|
 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
|
 |
ÒInside Putin's Russia,Ó a copy of which I have received for reviewing, was published this year by Andrew Jack, the Moscow correspondent of ÒThe Financial Times.Ó The name of its publisher, ÒOxford University Press,Ó seems to suggest that the book is intended for scholars. True enough, for the general reader, its 360 pages in fine print are an endless self-contradictory gossip about Putin and 26 other Òdramatis personae,Ó listed at the beginning of the book. On July 10, 2004, Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was shot point-blank by a hired killer. On July 3, 2003, another journalist, Yuri Schekochikhin, deputy editor of the Russian newspaper ÒNovoya gazetaÓ and a member of Russian Parliament, was poisoned by a chemical, available only at the top-secret labs. In his list of 26 Òdramatis personaeÓ Jack does not mention any such cases. Nor are they in the Index.
As for Jack's opinions, not just bits of self-contradictory gossip about Putin and 26 other Òdramatis personae,Ó Jack opines on p. 24 that there is no democracy in Russia because when the Anglo-American Allies occupied Nazi Germany they established (as in Iraq?) democracy there (what about German democracy from 1918 to 1933?), while in Russia the Russians on their own are unable to create democracy. Who are the Russians, according to Jack?
Jack begins the chapter ÒComing to TermsÓ at the start of his book with the following example (p. 7). Every year Yevgeniya raises a glass of vodka (the Russians, both men and women, drink in Jack's book only vodka, never a wine or a juice) to Stalin on his birthday. In 1943 her uncle was accused of collaboration with the Nazis, she was arrested at the age of 14 (actually, children in such cases were adopted by relatives or sent to an orphanage), and spent 13 years in Stalin's Òlabor camps.Ó She was released 3 years after Stalin died. She drinks to Stalin's health, and says that her Òconscience is not clean.Ó You see? Forgive me, dear Stalin! She was Òrehabilitated,Ó that is, declared not guilty, in 1993 Ñ 40 years after her arrest.
Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of the ÒNew York TimesÓ in the 1920s and the 1930s, wrote in a similar vein that when a Russian was tortured in the Middle Ages on the czar's order, he sang hymns to the czar during the worst torture. The difference is that Jack despises Òthe RussiansÓ for their incredible servility, while Duranty eulogized Stalin because that was fashionable in the West (Stalin publicly reciprocated his love), and Duranty needed his invention of the tortured Russian singing hymns to the czar to demonstrate that while some Westerners may condemn Stalin, the Russians would sing hymns to him when tortured, and so the Western condemnation of Stalin is irrelevant.
Predictably, the incredibly servile Russians cannot, without being occupied by the Anglo-American troops, to create not only democracy, but also an economy worthy of ÒThe Financial Times.Ó To begin with, Moscow is full of glaring socioeconomic contrasts. Jack sounds like Soviet journalists describing ÒcontrastsÓ between poverty and wealth in London or New York. Thus, in the Moscow subway, you can see (p. 27) Òwell-dressed middle-class RussiansÓ Ñ and (can you believe it?) beggars. Well, I have been seeing for 33 years, since my arrival in New York in 1972, beggars going through the cars of the New York subway. They are arrested, but they keep reappearing.
