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Whenever I write about something touching on my experience of communism, I get a few kind commenters encouraging me to share more of it. I rarely do so, as busy life takes over. Still, today I managed to post an article on my other blog, Media Influencer, that I felt was perhaps not coherent enough or too personal for Samizdata.net. For those interested, follow the bananas...

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Putin is sending shivers through the world with his attempts to strong-arm the Ukraine back into the Kremlin's zone of influence and no doubt more and more column inches are going to be directed at this emerging crisis.

Yet it seems to me pretty obvious that that Russia, circa 2006, is almost hilariously weak to be throwing its weight around. The Russian economy is pathetic for a would-be imperial seat of power, running about half the size of India based on purchasing power. Its GDP per capita is about the same as such mighty global players as South Africa, Mexico and Trinidad. The antics of its kleptocratic and economically illiterate former KGB leadership makes the place less attractive to investors by the day. Frankly you would have to be crazy to put your money in Moscow. Even its military has repeatedly demonstrated that it is inept and corrupt in equal measure. All this talk of Russia's importance is vastly over-stated. In short, Russia needs to be treated with respect, but only the sort of respect you give a drunk with a knife as he staggers down the street.

The price of gas sold to the Ukraine is currently below market levels but the cackhanded way Russia has handled this makes it pretty obvious that markets are the last thing on Putin's mind. But perhaps he is to be applauded for massively strengthening the hand of pro-nuclear power advocates with his preposterous posturing. Even the turgid political class of western and eastern Europe can now have few illusions that it makes sense to rely on an unstable place with delusions of grandeur for their energy supplies. Methinks it might be time for those with some spare dosh to invest some of it in nuclear energy stocks.

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I am travelling in Slovakia and the Czech Republic at the moment and internet access is rather hard to find. This all too brief internet lifeline is a welcome fix to help alleviate my OWLS (On-line Withdrawal Lamentation Syndrome). Horror is a foreign keyboard.

But at least the locals in the deepest rural Moravia are helping me get over the internet withdrawal shakes by stuffing me full of splendid pastries, for which this part of the world is rightly famed.

Interesting glimpses of the recent communist past abound but are becoming less visible by the year.

Remember a time before the internet? Hard to believe, I know! My hosts used this to listen to broadcasts from the West.

I am with the original samizdat people from whom I took so much inspiration and the reason I came up with the name for this blog.

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Today is the 16th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution or of the day when it all 'officially' started on Friday 17th November, 1989 at a demonstration in Prague. (There was one in Bratislava the day before but did not get initially much recognition.)

It was the death of a student, beaten by the Secret Police (or not so secret police), at the Prague demonstration that day that has pushed the students and actors across the country to articulate political demands, go on strike and start protesting in the streets daily. The theories behind this 'final straw' are many and varied - some argue the murdered 'student' was an agent provocateur who meant to start the ball rolling and enabled the powers-to-be orchestrate a peaceful, if not just, demise of the communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Time will tell the real story, I am here to remember mine.

At the time, 17th of November 1989 did not feel any special - there were some demonstrations before and usually were thinly spread around various anniversaries of dissident occassions. There was no indication that this is to be any different. With a flurry of activity from the dissidents, barely reported by the media and as usual, with more details broadcast by the heavily jammed Voice of America or Radio Free Europe.

I was then a teenager, with a twist - I knew that I had no control over my future and that I faced two choices only. In order to blend in, accept the evil around me in exchange for a semblance of a 'normal' life. Or follow in my parents' footsteps and forsake all that is considered good and rewarding in a healthy society, such as higher education, travel, even family and potentially freedom. I may have been very young but, alas, not young enough to be blind to the full horrors of such life. After all I had seen those around me living with similar decisions. As it happens, that choice was not real - having been part of the dissident movement, I was weighted, marked and tagged as the enemy of the state. I belonged to the dark forces undermining the society - a phrase so beloved of the communist media.

I remember the nervous elation of the 'now or never' moment, as we walked to the main square to meet thousands of others who felt the same. It was a powerful sensation to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people knowing that they are there for the same reason - an experience unprecedented in a fractured and diseased society under communism.

