some persons in Russia have adopted liberalism but that is a tiny minority, if compared with Europe. Vacuum cannot exist for a long time: it will be filled with an adequate concept. Today’s “sovereign democracy” is not the best formulation but already a claim for an ideology of Russia’s own. Ideas emerge from real life. The new Russian idea is unlikely to develop from the existing constructions – Christian values, or leftist ideas. Today, Europe is interested in Russia as a reliable energy exporter. In a few years, Europe will face the problem of food, and Russia’s resources will become vitally important. In this situation, Russia, if its collects the required political energy, could introduce the idea of strong power.
Q: Will Europe really demand the idea that looks like the very totalitarianism that had been declared the enemy of the civilized society?
S.C: In the Europe of today, power as a possibility to compel someone to do something he wouldn’t like, does not exist. All the European schemes of seeking common solutions – tolerance, multiculturalism etc. are designed for a quiet oasis of well-to-do consumption. It is in fact the same as the consumerist version of communism.
The original concept of democracy was the idea of elected power of warriors which suggested that a person can pay his life and fate for his choice. Today’s European citizen is a person with a certificate, not more.
But in the times when European well-being is coming to an end, harsh decisions will be required – of which nobody in Europe is today capable.
Several months ago, groups of Albanians and Serbs collided in a physical fight in one of the quiet commercial streets of Vienna. Policemen were staying a side, not knowing how to intervene. What is Vienna, with the whole background of its imperial past, can do with this – while every eighth Austrian is an immigrant from the Balkans?
In fact, the Balkans were designed as a detonator for exploding Europe. There will be more mine fields. The European home will start to fall apart. Under these conditions, absence of power is fatal.
Q: Thus, Europe will require the same methods that it had taught Russia to get rid of?
S.C: The Europeans will have no alternative. The nations like France and Germany that have a tradition of strong power will revive it. For the rest of Europe, it will be hard to realize that we are returning to the age of larger and smaller wars.
Today’s France is the only European nation that still has a real military potential, and that is why it was reluctant to re-join NATO for so many years. France has got the Foreign Legion that is involved in real warfare. The Germans are the strongest European nation, but the shape of their army is miserable.
In the post-crisis world, Europe will be strongly interested in the idea of a strong centralized power resting upon a strong army. Russia will attract interest as the center of power of this kind, as it hasn’t lost the understanding of power. Russia will attract interest as a center of military industry, possessing also vital resources including oil, gas, and fresh water.
Therefore, Russia will also be compelled to correspond with this image, as otherwise it will be destroyed.
Q: Unfortunately, the idea of strong power often transforms in arbitrary rule of local officials, and thus discredits itself in the form of corruption.
S.C: This phenomenon is rather an indirect result of liberal influence. Corruption is a typical feature of today’s democracy, which in fact is nothing but division of money, collected from taxpayers, between a few major business players of a particular nation.
Most powerful business structures acquire the possibility to control part of the budget and distribution. Thus, Russians should not believe in the myth that European democracy is a remedy from corruption.
Q: It is true that many Russians believe that civil rights and decent behavior of officials, physicians, police inspectors etc. is available only in a “non-authoritarian” society.
S.C: I know that such illusions exist. But if Russians want to imagine the most refined implementation of today’s democracy, let them look at the powerless disaster of Ukraine.
Q:What would you say to a young Russian who believes that Europe is a society of fair and well-to-do life where individual rights are really guaranteed?
S.C: These young guys could acquire those illusions from a superficial impression of European life. But the world is rapidly changing, and young Russians will have to reassess the reality. They will have to ask themselves why the Russian and European stock markets are simultaneously collapsing, and why the recently powerful oligarchs are going bust one after another. They will have to ask themselves what to do when the American casino that everybody was playing has caught fire, the owners have promptly escaped with cash, the roulette is still turning but the whole thing does not work. And they will make their conclusions. They will change their attitude to the world and their life.
It will be a hard revelation. In my young age, a European citizen could chose between a cozy quiet life and struggle for big success. The youth of today will get a more limited choice .
We are facing a time of harsh decisions, mobilization, and common fight for survival.
Un article intéressant à lire “ici“, ci dessous un résumé (en Anglais) : ***
The EU’s Russia policy cannot succeed as long as it continues to rest on faulty analysis and mistaken assumptions.
This is the main conclusion of What does Russia think?, a collection of politically revealing essays by intellectuals whose views influence the Kremlin – many of whom have advised Putin or Medvedev – which the European Council on Foreign Relations has published today. The collection includes essays by Fyodor Lukyanov, Valery Fadeev, Vyacheslav Glazychev, Gleb Pavlovsky and Leonid Polyakov.
Despite a tendency toward insularity, the policy debate in Russia as reflected through these essays is ongoing and lively. As ECFR Russia experts Ivan Krastev, Mark Leonard and Andrew Wilson write in their joint introduction: “If we want to influence and deal with Russia, we need to understand it. But if we want to understand Russia, we should be interested in it. Unfortunately, we are not. Taken together, these essays show that the EU will only be able to develop an effective approach to Moscow if its policy makers rediscover some of the curiosity for Russia’s internal debates that they had during the Cold War.”
According to the intellectuals: Russia does not want to be like the EU.
The overarching quest for most Russian policy-makers is not to move closer to their Western neighbours, as many in the EU would like to think, but rather to free themselves from the West. Leonid Polyakov is the Chair of General Political Sciences at Moscow State University, and has worked on developing and publicising the controversial “sovereign democracy” concept. In his essay, An Ideological Self-Portrait of the Russian Regime, Polyakov writes: “the task before us is to turn Russia from an imitator of other civilisations into a model to be imitated by others.
There is mounting distrust towards the EU in Russia.
Russia fears that its borders are vulnerable, which explains the ongoing drive to surround itself with buffer states. Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, which produces the most widely read analysis of Russian foreign policy. As he writes in his essay Rethinking Security in ‘Greater Europe’, “not a single country in the former Soviet Union, including Russia, can say for certain that its borders are historically justified, natural and, therefore, inviolable”.
The West has lost interest in discovering what is really going on in Russia, and relies on obsolete perceptions going back to the end of the Cold War.
