Russia: "Anonymous Bomb" and "Random Scapegoats" of Domodedovo

Global Voices Online
Thursday, January 27, 2011

In the aftermath of the Jan. 24 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, which killed at least 35 people and left over 100 wounded, some Russophone bloggers are once again discussing the ominous patterns that grow more and more obvious with each new major terror attack in Russia.

LJ user dolboeb posed two questions (RUS) to his readers on Jan. 25: "Who must be held responsible for the terror attack at Domodedovo?" and "Who will be held responsible for the terror attack at Domodedovo?" More than 3,000 people have responded so far, and below are the current results (RUS) of this poll:

Who must be held responsible for the terror attack at Domodedovo?

The airport's managers - 941 (13.2%)

Interior Ministry's bosses - 1,944 (27.4%)

Domodedovo region's authorities - 165 (2.3%)

Police and security service officers who where on duty at the airport at the time of the attack - 1,420 (20.0%)

The country's leaders - 2,086 (29.4%)

Ramzan Kadyrov - 551 (7.8%)

***

Who will be held responsible for the terror attack at Domodedovo?

Nobody - 784 (26.5%)

Random scapegoats - 2,091 (70.7%)

Everyone who is to blame - 83 (2.8%)

@akazakov linked (RUS) to a blog post by LJ user graf-alter, written right after the Moscow subway blasts of March 29, 2010:

http://bit.ly/dOZf0r - observations made after the subway blasts, nine months ago. Fits today's situation 100%, every single letter of it.

Here is some of what LJ user graf-alter wrote (RUS) back in March 2010:

Explosions in our country have a number of special features [...]:

- Following a terror attack, no one claims responsibility for it, and no demands are being made. Which is very unusual compared to the practice of terror elsewhere in the world. Because we know the names of all sorts of Basque, Palestinian and other terrorist groups due to the well-established phrasing used in the news: "a blast occurred in the city of NN; terrorist group NN has claimed responsibility for it, demanding NN." Here, bombs are anonymous.

- Investigation usually declares certain bandits already killed in the course of a "special operation" as masterminds of the explosion. [...]

- Rarely, investigations of explosions reach trial stage. These trials appear very pathetic and unconvincing. The names of those who ordered [the attack] never surface, and only those who carried it out - not the principal players, though - end up being named. Information revealed during the hearing about the suspects' contacts with the secret services is somehow never of interest to the court. As the hearing proceeds, cases against lawyers who "attempted to bribe the investigators," etc., are being opened. [...]

- Explosions usually occur during periods when the secret services' position weakens or when they are being criticized by the public. Or before the elections.

[...]

An old, scratched vinyl record, it's making hissing sounds but continues to play.

A few dozen souls who had nothing to do with this music are off to heaven again.

And here is a post (RUS) written by the same blogger after the Domodedovo Airport blast:

[...] "God, forgive me for my personal daily contribution to the filling made of hatred that this bomb contained."

This is how it should sound in a society of thoughtful, mature people. A utopia, of course. An ideal. [...]

A utopia, indeed.

On Jan. 25, Moscow-based LJ user nataly-kuzmina re-posted a highly disturbing YouTube video that was initially shared on Jan. 22 by LJ user azadovsky (who describes himself as a Moscow-born, Moscow-based "Russian"). The video features a little boy, who is wearing a "Chechnya: Resisting the Russian Invasion" t-shirt (these words are written in Turkish: "Çeçenistan: Rus İşgaline Direniyor") - and is talking to an unseen adult male, saying this (as quoted by nataly-kuzmina), among other things:

Would you like an ice cream or a gun? - A gun!
What do you need a gun for? - To kill Russians!

The blogger concludes:

[...] Is there anyone else here who still wishes to be tolerant? [...]

In another post-Domodedovo bombing entry, she writes:

[...] I don't want to, I'm scared to live in this country. There's nothing to lose here, except life. And it's easy to life here - the state is working hard on it [...].

And here is what LJ user z-abdullaeva - a Moscow-based woman, too, whose "roots" (RUS), however, are in Dagestan, and who grew up in Grozny, Chechnya - wrote right after the news of the Jan. 24 attack began to appear:

35 people [dead]

On blogs, they are talking about 70.

I'm waiting.

I don't feel like reading anything.

Our [folks from the Caucasus] will now turn out [to be responsible for the attack] again.

Suitcase - train station - Canada?

* Mood: pessimistic

And a couple more comments from the same blogger and one of her LJ friends:

z_abdullaeva:

Here they're always eager to have us, people from the Caucasus, to bear the collective responsibility...

***

greenarine:

Tell me, how do they immediately recognize a North Caucasian appearance on a thoroughly blown-up person? He must have left a Quran with Russian translation somewhere nearby, right? And a passport with Grozny registration.

Will have to move stealthily around the city again for a while.

z_abdullaeva:

[...] I'd also like to make some noise about this issue, but I know that my fellow countrymen are capable of this. Alas. I don't have any illusions about it...

Shura Burtin writes more (RUS) on the issue of "anonymous bombs" on his blog at the Russkiy Reporter news magazine, explaining that it's now crucial to get "people to start talking, not shooting" at each other:

I had already expressed this seditious idea - that it's necessary to negotiate with rebel fighters. The answer was ["No"]. I feel that this is a completely irresponsible type of morality, and people who talk this way couldn't care less about those who were killed and their families. Moreover, it's nothing but a substitution of notions, because the original meaning of this principle is that the terrorists' demands shouldn't be met - in order not to encourage new acts of terror. But the problem here is that it's been a long time since suicide bombers from the Caucasus demanded anything from us.

We should realize that a civil war has been going on for many years in our country, in the North Caucasus - almost like in Afghanistan or Iraq. And it's not a metaphor. According to the data from open sources, 1,710 people were killed and wounded in armed confrontations in 2010. And these figures have been deliberately understated [...].

[...]

The Russian society has to decide what we want: war or peace. If we want peace, then the process of making peace has to begin. And there's only one way to make peace - which is to start making peace. [...] The state has to stop thinking in the "us vs them" terms, it has to recognize this conflict as social insanity that has to be treated. It's important to understand that all parties in this war are Russian citizens. The reason for this war isn't the mythical international terrorism, but our own domestic conflict. This is a tragedy, a mistake, a result of the lack of dialogue and mutual understanding between segments of our society. All parties in this conflict have their own truth - and the task is to help them reach a consensus. [...]

Olga Allenova - LJ user allenova, a special correspondent for the Kommersant daily, author of Chechnya is Close: War Through the Eyes of a Woman (RUS), a collection of the 1999-2007 war reportage from Russia's North Caucasus region - has not yet written anything about the Domodedovo tragedy on her blog. But she returned from a trip to Dagestan on Jan. 21, just a few days before the airport blast, and posted a short entry (RUS) about the oppressive atmosphere there and how the local people are coping with it:

I'm back from Dagestan, feeling as if I was at a war - but didn't get to see the war itself. I saw people who had someone [from the family] killed. Saw machine guns in the hands of plainclothes special forces officers. I was shocked by a story told by my good acquaintance Timur: his friend Magomed's brother, a riot police officer, had been killed, and on the day his brother's body was brought home, Timur's neighbors were also awaiting a body - of the man who had killed Magomed's brother. Timur says he feels that the ring keeps narrowing, and the war is now right outside his house.

But if you are driving around the republic, everything looks quiet. People are selling things at the market, go shopping, get married, have children. Perhaps, this is the meanest type of war, when you don't see the actual threat.

What shocked me most was that people remained human even in such conditions. Hospitable, polite, well-mannered - most of the people I met were like this. Even those not very educated - village police officers, for example - but they were still very friendly.

I asked one - "How do you live here, why aren't you leaving?" (he does have a place to go). He replied: "Sooner or later we'll all die, and it's better [to die] at home while trying to do something [good], rather than somewhere far away, like a vegetable."

There is something to learn from the Dagestanis.

Russia: Reflections on the Subway Bombings and Politics

Global Voices Online
Monday, April 5, 2010

It's been a week since the March 29 bombings on the Moscow subway, which killed 40 people and left over 100 injured. Below is a sampling from an ongoing discussion by Russophone bloggers.