It was not until Monday, 27th of November, when the two-hour general strike took place, that we were sure that tanks will not be rolled out to face us. This was not without reason as on November 23rd the army declared its readiness. To do exactly what, we dared not speculate. At demonstrations between the two dates the list of those supporting the General strike was read out. There was a sense of profound relief when workers from a factory appeared on that list. We knew then that the communists had lost the propaganda war and a loud cheer reverberated across the square.

But the fight was not truly over until December 10th, when the first federal government since 1948 was appointed that did not have the Communist majority. We went to the streets once more, most of us looking for and looking forward to the sensation of true solidarity that had already started to fade. And the rest is history...

I find that my memories lack the nostalgia compulsory for any survivor of such social and political upheavals. My life has certainly changed beyond recognition as a result of the 1989 events, nevertheless I find it very hard to get dewy-eyed about my 'revolutionary credentials'. I do treasure the experience of seeing thousands upon thousands of individuals come together in a collective action that has changed the world around them. That was genuine no matter whether it was sparked off by manipulation or whether what followed in the aftermath was far less heroic.

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This is a picture of front page of a benign 'cousin' of the infamous Pravda (or more like a foundling on the same porch). It is a local paper that covers the small area of the Old Town of Bratislava, thoroughly local, post-communist, and reflecting the concerns of the local populace. Did I mention that it was local? The headline reads:

Two Bratislava districts (equivalent of local councils) have raised average wage above 25,000 [crowns].

What struck me was the active tense of that sentence – as if the local government had any control over what wages people get paid. I am told that the current Prime Minister was going around the country on a bicycle during the election campaign promising to double wages for everyone or words to that effect. Nothing extra-ordinary for a politician but people were actually disappointed after election when the wages did not double. When challenged he pointed at the fact that the wages did go up but nobody was fooled because they knew damn well that the cost increased as well. This did not seem to occur to them when the guy was making the promises though.

There seems to be the perception that the government still somehow doles out the wages as well as fiddles the cost of everything. Well, they sort of do but not in a good way. I also note the difference between the West and the post-communist East – people in the former talk in terms of rising cost of living and price inflation, people here think of terms of size of salary. I think it reflects the difference in mentality – it is thinking of how much you have rather then how much you can do…

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The convincing win by the anti-leftist coalition in Poland's elections would seem to be one in the eye for the statist left.

However the perils of the left/right labels are on prominent display here: Civic Platform Party is clearly on the side of the angels in most ways, being pro-market, pro-privatisation and generally in favour of liberty and a smaller state (though sadly they seem to think the €uro is actually a good idea).

Yet the senior partner in the winning team, the Law and Justice Party are really old style paleo-conservative statists, comparable to various European Christian Democrat parties. Although the Law and Justice Party are perhaps a bit more reactionary and stasis oriented than most Christian Democrats (and as a result no great fans of free-markets), at least that right-stasis orientation gives them a healthy euro-scepticism.

It will be interesting to see how this coalition manages to square its various circles or even holds together at all.

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It is splendid news that the trapped Russian submariners have been rescued from the dreadful fate that overtook the Kursk a few years ago. Fortunatly the Russians did not stand on their pride as they did the last time they suffered a subsaquatic disaster. This time they seem to have fairly quickly accepted the help that was offered to them by many navies around the world.

Although the Royal Navy's robotic sub was the prime mover of this rescue, it was really a very international effort with the USA and Japan providing vital assistance in the rescue. Hopefully this more enlightened approach by the Russian government and military authorities admitting they could not effect the rescue themselves is a sign of institutional change at the top, but the cynic in me wonders if it was not just a domestic political calculation that the embarrasment at having to have their submariners rescued by Western naval personnel represented less political damage than another scene on the television of angry family members on the dockside grieving over their dead sons.

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Yet another Russian firm, Rambler Media, a search engine, has listed on the small-cap AIM stock market in London, preferring to hold its IPO in Britain rather than back home in Mother Russia. The story in the Daily Telegraph here gives a fairly sketchy outline of the listing but neglects to explore a possible broader reason for the listing.

Let me have a stab at it. Russian entrepreneurs are turning their backs on their home turf because they are worried about the possibility of their wealth being grabbed by the Russian state. Political risk is driving many Russian-owned firms to run their business affairs offshore.

