I subscribe to Paul Goble’s blog, “Window on Eurasia – New Series.” Goble worked in the United States State Department while the Soviet Union was breaking up. He worked particularly with Estonia and the other Baltic States, which had been made Republics of the Soviet Union after World War II, although that status had never been recognized by the United States and most other countries.
After he retired from the State Department, he taught in Estonian universities and wrote a summary of media, translated from Russian and Estonian, for a mailing list. That summary became the blog. He watches a variety of publications for separatist leanings, of which there are many in Russia. Russia contains many nationalities and many languages, peoples not always happy to be part of that larger state, but not able to break away.
It’s a different view of Russia than we get from Big Media, which focuses mainly on Vladimir Putin, not even on the politics among his government and the oligarchs. The focus on Putin tends to make him look all-powerful, but he is subject to a great many political currents and challenges from rivals. For now, he is in a relatively stable position. Here are a couple of stories that Goble has been following.
Continuing Anonymous Bomb Threats
For the past couple of years, anonymous bomb threats have been made by phone, letter, or email to many cities in Russia. The Russians have not been able to find the source of the bomb threats, which disrupt civil and governmental functions.
On a single day [in March] the Regnum news agency reports, anonymous and unconfirmed bomb threats were made against 661 facilities, forcing the evacuation of “almost 24,000 people,” one of the largest one day totals ever there or in any other Russian city over the last three years (regnum.ru/news/polit/2597506.html).
“Among them,” the Russian news agency says, “were not only the customary trade centers or universities but also schools and hospitals and also administrative centers of districts, payment offices and business centers.” A day after these calls, an addition 17,000 people were evacuated. And this weekend, “this ‘process’ continued,” Regnum reports.
Targets included the Hermitage and St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Threats have also been received in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
Conflict Between Chechnya and Ingushetia
These two republics in the Caucasus have been in conflict for a decade or more. Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, has offered a number of challenges to Vladimir Putin. Chechen separatists fought Russian troops twice since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin supports Kadyrov, who negotiated a peace with Russia and has granted him a fair bit of independent action.
Recently, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of Ingushetia, negotiated land swaps with Kadyrov. The deal strongly favored Chechnya, and there have been Ingush protests about the swaps. Moscow has sent FSB and other police support to control the Ingush protests. They have arrested opposition leaders. However, the Ingush opposition seems to be solidifying and spreading. Ingushetia’s interior ministry is confiscating guns from the population.
Kadyrov is now unilaterally marking the Chechen border with Dagestan, causing concern there.
It’s not clear what will happen. Speculation is that Moscow will replace Yevkurov. Some Ingush have picketed in Red Square in Moscow, and the issue has been brought up in the Duma. Moscow has ordered an end to border talks between Chechnya and Dagestan to prevent protests like those in Ingushetia.
Other Bits
Russia has a single aircraft carrier, and it’s not in good condition. It may never return to sea.
Over the last 25 years, “no language in the world has disappeared as quickly as Russian.” Eighty million fewer people speak Russian now than did in 1991.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.
David Fud
I don’t see how the failed state of Russia survives past Putin’s lifetime. He looks strong and is projecting power now, but when they start fighting over what Putin has after he is out of the picture, it will be round 2 of the devolution of the Russian state, it seems to me.
I am just an armchair pundit, but when there are no legal systems worth a spit in place, there will be lawless outcomes. Just a matter of time.
matt
I’m not sure who it was, but one author I read said that if the people can’t express their political will via the political system they’ll express it with violence. That seems to be what’s going on with the bomb threats. could be our future if we continue down the path towards non-democracy.
Cheryl Rofer
@matt: I’ve wondered if the bomb threats are coming from American cyberwarfare. There would be copycats, too, but the inability to find the perpetrators, and not even finding scapegoats, seems odd.
p.a.