Gleb Pavlovsky is head of the Russia Institute and is one of the Kremlin’s leading strategists. He helped launch Putin as Yeltsin’s successor and ran Putin’s two election campaigns in 2000 and 2004. In his essay, Two missions in Moscow, Pavlovsky argues that western liberals focus stubbornly on what Russia lacks: “The West persistently repeats, like a mantra, that Russia is “weak”. The US refuses to recognise, and the EU refuses to accept, the reality of a global Russia. This is the biggest problem in relations between Russia and the West.“
Russian political debate is far more complex than a struggle between democracy supporters and Putin followers.
There is an underlying “Putin consensus” in Russia – Putin’s approval rating hovers at around 70%, while support for the government he heads is not even a third of this figure. But in denouncing the “Putin consensus” as manifest authoritarianism, the West fails to appreciate its social and political origins. To understand it, one has to look back at the debilitating crisis resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the anarchic democracy that followed. Vyacheslav Glazychev is the Managing Director of the Evropa publishing house which specialises in books on Russian politics, philosophy and history. In his essay The ‘Putin consensus’ Explained’, he argues that “fear of empty space” is the essential reason for Putin’s majority support. According to Glazychev, “the Putin phenomenon has only an indirect relationship with the rational. Without a shadow of a doubt, Putin’s macho style has an almost magical effect on the majority of Russian citizens.”
The economic crisis has strengthened Putin’s Russia.
Contrary to many predictions, the economic crisis has made the Russian state more powerful at home and abroad. Valery Fadeev is the editor of the influential business weekly Ekspert. In his essay, Has the economic crisis changed the world view of the Russian political crisis, he writes that when the economic crisis hit, “the authorities acted quickly and nearly always correctly. They preserved the financial system at a high level of functionality and prevented panic from entering the banking market.”
“There is no longer any doubt that with the end of the Cold War a lengthier world development period came to an end, spanning 400-500 years during which European civilization had dominated in the world. The historical West had consistently advanced on the edge of this dominance.”” The new stage is occasionally defined as “post-American.” But, of course, this is not a “world after the US” and even less so without the
US. It is a world where as a result of the rise of other global centers of power and influence the relative significance ofAmerica’s role dwindles, as was already the case over recent decades in the global economy and trade. Leadership is an entirely different question though; it’s above all the question of achieving harmony within a circle of partners, of the ability to be the first, but among equals.”“To define the content of an emerging world order, such terms as multipolar, polycentric and nonpolar are also put forward”
“We do not share the concerns that the current reconfiguration in the world will unavoidably lead to “chaos and anarchy.” There goes the natural process of the formation of a new international architecture – political as well as financial-economic – which would correspond to the new realities.”
“Russia conceives itself as being a part of European civilization having common Christian roots”
“The rigid Anglo-Saxon model of economic and social development is again, as it did in the 1920s, beginning to wobble.the global financial-economic architecture was largely created by the West to suit its own needs. And now that we watch the generally recognized shift of financial-economic power and influence towards the new fast-growing economies, such as China, India, Russia and
Brazil, the inadequacy of this system to the new realities becomes obvious. In reality, a financial-economic basis is needed which would conform to the polycentricity of the contemporary world. The manageability of world development can’t be restored otherwise.”
More than a year after Sergei Lavrov’s assertions (June 2008), the only report that comes to mind is that the financial crisis has totally confirmed those assertions. At the dawn of the autumn 2009, the Western world is about to leave History by the smallest door, after having transmitted its metastasis to the whole humanity. In this world in transition, it would be good to wonder what game the European populations intend to play.
At that time where the line breakages are less and less legible, it would be good to remember that the only chance of survival of the Europeans is to get out of the suicidal atlantist rut and to develop a true and integrated collaboration with the Federation of Russia. This European-Russian partner could contribute to peace within Heartland, in the hart of this new multi polar and decentralized world.
In a multi polar and decentralized world the European unity is unavoidable
Far from the ideal of psychology armchair, the reality of tomorrow is based on demography and economy. The decrease ofAmerica’s influence is also proved by the increase of many other actors:Brazil,Russia,India,China and the Arab Muslim world, both rich in energy and human capital. The world population reaches 6, 5 billions of inhabitants and will be over the 9 billions in 2050. Europe counts today 758 millions inhabitants 91/3 of the EU0 and should see its population fall down, between 564 millions and 632 millions inhabitants i.e. 7 % to 8% of the world population and less than 20% of the GDP (about the same than China on its own).
France as an example should count 70 millions inhabitants in 2050, i.e. 0,8% of the world population, 1 inhabitant out of 3 being more than 60 years old and half of its youngest population being mainly African and from Northern Africa.
In this context, and despite the punchy speeches of credible and interesting personalities (Nicolas DuPont Aignant, Paul Marie Couteaux or Jean Pierre Chevènement to only quote those), the way out of the EU and the return to a national sovereignty is surely the very last solution to think of.
The EU is imperfect to 99%, because being led byBrussels, and under the influence of ‘’the American party’’, who treatsEurope as an American colony.
Worse the Americans (who wish first to maintain their dominating position and defend their own interests) do not want a united and powerfulEurope. ThisEurope may not follow them in their military offensives or even oppose to them diplomatically and maybe militarily.
This is the reason why the Americans try everything in order to have their Troy horse entering the EU (Turkey) in order to create dissension and destabilize a homogeneous whole on its way.
Let us not forget, at last, thatTurkey is the second army of NATO and withIsrael the pawn ofAmerica in the Near East, while occupyingCyprus.
This is the reason whyAmerica has done everything in order to persuade De Gaulle not to obtain the nuclear independency and to stopFrance to exit the NATO commandment.
An independentFrance would be a prelude to an independentEurope. The latter could lead to the worse situations for theUS strategists: the loss of the advantages gained at the end of the World War II with the occupation ofWestern Europe and therefore the loss of the Heartland western side.
This is also the reason why some strategists of the ‘American party’ in Europe have understood the necessity to support the EU refusals through the anti EU and the Europhobic parties such asIreland with the Libertas candidate.
More recently, the Europhobic Philippe de Villiers has also joined the atlantist party of Nicolas Sarkozy, UMP, a party though openly pro EU, after that UMP has had France joining the NATO commandment.
The loss of sovereignty for the European countries is a process that went through 2 stages.
* The first one is the end of the empires, originating from theWestphalia treaty, supporting the national identity concept (nation state) as the primary identity. This “nationalisation” of the European identities has generated the 30 years war that destroyed our continent in the first half of the 20th century. Strange coincidence, theWestphalia treaty ended a European civil war that lasted 30 years.
