Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Why Russian Liberals Lose

Now that the results are official and, for the second time in eight
years, the liberal opposition parties failed to gain even a single
party-list seat in the Russian parliament, perhaps it is time for an
honest discussion of why they so consistently fail to attract the
support of the Russian public.
Granted, the country's booming economy does not make their argument
for removing Putin an easy one--the latest IMF annual report says that,
in terms of purchasing power parity, Russia's contribution to world
growth in 2007 will be half as large as that of the entire European
Union and much higher than Japan's.
Still, with a potential electorate as high as 40 percent, several well-
known cultural and political figures in their corner and plenty of
money from business elites to support their cause, it is simply
astonishing how badly Putin's opponents have botched their case.
The roots of this latest electoral debacle, in which the liberal
opposition lost more than half of their already small electorate, must
can be traced back to the fateful decision made four years ago to
forge some highly questionable political alliances.
In a misguided effort to gain publicity, moderates like Vladimir
Ryzhkov, Irina Khakamada, Grigory Yavlinsky, Mikhail Kasyanov and
Boris Nemtsov, embraced two highly controversial figures. The first
was entrepreneur and chess champion Gary Kasparov who, as a member of
the council of the U.S.-based Center for Security Policy, was known to
have close ties to highly influential, as well as vociferously anti-
Russian, American neoconservatives. The second is Eduard Limonov,
leader of the rabidly ethno-nationalist National Bolshevik Party
(NBP).
Limonov, who has called for the use of "Serbian tactics" to regain
regions of the former Soviet Union with large Russian populations, is
much more than an "accidental ally" of these liberals, as reported in
the American press. He approached the group that spawned "Another
Russia", the "Committee 2008: Free Choice", soon after it was
established in March 2004, to recommend the expertise of his
"fighters"--expertise like brandishing a fake grenade to occupy St.
Peter's Church in Riga, Latvia, for which several NBP members served
jail time. Limonov himself was convicted of illegal arms purchases in
April 2001 and served two years in jail, before being released on
parole
So bad is Limonov that even the pugnacious leader of the far left
"Working Russia", Viktor Anpilov, himself no stranger to
confrontations with authorities, eventually could no longer stomach
being part of "Another Russia." Its political agenda, he said, had
become "basically to get out into the streets and brawl."
In American politics this sort of coalition would be as unthinkable as
Al Gore and Bill Richardson forging an alliance with American chess
legend Bobby Fischer and ex-Klansman David Duke. In the bizarre world
of Russian opposition politics, however, Limonov, who was once labeled
an extremist in the Wall Street Journal, has become a steadfast
comrade-in-arms of Kasparov, now a contributing editor to the same
newspaper!
While several former allies, including Yavlinksy and Kasyanov, have
parted company with Another Russia, others like Kasparov, Ryzhkov and
Nemtsov continue to justify this alliance as necessary to circumvent
the Kremlin's control of the media.
But it is hard to believe that there are very many people in Russia
who don't know what the opposition stands for. For one thing, more
than a quarter of the population have regular access to the Internet,
whose Russia domain remains totally politically unfiltered and heavily
saturated with criticism of President Putin. 13 percent of the
populace (twice that many in Moscow and St. Petersburg) even say that
the Internet is their main source of information.
Moreover, even before the current election season, media surveys
showed that the two leading liberal parties, Union of Right Forces
(SPS in Russian) and Yabloko, received significant national television
coverage. In 2005 they accounted for 23.8 percent of all times that
political parties were mentioned on the country's seven major TV
channels, while in 2006 this figure was only 14 percent. If this seems
low, consider that it is far more than both parties combined have ever
achieved in national elections.
When surveyed last year, by a nearly four to one margin Russians said
that opposition parties were able to freely express their views on
national television and in national newspapers. Even 56 percent of
Communist Party voters agreed! None of this even takes account that
during the past month--the official campaign season--each party running
for the Duma received three hours of prime national television air
time, and that the televised party debates, in which all parties
except United Russia chose to take part, were watched by about the
