Posted on 04/27/2007 6:10:54 PM PDT by A. Pole
Boris Yeltsin, who died on April 23, was a towering figure in Russian political history. But was he, as so many US obituaries and editorials have described him, the "Father of Russian Democracy"?
As though a wave of historical amnesia had swept over the media, few commentators seemed to remember that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, upon becoming Soviet leader in 1985, who launched the democratic reforms of "perestroika" and "glasnost"--ending censorship, permitting, even encouraging, opposition rallies and demonstrations, beginning market reforms and holding the first free, multi-candidate elections. (Indeed, Yeltsin was the chief beneficiary of those reforms.)
[...]
After August 1991, Yeltsin's anti-democratic policies polarized, embittered and impoverished his country laying the ground for what is now unfolding in Russia--though it is being blamed solely on today's Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[...]
Beginning in early 1992, Yeltsin launched the disastrous "shock therapy" policies which sent the country reeling with pain. Urged upon Russia by a group of US (primarily Harvard) economists, and supported by the Clinton Administration and energetically implemented by Yeltsin's young "reformers," these policies--almost universally touted as "reforms" in the Western media-- involved the swift elimination of most price controls and a privatization program that resulted in hyperinflation wiping out, in installments, the savings of average Russians. Roughly half of Russia's people thus found themselves living below the poverty level.
** In October 1993, Yeltsin used tank cannons to destroy not only the Parliament that had brought him to power and defended him during the attempted coup of 1991 but the entire political, constitutional order of Russia's post-Communist republic. The US government and media, with few exceptions, acted as Yeltsin's cheerleaders as the Russian President's tanks pounded Russia's first ever popularly elected and fully independent legislature. A senior US official told the New York Times that "if Yeltsin suspends an anti-democratic parliament, it is not necessarily an antidemocratic act"; and an unnamed US official was quoted by Newsweek as saying the Clinton Administration "would have supported Yeltsin even if his response had been more violent than it was." (187 people died and almost 500 were wounded in the attack.)
[...]
In 1996, Yeltsin's reelection campaign---financed by a handful of oligarchs including now-exiled Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky and aided by pro-Kremlin media bias and censorship--was marked by spectacular legal violations. No less enduring in its consequences was the most aggressive giveaway on Yeltsin's watch --the notorious "loans-for-shares" agreement--which allowed a small group of men, in exchange for financing Yeltsin's campaign, to take control of and Russia's most valuable economic assets.(It was a colossal piece of criminality glossed over at the time by almost all US media outlets as "market reform".) Thus was birthed the rapacious oligarchy--leading one Russian journalist to remark the other day that Yeltsin was not "the father of democracy" but "the father of the oligarchy."
**In August 1998, following a number of financial dealings that victimized or failed to benefit most Russians, the government after pledging not to do so,suddenly devalued the ruble, defaulted on its debts and froze bank accounts. In effect, people's savings were once again expropriated, this time decimating the post-1991 middle class.
Such events help explains why for millions of Russians, Yeltsin's rule was an age of blight not democracy. This magazine never lost sight of the social and economic disaster he presided over. But almost no one in the US media wanted to tell that story. Preferring Panglossian narratives, few cared to report that since 1991 Russia's reality included the worst peacetime industrial depression of the 20th century. In 1999, when the UN Development program reported that " a human crisis of monumental proportions is emerging in the former Soviet Union," the report was virtually ignored. And while, as Professor Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski wrote, "for the first time in recent world history one of the major industrial nations with a highly educated society has dismantled the results of several decades of economic development," American press coverage preferred to run glowing stories about Yeltsin's crusading "young reformers" --sometimes called "democratic giants" -- showing a cold indifference to the terrible human consequences of the crusade. (A Reuters journalist later made the observation: "The pain is edited out." ) As Stephen Cohen wrote, "sustaining such a Manichaean narrative in the face of so many conflicting realities turned American journalists into boosters for US policy and cheerleaders for Yeltsin's Kremlin."
Neither these cold realities nor the political and economic consequences today have chastened the the booster-journalists. Indeed, while many of the obituaries in newspapers that were Yeltsin's most uncritical supporters at the time now give a more balanced account than they did at the time --there is no acknowledgement that they helped promote the acts they now criticize or regret.
