According to information linked to by Glenn Reynolds, the New World is poised to become the center of gravity for oil production by the end of this decade. There is as much as 2 Trillion Barrels in the US; another 2 trillion in South America and 2.4 Trillion reserves in Canada.

This affects the Middle East but it hits Russia even more. Over the last decade two of their big earners have been oil exports and aerospace. These have been just about the only sources of national power they have. Oil and gas exports have been used as a carrot and stick against the Europeans. The need for Soyuz launches to the International (but mostly US funded) Space Station have softened reactions from the US congress. The Russians know the US can only make noises about sales to Iran and others like them because ISS is and has been essentially hostage to their good graces for years.

SpaceX and American companies like them are about to shift the center of gravity for space systems back to US dominance. This has huge geopolitical implications. Cargo and crew flights to ISS will be fungible. If the Russians threaten a stand down, all that is needed to counter it are extra purchases from an American provider. That assumes we are even still buying Soyuz as the desire for Congressional 'pork' will almost certainly be overwhelming. It will result in a 'buy American' requirement for all US Government space flight as soon as SpaceX proves they can handle the job. On top of it all, if SpaceX delivers on the low prices it is quoting, and there is no reason to believe they will not, Russia and China and Europe are all going to be priced out of the commercial launch business in short order.

That is why the Russians are not happy about the SpaceX Dragon rendezvous and docking with ISS in December. With that docking and the shift in global energy production the writing is on the wall for Russia. Its days as even a minor world power are numbered. The implications of that are not necessarily good. Russia's ruling classes have been known to do very bad things when they feel threatened.

Whatever the case, we are going to find out by the end of this decade.

Incoming from Michael Jennings, which started with the link to this Fukushima update piece in The Register (subtitled "Still nothing to get in a flap about") which at the end says this:

Reaction to our earlier piece praising the actually rather brilliant response of the Fukushima reactors and their operators in the quake's wake has shown that hoary myths and legends surrounding Chernobyl persist, and that one will still, even after all this time, generally be pilloried for suggesting that Chernobyl – far and away the worst nuclear incident ever which didn't involve an atomic bomb – was genuinely not that serious.

We here at the Reg attended the launch of this rather excellent recent book, Flat Earth News, in which veteran Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies dared to include the Chernobyl myths of thousands dead (actually the established figure is 56) alongside other great, baseless modern scares like the Millennium Bug.

Davies said that nothing else he has ever done in his life earned him as much flak as that.

Michael says:

I think most people are unfamiliar with the story of what actually happened at Chernobyl in 1985, beyond "There was a meltdown". Basically, pretty much every possible fuckup happened one after another (from reactor design, to reactor management, to employee supervision, to safety procedures (there weren't any, quite seriously) to after the fact disaster recovery. This of course had little to do with problems with nuclear power and quite a bit to do with problems of the Soviet Union. Not that I need to tell you this.

But I do need to pass it on.

Real life spy dramas are interesting but what happens after the Big Denouement?

Russian intelligence sources told local media that the traitor who gave away Anna Chapman and nine others was Colonel Alexander Poteyev who served in the KGB's elite 'Zenith' Special Forces unit during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

A criminal case for 'state treason' had been opened against him and he will be tried in absentia like other traitors before him, they said.

Hardly surprising...

Fyodor Yakovlev, a KGB veteran who said he served with Colonel Poteyev in Afghanistan, told the Regnum news agency that he now regarded his former comrade as a "non-person".

"This non-person will live a lonely life until the end of his days in fear," he said. "Lonely because his relatives and loved ones will not be by his side. Either his children will have to alter their appearances or else they will be doomed to the same nightmarish existence as their father."

...so his loved one were left behind in Russia when we was extracted by CIA Operations, eh? Pity that but...

Colonel Poteyev is believed to have fled to the United States in June through his native Belarus days before the ten agents were arrested in America. He was reportedly deputy director of 'Department S' inside the SVR, the unit which coordinates the work of illegal agents in the United States.

He is reported to have worked in New York in the first half of the 1990s. It was there that the CIA is said to have recruited him, offering him a financial settlement. His wife later became resident in America and his son and daughter moved there before he fled Russia in June.

...er, hang on, Fyodor... did you not just say his loved one were not by his side?

Sorry but sounds to me like some guy called Hank Smith from Chickasaw Falls, plus his wife Wilma, son Hank Jr and daughter Natasha... er, I mean Britney... are living Happily Ever After and spending that hearty 'financial settlement' from Uncle Sam in a suburban strip mall looking forwards to Christmas somewhere with a fuck load better weather than Moscow.

"We are building socialism ... and as long as we are building socialism but have not yet built it, we will also have homeless children."

- Anne Applebaum quotes Nadezhda Krupskaya in this review of Children of the Gulag

I commend this fascinating article to those who have not yet come across it - A Hidden History of Evil:
Why Doesn’t Anyone Care About the Unread Soviet Archives?

The archives contain "unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War", yet their guardian "can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation." Amongst numerous other tidbits, there is some very interesting stuff about Soviet dealings with François Mitterrand, Neil Kinnock, and several past and present "European Project"/EU bigwigs.

(From the excellent Michael Totten, who's doing a fine job of holding the fort over at Instapundit)

And guess who the new owner of this leftist newspaper is? I wonder how Robert "my brain hurts" Fisk, columnist at that paper, is taking the news.

James Delingpole delivers the goods on the latest blow against AGW alarmism. It has come from Russia. The story is not quite so "John Le Carre" as the theory put up recently by Sean Gabb, however.

Happy Christmas!

As far as I know, it was my very good friend Sean Gabb who first posited a theory about who may be responsible for the hacking of the CRU e-mails that have now formed the basis of 'Climategate':

In short, I believe the Russians are behind this. It may be that all those megabytes of data were stolen by a computer hacker. There may be any number of people who are up to such hacking in the technical sense. But this seems to have been an integrated operation. Having the technical skills to get access to a computer archive is not the same as knowing where to look in that archive and what to look for. Nor is it the same as knowing what to do with it.

But the Russians had means and opportunity to do the job. Perhaps their security services are no longer as efficient and as well-funded as in Soviet times. But they are still there. Their mission is no longer to win the Cold War. But making life easier for Mr Putin and his friends is a large mission in itself.

I have no idea whether or not there is any truth in this. Certainly the Russian state has plenty of motivation but then so do a host of others. Sean offers very little in the way of evidence because there is very little in the way of evidence.

But, interestingly, there are some tufts of corroboration emerging:

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.

Have they merely read and then embellished Sean's article I wonder? Or is there some flickering fire to accompany this smoke? The evidence is, at best, circumstantial.

But what if it does turn out to have been the former KGB? Would it not be an irony of historic proportions that an organisation formerly devoted to establishing a global tyrrany has thrown a big hammer-and-sickle into the works of their would-be successors? And, not just ironic, but also just.

Because if the warm-mongers get their way, then it is not the powerful and the well-connected that need fear their zealotry. The Al Gores and Zac Goldsmiths of the world can afford to bask in the green glow of personal glory, safe in the knowledge that their opulent lifestyles will not be compromised by so much a sterling silver napkin ring. They will soar (both literally and metaphorically) above it all. No, it is the Average Joe/Jane who will be forced to endure the austerity that their new overlords will demand. It is those who struggle to make ends meet who will be told that the planet can no longer afford their humble family saloon or their two weeks a year in the Algarve. It is the little people who will be stepped upon because they can be stepped upon.

Maybe, one day, we will know the true identity of the e-mail hackers. Or maybe we will never know. But I do sort of hope that it does turn out to be some guy called Yvgeny, acting on orders from the Kremlin, tapping away in a windowless room in a drab building on a military base in Krasnoyarsk because then, we will be able to say: congratulations, tovarisch! You have, at long last, established yourself as a Hero of the Proletariat.

Take a look at this short video featuring Bill Browder, founder of the investment firm Hermitage, who several years ago was suddenly denied entry into the former Soviet Union for the "crime" of asking awkward questions about various Russian firms he had invested in. As I say, this sudden refusal of entry came to light a few years ago, but for some reason the video got made recently, and has stirred up fresh controversy about Mr Browder, and his treatment. I hope he has got decent security and takes care of himself.

To be honest, whenever I have an off-the-record chat with any private banker strategist, hedge fund manager etc., they tell me the same thing: avoid Russia if you do not want the risk of having your wallet lifted, or worse. It is that bad now.

But then I consider how the bond-holders in the US auto industry got the shaft during the recent bailout of said as orchestrated by Mr Obama and his pro-union political allies. The abuse of property rights knows no national boundaries.

Okay, be honest now... this time last week, how many of you had heard of Georgian blogger Cyxymu? Hello? Anyone? No, I suspected as much. Me neither.

So... imagine you are some Russian nationalist jackanapes hoping to silence a critic of Russian foreign policy and you get a bright idea:

"Hey Boris! Lets unleash the bots of war and do a massive world wide takedown of Twitter, facebook and Livejournal so that no one will read those nasty things mean old Cyxymu is saying about Mother Russia!"

Pure genius. Now, does anyone who reads the tech press (or indeed the mainstream media) not now know who Cyxymu is?

Although Russia abounds with fascistic nationalists who could have done this off their own initiative, in truth an epic fail of this magnitude anywhere in the world generally implies government involvement.

Russia continues its steely eyed march into hilarious self-parody and irrelevance (unless you happen to be a tiny powerless neighbour)...

... get yer pecs out Obama, your soul mates want to play.

Nicolas Bourbaki presents a very interesting insider's view of the how things are developing in Russia. Several of the article's links require registration at the linked site.

The summer of 2007 was a busy year for the Russian oil and gas business. In April of that year, the state-run energy company Gazprom finally exerted enough pressure on the Sakhalin II consortium to wrest control of the giant project in Russia's Far East from Shell, who had hitherto been the majority owner and manager of the development. In return for a cash payment of $7.45bn, at the time seen as a knock-down price, Gazprom acquired a 50% plus one share stake in the project. The deal was struck after months of the Russian environmental regulator exerting pressure on the consortium, Sakhalin Energy, resulting in works being delayed, stopped, and threats being made to withdraw the license to continue the development altogether. Despite there being genuine concerns regarding environmental damage incurred by the development, not to mention the doubling of project costs to $22bn, few believed that the governmental pressure exerted on Sakhalin Energy was anything other than a naked attempt by the Russian government to gain control over the project, its resources, and its revenues by force. Sure enough, within weeks of Gazprom taking the keys to Sakhalin II, the environmental regulator cheerily announced that all concerns had been resolved to its satisfaction and not a peep has been heard from them since. The outcome at Sakhalin II was presented by the Russian government, and accepted by many Russians, as a significant victory of the resurgent Russian state in reversing their exploitation at the hands of foreign powers when they were weak, and regaining control over Russia's strategic resources, its wealth, and its independence.

Buoyed with confidence from their coup on Sakhalin, the month of June saw the Kremlin use alleged breaches of license obligations to 'persuade' BP to sell its 62.85% stake in Siberia's Kovykta development to Gazprom for $900m in cash, a figure many people thought better than what was feared, i.e. nothing. Two months later, in August 2007, the Russian government moved to deny the Exxon-led Sakhalin I consortium the right to export gas from its development in an attempt to force the sale of the gas to Gazprom at artificially low domestic prices, after which Gazprom would be free to export it via pipeline or LNG carrier at international prices.

Now that Russia's foreign-run developments were back under government control or suitably compliant, the government ensured that all future developments would remain similarly tied to the Kremlin with limited foreign influence. In April 2008, the Russian parliament approved a new law which effectively handed monopoly rights for all future developments of the Russian continental shelf to just two companies: Gazprom and state-owned Rosneft. By now, the bulk of Russia's enormous hydrocarbon wealth both present and future was firmly in government hands, a situation which was looked on with gleeful satisfaction by Russians and allowed them to wield considerable influence beyond their borders. Soon followed grand plans for Gazprom to build a pipeline across the Sahara desert, buy all of Libya's gas, and build LNG plants in Nigeria. Energy nationalism at home and the loudly announced forays abroad as personified by Vladimir Putin helped ensure the Russian population returned approval ratings of over 80% for their then president, now prime minister. Russia had picked itself up off its knees, Russia was strong once more, Russia could once again command respect from others. Russia was back.

But anyone who was looking closely could see that beyond the grand announcements emanating weekly from the Kremlin, Russia's oil and gas development strategy was thin on substance and looking more than a little unrealistic. The first warning came in April 2008 when Rosneft's chief executive stated that Russia would need $2.6 trillion to develop just its offshore oil and gas reserves between then and 2050, which equated to a yearly expenditure of $62bn. To put this in perspective, the Sakhalin II project - one of the biggest and most complicated oil and gas projects every attempted and by far the largest in Russia - came in around $22bn and during the peak of construction was costing about $4bn per year. This means that the Russian oil and gas development plans would see the equivalent of about 15 Sakhalin II sized megaprojects running in parallel across Russia for 40 years, executed and managed by just two companies - Gazprom and Rosneft - neither of whom have ever executed a project of such magnitude and complexity before. Even a casual observer would think the numbers to be slightly overambitious, and overly reliant on the performance of two companies with an untested track record of project delivery.