* The second is the stage of the fragmentation into regions. This process, are we told, is very progressive politically (i.e. regions would be the ultimate stage of the European integration). But it is in fact the result of a deliberate external political process aiming at weakeningEurope, by fragmenting in small pieces that are left with neither economical independence nor military sovereignty.
This was the case in particular for Eastern Europe, e.g.Czechoslovakia,Yugoslavia or theUSSR, for obvious reasons: Those nations are not under the western influence since long so they are suspected of being hostile to the Euro –Atlantic Axis.
Of course, it is no surprise that most of the regionalist European political parties are also the most Europhiles and the ones fighting most actively for a NATO expansion and a Euro – Atlantic integration.
Those same political alignments are shared by theBrussels commissioners, devoted agents of the American interests inEurope.
The Europe of Brussels is of course the opposite of the powerful and independentEurope that we want. The EU made of flesh, the reel EU (the non legal one) is the only aim to defend in order for the Europeans to control their destiny and to become more than spectators, to become actors.
The world of tomorrow though will probably not be a more opened world than the one we know. It surely will be a world made of blocks in conflict, conflict for territories zones and civilisations.
In this world of increasing tensions the key forEurope is to gain a structure of defence that belongs to it and allows her to protect its interests and citizens.
In that sense, the proposals of President Medvedev on the necessity of creating a Pan European structure of security (replacing NATO) are a real challenge and the most interesting one, forEurope.
In a multi polar world, let us exit NATO and create a continental and NON Atlantic defence’s system.
NATO is a military alliance created is 1949 in order to faceUSSR, but also in order to avoid a new risk to Europe (as it had been the case withGermany). Fast, this alliance, under the Anglos Saxons’ influence, led to the creation of a competing alliance in the other bloc, the soviet one, in 1955: ‘’ The Warsaw Pact’’. This double alliance split up the world in two rival blocs, until 1958 while the De GaulleFrance decided to leave the Anglo Saxon block and to develop its own nuclear programme.
In 1966, France leaves the NATO commandment and the NATO HQ moves from Paris to Brussels, which is still the case nowadays. Brussels hosts the European institutions as well as the NATO ones. 30 years later in 1995, the French President Jacques Chirac started the negotiations to get back into the integrated commandment of NATO. This return was confirmed and focalized by President Sarkozy on the 17th March 2009.
Why this return ? What were the motivations of France to become an essential NATO actor ?
NATO has got today only two essential functions, both in the interest ofAmerica and both against the European interests.
First it has become a conquest weapon of the Eurasian heartland byAmerica and its extension towards the East and the Russian borders. New nations are asked to join under wrong justifications, i.e. the historical fear of a Russian imperialism. But this imperialism does not exist any longer. Only the American strategists keep it alive at perfection.
Under the pretext of entering the Euro-Atlantic partnership, NATO installs itself in the hart of Europe, pushesRussia back towards its own eastern borders and dividesEurope once more, with the installation of American bases in front of the Russian borders.
This is the real aim of theSerbia campaign.Serbia is an ally ofRussia in the logic of the Pentagon. With the bondsteel base but also the orchestrated revolution inUkraine, the aim ofAmerica was to implement an American base inCrimea, in order to respond to the Russian base.
Since the 11/09/NATO has become a crusaders army at the eyes of the Muslim world, the same American strategists trying to convince us that NATO is a protection against the aggressive and terrorist Islamism.
No need though to be a scientist in order to understand that the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, if they could be won (which will probably not be the case) will not defeat ‘’terrorist’’ Islamism. Islamism is used today like an excuse in order to justify much older geopolitical objectives. Do we not suspect that the Afghanistan attack has been justified by the 11th September, but planned much before and that its reel aim had been the implementation of US troops in the heart ofEurasia?
Can we, without laughing, believe that the baathist Iraq of Saddam Hussein was one of the vectors of the world Islamist terrorism, or targeted for its petrol dwells?
Domination wars of theUSA are wars aiming at controlling the natural resources that are concentrated (apart from Arctic) in the Arab peninsula,Iraq,Iran, Persian Gulf, Southern Russia (Caucasus) andAfghanistan.
Those resources conflicts are provoked by wrong motives, which are notEurope’s one. Worse, they may leadEurope to ethnical and religious tensions on ‘’its’’ territory.
Yugoslavia disintegration showed us how much a security structure was essential in order to maintain its harmony and face the external destabilizations. The recent Kosovo issue has perfectly shown that Europe is the bridge head that serves theUSA who attack and invadeEurasia.America therefore creates tensions between European populations and in particular withRussia, to whom the ‘’Serbia’’ warning was addressed.
The vote of the Silk road strategy Act by the US Congress in 1999 was aimed at ‘’favouring’ the independence of the Caucasus and the Central Asian countries and at creating a land bridge in order to divert the road of the Silk Road to the Turkish harbours, therefore a NATO country.
The BATCH oil pipeline that passes byGeorgia is following the same strategy and also partly explains the development of the military assistance toGeorgia, since the arrival at power of Mikhaïl Saakachvili.
In a multi polar world with many centres, we could avoid a continental disintegration
In 1999 despite the attack onSerbia and after 10 years of total collapse, the assumption by Vladimir Poutine straightensRussia up and replaces the country at the front of the word political scene. Europe has toppled over NATO (by its participation to the bombing ofSerbia).Russia,China, and the Muslim nations of Central Asia create in 2001 theShanghai organisation as well as the OSTC in 2002. Those military Eurasian and inter-religious alliances aim at replying to the double Chinese and Russian surrounding by the American army and at defending the Eurasian regional well defined area.
Zbigniew Brezinski said:«The Eurasian strategy of the USA brought Russia and China closer. The two continental powers are building a real military alliance in order to face the Anglo Saxon coalition and its allies. »
The American offensive towards the East (fromBerlin toKiev) has materialized in two majors steps, from 1996 until 2009.
In 1996, GUUAM was born. It regroupsGeorgia,Uzbekistan,Ukraine,Azerbaijan andMoldavia.
Those nations wish to get out of the post soviet bosom, right after theBerlin wall fall and whileRussia was collapsing. It is not surprising that those nations who have strategic geographical positions, consequently have been the victims of revolutions financed by the CIA (orange revolution, tulips, roses and recently inMoldavia too after the elections). They also have been the victims of changes of western regimes. The most representative members of this association are the observers,Turkey and Latvia (!).