same percentage of people that watched the final U.S. presidential
debates in 2000.
So while Kasparov contends that the only reason that the Russian
people shun the liberal opposition is because of the regime's control
over the media, Grigory Yavlinksy is probably much closer to the truth
when he told a reporter that his liberal party Yabloko already has 97
percent name recognition. The problem is not that the opposition
cannot get its message out to the Russian public. The problem is that
the messengers have completely alienated their natural constituency:
Russia's rapidly growing middle class.
Consider what a middle class voter would do if faced with the
following choice: to support a political movement that unites a former
chess champion with links to American neocons and whose family resides
overseas; a former prime minister, popularly nicknamed "Misha 2
percent" for allegedly taking that much in kickbacks while in office;
and an ex-punk rocker, released from prison just a few years ago, who
vows to restore the Russian empire by any means necessary. The sum
total of their political agenda: "A Russia without Putin!"
Or, to support the party of the current president, which has pledged
to continue the policies that have already increased wages from $81
per month to $550 per month, dramatically increased social spending
and reduced poverty from 27 percent to 15 percent. As any pollster
will tell you, this is a "no-brainer.
But why run a campaign against the interests of the middle class?
Perhaps some Russian liberals are just not aware of how much the
country has improved economically. Earlier this year, Grigory
Yavlinsky boasted to a reporter that he hardly reads the press anymore
("I have aides to do that") and hasn't watched Russian television in
four or five years!
But these are minor public relations gaffes in comparison to the ill-
concealed contempt for the Russian people to whom, ostensibly, they
are appealing for support. As Boris Berezovsky, who claims to be
funding the opposition from his exile in London, puts it: "The problem
is that, for centuries, the Russian authorities have been violating
the Russian people, turning it into cattle."
This bovine image of the Russian electorate is a favorite among the
country's liberal elite. From Yuri Afanasyev's comment in 1991 that:
"Many of our people seem reduced to a condition resembling that of
cattle and, what is more frightening, they do not ask to live any
other way", to the outrageous statements by former Deputy Prime
Minister Alfred Kokh that Russians are incapable of earning money and
"can't make anything new" (Kokh, by the way, then became the manager
of the Union of Right Forces' 2003 Duma campaign). Cattle, obviously,
need cattle herders, of which there seems to be no shortage among the
Russian liberal opposition.
Their utterly cynical assumption that politics, at least in Russia,
doesn't need to appeal to the voters at all, but is really about
replacing the "bad" people-herders with "good" people-herders, has
lead the opposition directly to the scorched earth policy that was
adopted in the current Duma campaign. What does it matter how people
vote, or even if they vote at all, for as Limonov vowed at the last
Moscow rally before the elections, Another Russia does not intend to
accept any results as legitimate.
Small wonder, then, that most Russians view the liberal opposition as
simply wanting to take away the prosperity they have worked so hard to
obtain? Nor is it any wonder that the Western media's uncritical
adulation of this opposition, and of Another Russia in particular, is
viewed by Russians with deep suspicion?
Far from indicating a retreat from democracy, the Russian electorate's
decisive rejection of the current liberal opposition is a good sign
that the country is progressing toward a mature democracy. Indeed, we
can thank our lucky stars that the overwhelming majority of Russians
have far too much common sense to vote for such extremists, even when
disguised in "liberal" clothing.
Nicolai N. Petro served as the U.S. State Department's special
assistant for policy on the Soviet Union under George H.W. Bush, and
now teaches international politics at the University of Rhode Island
(USA).
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16252

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:612632f6-deb3-4989...@o6g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
Interessante, ma l'avevo già letto su IHT.
Ciao,
Federico Antola. 


In altri termini significa che le lobby neocon hanno perso ogni grip
ideologico.
Nella sucessione ciclica raggiunto il vertice con la arrogante
campagna imperialista tra Iraq e Georgia ora stanno precipitando
trascinati sotto accqua da una banda di figli di puttana che ha
imbarcato.
Stranamente quasi tutti di origine ebrea, uno dei soliti casi storici.
Penosa la figura di Kasparov.
Saluti