Consider the news which appeared in the oil and gas press in June 2008 that Gazprom had stumbled at the first hurdle along its path to becoming the pioneer of Russian oil and gas development: a relatively simple topside refurbishment of a second-hand platform, part of the first stage of Gazprom's much publicised flagship Shtokman project, was overdue with the budget blown due to the contractor not having enough skilled workers to complete the assignment.

Those with an interest in such matters may also have taken note of the enormous debts that the Kremlin's favoured sons had accumulated. By March 2008, Gazprom had accumulated $41.7bn in debt mostly due to acquisitions, and it is estimated that its current debt stands at about $50bn. Rosneft was not in much better shape having amassed debts of $23.8bn, also largely on acquisitions not least of which was the remains of bankrupt oil firm Yuzkos, flogged off the year before in a murky auction. Concerns about Gazprom and Rosneft debts were dismissed by those who would point to the oil price which at the time sat above $140 per barrel generating massive revenues for the two companies, and the fabled wealth of the Russian government in terms of their foreign reserves and the oil stabilisation fund. However, such responses could not hide the fact that both companies were heavily dependent on the western financial institutions to whom they owed the debt, and would rely on these same institutions to provide the funding for future developments. It was also becoming more and more difficult to ignore the increased risk premium being attached to loans extended to Russian companies as a result of the government's contempt for contract law and the unpredictability such behaviour brings.

Unfortunately for the Russians, by the end of 2008 their lofty position was soon beginning to look less secure than it had been six months previously, and by 2009 it was clear that the situation was looking precarious. With the global financial crisis setting in, demand for oil and gas collapsed sending the crude price tumbling by over 70% and taking the Russian energy giants' revenues with it. And the western financial institutions upon which they depended for debt refinancing and financing their lofty development plans were facing either complete ruin or a desperate struggle to survive. The two companies upon which all the Kremlin's hopes and dreams depended found themselves with diminished revenues and unserviceable debt going cap in hand to Moscow for a bailout.

Unsurprisingly given Russia's dependence on oil and gas, the collapse in the oil price was matched by a collapse in both the rouble and Russia's stock market. Gazprom and Rosneft stock plummeted as the market fell by 75%. The Russian government, which just months before had harboured deluded dreams of the rouble being adopted as a reserve currency, watched as it fell from a high of 23.1/$ and raided their foreign reserves at a rate of $15bn per week buying roubles in a desperate attempt to keep their currency from collapsing. At the time of writing the rouble has depreciated to 36.2/$ (-36%) and continues to fall; Russia's foreign reserves stand at $388bn down from $600bn in August, a reduction of 35%.

The Stabilisation Fund, designed to balance the federal budget when oil falls below a certain price, was established in 2004 and thanks to booming oil prices had reached $157bn by January 2008. However, most of the fund was invested abroad and it is doubtful that the investments have avoided the carnage brought about by the financial crisis. Worse, in May 2007 Putin called for more of Russia's oil revenues to be invested in the Russian stock market, including Gazprom and Rosneft. This means that part of the money being set aside for when the oil price falls was being invested in oil and gas companies, whose very fortunes are dependent on the oil price. Speculation abounds as to the whereabouts and value of the money allocated to the Stabilisation Fund, and Russians are not hopeful that they will see any of it any time soon.

In response to the crisis the Russian government acted in characteristic fashion: by playing a strong hand very badly. Eager to demonstrate its reliability as a supplier of energy to Europe, Russia entered its annual gas dispute with Ukraine in no mood to compromise culminating in their shutting off the gas flows leaving European customers shivering in the homes during a cold snap. European Union monitors were somewhat unimpressed at having to provide hard-copy papers of their proposed activities to the Russians in advance of their being allowed to work, and the presence of shady third-party intermediary companies based in Switzerland in place of presented written contracts probably did little to reassure Europeans that their energy supplies were in good hands. Despite Ukraine sharing a large part of the blame for the dispute, Russia came away with its reputation as being a reliable energy partner shakier than ever, looking incapable of handling business matters without resorting to fiery ultimatums and brinkmanship, and with a $1.1bn hole in Gazprom's revenues.

Seeing its financial position take a sharp turn for the worst, Gazprom is looking to cut costs. Having gleefully helped itself to 50% of the Sakhalin II project, it has now found itself required to stump up 50% of the operating costs. Year-round oil export from the project started in December 2008 but coincided with the lowest oil price in several years, reducing the project's revenues considerably. First export of LNG to customers in Korea and Japan is likely to take place in early March 2009, but some of the gas was paid for in advance and thus Sakhalin Energy will not see revenues immediately. Faced with the unexpected obligation of paying for businesses that it owns, Gazprom has ordered $300m cuts in operating costs from the development in 2009 and all non-essential projects, such as the third LNG train, have been cancelled. Both expatriate and Russian staff are finding their terms and conditions being squeezed, and many are facing redundancy within the next few weeks and months. Departments vital to the safe and efficient operation of the project facilities are being told to look again at their organisation and come up with ways to cut costs, which normally means do the job with fewer people. The Russians who were overjoyed by the new, assertive Russia when Gazprom gained control of the project are now glumly looking at what this means in practice: unpaid overtime, reduced wages, and unemployment. The expatriates are rolling their eyes wondering why turkeys vote for Christmas. Whether Gazprom are rueing their decision to effectively stop Shell from paying for the Sakhalin II project (something they seemed quite happy to do until Gazprom showed up) can only be guessed at. And Sakhalin Energy's ability to run the extremely complex offshore platforms and LNG facility - which require an uptime of 98.5% - safely and efficiently with Gazprom (whose operational experience is limited to running onshore pipelines) calling the shots is a test which will be watched with great interest by those who have worked on the project since its inception and are now being given the boot by a Gazprom HR director parachuted in from Moscow.

If that was not enough to make those employed on Sakhalin Island gloomy about their employment prospects, Exxon have called a halt to the Odoptu field development, which was currently under construction as part of the Sakhalin I expansion. The reason behind this decision to demobilise the construction team leaving a facility unbuilt are neither clear nor public, but it is widely believed that the Russian government was attempting to strong-arm the consortium into accepting conditions not agreed to in the original contract. Exxon has an impressive record of not allowing itself to be pushed around, and probably calculated that the Russian government needs the revenues from the project more than Exxon does. What effect this will have on the rest of the Sakhalin I project remains to be seen.

In other areas of Russia, the Shtokman project is looking to be put onto the backburner as Gazprom officials say that the project can only proceed with oil prices between $50-$60 per barrel. Production in Russia is falling as the western Siberian fields go into decline with too few new projects coming online to replace them. Unemployment in Russia is spiralling upwards as the economy, so dependent on the export of industrial commodities, goes into rapid decline. Anti-government protests are starting to appear in major Russian cities as opinion polls see Putin and Medvedev's popularity waning. Without the injection of foreign capital into developing their reserves Russia's grand vision as being a global energy provider look to remain as mere dreams unrealised. Perhaps surprisingly, the cash rich western oil companies still have an appetite for investment in Russia, and several are showing an interest in partnering Gazprom in the giant Yamal development in Arctic Siberia. Without a doubt they will be far more careful the second (and for some the third) time around and we can expect to see guarantees in the form of internationally held bonds and cost-reimbursable contracts to be commonplace if such partnerships go ahead.

But having spent the past three years assuring its population that Russia is back to being a strong, independent country which does not need to partner with foreigners (a refrain which shows no sign of abating), how is the Russian government going to explain itself if it is once again signing "unfavourable" deals with western oil giants from a position of weakness? Or will Putin and Co. simply allow the Russian oil and gas industry to fall into inefficiency, stagnation, and mismanagement and blame everything on the west rather than admit that the policies they have pursued over the past few years have led them to disaster? We will find out soon enough.

The author has been living on Sakhalin Island working in the Russian oil and gas industry since 2006.

The EU is bleating as people go cold due to Russian gas being shut off due to its disputes with the Ukraine. And the ever dependable Russian polity, moonbats to a man, blame the USA for the crisis.

The pragmatic Slovak government has made the very sensible decision to possibly restart Soviet era nuclear power plants that they were decommissioning as part of their accession to the EU, if the crisis drags on... and in doing so, they show the simple and 'carbon footprint' friendly (as if I care) solution to this and oh so many problems... nuclear power. How can a solution that dooms both the Kremlin and Middle East to long term strategic insignificance not be a Truly Many Splendored Thing?

Just when you start believing Russia has returned to its old ways, something like this happens. A religious group attempted to get the license of a TV station pulled because it felt a South Park cartoon was hateful to Christians and Muslims. In return Russians rallied behind South Park, demonstrated, collected signatures on petitions... and... won????

The people’s voice, apparently, was heard. On September 25, Russia’s Federal Competitive Bidding Commission on Broadcasting voted unanimously to recommend that 2x2's license be renewed. The final decision is up to another federal agency, but it is expected to follow the recommendation. 2x2, in turn, will comply with the commission’s request to expand its programming to include TV movies and non-animated series, as stated in its official description; the channel’s general director Roman Sarkisov has promised that the new fare will be “faithful to the style of 2x2.” Meanwhile, South Park stays on the air except for the "offending" episode, which has been shelved pending further investigation of “extremism.”

I think this shows the danger of oversimplifying your view of a large nation with a complex political history. Russia is what it is and does not fit neatly into any of the categories we have heretofore used to describe it. Russia is no longer a simple 'evil empire'. Today it is simultaneously many things, some of which are opposites. It is a place where organized crime has great power; where ex-KGB officers long for the old days; where very smart and well educated people create new ideas and companies; where old imperialist ideas and suspicion of foreign influence exist and the Orthodox church has regained much power over society. It is such a hodge-podge of pulls and counter-pulls that virtually anything I can say about it will be wrong.

This of course makes it a fascinating place to watch.

One of the blogosphere's brightest lights, Michael Totten, once again finds himself up the sharp end and brings some interesting reportage from Georgia. If you are interested in the real chronology of events and understanding why Russia, not Georgia, is the prime mover of this regional tragedy, check out his article.

A few days ago, the venerable Glenn Reynolds linked to an article published in the Asia Times titled Americans Play Monopoly, Russians Chess. The article, written by pseudonymous columnist Spengler, is something of an interesting read, as it offers up a comprehensively explained and intriguing motive for the former superpower's recent machinations in Georgia.

Many Western commentators ascribe the recent Russian belligerence to a newly acquired military ability able to act upon the yearning of its current leadership which is trying to recapture the glory days of Soviet power. A good dollop of credible force applied carefully should make Russia's tiny neighbours wake up to the fact that they are kissing the wrong butt. Spengler contends that the truth is rather less vainglorious; Russia's recent adventures represent moves in a long-term game in which the country's very survival is at stake.

After all, it is - as any moderately informed individual knows - facing what present-day figures predict to be a near total demographic collapse in the coming years. Russia is, says Spengler, exercising a grand strategy to eventually absorb the Russians and other ethnic populations living in the nations in its so-called "near abroad", declaring them all Russian and thus halting the country's disastrous population decline. This will also ensure the minority status of the Muslim population in Russia (the only ones who are breeding) and, lo and behold, win the survival of the nation in the eyes of those pulling the levers in the Kremlin. It is an insightful alternative analysis of what is driving the crisis in Georgia - not groundbreakingly so, as I am certain a number of Samizdata contributors and commenters could have provided us with much the same explanation - but nevertheless well worth consideration.

Beyond this, however, the article is boneheaded. Of course, the reader immediately perceives the author's withering contempt of American foreign policy - and the refined superiority of that of the Russians - just by reading the title of the article: (simple) Americans play (the simple game of) Monopoly, while (cerebral) Russians (that most cerebral of games) chess. This metaphor is rather silly and falls apart quite easily after examining the facts, however one must delve into the article to fully comprehend just how ridiculous Mr Spengler's representation of the tensions in Russia's "near abroad" is. One also has the added bonus of marvelling at the astonishingly amoral and historically myopic remedy Spengler proposes to pacify the unfolding crisis. All in good time. Firstly, let us have a poke and a prod at the myth of the Russian leader as über genius that Spengler somewhat artlessly constructs:

The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards

This is rank hyperbole, especially the bit about all the stupid Russian politicians being dead. Certainly, there were periods of significant attrition in post-Soviet society, when the present crimina - sorry, commercial - elite was establishing itself by expropriating the wealth of the fallen Soviet Union. And no one is denying that the undoubtedly highly intelligent Putin has sidelined those politicians (perhaps even some smart ones, as well as the dumb) who sought to stymie his consolidation of autocratic power. But Mr Spengler suggests that Putin, his former masters and his subordinates had all their vanquished, lesser rivals put to the sword! Of course, there are most probably politicians who met with a sticky end and just happened to oppose Putin and his new political order. It would also not surprise me that, even after the reign of the country's most notorious butcher ended, the odd political obstacle in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia suffered an untimely demise at the hands of an unidentifiable but highly lethal aggressor. However, Spengel makes it sound as though Stalin has taken leave from the absolute depths of hell, where he is undoubtedly residing, to again sweep through Russia's political class, this time weeding out the dim-witted as opposed to the Trotskyites. This is a misleading assertion deployed to convince the reader that the sinister, Darwinian ruthlessness of the current Russian leadership will undoubtedly overcome its clueless and ham-fisted American opponent.