Perhaps one should call this the "Yukos Effect." In many respects the seizure of the oil firm's assets by Putin's Russian state is not quite the terrible smash-and-grab raid portrayed in some quarters - its owner was a decidely shady character - but it has certainly put a big chill into investors, pushing Russian shares down compared with their emerging market peers.

Expect to see plenty more launches of Russian firms on the British and other western stock markets for a while yet.

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The decline of post-Soviet Russia continues apace and an article on the Weekly Standard site points out that one of the major exacerbating factors in that decline is Vladimir Putin. The crushing of the media, the confiscation of a large company because it was owned by a political rival on trumped up charges, the failed attempt to direct the result of the Ukrainian elections and the pathetic reaction by the Kremlin to the Beslan atrocity are described at the key indicators of the probably terminal decline of the current regime.

The article is summed up at the end from a very narrowly 'American policy' perspective but the most interesting point for me was author Ander Aslund's contention that the Putin regime is not long for the world. Whilst the Russia of 2005 may be a banana republic without bananas, political instability in a nuclear power that may well be unable to protect its nuclear weapons (Russia's corrupt and famously inept military are somewhat like the 'Keystone Cops' with live ammunition) is something that is of interest to the rest of the world. I wonder when the focus of attention will start shifting away from the Middle East...

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The Ukraine faces a choice between living in Vladamir Putin's shadow or living under the shadow of more locally sourced rascals. Yes, I wish the protestors well in their attempt to prevent Russia's pet poodle Viktor Yanukovych from stealing an election but in truth I do not know enough about the alternatives to Yanukovych to get any real enthusiasm for what is going on.

The fact that anti-government people have a tendency to 'disappear' in the Ukraine is cause enough to want to see the end of Yanukovych and his supporting but the notion that 'democracy' is possibly being subverted is not any real cause for excitement to me per se, given that any alternative to Yanukovych (and the pretty strange Leonid Kuchma) will no doubt use democratic processes to turn the Ukraine into just another highly regulated EU-satellite 'aid crack' addicted state.

So sure, good luck guys, just try to make sure you are not changing Moscow's iron handcuffs for locally made ones with a velvet lining imported from Brussels.

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I had never seen the infamous GULAG system; the Soviet authorities were not keen to document their crimes. But in 1946 they incarcerated an artist, Nikolai Getman, and he survived.

Getman spent eight years in Siberia at the Kolyma labor camps where he witnessed firsthand one of the darkest periods of Soviet history. Although he survived the camps, the horrors of the GULAG seared into his memory. Upon his release in 1954, Getman commenced a public career as a politically correct painter. Secretly, however, for more than four decades, Getman labored at creating a visual record of the GULAG which vividly depicts all aspects of the horrendous life (and death) which so many innocent millions experienced during that infamous era.

Getman explains what happened to him:

In my third year I was called up to join the Red Army, which was where the war found me. I saw military action in the 24th Army. On Victory Day I was on the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary, a lieutenant technician. Marshal Tolbukhin sent me to Romania as an art specialist to serve on the Soviet Commission for the return of art treasures stolen by the Germans.

I returned home to Kharkov in October 1945 where I became one of the millions of Stalin’s victims. My crime was meeting with other artists in Dnepropetrovsk, where I was visiting my father, and exchanging memories of what we had seen in the towns we liberated. Remnants of fascist propaganda, posters, leaflets, cartoons. One of the artists took a cigarette box and drew a caricature he had seen of Stalin with a play on the abbreviation SSSR (USSR): Skoro Smertrt’ Stalinskomu Rezhimu (Sudden Death to the Stalinist Regime). An informer reported the sketch, and the whole group of us were arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation. I was arrested on October 12, 1945. In January 1946 I was convicted and sent to Taishetlag in Russia’s Irkutsk Oblast.

The Dnepropetrovsk Oblast court condemned me under article 54-10 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. In Russia this is known as article 58. I was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment and five years’ suppression of civic rights. I spent about eight years in Siberia (Taishetlag) and Kolyma (Svitlag). Labor camps records show that I was held in custody for seven years, ten months and eighteen days. I was freed on August 30, 1953.

