A useful concept
Sometimes an idea is tied to one place or one political culture. But there are times when the concept can be applied to many examples. That might explain why the phrase "
Potemkin Village" appeared half a dozen times in the news this month.
Back in they day when Catherine the Great ruled Russia, her country seized Crimea (sound familiar?). In 1783, Catherine toured the newly acquired territory to see what it was like. She traveled on a riverboat and her general (and lover) Grigory Potemkin was in charge of arrangements.
The usual tale goes that along the banks of the river, General Potemkin had soldiers and peasants build false front houses and shops in front of peasant villages (to hide them). They recruited (rounded up?) local peasants and their livestock to populate the fake villages and welcome the Tsarina as she floated down the river. Therefore, she'd come away from her inspection with an image of a prosperous Crimea and an adoring population.
Even though the stories were exaggerated by General Potemkin's rivals and enemies, his name became solidly associated with deceptive presentations of desired, but unachieved accomplishments.
I have often suggested that the Soviet Union and later Russia were, in many ways, large scale Potemkin Villages. Claiming communism and democracy while achieving neither. These days academics and journalists label many things as Potemkin Villages. It's a useful concept. Watch for it.
How would you use this idea to describe China? Iran? Nigeria? Mexico? Russia? the UK?
War President Obama Sends More U.S. Troops to Iraq
President Obama ordered another 615 U.S. troops to Iraq Wednesday as the Middle Eastern nation’s army prepares to take Mosul back from ISIS…
The troop level is inadequate for the task, says Sebastian Gorka, the vice president and professor of Strategy and Irregular Warfare at the Institute of World Politics...
Right now, the U.S. talks of a coalition of 62 nations. Gorka flatly denied that.
"There is no 62-nation coalition," said Gorka. "Obama's coalition is a Potemkin village."…
No, Donald, the Fed Isn’t Manipulating the Economy for Political Gain
n Monday night’s debate, Donald Trump reiterated a charge he’s been making on the campaign trail: that Janet Yellen, the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, is manipulating the economy to make it look better than it is, to help get Hillary Clinton elected. Whether you agree with the Fed’s policies or not, it’s an accusation that is way off base and, when you think it through, doesn’t actually make much sense…
So the Fed is keeping interest rates low because the U.S. economy — faced with a weak global economy — isn’t as strong as we might expect or desire and is walking on fragile ground. One can debate whether ultra-low rates really make things better or worse, but that’s the rationale for its actions (or inaction). There is no Potemkin village here, just caution not to make a shaky situation worse. And if the Fed’s low rates actually are making a sluggish economy “better” than it otherwise would be — as Trump charges — well, that’s the whole point of monetary policy. No?…
NCTA Scraps Annual Cable Trade Show After 65 Years
It’s the end of an era for cable TV: The industry’s biggest trade group… said today that it will stop sponsoring INTX, the annual gathering that was a must-go for industry moguls for decades when it was known as the Cable Show.
“We are now exploring new and better ways to tell our story, to gather our community, to advance our growth and present our vision of the future,” CEO Michael Powell, the former FCC chairman, said in a blog post about the 65-year-old confab…
[T]he annual gathering began to look like a Potemkin village as cable matured and consolidated. With major decisions in the hands of two industry giants — Comcast and Charter — and most operators looking to cut channels, there was no need for a showcase for new programmers and technology makers who want a foothold in the business…
Colin Powell and the Potemkin election system
… The disastrous results of Colin Powell’s lies live on today as does the media’s white washing Powell’s legacy. The media has gleefully repeated Powell’s attacks on #Donald Trump calling him “a national disgrace” and an “international pariah.” America’s Potemkin village elections, constructed to give the appearance of democracy while protecting the politicians, will go on. The only uncertainty is whether the American people will continue to buy the lie.
How to Profit From the Folly of Donald Trump's Best Friend Vladimir Putin
… Russia is like a Potemkin village that's mostly facade with hollow substance, while Putin's macho posturing masks the inherent weaknesses of his misrule. Below, we show you how to profit from the day of reckoning. The best way to make money is to be a contrarian and see the story behind the story. And the Russian story right now is rotten to the core…
In Debate, Trump Showed America He’s a Sputtering, Incoherent Egomaniac
Perhaps if Trump ran publicly held companies, ones that are responsible to stockholders and relatively independent boards of directors, he would not have evolved into the enormously self-satisfied specimen he is. But for the most part, Trump holds all the power in his business empire – if indeed it is an empire, not a Potemkin village…
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Labels: concepts, political culture, Potemkin village
Classic reruns: Potemkin villages
While the reality of their existence is lost in the span of history, I've found the metaphor of Potemkin Villages useful in explaining some of the internal contradictions of Russian government and politics. For example, look at Putin's explanations for why he's reversing some of Medvedev's reforms. And sometimes it's possible to stretch the idea to explain things in other regimes. (A couple of these examples are out of date, but you can come up with your own examples.)