I appreciate these other views, but I have to admit my infantilism: when I heard Ingushetia my first thought was “Marx Brothers…”
...now I try to be amused
The linked post says that 30 million people outside Russia speak Russian. I’m guessing the drop is due to Ukrainians and other non-Russian ethnicities that were once subjected to forced Russification under the Soviet Union and the old Russian Empire.
Which is to say, in 1991 there were 80 million people who didn’t want to speak Russian, and now they’re free not to.
MattF
I’ve seen a couple of ‘maybe Putin isn’t such a mastermind after all’ opinion essays. Interesting, but not a trend, yet.
burnspbesq
Kadyrov might be a pretty good preview of the next generation of Russian “leadership,” i.e. a murderous punk.
MattF
@David Fud: Russia has been a ‘failed state’ for a few hundred years, IMO. I’m not expecting major changes in that any time soon.
oatler.
If it weren’t for those pesky nukes.
randy khan
Through a link at LGM, I recently saw a chart that compared the U.S. carrier fleet to the rest of the world (several years old, but this stuff doesn’t change very quickly). The U.S. had 19 and the rest of the world had 11 (and only Spain and Italy – bet you wouldn’t have guessed them – had 2); the 10 biggest U.S. carriers all were bigger than the biggest carrier any other country had.
If you restricted the definition to what most people think of as carriers – big flat tops for regular fighter jets – it was 10 for the U.S. to 2, and one of those is the Russian carrier Cheryl mentioned that’s likely never going back out to sea.
Gin & Tonic
@…now I try to be amused: I’m going to take that number with a house-sized grain of salt, considering that it’s coming from a Duma member who’s specifically tasked with protecting the interests of Russian-speakers. It’s a very thinly-veiled (i.e. not veiled at all) swipe against the Ukrainianization policies in place in Ukraine since 1991. Kalashnikov, as does Putin, wants Russian to regain the status of an official language in Ukraine. Interestingly, one of the tactics used by Paul Fucking Manafort in his support of Yanukovych was to exploit the language issue – in fact, I think he developed that elsewhere years earlier, maybe in the Philippines(?)
In point of fact a significant portion, maybe a majority, of Ukrainian citizens are comfortable in both Russian and Ukrainian. One of the most popular political TV shows, sort of a MTP-style round table, has a host who speaks Russian, and often guests who speak Ukrainian, and the conversation wuill go that way, seamlessly: host asks a question in Russian, panelist responds in Ukrainian, nobody bats an eye. Nevertheless, the official functions of the government are conducted in Ukrainian. Kalashnikov wants them to be conducted in both; he wants Ukrainian universities to offer subject-matter instruction in Russian and Ukrainian. So obviously he will lament the “loss” of Russian at every turn.
ruemara
Boy does it feel like if they’re gonna die, they’re gonna take out everyone else.
Kent
Russia’s GDP is currently smaller than that of Texas, and is shrinking relative to the rest of the world.
They have an aging population that produces basically nothing the rest of the world wants other than oil and gas, grain, and diamonds. When was the last time anyone bought a Russian-made anything?
They do, of course, have Nukes. But then so do Pakistan and North Korea.
At some point all their military projection around the world will eventually implode and be unsustainable as I expect it already is.
germy
@Kent:
Last presidential election.
Cheryl Rofer
@Gin & Tonic: Good points. Even during the Soviet times, when pollsters asked people in the Soviet republics what languages they spoke, they usually underreported Russian. I’ve seen it with Estonians who “didn’t speak Russian” until they were in a situation where it was needed. Alternatively, in the 1990s, it was not uncommon to be rebuffed if you, say, asked a stranger for street directions in Russian.
During the Soviet times, pressures to use Russian went up and down, but it was mostly the language of officialdom. So pretty much everyone knew it.
Russia tried to make it an issue after the fall of the Soviet Union – the stranded Russians in now-independent countries that had been Soviet republics were being mistreated. There was some truth to that, but not a lot for the most part. It’s becoming a less and less effective troll. As time goes on, the young people are learning English as their second language.
ruemara
@germy: Win of the internets, confirmed.
