Transatlantic Politics

Russians are trying to stave off the natural elimination of their population.  How do they do it?  One Russian region is declaring a holiday accompanied by prizes to try and encourage its citizens to procreate.  Why Sept. 12th (the date chosen for the holiday)?  Because the expectant couples would then have their babies on Russia's national day 9 months later…Long live Mother Russia!

Read about it here.

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The Russian school manuals are being rewritten in order to fit the Putin doctrine of a strong Russia, unashamed of its past, bluntly distorting facts and bullying the US. Even scarier is the glorification of Stalin. The Times reports from Moscow: 

One [manual], for social studies teachers, presents as fact Mr Putin’s view that the Soviet collapse was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. It describes the United States as bent on creating a global empire and determined to isolate Russia from its neighbours. 

The book describes Josef Stalin as “the most successful Soviet leader ever” and dismisses the prison labour camps and mass purges as a necessary part of his drive to make the country great. The manuals are intended to serve as the basis for developing new textbooks in schools next year, though Education Ministry officials insisted that they would not be compulsory. Mr Putin gave them his seal of approval at a conference he hosted for teachers at his presidential dacha last month. He described Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937, in which 1.5 million people were imprisoned and 700,000 killed, as terrible “but in other countries even worse things happened”. Discounting the Soviet Union’s long history of oppression, he said: “We had no other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance.”

Pavel Danilin, who wrote the chapter on Sovereign Democracy, told The Times that it explained the “core transformation” of Russia under Mr Putin.

“We understand that the only guarantee for our democracy is our sovereignty, our strong state, our strong army, our strong economy and our strong nation,” he said. “It is not an ideology. It is just common sense. And my intention was to explain that common sense to teachers.”

 The new history manuals also explain Putin's support for Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine during the "Orange Revolution":

Mr Putin’s support for Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine’s rigged presidential election of 2004 is also defended. Mass protests in the Orange revolution eventually brought his pro-Western rival, Viktor Yushchenko, to power, but the manual states: “Yanukovych was the only candidate capable of truly resisting Yushchenko. So Russia’s choice was clear.”

Some more on the Stalinist era revival here. Le Figaro also writes about the "rehabilitation of the Communist past". And the Daily Mail about a freakish revival of "youth camps", a la Hilter: "Sex for the Motherland".

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Putin has resurrected another Stalinist recipe for dealing with critics and opponents, apart from imprisoning and murdering: forced placement in a mental institution.

It's another female journalist, just like Anna Politkovskaia. Her name is Larissa Arap. Radio France Internationale reports that she has been arrested in Murmansk and then forcedly placed in a mental hospital. In June she had published an article about the cruel and inhumane treatment children are submitted to in the local mental institutions, including electroshocks. Arap is also an active member of Gary Kasparov's opposition party, who now accuses the resurrection of Stalinist methods.

AFP talked to the local leader of Kasparov's party, Elena Vassilieva, who said that Arap was arrested on July 6, while passing a medical test for obtaining a driver's licence: "The doctor told her to wait on the hallway, then all of a sudden, the police arrived with an ambulance and took her by force." After being held in custody in a clinic for a while, Arap was transferred on July 26 to a psychiatric clinic with restricted access, 150 km away from the city, said Vassilieva. "We don't think she's ill. Maybe she had some breakdown, but she never lost her temper or became a threat to anyone. It's a return of the Stalinist repression", claims Vassilieva as quoted by AFP. 

A press spokesman of the regional governor declared that, although he's not aware of this particular case, it is impossible for her to have been placed in a mental institution on political reasons. "I completely rule out the idea that it's a case of political repression. There is no persecution of opponents. Everyone can express his point of view. It's absurd."

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Creepy words from Vladimir Putin at the Black Sea Economic Cooperation summit in Istanbul that sound eerily familiar to Eastern Europeans of the "old days" of Soviet occupation:

"The Balkans and the Black Sea have always been a sphere of our special interests. And it is but natural that a resurgent Russia is returning here."

The last move that practically checkmates the timid EU strategy in lowering its dependency on Russia was made last Saturday, when the Italian company ENI signed a memorandum with Gazprom to build a pipeline through the Black Sea, thus undermining the Nabucco-project that would have crossed Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria - bringing gas from the Caspian region and maybe Iran to the Western markets. Here is what the Moscow Times reports:

Gazprom and Italian oil firm Eni unveiled a plan Saturday for a big new pipeline to take Russian gas under the Black Sea to Europe, undermining an earlier plan to extend a Turkish route. The 900-kilometer South Stream pipeline would come ashore in Bulgaria and then branch to Austria and Slovenia in one spur and southern Italy in another, Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni said at a news conference with Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev and the two countries industry ministers.

