The Problem with the Poor being Allowed to Vote in Ukraine.

Trawling through the information on the Internet about the supposedly democratic opposition of The Other Russia, I chanced upon a quote from a certain Yulia Latynina who stated in an article for the Moscow Times on 10 February 2010, in regards to the Ukrainians returning the anti-Yushchenko candidate Viktor Yanukovych, that

Letting Poor People Vote Is Dangerous

Some quotes have appeared here and it is, perhaps, necessary to get the quotes from the Moscow Times which one has to subscribe to. The article was once available but has disappeared from view. Many people put it on their websites because they were surprised at the fact an advocate of democracy in Russia could argue this.

It is an astonishing admission by a journalist who is supposedly "liberal". As if democracy is only good if it gives the result that its ostensible promoters actually desire.

It could be one thing for certain parties to be banned as wanting to overthrow democracy, as did the Nazi Party.Yet few who take democracy seriously would say that in the USA in 2010 the low level of educational attainment of many American citizens should bar them from being able to vote, not least given the level of poverty in some parts of the USA too.

Yet in accordance with doublethink, Latynina's sort are 'democratic' because she believes in democracy and those who fail to measure up to the requirements of voting the correct candidate in what was a free and fair election simply should not be able to exercise the right to vote,

"Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in Sunday’s presidential election — not unlike the victories of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Adolf Hitler — once again raises doubt about the basic premise of democracy: that the people are capable of choosing their own leader.

Unfortunately, only wealthy people are truly capable of electing their leaders in a responsible manner. Poor people elect politicians like Yanukovych or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Poor people are capable of feats of bravery and revolution. They can storm the Bastille, overthrow the tsar or stage an Orange Revolution. But impoverished people are incapable of making sober decisions and voting responsibly in a popular election.

In other words, if the people vote the wrong candidate or against those preferred by the West, in particular the USA where she received on December 8, 2008 the Freedom Defenders Award by the US Department of State, then perhaps they should not be allowed by her standards.

Interestingly, Latynina has also been a member of the 2008 Committee since its inception, a group that includes Garry Kasparov of The Other Russia, a group that sees no problem in having active Fascists such as the National Bolshevik Eduard Limonov as a key strategist.

That makes farce somewhat of Latynina's democratic credentials no less than it does with Kasparov who, like Latynina, is essentially a fanatical neoconservative devoted to the cause of "regime change" by Machiavellian fraud and force across the globe.

An alternative take on events has been provided by Paul Robinson, a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa who wrote,

"While many will no doubt see it as a source of consternation, the election of Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine is really a cause for celebration. The defeat of the leaders of the Orange revolution, Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, is actually good news.

In 2004, Yanukovych briefly triumphed on the back of electoral fraud. In 2010, he has beaten his opponents honestly in an election deemed by international observers to be free and fair. This alone amounts to a significant political change for the better.

For Ukrainians, the constant squabbling of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko years will finally come to an end. For the West, the Ukrainian election offers a welcome opportunity to reassess the nature of the "colour revolutions" of the early 2000s.

The Orange revolution in Ukraine, the Rose revolution in Georgia, and the Cedar revolution in Lebanon gave rise to a myth of democratization in which the "masses" were rising up against corrupt elites. The ongoing protests in Iran have similarly encouraged some to believe that a Green revolution is also in the offing. But the colour revolutions were never quite what they seemed.

In Ukraine, for instance, the "revolutionary" leaders, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, were high-ranking members of the existing system. Furthermore, even in the final election that defeated him in 2004, Viktor Yanukovych still managed to gain over 40 per cent of the vote.

The Orange revolution was decidedly not an uprising of the entire Ukrainian people against its government, but rather a temporary victory by one party in a political struggle within a deeply divided nation.

The Orange revolutionaries proved to be incompetent rulers. The same goes for their colleagues elsewhere. In Georgia, for instance, Mikheil Saakashvili's government has proven disastrous, provoking war with Russia and what is almost certainly the permanent loss of two of the country's provinces.