Professor Bigfoot
@germy: Ba-dum- tss!
Gravenstone
@ruemara: That’s one sure way to make sure that you’re the one who dies with the most toys…
NotMax
Mothballing military craft is one thing the Russians have lots of experience in.
chopper
@germy:
see that’s some lolz right there.
Chris Johnson
@Kent: Polivoks (extensive Eurorack modular gear), Soma (Lyra synths), Black Corporation (Deckard’s Dream)… you may see a pattern there.
All those are off the top of my head and stuff I’ve actively been super-interested in on its own merits, sometimes without knowing it’s Russian stuff (Black Corporation/Deckard’s Dream, a Yamaha CS-80 clone, apparently is now based in Japan?) though it’s hard to miss how russian Polivoks is.
One thing these makers have in common is, this is little small boutique stuff, even the expensive (thousands of dollars for a Deckard’s Dream) creations. Hard to overstate how globalized this is. They’re in the same boat with us in a very real sense. A lot of these synth makers seem like synth hippies and are no more Russian than I am American (I do a lot of sales in Scandinavia and am completely done with capitalism, don’t even function directly as a software company anymore)
Literally anybody who’s really into cutting-edge hardware synthesizers these days has loads of respect for creative Eastern Europeans. If you include Erica Synths out of Latvia popularizing Polivoks circuits, and Bastl out of the Czech Republic doing outlandish amazing stuff, there’s no excuse for being snarky about that part of the world or calling it backwards.
…for hardware synthesizers.
So fair enough I guess? If you only care about GDP and large-scale economics, I can see this wouldn’t mean anything. Me, I’m furious with the whole ‘big economics’ attitude so I’m extra interested in small creators both here and elsewhere (here in America we have Analogman doing spectacularly good work in handmade boutique guitar pedals) and I feel I have kindred spirits in Russia and Latvia and the Czech Republic. Hell, if I bailed on the US I would be looking to go jam with Bastl because I’m that into what they’re doing.
I’d distinguish the people from the leaders and politics, here AND there. We’re frankly in just as big a mess as Russia, we just have much bigger GDP.
randy khan
@Gin & Tonic:
I am reminded of the first time i visited Puerto Rico and a lot – really, a huge percentage – of the billboards would have sentences that started in Spanish, switched in the middle to English, then switched back to Spanish. They basically used whatever language the writers thought was the best way to express any given concept. And nearly every educated person I encountered spoke Spanish and English fluently.
jl
Since topic is excellent links: two items.
Barr is going to redact report very carefully in order to avoid mistakes of Comey in pesky and unfair discussion of anyone not charged and other sensitive stuff, and to make sure he gets it just right, he is going to hold a presser, just like Comey, to palaver in general about the Mueller report.
Not just your ordinary corrupt hack, but a special kind of corrupt hack.
@joshtpm
There it is. Barr to hold news conference to add more Trump spin to the parts of the report he chooses to release.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1118614817055571968
NotMax
@Kent
See Cheryl’s Deripaska/Kentucy front page piece from earlier in the week.
jl
And, most excellent link of all, found at Josh Marhsall’s twitter feed:
The ‘Who said it: Sen. John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn?’ Quiz.
https://www.nola.com/opinions/2019/04/who-said-it-sen-john-kennedy-or-foghorn-leghorn.html
I got 15 out of 18! Protip (IMHO) Leghorn more erudite and learned compared to Kennedy than a kid just falled of the turnip truck might expect.
Amir Khalid
UEFA Champions League action:
A comfortable 1-4 away win for Liverpool over Porto in the second-leg quarterfinal. The 6-1 aggregate win means they go to the semifinal against Barcelona. But Manchester City go out! Their 4-3 home victory over Tottenham Hotspur only gets them a 4-4 aggregate draw, and Spurs go to the semifinal on away goals. Especially painful for City because Raheem Stirling’s injury-time goal, which would have given them a 5-4 aggregate win, was disallowed on VAR review.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: You either stay up very very late or get up pretty damn early to follow this.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes. Even I can’t realy tell which.
