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sented stalin as a wise leader whose decisions were undercut by feckless and incompetent commanders the semi exoneration of stalin is not an exoneration of communism but of national greatness it goes hand in hand with reverence toward nicholas ii and the glamorization of white army leaders such as alexander kolchak the hero of a recent blockbuster film and a 10 hour tv miniseries one of the weirdest aspects of attitudes toward stalin in russia today is a belief not very widespread but present nonetheless that stalin was a closet russian orthodox believer who destroyed the godless communists in the purges and restored the russian orthodox church which stalin actually did but only under pressure when he felt that the church would be a useful ally in mobilizing the people to fight the german invasion in a bizarre recent incident a priest in a moscow church displayed an icon that depicted stalin talking to matryona nikonova a soviet era underground russian orthodox preacher who was recently canonized by the russian orthodox church a totally unconfirmed legend has it that stalin visited matryona in 1941 and she told him that moscow would not fall to the nazis if he stayed in the city the icon was removed after complaints from parishioners and the church has condemned it as diabolical but the priest still stands by it the eccentric russian ultra nationalist alexander prokhanov recently predicted that eventually stalin would be canonized by the church on december 5 7 russia hosted its first ever scholarly conference on stalinism and stalin s legacy while the fact that the conference was supported by some official institutions may be put down on the positive side of the ledger there are some disturbing signals as well as nikita sokolov reports in grani ru two high ranking russian academics who spoke at the conference acted more or less as stalin apologists one noted that many roman emperors were also villains but they built a great empire nonetheless another noted the fact that stalin s nationalities policy resulted in the survival of virtually ever small ethnic group while in the united states it s hard to find a native american the minister of education defended the stalin whitewashing textbook on the grounds that such an approach is in demand from both instructors and students the day after the greastest russian vote came in the pro government izvestia ran a pro and con feature on stalin s third place vote the pro was contributed by the newspaper s deputy editor in chief elena yampolskaya while yampolskaya says that she voted for no one in the contest and certainly couldn t vote for stalin the support for the late dictator is actually a positive sign the people who backed him were voting against the dictatorship of liberalism the terror of political correctness and the totalitarian power of money they are not choosing blood paranoia and barbarism not the deviltry summoned from the dark abyss they are choosing victory power indifference to monetary gain statecraft and imperial ambition a phrase that is at last no longer considered pejorative telling indeed posted by cathy young at 1 40 pm 13 comments labels russia stalin stalinism russia winds of change my op ed in today s boston globe reposted below with a few extra lines the globe cut for space ______________________________________________________ a year ago russia was in an odd place between oppressive stagnation and a glimmer of possible change the ruling party united russia had just consolidated its hold on the parliament in a rigged election the presidential transition was revealed as the farcical anointment of a handpicked successor to vladimir putin the docile dmitry medvedev who quickly promised to make putin prime minister yet some russian liberals and sympathetic westerners harbored at least modest hopes that medvedev might prove more liberal than putin and that the division of power between president and prime minister might weaken russia s neo autocracy today the winds of change in russia are blowing again harsh winds that may yet turn into a storm the liberalization from above turned out to be a non starter despite medvedev s declaration that freedom is better than non freedom any hopes of a thaw or a putin medvedev fissure were crushed when medvedev s first 100 days ended with the war in georgia whatever georgia s responsibility for triggering this war it was preceded by years of provocation and manipulation by the kremlin intended to destabilize a government perceived as unfriendly and send an assertive message to the west the surge of patriotic sentiment that followed russia s victory threatened to take the country even further down the authoritarian road but history works in mysterious ways while western sanctions in response to the war proved short lived russia paid a heavy price for its victory in the flight of foreign capital which both predated october s financial crisis and exacerbated its effects in russia the crisis revealed the clay feet of the putin medvedev regime not only showing the extent to which its relative prosperity was tried to high oil prices but also exposing the fakery of its feelgood propaganda machine while state controlled television news avoided the word crisis except with regard to the west russian citizens rushed to convert rubles to dollars polls by the public opinion fund found a sharp drop in confidence in the mainstream media by late december close to half of russians said that media reports on the economy were biased and minimized economic problems 30 percent up from 23 percent in november said that journalists know the real state of the economy but are not allowed to tell the truth trust in putin and medvedev may suffer as well bizarrely over 80 percent of those polled recently still approved putin s performance as prime minister though only 43 percent thought russia was headed in the right direction yet of the 17 percent of russians who watched putin s live televised question and answer session on december 4 fewer than half were satisfied with his answers the first rumblings of discontent came after the government announced a hike in custom duties on imported used cars to help russia s auto companies run mostly by putin cronies importing used cars from japan is a major source of livelihood in the far east which responded with major protests that quickly became political some demonstrators openly denounced putin medvedev and united russia many angrily demanded television coverage after a week of protests a peaceful rally in vladivostok was brutally broken up by the riot police on december 21 several journalists too were beaten and arrested while television news ignored the incident many mainstream newspapers did not remarkably several local legislatures in the far east have backed the protesters demands so far the government has refused to budge but what will happen if the ranks of protesters swell from hundreds to hundreds of thousands so far the kremlin s strategy for dealing with political opposition is a carrot and stick approach among the carrots an effort to co opt the opposition with the creation of a kremlin funded liberal party the right cause and the appointment of a prominent liberal politician nikita belykh to a governorship the sticks include proposed legislation that would make it easier to convict dissenters of treason or espionage at least if they have any foreign contacts and to