From the very day I was released, I began to implement my plan to paint a series of pictures on the theme of the Gulag, but because this was a forbidden topic, I had to do my civic duty in secret. And so, in complete secrecy, beginning in 1953, I painted pictures about camp life that I recreated from memory. I told no one about this work—not even my wife—because this sort of activity was punishable by imprisonment or even death. I undertook the task because I was convinced that it was my duty to leave behind a testimony to the fate of the millions of prisoners who died and who should not be forgotten.

Getman produced 50 paintings about the GULAG, and they can be viewed here. I must advise that some of the paintings are extremely distressing, since Getman simply tried to recreate what he actually saw. However, they are also of huge historical value as a rare record of what the horror of Soviet 'justice' actually meant.

Getman dedicated his works thusly:

I dedicate my collection to the memory of those who survived the Gulag and to those who did not. Light a candle in memory. The living are in need of it more than the dead. Bow your heads.

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Much has been and will be written about the appalling tragedy of Beslan school and its children held hostage by Chechen terrorists that came to a bloody conclusion two days ago. What I want to remind the western observers just how different the world is on the other side of what used to be the Iron Curtain. There is much disregard for human life and for individual suffering or fate. We often complain here about the state's natural tendency to override the individual and point out where the balance between the two needs to be redresses. But what happens in Russia (and many other non-Western countries) is beyond the finely tuned scale we apply to western governments.

The contempt in which the Russian government and the ruling class in Russia hold individual life is profound. Perhaps contempt is the wrong word since one would need to recognise something has value in the first place in order to deny it to someone out of contempt for them. Individual human life is not intrinsically valued by the Russian society. The lives of the family members, relatives and the loved ones, of course. But it is not expected that the faceless collective will or even should take heed of others' suffering.

My brother and his two children are in there. His little girl, Lera, is three. His son, Shamil, is nine. They really didn't have to do this. To storm the building. With all those children inside. They shouldn't have done it. But they are the government and we are just ordinary people.

This was a cry of one of the relatives waiting outside the besieged school when the Russian troops starting firing their machine guns. Whether he was right or wrong on the Spetsnaz tactics in particular or hostage situations in general is beside the point, it was the acceptance of his or anybody's powerlessness in the face of the Government.

The ruthlessness of the Russian state and its President is echoed by Oleg Gordievsky, the highest-ranking KGB officer to work for MI6, in his opinion piece.

Despite all the caring, sympathetic noises he is now making, Putin has a fabulous indifference to human life. When the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk was stuck on the bottom of the Baltic, its 118 crew suffocating and freezing slowly to death, he didn't even bother to interrupt his holiday. When he was later interviewed on CNN about what had happened to the Kursk, he simply smiled and said: "It went to the bottom." About the 118 Russians who died he said not a word.

The thousands of deaths in the war in Chechnya don't move him in the least. He regards them as "normal wastage" - a hardly noticeable price which has to be paid for maintaining Russian control of Chechnya. That is the traditional KGB view, an attitude I remember all too well from my own days in the organisation.

Western governments offered sympathy to Mr Putin and the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the massacre had tested his faith. But the European Union called for an explanation of how this tragedy could have happened. The Russians described the request as blasphemous.

For once, I agree with the Russians. Sort of.

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The situation in Beslan in Russia has ended in predictable horror. Whilst Russian behaviour in Chechnya has never been a model of surgical restraint, I have yet to hear plausible accounts of Russian forces rounding up children, blowing them up and then shooting survivors as they try to flee.

The horrors of September 11 2001 have receded into being little more than a 'televisual curiosity' in many circles in the USA. However the Russians have been getting regular reminders about the nature of the enemy with whom they are at war, an enemy by no means unconnected from Al Qaeda.

In Beslan, one of the surviving terrorists was kicked to death by enraged civilians after being dragged out of an ambulance and I suspect this is just a hint of what is to come on a far greater scale. The political pressure on Vladimir Putin to move against anyone even suspected of sympathies with Chechen Islamists will now be overwhelming.

Coming on the heels of the destruction of two Russian domestic airliners, a great many Russians will probably see the extermination of Chechnya as simply a matter of survival and I fear Chechen innocents will be given about as much consideration as those Chechen terrorists gave the innocent Russian children of Beslan.