Captain C
@Cheryl Rofer: When I visited Georgia in early 1991, no one wanted to speak Russian. Luckily, many did speak English.
rikyrah
The Russians and Bernie
Melanie Jean (@princessmom122) Tweeted:
“I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton,” https://t.co/F0X9tvAwT3 https://twitter.com/princessmom122/status/1118299936339234816?s=17
rikyrah
Thread
Jon Ben-Menachem (@jbenmenachem) Tweeted:
Very interesting analysis of fines and fees practices in South Bend, IN under Mayor Pete. To boost “economic development,” Mayor Pete boosted civil penalties by 25% and handed out more than $500k in fines. Unsurprisingly, enforcement happened most often in communities of color. https://t.co/tDFMt1bafb https://twitter.com/jbenmenachem/status/1118191342662946817?s=17
Captain C
@Amir Khalid: Spurs or Ajax will be in the finals this year. Never would have guessed that.
Mike in DC
@oatler.: I think we should make denuclearization a precondition for the massive bailout they’re going to eventually need.
rikyrah
Jennifer #KamalaHarris2020 (@leftyjennyc) Tweeted:
The awesome thing about the people who scream at me “why won’t you vote for Bernie to STOP THE MADNESS” is how little they understand that if BS is our nominee, we’ve already lost. He’ll get SLAUGHTERED in the general by DJT. So much oppo & US hates socialism worse than fascism. https://twitter.com/leftyjennyc/status/1118575017594322945?s=17
Amir Khalid
I’m kind of surprised that Putin hasn’t made economic growth a priority for Russia. Its weak economy only undercuts the power and influence he wants to project around the world.
rikyrah
Bernie’s 3rd house ?? (@OjPats4) Tweeted:
Berners: We will write in Bernie Sanders to let Hillary know how much we hate her. Hillary wouldn’t be any different than Trump.
Also Berners: The most important thing is to defeat Trump, so you should vote for the nominee. You guys are cutting off your nose to spite Bernie. https://twitter.com/OjPats4/status/1118604661295132672?s=17
Dan B
@…now I try to be amused: Isn’t Russia losing population due to low birth rate? Another looming stressor.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
My cunning scheme is afoot!
1) Routine win for the Reds. √
2) Spurs turn over City in a manner bound to upset Pep’s team. √
3) City go all out to punish Spurs on Saturday but get hit on the break, dropping points.
4) Against United Pep’s team know they have to win, but after the Barcelona debacle United’s players are on notice that Ole is going to have a huge clear-out and pull out a performance like last year.
5) Liverpool win the title with games to spare.
This would make me very, very happy. Two down, three to go.
Peale
@rikyrah: Yep. I can think of a few states that Hillary won that he’d lose and many that need to be flipped that would go out of reach. There had better be a lot of people who sit out elections because there isn’t a socialist on the ticket. After a century of opportunity, you’d think there’d be more than 1 Senator wearing that label by now.
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
I love it when a plan comes together.
Amir Khalid
@Dan B:
If you were Russian, would you want to raise kids to live in a such a messed-up country? I can’t say I blame the Russians who have decided not to.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
He can’t. Russia suffers from a unique form of Dutch Disease.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
They also have, piggybacking on top of Dutch Disease, an aging and falling population, brain drain and economic looting.
Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund has been used as a slush fund, rather than a rainy day fund/reinvestment fund, and being held in Russia, to avoid sanctions, has a horrible ROI.
Jay
“
OTTAWA — Canada has formally joined a German-French coalition aimed at saving the international world order from destruction by various world dictators and autocrats — and U.S. President Donald Trump.