Nevertheless those regimes have not made it through, despite the expectations of their supporters (integration to NATO and EU, improvement of life).
On the contrary, those overthrown regimes have degraded economically and no integration into the euro-atlantist model occurred.
This is the reason why the departure ofUzbekistan in 2005 and the absence of concrete realization of the organization have led the latter to become inexistent politically. In May 2006 the political scientist Zardust Alizadé fromAzerbaijan expressed his doubts regarding the development of the alliance and of the alliance’s ‘’practical results’’.
Today, the second step sees a quite aggressive materialization through the creation of a new front that we may call GUA (Georgia,Ukraine, andArctic). InGeorgia: the political incapacity of the president has pushed the American strategists to launch a military operation in August 2008. This operation failed because the Russian army has replied with a lot of strength and has liberated the territories ofOssetia and Abkhazia. This conflict is the first conflict opposingRussia toAmerica out of the Russian borders. The previous conflict had been the Whabitt destabilization inChechnya, instigated mainly by the CIA.
In Ukraine the recent conflicts about gas show the growing tensions and a bright observer recently said that ‘’ a limited conflict, under the pretext of a territorial dispute, will surely burst and lead to a rupture of the gas’ supplies for a more or less long period of time. Those gas crises are provoked in order to train the Europeans to get used to such cuts.’’
Artic would need another article just for itself. I invite my readers to read my previous articles on the topic here and there and to consult the blog « zebrastationpolaire ».
Those manoeuvres of surroundings, of containment and of destabilization have various objectives:
– To control theBlack sea the Caspian and Baltic seas perimeters as they are essential zones of transit between the East and the West.
– To control the future corridors of energy in particular via a building project of oil and gas pipelines going round Russia but linking the regions of the Caspian sea with the ones of the Black and the Baltic sea.
– To spread the NATO influence further East in the heart of Eurasia in order to reduce the sphere of influence of Russia (on its close stranger) but mainly in Europe, and avoid a potential development of the Chinese influence towards Central Asia.
Of course, a non experienced reader will tell me that the Russians and the Americans have never stopped to fight since 1945 and that globally this is not the business of Europe and of the Europeans. Well, this is exactly the contrary.
In a multipolar world with many centres, the Euro-RussianAlliance is the key stone for peace on the continent.
The consequences we told you about in this article are dramatic forEurope. They will cut Europe fromRussia at a civilization, geopolitical, political and energetic level.
They will create a new wall in Europe, not inBerlin but in the heart ofUkraine, separating the West (under the American influence) from the East (under the Russian influence).
In a more pragmatic way this fracture nearly cuts the Orthodox Europe from the catholic and protestant Europe, underlining the theory of S.Hungtinton in his book « The shock of civilisations ». Last, let us note that China, a crucial geopolitical and economical actor, probably sees Europe (through NATO) as co-responsible of the surrounding situation that it (China) faces, West (military American bases in central Asia) and East (the Pacific along its shores, with also many American bases).
This rupture with two essential actors that areRussia (the biggest country in the world) andChina (the most populated country of the world) are very serious.
In case of growing tensions with NATO and OCS, France and the other European countries would be in a conflict with an organisation that nearly groups together, one man out of three in the world, covers 32, 3 millions of km² et resources wise groups together 20 % of the petroleum world resources, 38% of natural gas, 40% coal and 50% uranium.
This strategy of separation ofRussia and Europe and of Western and the centre will limit Europe in a micro territory slot in the west of the continent and will cut t from the huge possibilities that a partnership withRussia would offer.
·Europe needs Russia energy wise because Russia has got the gas and the petroleum resources that Europe needs. Russia is a stable supplier as its relation with Turkey proves it. Turkey has no supply problem. Just remember that the supply cuts during the war with Ukraine were due to the latter, but funnily enough the media have made Russia guilty). The topic ‘’energy’’ is essential because Europe under the American commandment is proposed very risky alternatives, as for instance to replace Russia by Turkey (A NATO country aiming at becoming an EU member!). . This replacement of Russia by Turkey would also mean to have Nabbuco instead of South Stream and to participate to conflicts for energy (like Iraq). Europe could surely avoid all those troubles.
·Europe needs the fabulous Russian potential, the human one (140 millions inhabitants), and the geographical one (17 millions km2 and its opening on the Pacific).Europe would therefore become a crucial actor, especially with the Asian world, the latter being in a full development process.
·Russia also needsEurope and the Europeans not only for allocating its primary resources but also for its technologies and human capital that it could use to fight against it depopulation at the East of Oral. Last but not least it needsEurope like a natural and complementary ally, originating from the same civilisation.
This Euro- Russian unity is the only warrant of peace and independence for the continent populations. It is vital, it is strongly advised, because the Western European and the Russians belong to the same civilisation first of all.
As Natalia Narotchnitskaïa recently said inParis during a colloquy:
« The real cooperation between Russia and Europe could give a new energy to our continent, at the dawn of the third millenary. The big roman – German and Russo- Orthodox cultures share one and only one apostolic foundation, the Christian and spiritual one. Europeans, whether they are western or Russians, have given to the world the biggest examples of the orthodox and Latin spirituality.’’
These are the reasons whyRussia is the future ofEurope.
Comme le titrait le courrier international le 03 septembre 2009, la visite de Vladimir Poutine en Pologne a été un succès.
Son discours de Gdansk restera dans les annales, vous pouvez le trouver en intégralité ici
Quelques extraits ci dessous :
“Victory over Nazism came at a huge price and at the cost of irreparable losses. More than 53,000 Red Army soldiers and officers died liberating Gdansk alone. Buried in Poland are 600,000 of my fellow countrymen who contributed to the victory over Nazism. All in all, half of the 55 million who died in the Second World War were citizens of the USSR. Think about these terrible figures“.
“The Second World War did not just happen. Its sources lie – and I agree with those who have made this point today – in the dire legacy of the Versailles Treaty, which did not only document the defeat of Germany after the First World War, but humiliated it, a fact that the Nazis took advantage of in order to seize power in the mid-1930s. “
“ Of course, mistakes have to be admitted. Our country has done so. The State Duma of the Russian Federation, our country’s Parliament, has condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.”