It is not clear what Jack wants: socialism as it was in pre-1991 Russia or as it is visualized by extreme left socialists in Europe? Any sign of wealth, not accessible to all in Moscow, horrifies him. Thus (p. 28):
ÒNear my office stands a gleaming Porsche showroom. When I went to visit it just after it opened in 2001, I was surprised to see only tiny model cars on display. 'We didn't expect such interest. They've already sold out,' Oleg Pashim, the manager, explained.Ó
All this wealth is at the expense of the poor (pp. 31-32):
ÒI stayed with Igor and Tamara for a month in St. Petersburg. Both had done well under Communism, he as a university teacher, she as a museum curator.Ó
They Òhad done well under Communism.Ó And what did Jack see now? They Òhad survived, but their quality of life had substantially dropped.Ó This is what Jack saw:
ÒTheir income was modest, but their outgoings low, with an apartment, a car and an occasional use of a friend's dacha [a country house], and support from a wide circle of acquaintances. 'At least fear no longer exists,' I suggested over vodka in their kitchen. 'One type of fear has been replaced by another: lack of money,' replied Tamara.Ó
Poor Igor and Tamara had to be content with an apartment (their own) and a car. No wonder their fear is lack of money! It is all different in Jack's London, where no one has such fear, for who lacks money in London if everyone is a millionaire unless he is a billionaire? My wife was shopping in London, and expected all she had bought to be put into a shopping bag. Other customers explained to her: ÒYou should have brought your own shopping bag from home. Otherwise you have to pay 5 pennies!Ó
There was no socialism in Russia, as Jack observedit! We read (p. 41): ÒThe inequalities and injustices fit to trigger a new revolution were being put in place.Ó For example, Òordinary RussiansÓ want to spend their vacations in Paris. What is more natural?
ÒI remember standing in an Aeroflot check-in at Paris, waiting for a flight back to Moscow. Around me were several dozen ordinary Russians, some of whom had obviously spent months or even years saving up to buy an economy-class ticket for the holiday of their life.Ó
Yet they were humiliated by Òrapidly and dubiously acquired wealth.Ó How did Jack know that the wealth had been Òrapidly and dubiously acquiredÓ? Well, all capitalists are robbers! Haven't you read your Karl Marx?
ÒNext to us, a group of young Russians in their early twenties, with thick necks and shaved heads, dressed in expensive suits, bearing all the marks of rapidly and dubiously acquired wealth, whisked through the first-class desk.Ó
Did Jack read his own book after he had written it? Before the middle of it, his absurd left-socialist carpings (the rich fly to Paris and back first class, while the poor have to save to fly economy-class!) change for no less absurd apologias for Putin's slide to dictatorship. Did Jack think at a certain point that he would continue to be a ÒFinancial TimesÓ correspondent Òinside Putin's Russia,Ó and Putin would Òhave his revengeÓ?
On pp. 136-7 we read how the NTV television network criticized Putin and how he Òtook his revengeÓ: his NTV's takeover. Having said which, Jack fills several pages to ÒexplainÓ that this general view in Russia and the West has been wrong:
ÒOne year after his successful election as president, Putin would have his revenge. NTV's takeover in April 2001 was portrayed in much of the international media as the most striking and disconcerting example of the authoritarian tendencies of the new regime. 'President Vladimir Putin had flouted the appeals of the United States and other Western governments that he preserve Russia's free media,' wrote the Washington Post three days later, calling for Russia's suspension from the G8 group of leading nations.Ó
Indeed, Putin has such an intimidating effect on the Russian media that while I had been writing for the Russian major periodicals throughout Yeltsin's time, I had to stop it when Putin came to power and declared that the KGB had been a good and useful organization, linking the government and the people.
According to Jack, those in Russia and the West who condemned Putin's NTV takeover were influenced by Òthe residual Cold War mentalityÓ and/or were too ignorant to understand Putin's Russia as Jack did:
ÒSome of the foreign journalists denouncing the takeover spoke little Russian, or had been in the country for too short a period to monitor the network's coverage and that of its rivals.Ó
Jack's own knowledge of Russian seems to him superb. Thus (p. 340), chiding the Russians for their oblivion of the Soviet past, he remarks that their own Russian proverb says: ÒForget the past and you'll lose both eyes.Ó Actually, when Russians want to be friends despite their former quarrel, they say: ÒWho will recall the past, let him lose an eye,Ó the opposite of what Jack invents as a ÒRussian proverb.Ó
As the book goes on, its tenor becomes more and more enthusiastic about Putin and his Russia. Thus (p. 298):
ÒToday, most [!] critics of the Russian authorities will talk openly on the telephone, meet with foreigners in Moscow's plentiful cafŽs without fear, and usually [!] live without repercussions when their comments are published.Ó
On p. 299 Jack forgets what he wrote on p. 31 about Igor and Tamara, who Òhad survived, but their quality of life had substantially droppedÓ:
ÒIf Russia's political system had changed significantly since Soviet times, its economy has been even more transformed. The small variety of shoddy goods and the widespread deficits and lengthy queues of the past have gone. At least when shopping, personal contacts and party privilege have been replaced by markets.Ó
On p. 337, we learn that ÒPutin is building a Russia that Òwill be infinitely [!] better for most of its own citizens and foreign partners than the USSR.Ó
The question whether Putin's Russia is sliding toward dictatorship is irrelevant in Jack's book, and Jack has hardly ever used such a rude ugly word as Òdictatorship.Ó The last 43-page chapter of his book before a short ÒEpilogueÓ is entitled ÒTowards Liberal Authoritarianism.Ó What dictatorship? The former lieutenant colonel of the KGB aims at Òliberal [!] authoritarianism.Ó
Jack does not contemplate even a remote theoretical possibility of dictatorship in Putin's Russia. Yet this is what is of vital importance to the West. Why?