This seems far more balanced than the unhinged diatribe of Latynina. Yet how on earth she can be seen as a liberal is beyond belief, at least by the standards of "Democracy Promotion" that the USA has put forth as Russia's destiny through the National Endowment for Democracy.

Latynina might well have despaired of the Ukranians voting the wrong person but comparing Yanukovych was hysterical and does nothing to promote liberal democracy: if anything it proves the shrill intolerance of such supposed "liberals": if indeed they are that.

To date Yanukovych has not since his election proposed embarking on a universal racial war like Hitler did and it is bizarre that Latynina put Salvador Allende in the same category of "mad dictator" as Hitler when he was one of the few left wing romatic "revolutionaries" to come to power through the ballot box who did not have dictatorial ambition in 1973.

Yet General Pinochet did when he was backed by the USA in its global war against Communism and despite the fact Allende received no aid from the Soviet Union: curiously it was some supporters of Yeltsin in 1993 who called on him to be another Pinochet in 1993 when crushing popular protests against the ruinous effects of shock therapy.

It is curious that Latynina did not link Hitler together with Pinochet, as both have been termed Fascists, though Pinochet was not a radical and would be better compared with somebody such as General Franco and his regime in Spain.

Why somebody such as Yulia Latynina can be put forward as some sort of youthful face of Russian liberalism simply discredits the term, as well as newspapers such as Novaya Gazeta which once was the home of Anna Politkovskaya.

Such people are a total embarrassment, do nothing to promote liberty and only discredit the concept as something that can be used as a ruse of the oligarchs to unseat those who do not let them have greater control: hardly democracy and hardly likely to appeal to people in Ukraine or Russia.

Designer Revolutionary Frauds-Strategy 31, Eduard Limonov and a Gigantic Phallus.

On The Observer article by Susan Richards, a Russian blogger called Alexey Kovalev, a contributor to The Guardian and student in London who popped up to defend The Other Russia went offline in a huff after trying to defend the claim that Strategy 31's plan to cause trouble for Putin was a good thing at public protests, sulkily moaning that,

Alright, this is a waste of time. I should be back to my Russia-hating, Western-funded grind.

However, it is very difficult to get a completely clear picture of the political forces at work within Russia or where people's interests lie, so corrupted is the political process there and very much so even amongst those in opposition to President Medvedev and PM Vladimir Putin.

To be fair he was accused without evidence of being in the pay of the CIA by more paranoid critics, something that gives online "discussions" a very Orwellian tone to them. And gives him the opportunity to play at being hard done by instead of answering more searching criticisms such as why people should support a group which includes Limanov, the Natzbol Fascist.

Yet the Strategy 31 initiative he supports is just not one that is going to be supported by those who remember the oligarchs and the last time pro-Western interests controlled Russia and saw a massive collapse in living standards, something apparently not discussed in terms of human rights at all.

The Other Russia is supported by a weird coalition of interests and by the National Endowment for Democracy which absurdly claims to be a non-partisan NGO and independent whilst receiving money from Congress. Most people championed by The Other Russia have close association with the oligarchs and are utterly unpopular leftovers of the Yeltsin period.

As Ron Paul, a potential Presidential candidate in the USA wrote in 2003,

What the NED does in foreign countries, through its recipient organizations the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), would be rightly illegal in the United States.

The NED injects "soft money" into the domestic elections of foreign countries in favor of one party or the other.

Imagine what a couple of hundred thousand dollars will do to assist a politician or political party in a relatively poor country abroad. It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation of foreign elections "promoting democracy.

How would Americans feel if the Chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China? Would this be viewed as a democratic development?

In opposition to Paul, it could be claimed that China is not a democracy and, in fact, would not support the means for countries to develop democracies as the USA does that, in theory, would be hostile to its interests. Yet, in practice, "democracy promotion" has been channelled to those with a scant interest in it, not least The Other Russia.

Garry Kasparov has consistently supported nearly everything the USA has done globally in recent years and supports the USA in return for continued funding, something bound to annoy large numbers of Russians who. perhaps, just did not share his view the Russia's opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was wrong only because Russia did so in its interests.