LJ user matiutia wrote (RUS) about an encounter with Moscow police officers on the day of the attacks:

I'm on my way to work. One subway station is closed. I move to another one. At the entrance, I'm stopped by the cops. Six of them or so.

- Your documents.
- [Don't have them] (left them in another bag)
- Are you registered [here in Moscow]?
- [Propiska - the record of place of residence]. Bolshoi Karetnyi Pereulok.

(They talk to each other for a while):

- Detention until identification.
- Well, come on, she's alive, that means she's not a [suicide bomber], come on...

(To me)

- Any identification documents.
(I unbutton my coat, take out my [Christian] cross):
- The only ID that I've got.
- You're free to go.

LJ user dolboeb commented (RUS) on the official response to the attacks:

[President Dmitry Medvedev] has decided to spend some time fighting terrorism.

Considering the background of our jurisprudent, we should not be surprised that all countermeasures he has come up with are not practical (scanners, cameras, dogs, instructing the population, international cooperation), but exclusively legalistic. What's needed, it turns out, is to reconsider the articles in the criminal code that relate to terrorists, and the bad [shahids] will get scared right away.

"It is reasonable to revisit issues related to the proper administration of justice under terrorist legislation – under the 'terrorism' and related crimes article - and to talk about the need to improve such practices," said the head of state.

I wonder how it is possible to improve the practice of law enforcement under terror articles in order to punish, finally, those two female suicide bombers whose body parts have allegedly been found on Monday on the Moscow subway? How to optimize measures of penitentiary influence on the two [female suicide bombers] who blew themselves up [on board of the planes on August 24, 2004]? How should the articles in the [criminal code and the criminal procedures code] be corrected? Perhaps, some afterlife punishment provisions should be added to them?

[two photos of the dead perpetrators of the 2002 Moscow theater siege, also known as the Nord-Ost hostage crisis]

It would also be interesting to find out whether the extermination of the Nord-Ost [female suicide bombers] (who were killed while unconscious by shots in the head) helped obtain data on their accomplices, [those who ordered the siege], funding sources, or the circumstances of preparing for the terrorist act. Did the "improved practice" used on their commander [Movsar Barayev] (a shot in the head and a bottle of cognac placed into the corpse's left hand) help prevent [the 2004 bombing at Rizhskaya subway station], the double bombing of the planes that flew out of [Domodedovo airport in Moscow], and [the Beslan school siege]?

[...]

LJ user maratguelman wrote this (RUS):

Unfortunately, we do not trust the results of the investigations into the previous terrorist acts. We are either not shown these results, or we are shown the corpses of the terrorists. But practically, there hasn't been a single trial whose materials one can look at and say - "we understand who and why carried out this terrorist act." This is a fact. Hence the theories [implicating the Federal Security Service, FSB]. [...]

http://community.livejournal.com/ru_politics/28956469.html Here they are discussing why [the terrorists] aren't targeting FSB as they take revenge for [militant Said Buryatsky], but instead attack peaceful Muscovites. As if terrorism is a declared war whose goal is to destroy an opponent. It's not the opponents that they are after, but innocent victims. [...]

When Sasha Brener [performance artist Aleksander Brener], in response to the [invasion] of Chechnya, challenged [Boris Yeltsin] to a fight at [Lobnoye Mesto on Red Square], the police did not interfere for half an hour and only after all the [TV] cameras were done shooting him, he was arrested. When I was picking him up from the police department, I asked them - why? Why didn't they detain him right away - they couldn't have been scared of 50 students who stood in a circle around Brener. Their answer was this: well, maybe your crazy guy has just saved someone's life. They'll see over there in Chechnya that there is someone who is protesting against the war in Moscow.

[...]

LJ user yuozik made this political forecast (RUS):

[photo of president Dmitry Medvedev on the left, and of PM Vladimir Putin on the right]

Any terrorist act [...] is an operation carried out by special services. It may be carried out by a 50-year-old Chechen woman or even by a bear with a [balalaika] - not much difference. [...]

And today I'm interested in only one thing - whose special forces have been working today? Of the one who is on the left? Or of the one who is on the right?

[...] The algorithm of what happens next will allow us to understand just how horrible the current situation in the Russian Federation is. [...] Because no matter how sad it may sound, we've arrived to the point where the two heads of the eagle on [the Russian coat of arms] (also, a reference to the so-called Putin-Medvedev "tandem") are trying to devour one another to get on top.

[...]

1. If this was done by the new president's special services, then in the nearest future we'll see the weakening of the positions of [Chechnya's president Ramzan Kadyrov]. [...]

2. If this was the work of the team of the ex-president in co-authorship with the current president of Chechnya, then it is possible to expect a real bloodbath in the nearest months. [...]

Then the goal of today's terrorist attack is to intimidate the president of the Russian Federation and his young, reform-minded team. [...]

Georgia, Russia: Cyber Attacks on Blogger 'Cyxymu'

Global Voices Online
Sunday, August 9, 2009

A year ago, the Russo-Georgian war coincided with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, diverting some of the public attention from the peaceful sporting event. This week, cyber attacks on LiveJournal, Twitter and Facebook, targeting Tbilisi-based LJ/Twitter/Facebook user cyxymu, have added an extra dimension to the coverage of the first anniversary of the war - and even re-focused it to some extent.

Initially, the Russo-Georgian connection was not evident. On Aug. 6, LJ user mhwest posted this note (ENG) in the lj_maintenance LJ community, announcing that the blogging platform was "under attack":

Wonderful World of DDoS

As some of you may know, LiveJournal has been under attack this morning from 6:00am PST until ??? We have taken steps to mitigate the DDoS but some users may still experience site connectivity problems. [...]

This post has received over 250 comments, but there is only a handful of mentions of the geopolitical cause for the outages. Here is a sampling:

lavvyan - Aug. 6:

The Russians are coming!

No, wait...

[...]

nysidra - Aug. 7:

I remembered seeing this comment yesterday.

Just so you know, you were right. ^_^

Twitter's Meltdown: Blame the Russians

Also on Aug. 7, Eternal Remont quoted from a BBC piece (ENG), explaining the situation:

Yesterday, as blood poured down from the heavens, the seas boiled and the Earth was ripped apart because of the Denial of Service attack against Google, Twitter and Facebook (“OMG, I can’t tweet about the fact that Twitter is down!) we pondered one alluring possibility: is Russia involved?

Maybe. We do know that the disruption of all social networking on the planet was directed at one person:

BBC: "The massively co-ordinated attack on websites including Google, Facebook and Twitter was directed at one individual, a pro-Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu… Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users." [...]

And so, on the eve of the first anniversary of the war, LJ user cyxymu - whose nickname is a latinized version of the Russian spelling of Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia - became a celebrity of sorts.

Cyrillic LJ users - diana-ledi, taki-net, markgrigorian and many others - reported (RUS) not being able to publish posts and comments containing cyxymu's nickname.

His primary LJ blog and two backups - cyxymu1 and cyxymu2 - are currently inaccessible (some of his recollections, however, were translated by Global Voices' author Lyndon in Oct. 2007 and July 2008: The War in Abkhazia - ‘Cyxymu' Remembers, and Abkhazia, Georgia: "Home.”)

Cyxymu also has a Blogger blog, Twitter account, a public Facebook page, and a Facebook group with more than 750 members, created by someone else to support his cause.

Evgeny Morozov of the Foreign Policy's Net.Effect blog wrote (ENG) that he'd been "calling attention to CYXYMU's problems for months now, and this brought no results." Here is Evgeny's take on the recent cyber attacks:

[...] In short, I think that the current wave of attacks had one objective: to flesh attackers' cyber-muscles by revealing the kind of leverage that CYXYMU's detractors have on the Internet's most popular sites. Make no mistake: these attacks on Twitter and Facebook were NOT about silencing him down or thwarting the distribution of information that would Kremlin feel uncomfortable. [...]

If you carefully look at CYXYMU's Twitter account (most of it in Russian), you will see that there is really no information of ANY political significance there. He's been tweeting since late December 2008, produced 41 updates, and most of them had nothing to do with politics (here are some typical updates: "Summer is good!", "Life is great! I am recalling all the jokes about mothers-in-law", "Oh those bureaucrats").