No doubt that plays well in certain circles, where a good spot of America-bashing never goes unappreciated. Et tu, Mr Spengler? I mean, we have seen some folk question the intelligence of American foreign policy, only to rather spectacularly eat their words when events did not turn out as predicted. Consider when Ronald Reagan - widely derided as stupid, even in the present - saw through the accepted wisdom of the day and outmanoeuvred the Soviet Union, supposedly primed and optimised by socialism's best technocrats, but all in vain. The anticlimax of its demise was thunderously louder than its feeble implosion. Bringing the rotting hulk of the Soviet state down also rather impudently snuffed out the inspiration of countless highly intelligent folk who no doubt considered (and consider) themselves to be easily the intellectual superior of that improbable President; a man who was fit for little more than making Bedtime for Bonzo sequels, a man who would have been better advised to leave the business of statecraft to a more suitable candidate, such as his predecessor. One would think that when the US won the Cold War so decisively, the Spenglers of this world might have started to realise that just because they cannot perceive a coherent strategy behind American action, the Pavlovian assumption that one does not exist may be inaccurate. But no, our fearless columnist insists on toeing the ever-popular "doltish, clueless America blundering about on the world stage" line:

What Americans understand by "war games" is exactly what occurs on the board of the Parker Brothers' pastime. The board game Monopoly is won by placing as many hotels as possible on squares of the playing board. Substitute military bases, and you have the sum of American strategic thinking.

And that is all there is to it, folks. American "hard power" foreign policy stripped naked; its writhing, muscular, unfocused imbecility revealed. All right, enough of the sarcasm. I concede that I do not have an exhaustive knowledge of declared US foreign policy imperatives, and I am the first to admit that my interpretations as to why a base is built here and not there should not be considered authoritative by any means. Still, I am fairly confident that there's rather more to it than the "hotels on squares" Monopoly metaphor offered above. Spengler interprets US base building in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, along with the encirclement of Russia by pro-Western neighbours as the US clumsily and unnecessarily creating a potentially dangerous strategic opponent. My interpretation is that the US considers that Russia could credibly develop into a strategic threat to the US in the long term, regardless of whether the US turns a blind eye to Russian aggression in its region, thus it builds bases and cultivates alliances along Russia's border.

No doubt, Spengler would consider the above a ridiculous notion. Russia and the US are so far away from each other. There is no reason for any strategic enmity if each country stays out of the other's way. I am not sure. Geopolitical realities have a habit of shifting over time. More importantly, it is not as though Russia doesn't have form when it comes to aggressing against others near to, and far from, its borders. What happened after the Americans, the British and the rest of the Allies helped the Soviet Union eliminate the hideous bedfellow that initially enabled the Soviets to devour Poland, before rather inconveniently metamorphosing into the motherland's most memorable Great Existential Threat? But that was then, and this is now. So let us examine the soothing balm Spengler prescribes to salve all that nasty chafing and inflammation between the US and Russia, so that the latter's present-day Great Existential Threat can be solved, to the overwhelming benefit of all. Oh, except for the Ukrainians, who will henceforth be known as Russians, if Mr Spengler has his way:

The West has two choices: draw a line in the sand around Ukraine, or trade it to the Russians for something more important.

My proposal is simple: Russia's help in containing nuclear proliferation and terrorism in the Middle East is of infinitely greater import to the West than the dubious self-determination of Ukraine. The West should do its best to pretend that the "Orange" revolution of 2004 and 2005 never happened, and secure Russia's assistance in the Iranian nuclear issue as well as energy security in return for an understanding of Russia's existential requirements in the near abroad. Anyone who thinks this sounds cynical should spend a week in Kiev.

Well, I am back from my week in Kiev and I did not manage to find your argument, which was sadly absent in your article, Mr Spengler. What is one supposed to discover in Kiev that would destroy that country's sovereign rights and make Russian conquest acceptable? Why is Ukraine's self-determination "dubious"? I agree that Russian cooperation over Iran and energy supplies would indeed be a valuable prize, but then again, so is the credibility of a US security guarantee. Hard to make alliances without it, and in this circumstance there can only be one choice.

Anyway, for the sake of argument, let us take Spengler's advice and give Russia a free hand in its "near abroad". The US sees the light and throws its allies in the region under a bus. Russia takes much of its former empire back, thus defusing - or more likely deferring - the population time bomb by the forcible "Russofication" of the people living in the former nations that made up the newly annexed "near abroad". Think of it as lebensraum, although the raum is not of such great importance this time around, more so the untermench living on it (well, they must be untermench in the eyes of the Russians if it's acceptable to steal their country). Of course, dear old Greater Mother Russia will still be a lousy place to live for most, yet its leaders will be too busy gobbling up other countries to do anything about that. Let us tease this out a little more. The factors that fuel the Russian population's dramatic David Copperfield impersonation will continue to make themselves felt, but with a vengeance - what with the huge influx of war-ravaged, miserable, press-ganged "Russians" and their no doubt limitless appreciation of their new nationality. I see no reason why the population will not go into freefall again. Never mind, Russia will have some fresh new neighbours to impose its "existential requirements" upon when these resurface.

Another troubling gap in Spengler's argument is that he does not attempt to explain his assumption that Russia has an absolute right to conquer its neighbours and assimilate the citizens of these countries to avert its impending population collapse, beyond sneering at their recent sovereignty and the quality of their democracies. These largely ad hominem remarks, which he does not bother to expand upon, have not convinced me as to why Russia should be allowed to destroy another nation to repair its own, especially considering that Russia is wholly responsible for its present misfortunes. The prevailing deep malaise that compels millions of Russian women to abort their unborn children rather than bring them into the world, men to drink themselves into the grave several decades too soon and refugees to get the hell out by any way they can is clearly - tch, what is that term so beloved of the American left? Ah, yes, blowback - from a seventy year long experiment with the most disastrous and destructive political system the world has seen thus far. Not only did the Russian leaders force their people to endure this nightmarish, mass-murdering tyranny; they also foisted it onto millions in many in other countries and tried to impose it upon all the world's people. Of course, the Russian communists eventually failed, thanks largely to the superior productive power of the vastly more moral alternative; a random network of free individuals making choices voluntarily in a market, but the toxic remnants evidently still remain in Russian society. This is unfortunate for the Russians. However, I am struggling to comprehend why on earth the US, the world capital of the enormously powerful system that slew the Soviet monster, should compromise its morals and throw its allies to the wolves to save Russia from demographic destruction that the nation brought upon itself.

Spengler makes some interesting points in his article, but ultimately his justification of Russia's designs upon its neighbours is morally bankrupt, and the solution he has devised for the West to undertake to reduce the tension between them and the Russians while Russia "solves" the problem it has brought upon itself is unconscionable, too. This is further emphasised by his inability to perceive the evil inherent in a government willing to invade its neighbours and forcibly assimilate the people living there, along with the enormous loss of innocent life that such action would invariably entail. He detects no threat from those willing to wield power in such a manner - they are so far away!

But hang on; after the dust has settled and all the involuntary new Russians have been minted, where do the country's conquering leaders look then? We have been down this road with the Russians before. Spengler may well have correctly identified the motive driving Vladimir Putin to want to force the now-sovereign countries that used to make up the Soviet Union into submission. However, he is dead wrong in suggesting that the US should simply turn a blind eye to such warlike behaviour, because it could never affect them. We can see the folly of this assumption from recent history. Moreover, instead of justifying Putin's naked aggression (and the subsequent reconquest of lost Soviet territory) as the only way for Russia to survive the life-or-death struggle Spengler describes, why not recommend that the Russian leader abandons his intention to devour his neighbours and starts to concentrate on making his country a better place to live? A place where women choose to give birth to their babies and raise them into adulthood, rather than terminating them at the first sign of pregnancy. A place where middle-aged men do not die in droves from alcohol poisoning because they don't need to drink bottles of vodka every day to escape from a poisonous reality and its unrelenting assault on them. A country that folks from abroad choose to migrate to, as opposed to the local inhabitants doing the reverse. It should be made explicitly clear to Vladimir Putin that this is the one and only way he can turn around his country's dire demographic predicament, and thus save it. He may not do so at the expense of another. If the US did elect to draw and maintain that line in the sand, then I assert that it is a moral and pragmatic decision to contain a demonstrably dangerous nation led by a warmonger that, if left unchecked and allowed to prosper, could certainly represent a threat to the US in the future.

And if that is Monopoly the US is playing, I'm a monkey's uncle.

The sheer number of articles suggesting that we are seeing a return to the day of the 'Cold War' are such that frankly I cannot even be bothered to link to one. Certainly the Russian Bear has been more overtly unfriendly as of late, and I do think Russia needs to be taken seriously in the way any collection of armed thugs need to be taken seriously.

However it is absurd to contend that Russia as a long term threat in the way the Soviet Union threatened the world for more than fifty years. Hapless Russia has a near mono-culture economy (GDP the size of Italy, for gawd's sake) and catastrophic demographics that make Europe seem like a stud-farm (Germany, Poland and Austria more or less total the same population as Russia's 'hordes'). The appropriate personification for Russia circa 2008 is not an oil fuelled Genghis Khan, threatening to surge once more across Eurasia... no, it is more like a drunk with a knife unable to admit they have terminal liver disease... a vodka fuelled Genghis Khan't if you will.

Surely a policy of political containment is really all that is needed while nature, rust and liver sclerosis on a Biblical scale do the rest. Probably the most damaging thing we could do to hasten the deflation of the absurd delusions of the thuggish Russian political class would be to make it easier for young Russians, and Russian money, to get the hell out of Russia and move west.

Yesterday in the British Press, much was made of the Soviet, sorry, Russian threat to nuke Poland if it hosted American, sorry, NATO defensive missile systems.

THREAT TO NUKE POLAND... well, really? What the Ruskies are saying is not "if you allow these systems on your soil, we will nuke you", but rather "in the event of a war between NATO and Russia, we will attack military targets in Poland, which is a NATO member".

Well no shit? This is hardly a revelation. Yet to read many of the article headlines you would think it was a clear and present danger, which it clearly ain't. Move along, not much to see here.

That said, clearly what the Russian general said is a crude attempt to intimidate Poland, albeit politically and not actually by making a threat of imminent action. Also predictably it has stiffened already deep hostility to Russia across Central Europe. Good, it is probably exactly what Europe needed.

This press briefing by Secretary Gates is the best summary of the situation I have run across thus far:

There is a certain level of bluntness in his delivery that I quite enjoyed.

Earlier this afternoon Perry and I had a lengthy editorial telephone discussion on the subject of Georgia. While we agreed broadly there was one area in which we had intense debate until I finally figured out how we were talking past each other.

The question is, how the hell did US intelligence assets miss the Russian Black Sea fleet movements? How did they miss the massive transport job of the troops and their logistical tail? They did not just materialize in position. It takes time and planning to make such moves. I will leave the detail of that to Perry as he seems to have been thinking about it in great detail.

My take is there is a limited amount of time available on the black satellites. The manpower and resources have been re-targeted on the Middle East. Orbits have been shifted to give maximal coverage in those areas of interest and experienced personnel have moved to 'where the action is'.

This is not to say Russia is being ignored. It is however a very big place and I am going to guess that the time between scanning particular areas has greatly lengthened. Russian troop movements are mainly rail based and with enough eyeballs and Cold War era periodic coverage one might hope to pick up changes in traffic patterns and notice "something is going on". But... this requires a certain periodicity in coverage. Changes in static positions like silos and strategic air bases are much easier to pick up even with occasional coverage. Dynamic changes, such as train and road movements are a different story. You have to have a satellite taking pictures at just the right time or often enough to pick up a signal just by chance.

This is what took Perry and I awhile to meet minds on: I have been thinking of this issue as a communications/information theory problem. How often do you have to sample an area to notice a change in the density of train traffic? I would posit it would have to be several times a week at the very least if the spike in traffic was huge and extended; if the spike were smaller and flatter you would need to sample daily or multiple times daily. You would have to do it at night and through clouds as well if you were to get a statistical value high enough to ring alarm bells. It is an issue of sampling rate versus the highest detectable signal frequency, pure and simple.

I doubt they have even been scanning large areas of Russia more than a few times a week (I suspect much less often) except in areas of nuclear strategic interest. They could easily miss large troop movements in a part of Russia which is not of great national interest to the United States.

Let the discussion begin. There is a lot of meat on this bone!

I was going to write about the unconscionable Russian attacks on Georgia and how it is more important than ever to confront and isolate Russia and impose a cost on Russian imperialism... but then I read this article by Marko Hoare, who has written some great things in the past on the Balkan conflict, and he says much of what I would have...

This is not a case of Moscow supporting the right of national majorities to secede - the Abkhaz have no majority, not even a plurality, in Abkhazia. Nor is it a case of Moscow supporting the right of autonomous entities of the former Soviet Union to secede - Moscow has extended the same support to the separatists of Transnistria, which enjoyed no autonomous status in the USSR, while denying the right to secede of the Chechen Republic. This is simply a case of naked Russian imperialist expansionism. It is Georgia which is fighting to establish its independence, and Georgia which deserves our support. Georgia is a staunch ally of the West; the third largest contributor of troops to the allied coalition in Iraq. A Russian defeat of Georgia would be a tremendous setback for the West’s credibility and moral standing; it would increase Russian control of our energy supplies and encourage further Russian acts of aggression in the former Soviet Union.