We learn from Mosnews.com that in 2005 Russia's Òdefense expenses will amount to 2.8 percent of GDP.Ó In a dictatorship this figure may be a propaganda fake, while the dictator can allocate Ñ secretly and of his own will Ñ any resources to the development of any weapons. Since the war today is the war of labs, a large dictatorship can thus begin a world war without any visible sign of it.
In 1992 Yeltsin opened to international inspection the giant biosection of the development of post-nuclear superweapons since the bioweapons contradicted the international convention of 1972. But he was not obliged to reveal the other sections. Where are they? Waiting for Putin's dictatorship?
Jack does not even mention the above because he (and his ÒFinancial TimesÓ?) assume that the only power in today's world is financial, while military power does not exist (except as the guerrilla war in Iraq).
The dictatorship of Russia will be able to seek world domination on its own or in alliance with China, like Stalin's alliance with Germany to divide the world.
Russia tested nuclear weapons in 1949 because from 1941 to 1945 Stalin was too preoccupied with a conventional war against Hitler. China tested nuclear weapons only in 1964. According to General Hal M. Hornberg in ÒUSA Today,Ó and ÒThe Inside the Air ForceÓ newsletter, even in conventional aviation the Russian fighters Su-30 MKI, MiG-27 and MiG-29 have proved Òin mock combatÓ to be superior to the US-15C/D Eagle fighters as well as the French Mirage-2000. Obviously, Russia is ahead of China in certain fields as well.
According to ÒAgence France-Presse in Moscow on July 6, 2004, Deputy Chairman Guo Boxiong of Beijing's Central Military Commission met Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, with the Russian security chief saying ahead of the formal meeting that military cooperation was Òdeveloping vigorously.Ó China Interfax reported that China in 2002 accounted for more than half of Russia's military export contracts signed that year, totaling $4.8 billion.
Russian-Chinese defense cooperation gained momentum in the 1990s. Cooperation was cemented in 2000 at a summit meeting between Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin. In December, Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan visited Russia as part of Beijing's efforts to increase transfers of Russian military technology.
It is useful to remind Jack and his ÒFinancial TimesÓ of the old Oriental adage:
Said Gold: ÒI'll buy everything.Ó
Said the Sword: ÒI will take everything, including Gold.Ó
One of the likeliest Swords of today is molecular nano weapons, and the Sino-Russian Òmilitary partnershipÓ may bring closer the doom of the West, including ÒThe Financial Times.Ó
As for Andrew Jack's book, published by Oxford University Press (!), it is highly valuable, since it shows to what depths of mental degradation, flippancy, and blindness to the mortally dangerous world of today Western journalism has sunk.
* * * * *
For more information about Drexler's Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org
To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a Ònano Manhattan Project,Ó go to crnano.org.
For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.
The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.
It is my pleasant duty to express gratitude to the Rev. Alan Freed, a Lutheran pastor by occupation before his retirement and a thinker by vocation, for his help in the writing of this column.
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.