As for Limonov, even the BBC, which tends to misunderstand the supposed liberal nature of oppositionist movements in Eastern Europe, reported in 2005 that he was,

...an anti-establishment leader with a strong youth following - Eduard Limonov, head of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) - told the BBC openly that his supporters would meet violence with violence.

Both sides, the fronts aligned to The Other Russia, and the Putin regime have reacted in the past with accusations and counter accusations that its opponents are the real "Fascists" with Limonov claiming to be a supporter of leftist anarchism or national defence when it suits him. In reality he is nihilistic and unprincipled.

As the BBC report revealed,

NBP leader Eduard Limonov told the BBC his supporters would join any velvet revolution in Russia.

Like Mr Yashin, he is deeply sceptical about Nashi, but unlike him he says the NBP is ready to respond to violence with violence.

"It is an invitation to a civil war. Such organisations are characteristic of a fascist state. Our country begins to resemble the Berlin of the 1920s and 1930s when fascists were attacking communists," he said.

"But we are not afraid of this. If the authorities want such clashes then we will provide for adequate resistance. We will be happy, because we can't fight with police, but with them - we can."

Naturally, whilst being a Fascist, Limonov can claim that the Kremlin is dominated by Fascists and appear to be a Communist, though why on earth the USA would want to support such an idiotic figurehead is at first apparently very odd, unless it is remembered that the only use of The Other Russia is to advance US interests and weaken Putin from within.

Limonov's vision for what The Other Russia should look like is pretty horrid though,

"We will have to leave Russia, to build a nest on the fresh central lands, to conquer them there and to give rise to a new, unseen civilization of free warriors united in an armed community. Roaming the steppes and the mountains, fighting in southern nations.

"Many types of people will have to disappear. Alcoholic uncles Vasias, cops, functionaries and other defective material will die out, having lost their roots in society. The armed community could be called ‘Government of Eurasia.’ Thus the dreams of the Eurasians of the ’30s will be realized. Many people will want to join us. Possibly we will conquer the whole world. People will die young but it will be fun."

Whether those engaged in more sedentary occupations such as chess, such as Mr Kasparov, would share this alternative vision for a Russia where many types who might not like riding out into the steppes or actively supporting this Manifest Destiny is not especially clear but it hardly sounds like "fun" to get killed in a war for global domination.

Thee rest of the creepy people in The Other Russia sound marginally better or sane. Sergey Yurievich Glazyev of the Rodina Party ( The Motherland ) claims to be "nationalist" and "socialist", despite having former Central Bank members and those close to Yukos Oil such as Viktor Gerashchenko as leading lights.

Glasyev retired in 2007 but the former adviser to Putin was on record for criticising in 2005 according to one source that "’certain forces‘ that are appropriating natural rent and ‘spending billions of dollars in order to have a lobby in the State Duma.’". Gerashchenko was formerly an erstwhile ally of Putin, even winning the Order of Merit for the Fatherland in 2000 off Putin.

His switch to The Other Russia and potential bid to be President in 2008 was only occasioned by his annoyance at the way Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil empire Yukos was taken off him in such a way as to damage his stake in it, despite the fact that Khodorkovsky was a colossal crook who stole Russia's assets from it and whose goons used contract killings to get their way

Now the idea that liberty should not be traded off for any illusory security provided by Putin is also mendacious as the oligarchs partook is a massive fraudulent rip off of Russia's wealth and resources during the 1990s when mafia power was at its height, as documented by Misha Glenny in his McMafia:Seriously Organised Crime.

So Yeltsin was no better when it came to providing security or maintaining human rights, apart from those of the oligarchs, despite Edward Lucas' feeble attempt to praise him for liberating Russia and blaming the failure to "de-Sovietise". Russia, in fact, was put through a very Bolshevik experiment under neoliberal shock therapy which went badly wrong.

It was the reaction to the devastating social and economic costs of that which has determined politics ever since, though it is routinely ignored by many Western liberals, more than the legacy of the Soviet Union. It seems some liberals are no less deluded about Yeltsin's Russia than they were once about Lenin's.

