#9 - JRL 8055
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004
From: Janet Keeping <jmkeepin@ucalgary.ca>
Subject: Re: 8054-Lavelle

I would not want even to try to enter into the heated debates taking place in “the List” these days. I have but three comments which grow out of Peter Lavelle’s contribution to # 8054. First, as usual, I found his comments helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff in the on-going debates. Second, especially useful is his statement, I think, that all too often journalists covering Russia [and, I might add, even worse, academics purporting to study Russia] fallback on political idioms and constructs that have meaning in the West, but have little analytical value when applied to Russia”.

I too find that often what is offered as commentary or analysis on Russia, to use Lavelle’s words, “makes perfect sense through the prism of Western ideas about politics and business, but does not necessarily make any meaningful sense of what is really happening” in Russia. I could not agree more that Russia must be explained from the inside out. That does not mean that what happens there should be justified on the same basis (explanation and justification are quite distinct processes of thought and argument). But as far as getting an actual handle on what is happening, one cannot, I think, dispute his assertion. Lavelle’s example in #8054 of political parties is a good example, but there are many others to pick from. Try on for size the cluster of issues, which I find probably the most galling, surrounding whether Russia is or is not a “democracy”, whether Russians are “capable of democracy” or even really want it.

Third, and finally, I would register gentle and respectful surprise that having lived in Moscow for six years he has, as he says, “NEVER met ONE Russian who felt any attachment to either party's leaders or platforms”. He is writing here of SPS and Yabloko. I have never lived in Russia, but have spent a lot of time there over a period beginning in late 1992. I have a very good friend in Moscow and a colleague in Novosibirsk, who I think could be described as being attached to Yabloko, in the sense that for several years now they have seen the party and Yavlinsky as constituting the only true alternative to the rest of what is on offer. No doubt there are many more such people. But my point is just this: I suspect that Mr. Lavelle also must have met such people and wish that he had not, therefore, over-stated his case, for it tends to undermine the credibility of his often stellar offerings.

Keep up the good work, David.

Thanks,

Janet Keeping
Director of Russia Programmes
Canadian Institute of Resources Law
The University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.