“Scott Gehlbach “:http://users.polisci.wisc.edu/gehlbach/ was fortunate enough to have attended Obama’s speech at the “New Economic School”:http://fir.nes.ru/en/Pages/default.aspx in Moscow on Tuesday. He sent along the following observations:
* Why did Obama choose the New Economic School for his big Russia speech? Konstantin Sonin, a professor at NES (and—full disclosure—a coauthor of both Josh and myself), provides analysis “here”:http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/379308.htm.
* Did Barack Obama really forget where he and Michelle met, as suggested by the “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/world/europe/08moscow.html? Likely not. Rather, he was riffing on a comment by Maxim Boycko, president of the NES Board of Directors, that the president and his wife met at Harvard. (The introduction was delivered in Russian but translated for Obama by Sergei Guriev, NES rector.) It may have been clumsy—there was Michelle, sitting in the roped-off section with other members of the American delegation—but from where I sat it appeared well-intentioned.
* Not to pick on the New York Times, but I’m also not sure I subscribe to the notion – expressed “here”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/world/europe/08russia.html – that the audience response to Obama’s address was less than enthusiastic. The folks with whom I spoke before and after the address were uniformly positive. It’s just not Russian nature to express great emotion in large public gatherings, perhaps the consequence of decades spent trying to blend into the crowd.
* Much has been made of the fact that the speech was broadcast live only on Vesti-24, a round-the-clock news channel to which comparatively few Russians have access. But from my perspective, this was a victory. Rumors were swirling before the talk that even Vesti-24 had been told not to go live. In the end, they did so, but without much advance warning. The popular radio station Ekho Moskvy also broadcast the speech later the same day.
My own thoughts on the visit can be found “here”:http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/07/obama-s-russia-gamble.aspx and “here”:http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Joshua_A__Tucker_A5C5CC07-AA6F-4668-A20C-21B459D34815.html.