"It's too easy to write off Putin as a despot" by Erofeyev

Here's an interesting opinion published in the IHT Online.

What Lenin and Joseph Smith have in common

Randomly selected students were paid money to participate in a psychological experiment. They had to stay at a campus square for one hour with posters saying something like, “Save Parazonian red spider!” The students were given no explanations about the insect and no information about the on-going environmental campaign. Actually there was no campaign: the red Parazonian spider was a made-up creature and there is no such place on Earth as Parazonia. When some of the students asked questions they were told: “Just hold the poster for an hour and take your 10 bucks.” It comes as no surprise that after the “protest” students just took money and forgot about the whole affair. Next time another group of students was selected to participate in the same protest action. Only this time another group of students while passing by sneered at them, ridiculed their slogans and made them look stupid. After that “protest” most of students not just walked away with money but started researching, showed real interest in environmental problems of Parazonia and were sincerely indignant with people who didn’t take seriously problems of the red spider. They were ready to participate in future protests for free. Some of them even decided to start a “Parazonian Red Spider Rescue Group”.
Such “field experiments” were very popular in early 70s at West Coast universities in the US. Many of them didn’t meet rigorous academic standards but the results are quite believable and commonsensical. I know several people who soon after getting a job at a tobacco company started believing sincerely that smoking is not that harmful and in some cases is even good for you.
Since I met Mormons for the first time in a god-forgotten Northern Russian town of Arkhangelsk in 1991 I was fascinated by their Church. How can a sane person ever believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet? If he lived a thousand years ago one can argue that he was foully slandered by foes but he lived in the age of printing press in a free and open country. There are thousands and thousands pieces of evidence that he was an imposter, fraud, faker and trickster. His “prophesies” are so evidently self-serving. “The Book of Mormon” is a ridiculous collection of rambling fairy tales. We have on one side genuine Egyptian papyri with quotes from the “Book of the Dead” and on the other side Smith’s “translation” of them – “Book of Abraham”. What other evidence is needed? However ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ I met didn’t come across as mad zombies. They take their mission in spreading the teaching of Joseph Smith very seriously, they are never confused and no one can lead them astray. Moreover, this is the fastest growing church in the world.
The early history of Mormonism is one long violent struggle of “we” against “them”. That feeling – the whole world is against us – was overwhelming. Early Mormons were not innocent victims – their fate was really violent and at one time J. Smith had a private militia force that was bigger then the US Army. We are talking not about theological disputes but about violence, murders, bloody wars, driving out citizens of whole towns and even counties by force, exile, long journey west to nowhere. At the end the tormented community settled at the Salt Lake – a community of brothers and sisters surrounded by the hostile and blood-thirsty world. In this small world calling in question the honesty and truth of Joseph Smith’s teachings was tantamount to questioning the survival of the whole community. Uncompromising division – we against the whole world – sealed with blood, death, torment and starvation is probably the best way to make people believe in almost anything.
How comes that a small group of radical nihilists led by Lenin took the power in Russia in 1917? The Communist revolution by itself was nothing special. In 1917 in St. Petersburg it was possible to overthrow the government on weekly basis. One only needed a crowd of several thousand militant scums. Remember the Kyrgyzstan Revolution? Lenin’s “secret” is unimaginable cruelty and limitless violence – kill everyone who doesn’t agree with us on the spot, take hostages and murder them without remorse if the enemy doesn’t unconditionally surrenders, rob the robbers, terrorize, burn and forget about morality. Blind violence feeds counter-violence. The fly-wheel of rage turns faster and faster. The Civil War starts when atrocities committed by the Red Army are quite comparable to the atrocities of the White Guards. Violence makes a small group of “romantics” a strong force united by blood. The whole world is against us but we will not surrender – we will violently destroy the world of violence. This way it’s easy to compare Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Smith. Several years later the Civil War was over but the feeling of “we against them” was still there. One needed a new leader who would bring law and order without destroying that basis of the Communist regime. This way Joseph Stalin can be compared to Brigham Young. Only Utah is much smaller in comparison with the USSR.
Now what this post is about? I was asked – why there are so many monuments to Lenin in Russia? Why don’t you just torn them down and become a democratic country? Consider this post also as an answer why Russian WWII veterans still adore Stalin. Or why liberal democrats who ridicule Russian “slave” mentality have so little success. Or why Georgian revolutionary fight against “Russian imperialism” makes Saakashvili politically stronger in Georgia but at the same time this fight rears nationalism among ordinary Russians.
By the way, is there any way to make Mormons see that Joseph Smith was a fraud?