We cannot afford to back down before this act of Russian imperialist aggression. We should defend Georgia with all the means at our disposal. We should send troops to bolster her. We should threaten Russia with sanctions. Heroic Georgia is fighting our fight; she is defending the freedom and security of democratic Europe.

Amen.

Is Russia now doing well, economically? Here's a quote which suggests that it is. It is from classical music commentator Norman Lebrecht, writing with his usual over-the-topness about the young Russian recently installed as conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko. According to Lebrecht, he is doing very well. Here is what Petrenko says about his recent Russian past.

Petrenko's grandparents endured the siege of Leningrad; his parents grew up under communism. He is among the last to have enjoyed the elitist benefits of the Soviet education system, getting fast-tracked through specialist schools after being spotted singing in a choir from the age of four. 'People around me were being trained to direct choruses in Siberia,' he remembers. ‘There were 200 professional choirs in the country, now there are nine. Those times are over. Parents don't want their kids to be musicians any more. They make more money as bricklayers, not to say bankers.'

Whatever your opinion is about people being paid to sing in choruses - mine is that if audiences won't pay, such singers shouldn't be paid – it surely says something about the Russian economy that now you can make proper money laying bricks. "Banking" could mean anything, from proper banking to legalised thievery. Merely getting rich being a construction worker would be similarly ambiguous, economically speaking. But there is something reassuring mundane about bricklaying, suggestive of real people wanting to hire you for good reasons, to build buildings that actually make sense.

I remember vividly what Soviet bricklaying used to be like. I attended a Libertarian jamboree in Tallinn, Estonia, in about 1990, and I recall seeing the wall around the local Soviet military base (I think it must have been). It was by far the most badly constructed wall I have ever seen, then or since, and had I not seen it, I wonder if I could even conceive of such constructional badness. Try to imagine the most spectacularly incompetent bricklaying that you can, and then halve its quality. Then halve it again. That's approximately half as bad as this brick "laying" was. It looked as if it had been done by six year olds, who had been alternating that with drinking Vodka.

Russian walls are now, I surmise, getting a lot better. Which I agree may not be wholly good news.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the man who helped to tell the world about the horrors of communist Russia and its defining institution, the network of forced labour camps known as the Gulag, has died.

One reason I fervently hope that the oil price eventually crashes if new energy sources are developed, is so it will pull a rug under thuggish regimes in places such as Venezuela and Russia:

The future of BP’s investment in Russia hung in the balance last night after Robert Dudley, the chief executive of TNK-BP, decided to leave the country.

In a humiliating defeat for Britain’s largest company, BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, said that Mr Dudley had left Russia temporarily, after an intense campaign of harassment by TNK-BP’s Russian co-owners, Alfa, Access and Renova (AAR), that had been “deeply unpleasant” for Mr Dudley and left him unable to carry out his job. Mr Dudley’s departure from Moscow was not disclosed until he was in the air en route to an undisclosed location.

I would like to think that if the BP executive were physically threatened or harmed in any way, that the full fury of the UK state would descend upon that gangster regime, but of course that is most unlikely and probably unwise anyway, so it is a folorn hope. As long as oil is so strong and countries in Europe are such heavy importers of Russia's natural gas, this sort of bullying will continue. But it surely is also a reminder that investment in that country is fraught with danger. The hedge fund manager, Bill Browder, was kicked out of the country a few years ago for his role as the asker of awkward questions when it came to investing in Russian firms. If ever Russia hits economic difficulties in future, as happened in the debt crisis of 1998, I hope that when Russia goes asking for aid, that other nations have the good sense to tell that country to perform sexual acts on itself, so to speak.

Stories such as this make me convinced that among the "Brics", Russia is not a good long-term bet, at least not until the political complexion of that vast nation changes for the better. That is going to be a long wait.

If you want to know why Bishop Hill is one of my favourite bloggers just now, you need look no further than this delightful posting today, which I now reproduce in its entirety:

There's a lovely anecdote doing the rounds of climate sceptic blogs about Sir David King, the climate alarmist and former chief scientific adviser to the British government.

It seems that President Putin asked some of his leading scientists to meet Sir David when he went to Moscow as part of the entourage of the foreign secretary. King apparently launched into his standard spiel about how we're all going to fry, but was a bit taken aback when the assembled scientists told him he was talking rubbish. When they had the temerity to list all the scientific evidence which refuted his claims of impending armageddon, our man was left looking a bit of a ninny and turned on his heels and stormed out of the room.

The story is doubly interesting because it's related by someone called RCE Wyndham in a letter in which he tells Robin Butler, the master of University College, Oxford, that the college can expect no donations from him this year because the appointment of King to head Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

The letter can be read here.

Fascinating. But then I googled Sir-David-King-Putin, and came across this, from about two months ago (you need to scroll down a bit):

Sir David King, who as the Government's Chief Scientist played a key role in the investigation into Litvinenko's murder, has accused the Russian president of masterminding the murder of nearly 300 of his own people in the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999, which Putin blamed on Chechen terrorists.

"I can tell you that Putin was responsible for the bombings," Sir David claimed to Mandrake at the Morgan Stanley Great Britons Awards. "I've seen the evidence. There is no way that Putin would have won the election if it wasn't for the bombings. Before them he was getting 10 per cent approval ratings. After, they shot up to 80 per cent."

I am not sure which came first, the mass murder accusation or the environmental ambush. I think it was the ambush that began all this. But either way, they really don't like each other, do they?

It might make a rather good play. It's always best when appalling people fail to get on. Imagine what the world would be like if they were all on the same side. I know, I know, not that different.

Vladimir Putin has announced that if NATO does not act in a manner more to his taste in future negotiations, he will take action to let them know he is not to be trifled with by unleashing an arms race.

So Russia (GDP $2.08 trillion) is threatening the EU (GDP $14.44 trillion) and USA (GDP $13.86 trillion) with an arms race?

Who says Russians do not have a great sense of humour? They are famous for it, in fact and this is a case in point. In effect Vladimir Putin is saying "if you do not start respecting me, I will bankrupt my country by producing large quantities of the same weapons that the Israelis consistently turn into confetti using western military technology." Oh saints preserve us! It is rather like a petulant child threatening to hold his breath until they turn blue unless they are given what they want... except I cannot see why anyone should give a shit if Russia goes blue in the face and keels over due to self-inflicted stupidity.

Modern Russia is rapidly turning into a vile police state, so why pander to this unrepentant KGB scumbag with delusions of grandeur?

There are lots of posters on the Tube and other places about this exhibition of Russian-owned art at London's Royal Academy. Henry Matisse's "The Dancers" is shown in the adverts; I am not a massive Matisse fan, but the sheer variety and quality of the work on show is tempting.

A problem I have, however, is that these works were stolen from their original buyers back in the Russian Revolution or in the 1920s (ironically, Stalin wanted to destroy some of this stuff because he considered it to be "decadent"). I am not really comfortable in looking at something that has been stolen from a private owner; I feel slightly the same way about taking tours around ancient buildings that are no longer owned by their original owners because they have been forced to sell up due to massive death duties, now transferred to such bodies as the National Trust. One might argue, of course, that aristocrats who own massive stately piles are not worth too much sympathy since their families may have come into these lands as a result of earlier hand-outs.

Oh well, I fear my curiosity will overcome my squeamishness. It pays to book early: this exhibition looks to be a sell-out. Thanks to regular Samizdata commenter Julian Taylor for suggesting that I write about this topic.

For those who are inexplicably worried about Russia's alleged 'resurgence' as a major world power now that it's economy is about the size of Italy's economy (albeit far less diversified), the following article should be unalloyed good news:

In the Russian Federation, a country where hundreds of companies are launched every year, the plans to create yet another one would not be particularly noteworthy. Except that Russian Technologies is to be very different from most of the rest. It will be no capitalist venture conceived by a profit-seeking entrepreneur, but a corporation established by a decree of the Russian Parliament. A giant conglomerate with the state apparatus behind it, its official mandate will be to ‘develop Russia’s heavy industry.’

The 'money quote' being "with the state apparatus behind it"...presumably because it was proven that "state apparatus" was the key to how the Soviets developed technology and business methods far superior to those in the capitalist west, became fabulously wealthy and as a result won the Cold War and... oh, hang on... In other words, the clowns who run the Kremlin are going to try an approach used in the West in the 1960s and 1970's of creating large bureaucratic 'national champions'. And that is because that worked soooo well for us, right?

So clearly those who feel "something must be done about resurgent Russia" can now relax and just let nature take its course. Putin and his entourage of economic ignoramuses are screwing Russia and crippling its ability to ever develop a dynamic market economy. This will weaken the nation far more effectively than anything anyone else could do to them. I just happen to think it is a pathetic waste of people's talents and potential.

The news media are still buzzing about the resumption of Cold War era style patrols by their ancient bucket-of-bolts bombers (not that I have anything against old-but-good combat aircraft) right up to the edge of NATO airspace. But for me the most interesting news to come out of Russia these days is that far from being the Neanderthal thug he is often portrayed as being, Vlad had decided it is time to reach out to that segment of the Russian electorate he has always stayed away from...

... he is now actively courting the Russian Gay Vote. Bless.

The Russian airforce has recently resumed long range patrols, approaching the airspace of Britain and Diego Garcia... and I am pleased to say the correct response has come from the US State Department:

"If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again that's their decision," Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said. "That is a decision for them to take - it's interesting. We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union. It's a different era."

Amen. This is the comment I left on the Telegraph article:

Who cares? All this talk about the resurgence of Russian power is tosh. Just look at the numbers. Even with all their gas and oil, Russia has the same GDP as Italy (and Italy is not an economic monoculture based on what comes out of the ground). Compared to China, the EU and the USA, Russia is, strategically speaking, in the minor league. If the quasi-fascists who run Russia these days want to rattle their little sabre, strut around like Mussolini and pretend they matter, let them. The appropriate response to their antics? No response at all.

I think the murderous actions of the Russian secret service in London are far more worthy of harsh responses than the antics of their military. I suspect a reaction to these military flights consisting of broad indifference and maybe the odd embarrassed snicker is far more likely to enrage the Kremlin than shaking a sabre back at them. The Devil does not like to be mocked.

Putin's Russia continues its heroic great march backwards in time. The 'weaponization of psychiatry' is something that never went out of style in China, where people can be described as 'politically deranged'. The use of psychiatric detention against political enemies has a long history in the not-so-post Communist world and so I can hardly say I am surprised to see this being done again in Russia.

I am delighted that contrary to my early expectations they they would do nothing at all other than make an official grimace and then politely forget about the whole affair, the UK government's action in expelling Russian diplomats is both all but openly stating the Russian government was behind the Litvinenko assassination and actually trying to impose some political cost on Putin's regime. It is only a small step but psychologically it is a very important one.

As Blair was showing signs of going soft on this horrendous issue,this is a welcome indication that the Brown government is really not going to let Putin's regime murder people in Britain in an ostentatiously obvious manner and let it pass with a shrug.

I was pleased that Downing Street is actively discouraging British companies from investing in Russia in the aftermath of the Shell Oil Sakhalin Island appropriations but more pressure over the Litvineko affair is now needed, if only to discourage more of the same. Of course I expect the Russian government to over-react at all but being called murderers and thereby help the process of de-normalising relations with that far from normal state. There is truly no upside to allowing Putin and his cronies to imagine they can do what they want in Britain without consequences.

Getting on-line in Ethiopia is a nightmare and so it has taken me a while to comment on a strange article in the Financial Times that had me choking on my breakfast of injera and zil zil tibs.

Peter Hambro, executive chairman of Peter Hambro Mining, an Aim-listed company that is one of Russia's biggest gold miners, said the claim from Tony Blair that western companies could shun Russia unless it shared democratic values "ran the risk of being damaging" for British businesses in Russia. [...] Hans Jörg Rudloff, chairman of Barclays Capital, said the government was mistaken when it publicly expressed concern about the growing risks of investing in Russia, ahead of last week's G8 talks. "Their approach looks unbalanced," Mr Rudloff said. "Russia's transition to a market economy has been successful and cannot be undone."

And later in the article, readers are reminded that Royal Dutch Shell was forced last November to sell control of its $20bn Sakhalin-2 oil and gas venture to state-controlled Gazprom and BP's flagship Russia venture TNK-BP is now being threatened with the loss of its licence to develop the east Siberian Kovykta field. So how exactly are these de facto nationalisation (in reality seizing assets for the benefit of members of Putin's clique) a sign that "Russia's transition to a market economy has been successful and cannot be undone"? Seems to me that Putin is doing an excellent job of undoing it.

It is not often I read the Independent but even that haven of fluorescent idiocy seems to be on the right side of the need to face down Vladimir Putin's increasingly sinister regime. There is a very interesting open letter by journalist Yelena Tregubova on the importance of not pretending that everything in Russia is just fine and dandy.

Of course over the last few days Putin has made the task of those shouting warning about the dangers posed by Russia a great deal easier, what with him threatening to target nuclear weapons at Europe again and pretty much announcing that he is about to appropriate BP's investments in Russia.

