Prague Property

In Russia’s shadow

The Kremlin’s useful idiots

Our correspondent meets yet another bearded Brit

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THE Old Theatre at the London School of Economics is a hotspot for demagoguery. Fiery student orators have honed their rhetoric there before going on to jobs in investment banking; mobs denouncing dictatorship have hounded hapless visiting speakers from the podium.

Notoriously poorly ventilated, the air can be thick with everything from the smell of wet clothes (LSE is too cramped to provide a convenient cloakroom) to flurries of paper darts directed at speakers that the audience finds boring or annoying. On one memorable occasion, a gigantic inflated condom came floating down from the gallery to disconcert a notoriously adulterous politician who was trying to give a talk on privatisation.

In 1980, when your diarist arrived there as an undergraduate, it was gripped by the issue of Soviet beastliness at home and abroad. At one end of the political spectrum were the ardent anti-communists, soon to be reinforced by refugees from martial law in Poland. They denounced the persecution of Soviet Jews, collected signatures for Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77, and celebrated the West’s renaissance under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

At the other end were the Spartacists, a weird group of Stalinist Trotskyists (yes, you did read that correctly), whose slogans included “Workers’ bombs are bombs for peace! Capitalist bombs are bombs for war!” and “Smash NATO, defend the Soviet Union!”

A slightly less bonkers approach by the Kremlin’s useful idiots was to match every Soviet crime with a real or imagined western one. It was called “whataboutism”: “So you object to Soviet interventions in eastern Europe? Then what about the American assault on the Nicaraguan Sandinistas?” “You mind about Soviet Jews? Then what about blacks in South Africa?”

AFP

Reports of Litvinenko’s death “greatly exaggerated”, say Russians

So an evening debate on the death of Russian press freedom (where your diarist was putting the case for the prosecution) produced a sense of déjà vu. Two Russian journalists, putting the case for the defence, centred their case not on the rights and wrongs of Russia’s laws on extremism, but on the shortcomings of the British media for superficiality, double-standards, and craven obedience to its political and commercial masters. How dare we criticise Russian public broadcasting after the way the BBC had bowed to government pressure on so many occasions? Had not the newspaper coverage of the Litvinenko murder been a farrago of exaggeration, misunderstanding and hypocrisy?

Well perhaps it had. But the debate was about Russia. The shortcomings of the British press are widely discussed, not least by its own journalists; though it gets most things wrong most of the time, the errors are not directed by weekly meetings at Number 10, Downing Street at which a prime ministerial aide lays down the line to take in the comings days.

Soviet propagandists’ overuse of “whataboutism” provided the punchline for subversive jokes. For example: A caller to a phone-in on the (fictitious) Radio Armenia asks, “What is the average wage of an American manual worker?” A long pause ensues. (The answer would have been highly embarassing to the self-proclaimed workers’ paradise, which was proving to be lots of work and no paradise). Then the answer comes: “u nich linchuyut negrov” [over there they lynch Negroes]. By the late 1980s, that had become the derisive catchphrase that summed up the whole bombastic apparatus of the Soviet propaganda machine.

Yet “whataboutism” attracted vocal support from some parts of the audience. A student from Pakistan passionately denounced democracy as a sham. Someone from Malaysia praised the Kremlin for standing up to America. A bearded Brit came up with a predictable, “Who are we to judge?”.

Others, including what seemed (from their accents) to be a good sprinkling of Russians, disagreed, denouncing the Kremlin line and bemoaning the loss of media pluralism (not quite the same as freedom, but still worth having) since the Yeltsin years. Most did not give their names before speaking. “The embassy is watching us” explained one of them afterwards. Plus ça change.

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Hey my first YouTube video. So now I can start to do loads of them and I have some ideas for Camino Videos, will post here as soon as do something.
Anyway enjoy.