The initiative is part of ongoing government efforts to shore up international co-operation at a time of waning American leadership and Trump’s outspoken disdain of institutions created after the Second World War, including the G7, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-joins-new-german-france-alliance-that-doesn-t-include-u-s-1.1245139
Adam Geffen
“Russia has a single aircraft carrier, and it’s not in good condition. It may never return to sea.
Over the last 25 years, “no language in the world has disappeared as quickly as Russian.” Eighty million fewer people speak Russian now than did in 1991.”
The first item isn’t entirely surprising to me. The second was rather eye opening.
@Jay:
Re “Dutch Disease”. Thanks for sharing that link. I hadn’t heard that term/concept before.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Amir Khalid: So of course those of us on the other side of the globe can’t tell! I appreciate the updates, whatever time you’re keeping up with football.
Adam Geffen
Somewhat off topic… The cross post to Nuclear Diner reminded me of an interesting post on nuclear power I read a few days back over at Crooked Timber: http://crookedtimber.org/2019/04/08/pinker-polymathic/
Having not looked into the issue of nuclear power I assumed the common refrain that irrational fears regarding saftey were the main roadblock to wider adoption. The blog post points out that economics seem to have MUCH more to do with it any fear held by the public.
/quoting some bits/
The New York Times has a piece pushing the idea that nuclear power is the solution to our environmental problems. It’s familiar stuff, citing the French success in the 1970s, the promise of Gen IV and small modular reactors, and so on. Indeed, two of the authors had an almost identical piece in the Wall Street Journal in January. What’s most interesting is that the set of authors[1] this time includes Steven Pinker, who seems to be spreading his claims to expertise yet more broadly[2].
None of the authors has any training or expertise in economics, AFAICT. So, they make extreme claims such as that South Korea and China can build nuclear plants at one sixth the cost of the US. With the abandonment of the nearly-complete VC Summer project, the only nuclear plant now under construction in the US is the 2GW Vogtle project in Georgia. That looks like coming in at about $20 billion or $10 billion/GW. Optimistic estimates of Chinese costs are around $3.5 billion/GW or one third of the US price, not competitive with new renewables under most conditions.
Moreover, it might have been worth mentioning that South Korea has stopped new nuclear power and China hasn’t started a new project in three years. In both cases, renewables have undercut even the lowest estimates of the costs of nuclear.
…
The myth that nuclear power would roar ahead if only public fear could be overcome is comforting to nuclear fans. But the truth is that the technology is doomed by economics.
Jay
@Adam Geffen:
Alberta has Dutch Disease as well. One unique product of that is it has the lowest level of post secondary education in Canada for white, rural males. Why get a University degree when you can make a great living driving a truck for the rigs.
The Admiral Kuznetsov was undergoing a major refit, when an accident sunk the only large Russian Drydock capable of holding it. The drydock spent the winter, underwater, and may be unrepairable. That kinda puts a hold on the aircraft carriers refit.
Amir Khalid
@Captain C:
It’s a sad economic reality that all the big clubs in Europe — the Bayern Munichs and Man Uniteds and Real Madrids — will be wielding big wodges of cash during the summer break to buy up Ajax’s hot young players. Ajax Amsterdam are themselves a legendary club, but they’re not among the richest so this very talented side might not stay together very long.
Jay
@Adam Geffen:
Yup, and that’s based on a very narrow economic model, that ignores the costs of mining and remediation, smelting and wastes, and of course, nuclear waste storage and disposal.
They are just looking at the costs of building and running the reactors.
Adam Geffen
@Jay:
“Alberta has Dutch Disease as well. One unique product of that is it has the lowest level of post secondary education in Canada for white, rural males. Why get a University degree when you can make a great living driving a truck for the rigs.”
I’m reminded now of a road trip I took this past November to visit Guadalupe National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park in west Texas/SE New Mexico. The oil industry dominated the geography there in ways that, coming from my Michigan city/suburbs upbringing, I had never seen before.