New Articles

Kirill Pankratov's new article "Perestroika-20: The Great De-Build-ing" -
The idea that Gorby's Politburo was thinking, "Oh, no, they are going to put lasers into space and shoot down all our missiles! We better give up and declare the end of Communism" is beyond preposterous. This could only occur to somebody completely ignorant of how the Soviet system worked. Since the Washington plutocracy was never short on ignorance, this is not particularly surprising.

Also, Gary Brecher (aka "War Nerd") knows how to use Okkam's Razor when dealing with Lebanon problems - "Lebanon II: Hezbollah Boom!"
It took the Israelis a while to realize what a disaster the invasion really was. Like us in Iraq, the first stage was such an easy victory that they thought they could do anything. Turned out that by booting the PLO out of Lebanon, they'd tilted the gang-bang balance in favor of the Shia, the newest, most ready-to-die gangbangers on the block. And the Shia didn't stop hitting the IDF until it abandoned its last "buffer zone" in South Lebanon in 2000.

Revolutionary Flora

"Rose Revolution" - Georgia
"Orange Revolution" - Ukraine
"Tulip Revolution" - Kyrgyzstan
Comming soon:
Uzbekistan - "Hemp Revolution"
Afganistan - "Poppy Revolution"

Who Poisoned Yushchenko? Part 2.

I already wrote a post about Yushchenko's mysterious poisoning. Now Telegraph (UK) published an article based on an interview with a senior doctor from the Vienna clinic where Yushchenko was treated. Dr Wicke claims that no trace of poisoning was found. Soon the doctor was ousted from the clinic and received death threats if he makes this information public.
Dr Wicke remains uncomfortable about the role played by the Rudolfinerhaus in the drama. "The first two times Mr Yushchenko was examined, there was no evidence of poisoning whatsoever," Dr Wicke, 64, said. Yet, to his dismay, persistent leaks from the clinic suggested that the politician had indeed been poisoned.
Dr Wicke told reporters that a "medically forged diagnosis" had been circulated by someone "not permanently employed in this clinic". This was taken to refer to Nikolai Korpan, a Ukrainian-born surgeon who had been treating the politician in Vienna.
Three days later, Dr Wicke received a written request from Dr Michael Zimpfer, the president of the clinic's supervisory board, to retract his remarks.
Dr Wicke marked the memo with the word "Acknowledged". It was after this that a man speaking accented English rang Dr Wicke and introduced himself as "a friend from the Ukraine". He said the man told him to "take care. Your life is in danger". Dr Wicke and his family were then put under 24-hour police guard.
So, who really poisoned Yushchenko and was he poisoned at all?

"Crying Wolf" by Vanora Bennett. Review.

"Crying Wolf: the Return of War to Chechnya" by Vanora Bennett.