The fact that The Other Russia and Yabloko ( apple ) is dominated by pseudo-liberals, who will often resort to supporting even worse demagogy than Putin's supporters, is both craven and a travesty of what liberalism is supposed to be. It is necessary to deal with that reality when looking at Russia.

If The Other Russia is really committed to democracy and freedom in Russia, then it is incumbent on its supporters to deal with the facts and to refute convincingly allegations that it is merely a front for oligarch interests at the expense of disenfranchised Russians who have little real choice.

All the continual spats over the right to protest in one particular square in Moscow amounts to is a sordid power struggle. If Russia is to make progress with human rights then double standards really do need to be addressed because this game is seen as an irrelevant abstraction being played over the heads of the vast majority of Russian people.

Mr Kovalev, however, was unable to deal with that at all. And his response was interesting in its evasion of any understanding, whether intentional or not, of what had befallen his nation since the end of the Soviet Union, shock therapy or even what backers of Strategy 31 in The Other Russia stand for.

He simply retorted that,

I don't care a single bit about Limonov. It's a very common question: "So what are you protesting against? Would you like to see Limonov/Kasparov/whatever as your president?" No, and it's not the point. I just don't like being lied to. I'd be fine if somebody just came clean and said "OK, you're right, the constitution doesn't work and we're not a democracy"

Yes it is the point. Supporting a group aligned to thuggish Neo-Nazis using explicitly fascist and communist insignia and to give a platform to Limanov in a way that would, in fact, be severely monitored even in Germany and other Central European nations that got rid of totalitarianism, is craven and hypocritical.

As for "Former dissident" Alexeyeva, she was furious that The Other Russia excluded Limonov, not because she agreed with him but just because she did not like the Kremlin deciding who could march. Yet in the Baltic Republics such insignia is banned by law. This, again, is a double standard.

In a joint statement put out by Alexeyeva she attempted some damage limitation,

“To agree to force out anyone else from these rallies would be a capitulation. But an agreement to hold the rally…with different applicants for the event is by no means a disgraceful agreement. This is a success all the same. Yes, not an entire one, but a success.”

The fact that it was the Kremlin that had to ban neo-Nazis parading in Natzbol insignia is not good for freedom of speech but they could have been excluded from protesting alongside other members The Other Russia before the Kremlin acted as it did whilst maintaining that they thought it was wrong.

It did not need to give Limonov a platform but it did. It could have upheld opposition to the banning of Limonov's party whilst refusing to associate with directly with him or, most obviously, by expelling him completely.

Yet The Other Russia has never condemned Limonov because he was useful in mobilising xenophobia and far right nationalist against Putin in an attempt to out rival him in his nationalist appeal. Limonov is leading figure in The Other Russia. By refusing to take a moral stance on this until forced by the Kremlin's tactics, The Other Russia has shown its cynicism.

Clearly, The Other Russia certainly now has little moral high ground from which to prate about human rights if it has as one of its key backers a man classified as a Fascist. Nor do those who fail to challenge oligarch power such as Kovalev. If this is the future of "liberalism" in Russia, then liberalism has no future there.

Now Kovalev claims that "he loves his country". So much so that he supports in an online student rag called The Free Pint those who fake indignation about the Russian masses and those who are aching to free them by drawing gigantic penises on drawbridges in Moscow. How radical.How transgressive. How likely to bring about beneficial change in Russia.

He opines, in an article written under the name The Angry Russian,

Even when we’re not fighting the bloodiest war in history or staging a revolution against whatever corrupt, unelected government that is lining its pockets with our taxes, the people of Russia have never really known the quiet life of prosperous Western countries. Save for the tiny elite, of course, who keep their money in Switzerland and kids in private schools in London.

But there’s one thing that we do really well: that’s sticking it to The Man in various creative ways. Radical political art in Russia has been flourishing since the early 90s.

That reads rather like a self-promotional corporate advertisement spiel. Yet Designer revolutionaries like Kovalev have no real chance of influencing anybody: the tactics of "young democrats" are pure 1968: to enrage the authorities and gain PR coups and portray Putin's Russia as some authoritarian nightmare.

