Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005
From: Martin Dewhirst <martin@dewhirst.org>
Subject: 9/5 propaganda opportunity in the Kremlin
Martin Dewhirst, University of Glasgow, Scotland:
Despite the numerous fascinating items related to President Putin’s virtuoso PR appearance before foreign guests in Moscow earlier this month (e.g., JRL 9238:3-18, 9239:13-16, 9240:11, 9241:1-3, 9242:5, 9243:5, 9244:12, 9245:5, 10), the crucial difference between the ‘dictatorship of law’ (diktatura zakona – i.e., the arbitrary and highly selective misuse of the law) and the ‘rule/supremacy of law’ (vlast’/verkhovenstvo zakona) has still not been sufficiently stressed. For background: according to Kommersant’’-Vlast’ of 23-29 June, 2003, page 67, the term diktatura zakona was introduced into the contemporary Russian political vocabulary by none other than the highly or lowly esteemed Colonel-General Al’bert Makashov. In June 1991 he stated: ‘I am a conservative. So far as concepts like patriotism, internationalism and Leninism are concerned, I haven’t changed my colours, and I don’t intend to change them… I remain a conservative. More than that, I’m also in favour of dictatorship. Of dictatorship of the law, dictatorship of the Constitution.’ In January 2000, as acting President, Mr. Putin claimed that: ‘The dictatorship of the law is the only variety of dictatorship to which we are obliged to submit.’
What is perhaps ominous is that Mr. Putin, who, like Mr. Lenin, studied law at university, has used this phrase since then in contexts where it would have been perfectly possible to say ‘the rule/supremacy of law’. Whether or not this is a Freudian slip, or an example of his healthy sense of irony, Mr. Putin seems recently to have become more politically correct, at least in public, and he does now sometimes talk about the rule of law. Perhaps this follows some advice given to him by one of his image-makers. But does he really think, given his knowledge of the Russian Procuracy, that the rule of law in Russia has already taken over from the dictatorship of law?
I have been impressed by the reverence with which some of those present in the Kremlin on September 5 have commented on President Putin’s brilliant performance. This was, after all, a pure (or impure) propaganda event, very largely for export use only, and it would have been helpful, as well as relevant, if someone somewhere on JRL had clarified in more detail whether or not it was the Russian side which had covered not just the cost of holding the Valdai conference but also the Western experts’ main hotel and travel (perhaps business class in some cases and economy class in others?) expenses. (It would also have been interesting to know roughly how many of the experts were unable to comprehend Mr. Putin’s beautifully clear and well enunciated Russian and had to rely mainly on the interpretation of his words into English.)
It struck me that some of these experts may never have read Ronald Hingley’s seminal article on the Russian love and mastery of vranyo (roughly: blarney), the first version of which was published in Problems of Communism in Washington over four decades ago. Why do President Putin’s public declarations deserve to be taken more literally and more solemnly than those of numerous other public figures whom one could name? Russian vranyo is still alive and kicking (and not only in the Kremlin and on Old Square), as is indicated by the remarkable new film entitled 4, which, i.a., contains an intense 30-minute conversation between three straight-faced Russians who never once say anything that has any connection whatsoever with the truth (for instance, it is asserted that Madame Putina consumes two bottles of wine every day). I have a dream that some playwright or scriptwriter - Tom Stoppard, perhaps - will write a similar scene featuring an earnest, tremendously sincere interchange between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and Mr. Putin, with each of them setting forth his own professed deeply-felt, intensely humanitarian political agenda...
I think that some of the Western experts who recently spent a few hours in the Kremlin would have learnt a lot more about Russia, and about the terrible problems that Russia and Mr. Putin face, if they had watched Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s film instead. And it would have been so much cheaper! Fortunately for those experts who work in London, they will be able to view 4 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, beginning on September 23rd. Who knows, 4 might even be screened in Washington.