Очень интересный анализ зарубежной прессы на тему террактов в Московском метро
Mark Adomanis - The Moscow bombings
Pressing commitments at work (as should be clear to all readers of this blog, I am an exceedingly important individual) have prevented me from writing much of anything this week. However I do want to take a moment to comment on the Moscow subway bombings or, to get meta for a second, to comment on some of the commentary about the Moscow subway bombings.
One of the very worst analyses came from Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. Stoner-Weiss, often partnering with her Stanford colleague Michael McFaul, has been on a truly bizarre quest to disprove Putin’s “myth” for some time now, though she mostly succeeds in making an ass of herself. Her shtick seems to primarily consist of closely reading the vapid self-congratulatory boilerplate, the sort of dreck that is 95% of any politician’s repertoire in any country in the world, that Putin often spouts and then studiously going about “proving” him wrong. This sort of thing has long been the staple of think-tank whores (think of the myriad of “studies” that “prove” that Barack Obama is a Martian, Muslim, Atheist, Communist, Socialist, Maoist, baby-killing Chicago Mobster) and it’s a real shame that it’s made the migration into seemingly respectable bits of academia.
In her note for the New York Times Stoner-Weiss wrote the following (emphasis mine):
The Chechen conflict, in the meantime, has changed, but not ended. It has turned increasingly toward Islamic militancy - a component absent in the original Chechen uprising in the mid-1990’s. It has also grown increasingly creative and aggressive, putting the Russian population at grave risk…
The subway bombings is further evidence of the failing of Putinism - the democratic rollback he pursued has produced even less personal security for Russians than even the weak and unconsolidated democracy of the 1990s under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin…
Some of the protesters called for Mr. Putin’s ouster, laying the blame for the failures of the Russian economy squarely on his shoulders and the economic system he sustained through high oil prices that have come crashing down. The subway bombings, like the protests last week, are a reminder that Mr. Putin’s autocracy has not worked for ordinary Russians.
Let’s take these in order
1) I am by no means a Caucasus specialist, but I’ve read a decent bit about the first war in Chechnya (the one waged by that great “democrat” Boris Yeltsin) and I’ve watched Kavkazski Plenik (a pretty good 1996 Russian language film about war) and it certainly seemed obvious to the Russians that they were fighting a war against Islamic extremists or, at the absolute least, a people that was heavily influenced by Islam. It’s certainly possible, and probably even likely, that Islamic extremism is now more prevalent among Chechen militants than it was in the mid 90’s, but to claim that Islamic militancy didn’t exist until Vladimir Putin showed up…that seems to be a lie that is both really bizarre and easily refutable.
2) The sentence I have highlighted is just flatly inaccurate, to the point where I’m forced to wonder whether Stone-Weiss is profoundly mendacious or just really, really, stupid. The rates of violent crime in Russia are, of course, substantially lower than they were in the 1990’s when gangland murders and revenge killings go so out of hand they were on the verge of becoming a low-level civil war. And Russian public health indicators are, of course, also vastly better than they were in the 1990’s, during those halcyon Yeltsin days when people were literally dying in the streets.
Let’s, however, ignore all of that for a moment and look only at Chechnya. What were the Yeltsin years like there? Were they a time of democratic bliss? No, they were a virtually unmitigated disaster! The Russian military suffered tens of thousands of causalities in the first war in Chechnya, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Let me repeat that again for the stupid and immoral people, like Leon Aron, who insist on whitewashing the profoundly and shockingly criminal conduct of war Yeltsin oversaw in Chechnya. The Russian military suffered tens of thousands of causalities in the first war in Chechnya, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. In order to demonstrate a more callous disregard for human life than Yeltsin displayed during the first Chenen war, Putin would literally have to ride around Red Square randomly beheading people oprichnik-style.
It is essentially impossible to overstate what a gigantic and utterly pointless slaughter the 1994-96 war was. For the love of God, it made people like Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi recoil in horror and disgust! They of “death porn” fame! Reading about the Russian assault on Grozny can make Ypres seem like a tea party: the whole thing was a top to bottom catastrophe that wiped out countless human lives for no reason whatsoever. If you can read stories about Russian troops (most of whom were 18 years old, had never been trained, and were literally starving to death) reduced to selling their weapons to the enemy in order to buy food, and not become violently enraged, well, I’d say that you are a sociopath on the level of Dexter Morgan. Or that you are a Russophobe of a profoundly immoral and terrifying variety. Or, perhaps, that you are a Chechen separatist.
Stoner-Wiess would have us believe that suddenly, when two lunatic fundamentalists set off some nail bombs on the Sokolnicheskaya line, we’re supposed to conclude that Putin is a gigantic failure. She wants us to think to ourselves “You know what, that Vladimir Vladimirovich is a very nasty fellow, let’s go back to the atmosphere of social chaos and disarray of the 1990’s when tens of thousands of people were being slaughtered in Chechnya for no purpose at all!” Sorry, I have more than 4 brain cells that work in unison. The idea that Russians were better protected by Yeltsin is a deeply contemptible one, and should be placed in the same intellectual category as holocaust denial (oh yeah, I went there!).