Embedded in those obituaries is another argument, perhaps stated most clearly by Strobe Talbott, a Russia expert and Clinton's primary adviser on Yeltsin's Russia, that while there are valid criticisms of Yeltsin there was no alternative route to what he imposed. Yet the majority of Russian pro-market economists warned against "shock therapy" --abetted by US-sponsored policies--foreseeing its tragic outcome. The alternative road they offered was more evolutionary, a gradualist approach, a "third way" that would have averted catastrophic impoverishment, plundering and lawlessness. Time has proved them right.
[...]
Katrina vanden Heuvel
this America-hater is not to be trusted....ever!
Shock "therapy" bump
You are confused. In this article the author is not a witness who is be trusted or distrusted. She presents analysis and arguments which can be rejected or accepted on their own merits.
It would not add/subtract to the value of this text whether it was written by Charles Manson or by Mother Theresa.
Consider the source.
In Manson's case, his evil and insanity would require that the text be examined with special care for lies and inchoate thinking.
In Mother Theresa's case, we could be confident that she was telling the truth, even if we happened to disagree with her.
Vanden Heuvel is well known for taking a hard left line on just about everything, and doing everything she can to make her own country look bad. I would examine anything she says with special care.
I have long suspected that the fall of the Iron curtain was engineered by those within who stood to profit handsomely from the transition. Yeltsin was a great and courageous man to a point, but was likely a figurehead for those in the then-KGB (Putin & Co) who are really running the show.
Given the way things have turned out, one must tip their hat to Putin and his cronies. Huge profits and acclaim for them, and the average Russky isn’t doing so bad either vis-a-vis 20 years ago. Kudos for crushing the Chechen rebels, too - probably something we should but never will learn from.
no, I’m not one bit confused......she habitually and deliberately fashions “facts” and interweaves them such that they support her well-known agenda.....she is shipmate to the likes of ellen ratner, eleanor clift, seymour hersh, bahbah streisand and bill press.
So thus "shock therapy": in their minds it was the closest thing to a free market they could get at the time, so by their definition it was the best mode of action.
Similar things were said when they tried to inject some of "The Free Market" into the energy sector here in the U.S. and we all know how well that went.
Similar things could be said with regard to what we tried to do in Iraq: a bit of democracy is better than no democracy at all.
When so-called conservatives attempt to reach conservative ends by radical means the only thing that can be certain is that the conservative ends are never achieved, and conservatism itself gets one more black-eye.
We used to have at least one leg to stand on.
Now we have just a couple of bloody stumps.
Reread your own sentence - it is absurd.
Of course if one is not capable to evaluate what is being said or written one is doomed to to rely on personal trust.
Machiavelli stated:
"Three minds exist; one capable of thinking for itself; another able to understand others' thinking's; and a third that can do neither. The first mind is of the highest excellence, the second excellent, and the third worthless."
* Editor and co-owner of the leftwing magazine The Nation
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1649
Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor of The Nation magazine and a Board of Trustees member of the closely related Nation Institute.
She is also an owner of The Nation, being one of several investors brought together in 1995 by then-Editor Victor Navasky in a for-profit partnership to buy the magazine — which was then losing $500,000 or more each year — from investment banker Arthur Carter. This group of investors included, among others, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Alan Sagner, novelist E.L. Doctorow, actor Paul Newman, and the computer software creator of Norton Utilities, Peter Norton.
Born in 1960, vanden Heuvel studied politics and history at Princeton University, writing her Senior thesis on McCarthyism. She has said that during her college years she sometimes “felt like a Russian.” She graduated Summa cum Laude from Princeton in 1981 and went on to work as a production assistant at ABC Television. According to a Princeton alumni publication, during her Junior year she had already worked “as a Nation intern for nine months after taking the ‘Politics and the Press’ course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine’s editor from 1976 to 1978,” and she “returned to The Nation in 1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs.”
Her father William J. vanden Heuvel served between 1953 and 1954 as executive assistant to the founder of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Donovan, during Donovan’s tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. Mr. vanden Heuvel later became a Board Member of the Farfield Foundation. By the early 1960s he was a special assistant to New York Governor Averill Harriman and then to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In 1976 he was named Chairman of presidential candidate Jimmy Carter’s New York primary campaign committee. Vanden Heuvel served from 1979 until 1981 as Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations with the rank of Ambassador. Today he sits on the board of the United Nations Association-USA and several other organizations.
