Today the U.S. mainstream media is desparately trying to deal with the uncomfortably undeniable ‘Perestroika 2.0’ by studiously ignoring or downplaying it––or pretending it is something else.
A good example is a recent editorial in the Washington Post (WP). The piece, “In Russia, perestroika 2.0? If so, Vladimir Putin won't be part of it,” is a clear effort to deny the first state-led phase of Perestroika 2.0’s liberalizing reforms––and establish a complete separation between it and Vladimir Putin (“In Russia, perestroika 2.0? If so, Vladimir Putin won't be part of it,” Washington Post, 29 January 2012)”.
The WP naturally left out that Putin backed and promoted his long-time associate Dmitrii Medvedev to the Russian presidency. Said protégé promptly declared ‘freedom is better than non-freedom’ and began a series of gradual but significant reforms touching on the Internal Affairs Ministry and police, corruption, the prison system, the harsh sentencing regime for white collar and misdemeanor crimes, state corporations, privatization, the courts, and peripheral aspects of Russia’s controlled and unfair political and electoral systems.
Now we learn, according to former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin who has aligned himself with the white revolution, that the more radical democratic reforms of the electoral system announced in December (in response to the demonstrations against the falsification of the Duma vote) were drafted long ago and introduced earlier than planned as a response to society’s demands (Vladmir Pozner’sinterview of Aleksei Kudrin, Program ‘Pozner’, Pervyi Kanal, 23 January 2012).
For years, the U.S. mainstream media studiously avoided mentioning these reforms by democrats supporting them. Even many in Russia’s new ‘white revolution’ movement backed Medvedev and considered his presidency had accomplished much in the way of reform. Opposition leader Ilya Ponamarev, for example, has said he considered himself “part of Medvedev’s team” but that the president “destroyed all his work of the past four years” when he agreed to step aside and let Putin run for presidency in his stead (“The Russian elite distances itself from Putin,” Russia Beyond the Headlines, 27 January 2012, www.rbth.ru).
Medvedev’s reforms rolled back important aspects of Putin’s policies set down in 2000-2007, but Putin never stepped in to block, and often came out in support of Medvedev’s measures. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of mainstream journalists and academics argued Medvedev was Putin’s puppet. All this means that Putin must have approved or at least tolerated much of the Perestroika 2.0 agenda. But any hint of this would undermine the depiction of Putin offered by the WP and many others as a leading despot comparable to Chinese, North Korean, Cuban, Saudi Arabian and other truly hardline dictators.
Of course, even leading Russian political analysts, like Stanislav Belkovskii, have missed a key point, identifying Perestroika 2.0 and 1.0 only from their latter stages of civic awakening (Stanislav Belkovskii, “,” Moskovskii komsomolets, 27 January 2012, ). But just like Perestroika 1.0, Perestroika 2.0 did not begin with mass demonstrations followed by the regime’s concessions (and in the case of 1.0 the full uncontrolled unraveling of the system led by revolutionary apparatchiks ‘from above’). Both began with reforms initiated from above by leaders who sought not revolution but gradual modernization, and freer discussion was allowed on state-run mass media. This signaled to society that change was possible, and civil society reawakened.
For example, the Soviet system’s economic failings, not civil society, prompted Gorbachev to ‘uskorenie’ (or acceleration of ‘socialist development’ through ‘quality control’ in 1985-86, then to ‘glasnost’) to make the party-state apparatus more efficient in 1986-1988, and then to economic ‘perestroika’ or restructuring (laws allowing cooperatives and decentralizing management of state enterprises). The Party-state’s obstruction of these measures prompted Gorbachev to political perestroika (the restructuring of power from the Party to the state, including semi-free elections to the soviets and new congresses in 1989). This mobilized the population and sparked the organization of opposition groups. Only then did Russian civil society resurrect and push the increasingly divided and weakened Soviet apparatus to further reforms––leading to a nascent revolution from below, the repeal of the Soviet constitution’s Article 6 and the Party’s monopoly on power, the draft Union Treaty that represented a negotiated pact for transition to democracy and the market with portions of the Party-state apparatus, most notably the Russian apparatchik revolutionaries led by Boris Yeltsin, and eventually Russia’s revolution from above against the remanats of the Soviet regime and state.
On ‘Russia – Other Points of View,’ I have been allowed to document what would have been impossible to document elsewhere: the early state-led phase of Perestroika 2.0. Perestroika 2.0’s first stage is over and the second, in which civil society begins to play a major role, has begun. But still only a very few, like Belkovskii, are beginning to get it. But whereas Russian political observers might have misspoken in the haste required by demand for weekly articles, no such excuse holds for the WP and its ilk.
The New York Times (NYT) took a tack that diverged from that taken by the WP. Its article “Meeting Fails to Bridge Opposition and Kremlin” by Ellen Barry noted only one of the radical election reforms proposed by Medvedev in December. Not surprisingly, the only reform mentioned is the one that might be watered down because of resistance from Putin and/or others. Moreover, the article exaggerated the still unclear extent to which this reform might be watered down. In noting that a presidential filter – consultations with the president – were included in the draft law on gubernatorial elections that possibly might allow the president to approve gubernatorial candidates, the article omitted the facts that the draft law stipulates consultations only in regard to gubernatorial candidates nominated by political parties. No consultations are mentioned in the law in relation to independent candidates. The article also omitted that a Kremlin spokeswoman stated that consultations would be voluntary not required (Ellen Barry, “Meeting Fails to Bridge Opposition and Kremlin,” New York Times, 17 January 2012).