The absence of real political analysis is the preserve of spoilt brats who think it is witty and clever to indulge in such banal pranks as The Angry Russian Phallus, which fakes indignation and a fake idealism that sees Russians as being too materialistic under Putin and not caring for freedom whilst having nothing to say about neoliberal shock therapy.

Old dissidents such as Solzhenitsyn too complained about the materialism of the New Russians but obviously would not approve either of the kind of nihilism exhibited in the so-called "performance art" of the poseurs who think unfurling a banner over the Mausoleum in Red Square stating Fuck You is particularly intelligent.

Designer revolutionaries like Kovalev have no real chance of influencing anybody in Russia, though he can play to a fawning gallery in the West. The tactics of "young democrats" in Eastern Europe are pure 1968: to enrage the authorities, get disproportionate reactions and gain PR coups in presenting Putin's Russia as some quasi-Soviet authoritarian nightmare.

The absence of real political analysis is equally as true in neighbouring Belarus where students, when they aren't holding up placards supporting the US invasion of Iraq, are trying on futile pranks which the authorities play into the hands of by trying to ban instead of just ignoring them.

Rather than offering a moral critique of Putin's regime or, indeed, the oligarchs, the nexus of money and privilege has led students to advance Russia as a trendy fight through "artistic collectives" and coming out with specious designer propaganda. Pure self promotion with minimal artistic merit. And boring too.

This is proved by looking at The First Pint's website when Kovalev opines on Russian history and culture ( after first feigning concern for the hungry masses ),

....it became apparent that nothing had really changed, and the content and satisfied life was still an illusion. Scratch the surface – and you still saw a country on the verge of hunger riots, with an incredibly corrupt and ineffective government on all levels and, as of recently, rising religious fundamentalism . The correct artistic response? To draw a gigantic penis.

Wow, now that's really going to get bread on the table and challenge the power of the rich and raise the living standards of Russia's poor isn't it ? Why did it become "apparent" that "nothing had changed" only under Putin and not under the radical market experiment under Yeltsin and with the approval of the IMF ?

A lot of things actually changed in the 1990s, such as the massive collapse of living standards and a plummeting life expectancy. Clearly, the arty Voina group does not have such a great memory of such trivial events as that. Perhaps a gigantic penis on a drawbridge should be better remembered.

The collective behind the most hilarious and ballsy artistic stunt is called Voina, or War, and they’re also behind the recent rise of radical political action that seems to draw much more attention than conventional protests which inevitably end in everybody being batoned down and arrested. Well, of course, you also can’t expect courteous treatment from the police when you paint a massive penis on a drawbridge that faces the windows of the most powerful law enforcement agency, but still the latter definitely gets your point across much better than standing on a square with placards. Alexey Plutser, the group’s ideologist and spokesperson, says: “What we are doing is not trying to communicate with the power. We are just shoving a dick in its face. A dick that is 65 meters tall, 23 meters wide and weighs about 400,000 tonnes.”

Hilarious stuff.

Gullible Western Liberals and The Other Russia

Opinion in the West on Russia tends to support those who oppose Vladimir Putin on the absurd basis that fronts such as The Other Russia are sterling and heroic democrats fighting a new dictator or authoritarian hardman by recourse to a selfless commitment to promoting human rights.

Susan Richards writes in The Observer today,

In Soviet times overseas support for "dissidents" acted as a significant restraint on the authorities. But today, western governments offer no support to opposition figures: they have agreed a Faustian pact with Putin, over energy (in Europe) and the "war against terror" (in the US).

In this context Strategy 31 – a civic movement bringing together old-style dissidents, intellectuals and young people fresh to politics – has emerged to defend article 31 of Russia's constitution on the right to free assembly. Supporters convene at 6pm on the 31st of each month, in a number of Russian cities.

In Moscow, they have been assembling in Triumfalnaya Square, from which they have been repeatedly banned.

They might have been banned from the square but, then again, they target places they know they will be banned from simply to make the point in front of the camera and on the Internet that Putin is some evil Soviet style leader against whom they are fighting for freedom.

