What can be more depressing that getting up and into the dark and chilly morning on Monday in this part of Sweden? The answer came when I was about to choke on my morning coffee at the site of Putin’s well-groomed face smiling victoriously from the front page of the daily paper. Like it or not, the indisputable winner of the Best Poker Face award had a good reason for feeling victorious: he played the country effortlessly, as someone who didn’t even have to bluff that he had a superior hand. He didn’t need to look at his hand. Moreover, the other players didn’t need to bother coming to the table at all. Hell, he made the game and the rules of the game. Right now, he IS the game.
While the West is busy demonstrating in support of the Burmese people’s demands for democracy, Europe has its own freak show unfolding much closer geographically. Russian opposition at the moment is not allowed to go further than making plans for protest demonstrations. Garri Kasparov, one of the opposition leaders, was recently released after five days in a cell. When do we start demonstrating against the violation of human and citizen rights in Russia? Or is Putin’s hand so unquestionably superior? Apparently: my answer to the what-can-be-more-depressing-than… question on the morning of January 1st 2006 would have been “Waking up with no gas” had I lived in Ukraine at the time, as the hand of the Emperor turned off gas supplies to the country making it perfectly clear who was running the show. Jokes aside: who wants to find THIS dog parked outside one’s own house? The problem is we might not really have a choice but deal with it before it gets too dark.
Garri Kasparov – is not one of the opposition leaders… If Bobby Fisher shows up at your door with a gang of radicals waving semi communist/nazi flags (a.k.a. National Bolshevik party of Russia) would you listen to him? He is frequently quoted and presented as a leader but he is no leader and he broke off his relationships with other more reasonable liberal forces in Russia…
Hi Alex,
Thank you for the comment!
The point of my text was to express concern over the situation with what Putin calls “sovereign democracy” (the term he uses), when Russian people in his opinion are not able to live in a Western kind of democracy but apparently need a democracy that very much reminds of a totalitarian regime, not to discuss Garri Kasparov or encourage “listening” to him (I might do it in the future, just you wait
).
Civil rights in Russia is just a notion of which Kasparov’s incarceration (just a few days before the elections) witnessed once again.
I am sure Kasparov’s successful career as a chess player has been helping him to do PR for his cause but don’t see what relevance it has to him being put away: I suspect Kasparov was put away as a political prisoner, not an ex World Chess Champion. Also, are you implying politically “unreasonable” individuals should be put away?
I am not aware of him being a member of any semi nazi party and referred to him as one of the leaders of the opposition because he has been leading a number of protest marches in Russia and acted as a spokesmen for at least some part of the Russian people which to me does sound like a leader of an opposition group, no matter how “reasonable” by some some standards or how numerous.
One of the many problems in Russia, imho, is the fact that the opposition cannot get united the way it did in the Ukraine at some point (of course, Ukraine is a much smaller country and therefore it is easier for the opposition to mobilise). Hopefully, this will change with time.
As to your question: living in a country with strong democratic traditions, I don’t find all the parties “reasonable” either. Democracy, in my opinion, is not about one specific party (even the one I might sympathise) winning and running the country as it pleases. It is about all parties having equal rights to compete in the elections and accepting the outcome of the fair elections. Take the elections in Austria a few years ago when the majority voted for Haider’s far right party. That was a shocker and many European leaders had to swallow the bitter pill of dealing with Haider’s government despite their will because it was chosen democratically.