In another distortion, the same NYT article includes a translation of an excerpt from Putin’s January 16th Izvestiya article that gives it a more sinister spin than is warranted (Vladimir Putin, “Rossiya sosreditochivaetsya – vyzovy, na kotoryie my dolzhny otvetit,” Izvestiya, 16 January 2012).
The Barry article’s translation reads: “In a number of regions, we hear the declarations of aggressively destructive forces, ultimately threatening the stability of all the peoples of the earth. Objectively, their allies turn out to be those states that are trying to 'export democracy' with the assistance of forceful, military means.”
The Kremlin’s translation reads: “Destructive forces have strengthened dramatically and have shown their aggressive nature in some parts of the world, ultimately threatening global security. The countries that are using military force to ‘export democracy’ often become allies of these destructive forces.” The NYT’s deletion of the word ‘often’ (podchas) and its translation of the Russian word ‘stanovyatsya’ as ‘turn out’ rather than ‘become’ radically change the reader’s interpretation of Putin’s words so that it sounds as if Putin is claiming the U.S. and the West are orchestrating destructive forces such as many involved in the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, Al Qa`ida, and the global jihadi revolutionary alliance, from which Russia suffers its own version – the Caucasus Emirate mujahedin.
In fact, Putin’s critique here is close to that made by American conservatives of the Obama Administration’s support for the revolutions of the Arab spring, which was undertaken without knowing what forces comprise those revolutionary forces. Indeed, the facts increasingly demonstrate that Islamist forces are coming to power in Egypt and Libya, lending Putin’s and the conservative critique a considerable foundation.
More recently, the NYT and WP seemingly teamed up to focus exclusively on the darkest scenarios for the outcome of the present crisis, ignoring once more the reformist trend within the state and obscuring the dominance by democrats within the societal opposition. Dealing in the usual clichés and stereotypes of Russian reality, they emphasized in turn ethnic Russian ultra-nationalism and the secret police. No wonder both these media outlets completely missed the emergence of regime reformism and a societal democracy movement in Russia over the last few years.
On January 29th the NYT’s Michael Schwirtz highlighted the role of radical nationalists who make up a small fraction of the white revolution movement, claiming that neo-fascists have enjoyed a “monopoly non street theatre” and have drawn “thousands” to demonstrations in Moscow long before the democrats ever did. In fact, nationalist demonstrations rarely if ever draw thousands in Moscow or anywhere else in Russia, and only one ultra-nationalist organization has more than a few hundred followers nationwide. Democratic demonstrations have been occurring since the late Soviet era. Schwirtz also asserts that ethnic Russian chauvinists enjoy greater support than do democrats outside of the “office buildings and hipster cafes of Moscow.” Never mind that democrats dominated December’s demonstrations from Moscow to St. Petersburg to Vladivostok and nationalist parties have never won close to even a plurality in any of Russia’s regions or nationally, unlike Ukraine.
The NYT and Schwirtz have repeatedly claimed that Putin supports ethnic Russian ultra-nationalism––despite his numerous statements condemning it and calling for mutual respect between communal groups. Never mind that in the last few years Russia’s liberal human rights center ‘Sova’ has recorded and acknowledged the regime’s crackdown on violent Russian neo-fascists and ultra-nationalists. Hundreds have been sentenced to prison terms, including several for murders of journalists – another point of repeated criticism by the U.S. mainstream media. Now they have interpreted his recent article, which repeated these points, as an attempt to split the white revolution movement’s nationalists and democrats (Michael Schwirtz, “Russian Liberals Growing Uneasy With Alliances,” New York Times, 29 January 2012).
A day after Schwirtz’s piece appeared, the WP’s Kathy Lally turned to the security services, raising the spectre of a violent crackdown on the nascent white revolution to be led by the secret police. Simultaneously, she deftly reiterated the unproven and unlikely claims that the Russian special services blew up apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999 and killed Aleksandr Litvinenko in London for exposing it: Kathy Lally, “Putin's Russia tries to sap opposition,” Washington Post, 30 January 2012). As usual, ethnic Russian nationalists and the secret services are fingered, but the terrorist Caucasus Emirate (CE) mujahedin, who have never been mentioned by name in either the WP or NYT, are ignored. The CE’s jihadi predecessors and masterminds, Ibn al-Khattab and Shamil Basaev, respectively warned about and claimed responsibility for the apartment bombings, and Litvinenko and his patron Boris Berezovskii had records of ties to, and support for Chechen separatists. Litvinenko even converted to Islam. It cannot be excluded that Berezovskii and Litvinenko were endeavoring to sell the polonium to jihadi terrosists or mafia intermediaries when Litvinenko was accidentally poisoned in the handling of the dangerous component.
In sum, bias, unfounded conjecture, obfuscation, and distortion remain the U.S. mainstream media’smodus operandi when it comes to Perestroika 2.0 and much else in Putin’s Russia.