Russia poll protests and the last days of Soviet rule

Since Russia's parliamentary elections last weekend, thousands of anti-government protesters have taken to the streets in Moscow to accuse Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party of rigging.

On 23 August 1989, two million Soviet citizens linked arms and formed a human chain - it stretched 640km (400 miles) from Estonia, through Latvia and into Lithuania.

The Baltic Chain was an astonishing act of defiance to Soviet rule. It was clear the three Baltic republics wanted out of the USSR.

A few days later I arrived in Moscow with a group of British students. As part of our Russian studies, we were going to be spending a year in the USSR.

It was an exhilarating time. Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform) were opening up what had been a tightly closed society, but at the same time the economy was collapsing. We were even given ration cards for buying sugar.

Having seen the Baltic Chain on television, I remember wondering could this be the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union? I soon dismissed the thought.

Everyone I talked to - Russian friends, teachers at the language institute - they all believed that yes, the USSR had its problems, but it was not in danger of disappearing. After all, it was a superpower.

Just two years later, communist hard-liners in Moscow botched their clumsy coup and 500,000 protesters took to the streets of Moscow and the empire collapsed.

I was back in the Russian capital on Christmas Day 1991, as the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin - to mark the official end of the USSR. The largest state on the planet had collapsed like a house of cards.

Putin's Russia is not Soviet Russia, but there is something oddly familiar about what is happening here today. A political system which had considered itself as solid as rock has begun to show cracks.

When Vladimir Putin came to power more than a decade ago, Russia was weak. So on the ruins of 70 years of communism and 10 years of wild capitalism, Mr Putin began to build his system. He called it "the vertical of power".

It was a pyramid - with an all-powerful Putin at the top, and everyone down below following orders.

This, he believed, was what Russia needed to ensure stability. Soon the state was back in control.

The powerful oligarchs had either fled abroad or pledged their loyalty or in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky been put in jail.

The main TV channels had all been brought to heel. And Mr Putin's party, United Russia, had become the dominant force in what was widely seen as a rubber-stamp parliament.

The Kremlin spoke about "managed democracy". Opposition parties could take part in elections, but only those parties which the Kremlin saw as no real threat.

Vocal opponents of Mr Putin were pushed to the fringes, their parties denied registration. Anti-Putin street protests did happen, but they were tiny, and often ended in protesters being arrested. Vladimir Putin seemed in complete control.

Until last weekend's parliamentary elections.

Even in this system of "managed democracy", Mr Putin's party took a drubbing at the polls - officially it lost more than 70 seats. And that amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging across the country.

Online the blogopshere was bursting with talk of election fraud, from ballot-box stuffing to so-called "carousel voting" - people being driven from polling station to polling station to vote several times for the party of power.

There has been a surge of public anger - and the internet has been instrumental in channelling that and bringing protesters onto the streets.

Moscow this week has seen some of the largest anti-government demonstrations in years - a strange mixture of Russian nationalists and liberals calling for the election results to be annulled and for a fresh ballot.

At one protest on Tuesday I spoke to a student called Maria. Along with the crowd she was chanting "Russia without Putin".

It was the first time Maria had ever come out to protest against the countries' leader. "I'm tired of our government," Maria told me. "I'm tired of Putin. I want change."

Which is why this week I keep thinking about the Baltic Chain. And about what happened to the Soviet Union.

And I have been asking myself the same question I asked more than 20 years ago. Under pressure from the people, could the current system fall apart? How strong really is the vertical of power?

It may not be as strong as its architect would like to think.

This week I went along to a pro-Putin rally near Red Square. It came across as unspontaneous and unconvincing.

One of the crowd, a teenager called Sergei, said he and his friends had been bussed in specially from Samara - more than 800km (500 miles) away.

"But no one has told me anything,' Sergei admitted. "I've got no idea why I'm here.'

Uncertain World: Destructive Soviet Nostalgia

MOSCOW, Russia -- Twenty years ago, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Soviet Union's Slavic republics – Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia – signed an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union.

Formally, they claimed the right to dissolve it because these three republics established it in 1922.

Many analysts still dispute the legitimacy of this deal, but that does not change anything.

By December 1991, the Soviet Union had de facto ceased to function, as power already belonged to its constituent republics.

The 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union evoked more lively debates than the tenth or 15th anniversaries.

This seems paradoxical – with the passage of time, emotions generally subside, giving way to more sober and unbiased analysis, all the more so since the Soviet past is no longer a functional tool capable of creating something new.

This anniversary brought into stark relief the divisions between Russia and the other former Soviet republics.

In Russia, people remember the collapse with mixed emotions.

