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#10 - JRL 8055
From: "masha gessen" <gessen@ru.ru>
Subject: RE: 8054-Lavelle and Rutland
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004

With apologies to all who are tired of this, I promise to keep this response very short indeed.

1. On Lavelle. I found his response thoroughly amusing. It's been a while since a foreigner has so un-self-consciously taken it upon himself to teach me, a Russian, how to be more Russian. I encourage Mr. Lavelle to move on and give the same lesson to other Russian fans of liberal democracy, including, perhaps, Sergei Kovalyov, Irina Khakamada (nah, probably not Russian enough), Elena Bonner (or is she also disqualified because she spends part of her time in the US?), my colleagues Valery Panyushkin, Anna Politkovskaya, Masha Lipman and many, many others. While he is at it, perhaps Mr. Lavelle could bestir himself to meet some of them personally so that he would not be able to claim that he has never met a Russian who supports pro-democracy politicians. Really, I sincerely regret that Mr. Lavelle has kept such lamentable company for 6 years. But I think that as someone who writes about Russian life and politics, he should have been concerned with this: after all, four years ago about a quarter of the voters in Moscow, where Mr. Lavelle lives, voted for pro-democracy parties. Seriously, Peter, you've had my phone number for nearly a year. You could have called, we could have met, perhaps this could have expanded your journalistic horizons a bit.

2. On Rutland. I don't disagree with much of what Mr. Rutland has to say, except he misrepresents my point and goes on to argue with it. He says I accuse the NYT and others of "failing to inform their readers of the anti-democratic character of Putin's rule." Not exactly. I say in the piece that while NYT and others have acknowledged Putin's "anti-democratic tendencies," as I've frequently seen this put, this has been lost in the bigger story the media have been telling. Rather, two bigger stories: the story of Putin as a liberal economic reformer and of Russia "inching toward democracy," as a recent NYT editorial put it, and the story of Putin as America's best friend. The analysis conducted by Mr. Rutland bears this out: NYT reporters and editorial writers tend to acknowledge problems but rarely, if ever, question the general direction in which the master narrative will have Russia going: toward democracy and greater cooperation with the West. (I don't think it is entirely fair to consider the op-ed page in this context, although I think the choice of op-ed pieces is limited by the framing of this story as well--in any case, it is a far more complicated issue that falls outside the scope of my analysis). My argument is that the NYT and other US media missed, as we say in Russian, the elephant: the really huge event that re-frames the whole story. That event is the reversal of Russia's general direction. The real story is not "Russia is taking two steps forward, one step back, but generally moving toward democracy" but, rather, "Russia is constructing a fascist state that at this point still has a few trappings of democracy."

Because of the way the story is framed, a huge part of Russian reality falls outside the picture. A perfect example is the recent coverage of the Moscow metro explosion. It was covered, mostly as a straight news story, by most newspapers. But none of the stories I found (obviously, I can't read every US newspaper, but I looked at the majors) cited the most amazing quote in this whole story, which did run in the Guardian and other British papers: "We do not need any indirect confirmation. We know for certain that Maskhadov and his bandits are linked to this terrorism," said Putin. The NYT ran 3 bylined stories in different editions, including two versions of the same news story and one follow-up about the families of victims. Oddly, the news story, while indicating that Putin had blamed Chechens, said that his remarks were "at once determined, but also indirect" (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/international/europe/07RUSS.html). The Washington Post ran a brief (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17499-2004Feb5.html), also omitting this telling quote. USA Today ran a good-size story but also omitted the quote (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-02-06-moscow-explosion_x.htm). I didn't find this quote in any of the other US papers, though it was all over the Russian media.

I don't think there is a conscious conspiracy to make Putin look better than he is. But you can't cite a quote like that and just leave it hanging. You have to have some reaction. Where would you go for reaction? You'd have to go to people who believe it may not have been Maskhadov. That would mean, most likely, the (formerly) parliamentary commission on investigating the 1999 apartment-building bombings. That, of course, would open up a whole can of worms that the US media (with the very notable exception of the Baltimore Sun) do not seem prepared to handle: the growing number of people who believe that the Russian security forces are either directly involved or implicated in some or all of these terrorist attacks that always seem to occur fatefully close to election date. I am not suggesting that the proponents of this idea have conclusive evidence. But they certainly don't claim that they can make their assertions without proof, and that puts them on more-solid ground than Putin in this case. But that would really mean breaking from the master narrative: the very suggestion that this man may be blowing up his own citizens in order to justify blowing up others of his own citizens (and what is so far-fetched about that?) would fall far beyond the scope of "a few stumbling block on the path top democracy."

This is an omission that distorts the picture of Russia today very significantly. I have spent much time looking at various Russian online forums in the last few days. The not-so-paranoid idea that the security forces are involved has at this point taken hold widely. It is no longer an utterly marginal point of view, as it was four and a half years ago. But you wouldn't even get an inkling of this from reading the US press.

One other note on sources. Another obvious one for this story is Boris Berezovsky. Does he have an agenda? You bet. Does he have less of one than when he was a Kremlin kingmaker and the US press corps couldn't get enough of him? I don't think so.

Now look what I've done. Written another long one again. Sorry. Hope you enjoyed it.