This is definitely not the kind of stuff that threatens Kremlin. [...] His blog is also somewhat of a news hub: he has done an amazing job of keeping his followers in the loop as to what happens in Abkhazia and Georgia, the two regions that are not exactly in the center of media attention (even in Russia). He's definitely NOT the blogosphere's version of Anna Politkovskaia; it is his opinions and visibility - rather than his revelations - that have made him an important target.

Thus, I think that the attackers' real goal was humiliation, not censorship (however, more on the censorship part at the very end). A secondary goal was to generate awe-inducing headlines about Russia's cyberpower all over the Web; there is no better way to do it these days than to make Twitter inaccessible for a few hours. [...]

Ostap Karmodi wrote (RUS, link via LJ user drugoi) that "the attackers" would have probably thought twice before doing what they did if only they had been capable of foreseeing the outcome of their attacks:

[...] The result of yesterday's attack is that cyxymu, so disliked by some hackers, has become known to the whole world. The Spanish El Pais has written about him, and the French Liberation, and the German Spiegel, and the British Guardian, and the American Washington Post, and the Japanese Yomiuri. In short, all the main papers of the world. Some of them have even done short interviews with cyxymu. From now on, if a conflict between Russia and Georgia breaks out again, the world media will know who to talk to.

From now on, cyxymu's opinion on Russian politics will be interesting to the whole world - the opinion of a person who caused a crash of a hundred million accounts is always interesting.

The day before yesterday cyxymu was known to no more than ten thousand people. Today he is known to - what's the audience of the world media? 500 million? A billion? And most of these people sympathize with him - people do tend to sympathize with victims of mass persecution. [...]

Here is one of Evgeny Morozov's theories on who might be behind the attacks:

[...] The amateurization of cyberwarfare has been one permanent feature of virtually all recent cyber-attacks that somehow implicated Russia; it may be part of a broader Kremlin effort to "crowdsource" its defenses and offenses to groups of nationalistic vigilantes, not just in cyberspace. Thus, recent news reports suggest that Nashi, Kremlin's youth arm, will soon be recruiting up to 100,000 problematic teenagers to form ARMED militia units that would patrol the streets. It would make some sense if they also invest into units of "cyber-vigilantes" who would be patrolling cyberspace, particularly given the rising importance of the Internet in Russia's public life. [...]

And LJ user dolboeb felt, too, that "the recent initiative to create street 'militia units' in Russia" and the idea to attack cyxymu's blogs could have originated from the same source. He wrote (RUS):

[...] Indeed, why would the regime torture itself, trying to come up with some general anti-internet laws, the way the naive Kazakhs and the old-fashioned Chinese did, when a pack of patriotically-minded thugs is close at hand, ready to crash any service or resource [as soon as they are ordered to (or even without being ordered to)]. [...]

LJ user drugoi pointed in a slightly different direction in this very short and sarcastic post (RUS):

A request

Comrade [officer], I've written a post about The Beatles. Will you allow me to publish it? There's not a single word about Georgia in it. Will you please turn off your hurdy-gurdy for five minutes?

(The Beatles post (RUS) is here, by the way - it commemorates the 40th anniversary of the famous Abbey Road photo.)

Russia: A Blogger's Review of "The Associate"

Global Voices Online
Thursday, May 28, 2009

About a month ago, Jost A Mon blog posted a “roundup of translated crime fiction consumed in April” - which included several books by writers from Central and Eastern Europe.

Below is a displeased Russian blogger's blitz review (RUS) of John Grisham's 21st novel, The Associate:

LJ user dolboeb/Anton Nossik - May 24, 2009

I've read Grisham's latest thriller, The Associate.

[Aleksandra Marinina, a best-selling Russian crime fiction author] also had one such detective novel, titled "An Unwilling Murderer."

The author makes up an [intricate] plot and sits down enthusiastically to write it out, twists plenty of plot lines and, closer to the middle of the narration, suddenly loses all interest in the manuscript, throws in an ellipsis in the most interesting spot, and in this form sends it off to the publisher. The publishers are probably somewhat [shocked] by such an avant-garde end, but business is business: where the reader expects a decisive battle of good against evil and the solution of all the mysteries, they hastily construct a final chapter about nothing, arrange the resulting half-a-novel in [huge] type, for [the book] to look thicker, and throw it out to the stores, where a multi-million army of the writer's fans diligently wipes the resulting half off the shelves for the price of a whole thriller.

And the funniest thing is that there is really no great difference between a thriller written to the end and one written to the middle. The goal - to grasp the reader's attention for a few hours on public transportation or at a beach - is achieved equally successfully [in both cases].

Israel, Lebanon: Russophone Bloggers Discuss Prisoner Exchange Deal

Global Voices Online
Monday, July 21, 2008

While some bloggers from the former Soviet Union take interest in the Middle Eastern affairs out of idle (or not so idle) curiosity, for others Israel is home, and so it's not surprising that the July 16 exchange of prisoners between Israel and Lebanon did not go unnoticed in the Russian-language blogosphere.

LJ user dolboeb - Anton Nossik, a Moscow-based Israeli citizen (RUS), widely known as a "Social Media Evangelist at SUP," the online media company that owns LiveJournal.com - posted this comment (RUS) on his blog on July 17:

Israel: Capitulation

Israelis today have exchanged [Samir Kuntar] for the remains of two soldiers who died in 2006.

The shame and disgust which I feel because of this deal are impossible to describe in words.

And for once, I don’t even have the moral right to reproach the nasty journalist of the International Herald Tribune who wrote this in his piece about Kuntar:

Samir Kuntar, will return to a hero's welcome when he crosses into Lebanon this week, 29 years after he left its shores in a rubber dinghy to kidnap Israelis from the coastal town of Nahariya.

That raid went horribly wrong, leaving five people dead, a community terrorized and a nation traumatized. Two Israeli children and their father were among those killed.

The straightforward message here is that the journalist does not see anything horribly wrong about the actual idea of kidnapping [Nahariya] residents by the terrorists, and that no tragedy would have occurred had Kuntar and his associates managed to kidnap this same family and take it away to Lebanon.

But how can we have a grudge against the American journo when both president [Shimon Peres] (who pardoned Kuntar) and prime minister [Ehud Olmert] (who secured a triumphal return to his [Hizbullah] comrades-in-arms for him) see nothing horribly wrong with how everything turned out to be in Nahariya 29 years ago.

In this connection, it seems relevant to mention that in 1985, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a whole ship, [Achille Lauro], with 400 passengers on board, also demanding freedom for Samir Kuntar. But 23 years ago, Israeli leadership had the balls. The ship was liberated and the terrorists captured. And this kept Palestinian militants from taking hostages again for a long time. Now, everything’s changed. And I’m afraid that the price that the whole Israel will have to pay for the shameful Samir Kuntar deal may turn out to be higher than what’s been paid for all the past adventures of Olmert and Peres.

This post has generated 344 comments. Below are bits of a discussion that, among other things, highlights the possible implications of the prisoner exchange deal for Gilad Shalit, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier who has been held hostage by Hamas since June 25, 2006:

igrok2:

Does it have to do with religion? That is, are the soldiers’ remains so valuable only from a religious point of view?

[...]

rjiyxapb:

First of all, they are priceless for the relatives of the killed ones, IMHO...

jerusalea:

Not really. In the Torah, there is even a prohibition to pay ransom for those who are alive if this is likely to lead to new kidnappings of Jews. It’s not about religion. At least, not about Judaism. And I can’t explain what kind of nonsense this is. My [LJ friends’ blogs] are full of a communal howling that this is just idiotic behavior. And two thirds of my [mutual LJ friends] are religious Jews. And everyone is ashamed and disgusted.

[...]

haraz_bey:

No, [it’s not about religion]. It’s just that no one knew for sure whether they were dead or alive - for Israel, this has been a blind exchange. If they had known for sure that there’d be dead bodies, they most likely would have canceled the exchange.

[...]

dolboeb:

I don’t know about everyone. But I knew that the deal was about the remains [of the soldiers]. I learned it from the open-access press. From the Russian press. I don’t believe that Olmert and Peres did not know.

haraz_bey:

Perhaps, Olmert and Peres don’t read the Russian press :) [That they were dead] was, of course, the most obvious assumption, and the press is always putting forward the gloomiest forecasts. But as long as their fate was unknown, there remained a chance that they would be alive.