Clearly Putin needs to be taken down a peg or two because if there are no consequences for his theft of foreign investments in Russia and the murders of opponents to his regime both at home and overseas, all we can look forward to is ever more destabilising antics coming out of the Kremlin.

Until recently, there was a shop named popXpress in Piccadilly near the Ritz hotel in London. This was a little store devoted entirely to selling Apple iPods and iPod accessories. When it was opened, people who analyse this sort of thing found it an interesting experiment, but were not terribly optimistic about its success, at least partly because it was situated only a short walk from the London flagship Apple Store in Regent Street. Higher hopes were held for the other popXpress store near Liverpool Street in the City of London, which was close to many cashed up City workers and far from an Apple Store. Thus it was not a terribly great surprise when parent company Computer Warehouse announced in March that the Piccadilly store was to close (the store in Liverpool Street remains open and quite possibly profitable). Upon learning this, most of us would have said "Oh", and then gone back to sleep. However, the explanation, when it came, was stunning.

Next to the popXpress store in Piccadilly was and is a sushi bar, a branch of a chain named Itsu. This is what is known as a "fast casual" restaurant: a bit more expensive and with food a bit tastier than McDonald's, but designed for people in a hurry or on their lunch breaks who want a quick meal and do not want to spend too much money. Itsu belongs to Pret a Manger, probably the king of London fast casual dining (and, incidentally, 30% owned by McDonald's) . There are a couple of Itsu outlets near where I work in Canary Wharf, and from time to time I eat lunch in those outlets myself. The food is not bad, but it is not exactly worth writing home to Mum about either. I have never eaten at the branch in Piccadilly, and I suspect that few people who know the area do, because the (possibly Japanese government subsidised) Japan Centre at Piccadilly Circus is just down the road, and this manages to both be inexpensive and to serve some of the best Japanese food in London.

However, the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly gained notoriety last November as the place where Alexander Litvinenko had lunch with his Italian acquaintance Mario Scaramella, where it was for a time believed he was poisoned and where traces of Polonium 210 were later discovered, leading to many radioactive sushi jokes.

As I mentioned, a couple of months after this, the popXpress store next door announced it was closing. Few would have thought there was a connection, but when asked, management explained that that had received "an offer they couldn't refuse" from Itsu, who wanted to expand their store. Apparently, business had been absolutely booming since the Polonium 210 incident, and they wanted to expand the restaurant (no, I will not speculate as to why this offer could not be refused, and which if any isotopes were involved). Apparently Itsu also brought forward plans to open their first store in New York, as the publicity was apparently a godsend. It would seem that all publicity is good publicity, even when you are a change of restaurants and the publicity was that your food might be radioactive.

Actually, that may not be entirely true. Or at least it can be further tested. For come to think of it, another chain restaurant in London was in the news recently. At the Strand branch of pizza chain Zizzi, a man recently entered the restaurant at dinner time, obtained a knife from the kitchen, and used it to sever his own penis in front of diners.

Upon walking past that particular restaurant a couple of days later, I will confess that I was struck by a strong urge to walk in the opposite direction. Really, though, I should go in and ask management what the publicity has done for business. For I may want to take an interest in the business next door.

The latest weird twist in the Alexander Litvinenko assassination has been the release by prime suspect Andrei Lugovoi of his promised 'stunning revelations' about the case. His claim was that Litvinenko was in fact working for the British intelligence services and that MI6 had in fact attempted to recruit him as well

Now what makes this all really puzzling to me is that even if this is all true, far from taking the heat off himself and the Russian security services, he seems to in fact be providing the Russian spooks with an excellent motive for wanting to kill Litvinenko.

Am I missing something here?

The latest developments in the investigation into the assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed last November in London, is interesting, to say the least.

To no one's surprise (at least no one who is not a Kremlin stooge), the person the British Director of Public Prosecutions has charged with the murder is an former(?) member of the Russian security services, just as his victim was. The Crown Prosecution Service is formally demanding Andrei Lugovoi's extradition from Russia.

What makes this really fascinating is that the CPS is well aware that the Russian state has a policy of not extraditing Russian nationals to other countries (nor are they in the habit of surrendering their assassins to foreign police no matter how politely they are asked). The fact they went ahead and made the demand for extradition anyway shows that the government is at last taking the threat Putin and his cronies pose seriously and this is an excellent way of dealing him a no-win hand politically, even though it will not result in Lugovoi being brought to justice. Although no one in an official capacity is saying the Putin regime ordered this murder on British soil, you do not have to squint very hard to see the writing between the lines.

Update: an new article in the Telegraph seems to confirm what I was suggesting about a determination to face Putin down. Good.

There is an excellent article in the Telegraph by Boris Berezovsky, the exiled anti-Putin Russian politician and businessman, called Why modern Russia is a state of denial.

First, Yeltsin lacked the will (or, maybe, the courage) to indict the communist regime as a criminal one - no less so than the Nazi regime, with all the resulting consequences for the communists themselves, and for their vanguard, the Soviet secret police. Second, Yeltsin also failed to lead Russia to repentance, to make every Russian acknowledge his own responsibility for the crimes of the communist regime. Without repentance, however, those who were oppressed and raped by Russia, such as Estonia and the other Baltic states, will never trust it again.

Great stuff and much the same point I have been making on the issue of former communist countries. Read the whole thing.

To have a free and prosperous country, it is important to have strong institutions underpinning things like contract and property rights. Yet all too often we forget the roll of social attitudes and world-view in creating wealth and its handmaiden, liberty.

There are two interesting articles in The Telegraph today (on the same page in the print version in fact) that shows that places like Russia and China may be vastly wealthier and freer than they were under the darkest days of Communism, but both those places have yet to develop either a culture that expects liberty, understands the implications of state money (they are hardly alone in that) or accepts the usefulness of profound outside influences.

The Chinese government is trying to lure foreign educated Chinese back to China, which suggests at least the people at the top are aware that there is value in the way the rest of the world does things..

Under the government's new incentives, returnees will be able to work wherever they like, regardless of which city they have a residence permit for, and will be offered higher pay, while their families will receive preferential treatment.

Which is interesting as that means most people still cannot live and work where they like, requiring internal passports and state residence permits. How can a place with such restrictions on a person's ability to sell their own labour ever hope to become affluent and truly dynamic? Can they not see the link between the ability of individuals to make fundamental choices and the effectiveness of markets?

Those graduates who return, expecting their foreign education and work experience to be a passport to a glittering future in the new China, frequently face discrimination rooted in a deep-seated distrust of those who have left the motherland for the West.

Which makes me wonder, do most Chinese people not realise how much more affluent the First World is than they are? I am guessing they do but this is trumped by the cultural imperative for Chinese-ness... the sort of mindless nationalism that is thankfully largely dead in much of the Western world. This suggests to me that regardless of how China's leaders tinker around, if Chinese culture is that obsessed with China-is-always-best attitudes, there are serious limits to their ability to grow into a prosperous and civil society.

Also in Russia, most of the institutions associated with advanced nations (courts, property rights, contract law etc.) are not known for their robustness or independence from politics. But also I wonder how much the culture in Russia allows people to imagine things any differently?

Russia's ageing but revered scientific geniuses are on a collision course with Vladimir Putin after the 1,200-member Academy of Sciences rejected Kremlin proposals to end its unique independence from state control [...] Now, however, its autonomy is threatened by a proposed new charter which would give the government control of its management, funding and multi-billion pound property holdings. Kremlin officials claim the institution needs dragging into the modern world to harness its members' brainpower for lucrative scientific patents and commerce. But critics fear it will fall victim to Mr Putin's appetite for control and his distrust of free-thinking institutions.

Which is interesting. But then...

The Academy receives £870 million in federal grants, owns about 400 affiliated institutes and employs around 200,000 people across Russia. Prof Valery Kozlov, 57, its vice-president, said: "This is simply an attempt to seize control of our finances and property."

I am sure Professor Kozlov is a very smart man, yet I wonder if it even crossed his mind that perhaps his Academy should respond to Putin's power grab by refusing to take any more state money. If they are a centre of excellence as claimed, surely there must be companies and institutions around the world which would love to fund them and allow them to be truly independent of the state.

Yet the notion that everything must happen top-down with the blessing of the state is probably so deeply ingrained that the reality of what is involved with making yourself independent does not track at all.

It is understandable that many Russians view World War II era war memorials as being about resistance to the Nazis. Yet it is equally understandable the monuments to the Red Army have altogether different connotations in the countries conquered by the Soviet Union.

The fact that Estonia has removed a statue of a Red Army soldier from downtown Tallinn, leading to violence and intimidation by ethnic Russians in Estonia and the Estonian embassy in Moscow being placed under a state of virtual siege, it does suggest a lot of Russians have not reconciled themselves to the fact the Soviet Imperium is a thing of the past.

How can any of Russia's neighbours ever trust Russia and allow mutually beneficial trade relations to develop if the Russian state feels it has any legitimate role in telling the former victims of Moscow's rule what sort of symbols are appropriate for displace in a city centre?

It is not hard to see why trade between the Baltic Nations and Russia has so quickly diminished in importance and been replaced by rapidly expanding commercial ties with the European Union.

Blogger Rurrik at The Whims of Fate has a terrific collection of photos of the anti-Putin marches in Russia (including Kasparov being detained). There are so many images that I will not link to a specific article, just check out the whole blog (do not just look at the first page).

The sidebar statement about the Russian Federation on The Whims of Fate is:

• Brutally Suppressed Opposition
• Bureaucratic, Corrupt, Backwards Government
• By the Grace of God, Emperor Tsar
• Byzantine Justice
• Censorship
• Church as Arm of the State
• Extravagant Ruling Elite
• Huge Unwieldy Army
• Political Assassinations
• Powerful Secret Police
• Subservient Parliament
• Widespread Abject Poverty

Sometimes I read articles which seem to prove the existence of parallel universes. What I am curious about however is how does my web browser manage to access them from within this universe? I really must drop David Deutsch an e-mail and ask him to theorise.

For example, see this article sent from some alternate Earth, called 'Britain counts cost of diplomatic furore over Berezovsky' (I apologise if the transdimensional shift causes your browser to crash):

The furore also probably extinguishes any hope that Russia will agree to let suspects be extradited to Britain over the London poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko

So by this I can only assume that some people think that if only Britain was 'nicer' to the Russian regime, there was at some point a 'hope' that the Russian leadership might allow the UK to extradite the people who could confirm the already obvious fact that the Russian state ordered Russian agents to assassinate Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Yes, I am sure the Russian authorities are really keen to do that. Not in this universe, of course, but I am sure that must be true in some other universe otherwise how else would it end up in a newspaper article?

I am fairly sure it is too late for an April Fool and I cannot detect humour at work in the writing so no doubt journalists Patrick Wintour and Laura Smith, the ones in this universe that is, are rather bemused by this transdimensional strangeness from their alter-egos from the universe in which politeness and pliability by Her Majesty's Government can be expected to get Russian leaders to implicate themselves in murders on British soil.

Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was granted asylum in the UK due to his treatment by the Russian state, had said he wants to engineer the overthrow of Vladimir Putin:

"We need to use force to change this regime. It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure."

To which a Kremlin spokesman said:

"In accordance with our legislation [his remarks are] being treated as a crime. It will cause some questions from the British authorities to Mr Berezovsky. We want to believe that official London will never grant asylum to someone who wants to use force to change the regime in Russia."

Yet the Kremlin seems to think it can murder its political opponents in London and at home and that is just fine and dandy. Who says Russian politicians do not have a sense of humour, eh?

What is sauce for the goose...

Paul Joyal, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin has been shot in the USA. Does this remind you of anything?

Of course it could just be another random street crime, but if not and this turns out to be another (hopefully just attempted) assassination of an overseas political enemy living in the west, then it is clearly well past time to start loudly demanding the state does one of the few legitimate things it taxes us for... protecting us all from the armed servants of a foreign government.

Could it be time to start threatening Putin in the most literal way? If he keeps killing people in the west then not only should Russian embassies be closed forthwith, those expensive security services we pay for should start motivating the Russian security services to behave via whatever means come to mind. I can certainly think of a few.

I will watch with interest to see what information comes out about this case. It could, after all, have just been a robbery.

Vladimir Putin, the former KGB member who runs Russia as if the Soviet Union was still alive and well, does not like the fact the US is prone to take military action outside its own borders, claiming it is causing a new arms race.

Arms race? With who? China is certainly arming itself but sclerotic Russia? I would love to see some figures for Russian arms procurement over the last ten years to get some insight into the true strength of Russia as a serious military power. The Russian GDP is about $1.7 trillion... i.e. slightly less than Italy... and does anyone really loose much sleep over what the President of Italy thinks?

Still, it seems a bit perverse for a man who seems keen to sell technology to Iran to be complaining about all those things the pesky Yanks are doing which are not in his interests.

Last night I and several other assorted bloggers and Samizdatistas dined at Chateau Perry, at a gathering hosted by Jackie D. The guest of honour was Mr Squander 2. Of course we all asked after Mrs and Baby Squander 2, and the good news is that mother and child are doing much better.