take such cases out of jurors hands these laws have drawn objections even from the governmental public chamber a monitoring body meant to function as a collective ombudsman though whether these objections will have any effect remains doubtful unlike the communist regime the authoritarian russian state still has room for some legal resistance from the independent media to pro democracy movements to judges who refuse to convict government critics under vague extremism laws these small islands of freedom face a vastly unequal battle against the forces of repression but the outcome in this battle is more uncertain than it has been in a long time posted by cathy young at 10 19 am 10 comments labels freedom russia thursday january 01 2009 looking forward to 2009 2008 has not been the best year of our lives an election that seemed to have a lot of inspiring potential a republican candidate who once had solid bipartisan appeal the first serious female presidential contender in u s history a visionary candidate who also happens to be black a female vice presidential candidate turned into a singularly nasty and divisive campaign or does every presidential campaign these days seem nastier and more divisive than all the previous ones in russia faint hopes of a medvedev thaw were buried in the wreckage of the august war with georgia which also pushed russia and the u s close to a new cold war finally there was the financial crisis that soon became an economic one we may not be in for a new great depression but no one doubts that tough times are ahead and yet in the midst of all this there is good news for instance 1 back in october i wrote many people who are tired of the mudslinging can t wait for the election to be over but nov 4 is unlikely to bring much relief the dogs of war are loose and they won t be easy to leash if as seems likely obama is elected a large number of people on the right will see him as a stealth radical who won thanks to media bias and rampant voter fraud if mccain pulls off a surprise upset at least as many people on the left will blame racism republican dirty tricks or both and some will regard the results as proof that the right wing cabal behind bush will never let go of power either way a substantial minority of americans will see themselves as living under an illegitimate and evil regime and that s more frightening than the economic crisis i m happy to say that i seem to have been wrong with some exceptions sean hannity and melanie phillips conservatives have been remarkably willing to give obama a chance obama s judiciously centrist picks have had a lot to do with this but credit also goes to mccain s and obama s post election graciousness and that s a good reason to take pride in the american political system and its ability sometimes to bring people together 2 while sarah palin s candidacy proved to be mostly a dud it did accomplish some positive things it remolded the conservative base in a more feminist direction by giving it a heroine who was a working mother a self proclaimed feminist and an unabashedly ambitious woman it also highlighted the need for a more ideologically diverse feminism no less a feminist than naomi wolf in full throes of palin derangement syndrome this past election cycle wrote back in 1993 in her book fire with fire that feminism should discard litmus tests on everything from gun ownership to abortion which exclude too many women wolf wrote that the beliefs of conservative and republican women who embrace self determination ownership of business and individualism should be respected as a right wing version of feminism hear hear 3 in russia the crisis accompanied by the steep drop in oil prices may accomplish what the medvedev succession did not weaken the authoritarian state s grip on power more on that soon of course if there is a new russian revolution it may not be bloodless and it s far from certain that it will bring the good guys to power stay tuned for 2009 it could turn out to be the best of times and the worst of times may the best part prevail happy new year to all posted by cathy young at 3 47 pm 12 comments wednesday december 31 2008 from russia with nuttiness anti american nuttiness in russia a subject i have previously plumbed is the gift that keeps on giving now there s this for a decade russian academic igor panarin has been predicting the u s will fall apart in 2010 for most of that time he admits few took his argument that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the u s very seriously now he s found an eager audience russian state media prof panarin 50 years old is not a fringe figure a former kgb analyst he is dean of the russian foreign ministry s academy for future diplomats he is invited to kremlin receptions lectures students publishes books and appears in the media as an expert on u s russia relations mr panarin posits in brief that mass immigration economic decline and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar around the end of june 2010 or early july he says the u s will break into six pieces with alaska reverting to russian control in addition to increasing coverage in state media which are tightly controlled by the kremlin mr panarin s ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts he presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the foreign ministry the country s top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker during an appearance on the state tv channel rossiya the station cut between his comments and tv footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the u s the professor has also been featured on the kremlin s english language propaganda channel russia today that s from the december 29 wall street journal meanwhile on the same day the website of the pro government izvestia which originally publicized panarin s shall we say fanciful claims on november 24 ran a short piece titled now america also knows it s due for a collapse while the title is somewhat sarcastic the piece apparently is not it claims that panarin s interview sparked a stormy discussion and many articles both in russia and around the world and notes that even white house spokeswoman dana perino had to fend off questions about the disintegration of the usa according to the wsj the article prompted a question about the white house s reaction to prof panarin s forecast at a december news conference i ll have to decline to comment spokeswoman dana perino said amid much laughter izvestia goes on to say a heated discussion also raged on the wsj website in which however the most common arguments were along the lines of those stupid russians incidentally a similar convenient stance was adopted by our own pro western electronic media which hastened to declare that not one serious publication has given the professor s amazing forecast any attention the wsj too prefers to view everything through the lens of russia and doesn t bother to explain why this interview elicited a huge response in the usa rather than here panarin s view reflects a very pronounced degree of anti americanism in russia today the wsj quotes tv host vladimir pozner as saying it s much stronger than it was in the soviet union it would also be really good to understand where this anti americanism came from could it be due to the american position on missile defense or south ossetia but alas the wsj is not interested in digging that deep i m sure it would be news to most americans...