[...]

yakov_sirotkin:

Actually, according to the Christian tradition, for example, to pardon criminals is not considered impossible. Nonetheless, I think that bandits should always be called bandits, even the pardoned ones, but I do not see any confirmation that the Israeli leadership is clearing the bandits of their guilt.

It’s sad to read comments with suggestions to kill someone - this will only result in a non-stop cycle of violence and terrorism.

As for the exchange of live human beings for the dead ones, the very fact of trade in corpses seems [barbarous].

dolboeb:

[...]

You’re looking in the wrong direction.

The problem isn’t in paying ransom for the corpses. The problem is in admission that we are ready to pay the same price for a live prisoner in the form of a corpse as what we would have paid had he been alive.

After such an admission, not a single reason remains to keep him alive. After such an admission, the price of [Gilad Shalit’s] life equals the daily cost of feeding him.

[...]

anreality:

IMHO, all this noise isn’t worth [...] the time wasted on it. A huge pile of [feces] has been taken out of my country, where it was being kept on my money, too, and the animal was being fed, educated and kept safe, instead of quietly rotting somewhere.

And no matter how you look at it, by announcing to the whole world that this creature is a hero, Hizbullah is not likely to draw more sympathizers, and even the current ones may possibly think twice.

And to return the soldiers by exchanging them for [feces] is good in any case.

And nothing but annihilation will take away their taste for taking hostages.

dolboeb:

It would be very good if you were there instead of Gilad Shalit.

But, unfortunately, this isn’t so.

In Gilad Shalit’s place is Gilad Shalit, a corporal of the Israel Defense Forces. And you are in the place of someone who is ready to pay for [Gilad Shalit’s] body as much as for a live soldier. Judging by how categorically you sound, you must be a [draft dodger].

It really would have been better the other way around.

[...]

anglofilka:

Somehow it seems to me that the Israelis are not done with this Kuntar story yet. One quiet summer night he’d just be shot somewhere, without any noise. This step, crazy from the perspective of sane people, has given Israel a huge advantage in the international political arena. And it has taken away many points from Hizbullah. Now it’s possible to bargain with America, there’s a moral right to strike Iran, etc. - everything will be tolerated. But, unfortunately, the life of Shalit is nothing but an exchangeable coin.

Russia: Savva Terentyev's Case

Global Voices Online
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

On July 7, Savva Terentyev, 22, a Russian blogger and musician from Syktyvkar, received a one-year suspended jail sentence for a comment (RUS) he posted on Feb. 15, 2007, on the blog of a local journalist Boris Suranov.

Here is a rough translation of the comment:

I hate cops [menty], [swear word omitted]

I don't agree with the thesis that "policemen still have the mentality of a repressive stick in the hands of the powers that be." First, they are cops [menty, not militsionery, a less respectful way to refer to police]. Second, their mentality isn't still here. It's simply ineradicable. Once a musor [a synonym for ment; non-slang meaning of the word is "trash"], always a musor, even in Africa. Those who become cops [menty] - rednecks and thugs - are the dumbest and least educated representatives of the live/animal world. Would be great if there was an oven, similar to those in Auschwitz, in the center of every Russian city, at the main square (in Syktyvkar, right in the center of Stefanovskaya, where the New Year's tree stands, so that everyone could see), and there'd be a daily ceremony - or, even better, twice a day (at noon and midnight, for example) - of burning a dishonest cop [ment] there. The people would be doing the burning. This would be the first step towards cleansing the society of the dirt that the thuggish cops are.

The court found Terentyev guilty of inciting enmity and publicly humiliating representatives of a social group (Article 282, part 1 of the Russian Federation's Criminal Code).

Here is a rough translation of a tiny part of the 12-page "guilty" verdict (RUS), posted by one of the defense witnesses, LJ user mezak, on his blog (the original of the passage below is on p. 11; the post also has photos of Terentyev, his defense team, and the judge reading the verdict; there are 376 comments to the post so far):

[...] Defendant Terentyev S.S. [Savva Sergeyevich], by means of the language, by having a negative impact on the public opinion and mood, and by aiming to incite social enmity and hatred, to escalate social conflict, to sharpen social contradictions, to awaken base instincts in people, contrasted the people and police officers, calling to [their] physical annihilation by the people. The text does not allow for ambiguous understanding and interpretation of [its] content and meaning, because it should be understandable to any average native speaker of Russian who has basic oral and written language skills. [...]

LJ user sholademi re-posted the verdict on his blog and added this note (RUS) at the end of his entry:

Hmm, it has to be noted that the court's verdict contains many orthographic mistakes. This, in addition to the legal side of the case (namely, the questionable linguistic analysis). In short, it's getting crazier and crazier.

In another post, LJ user sholademi posted a 5-question survey (RUS), explaining that Terentyev's defense team was planning to appeal the blogger's sentence and, among other things, would like to "find out how Savva Terentyev's case is going to affect the discussion environment in the Russian blogosphere." Below are the survey's results so far:

1. Before Savva Terentyev's case, were there many LJ bloggers who allowed themselves to speak harshly of law enforcement and other state institutions and officials?

a. Many bloggers made such statements - 842 (75.4%)

b. Only some bloggers made such statements - 233 (20.9%)

c. I've never encountered such statements on blogs - 41 (3.7%)

2. Before the verdict on Savva Terentyev's case, how often did you encounter harsh statements about law enforcement and other state institutions and officials on your friends feed?

а. Such statements were pretty frequent on my friends feed - 664 (59.7%)

b. Such statements were pretty rare on my friends feed - 347 (31.2%)

c. Such statements were never present on my friends feed - 102 (9.2%)

3. If the verdict on Savva Terentyev's case comes into force, how will it affect the number of bloggers who would allow themselves to make harsh statements about law enforcement and other state institutions and officials in open posts and comments?

a. Their numbers will grow significantly - 193 (17.4%)

b. Their numbers will grow, but not significantly - 239 (21.6%)

c. Their numbers will decrease, but not significantly - 550 (49.6%)

d. Their numbers will decrease significantly - 126 (11.4%)

4. If the verdict on Savva Terentyev's case comes into force, how will it affect the number of bloggers who would allow themselves to make harsh statements about law enforcement and other state institutions and officials in locked (friends-only) posts?

a. Their numbers will grow significantly - 386 (34.9%)

b. Their numbers will grow, but not significantly - 470 (42.5%)

c. Their numbers will decrease, but not significantly - 219 (19.8%)

d. Their numbers will decrease significantly - 31 (2.8%)

5. Do you consider Savva Terentyev's sentence fair?

a. I consider it fair - 73 (6.5%)

b. I consider it unfair, as it is too soft - 12 (1.1%)

c. I consider it unfair, as it is too harsh - 71 (6.3%)

d. I consider it unfair in principle, because, in my opinion, Savva did not commit a crime - 963 (86.1%)

On July 14, Savva Terentyev and his lawyer held a press conference in Moscow (see photo of Terentyev at LJ user mezak's blog). LJ user dolboeb - Anton Nossik, the self-described "Social Media Evangelist at SUP," the online media company that owns LiveJournal.com - announced the event on his blog and added this note (RUS) at the end of his post:

[...] Each month, 10-12 million comments appear in the Cyrillic LJ (10.5 million in June, 130.5 million in the past 12 months). On the average, every post gets 3.7 comments. [The police unit that initiated Savva Terentyev's case] has plenty of work ahead (unless, of course, they've got nothing else to busy themselves with).

At the press conference, LJ user dolboeb reiterated his point (RUS, link to an article in Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper for which Anna Politkovskaya used to write):

[...] Of course, spending 15 minutes on the web and finding a criminal is a lot more convenient than running around the dark, narrow streets with a gun. As a taxpayer, I'm not satisfied with this situation. [...]

Russia: Putin Out, Medvedev In

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

On Wednesday, Dmitry Medvedev became Russia's third post-Soviet president.

LJ user kozenko - Andrey Kozenko, journalist for the Russian daily Kommersant - wrote this (RUS) about the legacy of the outgoing president, Vladimir Putin:

[...] I feel all but indifferent about Putin's departure. Nothing to thank him for. He ruled the way he could, according to the mentality. Many people liked it.

