This week Russian oligarchs like Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich will have yet another opportunity to spend astronomic sums of money buying art. In May alone, Abramovich spent a total of £60.2 million on two paintings – one by Lucien Freud, the other by Francis Bacon. Sotheby’s auction house is holding a three-day auction of paintings by top Russian artists, including all-time favourite Marc Chagall, and noted modernist Natalia Goncharova, many of them from the period leading up to the October 1917 revolution.
Apparently the previous, long-term owners of these works could no longer afford the insurance premiums as the price of art rises at unprecedented rates, which is why they are now on the market. A Sotheby’s spokeswoman said that prices have gone from £20,000 a few years ago to between £200,000 to £500,000 in just a few years. Russian art offers a superb status symbol for the new class of billionaires who preen at the top of Russian society, as well as sending their children to Britain’s top public schools. In addition, art has come to be seen as safe investment at a time when property prices have become unstable, and the global economy lurches into deeper crisis.
Over the weekend, Abramovich berthed his £152 million yacht on the city centre riverside in St Petersburg so he could join politicians and super-rich oil and mineral company executives meeting at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. He will have heard Russia’s new president Dimitry Medvedev, who was inaugurated last month, warn that the world might be in the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
In a speech aimed at impressing Russian nationalists, Medvedev said his country could play an ever bigger role in the global economy. What he really meant was that it would be on Russia’s terms. For example, BP’s giant Russian venture, TNK-BP, which pumps a quarter of the company’s oil, failed to reach a hoped-for deal at the St Petersburg summit. The Kremlin prevented an agreement being reached so it could satisfy nationalist pipe-dreams of making Russia into a modern super-power by insisting that non-Russian operators would be excluded. With the price of a barrel of oil soaring by $11 in one day’s trading at the end of last week, Russia’s manoeuvres are bound to increase global tensions and instability.
Significantly, the man who oversaw Russia’s transition to a capitalist economy, Anatoly Chubais, told the gathering that the Russian state could not function properly unless there was a political opposition. Chubais’ remarks were clearly a criticism of the oppressive regime set up by Medvedev’s predecessor, Vladimir Putin. Under Putin, open political opposition was virtually silenced, with many journalists and rights campaigners assassinated or jailed. Virtually all the media is under government control. Forlorn hopes that Medvedev would be different from Putin are rapidly being dashed. In fact, Medvedev is a puppet president. Before he left office, Putin switched all key powers away from the Kremlin to the office of prime minister, which he now occupies.
From within the country itself, voices are being raised against the wealth-crazed autocrats who preside over the chasm between the super rich and poor. In particular, Russia’s recent history has come back to haunt its leaders. Many were angered by Putin’s statement that no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about the Great Terror. A teacher's manual published during his presidency suggested that Stalin's actions were justified by the need to modernise the economy.
Last week, former Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev called for a national museum-memorial to honour the victims of Stalin’s repressions. Gorbachev and 25 others, including poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, signed a statement announcing the initiative, saying that "the current and future generations need memory and knowledge of the repressions of the Stalin regime" which had left few families untouched. Russia’s present leaders are, however, much more interested in the price of oil – and works of art – than anything remotely connected with democracy and historical truth.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Russian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russian. Show all posts
Monday, June 09, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
'More like Mafia than democracy'
As Russia moves towards its coronation – sorry, presidential election – this Sunday, the clampdown on the autocracy’s political opponents continues to tighten. The outcome is already decided, as President Putin has anointed Dimitry Medvedev as his successor. But just to make sure, the authorities have been using every trick in the book to clamp down on freedom of expression, assembly and association.
This week Amnesty International published a report, Freedom Limited documenting the use of vague legislation to harass anyone expressing their opinion and standing up for their rights. Amnesty outlined the hydra-headed attack on opposition demonstrations, human rights activists, journalists, radio stations like Ekho Moskvy, non-governmental organisations, friendship societies like the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society – indeed any independent organisation that voices criticism of the authoritarian regime.
The investigation into the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has run into the sand as authorities high up in the regime are clearly protecting those who ordered the killing. The international Committee to Protect Journalists has warned about the high casualty rate for journalists in Russia.
According to International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) analyst John Crowfoot, Russia is currently the most dangerous place to be a journalist, after Iraq. He has produced a database that outlines the deaths and disappearances of 289 journalists in Russia since 1993. The youngest to have died is a 19-year-old reporter killed last September; the oldest, a retired journalist of 80, was stabbed to death in his home a few years ago. Forty-seven of those killed were women.
Another independent human rights organisation, Article 19 has warned repeatedly about the use of defamation laws to suppress criticism of public figures and powerful individuals against the media. “Criminal defamation” laws have led to imprisonment in three cases over the past two years.
In Nizhniy Novgorod, a city of 1.5 million people, police beat up demonstrators, while in Nazran, Ingushetia demonstrators were wounded and 60 people were detained. Three Moscow television journalists and Oleg Orlov, a member of Memorial organisation were abducted from a hotel, beaten and left in a field by unidentified men wearing masks. Before the December parliamentary elections, workers at state-owned plants and public sector workers were virtually ordered to vote for Putin’s party or lose their jobs.