Ulcerative Colitis and Pizza don’t seems to go too well together.  And I have no idea why.  Perhaps I just blame food too often when things start to go wrong within my body.  But, hey, I eat piazza about three times per year, it is my typical comfort food, so I really should know that […]

Poland

Sighs and relief

Poland’s new government has plenty to do. Not repeating the mistakes of the past would be a start

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FOR the past two years, outsiders have watched with a mixture of unease and derision as the most important country in eastern Europe has seemed to drift off into a world of its own. Poland’s voters have now mercifully dragged it back. With the thumping defeat of Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party, and the victory of Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform, Poles can put behind them a period of mistakes and missed opportunities. And not only Poles are celebrating.

Under the eccentric rule of Mr Kaczynski as prime minister and his twin brother, Lech, as president, Poland seemed to confirm the fears of those who said that enlarging the European Union to the east was a mistake. In the name of fighting corruption at home, the Polish authorities corroded independent institutions, undermined the rule of law and misused the intelligence services. Abroad, the Kaczynskis repeatedly misplayed their hand, making their country, once a respected ally, a laughing stock and a nuisance. They picked unnecessary fights with Germany, sourly cited past historical wrongs (Poland has, sadly, suffered many) in their bid for bigger voting weights within the EU, and put backs up all round.

It was principally younger Poles, turning out in unprecedented numbers, who handed Law and Justice its election drubbing (see article). That is a welcome counter to fears that apathy, cynicism and emigration make it too easy for heavy-handed governments in ex-communist countries to hang on to power. Voters’ patience is exhaustible.

Civic Platform inherits a booming economy, with GDP growth forecast at 6.5% by year’s end. That provides a good basis for reforming the public finances and simplifying the tax system, which Law and Justice largely failed to do. The country’s lamentable transport system and antique public administration offer plenty of scope for modernising zeal. A good measure of success will be if some of the hundreds of thousands of Poles now working in western Europe start to trickle home. Abroad, simple adherence to the elements of diplomacy—turning up for meetings, answering letters, negotiating calmly—will gladden Poland’s friends and neighbours.

Civic Platform will find it easy to be more competent than its predecessor, but it should not be less principled. The Kaczynskis were clumsy in their corruption-hunting, but their quarry was real. It would be a pity if Poland now returned to the sleaze that marred public life before 2005. The criminal-justice system needs to be depoliticised, not castrated. Meanwhile, the new government should avoid seeming vengeful. Law and Justice packed the senior reaches of officialdom with party placemen; Civic Platform should not. Nor should Poland’s new leaders purge competent people in top jobs solely because they were appointed by the old government.

As for foreign policy, Civic Platform could start by mending ties with Germany. Poles may reasonably feel twitchy about close German-Russian co-operation, especially in energy. But regarding Berlin and Moscow with equal suspicion is no help. Germans are themselves worrying about Russia’s direction under Vladimir Putin, and about its influence on their country. The Kaczynskis’ venomous anti-German stance damaged Poland and weakened the EU. The more constructive Poland is in the EU, the easier it will be for Germany’s Russia-sceptic chancellor, Angela Merkel, to take risks on Poland’s behalf.

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An estimated 5000 demonstrators gathered outside the Saeima, Latvia’s Parliament, this morning, called upon to defend the rule of law by Diena, the intelligentsia, and many prominent Latvians concerned about the latest twists in the twisted course the Government has taken in the last year. Some have jumped the gun and called it a “Fourth Awakening” — which is definitely a gross exaggeration — but the numbers are not bad for 8.15 in the cold rain on a weekday’s notice, and so I do hope that the current mood of “people power” at least signals an end to the so-called “Fourth Falling Asleep.” There’s a new optimism in the air, helped along by the fact that “the usual” crowd of democratic activists emitting clarion calls was joined by such figures as Georgs Andrejevs, a former Foreign Minister, and Ģirts Valdis Kristovskis, a former Defense Minister — both are now MEPs… and both were elected to the EP from parties in the ruling coalition.

