Are we forgetting the thuggery of Putin’s rise to power? The systematic buy-out and subjugation of the press by businesses that served the state to that end? Are we forgetting the secret services having a hand in some terror attacks against Russians. Do we forget that Politkovskaya was poisoned first and at a later time shot dead on the doorstep of her apartment?
Is it possible we don’t remember that only pissants and the politically marginalized are even on the ballot, and the serious contenders have been disqualified? Has it been incorrectly reported that the dissenting press is on the order of magnitude of Novaya Gazeta, a periodical with approximately the circulation of The Nation in the US? Are we misinformed that workers are ordered to vote on peril of losing their employment?
There seems to be some sugar-coating here of Putin’s regime and his political machinations.

Posted by: Copeland | Mar 3 2008 4:35 utc | 3

Democratic in the sense that the Iranian elections were democratic: just as the Iranian religious leaders disqualified candidates who did not meet thier standards, the Russian authorities derailed any candidates who did not meet their standard, which was, in a word, any candidate who might have threatened Putin’s chosen successor.
America does not have a board of religious leaders, it just has a committe of Big Campaign Spenders who withhold their blessings on any who do not promise to deliver.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 3 2008 6:41 utc | 5

Moscow Times: Complaints of Fraud, Bribery and Pressure

Voters and opposition parties complained of ballot stuffing, bribery and intimidation in Sunday’s presidential election, in which Kremlin-backed candidate Dmitry Medvedev appeared set for a landslide victory.
Golos, the only independent Russian monitoring group, said that a majority of the violations occurred not at the ballot box, but rather in the run-up to the election and during the tallying of votes.
Authorities, meanwhile, either denied any voting irregularities or dismissed them as negligible.
…
Western election observers reached Sunday said they did not see any blatant violations.
“There does not seem to be any voter intimidation,” Nigel Evans, a British parliamentarian, said after visiting eight polling stations in Moscow.
Evans is one of a 23-member mission from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the only regular Western observation team that came to monitor Sunday’s election.

Posted by: b | Mar 3 2008 10:16 utc | 7

What the US media don’t reveal is that Russian politics (parties, leaders, votes) is no different from the Bush, Clinton dynasties that ‘rule’ the US.
The Russians vote for stability, for leadership they consider stellar, acceptable, or immovable, inevitable, a bad choice, but the only one going.
The vote is an imposed modern habit, a charade, a ritual.
The Americans like to pretend that their democracy functions as ppl are asked to judge personal characteristics of the Supremo Leader – being experienced, blond, or black and young, fat or thin, and for all I know, liking Sushi or rock, or not.
That expensive jamboree implies another kind of control – the illusion of choice without any. The low key acceptance of the Russians is more reasonable than the year long hype of the US Pres. elections, imho. Less tiresome, wearing.
Putin controls the TV – state media, with an iron, and maybe murderous, fist. Not the newspapers, or not much, not closely, and the internet, not at all. Free speech, whatever that is, is alive in Russia. In the US, the picture is similar but yet different. TV is controlled, thru self censorship, total alliance to power, no direct intervention is needed. The tv media are part of the Gvmt, without that relation being official or overt or coerced in any way. Newspapers are also self muzzled. The internet is not censored for the moment.

Posted by: Tangerine | Mar 3 2008 14:31 utc | 9

The Russians despise Gorbachev en masse? I lived there for five years and never got that impression. He was unpopular amongst some of the intelligentsia, but they had a tendancy to denigrate everyone. For the most part, regular Russians would just mock him for his atrocious accent and speaking style. I suppose they could have all learned to hate him since I left…