But still, there is something to this phrase: "Former Russian president Vladimir Putin"... mmmmm :) [...]

In an earlier post, Kozenko explained (RUS) his decision to take part in the Dissenters' March in Moscow on May 6 (his thoughts on what the rally turned out to be like were featured in yesterday's Global Voices translation):

[...] I don't like the [Soviet-style] "rapturous and long ovations" [to Russia's leaders] on TV. I don't like news styled as propaganda.

I don't like aggressive patriotism and hostile rhetoric.

I feel dirty when I hear of a certain governor who was sweating as he sat with a suitcase of cash in the reception area of the head of a certain state-controlled corporation - in order to have his region included into some [state-funded development] program.

I no longer find it funny that in my native region half of the officials have been sent to jail for corruption. Especially, considering there's an opinion that they were jailed not because they deserved it, but due to clan war. Because, basically, they all deserve to be jailed.

I really dislike it that all my friends and acquaintances involved in business [may be jailed all too easily]. And they're saying that they try [as hard as they can] to do their work in accordance with the law.

Anyway, I do have the reasons to dislike this regime. And I want to vote for the opposition. And I don't really understand why the regime has annihilated all the oppositional politicians who could have been representing my interests. I'm not even saying they should make up the parliamentary majority. I just want for them to be there and to have influence. But they aren't [...]. And I'm presented not even with a choice, but with something given: forget about it, stop caring. We are experiencing a consumer boom, enjoy it. Buy yourself something. Or, well, go to the Dissenters' March if you are so oppositional.

But I don't want to go to this march at all, with people I don't consider close. One of them [...] is a writer [Eduard Limonov], the other is a chess player [Garry Kasparov]. I don't like this form of protest, I don't like to chant slogans and don't know how to. But, I repeat, I have no choice. Either I go, or I stop caring about what's going on.

Here is the last comment to this post:

stas_ya:

How about everything exactly [the way you describe it], but there's no money as well? And [no hope of getting some in the future.] What consumer boom are we talking about? The only thing left is angry apathy - would make it neither the [protest] march, nor to a store...

Back to Medvedev's inauguration: LJ user dolboeb (Anton Nossik) was so impressed with the traffic situation in Moscow on Wednesday that he decided to write a letter (RUS) to the new Russian president:

[...] Dear Dmitry Anatolyevich,

Congratulations on assuming your new post. I hope you enjoyed the ceremony as much as I did. I thank you for providing me with a rare opportunity to see daytime Moscow without traffic jams. Please consider holding inaugurations once every week, preferably on Wednesdays. I think this could contribute to solving many traffic problems of the Russian capital. [...]

Judging by this popular "bold/hairy algorithm" cartoon - posted, among others, by LJ user tumbochka - Medvedev is to have more than one inauguration in the next few decades (if not weeks):


Soviet/Russian leaders: Lenin (bold), Stalin (hairy), Khrushchev (bold), Brezhnev (hairy), Andropov (bold), Chernenko (hairy), Gorbachev (bold), Yeltsin (hairy), Putin (bold), Medvedev (hairy)... Putin (bold), Medvedev (hairy), Putin (bold), Medvedev (hairy), Putin (bold), Medvedev (hairy)

Russia: Blogger on Trial for Writing Fiction

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Dmitry Shirinkin (a Perm-based LJ user tetraox) faces trial for having written on his blog that he had purchased a gun and was going to kill a few dozen people in one of the city’s colleges.

According to Shirinkin, the text - posted on April 21, but made private on April 22 - was a work of fiction, "inspired" by the Virginia Tech shooting. According to the prosecutor's office, however, Shirinkin has violated Article 207 of the Russian Criminal Code by "distributing false information on a planned terrorist act." The trial is likely to take place in September; if convicted, the Russian blogger may receive a three-year prison sentence.

A concerned reader (LJ user rassty) asks (RUS) Shirinkin:

I wonder how the LJ community is going to keep you from being destroyed? And by the way, do you have a good lawyer - or a court-appointed one?

Shirinkin replies:

The lawyer's good, an old friend, a colleague from the legal community. Experienced, respected. Has been working at this particular court a lot.

[...]

There's no way for LJ to help me. LJ is a virtual thing, unfortunately( I'll have to work it out on my own(

Anton Nossik - LJ user dolboeb, a representative of the company that oversees LiveJournal's Russian segment - is not too optimistic (RUS) about the direction that Vladimir Putin's Russia is moving in:

[...] Though, of course, it's good that it is all still happening in Perm, not in Moscow. But [the Commander's footsteps] are getting louder.

LJ user pavel_kireev, in a comment to Anton Nossik's post, writes that the government is beginning to tighten the screws on Russia's internet users:

How good I felt on the web in 2001... In 2003, I felt safe but knew that it wasn't going to last. And now, freedom has ended...

LJ user denbor argues (RUS) the details of Shirinkin's case with LJ user zemsky, also in the comments section of Nossik's post:

denbor:

You've confused the terms. He's not being tried for LJ. LJ is nothing but a technical means through which he distributed false information on a terrorist act in the making. This is what real freedom is about. He was free to do what he did, and the prosecution was free to apply legal means to him. Why is everyone so upset? The law enforcement officials have not violated any laws. Any clever lawyer would tell you that they were using the article appropriately. All within the legal framework. [...]

zemsky:

Only a mass medium can be used to distribute information. A newspaper, for example. Or a phone call. And it was clear right away that this was a work of fiction. And it wasn't the author who distributed false information, but that other person, the one who had turned him in. [...]

denbor:

Quote: "And LJ is a tool for expressing all kinds of nonsense."

An interesting definition. But it appears that we'll have to get used to the idea that the internet is also a mass medium, and the one that's even more efficient than TV, radio or newspapers [...]. [...] And he hasn't been imprisoned yet, right? His case is just being considered in court. If he proves that this was nothing but a work of fiction, great. The main thing is to get the people to understand that they will be held responsible for their words. Unfortunately, people in Russia aren't used to this - or have gotten unused in the 15 years of anarchy.

Anton Nossik concludes (RUS):

The main thing is to get the people to understand that they will be held responsible for their words. Unfortunately, people in Russia aren't used to this - or have gotten unused in the 15 years of anarchy.

Priceless words.

We've spent 15 years without censorship, without Criminal Code articles for "anti-Soviet agitation" and "distributing false information that defames the regime."

Now we're getting back there.

And of course, there are those who like it.

The only thing that's not clear is why they were sitting online, waiting for this event, instead of appealing to the North Korean embassy, asking for political asylum.

Russia: The Temple's "Online Feeder" Nearly Wrecked by Bloggers

Global Voices Online
Wednesday, June 6, 2007

While looking for information on LiveJournal's recent blackout, I ran into this unrelated item (RUS) by Anton Nossik (LJ user dolboeb), one of the people in charge of Sup, the Russian online media company running the “Russian-speaking” segment of LiveJournal in partnership with Six Apart:

The Temple's Money Changers Have Hidden Away the Price Tags

The price list for commercial services rendered at [Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior], which had been dug out by the dogged bloggers [...], didn't stay there to delight our eyes for too long. It hasn't even been a week yet, and the price list has been quietly taken out of the Internet users' sight. But it appears that the commercial department of the God's Temple did manage to overcome the pressure from the bosses embarrassed by the leak and prevented the final bankruptcy of its online feeder.

As a result, we have something extremely strange. The price list page is now empty, and the only way to learn about the prices is by reading bloggers' accounts, or by looking into Google's cache. At the same time, the rest of the advertising pages have been left intact and are promoting different kinds of the Temple's money changers' activities. Here, for instance, is an advertisement of services for those who'd like to rent conference halls of [the Cathedral] (with pictures). And here's an ad of the underground garage where some God-fearing Russian oligarchs are hiding their Maybachs, Lamborghinis and Maseratis from the wrath and envy of fellow citizens (the price list for this service is also empty now, but there's a phone number that one can call to specify the prices).

[...]

There's even a dry cleaning service at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

LJ user breqwas offers an explanation (RUS) of why so much commerce is taking place inside Russia's main church:

You see, [Christ the Savior Cathedral] does not belong to [the Russian Orthodox Church]. It belongs to the city and is managed by the Christ the Savior Cathedral's Fund, through which they were raising funds for its construction at one point. It was not given over to [the Russian Orthodox Church] allegedly because it costs a lot to maintain such a huge thing, and our Church is poor. And this is why this Fund is raising money the way it can. Why are they doing it like this? First, because it's a free country, and second, because it's Russia. [...]

