No, this isn’t going to be about “Arms Control”:http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/24/czech.start/?hpt=T2. Instead, here’s my favorite Russia-related quote for a while:
bq. Let me get this straight. You fight the regime, and in exchange the regime brings you free chicks and blow? Duly noted.
This from a Facebook comment by Ilya Krasilschik, the editor of Afisha magazine, via a “fascinating article by Michael Idov”:http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-23/russias-amazing-drugs-and-hookers-scandal/full/ at “The Daily Beast”:http://www.thedailybeast.com/. The story involves young leaders of Russia’s nascent opposition movements being set up to be filmed having sex and using drugs in an apparently fairly clumsy manner, which seems to be part of a wave of efforts to try to scandalize some of these people. While the stories themselves are interesting, even more so is Idov’s commentary about what it says about what is going on in Russian these days politically:
bq. The first and most obvious reaction to all this nonsense is that the Russian opposition doesn’t really need sabotaging. It’s completely neutered as is, and lives on a clearly delineated reservation: LiveJournal, the radio station Echo of Moscow, the television channel Ren-TV, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and a few other inconsequential outlets with little reach beyond the capital. Yashin and Dobrokhotov are twentysomethings who hold no elected post; Fishman and Oreshkin harbor no visible political aspirations. This sudden breakdown of the unspoken pact between the Kremlin and the “liberals”—you don’t develop national ambitions, and we let you preach to your fancy choir—could mean one of two things. One is that the system is wobblier than thought, President Medvedev’s liberalization promises are about to bear fruit, and Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, sensing uncertainty for the first time in years, is wasting no chance to tar every possible breakout star of the opposition. That would be almost heartening.
bq. The other possibility is that the smear campaign is the handiwork of an off-the-script underling. (This happens quite a bit in the modern Russia: Most of the censorship on television, for example, is born not of direct orders from above but of various flunkies’ blind guesses as to what would please their bosses in the Kremlin.) In this case, Nashi—the pro-government youth “movement” that the administration uses to beef up headcounts at various rallies and to sic on the occasional dissident—would be a prime candidate. The organization is just useless enough, and its members just dumb enough, to concoct something like this. Sadly for Russia, this version appears far more realistic.
You can read the full story “here”:http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-23/russias-amazing-drugs-and-hookers-scandal/full/
One of the interesting (? not sure if this is the right word ?) things about Russia today is that while mass media, and especially TV, seems to be fairly closely controlled by the Kremlin, the internet remains fairly free and open (the “Live Journal”:http://www.livejournal.com/ referred to in the above quote is a blog hosting website). So an interesting aspect of the story is that you can read about the set up attempts on the blogs of those who were set up (see for example “here”:http://dobrokhotov.livejournal.com/447752.html and “here”:http://yashin.livejournal.com/894296.html). So the whole thing begins to look rather ridiculous: someone is trying to get _kompromat_ (potential material for blackmail or public humiliation) on these guys, and they are turning around and blogging about it, including photos of the girls used to set them up.
For a somewhat more somber take on what’s going on with Russia’s security services, see “this update in the Economist”:http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15731344.