Potemkin "villages"
All five of these things may be trivia, but they were interesting to me. The examples come from the UK, Russia, and China. It is possible that some of these examples will be more than trivia and more substantial than "Potemkin" events in the future. Keep your eyes open for developments.
- Potemkin crisis
- Potemkin reform
- Potemkin Square
- Potemkin Democracy
- Potemkin reform (again)
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Labels: concepts, methodology, Russia, theory
Potemkin "villages"
All five of these things may be trivia, but they were interesting to me. The examples come from the UK, Russia, and China. It is possible that some of these examples will be more than trivia and more substantial than "Potemkin" events in the future. Keep your eyes open for developments. (That's Grigory Potemkin to the right.)
1. Potemkin crisis (This one reminds me of the debate between Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall in which Jefferson insisted that Congress had the power to decide what the Constitution meant through its legislation. Read
Marbury v. Madison to see how Marshall won the argument.)
Judges spark 'constitutional crisis'"Judges have sparked a 'constitutional crisis' by their decision to quash the government's control orders, the chair of the home affairs select committee claimed today.
"A key plank of the government's anti-terror legislation is now in legal limbo after a high court judge ruled yesterday that orders confining suspects to their home and curtailing who they can meet breach the European Convention on Human Rights.
"Today John Denham, a former minister and highly respected backbencher, put the blame firmly at the door of the judges and demanded urgent talks between politicians and the judiciary to resolve the situation before it escalated any further...
"Mr Denham told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'There is a constitutional crisis emerging here, I think, about the way in which the judges and the courts are approaching these issues. When many of us, as I did, supported the Human Rights Act and indeed still support it, we thought that on great matters of state of this sort - if the elected parliament had taken a careful view of what was in the wider public interest - that would be given considerable weight by the courts.'"
2. Potemkin reformChina navy chief sacked for graft "A top-level Chinese military official has been sacked for corruption after his mistress turned him in, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported...
"China's ruling Communist Party is worried that widespread official corruption is undermining its legitimacy, and has taken care to highlight a number of high-profile falls from grace.
"Earlier this month, in an unrelated case, a former deputy Beijing mayor, Liu Zhihua, was sacked over unspecified corruption charges."
3. Potemkin SquareOn Red Square, a Czarist Ritual Revived"Just before 2 p.m. on the last Saturday of each month from April to October, a dozen saber-bearing cavalry officers of the Kremlin Regiment, in tall hats and czarist military uniforms adorned with gold buttons, yellow tassels and epaulets, mount their horses and gallop through the Spassky Gates, past the impossibly colorful onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
"Their destination: the center of Red Square, near the podium where Communist Party bosses once stood and where thousands of tourists from around the world have gathered.
"The Presidential Orchestra's marching band, dressed in white and playing grand imperial marches, and infantry officers with saber rifles follow close behind the mounted officers. Taking their positions in the middle of the square, they launch into half an hour's worth of elaborate formations, graceful pirouettes and breathtaking saber tosses...
"The Kremlin commandant, Sergei Khlebnikov, and Grigori Antyufeyev, the chairman of Moscow's City Tourism Committee, introduced this recent recreation of a czarist cavalry and marching ceremony as Russia's answer to events like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace in London.
"'The main goal of the event is directed at the further forming of a positive image of Moscow as an international tourist center and the development of international and domestic tourism in Russia,' read a joint news release reflecting the very capitalist desire for tourist dollars, or euros, as the case may be, since the dollar continues to fall in Russia...
"Moscow's tourist development program is involved in other projects that look back in time, among them the restoration of prerevolutionary palaces and estates. In one case —Catherine the Great's unfinished Tsaritsyno Palace — Moscow has decided to finish what she never did. Other projects include a "retro train" around the city, meant to evoke the era of Czar Nicholas II; it will have a test run later this year..."
4. Potemkin DemocracyRussia: Bill Widening Definition of Extremism Moves Toward Approval"Parliament's lower house gave preliminary approval to amendments that would expand the definition of extremism, a measure critics say is so broadly worded that it could allow the authorities to quash political and public protests.
"The amendments ... would label as extremist those who 'impede the activities of state bodies' or organize or take part in public disturbances... It would also apply to 'public slander' of state officials. The measures would allow the authorities to disqualify political parties or, in extreme cases, prosecute violators."
5. Potemkin reform (again) House of Lords Creates New Speaker's Post"LONDON (AP) -- The wig will be gone, but the cushy seat known as a Woolsack will still await the winner of an unprecedented election in the House of Lords. Their Lordships voted Wednesday to choose their first Lord Speaker, an innovation to replace the centuries-old office of Lord Chancellor. The winner will be announced July 4...