Some feel sorrow and nostalgia, others feel joy and schadenfreude, but everyone perceives it as a loss.

The other republics, which are still called “newly independent states,” celebrate it as their birth, that is to say as something gained.

This conceptual difference existed before, but now it is acquiring a special meaning for Russia.

The fixation on collapse – an exclusively destructive act – is setting the tune for national development.

Luckily, Russia has never had strong revanchist attitudes, but it is still suffering from an inferiority complex in its current borders, although it is perfectly clear that nobody wants to restore the USSR.

Sorrow over the end of the Soviet Union primarily reflects the absence of a conceptual replacement for the former socio-political formation.

The ideological anti-communist revolution of the early 1990s, designed to discredit the Soviet model to the world once and for all, quickly came to a halt.

First, nobody found convincing and consistent arguments, without internal contradictions, that could be patiently and professionally introduced into the public consciousness.

Painting a picture of the horrible, totalitarian past was not as easy as it first seemed.

It was impossible to ignore the achievements of the Soviet era without putting oneself in a vulnerable position.

To this day, pro-Soviet demagogy easily prevails over anti-Soviet rhetoric.

Second, some manifestations of “real democracy” have been so repulsive that many have started looking at “real socialism” through rose-colored glasses.

Finally, the political class took up a completely different matter – trying to convert the credit of public trust into power and property for itself.

The reforms of the 1990s, primarily privatization, reached their real, as opposed to stated, goal, and returning to the Soviet economic model and politics became impossible.

Yet, the exploitation of nostalgic feelings for Soviet life became widespread – having started under Boris Yeltsin it flourished and became systemic under Vladimir Putin.

The collapse of the Soviet Union will remain in the center of public debate until it is replaced by a more meaningful subject.

And there are no signs of this replacement so far.

Modern Russia finds it hard to deal with anything related to “values,” which makes it unreasonable to hope for the formation of any ideological platform.

It is possible to artificially maintain interest in the Soviet Union for a long time, but in this case the public debate will be increasingly divorced from real politics and goals.

With the passage of time, the Soviet past will become increasingly distorted as in a crooked mirror, engendering a more counterproductive and inadequate public response.

For all the differences from other republics (and Russia is still the official successor of the USSR and remains an empire structurally), Russia will still have to traverse their path to some extent.

The next stage involves acquiring a non-Soviet and non-post-Soviet identity, that is, to accomplish the task that other union republics have resolved – each in its own way.

Lamenting the loss over and over again is not just useless but counterproductive, all the more so since it is difficult to get out of the trap – the same elite that longs for the “real country” (its second generation) consists of the same people that once condemned it to extinction.

After all, it was the Russian Federation that played the decisive role in the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Popular fronts in the Baltic states or Ukrainian nationalists would have never achieved their goals if the Russian democrats had not backed them.

The sooner Russia views itself as a self-sufficient and fully-fledged state rather than a fragment of “something real,” the greater the chance it will be able to channel the nation’s energy into a constructive endeavor.

Ukraine Loses Fight Against Corruption

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has detained a fire inspector for soliciting a $44,000 bribe from a company which was involved in the construction of a new stadium for the Euro-2012 soccer championship in Kiev.

Just two days later, State Employment Service chief, Volodymyr Halytsky, and several of his subordinates were detained on suspicion of corruption.

Cash and valuables totaling $7.5 million were confiscated during a search of their offices and homes.

The two arrests have been the most recent manifestations of the scale of Kleptocracy in Ukraine.

Viktor Yanukovych, on his election as president in February 2010, like all his predecessors, proclaimed the fight against corruption as one of his priorities.

However, he has failed to improve the situation.

Corruption permeates all walks of life, from highway policemen who openly solicit bribes for speeding to government officials who thrive on kickbacks.

The case of Halytsky is special because it shows how the corrupt system works at the very top.

Under Yanukovych, people connected to three or four of the strongest groups in the government can steal with impunity, the daily Segodnya which is linked to the ruling Party of Regions reported on November 29, quoting its sources.

Halytsky, who apparently did not belong to any of these groups, had been warned that he could face problems but he just could not stop, according to the sources.

Since 2003 Halytsky had chaired the Employment Service, which pays unemployment benefits and finances companies to create jobs, with a break immediately after the “Orange Revolution” in 2005-2006.

Thus, he worked in this position in all the governments under three Ukrainian presidents.

During this period, the service’s social protection system was transformed into a system of organized plunder, according to the weekly Zerkalo Nedeli.

Funds earmarked for retraining the unemployed have been routinely stolen.