3) Of course the Putin autocracy has worked for ordinary Russians. This isn’t even a matter for discussion. Real wages are something like 3x higher they were when Yeltsin left office, health spending is 50% greater, and legitimate Western goods (not the 4th rate knockoffs and counterfeits that predominated in the 90’s) have penetrated even to the provincial centers. Any social, demographic, or economic indicator you can think of its better now, in 2010, than it was before Putin came to power. Indeed, the benefits that the Putin regime has provided to ordinary Russians are precisely why it is worrying to people who are not pig-ignorant about the country. Putin has, simultaneously, significantly limited Russians’ political freedoms while expanding their material and economic freedoms to previously unheard of levels. He has done so to resounding and lasting popularity, indeed he remains one of the most popular politicians in the entire world.
For someone that is actually concerned with democracy (and not simply “democracy” as defined by the geopolitical interests of the West) Putin’s Russia presents a very interesting challenge and some very tough questions. During the recent economic crisis the Putin regime has preformed substantially better economically than its more democratic and liberal neighbor Ukraine, and even seems to have rebounded from the crisis more swiftly than the incomparably more liberal and democratic Baltic states. These are very real problems for democracy enthusiasts, and waving one’s hands about and airily dismissing the positive developments of the past decade of Russian history with the ludicrous statement of “everything was better under Yeltsin!” doesn’t accomplish anything at all except demonstrating one’s profound ignorance and intellectual laziness.
Lastly, I’d like to note that the “Putin allowed the attacks to occur therefore he is a failure” school of thought is a close cousin of the idiotic “Bush kept us safe!” meme prevalent in certain circles of the American conservative movement. These two “ideas” introduce a cartoonish sort of utilitarian calculus into what is ultimately a far more basic question of political ethics. Either what Putin has done to limit political freedom is justifiable on its own grounds or it is not (note to would be flamers: I don’t think Putin’s actions in this realm are defensible!), his ability to prevent suicide bombings isn’t really relevant. If Putin had prevented additional suicide bombings (as he did for 6 years from 2004 until just now) would he be the leader that “kept Russians safe?” Would his ability to prevent terrorism change how one views the basic nature of his regime? It shouldn’t. Abductions, torture, and assassinations of the sort that Russian forces have carried out in Chechnya are wrong, unequivocally, regardless of whether they spur or prevent additional acts of terrorism. One would think that the people who constantly decry “moral relativism” in others would remember this.
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Pressing commitments at work (as should be clear to all readers of this blog, I am an exceedingly important individual) have prevented me from writing much of anything this week. However I do want to take a moment to comment on the Moscow subway bombings or, to get meta for a second, to comment on some of the commentary about the Moscow subway bombings.
One of the very worst analyses came from Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. Stoner-Weiss, often partnering with her Stanford colleague Michael McFaul, has been on a truly bizarre quest to disprove Putin’s “myth” for some time now, though she mostly succeeds in making an ass of herself. Her shtick seems to primarily consist of closely reading the vapid self-congratulatory boilerplate, the sort of dreck that is 95% of any politician’s repertoire in any country in the world, that Putin often spouts and then studiously going about “proving” him wrong. This sort of thing has long been the staple of think-tank whores (think of the myriad of “studies” that “prove” that Barack Obama is a Martian, Muslim, Atheist, Communist, Socialist, Maoist, baby-killing Chicago Mobster) and it’s a real shame that it’s made the migration into seemingly respectable bits of academia.
In her note for the New York Times Stoner-Weiss wrote the following (emphasis mine):
The Chechen conflict, in the meantime, has changed, but not ended. It has turned increasingly toward Islamic militancy - a component absent in the original Chechen uprising in the mid-1990’s. It has also grown increasingly creative and aggressive, putting the Russian population at grave risk…
The subway bombings is further evidence of the failing of Putinism - the democratic rollback he pursued has produced even less personal security for Russians than even the weak and unconsolidated democracy of the 1990s under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin…
Some of the protesters called for Mr. Putin’s ouster, laying the blame for the failures of the Russian economy squarely on his shoulders and the economic system he sustained through high oil prices that have come crashing down. The subway bombings, like the protests last week, are a reminder that Mr. Putin’s autocracy has not worked for ordinary Russians.
Let’s take these in order
1) I am by no means a Caucasus specialist, but I’ve read a decent bit about the first war in Chechnya (the one waged by that great “democrat” Boris Yeltsin) and I’ve watched Kavkazski Plenik (a pretty good 1996 Russian language film about war) and it certainly seemed obvious to the Russians that they were fighting a war against Islamic extremists or, at the absolute least, a people that was heavily influenced by Islam. It’s certainly possible, and probably even likely, that Islamic extremism is now more prevalent among Chechen militants than it was in the mid 90’s, but to claim that Islamic militancy didn’t exist until Vladimir Putin showed up…that seems to be a lie that is both really bizarre and easily refutable.