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We don't breed them like this over here:

FORGET eBay. If you want to buy a dysfunctional boiler house, an international airport, a tea plantation, an oil terminal, a proctology clinic, a vineyard, a telephone company, a film studio, a lost-property office or a beekeepers' regulatory board, then call Kakha Bendukidze, Georgia's new economy minister. His privatisation drive has made him a keen seller of all the above. And for the right price he will throw in the Tbilisi State Concert Hall and the Georgian National Mint as well.

If only he could get his hands on the BBC!

Next year—if not sooner—he will cut the rate of income tax from 20% to 12%, payroll taxes from 33% to 20%, value-added tax from 20% to 18%, and abolish 12 kinds of tax altogether. He wants to let leading foreign banks and insurers open branches freely. He wants to abolish laws on legal tender, so that investors can use whatever currency they want. He hates foreign aid—it "destroys your ability to do things for yourself," he says—though he concedes that political realities will oblige him to accept it for at least the next three years or so.

I hear that HMG has kindly offered to take in any unwanted taxes and resettle them here in the UK.

As to where investors should put their money, "I don't know and I don't care," he says, and continues: "I have shut down the department of industrial policy. I am shutting down the national investment agency. I don't want the national innovation agency." Oh yes, and he plans to shut down the country's anti-monopoly agency too. "If somebody thinks his rights are being infringed he can go to the courts, not to the ministry." He plans, as his crowning achievement, to abolish his own ministry in 2007.

Up until a few years ago, this country was run by communists.

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In that marvellously bonkers publication Pravda, it is being reported that the Ukrainian sports authorities are blaming their lack of medals at a gymnastic event on the fact their Russian rivals brought in people with paranormal abilities to sabotage the Ukrainian competitors.

According to the federation's governing body, evil-minded Russians hired psychics, people with extrasensory abilities in order to paralyze free will of Ukrainian gymnasts during competitions. Such statement of the federation received wide publicity among Ukrainian media sources, reports PrimaNews.

[...]

The federation also informs that "Russian mobs" brought fifteen paranorms to Kiev, including famous Russian medium Alan Chumak. They were seated in VIP seats on the stadium and somehow paralyzed the will of Ukrainian sportswomen; that is why the latter lost.

To hell with the gymnastics! If they can do such things, then they simply must organise special events in which paranormals compete to see who can paralyse the will of the other first!

No Officer, I am not drunk, I had my will paralysed by Russian paranormals!

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My recent posting on Slovakia contained a scoop and I missed it. The leader of the Slovak governing party's campaign for the European elections tomorrow is former ice hockey player Peter Stastny.

I knew the name (one of the few names in ice hockey I ever knew of), but failed to connect it to the poster boy of the Slovak Democratic Coalition.

From the comments to my last posting, my description of SKDU as conservative-libertarian is controversial. Considering that the new Libertarian Party candidate in the USA was selected because he campaigns on sticking to the Founding Fathers' intentions (nationalized Post Office and all), I stand by my description for now.

What is amusing is the contrast between the Slovak and the Austrian election: the posters in Austria oppose reform, the Slovaks put a celebrity on the poster and bring in massive tax reforms in the right direction. American show-biz versus Austrian corporatism. I know which I prefer.

[Thanks to Tim Evans at CNE for providing the tip-off about Peter Stasny.]

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I recently gave a presentation in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the evils of 'competition policy' and the 'entry and exit costs' economic model, which is little more than an excuse for more business-killing government intervention.

My first trip there in 1991 had been as economic and political adviser to that country's Prime Minister when Slovakia was part of the Czech & Slovak Federal Republic (1989-1992). In those days, talking about a single tax band, a competitive advantage of Slovakia compared with Germany, why an independent Slovakia would actally reform better than under Prague tutelage and so forth was often like trying to explain Switzerland to a Pol Pot survivor.

The first photo that I took in 1991 was of the Iron Curtain seen from the Austrian side, a forest of trees leading up to the jagged line of a forest of rotting concrete.

This time on the way back I took a coach from Bratislava to Vienna airport. The following photos show the turnaround.