Western liberals uncritically lap up that agenda without much questioning of the hidden agenda behind it and the reality that most "oppositionists" are working for the return of oligarch power and a "liberalism" that really means freedom for the wealthy and privileged.

In short, The Other Russia is a front for moneyed oligarchs to advance a power game, often supported by politicians who have worked for Putin in the past and did not oppose human rights abuses or freedom then or under Yeltsin but suddenly liked the idea when it could be used to support their ambitions and interests.

Strategy 31 is not exactly what is appears and is yet another fake designer revolutionary initiative tied to The Other Russia which does receive funds from the USA and is led by Garry Kasparov whose mission it is to make Russia safe for the oligarchs again. He is a chess playing tactician and work to promote US interests and, in the process, his own.

Sadly, the idea that the average worker would get anything should these people even stand a chance of power is farcical-the result would be simply anti-Putin oligarchs and a return to the 1990s. There is no doubt that anybody who understands the reality in Russia knows that, though opposition parties pretend that they are for 'the workers'.

Western Liberals such as Susan Richards need to understand that because no matter what workers in Russia might hope for, a network of NGOs and think tanks are essentially promoting nihilistic strategies in wanting power at any price and have no more regard for Russian people than under Yeltsin.

This is one reason why respected political commentator and historian Anatol Lieven has termed such people who turn up to staged demonstrations dressed as Santa Claus ( witty student style pranks that do not go down well with Russians ) and, who are funded by the USA, as "limousine liberals".

Even worse, Richards fails to mention something that would shock the average Guardian liberal in the UK: The Other Russia has been allied with Eduard Limonov of the Natzbols or National Bolsheviks and he remains a key supporter.

The Natzbols are a neo-Nazi group with explicitly parades in fascist insignia with their flag being red with a white circle and a hammer and sickle inside it.

Why it is that "liberal movements" in Russia are still led by those in Yabloko and other political fronts dominated by family members connected to those who rammed through shock therapy in the 1990s such as Maria Gaidar ( daughter of Anatoly ).

The neoliberal reforms that led to colossal mortality rates, that is premature deaths, and which entirely merits the title "Market Bolshevism" both for its callousness and contempt for the lives of Russians who, as so often in history, were treated as nothing but dirt.

All of this has been documented in Peter Reddaway's and Dmitri Glinka's Market Bolshevism: The Tragedy of Russia's Market Reforms.

The greed to grab Russia's riches for themselves again and to serve the agenda of "democratic geopolitics" motivates those in The Other Russia: the weakness of Putin's record on human rights is seldom contrasted to Yeltsin's despite his crushing of popular protests in 1993 with military force in a coup.

The sheer hypocrisy of these shrill reedy voices piping up about human rights when they always defend the record of Yeltsin or, at best, euphemise or glide over his record shows the pervertion of truth that follows wherever "pro-Western liberals" are willing to serve US funded fronts at the expense of the majority of people in their own country.

The Other Russia has Limanov positioned in a major role and only recently agreed to ban him at the Kremlin's behest, proving the idiotic propaganda that Putin is a "Fascist" was silly, though the Edward Lucas peddles this drivel in his propaganda "The New Cold War".

Yet a Russian blogger Alexey Kovalev appeared yesterday to defend The Other Russia on this basis,

... let people say whatever they please and hang around wherever they find suitable. And we don't actually need anyone's support, thank you. The point of the 31 protest is to show that freedoms of speech and assembly exist, and they are not what Putin thinks they are.

This is nonsense, even if Kovalev might want to believe, at least if he does actively support The Other Russia. He lives in London, after all, and has not set up another rival group nor done much constructive other than support pseudo-arty groups in his homeland such as Voina which protests at Putin by putting huge graphic images of penises on draw bridges in Moscow.

The Other Russia is funded by US based NGOs filtering money from the National Endowment for Democracy. It's "the best democracy money can buy" and it has no real organisational roots in any labour movement nor grassroots activistm as did once genuinely democratic opposition in Central Europe like Solidarity.