Then there was the announcement by Visvaldis Lācis. 83 years old and a veteran of the Latvian Legion, Lācis was elected to the Saeima from those “Green Rustics” I mentioned a couple of posts ago. The quintessential nationalist maverick, Lācis had a gentleman’s agreement with his party — he would always vote his conscience. With regard to “Latvia’s Eliot Ness,” he wasn’t given that option — even before Aleksejs Loskutovs, JD, got a hearing, Lācis was pressured into voting to get rid of him. The trouble is that the Green Rustics should have known that Lācis is not to be cowed — Augusts Brigmanis, the man he accuses of pressuring him, said as much yesterday. I bet that the Rustics regret ever asking him to join their list. Side note — though Lācis is quite the rightist, the fact that Loskutovs is an ethnic Russian matters not at all in this case. Cracks, cracks in the coalition, and even in the ruling party. Some Fatherlanders, too, are jumping ship.

My prediction — this coalition’s days are numbered, maybe even in single digits. To hope against hope — may the gods grant that we get a decent Government at long last. Let the people be heard — the only way to slay the cynicism and nihilism that infects every level of Latvian society is to get the political élite to listen. This won’t be easy — in fact, it’s well nigh impossible. We are talking about people who lean out of the Parliament building’s windows to give the finger to the electorate. The likeliest response to the current, feeble groundswell of fury is “the same crabs in different sacks,” as always. May the groundswell grow!

The photo is from a gallery at Apollo. The sign reads: “All animals are equal, but pigs are more equal than others.” The Prime Minister here is often likened to a pig — Cūkmens is based upon Betmens, “Batman”; cūka means “pig.” Orwell’s Animal Farm saw its first appearance in the Soviet Union in Avots, a magazine published in occupied Latvia during the Third Awakening.

More questions in my inbox that I don’t know the answer to - can anyone help?  Thanks.
We are planning to walk the Meseta in November, the part of the Camino we have not walked in the past…saving it for our old(er) age!  A couple of questions, please:
1/  What is the weather likely to […]

This is question from Steve - anyone any ideas?  I have not been in Pamplona at that time of year.
Hi,
Thanks for your great website. I plan to walk the Camino next summer.
Unfortunately, I can’t do it except in July. I thought it might be interesting, as well, to be in Pamplona during the running of […]

Ernests at Diena offers comment on the Government’s reaction to the deliciously earthshaking speech by the US Ambassador to Latvia at the University today. The title of the cartoon is “Americans and other Sorosistas.” The text: “We will not submit to foreign pressure, imperialist pig! Corruption is an inalienable part of our sovereign democracy!”

Another reaction — the opposition party New Era is introducing a no confidence motion. Confidence on the part of most Latvians in this Government has long been below zero, and Ambassador Bailey’s speech is a sign of just how bad things have gotten — America rarely criticizes its staunch ally and these words are quite harsh, coming from a diplomat. (Okay, so the speech does contain a stellar example of American “self-criticism”: “NOW, PLEASE KNOW, AND YOU ARE HEARING THIS FROM ME, AMERICANS ARE NOT PERFECT IN THESE AREAS AND WE KNOW THAT”)…

The title of the post is from Firesign Theatre. Hat tip to Aleksei for the cartoon!

I have been busy writing, not writing here but writing a Camino ebook. I have been passing it around my friends who have also walked the Camino and getting some feedback from them.  And now I am here asking for your opinion on this.
Do you think it is something that you would find […]

The Case of the Mysterious Briefcase, which led to the departure of Indulis Emsis from Parliament a couple of weeks ago, is cause for reflection on what being Green in Latvia means. It’s rather anticlimactic, though — by the time Emsis became the world’s first Green Prime Minister in 2004, most saw the Greens (who’re married to the Farmers’ Union in what is sometimes amusingly translated as the Greens and Rustics, or the Green Peasants) as pathetic opportunists collecting a motley crew of politicians under the sponsorship of Latvia’s most famous oligarch, Aivars Lembergs (”transparency is not a striptease”). So you have a Green Party in the pocket of the man with “the Pipe.” At the other end of the spectrum, there’s Latvia’s “Green” MEP, Tatyana Zhdanok, the sole ethnic Russian in the European Parliament and one of the most hated politicians ever to have lived among Latvians — ķoķa Taņa was a leader of the Interfront, the anti-democratic grouping that opposed Latvia’s independence.