Russia: Reactions to Boris Yeltsin's Death

Global Voices Online
Monday, April 23, 2007

Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first president, died today in Moscow.

There is an avalanche of responses to his death in the Russian blogosphere, ranging from "rest in peace" to "be damned."

Below is a tiny selection (RUS) from the blog of LJ user dolboeb (Anton Nossik):

aristo_big: Ten years ago, this piece of news would have been joyful to me.

emailya: A PITY. No matter how much he is being denounced, everyone obtained real freedom through his policies.

aristo_big: ...and they got "a real successor" who obliterated this freedom :)

[...]

emailya: Yeltsin was funny and didn't care when they were making fun of him. Putin is scared and obliterates laughter and parody. And you can see the result of it...

daunit: Yes, only we got anarchy instead of freedom. No one had to do anything to build anarchy on the ruins of totalitarianism - it built itself. It's not clear how we could mistake one for the other all these years. In the 1990s, we were "free" under bandits, and now we are "free" under bureaucrats and the police. It's a pity [Yeltsin] hadn't been jailed while still alive. Jailed for Berezovsky, Abramovich, and [the financial crisis of] 1998. [...]

lapkis: R.I.P.

mr_quietest: R.I.P.

[...]

kashtan123: It'll take this country a long time to fully comprehend what this man has achieved. He buried the empire (the USSR), buried socialism and the socialist camp, buried the CPSU, laid the basis for the new country (Russia), and all this was done with little blood spilled, without civil war. He rid the world of the Cold War. Yes, there were times when he sinned, but there were also times when he was a saint! His brains weren't sterilized, unlike the brains of today's [chekists]. Eternal Memory!

m_darklighter: The gravedigger has set out for his own grave. :)

chelobitnik: With little blood spilled? [...] The war in Chechnya is a direct consequence of Yeltsin's rule. The criminal privatization is a direct consequence of Yeltsin's incredible stupidity. And much more. [...]

[...]

100rm: For some reason, I feel sorry for him... My attitude to him is contradictory [...]. A whole epoch is gone...

LJ user drugoi (Rustem Adagamov) has posted photos of Yeltsin from different years - and has received three pages of comments already. Here are a few of them:

dostacha: Some people would genuinely regret, others are going to spit, but it's impossible to deny that a whole epoch is gone.

[...]

tonya_monya: I feel sort of sorry for Yeltsin, looking at these photos and seeing him as an ordinary person, with family, grandkids... He loved tennis (it was amusing to watch him root [for Russian players]), and his politics got erased from memory somehow in these years.

gordita_rusa: You've forgotten his politics??!!! And what about the guys he sent to war in Chechnya, do you remember it? And how the whole world was laughing when this drunk was conducting an orchestra in Germany over the ashes of the Soviet soldiers? And the country [forced to stand in a humiliating position] has also been erased from your memory? And the hungry pensioners? And [the tanks] firing at the legitimate parliament? And Russia's fiasco in international politics?

[...]

zvetaeva_41: I've been thinking whose monument should replace that of [Felix Dzerzhinsky] on [Lubyanka]. [Yeltsin] deserves it.

prelate: I agree.

voutsen_cv: Oh please, let's not erect monuments... there're enough of them for now.

jenyay: Well, it's okay to have a monument, for history, but not on Lubyanka. Because it'll be as if he took Dzerzhinsky down and got up there himself.

Russia: Dissenters' March in Moscow (1)

Global Voices Online
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The volume of blog coverage of the weekend's rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg is truly overwhelming - as overwhelming, perhaps, as the number of riot police (OMON) deployed from all over Russia to disperse the opposition's Dissenters' March. But nowhere near as shocking.

Below is the first installment of links, accompanied with snippets of text translated from Russian. (Please note that many entries - arranged in no particular order - link to bandwidth-intensive content.)

- LJ user mnog (photos):

Don't feel like writing.

Photos (more than 50 (about 6 MB) )

- LJ user insie (other bloggers' photos, text):

[...] In the backyards near Tverskaya, I was surprised to discover little streams of people, who chose this path as the best, just like I did. In the backyards closer to Pushkinskaya, I saw trucks with OMON, police officers giving threatening orders via walkie-talkies, fire trucks and an ambulance. People walking nearby were on their cell phones, saying something like this: "See you later, unless I get detained." Made me feel uncomfortable. [...]

- LJ user serni (photos, video, text):

Disclaimer: I was present at the Dissenters' March out of curiousity only.

[...] When people moved forward, trying to break through, yelling, "There are more of us," the regime's forces produced sticks right away and started beating everyone who was in their way. It was the first time that I saw the enraged OMON fighters, walking towards me with sticks in front of them, beating everyone left and right. By miracle, I avoided the blows. It felt like a parachute dive. [...]

- LJ user dolboeb (photos, text):

Some OMON fighters, in the Ninja Turtles' outfits, looked appropriately intimidating and photogenic, but the pointlessness of their being there, their walking back and forth, seemed to tire both them and the audience. [...] As background for portrait shooting, the police looked great, I think.

- LJ user plushev (photos, text):

[...] We only got there at the very end of the rally, when they were no longer detaining or beating anyone - all were polite and respectful. The main and, basically, the only impression that I had the time to get was that they send A LOT OF young [police] women to work at rallies. Students of the police school, that is. Many were very beautiful, even in their ugly uniforms. Didn't manage to get a close shot of anyone - [my camera is too slow], and the girls were shy, they were turning away and asking not to photograph them.

- LJ user m_gaidar (text):

When they were taking me away, I called 02 [an equivalent of 911] and told them that I and a group of 20 people have been unlawfully kidnapped by people in uniform. The girl [operator] got very frightened and asked: "Where are you?" In a bus near Pushkinskaya, I replied, and the girl just hung up on me. I called again and asked her to introduce herself and register my call, because people in camouflage were taking us all in an unknown direction. She asked again where we were detained. I said, on Pushkinskaya, and she sign with evident relief and said: "Well... you know... here... We are just having a special operation there! Nothing to be scared of." A special operation against whom - against me?!!!!!! And what do you mean it's nothing to be scared of - for whom nothing scary? For you or for whom?!!! The girl was definitely feeling uncomfortable... said, please call the boss [starshiy]. "What boss?" I asked. "The one in camouflage," she replied. Okay, I see, you are all together in it, I said and hung up on her myself this time.

Anyway, I've now got a phone call from the prosecutor's office and they invited me to come tomorrow at noon to 19 Petrovka, to Boluchevskiy Sergei Anatolyevich and answer questions about my phone call. I said I'd come with journalists and a lawyer. They replied: "Yes, sure! Come with whoever you want..." Anyway, if anyone want to come along - write me. [...]

[A RIA-Novosti photo of m_gaidar's detention is here.]

- LJ user okalman (text):

I'm going to the March tomorrow... For many reasons. I disagree with the Other Russia, too, among other things, but I'm still going. [...] I don't like Kasyanov, nor do I like Kasparov, and even less so do I like Limonov. But if in the 1990s everyone wisely concluded that Yeltsin was a [Communist] party official and why would I go to the White House "for Yeltsin"? - then we'd still be living under Communists. [...]

Russia: Litvinenko's Death

Global Voices Online
Friday, November 24, 2006

Aleksandr Litvinenko, a 43-year-old ex-KGB/FSB lieutenant-colonel and a harsh opponent of the Kremlin, died Thursday night of radiation poisoning in London, where he lived under asylum since 2000. In his deathbed statement read out by his friends, Litvinenko was addressing (and implicating) Vladimir Putin:

[...] You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.

You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value.

You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women.

You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.

May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

LJ user dolboeb (Anton Nossik, whose entry on journalist Anna Politkovskaya's assassination was translated here a month and a half ago) posts a reaction (RUS) that's nowhere near as straightforward as Litvinenko's last statement - but as telling:

A Conspiracy: Theory and Practice

Sasha Litvinenko died last night at a London hospital. While he was alive, all he was interested in talking about were special services' conspiracies, murder attempts, secret plots. It sounded like pure paranoia, acquired as a result of too many years of work in the organs. But he ended up being right. A pity.