Funds disappeared last year that were intended to help Ukrainians launch their own businesses after losing their jobs, and it has been virtually impossible for companies to qualify for compensation for creating jobs without kickbacks.

Halytsky has been charged with embezzling money from a fund which was set up to help companies create jobs for former coal miners.

The companies in question reportedly had to pay 15 percent to 20 percent kickbacks.

The newspaper alleged that Halytsky paid protection money to people’s deputies from the Popular Party which is part of the ruling coalition and is chaired by Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn.

Several former top officials have been arrested and jailed for corruption since Yanukovych’s election as president.

Many of them are his political rivals, like former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which raises legitimate doubts about their guilt both in Ukraine and internationally.

At the same time, several officials who served under Yanukovych have also been punished for corruption. Last October, former Deputy Environment Minister, Bohdan Presner, was jailed for nine years.

Last November, the former chief price inspector, Tetyana Rud, was sentenced to five years in jail.

The chairman of the state commission for financial markets, Vasyl Volha, has been in custody awaiting a court verdict since last July, when he was arrested on suspicion of bribery.

There is a perception in Ukrainian society that these arrests appear to be only the tip of the iceberg and that many officials linked to the very top go unpunished.

For example, it is still not clear who owns the estate in a natural reserve area near Kiev, where Yanukovych established his multi-million dollar residence.

Chornomornaftohaz, a subsidiary of the state-owned oil and gas company Naftohaz Ukrainy, reportedly overpaid millions of dollars for an oil rig to an obscure company registered in Latvia which had won an apparently fake tender, while Energy Minister, Volodymyr Boyko, asked the SBU to find out who was behind the reports about the deal.

A survey conducted by the International Finance Corporation last year revealed chilling figures: an average Ukrainian company spends some ten percent of its annual turnover on corruption, and the share of those businesses which used unofficial ways of solving problems with state officials rose from 35 percent in 2008 to 46 percent in 2010.

Unsurprisingly, Ukraine slipped 18 positions in the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2011, which was released by Transparency International on December 1.

Ukraine now shares position 152 out of 183 with Tajikistan.

This is the lowest position for the country ever, and Ukraine is lower on the list than all of its peers in the Central and Eastern Europe region including Russia.

It scored only 2.3 on a scale of zero to 10 with zero indicating the highest level of corruption, down from 2.4 last year.

At the same time, Ukraine has failed to establish an independent anti-corruption body by the December 1 deadline, which was set by the European Union.

This has been one of the EU’s requirements for visa liberalization.

A Terrifying Blockage

LUND, Sweden -- Some of us believed that at the end of the Cold War in 1991 American and Soviet nuclear rockets would be left to rust and rot in their silos.

Indeed, we actually saw Ukraine, where the Soviets made most of their rockets and based many, calling in American engineers to help dismantle them.

Moreover, Ukraine decided to forsake nuclear power status — for which the world should give more praise than it does.

President George H.W Bush and even more so Ronald Reagan before him did quite a lot for nuclear disarmament.

At a summit in Iceland, Reagan and Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, panicked most of their advisors and western commentators when they nearly agreed to total nuclear disarmament.

Only Reagan’s persistence in demanding to keep alive research into “star wars” anti-missile systems and Gorbachev’s unwillingness to agree to this stymied an agreement.

Both sides were equally at fault.

Despite all his rhetoric and bear hugging of Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton achieved very little.

His successor, George W. Bush did only a bit more.

Hopes were focussed on Barack Obama who was chosen be honoured with the Nobel Prize partly because it was thought he would be a standard bearer for disarmament.

Apart from an initial agreement with Vladimir Putin to reduce superpower long-range rockets down from 2,200 warheads each to 1,500, still enough to blow up most of civilisation, Obama has done precious little.

The resistance in Congress to ratifying this pact was immense and passage only came on the promise of spending $80 billion to modernise nuclear forces.

Even Bush junior’s plan to base an anti-ballistic missile system on Polish soil to deter Iranian missiles has been modified only somewhat in an attempt to satisfy legitimate Russian concerns about it being used to intercept a Russian attack.

More American compromise is needed on this, such as moving the site to Romania, nearer to Iran and further from Moscow and finding a way for Moscow to share the running and control of the system.

Turning the page, the US has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would help stymie the further spread of nuclear arms to other countries.

If you can’t test you don’t know if you have a workable bomb.

The next stage in the disarmament process should be getting rid of short-range tactical missiles base in Europe.

Moscow is insisting that the first step must be the US removing all its tactical weapons from Europe, which is fair given their proximity to Moscow.

Obama has pledged to fight for “a new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials intended for use in state nuclear weapons”.