2) The sentence I have highlighted is just flatly inaccurate, to the point where I’m forced to wonder whether Stone-Weiss is profoundly mendacious or just really, really, stupid. The rates of violent crime in Russia are, of course, substantially lower than they were in the 1990’s when gangland murders and revenge killings go so out of hand they were on the verge of becoming a low-level civil war. And Russian public health indicators are, of course, also vastly better than they were in the 1990’s, during those halcyon Yeltsin days when people were literally dying in the streets.
Let’s, however, ignore all of that for a moment and look only at Chechnya. What were the Yeltsin years like there? Were they a time of democratic bliss? No, they were a virtually unmitigated disaster! The Russian military suffered tens of thousands of causalities in the first war in Chechnya, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Let me repeat that again for the stupid and immoral people, like Leon Aron, who insist on whitewashing the profoundly and shockingly criminal conduct of war Yeltsin oversaw in Chechnya. The Russian military suffered tens of thousands of causalities in the first war in Chechnya, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. In order to demonstrate a more callous disregard for human life than Yeltsin displayed during the first Chenen war, Putin would literally have to ride around Red Square randomly beheading people oprichnik-style.
It is essentially impossible to overstate what a gigantic and utterly pointless slaughter the 1994-96 war was. For the love of God, it made people like Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi recoil in horror and disgust! They of “death porn” fame! Reading about the Russian assault on Grozny can make Ypres seem like a tea party: the whole thing was a top to bottom catastrophe that wiped out countless human lives for no reason whatsoever. If you can read stories about Russian troops (most of whom were 18 years old, had never been trained, and were literally starving to death) reduced to selling their weapons to the enemy in order to buy food, and not become violently enraged, well, I’d say that you are a sociopath on the level of Dexter Morgan. Or that you are a Russophobe of a profoundly immoral and terrifying variety. Or, perhaps, that you are a Chechen separatist.
Stoner-Wiess would have us believe that suddenly, when two lunatic fundamentalists set off some nail bombs on the Sokolnicheskaya line, we’re supposed to conclude that Putin is a gigantic failure. She wants us to think to ourselves “You know what, that Vladimir Vladimirovich is a very nasty fellow, let’s go back to the atmosphere of social chaos and disarray of the 1990’s when tens of thousands of people were being slaughtered in Chechnya for no purpose at all!” Sorry, I have more than 4 brain cells that work in unison. The idea that Russians were better protected by Yeltsin is a deeply contemptible one, and should be placed in the same intellectual category as holocaust denial (oh yeah, I went there!).
3) Of course the Putin autocracy has worked for ordinary Russians. This isn’t even a matter for discussion. Real wages are something like 3x higher they were when Yeltsin left office, health spending is 50% greater, and legitimate Western goods (not the 4th rate knockoffs and counterfeits that predominated in the 90’s) have penetrated even to the provincial centers. Any social, demographic, or economic indicator you can think of its better now, in 2010, than it was before Putin came to power. Indeed, the benefits that the Putin regime has provided to ordinary Russians are precisely why it is worrying to people who are not pig-ignorant about the country. Putin has, simultaneously, significantly limited Russians’ political freedoms while expanding their material and economic freedoms to previously unheard of levels. He has done so to resounding and lasting popularity, indeed he remains one of the most popular politicians in the entire world.
For someone that is actually concerned with democracy (and not simply “democracy” as defined by the geopolitical interests of the West) Putin’s Russia presents a very interesting challenge and some very tough questions. During the recent economic crisis the Putin regime has preformed substantially better economically than its more democratic and liberal neighbor Ukraine, and even seems to have rebounded from the crisis more swiftly than the incomparably more liberal and democratic Baltic states. These are very real problems for democracy enthusiasts, and waving one’s hands about and airily dismissing the positive developments of the past decade of Russian history with the ludicrous statement of “everything was better under Yeltsin!” doesn’t accomplish anything at all except demonstrating one’s profound ignorance and intellectual laziness.
Lastly, I’d like to note that the “Putin allowed the attacks to occur therefore he is a failure” school of thought is a close cousin of the idiotic “Bush kept us safe!” meme prevalent in certain circles of the American conservative movement. These two “ideas” introduce a cartoonish sort of utilitarian calculus into what is ultimately a far more basic question of political ethics. Either what Putin has done to limit political freedom is justifiable on its own grounds or it is not (note to would be flamers: I don’t think Putin’s actions in this realm are defensible!), his ability to prevent suicide bombings isn’t really relevant. If Putin had prevented additional suicide bombings (as he did for 6 years from 2004 until just now) would he be the leader that “kept Russians safe?” Would his ability to prevent terrorism change how one views the basic nature of his regime? It shouldn’t. Abductions, torture, and assassinations of the sort that Russian forces have carried out in Chechnya are wrong, unequivocally, regardless of whether they spur or prevent additional acts of terrorism. One would think that the people who constantly decry “moral relativism” in others would remember this.
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