There is no reason why groups opposed to Putin could not protest against the Kremlin without allying with those promoting "National Bolshevism", a term which was first used by those who supported a more "left" wing version of National Socialism in Weimar Germany. It's bizarre that Western liberals just ignore this.

In other words, Strategy 31 is not what some people, especially in the West think it is. Indeed it is curious, moreover, that veteran human rights supporter Lyudmila Alexeyeva of The Other Russia decided that the move to exclude Limonov could be accepted only very reluctantly. Indeed she was very much against the decision.

Strategy 31, as its desperate sounding name implies ( best to think of another PR technique there ) reflects the same interests represented by waves of protests choreographed by US funded groups who use Orwellian doublethink in exploiting Putin's record on human rights to advocate the return of the oligarchs.

Yet Russia needs its own domestic opposition to be free from the national power ambitions of the USA or too much meddling. It needs to be genuinely committed to human rights and democratic accountability: The Other Russia never tells people what it actually stands for other than 'not being lied to' as Kovalev puts it.

Unfortunately, The Other Russia itself seems to operate on the principle of falsehood, evasion, dissimulation and the cynical use of human rights failings to advance the power and ambition of those who want power at all costs at the expense of most Russians: its a power game using human rights as a pawn.

It is curious that Lydmila Alexeyeva was against Limonov being banned. Perhaps this shows her devotion to freedom of speech. But clearly the Kremlin used this demand to put The Other Russia on the defensive to prove its anti-fascist credentials and some decided he was a liability in this respect.

The point to note, however, is why The Other Russia should ever have allowed the Natzbol leader to feature as part of their struggle. Perhaps they were pleased to have his "populist" presence as just anything that could mobilise people against Putin was welcome. Hardly ethical.

In a statement posted Saturday on her blog, former Soviet dissident and Strategy 31 rally co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva indicated, albeit inadvertently, that she and fellow former dissident Sergei Kovalyov have decided to exclude National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov from the group of organizers who regularly apply for sanction with the Moscow mayor’s office.

The concession would fall in line with a proposal made by the presidential administration earlier this month to exclude Limonov and receive sanction as a result. At the time, opposition leaders – including Alexeyeva – strongly denounced the proposal.

No doubt these "debates" are meant to show, or can be interpreted, as evidence that Strategy 31 agreed on by The Other Russia ( though which "other" in Russia remains wide enough for people to think there are huddled masses yearning for their agenda if necessary ) is really "democratic".

Yet if these weird manoeuvres are part of the "democratic opposition" in some "New Cold War", it is odd that Alexeyeva is described as a "former dissident": why she is not still just a dissident if Putin really is some "neo-Stalinist" is strange. At best, she is just anti-Putin. That could co-exist with a defence of liberal democracy but not in allying with Limonov.

The Other Russia has called the accusation that Boris Berezovsky funded The Other Russia a "Kremlin lie" but the opposition is shadowy and hardly abides by the criteria of "transparency" it recommends for everybody else in Russia and excludes itself from. Orwellian doublethink indeed.

The Independent in 2007 reported

There is speculation now that Gary Kasparov's opposition grouping The Other Russia may be among the beneficiaries of the financial support Berezovsky says he gives to opponents of President Putin. Berezovsky is careful not to name the recipients of his largesse, however.

Essentially, The Other Russia is a front for those who want a return of oligarch power or who have fallen out with Putin. It has little to do with any genuine commitment to anyone other than the moneyed influence of the privileged who are chafing at Putin only because they are not benefiting as much as they think they should be .

One of its backers is Viktor Vladimirovich Gerashchenko of the Rodina Party who once received The Order of Merit for the Fatherland from Putin but then later decided his interests lay elsewhere. Of course, people have the right to oppose Putin later if they decide they oppose his policies.

Yet the way Russian politics is determined by the "ins" and "outs" or who has control of the media through money is hardly democracy in the way Western nations such as those in the US or UK understand it, though both nations have seen their own democracies change more in the direction of oligarchies.