Five months ago I found this book at an English/American Bookstore on Myasnitskaya. I read only a few pages from it at the store and was immediately swept away by its uncommonness. Unlike most books on Chechnya it was incredibly well-researched, sincere, detailed and not one-sided at all. Vanora covers 600 pages with descriptions of her life in Moscow and travels to the Caucasus: interviews and private talks, historic references, quotes from the classics, personal opinions and opinions of other people, newspaper clippings. Nothing is left behind. The best part is certainly Vanora’s epic-like personal accounts of her highly dangerous trips to war-torn regions in Armenia, Karabakh, Ingushetia and Chechnya. I read the whole book in two days.
But it also brought the sense of uncertainty, like it was not really completed. Something was missing – the moral, probably. If you skip Vanora’s personal opinions and just read her detailed accounts of what is going on, you would become a misanthrope. There’s this vicious cycle of infinitely growing racism, blind hate, madness, blood, death, suffering that carries away everyone: Russians, Chechens, Osetians, Armenians and Azeris alike. Nice and peaceful men are turning into blood-thirsty monsters. Loathing and thirst to revenge make otherwise rational people think like fanatical madmen. In Vanora’s book there are no good or bad guys in the war – almost all think and act like wild animals, gloating with joy when they win or whining maliciously when they lose. It’s impossible to take sides, to be pro-Russian or pro-Chechen, or anywhere in between. What’s the moral of the story? Is it the idea that when any stable social system is destroyed people loose all the humaneness they had? Is it the idea that any war, be it fair or not, irretrievably destroys the human soul? Is Vanora the follower of Leo Tolstoy’s theory of non-resistance to evil? Tolstoy illustrated his ideas with the story “Hadji Murat” that I already wrote about. Actually Tolstoy’s theory is not as idealistic as it sounds. Mahatma Ghandi, a passionate follower of Tolstoy, made India independent with the help of it. He was confident that once you resist evil by force or violence, your soul is damned. Isn’t Iraq or Chechnya a good proof that he was right?
Incredible, but Vanora is taking sides – she is definitely on the side of Chechens, Russophile turned Russophobe just in one day. That makes her book so weird. I simple couldn’t understand why. Her descriptions of Chechens gave absolutely no clue for her reasons.
Three days ago I took the book again and read several random pages from different parts. And I think I solved the mystery. Vanora is totally devoid of empathy, the human talent to feel what other people feel. She is emotionally handicapped like there are musically handicapped people. What is music for everyone, for them is simply noise made with a vast variety of instruments. Such people can try hard to understand what’s there in music that makes others dance, laugh or cry, why this kind of noise is so popular but another is called trashy. They can take great pains to decode music. They can actually go so far as to learn to play music but even then they couldn’t get it – why people listen to the noise I make. That’s what Vanora is trying really hard, driven by incredibly reckless curiosity, - to decipher the noise that other people call emotions. In this quest she rushes without doubt to any region where there’s war and eagerly interviews people who just undergone unbelievable sufferings.
Vanora is very observant. She covers pages with descriptions of people she met to the minutest detail: every wink, gesture, smile and change in voice. Nothing is left unnoticed. Sometimes I wanted to say, “Stop here, Vanora, I already got what you mean!” but she goes on and on and on. Like a musically handicapped person painstakingly dissects the noise to every single sign and note, then looks stupidly at them and says, “Hey, that was polka!” No, that was not polka. That was rock’n’roll. It doesn’t take so much pain for an ordinary person to see the difference. Vanora covers five pages with extraordinary vivid and detailed description of her bus ride to Karabakh with broken-hearted, crying, trying to be understood Armenian refugees and then unexpectedly she goes, “Hey, they were manipulative!” No, they were not.
This emotional backwardness is probably the reason behind so many contradictions in the book. For example, she describes a talk with her Russian “friend” and makes a conclusion – this man is a racist. That’s right. I agree. Then some fifty pages later she describes an almost identical talk with a Chechen and concludes – this man was hurt so much by Russians. No, Vanora. That man is also a racist. He’s as disgusting as his Russian counterpart. A truly pro-Chechen writer, like Politkovskaya, would simply omit such an interview from the book. She would certainly see that it doesn’t fit and breaks the integrity of the book but Vanora doesn’t get it. There are dozens and dozens of such contradictions throughout the story. They make the book so much misanthropic – all humans are beasts. Although Vanora leaves her opinions here and there – Russians are evil but Chechens are noble – but one simply doesn’t believe her. My recommendations – skip Vanora’s personal comments and you get the most detailed, well-researched and un-biased book about the war in Chechnya.

Chechnya and Logic

Robert Bruce Ware does something that no other expert on Chechnya seems to do - using formal logic to answer the question if Illyas Akhmadov, who is recognized as political refugee in the US, is a terrorist or not. His article "Chechnya, Logic and Confronting the "Conventional Wisdom" is published at Untimely Thoughts.
Those who want to go straight to the point can skip three initial passages of the article.