The General Russia Thread

There's a cat cafe in Moscow, except instead of cats it's freaking owls.

They look like educated ornithologists, too, or at least very responsible owners. The birds look healthy and well-socialised, and they don't allow people to touch them unless the owl decides to touch you itself.

Owls are fascinating creatures yet had to suffer from a bad reputation due to superstition. It is great that there is now a place where people can interact with them, provided the welfare of the animals is guaranteed.

It seems Amnesty International has revoked their declaration that Alexei Navalny is a Prisoner of Conscience, due to remarks he has made that qualify as hate speech. Per Reuters

It's as Knit Tie has mentioned on this thread in the past, Navalny has a thing about immigrants.

Edited by FFShinra on Feb 26th 2021 at 5:53:00 AM

Though they also reaffirm that they consider his imprisonment to be unjust.

Oh for sure, because it is, but this does point out that Navalny is no saint, and blind backing of him won't necessarily be a good thing down the line just because it tweaks Putin's nose. He's another Aung San Suu Kyi in the making at best.

That owl cafe idea is fascinating. Like a one animal mini-zoo.

It's rather iffy stuff. Journalist Masha Gessen addressed his past racist and xenophobic statements in this article. Having heard his remarks crop up over the years, I don't think that he should be given a pass until he publicly renounces his past words.

At the same time, any harm he might've brought paled in comparison to the Putin regime's support for far-right leaders like Zhirinovsky and Zhuravlyov, or his empowerment of autocrats and oligarchs who rob and silence their own people on the daily. And the fact remains that Putin's goons tried to have him offed and then jailed for his work on exposing government corruption. You don't have to think highly of him as an individual to recognise that that's wrong.

Those of us who follow Chinese diaspora activism would be familiar with the way some pro-democracy activists like Liu Xiaobo and Chen Guangcheng, who endured harsh prosecution by the regime at home, adopted scarily arch-neocon views (sometimes tinged with a touch of racism) as they saw it as an act of rebellion against their oppressors. There's probably some parallels to be found here. Gessen's article talked about how there's not much of a glue holding opposition activists together beyond nationalism (or maybe Europhilic self-hatred, iunno).

Navalny's work and arrest definitely helped catalyse the latest round of protests, but it seems to me like they're more about widespread frustration with government corruption rather than him, specifically. I'm thinking that as social activism around the world grows more wired, the younger generation will eventually find a way to build new coalitions around shared values, rather than being anchored on problematic vanguard leaders like Navalny or outdated expressions of civic religion. Let's see how it goes.

(Also, lowkey NSFW, but looks like the Putin palace vid has evolved into a meme)

As Knit could probably confirm, it’s probably that.

A rather ironic sidenote: a letter, purportedly sent by Circassians in support of Navalny after the reveal of the palace in Gelendzhik, is claimed to be fake by prominent Circassian activists.

Edited by LordforlornII on Feb 27th 2021 at 4:18:11 AM

My pointing out Navalny's issues isn't a vindication of Putin, as I've already mentioned. Mentioning how bad Putin is does not absolve Navalny.

But there have been times on this forum where simply because he opposes Putin, Navalny is given a pass even when actual Russians on the thread kept warning that he was no saint. I usually only chimed in to say that the reality of Russian politics means even if he came to power, he'd be doing a lot of the same stuff Putin is doing (as Yeltsin did prior to Putin and Gorbachev did prior to him...). But this is the first time I've seen a prominent Western institution reflect what Russians have said about hi,.

In general it seems like Western media is desperate to paint any opponent of Putin as a liberal. Which runs into the problem that you don't need to a liberal or particularly progressive to object to corruption. Hence their whitewashing of a man who does seem to oppose corruption, but also has some gross views of immigrants.

Because this forum dosent like the idea that a this point, putin is probably the best russia is going to get a this rate given the system, which is very depressin on his own right.

It’s more like people not wanting to accept that quite few of Putin’s Western-backed opponents are not the flawless heroes they are mostly depicted to be by several Western governments and the concerning Western media and that there might be at least a certain amount of truth in certain claims of the Russian government.

And no, the former does not absolve Putin and co. of any of their crimes, but does question whether some of the most hardcore influential and high-ranked Western supporters (who quite likely have been aware of the misdeeds of their protegees for a while) of the Navalny-esque assholes actually care about the situation in Russia.

Edited by LordforlornII on Feb 27th 2021 at 5:39:28 AM

When it comes to the Media I wouldn't be surprised if it's more incompetence than malice, at least American media is profoundly poor when it comes to covering any non-English speaking area.

Vox has details on how Putin got to power and how Navalny's beginnings.

I would be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if we weren’t talking about media and people perfectly capable of receiving and analyzing information in Russian and if these misdeeds weren’t known for at least a decade.

Something I'm curious about: Is there any meaningful opposition to Putin that hasn't been neutralised in some fashion (politically or lethally) yet?