I've slowly gotten used to pessimists winning all the bets. This time it's a paranoiac who has won the main bet of his life (and death). I feel like saying this again: "But no, Sasha, you are wrong, it can't be so." But there's no one to say it to.

Here're some of the comments to dolboeb's post:

otry: It all resembles the [Soviet times]. Russians, aren't you scared to live??

iterentyev: No.

andronic: A deserter died, a subject of Her Majesty. Why should Russian citizens be scared?

otry: Think of the USSR and the dissidents. It's much easier to live when [the Communist Party] is leading and directing you. [...]

[...]

baijarak: What does it have to do with Litvinenko's death? Or do you have evidence proving he was killed by the [secret service]?

otry: What I said isn't just about Litvinenko. Turn and look around.

baijarak: Well, everything's not too bad around me. At least, it's not as you are describing it. The regime makes many [mistakes], there's [plenty of] crap in society - as in the majority of countries, by the way. But I wouldn't say that special services aren't letting anyone live and are doing away with all people who have their own position. [I wouldn't say] there "no oxygen." It's all quite normal.

varera: [What secret services?] He poisoned himself on purpose, to [spite] Russia.

almish: I thought about it, too, by the way. [...]

varera: What's to be done for people to see the irony? What smiley to insert?

[...]

jerom: Oh, but there are many countries that aren't shy about eliminating criminals in foreign countries (Israel, USA). Litvinenko is a KGB officer, with access to secrets, a traitor. Maybe [he deserved it]? Let's watch [Oleg Kalugin]'s health, and that of [Victor Rezun-Suvorov], let's wait and see...

[...]

___mic___: He got what he wanted.

vasya22: When one works in the organs for too long, one acquires realism, not paranoia...

[...]

object: Those who support the arguments "No one cared about him" and "Why harm your own prestige?" should first tackle the questions of whose prestige was benefiting from [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]'s deportation or [Andrei Sakharov]'s exile in Gorky. I remember how a teacher of history of the CPSU at the institute was saying that Sakharov was a worm that no normal people would pay attention to. This was his argument in favor of the exile.

In any case, [FSB director Nikolay Patrushev] said honestly: "We didn't reject our past, we've said it honestly: [Lubyanka]'s history of the past century is our history..."

smolenski: [...] Is it bad - to remember your country's history?

object: We are talking of different things.

[...]

kondratiy: It looks like [Mr. Yelenin] has begun to get rid of those extra mouthes to feed.

[...]

Moscow, Now and Then

Global Voices Online
Friday, November 17, 2006

On Oct. 31, LJ user dolboeb was at his Moscow office, taking pictures (RUS) of a huge traffic jam down below:


MosGorProbka [Moscow City Jam], across the street from the Russian Foreign Ministry - by Anton Nossik/LJ user dolboeb: "Although my photos are covered by the Creative Commons license, there's still the [Internet charity] fund Pomogi.org, and neither money, nor publicity would hurt it, even if I myself am not charging for my photos."

***

English Russia has just posted a Moscow subway video shot with a cell phone camera during rush hour:



***

Back in May 2005, LJ user valkorn came up with a nostalgic postcard tour (RUS) of Russia's capital: the city looks eerily - or blissfully - deserted on some of these photos, scanned from the 1980 edition of Moscow encyclopedia:


"Hi, I'm the daytime traffic flow on Gorky Street."

Below are the translations of the captions from the rest of this interactive, talkative series:

[photo omitted]

Hi, we are the Intourist Hotel, Moscow Hotel and the empty space in front of the Manege. We no longer exist.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm [Karl Marx Avenue]. Today, I've a different name and have turned into a traffic jam.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the Kursk Train Station. Today, you can't see me from behind the shopping mall.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the clock with mechanical fairy tale characters from the Central Children's World [store]. We no longer exist.

[photo omitted]

Hi, we are street signs. We no longer exist.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the administrative building of the Lenin Komsomol car factory. There's nothing to administer here anymore now, and I've been partly leased and partly deserted.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the movie theater "Rossiya." I've a different name now and there's a casino inside me.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm Taganskaya Square without the casino.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm [Yuri] Gagarin Square without the ads.

[photo omitted]

Hi, we are the buildings of the Belgrade Hotel. We used to be the same once.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the spacious October Square.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the subway station "Textilshchiki" without the gambling pavilions.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the Building-on-the-Embankment, with no ads. And behind me is the "Udarnik" movie theater without the casino.

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm "Wanda" store, where goods from [the People's Republic of Poland] are sold. I'm one of the few stores in the city that has gained the right to have Latin script on the sign.

[photo omitted]

[...]

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the Planetarium, a monument of Constructivist architecture. Under the "restoration" disguise, they are rebuilding me now.

[photo omitted]

Hi, we are Vera Mukhina's "The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman." They've dismantled us and taken away for restoration, and they are promising to install us on the roof of a shopping center.

[photo omitted]

[...]

[photo omitted]

Hi, I'm the "VDNKh" subways station without vending pavilions.

Good bye.

There are 14 pages of comments to this entry. Here's part of one (RUS), picked almost at random:

oniku_san: Photos are beautiful and interesting. But it's silly to get nostalgic. Yes, there were no traffic jams - but that's because only a few could afford to buy a car. Yes, there were no ads. But because of that, the city was dark and not cosy in the evenings. [...]

Russia: LJ and Politics

Global Voices Online
Saturday, October 28, 2006

On October 25, International Herald Tribune published Evgeny Morozov's opinion piece on the recent developments in the Russian blogosphere. On his blog - Sharp & Sound: Perspectives On Modern Politics - Morozov wrote:

[...] I’ve been surprised how little coverage the story has received in the Western media…Hm, virtually none…

Russian bloggers, unlike the world media, have been all over the controversial Six Apart-Sup deal in the past few weeks - and some, including Maxim Kononenko (LJ user mrparker, creator of Vladimir Vladimirovich™ spoofs on Vladimir Putin), have also been monitoring what little is being written outside Russia. Never too congenial, Kononenko passed an extremely harsh judgment (RUS) on Morozov's piece - and Morozov provided a translation:

I’m honoured: Mr Parker, one of the most odious figures on the Russian blogosphere, has just awarded with “prize of the month” for “the most clinical idiotism, which can only be reached in analytic journalism”.

Coming from him, it’s equivalent to Nobel Prize in literature… ;-)

I’m anxious to see other prizes from the Russian bloggers.

[...]

What unnerved Kononenko was Morozov's assertion that Anton Nossik - LJ user dolboeb, "a former associate of Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin's spindoctor" and the "chief blogging officer" of the company taking over LJ's Cyrillic sector - may be aiding the Kremlin "in destroying a viable and vibrant public forum."

But Nossik is not alone in the Russian blogosphere when it comes to having ties to one of Putin's chief image-shapers: Kononenko co-hosts a political TV show with him, and there are also Marina Litvinovich (LJ user abstract2001) and Marat Guelman (LJ user galerist), who were both closely linked to the Kremlin and Pavlovsky in the past - and are in opposition now, to various degrees.

Guelman - a gallery owner, among other things - founded the Foundation for Effective Politics think tank together with Pavlovsky in 1995 (and Pavlovsky is still its president). Litvinovich - founder of PravdaBeslana.ru, among other things - served as the head of the Foundation's Internet department (Pavlovsky doesn't seem to have a blog).

Guelman has been having an eventful time lately. First, on Oct. 20, Russian customs officials at Sheremetyevo-2 airport seized 11 photo collages by Blue Noses that were being transported from the Guelman Gallery in Moscow to Matthew Bown's gallery in London. On his blog, Guelman posted reproductions of two collages created five years ago and depicting Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden lounging together in underwear (here and here). He also wrote (RUS) that the authorities were threatening to persecute him for offending the Russian president, and noted that some media, both local and international, were using his blog to gather information:

[...] Others called me and Matthew, but one way or another, 13 publications[,] two radio stations and [R]euters - [their] source was LJ. Who needs press conferences ;))

The following day, on Oct. 21, a group of men described as skinheads burst into Guelman's gallery, destroying paintings by an ethnic Georgian artist Aleksandr Dzhikia and beating Guelman up. In his journal, he later posted a brief note (RUS), which received 287 comments, most of them "get well" wishes:

;alive and in one piece)

LJ user mnog posted photos of the gallery after the pogrom (150 comments, RUS).