Slovakia’s ruling coalition: conservatives and libertarians
(photo taken at Bratislava bus station)



This Slovak election poster for the EU parliament
seems to get the message. (Sorry about the
quality but I snapped it out of a coach window
on a bend, outskirts of Bratislava)



Austrian Social Democrats know what they stand for:
No privatisation!
(dotted all over the Austrian countryside North of Vienna)

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Over at the excellent libertarian group weblog, Cattalarchy, there is a fine and thoughtful collection of articles, which was published a few days ago, to mark the May Day parades of old socialists with a wide-ranging broadside against what communism has wrought. I urge folk to fire up some coffee and take time out to read them all.

With all that fine material in mind, I was stunned to read a screed in the latest edition of The Spectator by ultra-rightwinger Peter Hitchens. As well as saying some decidedly uncomplimentary things about former South African President and anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela, a topic to which I may return later, Hitchens also bemoans what he claims has been the lack of any real improvement of life in countries which have been released from communism.

Really? Have there been no improvements at all? I mean, for a start, surely a declared Christian like Hitchens should be glad that fellow believers are no longer persecuted as they were in the old days of Communism. The Gulag is no longer in operation. Members of the KGB no longer drag you off in the middle of the night. And yes, key parts of the economies of those nations are not just recovering, but offering some of the tastiest investment opportunities in the world today, as this article illustrates.

There is a priceless passage in which Hitchens even refers to the elderly generation in the former Eastern bloc who miss the good old days of guaranteed jobs, even if that era came with bread queues, bureacracy and compulsory military service. That's the spirit! None of this messy and vulgar capitalist nonsense, with all that bothersome choice, and ugly advertising, noisy department stores and red light districts.

I honestly do not know what to make of folk like Hitchens and whether he has any coherent political philosophy at all apart from a desire to shock what he thinks is the received wisdom (not always a bad or dishonerable urge, mind). A few weeks back he wrote a superb article shredding the case for state identity cards, of the kind that any libertarian would be proud to write. Yet a few issues later we get a gloomy piece almost pining the days when half of Europe was run by the communist empire of the Soviets.

Weird.

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One of the reasons for slightly less output on this august blog is that two of the editors and the inimitable Gabriel Syme were off meeting other sinister Illuminati in Prague for a fine Czech beer or six.

No prize for guessing where the Illuminati meet in Prague

Prague, like Bratislava, is known for its splendours...

Hot... steamed in fact

One of the upsides of the dire weather was that many of the usually crowded tourist attractions were almost deserted.

We meet one of the leading central European bloggers, Tomas Kohl (on the right)...

Tomas sinks some fine Czech Pilsner with Adriana and Gabriel Syme

Tomas told us the best place in Prague to see its famous chicks...

More Prague chicks

Prague is a city in which the splendours of Western Civilisation pretty much kick you in the teeth...

We found a design we really liked for the new Samizdata.net HQ's front door...

The locals know a thing or two about about what makes life great...

... and a thing or two about what makes life suck...

Which perhaps explains the Czech sense of humour...

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Notwithstanding the result of the Spanish election that David so poignantly blogged about yesterday, one thing that the commentators note is the turnout. Apparently, the extra 3 million voters who turned out to vote were spurred by the terrorist attacks and disgruntled by the Aznar government's handling of the information in the aftermath. It transpires that the popular opinion in Spain was against supporting the US in the conflict with Iraq and the country's participation in the 'Coalition of the Willing'.

The BBC commentators have a field day - the 'power of democracy' has been demonstrated and the Spanish voters have chosen a socialist government. It don't get better than that. It is a dream come true.

Oh, wait. The Russians have elected its President. In an extraordinary and widely predicted result, the former KGB agent crushed his closest rivals by securing 70 per cent plus of the vote, according to preliminary exit polls:

Russians overwhelmingly turned their backs on western-style democracy yesterday, voting for stability and a strong hand at the helm by giving four more years in office to President Vladimir Putin.

Although there was a small chance of under 50 per cent turn out, the Russians were forcefully encouraged to exercise their democratic rights, or else:

Officials are trying to bolster interest with patriotic advertisements showing Soviet-era rockets blasting off and glossy pictures of model Siberian mines. Others exhort parents to vote for the sake of their children.

Some officials have used bribes, threats and other schemes. Last week hospitals in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk put up notices saying they would refuse to treat patients who could not prove they had registered to vote in hospital.