The Rodina Party is yet another fake party which proclaims to be nationalist and socialist ( the " motherland party" ) but which has got in to difficulties as in 2005 when it put out an advert with dark-skinned Caucasian immigrants throwing watermelon rinds to the floor and ended with the slogan, "let's clear our city of trash".

Whatever one thinks of Putin it is important to note that oppositionists are hardly pleasant people themselves and will do about just anything to gain popularity: including xenophobia and racism, simply to outmanoeuvre Putin and pose as "real" patriots.

The cynicism is shown in the career of Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, now Russian ambassador to NATO, who was condemned by Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya for supporting a front originally,

'created by the Kremlin’s spin doctors specifically...to draw moderately nationalist voters away from the more extreme National Bolsheviks'

Former allies of the Putin keep popping back up as opponents of Putin depending on where their interests presently lie and are then hailed as sterling democrats by the West which wants more influence over Russia. Human rights are used to discredit Putin by those who do not give a fig about them either. They remained silent during Yeltsin's 1993 military coup.

In Leninist terms, "former dissidents" such as Alexeyeva are merely "useful idiots" who have long lost any moral high ground they could once claim. The Other Russia is a mere charade. It merely reflects oligarchs jockeying for power and the West's tactics to get rid of Putin. The cynicism of the means clearly belie the cynicism of the ends.

Indeed British historian and journalist Anatol Lieven, himself a liberal and an ethical realist, has condemned the "Limousine Liberals" in Russia in The National Review and said of those "liberals" attacking any reapprochement between the Medvedev and Putin led Russia with the USA that,

.....their criticism serves as a mouthpiece for the agendas of the most bitterly anti-Russian and geopolitically aggressive liberal interventionists and neocons who help maintain tensions between Russia and the West-and actually between the United States and the rest of the world.

And these tensions are extremely damaging to any hopes of the long-term liberalization and Westernization of Russia which these liberals want to further.

Do Piontkovsky, Shevtsova and the others seriously think that the U.S.-Russian rivalry in the Caucasus, and the war over South Ossetia which resulted, helped the cause of liberalism in Russia? Do they ever actually talk to any ordinary Russians, one wonders? Or do their duties briefing Americans simply leave them no time for this?

....figures like Igor Yurgens, a leading businessman and adviser to President Medvedev, are playing an extremely valuable role in resisting moves to further authoritarianism, centralization and nationalization in response to the economic crisis. They could do much better if they had bigger support within the population at large.

Groups such as The Other Russia only alienate many Russians, as does the fact that so many oppositionists still have their origins in the government and supporters of Yeltsin, a point made forcibly by Lieven who comments,

Tragically however, many Russian liberals in the 1990s-through the policies they supported and the arrogant contempt they showed towards the mass of their fellow Russians-made liberals unelectable for a generation or more across most of Russia; and to judge by these and other writings of liberals like the ones under discussion, they have learnt absolutely nothing from this experience.

They think that they form some kind of opposition to the present Russian establishment. In fact, they are such an asset to Putin in terms of boosting public hostility to Russian liberalism that if they hadn't already existed, Putin might have been tempted to invent them.....people who blindly back a U.S. democracy-promotion line are doing an injustice to the very liberalization they seek.

Lieven's case is similar to the one I have put forth here,

The truth of the matter is that like Ahmed Chalabi and other "democracy promoters" who have sought U.S. aid, these writers care neither for American nor for Russian interests, but only to enlist U.S. help in trying to bring themselves and the groups they represent to power and influence.

The Other Russia cares certainly for US interests in so far as they coincide with their own. Yet this is bound to backfire as Putin can portray liberals as traitors and Natzbols and by extension The Other Russia as Nazis, hardly an edifying image in a land that makes much of its sacrifice in World War Two.

With regards some liberal think tankers Lieven comments,

They may well wish for democracy-but not always or necessarily if it comes with unconstrained capitalism and the assumption that to be a democrat means sacrificing your national interests to those of the United States. In the case of Russia, these American assumptions in the 1990s helped lead to the reaction of Vladimir Putin. And Putin's Russia isn't the worst we could see by a very long chalk.