The idea behind this is to stop in their tracks any country thinking of building a nuclear armoury whilst setting limits on the renewing of warheads by those who already have them.

Meanwhile the main issue — the number of long distance super-destructive rockets held by Russia and the US — is not on the agenda despite Obama’s pledge in Oslo to work towards zero possession.

The US Senate is an immovable brake on Obama.

And the Russians, observing the power of the US Senate to probably refuse to approve any new treaties, stops them suggesting opening negotiations.

But how is it, 11 years after the end of the Cold War, that either side can justify nuclear weapons?

Is Russia an enemy or is it not?

Successive American presidents have said it is not.

The Russians say the same thing about the US and Europe.

Non-enemies don’t have nuclear weapons pointed at each other.

At least that is what basic morality and common sense would say.

Certainly they are never going to be used.

So what is it all about?

Don’t the US and Russia want to set an example to the rest of the world, as is their sworn obligation under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

After all sauce for the goose is good for the gander might say the Iranians and those in the Middle East that will probably emulate Iran if it does go nuclear.

Obama is checkmated. Therefore the world is checkmated. What a terrifying impasse this is.

Tymoshenko Arrested 'For Life,' Says Defense Lawyer

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Shevchenkivsky District Court in Kiev has chosen the measure of restraint for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the case on the activities of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) corporation in the form of indefinite arrest, the ex-premier's defense lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, has said.

He said at a press conference on Friday that he had received the text of a court ruling, under which Tymoshenko was arrested for the second time by the Shevchenkivsky District Court in Kiev.

"Tymoshenko was arrested for an indefinite term," Vlasenko said, referring to the text of the ruling.

He said that any other rulings of this kind indicated a period of arrest.

However, in this case, the issue does not concern any dates, Vlasenko said.

"In accordance with this resolution, Tymoshenko was arrested for an indefinite term, i.e. for life," Vlasenko said.

The deputy leader of the Batkivschyna Party, Oleksandr Turchynov, in turn, noted that there had been no cases of this kind in independent Ukraine.

"I cannot rule out that Yulia Volodymyrivna [Tymoshenko] could be arrested for a third or fourth time, and so on," Turchynov said.

He said that the Ukrainian government was becoming unpredictable and dangerous and that the only way out of this situation was to remove it from power.

As reported, Tymoshenko has been in jail since August 5, 2011.

On October 11, a court sentenced her to seven years in prison for abuse of office in signing a gas supply contract with Russia in 2009.

The appeal against this decision is to be considered on December 13.

In addition, other criminal cases were opened against Tymoshenko, in particular, the case on the activities of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) corporation.

On December 7 and 8, the Shevchenkivsky District Court held offsite sessions in jail and chose the measure of restraint for Tymoshenko in the UESU case in the form of arrest.

The American who makes cheese in a Russian village

What makes an entrepreneur?

ay Close, an American living in a small village near Moscow

Up at 5am to milk his cows, battling bureaucracy by day and making late deliveries by night - becoming a cheese-maker in Russia has been "hard, hard work" for Jay Close.

The 48-year-old New York-born chef began his operation 18 months ago, as part of a move to establish a rural life with his new wife Valentina, 25, in Moshnitsy, a village an hour's drive from the capital, Moscow.

Jay was inspired to try making cheese after visiting a cheese-maker in Holland during their honeymoon.

But what began as an experiment has fast become a business, with an estimated turnover of 30,000 euros (US$40,300, £25,700) in 2011.

Jay started with one cow. Now he has five plus eight goats, buys extra milk from nearby farmers and employs a worker from Tajikistan.

He began making one to two kilogrammes of cheese a day, but can now make up to 30 - and 30 different varieties.

The operation has taken over the entire downstairs of the farmhouse he built himself. "I'm making cheese in my living room and my kitchen," he says.

On top of covering the couple's living costs and debt repayments, the business is delivering about US$300 a month, which they are reinvesting in materials for a separate cheese-making building.

Jay also now sells to restaurants in the capital, using connections built during many years working in their kitchens.

In addition, a recommendation by a French tennis coach he met in one restaurant has delivered a market for about two-thirds of his output, via an organisation called Lavka Lavka, which delivers high-end farm produce directly to a network of individual customers.

Lavka Lavka also helped to find four keen potential buyers who between them stumped up 3,300 euros for equipment to enable Jay to scale up production.

"Cheese futures," he jokes, adding that most of the money has now been repaid - in cheese.

The rest of the business, and the house itself, was funded from Jay's savings, some inheritance, and the proceeds from selling a houseboat he owned on the Seine River in Paris.