” Without a profound understanding of what has happened, we will be unable to build a truly secure world, eradicate the legacy of the Cold War, and remove the artificial dividing lines.”
” I would like to note that my country does not only recognize the mistakes and tragedies of the past, but is making a practical contribution to building a new world based on new principles.”
“An example of how old wounds can be healed – I am confident of this today – is the relationship of true partnership between the Federal Republic of Germany and the new Russia that has taken shape in recent years“.
” In conclusion I would like to address the main participants in today’s ceremony, the comrades-in-arms of those who defended Westerplatte and Stalingrad, landed in Italy and Normandy, and liberated Warsaw, Paris, Prague and Berlin. Your feat is immortal. It will remain forever in our hearts as a true measure of fortitude, courage, valour and honour.”
It is an honour for me, to write to you, from Moscow!
In a couple of days, we will be the 24th March 2009, a tragic day, as 10 years ago, a military coalition of the most powerful countries of the planet, federated through NATO, started a military bombing campaign of 78 days on Serbia, your Serbia.
Officially, this military operation has been set off in order to stop the ‘’slaughters’’, or should I say the so-called on going genocide supposedly taking place in Kosovo. Do you know that in France, the number of one million dead people has been quoted on the television news?
Unofficially, we all know very well why NATO has bombed Serbia: because it was the only worthy European State, the only sovereign and free State, the only State that did not bend in front of the liberal Atlantist diktat. The only State, that resisted the NATO spreading to the East.
With this campaign, were we told though, that we would stop the Kosovo genocide and we would make Serbia a ‘’democratic’’ and ‘’free’’ State, ready to integrate the European Union. To tell the truth, Serbia would become a State controlled by a government of poodles, themselves obeying Brussels and indirectly, Pentagon. Serbia would be come a state that would have to sell its patriots and its heroes.
10 years later, Serbia still, has not integrated the European Union. Even better, the ones who did an outcry for this so called genocide have divided the country. They recreated its borders, just like they had recreated the borders of their ex-colonies in Africa and in Asia.
They tore from Serbia, what was its most precious treasure: its heart!
Effectively, since a bit more than a year now, Kosovo would have become a so called ‘’independent state’’, acknowledged by the majority of the NATO countries (the countries that bombed Serbia) and their new freed allies: Iraq and Afghanistan.
Can we imagine any organism, be functional without its heart?
For NATO, in the name of International Law, this is possible. NATO has given birth to a monster, a lawless area where churches burn, where people are murdered because of their race and their religion, a little like in Rwanda, but in the heart of Europe.
The same way, those powerful nations have created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in order to mete out.
This ersatz of tribunal is the perfect reflection of the society it is supposed to represent. It judges and condemns people because of their race and religion and it murders some defendants without even they could go through a trial.
A very bright commentator (Arnaud Borella) was saying the following: ‘’ Do people know that Kosovo is slowly being monopolized by Albania? Do people know that Albania has given the free use of its Shengjin harbour located in the North of its territory, to Kosovo?
Do people know that the telephone prefix of Kosovo will not be the one of Serbia (+381) but the one of Albania (+355)?
I am not sure either that people know, that the customs between Kosovo and Albania have been abolished, while in the meantime the local KFOR reinforced custom duties between Serbia and Northern Kosovo.
Kosovo war has not been a war of liberation. Kosovo war has been a war of conquest. « Kosovars » only exist in the Western newspapers and Kosovo is becoming, not less not more, a region of Albania.’’
This is the result of 10 years of American interference in the heart of our Europe.
I was recently reading this amazing history occurring in a Swedish zoo. The employees of the zoo said that one of their monkeys, probably more intelligent than the others, was preparing projectiles that it aligned in its cage and threw at the tourists coming too close.
The zoo employees, though very surprised by the highly technical gesture of the poor animal, said to have found the solution: The monkey will be castrated and therefore will become more docile.
This is exactly what NATO has tried to do in Serbia: a castration. The real genocide lies here.
In March 2009, the world can conclude by himself, what Kosovo has become: an occupied province stained with impoverished uranium, an occupied province in the hands of mafia groups cleared by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, now free to deal with their main occupation: the white slave trade and the drugs traffic aimed at the Brussels European Union. An occupied province, where the inhabitants live cooped up in ghettos, under the gloomy and empty eyes of the whole world, just like our poor monkey in its Swedish zoo.
But Kosovo is not lost!
NATO and its Brussels menservants have not bended the Serbian resistance, that has just given the entire world, a totally new example of courage, strength and determination.
The Serbs must know that they are not alone! The European Union, the United Nations, have still not acknowledged Kosovo and they never will! In the heart of Europe, Greece, Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Cyprus, have refused to give in, despite huge pressures on them.
Across the world, many other countries like China, India, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Moldavia and many others are opposed to the independence of the Kosovo!
In all those countries, hundreds of thousands, millions of inhabitants support Serbia.
There is also Russia, the great benevolent Sister, who from day one, said that never ever it would acknowledge Kosovo. Russia, whose leaders, Vladimir Poutine and Dimitri Medvedev to start with, have decided to take their fate in hands. Russia, who proposes today to the Europeans, an absolutely choice for the survival of our civilisation and our populations.
Time has come for the Europeans to take their fate in hands, this future that is not towards Atlantic with NATO but is beyond Oural, through a gigantic military continental alliance with Russia.
The continental unit is the only space that will warrant the Europeans and the Serbs to start with, the possibility to live in peace and freedom on their land.
More than anything else, Kosovo must come back to its owners, just like Northern Cyprus.
It is time that Europe stops being an occupied land, whether by the Turkish army or by the American army, under the NATO flag.
On the 24th March in the evening I will not be physically in Belgrade but my heart and my soul will be with you, my Serbian friends.
The next morning, the fight will continue and will cease with the end of the Kosovo occupation!
More than ever tonight, I salute you and remind you my faithfulness oath to Serbia:
Long live Serbia, long live Serbian Kosovo! Zivela Srbija! Kosovo je Srbija ! Hourrah !