So in one country we have a socialist government taking over as a result of democratic elections that were influenced by terrorist attack whose horror is still fresh in the people's mind. In another, an overt authoritarian has cemented his already powerful position for another four years. I doubt very much that either election was determined by anything resembling rational discourse. No, I am not naive and do not expect every single voting decision to be rational or even sensible, however, the events of yesterday point to the other extreme.

[Retiring back to his cave, mumbling something about "emotionally incontinent" times...]

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Sometimes when I feel the need to see the world through very strange eyes indeed, I wander over to the Pravda website for a bit of paleo-collectivism using language little different from Soviet days. I am rarely disappointed.

There is a splendid example of entertaining pretzel logic in slightly fractured English called West against Russia. The article discusses that the fact many articles appear in the western media which are critical, unflattering and disparaging regarding modern Russia and particularly Vladimir Putin. The author of the article, Mikhail Chernov makes it clear that the western reports are not just reportage but are a campaign and 'Russian experts' know why this is happening:

The main task of the new media campaign is making Vladimir Putin (who will probably be elected for the second term) not legitimate in the minds of Western audience. Meanwhile, some Russian experts believe that toughening the position of the West did not result from Russian political events and certain economic interests in Russia. The EU and the USA increased their criticism of Russia because of the crisis of the "Western" model of social order and simultaneously express their rejecting Russian social order model in this way.

So western criticism actually has nothing much to do with Russia, it is just a facet of the crisis of our social order, hence...

Many Russian experts believe that moving Western politics into anti-Russian direction is inevitable. Director of Pamir-Ural research group Alexander Sobyanin said that there is no special plan to undermine Russia. Western elites do not think bad about Russia and are not going to bring Russia down.

Quite so, there is not much interest in 'bring Russia down' anywhere other than Chechnya. In truth, western elites (whatever that means) do not really tend to think overmuch about Russia at all. But the fact Russia is seen as a far of basket case by most western elites is not the thrust of the article at all. Quite the contrary in fact.

According to Mr. Sobyanin, sharp increase of anti-Russian propaganda resulted from the crisis of the Western society elites. "The elites of only three countries were in the mainstream of the global economic and social development in the last century - Russia, the USA and Great Britain. The world entered the stage of changing dimensions - it has to abandon outdate absolute "financial criteria" and elaborate the new paradigm of development. Implementing changes will be accompanied by wars and social conflicts. Anglo-Saxon elites are not ready for this yet", said Alexander Sobyanin. He believes that there is a chance that Russia can elaborate new, alternative algorithm for global development (in last century it was socialism), and for this reason the West perceives Russia as the dangerous ideological competitor.

Well I did tell you that I go to Pravda because I enjoy reading things that are surreal. This appears to say the thing that is wrong with the Anglo-Saxon model is that it looks at the ecomony in economic terms! And so what is this 'new paradigm of development'? It is not spelled out so let me guess: economics must be managed politically for fairness and efficiency in order to avoid 'wasteful competition'? I am just speculating here but who feels brave enough to disagree and tell me this is not at the root of this 'new paradigm of development' being hinted at? The notion that Russia is a source of a viable economic algorithm likely to challenge 'Anglo-Saxon' capitalism is quixotic to put it politely... laughable to be a bit more blunt.

As Russian civil society exists only precariously, the Russian social model is simply that of subordinating 'social' interactions to politically regulated interactions strongly influenced from the top. In short, the Russian social model is 'people being told what to do'. The socialist 'ownership' based method of doing that has simply been replaced with the more effective fascist style 'control' based method. Which is to say, rather that nationalising everything, the Russian state simply regulates things and imposes controls on what people can do with what they nominally own.

This is of course also the approach of regulatory statists even in Britain, the USA and elsewhere in the west, but unlike those places, Russia has the 'advantage' of a civil society with no significant intermediate organisations between it and the state, moreover it is a society conditioned to a top down approach by centuries of Tsarist autocracy followed by Communist totalitarianism. The article then goes on to talk about how in the 'Anglo-Saxon' way, it is competition which defines our civilisation:

Western model" implies having certain "agreement" accepted by the society. One of the backbones of this agreement is competition between individuals. Russian tradition does not recognize competition as positive factor because competition awakes low instincts in people and does not improve the quality of products, but, on the contrary, worsens their quality.