Jay lived in countries as diverse as Mexico, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji as a child, and speaks English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

His experience in catering began in California, when he ran away from home at the ago of 14 to avoid being sent back to boarding school in the UK.

He slept in the stairwell of an expensive apartment building, and washed dishes in a restaurant across the road, before eventually going with his father to Australia where he studied graphic arts.

But he later became a chef, although stints in construction and an abattoir have also brought experience which has come in useful in setting up the farm.

After visits to Moscow in 1993 and 1994, Jay moved in 1995 to work in post-Soviet Russi

"I didn't understand and I wanted to understand - how people lived, how they ate, how everybody seemed to have work but nobody had a salary. There were no shops, no advertising, no neon signs - people had very little, and no money, but they still had smiles."

Jay is constantly busy, breaking off to check batches of cheese, forgetting to eat breakfast, trying to recoup money from a truck driver and fielding calls from Lavka Lavka.

Although clearly stressed at times, he comes alive as he talks about his products, which he describes as "something that was made the way things were supposed to be made before progress stepped in and made things worse".

He believes most cheese in Moscow's supermarkets, which sells for as little as 220 roubles ($7; £4.50) a kilo, is mass produced and has vegetable fat added.

Jay uses 10 litres of milk - which he says costs 450 roubles - for each kilo of cheese.

The cheese sells for 500-600 roubles a kilo when bought directly from him, but Lavka Lavka customers pay almost twice as much.

Despite his growing success, Jay is divided as to whether he would recommend Russia as a suitable business environment.

The bureaucratic struggles are constant, and he describes lengthy difficulties in buying land and getting his cheese certified for sale.

"You've got to have some inside connections. For a foreigner thinking he's going to start something in Russia, it's too much - the culture, the people, the land... A lot of people just give up," he says. "I can't say you wouldn't regret it."

"I've had it all on my shoulders, I've worked on cruise ships with 20-30 chefs under me, making three meals a day for 250 passengers," he says.

But tired of Moscow's erratic wages, commuting, and working for others, Jay says he wanted to do something for himself.

"This is more rewarding psychologically," he says. "When you're working for yourself, you put more of yourself into it."

"It's never dull - there's always some new adventure."

Russia protests: Gorbachev calls for election re-run

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has said Sunday's Russian parliamentary election was marred by fraud and has called for a re-run.

"The country's leaders must admit there were numerous falsifications and rigging and the results do not reflect the people's will," he said.

Protesters were planning new rallies for Saturday as arrests in Tuesday's crackdown in reached 800 across Russia.

Key figures in the protest movement are starting 15-day jail sentences.

State TV channels have ignored the protests, giving coverage only to rallies in support of the government.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Disregard for public opinion is discrediting the authorities and destabilising the situation”

Mikhail GorbachevFormer Soviet leader

The centre of Moscow saw its biggest protest against the rule of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his allies in years on Monday, when several thousand people came out to condemn widely reported fraud at Sunday's parliamentary elections.

An attempt to hold a smaller rally on Tuesday was quickly broken up by riot police, while rival rallies by Putin supporters were allowed to proceed.

The big question now is whether the fledgling protest movement can maintain its momentum.

While the movement began as a protest against the election results, most of the slogans have been against Mr Putin, our correspondent adds.

The Russian prime minister, who formally registered on Wednesday to stand in the March presidential election, has played down losses by his party, United Russia, which saw its support drop sharply to just under 50% of the vote.

OSCE monitors have said the polls were slanted in favour of United Russia, noting apparent manipulations such as the stuffing of ballot boxes.

Mr Gorbachev told Russian news agency Interfax in Moscow: "I think they [Russia's leaders] can only take one decision - annul the results of the election and hold a new one."

The former leader, 80, initiated democratic reforms in the final years of the USSR but rapidly lost popularity and influence after the emergence of the new Russian state under the late Boris Yeltsin.

"Literally by the day, the number of Russians who do not believe that the declared election results were honest is increasing," he said.

"In my opinion, disregard for public opinion is discrediting the authorities and destabilising the situation."

Messages on Twitter and other social media, used to co-ordinate the earlier protests, are fixing Saturday as the date for the next demonstrations.

Revolution Square, just 200m from the Kremlin, was named as the venue in Moscow.

Unconfirmed reports in the Russian media on Wednesday said the city authorities were planning to shut down the square's metro station of the same name "for repairs".

According to the Russian news website lenta.ru, the Solidarity opposition party has received permission from the city authorities to hold a rally on the square limited to 300 people.

However, the party's Facebook page "Rally For Honest Elections" had received nearly 16,000 requests to attend the rally as of Wednesday afternoon.