Litvinovich, like Guelman, had been attacked and badly beaten earlier this year; like Guelman, she posted a brief update on her blog shortly after the incident took place in March and received some 500 "get well" comments from her readers.

Lyndon of Scraps of Moscow was following the story at the time and, among other things, he provided some background information on Litvinovich and her involvement with Gleb Pavlovsky:

Perhaps the powers-that-be are even more angry at Litvinovich because, years before her recent attempt to get possible Putin successor Sergei Ivanov booted from his job as Defense Minister, she seemed to be on their side. Without wanting to call her opposition cred into question, it seems relevant to mention that she got her start working for Kremlin spin-doctor Gleb Pavlovsky's Fond Effektivnoi Politiki, though, to be fair, I think back in '99 Pavlovsky wasn't considered to have gone over to the dark side - actually, back in '99, concern about the Putin administration becoming a "dark side" was rather muted overall.

Recently, Litvinovich has posted photos from her visit to Chechnya soon after the beating - here, here and here: ruins again and again, ads calling people to "come out of the shade" and pay taxes, Ahmad Kadyrov's monument in Grozny - "The only monument I know of a man with prayer beads." On several photos, one can still see scars on Litvinovich's face.

Also recently, Litvinovich posted photos from her visit to the Korallovo children’s home and lyceum, founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. She wrote (RUS):

Have been to the birthday party of the Podmoskovny Lyceum in Korallovo. As you know, orphans live and study there. Including many children from [Beslan], orphans of [Nord-Ost], the fallen planes, children of the border guards, etc.

The lyceum is still under arrest. Nevertheless, they exist and continue to develop. Few people know, but the lyceum's motto is "Duty. Honor. Fatherland." They say it as part of the lyceum student's oath, too.

Last I was there was three years ago, with Mikhail Borisovich [Khodorkovsky], a week before his arrest. Today, only [Khodorkovsky's mother] Marina Filippovna was there. [Khodorkovsky's fahter] Boris Moiseyevich was in the hospital.

The children performed a wonderful concert. If you are interested, you can see the photos I took (part 1 and part 2).

God willing, all should be good for them and the lyceum.

Russia: The Second Blog War

Global Voices Online
Saturday, October 21, 2006


(more buttons and userpics are here)

The Russian-language blogosphere (commonly known as ZheZhe) is on fire: some users are shutting down their blogs, others are emigrating to the virtual Trinidad & Tobago - all because LiveJournal.com's owner Six Apart has decided to team up with the Russian internet company Sup, founded this year by Aleksandr Mamut, a Russian "oligarch," and Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur.

This isn't the first time that ZheZhe (an abbreviation of ZhivoyZhurnal - "LiveJournal" in Russian) is in rebellion: the first "blog war" has been documented by Anna Arutunyan in the July 2005 issue of the Exile.

Assurances from managers of Six Apart and Sup have left many unconvinced and still concerned over whether the Russian security services would gain access to their personal information and whether the new Abuse Team would carry out ruthless purges. A number of ethnic Russian bloggers are furious over the fact that some of Sup's top managers are Jewish; their favorite object of hate now seems to be Anton Nossik (LJ user dolboeb), whose opinion on journalist Anna Politkovskaya's assassination was translated for Global Voices earlier this month.

LJ user kimmi8, a Six Apart employee, attempts to clarify the situation (and LJ user yakovis translates her entry, posted in the lj_biz community, into Russian):

We've licensed SUP, a Russian internet company, the right to use the LiveJournal brand. They'll be operating portions of the LiveJournal service for our Russian userbase (and only for those that want this support). This partnership is an effort to improve the speed, usability, and services that are offered to our Russian community. The only changes that Russian users will see is an improvement to user experience, translation, and support.

The Russian users that have agreed to this support will still continue to be a part of LiveJournal, for as long as they want to be. SUP will be able to promote other products or services they develop to the Russian community, but they won't be able to disconnect anyone from LiveJournal or break apart the community. LiveJournal will still be in control of your journals. We're partnering with SUP to offer a better experience, since we know we've been strongly limited by not being able to serve our Russian community in their native language.

Here are a few of the common questions we know you have:

* What criteria will be used to determine whether a journal is "Russian" or not?

It will be a combination of if you write primarily in Cyrillic, have listed your location as a country from the former USSR, or use a Russian browser.

* Will there be a way to opt out of having my journal transfered?

No journals are being transferred; it's just a change in how the site will be supported. You will be able to opt out of getting the new Russian features, and to continue to be supported by LiveJournal/Six Apart).

* Will information from these journals be given to the Russian government? Personal information?

No. Not in any way that would not happen today, such as a court-ordered subpoena. SUP is acting as our agent and will be bound by our Privacy Policy.

[...]

According to the results of an LJ opinion poll, over 50 percent of respondents (1,741 votes so far) are against Sup's takeover; roughly 20 percent are still undecided and as many don't care; and only 8.5 percent consider the changes positive.

LJ user sholademi, whose post on children's drawings of Vladimir Putin was featured on Global Voices in August, thinks that ZheZhe won't last till winter.

This must be a bit of an exaggeration - even though some of the 300,000-plus Russian users' accounts will surely land in Trinidad & Tobago's blogosphere, as a result of the ongoing virtual exodus flash mob: "Let's make this small but proud state the leader of the world Internet!"



Another resistance initiative has been suggested by a Ukrainian-language blogger none_smilodon, who decided to write his entries using Greek script instead of the Cyrillic:



***

There are currently three LJ communities (RUS) whose members oppose Sup: anti_prodazha ("anti-sale: We are for freedom in the LJ"), antisup, and no_sup.

***

One LJ community, sup_ru, is maintained by dolboeb and contains suggestions to Sup's management (RUS) on how to improve ZheZhe, among other things.

***

LJ user yojik_yamamoto chronicles (RUS) what he calls "the hysteria."

Russia: Anna Politkovskaya’s Murder

Global Voices Online
Sunday, October 8, 2006

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist famous for her critical coverage of Chechnya and Vladimir Putin's policies, was shot to death in Moscow Saturday. Russian-language blogs are awash in speculation on who might be behind the murder.

Anton Nossik (LJ user dolboeb, aka "the Guru of Russian Internet") points (RUS) at Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's prime minister, without naming him; the Russian Yandex Blogs portal currently lists this post as the third most popular one in the Russian blogosphere:

The murder of Politkovskaya: cui prodest

The name of the contractor is absolutely obvious - it's just enough to know some widely available facts.

I'll cite them here, for the public record.

Fact number one. While Chechnya's prime minister [Sergei Abramov] was closely working on investigating the issue of who, how and where extorts money in Chechnya for "rebuilding the republic," he kept getting attacked. The last attack - a car crash - was the fifth one, if I remember correctly. And the most successful one. Abramov was out of the game.

Fact number two: An hour and a half before her death, Anna Politkovskaya told about her latest investigations in an interview to the Caucasus Knot. She was investigating - surprise! - the same mechanisms of money extortion, corruption and stealing of state funds that Abramov had been looking for in his time (and, to his misfortune, kept finding). Politkovskaya had the misfortune to declare publicly that she had the documents at her disposal that would allow her to recreate the whole corrupted scheme of financing the "Chechen national projects." The journalist's fate was decided.

Fact number three: of course, if there had only been an interview with the Caucasus Knot, Politkovskaya would have been alive now. Unfortunately, somewhat earlier, she managed to tell about it in an interview with Radio Liberty. And it's likely that the people whose plans could've been disrupted by her investigation had their own sources of information, which allowed them to know the current interests and creative plans of the deceased.

What has to be noted is the [...] recklessness that accompanied the contractor's decision to tie the long-awaited "fact of liquidation" to the happy state holiday [Vladimir Putin's birthday]. I have no doubts he'll be allowed to get away with Politkovskaya, just as his father was forgiven for the jihad he had declared against Russia. Because there are plenty of false directions in which the investigation could be diverted. [...] As for the actual hit man, I think the casting for the role of his corpse has already begun in the morgues of Chechnya's hospitals.