Austria, of course, is well off, after having signed a deal with Gazprom on building joint storage facilities at Baumgarten, the regional hub where the Nabucco pipeline would have ended. (See also: Russia: If we can't own the pipeline, we'll control the faucet) Coincidentally or not, the South Stream pipeline has a branch to Austria..

While the Russian monopoly has succeeded in cutting out British Petroleum of the Siberian gas fields, both the EU and US lack leadership in respect to the Black Sea and Caspian region. As Vladimir Socor puts it, the US and EU energy policies in Eurasia are collapsing:

In retrospect, Washington's retreat from leadership on Central Asia-Europe energy transit projects in 2001-2005, along with a policy vacuum in Brussels, set the stage for the debacle just seen. Even after the January 2006 "wake-up call" (triggered by Kremlin manipulations with Turkmen gas supplies to Ukraine and beyond), the U.S. and EU relegated Caspian energy policy mainly to mid-level officialdom, with only episodic top-level involvement.

In Washington, for example, a deputy assistant secretary of state was tasked to promote these energy projects in the relevant countries, in a direct match against Putin. The Russian president (along with his energy executives) was personally interacting with the same countries and leaders to pull his incomparably greater political weight for the Russia-favored projects. The United States and the EU did not seriously attempt to offset Kremlin pressures on the Kazakh and Turkmen presidents. Nor did they develop timely and convincingly resourced alternatives to the ready-made Russian projects.

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The Nabucco project is one feeble EU attempt to build an alternative to the Gazprom-controlled, already-built natural gas pipeline-network. 

It is supposed to bring gas from Azerbaijan and/or Iran, through Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania to the huge gas-hub in Austria, at Baumgarten. Russia tried first to discourage the Azerbaijan government from moving forward with the project.  Instead, Russia built its own direct pipeline through the Black Sea via Turkey (entitled Bluestream), all the while openly dismissing the Nabucco pipeline, by saying that Russia needs to protect and expand its own pipelines in order to ensure an uninterrupted gas flow to its European clients.  Given Russia's recent history towards energy policy, some might view this sequence of events as disturbing.

But Russia's ultimate strategy came to life 10 days ago, during Putin's visit to Vienna. The gas hub in Baumgarten, where the Nabucco pipeline would be connected to other Western European pipelines is now a shared venture between OMV (the Austrian gas corporate) and..Gazprom - the Kremlin-controlled Russian oil conglomerate!

Can't own the pipeline? No big deal, we'll own the faucet.

This might just be the beginning of a "beautiful friendship" with the Austrians, similar to the Gerhard Schroeder affair.  The former German chancellor struck a deal with Putin just weeks before the election he lost that called for building a direct pipeline through the Baltic Sea linking Germany directly to the gas fields in Siberia.  Doing so conveniently reduces the gas flow through the Baltic states and Poland - who have openly criticized Russia. Punishment and reward in its most basic form.  Since signing this deal on behalf of the German government he no longer leads, Schroeder has been rewarded with a seat on the executive board of Gazprom and he is now actively lobbying for the continuation of this and other projects of the Russian state-controlled giant.

Pictured above is the map of the Nabucco-project. The construction of the pipeline is due to start next year and be ready by 2011. It is not clear yet which branches will be developed first. With Russia having also struck a deal with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan regarding their Caspian Sea reserves, and with Iran being the second gas producer, there is only Azerbaijan left to feed the pipeline. And Azerbaijan's reserves are not sufficient. With Gazprom waiting patiently at the other end of the pipeline, one might ask if it really matters anymore.

As Ed Lucas puts it in this week's Europe view column -

"Russia has largely won the gas wars before most Europeans even noticed they were being fought. So far this year the Kremlin has stitched up the Caspian (by striking a pipeline deal with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan). It has nobbled Austria, Belgium and Hungary (to add to its powerful position in Germany, France and Italy). By schmoozing other producers it has begun to form a gas cartel. Russia has also built a strong pro-Kremlin camp elsewhere in the European Union (Greece, and Cyprus chiefly; Hungary, Latvia and Slovakia increasingly; and probably Bulgaria too if anybody looked closely). Its banks and businesses have created a fifth column in the City of London and other world financial centres."

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