Teaching Comparative

Imagine Paris Hilton's political party

According to the Guardian (UK), we should pay attention to Ksenia Sobchak, not for her play girl antics, but for her politics. Given the emphemeral nature of political groups in Russia, this may be more attention than she deserves, but with her connections, who knows? File away her name and see if it comes up again.

Besides The Guardian, this news was reported in several other Western publications and in the St. Petersburg Times.

In May, Sobchak made the Kommersant business news by hanging out with Boris Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Yumasheva. That's another sign of her high level connections. What does all this say about political recruitment in Russia? It sounds like things there aren't so different from the UK or China.

Here are excerpts from The Guardian article. (As usual, the title is a link to the whole article.)

She has a TV show and a Porsche. Now Moscow's Paris Hilton wants a party too

"· Reality TV presenter plans youth movement
"· Daughter of politician denies she is Putin stooge

"Ksenia Sobchak, Moscow's answer to Paris Hilton and Russia's chief 'it' girl, turns away from the make-up artists and giggles. 'Maybe I was a naughty girl but I am not one now,' she says...

"But now Sobchak is trying to use her image to political advantage: she has formed a youth movement aimed at encouraging young people to assert their rights. She announced the creation of 'All Free' last Thursday, an attempt to turn her feisty image into people power...

"Sobchak is all the same the daughter of a very well connected man, Anatoly Sobchak, an academic who was one of the earliest advocates of free market reforms as the Soviet Union crumbled. He became mayor of St Petersburg and was Vladimir Putin' s mentor, giving the future president his first job in government...

"Why then is she starting a youth movement, the sort of group used in Ukraine and Georgia to unseat the authoritarian governments allied to the Putin administration? Lilya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment thinktank, suggests the idea may not have been her own. 'Anything connected to the Sobchak family should be connected to the Kremlin's initiative, or inside their control, taking into account who her father was,' she says, adding that it is probably to do with 'political cloning', whereby the Kremlin makes its own versions of traditionally opposition ideas.

"What Sobchak's movement, 'All Free', stands for is not completely clear. Sobchak only announced its creation nine days ago and will not or cannot say how many members she has before her first congress in a fortnight's time.

"But her rhetoric chimes nicely with the managed democracy of Putin's Russia. She advocates freedom of the press and of association, and respect for minorities, all hot topics in a country where state control and xenophobia are on the rise. Young people should become more aware of their rights, she says, adding they should name and shame university professors who demand bribes for places.

"Yet 'freedom should always be restricted', she says, adding that otherwise you have anarchy. 'If we stay within the law [young people] can decide what's right for themselves.'. She says she is financing the group and its headquarters in central Moscow from her own pocket, but hopes businessmen will come to her aid..."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 11:16 AM