For me the most memorable thing that got said last night was when Mr Squander 2 told of how, during the Brezhnev era, poor old Mr Brezhnev apparently consumed an annoyingly large amount of Soviet and in particular KGB man hours trying to get various of his minions to answer for him the question: "Who runs capitalism?"

Presumably so that they could take him/her/it out, in some way or another, and score a cheap and quick victory in the Cold War, although sadly that wasn't part of the story as told last night.

Or, maybe the idea was for Brezhnev then to able to sit down with this controlling mastermind, and to ask him/her/it: "How can we do it?"

Knowing the damn Bolsheviks, it could well have been both. First find out how they do it, then kill or enslave them all, starting where it makes most sense, with whoever is in charge.

Anyway, (1): Heh. And (2) does anyone know anything more about this? I tried googling: Brezhnev "Who runs capitalism?", but that yielded nothing. It is such a great story that it is the kind of thing people believe because they want to believe it. I know I want to. But, is there any truth in it?

It is fair to say not many Englishmen live in the more remote parts of Russia. Thus when someone gets an e-mail from an Englishman called Tim Newman, living in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, who is an oil business professional discussing the Royal Dutch Shell's operations, and there is a Tim Newman working for Shell in that part of the world, it will be one and the same person, right?

Nope.

Take a look at this for a real life comedy of errors.

A great thing about capitalism is that people pay for the consequences of their own stupidity. So staying on the topic of Russia as per my last article, I have no sympathy with Shell Oil now that they are getting shafted by the Russian state after making vast investments in that country. The word of the Russia government (even more so than most governments) is worth less than nothing. As a result, anyone who makes agreements with that government and puts big money into a place which has for years clearly been a kleptocratic sink hole is the author of their own misfortune when things inevitably go pear-shaped.

So now that odd organisation Interpol has joined the ever more multi-national hunt for Alexander Litvinenko's assassins. This all completely pointless. If the Kremlin or anyone else had wanted Alexander Litvinenko dead with no one knowing who had killed him, they would have simply have hired some thug in London to push him under a bus or stick a knife in him. But no... instead the murderers chose an absurdly sophisticated method of assassination by using an exotic toxic isotope only available to someone with access to the resources of a nuclear industry. The conclusion to draw from this is screamingly obvious: Vladimir Putin wants his critics to know who killed Litvinenko in order to frighten them into silence. I can see no other plausible explanation.

So why keep pretending it is a mystery who murdered this man? He was killed in London by agents of the Russian government and as a result the only discussion needed is how to react to a foreign government using violence to decide who can say what about people in Britain. At least the sort of response directed at Iran in the aftermath of the Salman Rushdi affair must be implemented. At the very least.

A BBC journalist this morning informs us that the death in highly suspicious circumstances of a former Russian KGB official could lead to a "potential diplomatic incident" between Britain and Russia.

You think?

I must admit that the stuff about the Russian poisoning story is reminding me of when the Cold War was pretty chilly. It is also, its perverse sort of way, a reminder of what the world was like when a former naval officer, journalist and stockbroker began to churn out thrillers at his Jamaican holiday home back in 1953. Casino Royale, the first and one of the best James Bond adventures has been turned into a film that yours truly will be seeing on Thursday night. I admit that when Daniel Craig was first cast in the role, I had my doubts, but the reviews so far have been mostly favourable. Craig, even though he looks like a well-groomed football hooligan, seems to have conveyed the darker side of Fleming's creation, showing that Bond is a bit more than a dude in a suit, as well as keep most of the bits that cinema viewers have come to expect, such as amazing stunts, special effects and the odd witty one-liner.

Putin, a former member of the KGB, became the leader of Russia in 1999, eight years after the fall of the USSR. Would anyone have considered it acceptable for a former member of the Gestapo to be leading West Germany in 1953?

- David Emami

The attempt assassination in London of a critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, almost certainly carried out by the Russian intelligence services, highlights that it is long past time to stop treating Russia as 'just another European government'.

But there is another rather interesting twist to this story that I did not spot in the media yesterday, courtesy of the UKIP.

Update: sadly it is not longer an 'attempted' assassination.

The senior Russian central bank official who was shot dead this week was a prominent campaigner against money-laundering. No matter what one thinks of some of the more oppressive laws against money transfers - as a libertarian, I find a lot of such laws counter-productive and intrusive of privacy - there is no doubt that Russia has a terrible reputation for financial skulduggery. By going against financial hoodlums, it sadly appears this guy signed his death warrant.

Funnily enough, this story does not appear to have caused much of a stir outside the business sections and some of the foreign bits of the press. I find that a bit odd, if not chilling. A senior central bank official gets murdered. Imagine the reaction if a top official working for the Bank of England or the Fed got killed.

Russia has a long, long way to go before it becomes a place in which civilised people will want to do business.

While rootling around yesterday for links concerning the Arcelor story, which has a Russian angle because Russians were also trying to take Arcelor over, I came across this story, from Mosnews.com (whatever that is):

Scientists from the Russian city of St. Petersburg have announced they had managed to develop a new, drug-free variant of cannabis which, if grown on industrial level, would cross with wild growing hemp end eventually force it out of existence.

Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Grigoryev of the Russian Plant Institute as saying that the amount of psychotropic substance in the new variant of cannabis is practically zero. When the new plant is crossed with the wild growing hemp the amount of psychotropic substance in the latter will gradually become less and less. If Russian hemp is grown on industrial level, it could even force the cannabis that is used for making hashish and marijuana out of existence.

This has got to be the perfect Samizdata news story. It has drugs, scientific progress, lots of US foreign policy angles, massive opportunities to disagree about its truth, implications, etc. It has everything we want.

My pennyworth is that, in the event that there is any truth to this story (which I do not assume), then this may be only the first step in a new drugs war, this time between scientists trying to develop and improve this Just Say No cannabis, and scientists working to strengthen the ability of your real, drug sodden cannabis to resist the attentions of Just Say No cannabis, and if anything to become even more drug sodden. Sort of like red squirrels versus grey squirrels but with gazillions of dollars to back each colour of squirrel against the other colour of squirrel.

Far out, man.

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.

It is splendid news that the trapped Russian submariners have been rescued from the dreadful fate that overtook the Kursk a few years ago. Fortunately the Russians did not stand on their pride as they did the last time they suffered a sub-aquatic 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 embarrassment 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.

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.

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...

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.

I bow my head. I will not forget.

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.

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.

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!

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, bureaucracy 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 dishonourable 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.

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...]

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.

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.

Wired reports that Russia has successfully tested a hypersonic anti-Star Wars weapon capable of penetrating any prospective missile shield, a senior general said Thursday. The prototype weapon proved it could maneuver so quickly as to make "any missile defense useless," Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, told a news conference.

This exchange of statements has an air of nostalgia about it:

Putin said that the development of new weapons was not directed against the United States, and Baluyevsky reaffirmed the statement, saying that the experiment shouldn't be seen as Russia's response to U.S. missile defense plans. "The experiment conducted by us must not be interpreted as a warning to the Americans not to build their missile defense because we designed this thing."

In Washington, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by reporters about the Putin statement. "If you're in that business -- intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads -- you want them to be survivable, and maneuverability is one way to increase their survivability against any potential defenses."

I suppose the signs of new era are the following bits:

Putin said that Russia has no intention of immediately deploying new weapons based on the experimental vehicle. "We have demonstrated our capability, but we have no intention of building this craft tomorrow."

Baluyevsky said that Russia had informed the United States about its intention to conduct the experiment and added that U.S. officials issued no objections.

We shall see.

I found this gruesome story in a letter to Editor in today's Telegraph:

Sir - Julius Strauss's report on the lost prisoners of the Soviet gulag (News, Jan 3) reminded me of a wartime experience.

As an 18-year-old seaman aboard an escort destroyer out of Scapa Flow in 1943-44, I recall that, after shepherding the convoy in the Kola inlet north of Murmansk, we moved to the small dockside at Polyarni.

During one of our arrivals, when some of us were stretching our legs ashore, a well thrown snowball caused me to stagger against a snow-covered stack of logs. I recovered my balance to find that I was hanging on to a human foot, naked and frozen.

We found that the stack was not of timber, but of human bodies, laid five upon five, approximately 30 to a stack, piled along the jetty. We surmised that they were casualties of the war to the south, could not be buried in the frozen ground and had been moved by rail to an ice-free port for disposal at sea.

Having read your report, I am inclined to suggest that they had perished in the gulag Vorkuta, not far to the east.

From:
Leslie James Cousins, Petersfield, Hants

The article mentioned in the letter talks of horrendous conditions of gulag prisoners at the Vorkuta camps.

Even in the context of the times, the suffering at the Vorkuta camps was extreme. In the winter, temperatures on the tundra can drop to minus 50C.

Inmates were provided with ill-fitting, poor quality clothes and forced to work 12 or 14 hours a day on a starvation ration. During the 1940s and 1950s a million prisoners passed through the Vorkuta gulags, according to Memorial.

At least 100,000, perhaps many more, died. They were buried in the rock-hard permafrost or simply left by the roadside to be covered by snow.

Many of the survivors are now trapped by poverty as the hyperinflation following the end of communism wiped out their meagre savings. For years Vorkuta was a political gulag. Today it has become an economic gulag.

The scale of Russia's disillusionment with western-style democracy became apparent yesterday as the country's two largest pro-western parties were all but wiped out in parliamentary elections.

President Putin's United Russia came out the clear winner with 37 percent of the vote and a majority in the new State Duma and will most likely end up controlling two thirds of the Duma enabling the president to change the constitution at will. This may not be a revolutionary change from the past as the constitution was rendered feeble and Duma castrated by Yeltsin. Another quarter of the seats will be shared by anti-western reactionaries nostalgic for the days of Soviet superpower status.

The election made clear one thing - that I have argued here on Samizdata.net in the face of indignation by some commenters - Russia is not (and was not) heading the right direction. The reasons for this are more fundamental than Putin's taste for power or Yeltsin's penchant for gestures of a 'Leader of Mother Russia'. Although they both fossilised what was wrong with the political and state institutions in Russia, their attitudes and actions originated from the country's political and social values and traditions and were often supported by the majority.

Here are some quotes that sum up the political development in Russia:

Yesterday's election shows what the people actually think: they are stridently nationalist, want wealth redistributed and have little interest in liberal or democratic values. An analyst at a financial firm, Aton

It is a sad day for liberalism. The liberals in Russia are finished in the short term. Igor Mintusov a political campaign consultant at Nikkolo M

Our main impression of the overall electoral process was one of regression in the democratisation of this country. Bruce George of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe

The first two statements are spot on, the last one confuses democracy with liberal values. The Russian elections were probably democratic alright. It is freedom, liberal constitutionalism, individual and civil rights that have suffered a defeat in Russia. My point is that they were not even taking part.

Look, matey, I know a dead protocol when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now:

Russia says it will not ratify in its present form the Kyoto Protocol designed to mitigate global warming.

"The Kyoto protocol places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia," presidential aide Andrei Illarionov told a conference in Milan.

The landmark environmental pact cannot now enter into legal force, especially since the US has also repudiated it.

It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This protocol is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet it's maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it'd be pushing up the daisies! It's metabolic processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!

Some 'amazing' news from Russia - President Vladimir Putin has met with the country's richest business people and warned them that unless they share their wealth they risk losing it. He told them they must use their wealth to help reduce poverty, saying there is a line between wealth and political power. Seems like an offer they can't refuse...

Sounds familiar? You bet. Putin used to be the head of KGB and I expect no less of him. His career since the fall of communism did nothing more than reinforce his old communist opinions and prejudices. It is possible that his 'talking to' to the 800 businesses could be, just could be, a very clever PR ruse to appeal to the Russian people who have to struggle to make the ends meet in a whole new and 'free' post-communist fashion whilst the nouveau rich flaunt their wealth. But I do not really think so. It is worse than that, he actually believes it. The few politicians from the former communist bloc who are perceived as 'englightened' by the West are more often then not paleo-communists whose rhetoric has turned communitarian, or outright anti-capitalist. This is what Putin told a packed Hall of Columns in the House of Unions that included at least five billionaires:

[Businesses] must aim their efforts at developing a system of new social guarantees for the population in line with the new demands of the time. [We must join] forces to make the lives of people economically sound so that they have plenty to live on.

Bye-bye the lip-service to individual property rights whilst economic future of Russia circles round the drain as her dozen billionaires and several thousand millionaires have begun the process of moving their money off shore. God speed, 'comrades'.

I am sure that these 'gentlemen' are no lambs. In fact, I am certain that their money does not come from honest business. Most likely they grew obscenely rich on rigged privatisations - they happened to be at the right place, right time, with nastier thugs at their command. From what I have seen so far it seems to me that Mikhail Khodorkovsky might not of the same ilk but I do not know enough about him to stand by that conclusion.

Nevertheless, the way to tame the 'oligarchs', as they are affectionately known in Russia, is not making them hand-over their money. Just make them subject to the same laws as everyone else (I hope it is obvious that Yukos is not Russia's Enron). That would, however, require strong institutions such as courts and legislature upholding laws in general and contracts between individuals in particular. This is profoundly lacking in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

The Russian state machine is toxic. It may have divested itself of the evil ideology, but it continues to trample over the individual. Rights and justice are considered Western luxuries or, better yet, a clever propaganda by the Western politicians to mask the strings pulled by the military-industrial complexes. Tinfoil hat material? I do not think so - not enough tinfoil in Russia for the lot of them.