Because I suspect that might be the reason why western media in particular focus on Navalny so much - it's less about the guy himself, but more about his ability to mobilise people.

And considering how Putin keeps trying (and failing) to have the guy killed, he clearly sees him as a credibly threat, which makes people abroad take note.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 27th 2021 at 3:27:20 PM

There is a “socialist opposition”, but in fact the overwhelming majority of them are openly far-left (or far-left mixed with far-right, as in the case of Limonov and the Other Russia) fringe groups, so they are not getting any support on part of Western actors and I’m wholly content with that.

What I’m not content with is Navalny getting this support, in spite of being just as bad as the “socialists” overall.

Edited by LordforlornII on Feb 27th 2021 at 7:31:48 AM

Meanwhile, you have this weird case of the fringe left groups in other western countries often being pro-Putin (due to a very toxic interpretion what of anti-imperialism means).

In many cases it is also anti-Americanism. The USA is the imperialist devil, Russia is its' rival, thus Russia must be good or at least preferable.

People also need to be more realistic about what views can be expected from certain countries. Russia is - along with Cyprus - the society with strongest islamophobic mindset and many politicians adhere to it. This survey was done only a few years ago.

http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?id=4692&view=pdf&pn=forum&type=artikel

Sergey Sobyanin, the man Navalny (allegedly) lost the mayoral election to in 2013 has implemented strict anti-Muslim and anti-LBGTQ policies. Navalny might not have been an improvement on those issues, bot probably on many others, which makes him still significantly preferable.

Even someone like Gorbachev who is today celebrated in the West as the man who made a peaceful conclusion to the Cold War possible, had initially supported the imperialistic war in Afghanistan and even much later tried to prevent the independence of Lithuania with military means. In those cases he didn't react much differently than those Soviet leaders that came before him, yet nobody would dispute that he was a significant improvement compared to them.

We have the same problem in other European countries, some of which are even democracies however immature. There is almost no difference between the Polish opposition and the government on refugees from Islamic countries, yet there is little doubt that the government with its' actions to undermine Polish democracy are the real problem. Sometimes you have to take what you get.

Edited by Zarastro on Feb 28th 2021 at 12:40:10 PM

Or people could try to consider that Navalny and the like are supported in no small part because their rule would be geopolitically advantageous for at least some political actors. Russian foreign policy under Navalny would not differ much from that of Putin regarding the post-Soviet space, but he openly declared that Russia should retreat from Syria and he would probably suspend other Russian enterprises in Africa and South America as well.

Russia may be not very friendly towards Muslims nowadays, but there is a firm line between being unfriendly and participating in events organised by openly extremist and far-right groups.

Tbh even regarding internal problems he doesn’t seem like the panacea for the ills of Russia he is portrayed as. His reform program would be nice and good if it wouldn’t be eerily reminiscent of that of Yeltsin and his friends back then. So far, nothing proves that Navalny wouldn’t turn Russia into another “controlled democracy”.

Edited by LordforlornII on Feb 28th 2021 at 5:33:20 AM

The Russians would not argue that, with regards to Gorbachev.

I actually think I remember someone saying in this thread that they thought the assassination attempts were more likely the work of overzealous underlings specifically because Putin himself doesn't consider Navalny a credible threat.

That's the general understanding of people living in Russia and outsiders with a good view of Russian internal politics.

Putin isn't the type to try and kill dissidents, not because he isn't an evil autocrat but mostly because has no need to and doesn't care.

Edited by LeGarcon on Feb 28th 2021 at 11:28:22 AM

Honestly, I always had the impression Gorbachev was very much Mis-blamed for the fall of the Soviet Union. If anything, his reforms probably came to late to prevent it.

It had been in steady decline for a while, not helped by ineptitude of its previous leaders.

What did people expect the guy to do, crack down on people some more, even though the Soviet Union didn't have it in them to do that anymore?

,

I'm gonna be blunt - so what? The blame still falls on Putin for creating the apparatus and climate in which his subordinates think murdering people for displeasing or murdering their leader is a thing they should do. And it keeps. Bloody. Happening.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 28th 2021 at 5:49:36 PM

I always thought Knit Tie (the user who always operated on "Putin didn't do this directly") was being overly charitable whenever he acted as if all the political oppression and murder has occurred somehow entirely independant of Putin's wishes, as if the most powerful man in the country is somehow entireley unaware of the vast war machine of oppression built under him.

Putin is very much responsible, very much to blame and in a just world Putin would be hanged at the hague for crimes against humanity.

Even the "Putin doesn't need to oppress because the opposition is just as bad" feels like mistaking the chicken for the egg. The opposition is bad because there's a tyrannical system of oppression in place. You can't expect to have a functional opposition when half the opposition ends up murdered, jailed or poisoned on a regular basis. Even the opposition is controlled, to an extent (Hell, there's the "protest permits" that make 0 sense). That is why Navalny is allowed to exist (because he's basically polarity-reversed Putin, except maybe slightly less of a stone-cold sociopath).