And it gets worse. Today the IFJ called on journalists’ unions around the world to join protests over a “cynical campaign” by Russian political bosses to close down the Russian Union of Journalists, the country’s largest non-governmental organisation. For the past year state agencies in Moscow have been trying to evict the Russian Union from premises they have occupied for almost 30 years and which they were promised ownership of by previous governments claiming the building is unsafe.
Now the RUJ has learned that the government is trying to sell the building to a private owner and in the process put the RUJ on the street. “The Russian Union has been one of the most strident critics of government pressure on independent journalism,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “It is the victim of intimidation and a cynical campaign by its political opponents who have failed to close the union using trumped charges of breaching fire regulations, now are trying to sell off offices that the union insists are legally their own.”
Even world-famous personalities like chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, who tried to stand as a candidate against Putin was arrested last November along with 200 other people. He spent 28 days in a Moscow jail. After his release, Kasparov did not mince his words: “Putin wants to rule like Stalin but live like Abramovich [the oligarch who owns Chelsea FC]. Putin’s system is more like Mafia than democracy.” Sounds like the time is ripe for another Russian Revolution.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
This week Amnesty International published a report, Freedom Limited documenting the use of vague legislation to harass anyone expressing their opinion and standing up for their rights. Amnesty outlined the hydra-headed attack on opposition demonstrations, human rights activists, journalists, radio stations like Ekho Moskvy, non-governmental organisations, friendship societies like the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society – indeed any independent organisation that voices criticism of the authoritarian regime.
The investigation into the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has run into the sand as authorities high up in the regime are clearly protecting those who ordered the killing. The international Committee to Protect Journalists has warned about the high casualty rate for journalists in Russia.
According to International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) analyst John Crowfoot, Russia is currently the most dangerous place to be a journalist, after Iraq. He has produced a database that outlines the deaths and disappearances of 289 journalists in Russia since 1993. The youngest to have died is a 19-year-old reporter killed last September; the oldest, a retired journalist of 80, was stabbed to death in his home a few years ago. Forty-seven of those killed were women.
Another independent human rights organisation, Article 19 has warned repeatedly about the use of defamation laws to suppress criticism of public figures and powerful individuals against the media. “Criminal defamation” laws have led to imprisonment in three cases over the past two years.
In Nizhniy Novgorod, a city of 1.5 million people, police beat up demonstrators, while in Nazran, Ingushetia demonstrators were wounded and 60 people were detained. Three Moscow television journalists and Oleg Orlov, a member of Memorial organisation were abducted from a hotel, beaten and left in a field by unidentified men wearing masks. Before the December parliamentary elections, workers at state-owned plants and public sector workers were virtually ordered to vote for Putin’s party or lose their jobs.
And it gets worse. Today the IFJ called on journalists’ unions around the world to join protests over a “cynical campaign” by Russian political bosses to close down the Russian Union of Journalists, the country’s largest non-governmental organisation. For the past year state agencies in Moscow have been trying to evict the Russian Union from premises they have occupied for almost 30 years and which they were promised ownership of by previous governments claiming the building is unsafe.
Now the RUJ has learned that the government is trying to sell the building to a private owner and in the process put the RUJ on the street. “The Russian Union has been one of the most strident critics of government pressure on independent journalism,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “It is the victim of intimidation and a cynical campaign by its political opponents who have failed to close the union using trumped charges of breaching fire regulations, now are trying to sell off offices that the union insists are legally their own.”
Even world-famous personalities like chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, who tried to stand as a candidate against Putin was arrested last November along with 200 other people. He spent 28 days in a Moscow jail. After his release, Kasparov did not mince his words: “Putin wants to rule like Stalin but live like Abramovich [the oligarch who owns Chelsea FC]. Putin’s system is more like Mafia than democracy.” Sounds like the time is ripe for another Russian Revolution.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
A 21st century Balkan powder keg
Birth should be a happy event. But the declaration of a new state in Kosovo, which according to the United Nations is still nominally part of Serbia, could spin dangerously out of control. Both the majority Kosovan Albanians and the ethnic Serb minority have become parties to 19th-century style Balkans manoeuvres, with Western Europe on one side and Russia and Serb nationalists on the other.
The actual fate of the people of Kosovo is almost certainly the last thing on the minds of the major powers and their allies. Kosovo remains like a prison for its inhabitants, whatever their ethnicity or religion. It has high rates of poverty, 50% unemployment and is plagued by power and water shortages. Animosities are fuelled on both sides by a toxic mix of economic underdevelopment, opportunist and corrupt local politics combined with big power arrogance riding roughshod over ethnicities and small nations.
The declaration of independence in the Kosovan parliament, prompted and encouraged by the United States, Britain and Germany, came despite the absence of an international agreement about the area’s future status and in the knowledge that Serbia regards Kosovo as the historic cradle of its own nationhood.