According to our good friend Iain Murray, the Russians have really put the boot to cherished theories at the World Climate Conference.

According to Iain, the head of the Russian Academy of Scientists said the only effect of dropping Kyoto "would be on several thousand people who make a living attending conferences on global warming".

An urgent memo to the people whose job it is to monitor so-called 'greenhouse gases': there appears to be more than enough hot air over Central Europe to keep the Kyoto balloon aloft:

Russia came under pressure from the European Union at the weekend to ratify the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases, amid fears that Moscow's commitment may be wavering.

Yes it is probably 'wavering' because the Russians (in common with everybody else) know that the Kyoto Protocol is a bad idea which has been touted as the solution to a non-problem. If the Russians have got any sense they will consign the whole boondoggle to the shredder.

The protocol, which is backed by the EU but opposed by Washington, needs the support of the Russians to reach the threshold of backing required for it to come into force. Although Moscow announced last September that it would ratify, it has so far failed to do so, raising fears that the entire international effort to combat climate change could be stalled.

The keyword here is 'fear'. Not fear of environmental catastrophes or other such fantastic nonsense, but a (justified) fear among Europe's political elite that their dirigiste economies will not be able to compete in a truly global marketplace.

Altero Matteoli, the Italian Environment Minister, called for enhanced cooperation with the US and Russia, as well as with emerging economies,such as India and China.

'Cooperation' is a euphamism for 'submission' and what Mr.Matteoli and his ilk require is for potential competitors to hobble themselves with pointless and damaging regulatory burdens that slap a lid on industrial and technological development. The only other method of halting decline is root-and-branch reform of the Europe's stagnating economies and that is not going to happen.

Kyoto is not about 'saving the Earth' or 'improving the quality of life' or any other enviro-mentalist nostrums. Kyoto is a deeply dishonest contrivance; a device for propping up an arcane and protectionist 'old' Europe.

Asks b3ta.com:

Men: Like looking at pretty ladies? Like laughing at bad translations of Russian mobile phone conferences? You're in the land of luck as this site combines both.

It certainly does. Eldar Murtazin is impressed, and Andreas Von Horn (that's what it says) translates:

Year by year, visiting CeBIT, catch myself at idea, that they have better organization, and exhibits for the first time are shown exactly at this exhibition, instead of wandering on the world, turning in an antiquity. But there is one big advantage of the Russian exhibitions and of SvyazExpocomm as one of the most appreciable, there are excessive plenty of beautiful girls on one square meter of the area. The last year one my foreign friend after visiting the exhibition has left in prostration and has told, that knows where to look for a wife. Girls in city centre which caused the genuine interest and remarks in the excellent form, have simply ceased to exist. The friend all the rest three days has spent at the exhibition, and according to him has not been sorry at all about it.

On results of the first day has collected about 500 photos of girls from various stands, a part from them we'll publish in this picture story. I can not give up to myself such pleasure, and the reputation needs to be supported, in fact the tradition began the last year. To try listing all photos is senseless, further are photos that have appeared by will of case beside and have pleased me.

For knowing people and visiting the exhibition not the first year, CBOSS name talks a lot about, but I beg to assume, that in the last turn about billing. However, judge, I in my turn dream to shake hands with the person, which selects girls for this company!

Ah, those wacky foreigners.

   

Political assassination is becoming something of a national pastime in Russia. The latest victim is Sergey Yushenkov , a Liberal Party deputy in the Dumas who was gunned down yesterday outside his apartment building in Moscow.

Russian Liberals are 'Liberal' in the European sense of the word, not the American sense i.e.

He was a strong proponent of military reform and favoured the creation of a free market in Russia when many deputies were dragging their feet.

Of course, murder is always murder regardless of the opinions held by the victim, but in this case Russia has lost one of the genuine good guys and at a time when they need all the good guys they can get.

There are no indications as to who carried out the murder or why.

R.I.P. Mr.Yushenkov.

That people who hate Anglosphere capitalist civilization should make common cause with a mass murdering tyrant is interesting but to anyone who has spent years observing the incoherence of 'progressive socialism' it is hardly a surprise.

What is a surprise is that Vladimir Putin has shown that not only is the Russian state still the enemy, its leaders are not nearly as smart as I had given them credit for, given they have been caught having given active support to the Ba'athists even to the extent of acting as an employment agency for assassins on their behalf.

To have squandered such a large pool of political capital and good will by continuously passing intelligence and weapons to the Iraqis right up to the start of the war is utter madness. Did the Russians think any outcome was possible in the long run other than an Allied victory over the Ba'athist regime? And surely once that fact is grasped, how could they think that news of their treachery would not eventually come to light?

What possible benefit could the Russian state gain from this move? Is this going to make honouring Russian contracts with the fallen Ba'athist regime more likely or less likely in US dominated post-war Iraq? Were they hoping Putin's good buddy Tony Blair would pressure the Americans into a softer line regarding Russian economic interests in Iraq? If so, I wonder how Blair feels about his private diplomatic conversations being relayed to the Iraqis by the Russian intelligence services.

It is a terrible thing to live in a world filled with enemies, but if Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussain are the measure of our foes then at least we can comfort ourselves that we are facing opponents who are not just weak, they are self-deluded and quite frankly stupid.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Tuesday that it was unlikely Moscow would abstain on a U.N. vote on authorizing war against Iraq and strongly indicated it will use its Security Council veto to stop it if necessary.

At a joint news conference with Jack Straw yesterday the Russian softened his stance slightly. "The Iraqi issue is one that is unlikely that one of us would abstain...We have not ruled out using a veto over the crisis."

The French/Chirac's interests in Iraq have already been examined in some detail but I am yet to see a comparable analysis of the Russian motives. At the moment it seems that Russia is giving itself ample room to support America and Britain in future military action despite declaring its opposition to war in Iraq.

It is clear that Moscow expects to extract maximum amount for its support of military action in the UN. Perhaps the price has not been high enough. They will want guarantees that Russia's economic interests in Iraq will be preserved, particularly its contracts to develop rich oil fields once sanctions are lifted.

Also, Iraq is one of Russia's traditional allies. Russian hardware makes up 95 per cent of Iraq's arms and the two developed strong ties in Soviet times. It is hard to believe that they do not see that they would be much better off supporting the US and the UK in its strategy.

The problem seems to be not only the Russian government's need to protect huge investments and deals already made but also its inability to recognise that the kind of blackmail Iraqis are trying on them, is not necessarily 'understood' by the Bush administration.

Last year, a week before Christmas, a row broke out between Russia and Iraq when Baghdad declared "null and void" a �200 billion deal with Lukoil to develop the West Qurna oil field.

Russia's energy and foreign ministries reacted furiously to the news. Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, said the cancellation was to punish Lukoil for negotiating with America over its future interests in the region. Given Iraq's record, the cancellation of the deal was probably a crude attempt to blackmail Moscow into offering greater diplomatic support during the crucial developments in the UN in the coming months.

At that time Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, called for talks on the deal. If America had offered Moscow the guarantees it was seeking for Lukoil, the balance of power (or rather of obstructiveness) might have looked rather different today. Russia's aim is to get the US to convince it that Saddam's downfall would be to its economic advantage. Or in other words, pay them now or in future lucrative contracts, or else. Who said that the UN was a street market of sordid bargains?

Update: Earlier today on MTV, Mr Blair said that in a post-conflict Iraq, the country's oil should go into a UN supervised reserve which would be for the benefit of the Iraqi people. Oh dear, oh dear...

It now apears that the number of victims of the Moscow theatre siege has risen to 117. It also appears that all the victims were killed by the gas that was used to overcome their terrorist captors.

Unarguably that is a terrible price to pay but I am forced to agree with Dale Amon that the Russian authorities had no other plausible options open to them. Faced with not being able to win them all, they settled for not losing them all. Decisions do not come any harder than that.

Negotiations, however framed, were a non-starter. To even commence them would be, and be seen as, a capitulation; a reward to the terrorists for their audacity and enterprise and a guarantee that every public venue in the civilised world would, henceforth, be eyed hungrily for the prospect of a repeat performance. Negotiations don't always save lives.

Like it or not, the Russians have now established the template for dealing with these situations and, regardless of the whining in the mainstream media, it's a template that will be followed, albeit improved upon. It is also a message to every terrorist nutjob in the world that all they can expect in return for their 'heroic' efforts is a miserable, pointless death. I wonder how many other planned terrorist 'operations' of this nature are, even now, being hastily reconsidered? The much-feared Russian proclivity for brazen ruthlessness has, for once, worked both in their favour and ours.

They have a saying in Russia: if you're going to die, then die with music. It means go out with a bang, go down fighting, make sure your death has meaning. Whilst it will not constitute even a meagre crumb of comfort for the bereaved, I do not believe their loved ones died in vain. By their tragic deaths, many, many others might avoid an equally grisly fate.

I cannot bring myself to glorify an event which led to the deaths of so many people who went out to enjoy a musical evening. But I think it appropriate to pay them tribute by acknowledging that they died with music.

That 80 or more hostages have been killed is dreadful but the fact 750 were saved is a triumph.

But there are some very stark lessons here.

In 1995, a related Chechen group took over 2000 people hostage in a hospital in Budyonnovsk. After an initial attempt to free the hostages was botched with considerable loss of life by the Russian forces, a deal was cut by then Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin that agreed a cease-fire in the Chechen war and allowed the hostage takers to escape in return for the safety of their captives.

And of course that was proof that you can indeed get the Russians to cut a deal if you are daring enough and willing to slaughter enough innocent civilians.

Well I hope that Vladimir Putin has just signalled a complete rejection of that mind set. As terrible as it is that so many hostages have died, the fact is the Chechen terrorists who did this are now either dead or facing a very grim time indeed in a Russian jail... and were given nothing for their pains by the Russians. That is the only message that must be sent to terrorists everywhere, to do otherwise is to motivate such people to cause more horrors in theatres, hospitals and homes. The enemy may not fear death itself but I suspect they do indeed fear pointless death.

So whatever the cost, in the long run it is cheaper in lives to never negotiate (other than as a tactical ruse). Give them the death they desire but nothing that would further their aims, no matter how small.

My initial hopes, that the storming of a theatre just outside Moscow (the name of which doesn't appear to be published anywhere, incidentally) by a gang of heavily-armed Chechenhawks was merely the execution of a piece of bizarre and shocking performance art, have now ebbed away.

"I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living,"

"Even if we are killed, thousands of brothers and sisters will come after us, ready to sacrifice themselves," said a female among the group, only her eyes peering from a head-to-toe black robe."

As substitute for hope, I now have the tangibly queasy feeling that this is all going to end very badly.

I am back from Slovakia now, and had a lovely time thanks. On my final weekend, while football related mayhem reigned in Bratislava, I took a trip northwards to the Czech countryside. I was shown several fine churches, but the most intriguing item of my stay did not involve any sightseeing trips, at any rate not by me. It concerned, rather, one of my host's first cousins, a man called Karel Krautgartner.

Krautgartner was Czecho-Slovakia's answer to Benny Goodman, that is to say a hugely accomplished jazzman who could also more than hold his own in the classical repertoire, on clarinet, saxophone and all related instruments. My host played me a videotape of a Czech TV documentary recently shown to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Krautgartner's death. He looked like a James Bond villain, and played sublimely. He didn't seem to have been a huge creative musical force. But he was a great band leader and organiser, who inserted successive jazz innovations from America into Czech musical life, and who added middle-European technical polish and discipline to everything he touched.

Krautgartner was only about sixty when he died, of cancer of the colon, in West Germany. He had emigrated there on account of his unwillingness, following the suppression of the Prague Spring of the late nineteen sixties in which he had played a prominent part, to become a Soviet stooge. Concerning Krautgartner's death my host told me a fascinating and terrible story, which was not mentioned in the documentary, but which my host had learned through being personally acquainted with many of the personalities involved.

Somewhere in the Urals, during the nineteen fifties, a nuclear bomb went off by mistake in a research laboratory, devastating the entire surrounding region, with, as you can imagine, appalling loss of life.

The USSR, being the USSR, decided a few years later, in the early sixties, to start repopulating the area, and damn the consequences in terms of human disease, which were appalling too. The USSR was no lover of jazz, but it was willing to use jazz for its own higher purposes, such as to add a dash of glamour to an otherwise wholly dreadful human environment where it nevertheless wanted people to live, and so various showbiz acts were despatched to the area, including a jazz band lead by Karel Krautgartner. And, according to my host, Krautgartner wasn't the only one to die at about the age of sixty, of cancer. They all did. That's right. The entire band later died prematurely of cancer. And this after a visit lasting hardly more than a few days.

Now I don't understand the technicalities of thermo-nuclear pollution, but it seems that it is not something that is evenly spread. It concentrates itself in particular places where it finds it particularly easy to hang around, and as a result there was one happy exception to the collective, delayed death sentence that the band later found itself condemned to.

One of the band members took a more, let us say, American jazzman's view of his responsibilities, and passed on the sight-seeing aspect of the trip, choosing instead to stay stuck in his hotel room consuming a continuous supply of cigarettes and alcohol. As a result he lived about a decade longer than the others.