By Sharon TennisonThe latest from Stratfor on Afghanistan is a lengthy article laying out some pretty dire scenarios with this as ending paragraph: “A little more than a year ago, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” That statement describes a clear gap in priorities for the United States in fighting these two wars. Now, with the spotlight on Afghanistan, the Obama administration will have to decide just how much it is willing to commit to a war in a country that has a historical record of outlasting foreign occupiers. Afghanistan may be a pressing issue for the United States, but it is also competing with a larger and arguably more strategic threat that will impact U.S. national security beyond the life of the U.S.-jihadist war – the Russian resurgence.” My response to George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor: By Sharon TennisonGeorge, is it out of your realm of possibility that Russia is not the enemy you project? Of course, Russia will arm to the teeth as long as you and the US military project “enemy” on them. Certainly you play into Russia’s worst fears and paranoia – while you create a self-fulfilling prophecy through your assumptions. Russia’s current leaders, excluding a small minority of hard liners, want nothing more than to rebuild their economy, provide decently for their people and to be respected in the world. Par Sharon Tennison La dernière brève de STRATFOR sur l’Afghanistan est un long article définissant certains scénarios surprenants, et affirmant dans le dernier paragraphe : ” Il y a un peu plus d’un an, Mike Mullen affirmait que : “en Afghanistan nous faisons que ce l’on veut, en Irak nous faisons ce que l’on doit”. Cette affirmation décrit très clairement le gap existant pour l’administration US entre ces deux guerres. Aujourd’hui, avec l’accent mis sur l’Afghanistan, l’administration Obama va devoir décider comment mener une guerre dans un pays qui détient le record historique de résistance et d’expulsion des envahisseurs. L’Afghanistan est en effet un défi pressant pour les états-unis mais représente également une autre menace stratégique plus importante et qui va considérablement peser sur la sécurité Américaine (au delà de la guerre contre les Jihadistes) : la résurgence Russe.”
Ma réponse à Georges Friedman, CEO du site Stratfor : Georges, pensez vous dans le domaine du possible que la Russie ne soit pas l’ennemi que vous pensez qu’elle est ? Bien sur que la Russie va s’armer jusqu’au dent aussi longtemps que la doctrine militaire Américaine les définit comme des “ennemis”. Bien sur vous jouez sur les pires craintes et paranoïas Russe, tout en créant votre propre prophétie, qui se réalise va vos propres hypothèses ! La grande majorité des dirigeants Russes aujourd’hui, à part un petit groupe prônant une ligne dure, ne souhaite rien de plus que reconstruire leur économie, donner un niveau de vie déçent à leur peuple et être respecté dans le monde.
On the 25th August 2008 the Financial Times bitterly wrote that Washington was left watching other superpowers modify the world reality. In a 1991 FT edition, such an assertion would only have found its place in a rubric such as ‘’ Catastrophe scenario for the future’’ or ‘’science fiction’’.
It is true though that the American media in 1991 was focused on other events: USSR had just collapsed, together with the Berlin wall. In Iraq’s sands, Bush Senior promised Humanity a ‘’New World Order’’, a fair, marvellous and above all unilateral order, under the protection of the starry flag, while Europe was starting its reunification process. We had gone into an era of so called ‘’Pax Americana’’ with all its corollaries, would they be military, financial, or economical.
Some had even predicted the end of History. History taught us they were wrong. The ‘’unipolar period’’ did not last long. 10 years only were necessary in order for an unlikely attack happens on the American territory. From then, the Empire launched two military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the name of the fight against terrorism, dragging along most European nations. This Europe, that pad twice a heavy tribute for its ‘’collaboration’’ with NATO, in 2004 an 2006.
Less than 20 years after the USSR collapse, one must notice that the FT title is very topical, as the country prepares itself to choose its new leaders. A 5 days defensive war in Southern Caucasus, cleverly won by Russia, was enough to jam the expansion process of NATO. For the first time, a superpower thwarted militarily the United States of America. In August 2008, the Russian tanks that defended Tsinvali had made the old unilateral and neo liberal world, totter.
Against NATO, the America’s weapon against Europe
As Novopress underlined it very well, it is usual to see America as the immutable ally of Europe- having saved it from the Brown and red totalitarianism. If this is partly true, we seem to permanently forget that the American hegemony has leaned on the takeover of Europe. The 1914 war, was the occasion for the USA to liquidate the European and continental empires of the Axis (German, Austrian, Ottoman), to impose the dollar reign against the Pound but also to confiscate the seas supremacy to England. Theodore Roosevelt even declared: ‘we have failed profiting of the war!’
His cousin Franklin Rooselvet learned his lesson and will bargain his incoming to war in 1943 at the Anfa conference, imposing his terms to De Gaulle and Giraud. Both had to dismantle the French colonial empire in the next 30 years. In 1945 in Yalta, Roosevelt knowingly and cynically delivered half of Europe to Staline, assuring the success of communism and its extension for 50 years, while maintaining Europe divided and therefore weakened. Today, this logic of Europe’s subdivision is found again, maintained again by the American strategists since the 2004 Iraq conflict (Old/New Europe opposition) and the short term politics of the EU newcomers, i.e. the new colonial states of America (would it be Poland, or the Baltic States). This short term policy adopted by the newcomers is irrational because it follows a post cold war logic, that is to say, before anything else, a nationalist, anti Europe and mainly anti Russia policy.
This military and economical black mail is reinforced by an energetic black mail, as this ‘’pressured’’ European sub division would justify the participation of the Europeans to brutal and violent actions world wide, in the name of Democracy. Those actions hide in fact control attempts of energetic fields rejecting Russia (Kosovo with AMBO, Afghanistan with UNLOCAL, battle for the Caspian Sea, Nabucco project, etc.)
Since the USSR and the Berlin wall falls, NATO has though no reason to be anymore. It is unable to get rid of terrorists and Afghan opium traffic, as reminded very recently Serguei Lavrov< NATO has become an archaic organisation, aimed at failing and not reflecting ‘’anymore’’ the European interests. It is true that the Soviet threat and the Varsow Pact has disappeared, and the new terrorist threat has diminished and is nearly inexistent (due to a Ben Laden trained by CIA), without a recurrent NATO participation across the world. Europeans must understand that their soldiers are just the completion of the American army and get killed for wars that are not theirs! Even worse, by collaborating with NATO, Europe is entering in a conflict position with actors that are essential to the peace and the stability, would it be in the Muslims world (where NATO is perceived as an ‘’alliance of modern crusaders’’) or the Eurasian world, where NATO is perceived like an American tool creating trouble, for instance by Russia, a tomorrow superpower, but also China, India, or Iran> All those powers are related the ones to the others through the Regional Organisation of the Shanghai Cooperation.