January’s elections in Serbia undoubtedly helped push Kosovo’s parliament to its declaration. Serbia’s ultra-nationalist, right-wing Radical Party led by Tomislav Nikolic received 29% of the votes, the largest share of any group. Nikolic stated that Serbia should "cut all economic ties, transport, flow of capital, goods and people from Albanian-controlled parts of Kosovo. Their passports will not be valid here, so Kosovo Albanians will not be able to enter Serbia."
Far from “a triumph for intervention”, as the Independent on Sunday blithely claimed, the future is fraught. Russia is opposing Kosovan independence in the UN security council. Other nations like Spain have rejected the declaration by Kosovan prime minister Hashim Thaci, that “from this moment on, Kosovo is proud, independent and free”. Like Russia and China, Spain is concerned about the knock-on effects on would-be new states within its own borders.
NATO military strategists clearly expect trouble. The EU is sending a 2,000-strong “peace and justice” force and Britain will send 1,000 troops in addition to the 16,000 Kosovo-Force (K-For) already occupying the 4,170 square mile area of Kosovo. But the “peace-keeping” function of NATO is in fact a major contributor to the tensions in the area and, like in the past, will only exacerbate them.
Tito’s Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, formed in 1943 out of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo, began to unravel in the 1990s as Stalinist regimes collapsed in Russia and eastern Europe. Today’s animosities arise directly from the misrule of Stalinist-turned nationalist Slobodan Milošević. Milošević hung on to power for 11 years after becoming leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1989. He whipped up anti-Muslim and anti-Kosovan nationalism as the Yugoslav armed forces carried out brutal “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims. His reactionary politics prompted the civil wars in the region.
In response, separatists declared Kosovo a republic in 1991 and the Kosovo Liberation Army seized control of 40% of Kosovo itself in 1998. Serb forces retaliated, sparking off NATO air strikes in 1999. Serbia and its capital Belgrade were bombed for 98 days, ostensibly to save the Kosovans from persecution. But NATO had a second, hidden agenda: the destruction of the Yugoslav army, the chief military power in the Balkans, plus what remained of the socialist property relations set up under Tito. The political aim was to ensure the triumph of corporate capitalist rule – otherwise known as the “spreading of democracy”. And that remains the NATO/EU agenda in Kosovo today.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
The actual fate of the people of Kosovo is almost certainly the last thing on the minds of the major powers and their allies. Kosovo remains like a prison for its inhabitants, whatever their ethnicity or religion. It has high rates of poverty, 50% unemployment and is plagued by power and water shortages. Animosities are fuelled on both sides by a toxic mix of economic underdevelopment, opportunist and corrupt local politics combined with big power arrogance riding roughshod over ethnicities and small nations.
The declaration of independence in the Kosovan parliament, prompted and encouraged by the United States, Britain and Germany, came despite the absence of an international agreement about the area’s future status and in the knowledge that Serbia regards Kosovo as the historic cradle of its own nationhood.
January’s elections in Serbia undoubtedly helped push Kosovo’s parliament to its declaration. Serbia’s ultra-nationalist, right-wing Radical Party led by Tomislav Nikolic received 29% of the votes, the largest share of any group. Nikolic stated that Serbia should "cut all economic ties, transport, flow of capital, goods and people from Albanian-controlled parts of Kosovo. Their passports will not be valid here, so Kosovo Albanians will not be able to enter Serbia."
Far from “a triumph for intervention”, as the Independent on Sunday blithely claimed, the future is fraught. Russia is opposing Kosovan independence in the UN security council. Other nations like Spain have rejected the declaration by Kosovan prime minister Hashim Thaci, that “from this moment on, Kosovo is proud, independent and free”. Like Russia and China, Spain is concerned about the knock-on effects on would-be new states within its own borders.
NATO military strategists clearly expect trouble. The EU is sending a 2,000-strong “peace and justice” force and Britain will send 1,000 troops in addition to the 16,000 Kosovo-Force (K-For) already occupying the 4,170 square mile area of Kosovo. But the “peace-keeping” function of NATO is in fact a major contributor to the tensions in the area and, like in the past, will only exacerbate them.
Tito’s Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, formed in 1943 out of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo, began to unravel in the 1990s as Stalinist regimes collapsed in Russia and eastern Europe. Today’s animosities arise directly from the misrule of Stalinist-turned nationalist Slobodan Milošević. Milošević hung on to power for 11 years after becoming leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1989. He whipped up anti-Muslim and anti-Kosovan nationalism as the Yugoslav armed forces carried out brutal “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims. His reactionary politics prompted the civil wars in the region.
In response, separatists declared Kosovo a republic in 1991 and the Kosovo Liberation Army seized control of 40% of Kosovo itself in 1998. Serb forces retaliated, sparking off NATO air strikes in 1999. Serbia and its capital Belgrade were bombed for 98 days, ostensibly to save the Kosovans from persecution. But NATO had a second, hidden agenda: the destruction of the Yugoslav army, the chief military power in the Balkans, plus what remained of the socialist property relations set up under Tito. The political aim was to ensure the triumph of corporate capitalist rule – otherwise known as the “spreading of democracy”. And that remains the NATO/EU agenda in Kosovo today.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
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