As Wikipedia observes, “Emsis’ political views are described as rather conservative, unusual for members of Green parties around the world.” So, some background — the very backbone of Latvia’s independence movement was environmentalist. VAK, which is now also Friends of the Earth Latvia, was at the heart of it. It was VAK, which has roots stretching back into the dark years of the occupation, that organized the 1988 demonstration in Mežaparks demanding the legalization of the Latvian flag, then forbidden (video below). VAK organized the Prayer for the Sea (photo above), in which nearly a third of a million people on the eastern shores of the Baltic joined hands to protest the turning of “our sister” into a cesspool. VAK led the protests against the building of the metro in Rīga. One of the seminal events in the Awakening took place here in Daugavpils. Dainis Īvāns, the young idealist who would later be leader of the Popular Front, led protests against the building of a dam that would have destroyed what’s left of the Daugava Valley (the rest of the Daugava is indeed a chain of reservoirs).

The Green movement was radical — but it was not a fringe movement. Latvians have always been “close to nature” — the cities still empty out after the summer solstice, when we celebrate the principal festival of the year with pagan songs. Oaks are practically sacred — farmers plow around them. Large, old trees and big stones are named, catalogued, and venerated. What VAK struggled against was the destruction of a traditional “ecotopia” by the Soviet Union. Nationalism went hand in hand with environmentalism. The metro would bring further colonization, as would the dam in Daugavpils. VAK confronted Soviet soldiers to place crosses upon the graves in the Zvārde civil parish — the entire parish had been laid waste by the Russian military. Latvians themselves had been infected by the prevailing lack of culture — one woman, writing about their attempts to restore some of the landscape, describes taking a bus past the ruined churches of Courland, every passenger in a drunken daze, the countryside devastated.

Not a few VAK activists were founders of the Green Party, which was the first political party formed in occupied Latvia (the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, the oldest party in Latvia, had survived abroad). Emsis was one of the founders. In my first winter here, 1991/92, I journeyed to Sabile with another founder, Oļegs Batarevskis — to Pedvāle (it was nothing then; ruins and choked streams, mansions carved up into flats for transient farmhands, a Soviet landscape of litter and despair). I remember asking Oļegs about their relationship to, for instance, the German Greens — he answered that Latvians were more realistic; “we don’t want to go back to living in caves.”

Arvīds Ulme, the “Chieftain” (virsaitis) of VAK, wrote a decade ago that he wanted “to find and bring together those with the divine gift of devotion and ability to give in the name of a bright green beginning. We endeavor first to call together our own ranks, like we did at the start of the Awakening. The same Awakening which we, the Greens, rang in with our audacious black-white-and-black and green-white-and-green marches. The same Awakening which glowed in the maroon-white-and-maroon barricade bonfires and cried out in the joy of new-found freedom. The same Awakening which, before our very eyes, died from a combination of blind faithlessness, KGB-mania, and finally, the money-starved free market economy. Those who rang in and called together the Awakening indeed share responsibility for all that is transpiring today.”

The “Chieftain’s” mentality is tribal. As to KGB-mania — he was a KGB informer, as it turns out (to no one’s surprise). These days, Greens like Ulme are as likely to be promoting homophobia as they are to be defending the environment. Still, one has to try to look a bit deeper to understand how we got to “blind faithlessness” and the Case of the Mysterious Briefcase. “The money-starved free market economy” has meant, in part, the closing off of public waterfront for the manses of the few. “The first Green politician to lead a country in the history of the world” resigned in ignominy, after playing “should I stay or should I go” long enough to add comedy to his tragedy. The counterculture — really the essence of the movement — survives.

There have been Green successes — the scrapping of the Finnish-Latvian Baltic Pulp project, for example. Reality requires realism. The signs of the times — not many people show up to pray for the sea, and Daugavpils politicians would like to see the dam built after all. Now that cars choke Rīga, a metro would probably be nice. Belarusian biznismeny are yearning for a canal to link our “river of fate” to the Black Sea. Lithuania and Estonia have deposits on bottles — in Latvia, they’re thrown into the woods. Burning the fields is a Soviet “custom” that has spread to Ireland due to Latvian immigration there. In Rīga, a real estate speculator drives two Humvees at the same time…