Mr vanden Heuvel brought his daughter Katrina onto the Board of Directors of New York City’s Correctional Association and onto the Board of Governors of a group he co-chairs, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
On her own, Katrina vanden Heuvel gained a seat on the Board of the Institute for Policy Studies.
In 1988 Katrina vanden Heuvel wed New York University history Professor Stephen F. Cohen, two decades her senior and an expert on the Soviet Union. They have one daughter, Nicola. Today, Cohen is a Contributing Editor at his wife’s magazine.
In 1989 vanden Heuvel was promoted to The Nation’s Editor-at-Large position, responsible for its coverage of the USSR. In 1990 she co-founded Vyi i Myi [”You and We”], a quarterly feminist journal linking American and Russian women. She also did some reporting for the Moscow News.
In 1995, vanden Heuvel was made Editor of The Nation. She and Navasky moved aggressively to expand the magazine via radio, the Internet, books and other synergistic opportunities.
A defining moment for Katrina vanden Heuvel came in May 2002 during one of her frequent appearances on MSNBC’s Hardball. After vanden Heuvel spoke about how she lived in Harlem and understood the poor, host Chris Matthews let his audience know that in fact she lived in a multimillion-dollar townhouse in a posh section of Morningside Heights.
Katrina vanden Heuvel has authored or co-authored a handful of books, including Dictionary of Republicanisms: The Indispensable Guide to What They Really Mean When They Say What They Think You Want to Hear (2005); Taking Back America: And Taking Down the Radical Right (co-authored in 2004 with Nation Contributing Editor Robert L. Borosage and published by Nation Books); A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy, and September 11, 2001 (co-authored in 2002 with Jonathan Schell); and Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers (1990).
Present Russian government used universal and timeless imperial method, instead of trying to follow wishful thinking and trying to implement some abstract principles, they found who is potentially the strongest local leader and gave him the full support in exchange for loyalty.
This is the method British used when their empire was ascendant, once they reverted to jingoism, brute wasteful force and ill advised idealism, their empire vanished into thin air.
In other words, you consider what they say to be truthful and accurate within the scope of their knowledge. You can trust that they are not deliberately lying, manufacturing information, or seeking to mislead.
When a person is a known "spinner" (a polite word for "liar"), then a far more suspicious attitude has to be taken to any assertion he makes. Colloquially, "if he said the sun rose in the east, I would go outside and check."
If someone habitually posted from the works of Charles Manson, and by all appearances endorsed them, people might begin asking questions.
Good point. In the area I live local authorities refused to give into privatization fad - they kept public ownership of electric supply. Now the prices in out are LOWER than in neighboring places :)
I guess it would be easier for you if the author of this article remained anonymous.
It is what I said, if something is beyond your ability to judge on its merits, you have to use trust.
It does not have to be disparaging, I had to focus on personal trustworthiness of my dentist and car mechanic, since I am not able to form judgment in their areas of expertise. It was a painful trial and error process before I found the good ones.
But this is political forum where we are supposed to be able to debate on our own. Otherwise we might lose chance to remain quiet :)
Such events help explains why for millions of Russians, Yeltsin's rule was an age of blight not democracy. This magazine never lost sight of the social and economic disaster he presided over. But almost no one in the US media wanted to tell that story. Preferring Panglossian narratives, few cared to report that since 1991 Russia's reality included the worst peacetime industrial depression of the 20th century.
Two thoughts. To use a shaky metaphor, when you quit smack cold turkey, the withdrawal is pretty severe.
As for The Nation being oh so responsible in calling attention to post-Cold War Russian difficulties: pretty hard to stomach the told-you-so when you spent decades defending the gulag archipelago, bastards.
However, I have experience with this person as an untrustworthy source; therefore, I would prefer to see any information, if true, from some other quarter.
Just exactly like your dentist!
We inherited our car mechanic - we know he's trustworthy because he's working on his third generation in my family (my 18 year old daughter just bought her first car from him.)
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