Which no doubt explains the huge flood of high quality Russian products sweeping the world. That pesky toleration of individualism will be the undoing of us poor Anglo-Saxons. In reality, that there are any successful businesses at all in Russia is testament to the ingenuity of individual Russians and their ability to operate in spite of the 'Russian model'.

Quite apart from the fact this utter tosh claims to be 'reasoned analysis', the fact that the people who think of themselves as Russia's elites still think in such delusional terms shows the extent to which things have not yet recovered intellectually from that nation's poisonous past. Who needs The Onion when you have Pravda? Sorry, but there is only one kind of Russian model that has any interest for the rest of the world.

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Via the constantly diverting Dave Barry comes news of the state of the popular arts in Russia.

You know those nesting dolls they have there. Putin on the outside. Undo him and you get the Fat Drunk Guy, undo him and you get Splotchtop, then another Fat Drunk Guy, then Andropov, then Brezhnev, and so on down the list of the Soviet Hall of Shame. This could all be in the wrong order and I could well have left out a couple of Drunk Guys, but you get my drift. Those dolls, is what I mean. Well, now they have nesting dolls with rock star faces on them.

The really cunning one would be a set of different Elvises, starting on the outside with Very Fat Elvis just before he died, and working back via Las Vegas Elvis, GI Elvis, to Original Elvis. But I do not think they have yet got around to doing that.

Nevertheless, I love it. Says it all. Think who the dolls used to be, and now look at them. Another triumph for capitalism.

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There is an article in the Telegraph titled Slovakian troops sent in to stop gypsy riots that reports what is happening but makes no comment on what seems to me the key underlying reason it is happening:

Thousands of police backed by 2,000 soldiers in the ghetto towns of eastern Slovakia appeared to have temporarily ended attacks by mobs forcing their way into food shops. Near 100 per cent unemployment has brought thousands of Roma gypsies out on the streets

[...]

Demonstrators in one town gathered peacefully, shouting: "We want to eat." Others said their families were starving since the cuts [ in state unemployment benefits], meant to prepare the country for European Union entry, were implemented on Jan 1.

Tibor Tutak, 39, said: "We know stealing isn't a solution but I cannot let my children go hungry. What has happened so far is nothing compared with what will happen if the government doesn't do anything."

Roma leaders threatened further trouble unless the Bratislava government rescinded dramatic welfare reductions which have halved the incomes of many families. Unemployment among some gypsy communities is close to 100 per cent.

It is regrettable for anyone to go hungry but for 100% unemployment to prevail amongst significant sections of the gypsy community in Slovakia, that is not bad luck or economic vagaries, it is a lifestyle choice. What is more, what Tibor Tutak is actually saying is that he dislikes having to do the stealing himself, given that he and his community had gotten used to having the state do it for them. The fact is no one owes anyone else a living by right at their expense, particularly not if they decline to participate in the economy as anything other than parasites. The forceful official Slovak response seem entirely appropriate to me and I hope they do not even consider allowing themselves to be shook down for larger the 'welfare' payments.

No one is forced to live in a gypsy community in this day and age... yes, I know some people will bring up the infamous walls built Czech authorities after years of complains by local people. These were designed specifically to keep gypsies away from the rest of the community in a town near Ostrava a few years ago, but that was hardly an enforced ghetto in the traditional European sense of the word, as there were no laws compelling gypsies not to live elsewhere.

I also realise gypsy communities are on the receiving end of considerable prejudice and discrimination, though it needs to be said that not all of the reasons for the wider community's hostility towards them are baseless. The gypsies are a separate cultural group and are certainly entitled to live according to their ways... provided these ways are not based on theft, be it directly or via the state and therein lies the issue at the heart of what is happening now in the Slovak Republic. Let me give the last word to Czech blogger Tomas Kohl who writes what the Telegraph article conspicuously did not:

These people are not victims of reforms. They haven't been wronged by the government today, but when the State decided it's a good idea to subsidize people for not doing anything and punish them when they moved a finger, it's like giving away dope, making everyone addicted, then halving the supply.

Is there an easy way out? No. Yeah, I could say just abolish the idea of Caring Government, and it has certain utopian appeal I like, yet there is no political force there that would be capable of doing just that. Unless they send in an infantry regiment, the unrests can continue for a long time, until the underclass moves west, to countries where they still give lunches away for free.