Dan B
@rikyrah: It’s interesting to read all the details of this story. The fines were for unoccupied buildings and when community activists confronted Buttegieg he course corrected and came up with double the money they wanted to assist low income people with code correction. The head of the NAACP praised Buttegieg for being a great ally.
Sounds better than many liberal mayors of “socialist” Seattle. If you read the headline it makes Buttegieg sound like an uncaring racist.
I’m concerned that these same misleading headlines will be used against Harris. There are headlines that she had truants arrested by the boatload. The real story is that one conservative (white supremacist?) sherrif in Orange County, over whom Harris had no jurisdiction, arrested one truant.
Wilmer seems to believe that Harris and Booker will split the black vote in South Carolina. Will the “Harris is a cop who is not really black!!!” headline peel off votes and hand Wilmer an early win and Harris and Booker 5th and 6th place?
At this juncture it appears that the bots and Wilmer purists have gotten to influencers who are jumping to conclusions where the evidence is more than murky.
I want Harris to pull ahead. I want Warren to show the way forward on policy, particularly economic fairness. I want Castro to promote humane and forward thinking immigration. I want Buttegieg to expose the hypocrisy of right wing christianists. I want Inslee to put the green energy bonanza, and the climate as usual catastrophe in the forefront. None of these are at odds with what Kamala stands for. So I fail to see how labeling Buttegieg as racist rich guy do any more than set us up for dividing whites from blacks and realize the MSM wet dream headline, “Democrats Divided!”
Isn’t Kamala the wealthiest? And I don’t care. Howard Schultz is far wealthier and a classist creep but he’d be an improvement over the Orange monster. But his flaws are in his own words, no cherry picking necessary.
Your videos of Kamal that got front paged were great. More if this please. Let’s focus on the awesome talents of each candidate and how they boost the merits of today’s Democrats. (That should keep Wilmer out of the discussion, amiright? And limit Biden and Gabbard.)
Dan B
@Amir Khalid: It’s my understanding that Russians don’t have a bright view of the future and it is one of the causes.
Dan B
@Jay: Joe Romm at Climate Progress, formerly at DOE (senior analyst?) has covered the economic walls that nuclear has faced for decades. Now that wind and solar pv are about to be less expensive than natural gas, and storage / smart grids are heading the same direction it’s only a matter of a few years before investors say no more nuclear. Cheryl may disagree with this but Hanford is a recurring headline story in Seattle and Portland. The latter has the extra “thrill” of being downstream from Hanford. The radioactive plumes creep closer to the water table that connects to the Columbia and the cleanup keeps generating nightmarish stories: leakey ancient tanks with massive hydrogen bubbles or unknown issues. And contractor costs seem to be in the billions every year with corruption, incompetence, and no end date. In other words human frailty was not factored into the promise of utopia realiized by the most dangerous materials on earth.
Jay
@Dan B:
On the “bright side”, Hanford has preserved the only “wild” stretch of the Columbia in the US.
In Canada, we have Uranium City.
Uncle Cosmo
@…now I try to be amused:Not just in the successor state to the FSU. Several years was taught to every schoolkid in the Warsaw Pact prior to 1990, & most of them have had precious little use for it since – & without practice it’s as lost as the French or German USAns learned in school.
Doug
Ramzan Kadyrov is how you spell Ramsay Bolton in Chechen. Kadyrov’s crossed with a little bit of Joffrey, just enough so that he doesn’t have the redeeming features of either of his Westerosi models.
J R in WV
@Adam Geffen:
I fly from here to Tucson AZ via Atlanta, and coming home eastbound we fly over miles and miles of West Texas land with absolutely regular perforation patterns you can see from 35,000 feet. Oil exploration the old fashioned way. You just drill every 100 acre patch, leaving every 100 acre patch useless forever going forward. And what an interesting pattern that creates from the airliners !! “Bletch!”
Can’t tell if they actually ever hit any real oil, no tanks, no pipelines… Just ruined countryside.