Posted by: aubanel | Mar 3 2008 18:41 utc | 11

The systematic marginalization of potential opponents to Putin has been in the works since his reign began. With the secret services firmly behind him and financial favors in hand to be dispensed, he has buttered and threatened his way to power. Getting the Duma in lockstep behind him, driving independent media out of business, and driving serious opponents from the arena. Yeltsin was coarse and a drunk; but when he began the first Chechen war, Russia still had a talented, vibrant, exceptionally serious press. There are lackeys now under Putin, who control information.
After I addressed my comment to b, in number 3, above, I read back over what I had written and I reflected upon parallels to the present administration in my country, the US. Both Russians and Americans seem to have made unfortunate trade-offs against their liberties. The Cold War left one collapsed empire and another empire on its last legs.
Putin got rid of the regional governors and the election process that gave their regional administration legitimacy.
Now Medvedev will fit like a pair of gloves on Putin’s muscular hands. The real power is in the control of the Security State. Goverment offices. the Duma, the justices and procurators, have become window dressing.
The assassination of Politkovskaya is connected as much to her tireless investigation into the siege of the Nord-Ost theatre in Moscow, in 2002, as to her digging into the crimes of Chechen warlords (some of whom are beholden to Putin). The relatives of the victims of the Moscow theatre atrocity have demanded, but never obtained, cooperation from the state to investigate the deaths of so many of the hostages, who died from breathing the opiate gas that Russian authorities used to flood the theatre. It has never been explained why authorities took none of the hostage-takers prisoner, but instead carefully identified each one of them at the scene and fired a bullet point-blank into the head of each.
Politkovskaya heard from a few eyewitnesses that some well known state security characters were seen around and inside the theatre just prior to the unfolding of the hostage incident. From reading Politkovskaya’s book, Russian Diary, this is not the only incident in which she suspected Security State complicity in “terrorist” acts against Russians.
Honestly Bernhard, comparing Putin’s democratic process to France is an absurdity; and the image of a “prayer room” on the Russian President’s plane is really just amusing.

Posted by: Copeland | Mar 3 2008 23:18 utc | 13

@Copeland – Honestly Bernhard, comparing Putin’s democratic process to France is an absurdity; and the image of a “prayer room” on the Russian President’s plane is really just amusing.
On the first issue I certainly don’t agree. A system that gives LePen the second place and Sarkosy (an oligarch playchild) the first is certainly not ideal. The Russians seem to believe they got the president they wanted. What do we have to critizise about that?
On the “prayer room” – You seem not to be aware how important the orthodox church is now again in Russia. What do you think Serbia and Kosovo are about? Russian support for Serbia certainly has a religious component. To put a prayer room on an official plane after 75 years of ordered secularism is huge in my view (and the pictures released with purpose).
Antiwar take on Medvedev, Hillary, and ‘Media Bias’
“Was the Russian election any less free than our own?”

Posted by: b | Mar 5 2008 18:06 utc | 15

Well Bernhard it was the implication of Putin’s piety as a good Christian man that made the “prayer room” on the presidential plane seem amusing to me. He must have flipped through the Bible several times while he was laying waste to Chechnya.
Now Sarkozy may fit classical definition of a “running dog of imperialism”, and he may be a rancid little lackey and a political opportunist, but he was elected fair and square. He is not, however, a KGB man’s KGB man. He has not laid waste to one of the provinces of his own country. He and his offices have not bureacratically defeated murder inquiries, given procurators and judges instructions of how they should behave in the matter of cases brought before them. Let’s give European democracy a little credit. Sarkozy is not that imposing (are there shirtless, muscle flexing photos of him?); he is not the focus of a cult of personality; and I expect that when he leaves office, he will not continue to rule France through a proxy.
And Raimondo’s piece tries to squeeze the reader into a tedious Cold War narrative, that we know by heart. But the narrative ignores the facts on the ground, that took place while Putin was building up his base of political power. It is dishonest of the writer not to at some point remind his readers, that when Putin was shunting aside political opposition, centralizing political control, and systematically neutralizing all criticism of the president, there was a blackout of this news in the US. Putin was Bush’s pal, a partner in the War on Terror.

The new Cold Warriors are on the warpath, intent on restarting a conflict that ended in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The propaganda offensive against Putin’s Russia – launched, as per usual, by the neocons, and since taken up by left-liberals – is in full swing. Putin is routinely compared to Stalin,

Well who the fuck would have imagined neocons and “left-liberals” would be on the same side on this? It’s Russophobia, I tell you!
Incidently, in her Russian Diary, Politkovskaya wrote about how the new history texts for Russian schools, issued under Putin, were portraying Stalin in a more favorable light.

Posted by: Copeland | Mar 6 2008 6:21 utc | 17