Thursday, October 27, 2005

Putin Is Tired

Moscow News published a very interesting interview with Helene Carrere d'Encausse. This belongs to a tiny group of experts on Russian affaires who (judging from the interview) is smart and open-minded. There some lines from the interview I liked most:

But I rather suspect that he is already tired of working. He goes to different places a bit too often and practices sport a little too much.

It’s evident to most of Russians. Putin is not a politician and never was. Every politician should love power above all but he doesn’t. Putin is doing his job as if he was appointed to be a president. And that is the main reason why Russians like him. It’s also a reason why so many Western experts simply couldn’t grasp the idea that a person with so much power doesn’t want to use to become a president for a third term. Maybe they think it’s an axiom that only power mongers can be politicians as it always was in the West? Money and Power is ueber alles.

This may sound a bit harsh, but I get the impression that our [French] elites are irked by the fact that Russia has extricated itself from Communism on its own, without any outside assistance.

Exactly. The Russian revolution of 1991 was probably the only one in the modern history that happened without “help” from the West. Not a single NGO or a “freedom-in-the-world” foundation played any role in the process. No Western politicians showed their support on Moscow squares. Not a single dollar was spent on training “democratic” youth organizations. They didn’t even consult with the leaders of the free world on what is the most appropriate candidate to lead the revolution. Russians overthrew the Communist regime and established democracy in this country all by themselves. They had the cheek to do it! Barefaced impudence!

Yes, we see that Russian television reports on every step that Putin takes, to the exclusion of all else. But then French television is so PC that it is simply a nightmare. We have laws that not even Stalin could have devised. A person risks being sent to prison if he says that there are too many Jews or blacks on television. People may not speak their minds on ethnic groups, World War II, and many other things. This is a statutory offence.

Political correctness on French television is probably the same as media censorship in Russia. But Russia has some terribly interesting newspapers, while in France, all major newspapers write more or less the same stuff.

Again I agree. I don’t know what is more boring: watching stupid coverage of every step Putin makes on TV, or being hypnotized by irrational and distilled PC stream from CNN or BBC. France is not an exception. It’s like watching a castrated old lion in a zoo playing with his tail. When I need good political analysis I read Russian newspapers. When from time to time I feel pessimistic about life in Russia I read Wall Street Journal or Washington Post. It gives a real boost of patriotism. If Putin only wanted to make his power much stronger and chances of liberals puny, he only needed to start a daily show on TV “What European and American mainstream newspapers write about life and politics in Russia”.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some facts about H?l?ne Carr?re d'Encausse a.k.a. H?l?ne Zourabichvili:
She is a 71 years old historian of aristocratic German-Russian origins.
She wrote 14 books about the USSR.
She is a prominent member of Jacques Chirac conservative party RPR.
She was at the head of several corporate lobbies for the suppression of the rights of workers and the lowering of social living standards at European level.
She worked as a senior advisor for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (http://www.ebrd.com/about/index.htm).
She headed the ultra-liberalist campaign for the European Constitution, which was widely rejected last year by French voters.
She is mostly known for having been the usual advisor of the former right-wing state Television until 1981, and as a hateful anti-communist and anti-Russian propagandist. None of her prophecies became true.
In one of her books, she claimed that Lenin caused the death of 100 million Russians!

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the question marks some will get in her name. It should read ***Helene Carrere d'Encausse*** without "Accent Aigu" or "Accent Grave".

Anonymous said...

Her cousin, Georgia’s former Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili was recently sacked by Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli for her incompetence...

Alexey Makarkin recently compared her to Georgian Timoshenko:
http://www.rian.ru/analytics/20051024/41872849.html
(in Russian)

http://www.centralchronicle.com/20051026/2610302.htm
(in English)

Anonymous said...

Salome Zurabishvili is the grand-daughter of Ivan Zurabishvili, a minister of the last "white" government of Georgia.

See a article of 2004:
"Remarkable Move in Georgian Chess"
by Paul Labarique

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30087.html


Sorry to have hi-jacked the posts...

Back to Putin, then:

Does not Bush look pretty tired recently?

Anonymous said...

Sorry to say you're really wrong about Europe. Even the sentence "What European and American mainstream newspapers write about life and politics in Russia" shows that you're not into the european media. Large parts of the mainstream media in europe are run by american companies, especially of course english-speaking media. So Helene Carrere d'Encausse is not a European and many people who call themselves "european" or "new europeans" are americans. I think there is a big difference between the way european media reports about putin and american media reports about putin. And it should be noted that france, germany and russia have the same position concering iraq + this position is widely accepted by the people. Anyway for example in germany live 3 million people from the former sovient union. There are many russian newspaper in germany (most popular is probably: http://www.rg-rb.de/ РУССКАЯ ГЕРМАНИЯ. So if say the РУССКАЯ ГЕРМАНИЯ is not a european newspaper the american media in germany should not deserve the term european media also. Btw we also have russian televisons (nashe kino, detski mir, etc.) in germany and we have german newspapers that take around 90% of the new from ria novosti (like saar-echo, etc.).
So please dont say "european", about a newspaper or anything, when it is actually from georgia or the u.s. Europeans have their own politics and their own voice, sadly it isn't heard very often.

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