Towards the civilisation and continental gathering
This new multi axis order seems to take shape via the emergence of big civilisation and identity groups (EU, China, Russia, India…). This phenomena of ‘’gathering’’ above a regional level is opposed to the ‘’fragmentation’’ movement to which America works in Europe. This fragmentation process is aimed at creating small groups easily controllable economically, and militarily dependants (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, project of dividing Russia into three parts…).
Those fragmentations are generated by NATO and are dogmatically attributed to the collapse of the USSR. Those new ‘’self centred’’ gatherings only occur in Eurasia but on all continents, in South America (Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia), in Africa or in the Muslim, Arab or pan Turkish world.
Those gatherings were born via historical, civilisation and economical hearts. Those imperial hearts are generally the big ethno capitals of the concerned zones, e.g. Pekin for China, Tokyo for Japan, Caracas or Rio for South America,, ‘’Muslims’’ living since a long time between Mecca, Teheran and Istanbul, with a empowering of the Muslims from Asia.
One must note that Russia has a unique place, at the intersection of all worlds: the Islamic one via OCI, the western one via COR, the Asian one due to its geography and OCS participation.
The Euro- Russian continental alliance, source of peace across the world
Among those gatherings or groups that represent an economical and even military competition, America fears the big Europe, the ‘’continental front’’, much more. This economical and military giant, this gigantic empire from Reykjavik to Vladivostok, laid on 11 time zones is the potential economical and military leader of the world. The division that was wished and wanted by American Strategists has one aim only: impede by all means a pan European unity! John O’Sullivan wrote in 1845 in ‘’ dans “Our Manifest Destiny’’: With the collapse of Europe, America will become the world Master.’’ In 1890 the book ‘’our country’’ underlines that ‘’ the ageing Europe does not have the means to safeguard the civilisation values of the West, retaken in hand by a dynamic emergent America’’ and the conclusion is ‘’Europe must perish!’’
All across the 20th century America having taken the control of the seas (over England) strategists will theorize the second essential step: the control of the lands, and mainly of the Eurasian ‘’Heartland’’. The work art of it has been explained more than 10 years ago by Bzezinski in his book ‘’the big chessboard’’.
America being isolated form the world in between two oceans knows that the world future will be played on the Eurasian continent as this is where most civilisations, human beings but also resources, are aggregated. For America to remain a world leader ist must impede another leader to emerge (German-Russian alliance) and must protect itself from an alliance between the future leaders of this zone (Europe and Russia for instance). America is therefore opposed more and more aggressively to any rapprochement between Europe and Russia (North Stream for instance as an economical one) or military (Helsinki2?). They also try to increase the fracture between the Europeans and the Russians (NATO expansion to the East and creation of military conflicts like in Georgia and probably tomorrow in Ukraine..)
Moscow : Capital of Europe
5000 years ago the European civilization was nested in the Slavic, Mediterranean and Greek cradle, and it was so for 3000 years, from the Mycenaeans to the Greeks, then to the Macedonians, from Knossos to Athens. The Europe became roman. This was the Pax Romana that lasted 6 centuries and led to the creation of two Christian empires, so called Western and Eastern. After the panic of the Germanic invasions, an embryo of Europe got created, mixing Christianity and Germanity, a Frank Barbarian being baptised in Roma.
After Knossos, Athens, Roma and Aix les Bains, it will be Byzance /Constantinople that will remain the united capital (of the East) during 8 more centuries, founding its unity on Christianity and the Greek language, relocating the heart of Europe on the Mediterranean shores. The 5 next centuries will see the east topple under the Ottoman darkness while the Western Europe was preparing its auto genocide of the 20th century. After the big civil war of 30 years (1914-1945), the fracture between the East and the West is done. Even worse, the hearts of the European civilizations that were in war, are not territorial anymore. For Western Europe, this is now Washington that federates the freed Western world of the allies, and East, this is Moscow that becomes the heart of the Western Soviet Europe. Those two hearts both have a plan of world domination but only one will make it through the 21st century. After the Berlin wall fall, for the first time the concept of Europe disappears and is replaced by the one of West. America becomes the center of the Western world and Brussels a simple subsidiary of the Pentagon that reorganizes the fragmented Europe, in pace with its NATO military integration.
Recent events though reveal how urgent it is for Europe to emancipate itself from the American guardianship and understand that this Atlantis project (Washington- Brussels) is built on the European ruins. This project is not acceptable for the European people who wish to live in peace. Europeans have the choice today, to defend the ruins of the old western world under the NATO flag, in a logic of total confrontation with the rest of humanity, Russia to start with; Or to collaborate continent wise, viA Russia, and overcome the Visionary pan European project of De Gaulle General (Paris Berlin Moscow Axis).
Russia has felt asleep under Eltsine but has woken up. It has become the hyper centre of resistance to the forced Americanisation and to the criminal and aggressive NATO extension. Russia has proved us recently that it is ready to defend its interests but also to collaborate with Europe and participate actively to a pacifist society project, a multilateral project, based on consultation. Just like the Russians in 1999, the 2009 Europeans must wake up and free themselves from the NATO chains that now expand until the Ukrainian and Belo Russian borders. This could lead them to a conflict with Russia.
Europe is located ‘’on’’ the Eurasian continent and takes up the Atlantic front. Russia occupies the majority of the lands and the Pacific front. Europe and Russia are per se linked and belong to the same continent, Eurasia! Eurasia is the common house of the Europeans and of the Russians, from Reykjavik to Vladivostok (see the Maksim Mishenko speech on the subject). Grace of Russia another Europe, a Eurasian Europe, stands in front of the small Atlantist Europe of Brussels. After Athens, Byzance, Aix la Chapelle and Constantinople, Moscow is the new capital of Europe.
“Commentary on the last presidential elections in Russia March 2nd has been unequivocal – “absence of democracy”; “opposition stifled”; “a drift toward a single party”; “a return to Stalinist practices”, and so on. These accusations have made the rounds of television and newspapers as well as the numerous blogs dealing with Russia. Still, Dmitry Medvedev’s results reflect the evolution (maturing) of a coherent, stable electorate rooted in 1991; the year which marked the inauguration of universal suffrage, the collapse of the USSR – but also the year in which Boris Yeltsin was elected Russia’s first president! Indeed, Russia is a young and vigorous sovereign democracy!