I love that. A man's life is prolonged by his addiction to alcohol and nicotine. True, he eventually died of throat cancer brought on by smoking too much, but even so: hurrah!! Smoking And Drinking Can Sometimes Seriously Protect Your Health.

I treasure this story, because it seems to me to sum up, in a way that is downright artistic, the whole multi-faceted achievement that was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics � its obsession with punching militarily above its weight, its proneness to huge accidents; its indifference to human life, including human lives appropriated from far away countries; its hatred of everything popular and western but its willingness to succumb to such things for its own over-ridingly vile purposes; the spectacular poisoning of the environment, far, far beyond the worst of the petty pollutions committed by Western corporate capitalism; the way that the most intelligent thing to do if you got swallowed up in it was to get blind drunk; and the way that it all eventually collapsed amidst a hurricane of plummeting life-expectancy statistics. It's all there. (Only the arctic death camps are missing, but they've been well covered by others.) And I treasure being a Samizdatan and having somewhere to put the story.

What I don't know is how well known it already is. My host reckoned this hadn't been written about before, not with regard to these particular musicians anyway. But there must be a mass of reportage of the explosion itself and general surrounding miseries, especially now that the USSR's successor government has finally admitted that the thing did happen. Samizdata readers are pretty hot on the technicalities of weaponry, so maybe there'll be some good comments and the story will grow somewhat. I hope so. It's important to keep reminding ourselves what a good thing it was that the Cold War was won, mostly without severe explosions, by Civilisation rather than by its opponents.

(Come to think of it, fellow Samizdatan Dale Amon knows about weapons and about this kind of music, the way I know about neither. I wonder what he may have to tell us.)

The Blogger Bash is tonight, so I got myself in the party mood this morning by reading how David Farrer of Freedom and Whisky had responded to Adriana's griefometer posting.

He tried it on Soviet Communism, but deliberately took it all a bit seriously and tastefully, ignoring for example how very uncute lots of the victims of Soviet Communism were.

Now, this griefometer is just a silly game, isn't it? A bit sick perhaps? Well, consider this: 100 million killed over 80 years is about 3,422 per day. Or one "World Trade Centre". Every day for 80 years.

What's really sick is that the communists' ideological soulmates infest almost every academic institution in the western world. And I am still waiting for them to apologise.

Have a nice weekend.

Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who opposed both the Nazis and the Red Army (whom they regarded as occupying Russians) from 1942 until they were largely crushed by the communists in 1953, are to be accorded the same rights as former Red Army veterans by the Ukrainian government. It is interesting that the Russian government regards this as an affront even after all these years, calling the UPA 'bandits' for having the audacity to defend the Ukraine against all comers.

However although the UPA opposed both the Soviets and Nazis, they were also implicated in the mass murder of Poles and Jews and do not really fit comfortably into the 'clearly-the-good-guys' category, a fact surprisingly absent from several reports on the recent hostile reaction by the Russian government to the Ukrainian decision to grant surviving UPA veterans full military pensions.

On my recent holiday in France I took with me a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the one by D. M. Thomas (subtitled "A Century in His Life", first published Little, Brown and Company, 1998). Before that I had been reading Solzhenitsyn's own The Oak and the Calf (which came out in 1975), and now I'm reading his Invisible Allies, which came out in 1995.

These latter two books are Solzhenitsyn's answer to the question: "How on earth did you do it?" The first puts Solzhenitsyn's own exploits centre stage. The second names some of the many names that could finally be named safely, without endangering lives. He did a lot himself. And he had a lot of help.

It was partly being a contributor to Libertarian "Samizdata" that prodded me into this reading burst. I quite understand why Perry gave the name "Libertarian Samizdata" to Libertarian Samizdata � messages that go under the radar and past the editorial defences of the official statist oriented big media, and so forth. Nevertheless I do feel a bit uneasy decking myself out in the word that originally meant people risking their very lives, all day, every day, for years on end, copying and distributing the real Russian literature of those times. The worst that can happen to us is a few hostile e-mails.

This reading has, of course, stimulated a million thoughts, but one thought in particular relates to Adriana Cronin's point about how Stalin, his henchmen, his successors and his middle managerial puppets throughout the Soviet empire were prone to believe their own bullshit.

Simply: Why didn't they just kill him? Solzhenitsyn was making a monumental nuisance of himself. So why, as soon as he started doing this seriously, didn't they just take him out the back of somewhere private and have him shot? They had their chances, as Solzhenitsyn himself relates.

There are many reasons. Western "pressure" was indeed crucial. And Solzhenitsyn was a literary and political tactician of genius. This was no dreamy, socially dyslexic wimp we're talking about. This was a man who, until they arrested him for being incompletely reverent about Stalin, was a highly effective and courageous Red Army artillery officer, and the military metaphor he uses to describe his "battles" with Soviet officialdom is relentless and entirely appropriate. He writes particularly memorably in The Oak and the Calf of "encounter battles", involving not only him and his Soviet enemies, but also, operating independently, the dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov.

But here's another reason they didn't kill him. They didn't kill him because killing him would have contradicted their idea of what they thought they were doing.

It wasn't just "idiot savants" (D. M. Thomas' killer phrase) like Jean Paul Sartre and his ilk who swallowed Soviet lies about happy smiling people marching joyfully into the cornfields and the steel factories; they believed this drivel themselves, if not as a complete fact exactly, then certainly as an aspiration. To have killed Solzhenitsyn would have been to admit to themselves that all this socialism-with-a-human-face nonsense was indeed nonsense, and that they were just old-fashioned, self-serving tyrants whose rule was based on brute force and nothing else.

Looking at the larger picture, the tendency to believe their own lies was a major part, not only of their failure to handle the likes of Solzhenitsyn, but of their failure period. The Soviet Empire fell apart because it was founded not only on the deception of others, but on self-deception self-inflicted by and on its own rulers. They didn't, in the end, con us. Not enough of us, anyway. But they did con themselves.

This morning on the tube (a mode of shifting vast crowds of people from one place to another, aspiring to the name of London's underground transport system) the person sitting next to me was drowsing over an article in an issue of today's newspaper called The Soviet threat was a myth. That really caught my attention so I spent the rest of the journey trying to work out which newspaper was gently resting on my neighbour's lap. Many furtive glances later I discovered it was The Guardian, a left-wing (to put it mildly) daily. Shock horror but no surprises there with regard to the title then... Nevertheless, I was intrigued and decided to read the online version as soon as I could get to my computer.

The conclusion of the argument was predictable and I am now torn between a point to point response to Andrew Alexander, the author of the article, who apparently is writing a whole book on the subject and just a few well placed words of wisdom, backed up by my personal experience, that would put him in his place. Something tells me that the latter approach would not satisfy the discerning Samizdata audience, so I will briefly highlight the most contentious of Mr Alexander's statements and assumptions.

The conclusion that Stalin had no intention of attacking the West and that therefore the West is to blame for the Cold War just doesn't hold. Just because the orthodox view of the Cold war as a 'struggle to the death between Good (Britain and America) and Evil (the Soviet Union)' may seem today as a simplistic 'Manichean doctrine', it does not follow that the Soviet Union's actions such as installing communist governments throughout central and eastern Europe can be interpreted merely as a frightened response of the war-weary Russia to the speeches made by Churchill (the Iron Curtain speech of March 1946) and Truman (the phrase 'stand up to Stalin with an iron fist').

There are two lines of reasoning employed by those who challenge the Cold War orthodoxy, often combined to achieve greater emphasis. One is examination of the internal ideological struggles of Stalin with Trotsky and other opponents within the communist camp such as Tito and Mao to point out that Stalin was not driven by ideology. The logic blind spot is obvious here - Stalin's version may have been different from the others but not necessarily less virulent and aggressive. And so, this flimsy and unsupported conclusion is then applied to his foreign policy and in combination with the realpolitik school of thought used to argue that Soviet Russia was acting in its national interest. The forceful communisation of central and eastern Europe is transformed to a natural reaction of a state defending its territory and security. By extension, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were necessary as part of the 'cordon sanitaire' around Russia and the invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, however brutal, were 'aimed at protecting Moscow's buffer zone'.

Where does one start?! Rather than getting into a detailed discussion about the validity and interpretations of this or that surviving historical evidence of Stalin's world view (which I plan to do anyway at some stage), I think it is important to point out the power of one's own propaganda, especially when carried out in the Soviet proportions. Most students of communism tend to forget that it may be impossible to resist such intense and pervasive 'brainwashing' (including your own) without a deeply rooted alternative world view. So, how can we assume that Stalin was not susceptible to the effects of his own megalomaniac personality cult? Here my personal experience comes in handy as I remember only too well how insulation and ignorance create a breeding ground for a warped perception of reality and how those who perpetuate it fall victims to their own lies. Therefore, to attribute a perspective of an international relations academic to a dictator of Stalin's calibre who wielded an 'unlimited power' over human lives using an elaborate ideology and a totalitarian regime is at best naive, at worst... well, let's not be beastly to the Guardianistas in this enlightened day and age...

The most we can acknowledge is that there is no hard evidence (as yet) to prove or disprove the claims that Stalin had a masterplan for invasion of Europe and that only the determination of the West had prevented the Red Russia from taking over the world. However, to say that 'any post-war Russian government - communist, tsarist or social democratic - would have insisted on effective control at least of Poland, if not of larger areas of eastern Europe, as a buffer zone against future attacks' as Mr Alexander does, is just plain wrong, bordering on a serious lapse of judgement. The balance of power argument cannot possibly apply in the case of democratic Russia, as Germany, the main threat to Russian security, had been defeated by democratic countries and subjected to forceful democratisation by the US. The only way such an argument can be made, is if it contains an implicit assumption that communism is a morally equivalent (or morally neutral) alternative to the Western democratic regimes. Welcome back to meta-context!

And meta-context is where I want to remain for the moment in the Cold War debate as I do believe that its origins are not as clear as the orthodox or revisionist interpretations would have us believe. The methodology of discovering the causes of the Cold War is crucial as I believe this period of history to be steeped in meta-contextual clashes and misperceptions. This is not to ignore the moral dimension, far from it, but merely separate it from the rubble of the usual academic discourse that hides so many skeletons in its own meta-contextual closet.

I always believed that I would have to live a very, very long time indeed to witness better laws in Russia than we have in Britain. Well, I am a mere sapling of 40 and, to my not inconsiderable amazement, that day has arrived.

"On Friday the State Duma passed amendments to the Criminal Code that are to increase the rights of the Russians for self-defense. For example, a new norm has appeared: "if an attack has posed a threat to the life, the harm to the assailant can not be treated as a crime"

Contrast this to the situation in Britain, where, despite a right to self-defence being enshrined in law, the police act with almost indecent haste against any citizen that manages to successfully take advantage of it. And, lest we forget, British citizens may have this wonderful theoretical right to self-defence but they are forbidden to wield so much as a toothpick to exercise it with.

I would like to believe that this change of heart by Russian politicians has come about as a result of some great degree of enlightenment but the truth seems far more prosaic.

"The crime rate has considerably increased in Russia, and law enforcement authorities fail to cope with it. The passing of the amendments means, the government, probably rather unwillingly, has to shift the defense of lives on the people themselves"

Facts on the ground have a knack of knocking high-minded ideals off of their lofty perches. If people feel themselves to be in danger they will defend themselves regardless of what the laws say and that puts politicians in a dilemma: do they preside over a state of mass disobedience and resultant loss of legitimacy or do they relent and give the people what they demand?

The answer from Russia seems to be that they relent and give the people what they demand. But, we all know what people are like; give them an inch they demand a mile. Now that Boris and Irina have a meaningful right to defend themselves they will beg the question, what with? How long, I wonder, until the State Duma is 'reluctantly' allowing Russians the right to bear arms?

A point of principle all Libertarians understand as a given is that self-defence is a right not a licence. It it is not within the gift of politicians either to bestow it or expropriate it. But I would be churlish to nitpick over this news. Given the way Russia was ruled just a few short years ago, I can only applaud enthusiastically.

And thus, when the pseudo-democratic authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin, notable for crushing the free press in Russia, come out in favour of gun-control (victim disarmament) advocates in America, it becomes clear that supporters of well armed liberty are well and truly on the right track. According to World Net Daily, our liberty loving Russian 'friends' have done exactly that

Russia supports restrictions on U.S. gun ownership, according to official sources, pointing out that after the events of Sept. 11 gun sales in the United States increased. The blame for increased gun sales, according to Moscow and anti-gun activists, lies with gun manufacturers.

"American firearms manufacturers saw their chance at profiting from the tragedy of people scared of threats from international terrorists," Moscow declared. Asserting that "a nationwide campaign has been launched to advertise pistols and guns," Moscow referred to a recent press conference held to "draw attention to gun makers' marketing efforts." The event included participation by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice.

The statements were reported by the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.

I can only assume that this is actually a plot by unknown well meaning NRA sympathisers within the Russian establishment, because I can hardly imagine a better way of encouraging a surge in US civilian gun acquisition than 'The Official Russian State Media does not want you to own weapons'. Superb. Well done, Vlad. I knew you were on our side really.