Explanation: the Western political checkerboard does not have anything like the same form as the Russian. The West European or Anglo-Saxon checkerboard is marked by pronounced dualisms, generally an opposition of “right-left” or “centrists-extremists”, seen eventually as “liberal parties – non-liberal parties”. The organizational form of this political gameboard totally excludes alliances between parties of the right and left, or of centrists and extremists; you might say the political partitioning is clear-cut and does not allow for “surprises”. This political organization is that of the United States (Democrats versus Republicans) or European countries (Right versus Left as well as existence of extremist parties)…this dualism does not exist in modern, post-communist Russia.
The Russian political board is itself comprised of a number of parties, very varied but on the whole gathered in three concentric circles, as a function of their type (nature) more than of the ideas they advocate.
The first circle, called the “central circle”, is comprised of government parties, generally indistinguishable as “right or left”. This inner circle is comprised generally of alliances of parties of or close to the Kremlin. This movement has its beginnings in 1991, the first “free” elections of Russia; it comprises an alliance of parties one could qualify as “centro-pragmatists” rather than the “centre-right” (Reform) under the Yeltsin era (1991-1999) and the “centre-patriotic” under the era of Putin (1999-2008), with an inclination toward a patriotic left axis. The common denominator in this league of government is the realignment of parties we could, broadly speaking, refer to as “patriotic”; the names of parties that, since 1991, comprise this league speak for themselves – “Homeland” (Motherland), “Unity”, “Our Home Russia”, “Our Land”, “Just Russia”, “United Russia”…the weight of this central bloc (government bloc) that Russians understand unquestioningly to represent “stability” (social more than political) grows with each election: from 25% in 1999 to 40% in 2003 and finally to 64% in the 2007 elections. The representative of the inner circle also saw his score increase regularly in the Russian presidential elections: from 35% of the vote in 1996 to 52% in 2000, and 70% in 2004 and 2008.
An “outer circle” is comprised of opposition parties who have a solid electoral base in Russia, high scores and which surrounds the “inner circle” on the spectrum. Two most visible are the Popular Democratic Union of Russia (or Communist Party of Russia, more to the left of the political spectrum), and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (neo-imperial, and more to the right of the spectrum). However, there are many others, notably a party of entrepreneurs, a leftist nationalist party…but in 2005 they joined the United Russia coalition of president Vladimir Putin. It must be noted that in 1991 and 1996, the Popular Patriotic Union of Russia candidate (Gennady Zyuganov) polled equally with President Yeltsin, who was seeking a second term, this before his election gained the votes of Alexander Lebed’s supporters. Finally, in 1993, The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky) gained nearly a quarter of the vote in the parliamentary elections, becoming the first (opposition) political party to sit in the Duma.
Finally, there is a “marginal (extreme outer) circle” composed of a quite heterogeneous mixture of parties that includes ultra-radical and extremist parties as “liberals”. Among those regularly present at elections of the past 15 years, one could mention the “Agrarian Party”, “Yabloko”, the “Union of Right Forces”, the “Party of Regions” and various independents.
Informed commenters, usually westerners, should give up on this so-called “liberal opposition”. These generally westward-looking parties have seen their electoral base slowly but steadily decrease since 1991, when some of them occupied important positions in the Yeltsin government, with obvious results…their electoral weight was about 12% in the 1993 elections, 7% in the elections of 1995 and 1999, 4% in 2003 and 2% in 2006 (compared with 1.5% for the liberal presidential election candidate last March 2nd). Yet another often-heard explanation for this electoral erosion is that “Russians don’t want to be Democrats”, or “The Kremlin censors all opposition”…indeed, these “opposition parties” have coalesced in an interesting alliance that might be called the “Disagreement Alliance”, led by two men with totally different profiles (personalities), Garry Kasparov and E. Limonov. This alliance, based on anti-Putinism, repackages a lot of associations and parties that you’ll find here, plays the media internal-destabilization card (deliberate organization of protests in front of foreign cameras, demonstrations which deteriorate only once legally refused by municipalities, etc, etc…). Add to this Mr. Kasparov’s deliberate speech in English, and one might ask who were its real targets. Externally, these movements play on the sensitive heartstrings of the EU (human rights violations) and America (support for Orange revolutions, taking of anti-Russian stances on the Caucasus and Central Asia).
It’s a strange supposedly liberal opposition, composed of the shaven skulls of the GNP, a longing for the gulag, former convicted dissidents (such as Limonov, who is of French nationality), political associations financed by NGO’s and American Democrat George Soros’s network and leaders of American think tanks who make speeches… in English in the heart of Moscow! You really have to ask why the West concentrates so much attention on parties that are struggling to gain the legal recognition of Russian political parties, and which represent only a tiny minority of the immense Russian civil society, which is itself very active. The fact that Edward Limonov is French and Garry Kasparov is a regular guest before the TV trays of America is perhaps the beginning of an explanation…Nonetheless, some day someone should explain to Kasparov that it is Russians who must be convinced, and not the Americans and the Europeans predisposed by the atmosphere of Kremlinophobia. It is noteworthy that the two primary opposition parties have refused to join “Other Russia”, so as not to mix with undemocratic and violent elements therein, it is the party of “Yabloko”, and the Union of Right Forces”. For the great majority of Russians in search of stability and order (after the tumult of the 90’s), this is anything but serious and overall, anything but credible. It must be reemphasized that the title “liberal” in today’s Russia means “pro-western”, which is overtly criticized since 1991 and the chaos of Yeltsin and his ministers – who often presented themselves as “reformist/liberal” – has been assimilated by the Russian collective unconsciousness as “liberalization”, “economic pillaging” and “social chaos”. In summary, if Kasparov and his cohorts are the pillars of “opposition”, it is only for westerners, as they remain relatively little known in Russia. But that is to be expected if one campaigns in English in front of the TV trays of western countries; it is difficult to be heard by the Russian people but easy to masquerade as the poet of democracy for the complicit presenters and ignorant spectators. It is noteworthy that lying only works for westerners as a strong feeling (and only at home) that the scores of foreign candidates for the Kremlin (German, French, English, UK..) are generally highly regarded in Russia.
It’s hard to believe that the ballot-boxes are stuffed in consulates, yet the voices of Russian voters living in these “civilized, free and democratic” countries tend naturally toward the Kremlin parties. Something to think about…