"The new Lord Speaker's post is one aspect of Prime Minister Tony Blair's unfinished project to remodel the House of Lords -- making it more democratic and ejecting many of those who had simply inherited their seats...
"The Lord Chancellor's role was changed amid concern that a single position had so many responsibilities in separate branches of power. Besides the role in the House of Lords, the job also came with a seat in the Cabinet and the post of head of the judiciary.
"Those responsibilities will now be split. The Lord Speaker will still preside over the House, but will be independent of the government. The newly restyled Lord Chancellor, who is appointed by the prime minister, will take the judicial role as well as the title of secretary of state for constitutional affairs...
"The Woolsack -- the Lord Speaker's seat in the chamber -- dates from the 14th century reign of King Edward III, when sacks of wool were placed in the chamber as a reminder of the source of national wealth.
"The Lord Speaker will wear a gown while presiding -- but he will not be sporting a wig."
In case you missed out on the references to things "Potemkin," here are the definition and some examples of Potemkin Village from Dictionary.com.
Another Potemkin village
Even
New York Times reporter Ellen Barry includes a reference to
Potemkin Villages in her report about a "rally" for Putin that really wasn't. It all makes me wonder if Grigory Potemkin could have gotten away with building facades for Catherine the Great if the peasants had had Twitter.
I'd extend the Potemkin Village metaphor from the "rally," described below, to the whole campaign by Putin for the presidency.
Social Media Raise Curtain on Staged Event in MoscowDmitri A. Medvedev, stepped into a packed lecture hall at Moscow State University’s venerable journalism department. Applause washed over him, proof that progressive, social media-savvy young people still look to him as a standard-bearer.
Except — it wasn’t.
Starting that morning, journalism students had been complaining over Twitter that the 300 people in the audience were outsiders, chosen by Kremlin-connected organizers and brought to the university. They included contingents from pro-Kremlin youth movements [Nashi], while only a tiny number of students from the department were allowed in…
Stage-managed events are a mainstay of politics here, but this year they are being greeted with sourness, especially among people who get their news from the Internet…
Mr. Medvedev himself has expressed disdain for the political showcases known as Potemkin villages, after the fake settlements erected by the minister Grigory Potemkin to ingratiate himself with Catherine the Great…
It is difficult to imagine this playing out so publicly in years past, before the center of political discussion swung to the Internet. Social networks have forced the authorities to respond to unorthodox critiques: two weeks ago, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s press secretary explained on a Web-based news channel that some of Mr. Putin’s televised exploits had been staged…
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Labels: elections, political culture, politics, Russia
Potemkin village
When I saw Paul Krugman's opinion piece in the New York Times, I was reminded that the metaphor he used was helpful in explaining government and politics in Russia. Here's the introduction to his editorial. Now imagine how this image (a Potemkin village) could help make sense out of elections in contemporary Russia, a constitution that can be modified by the supermajority in the Duma, or Putin as virtually president for life.
Do a web search for Potemkin Village to see how common the idea is.
Trump’s Potemkin Economy
According to legend, Grigory Potemkin, one of Catherine the Great’s ministers (and her lover), created a false impression of prosperity when the empress toured Ukraine. He supposedly did this by setting up fake villages, or possibly just facades, along her route, then dismantling them after she passed, and setting them up again further down the road.
 |
| A movie set as a Potemkin Village |
There probably isn’t much if any truth to the story — among other things, Catherine was too smart and tough-minded to be that easily deceived — but never mind: the legend has become a byword for the general idea of prettifying reality to please a tyrannical ruler…
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Labels: government, history, politics, Potemkin village, Russia
Potemkin-Putin Village
I've taught about the
Potemkin village metaphor as long as I've taught comparative politics. It just won't go away. But now, maybe we ought to call it the Putin village.
Russia: Fake facades on unkempt homes 'to impress Putin'
A Russian city has wrapped its dilapidated buildings in fake facades ahead of a planned visit by President Vladimir Putin, it's emerged.
 |
| The front (left) and back of a house in Suzdal |
Local authorities in the historic city of Suzdal draped unkempt traditional wooden houses in banners camouflaged to look like well-tended facades, complete with carved window frames and flowerpots in the windows, according to a blog post by a local journalist. The sprucing-up operation earlier in November came ahead of a national conference of local government leaders that Putin was scheduled to attend.
Media websites - such as Moskovsky Komsomolets - were quick to liken the result to fake villages said to have been erected by Catherine the Great's favourite, Grigory Potemkin, in war-ravaged regions of southern Ukraine in the 18th Century. This was allegedly done in an effort to impress the visiting empress and foreign ambassadors. The window-dressing habit apparently continued in Soviet Russia. Stories abound of regional authorities giving blocks of flats quick licks of paint and stacking fresh goods in usually barren shops ahead of visits by party bigwigs.
n Suzdal's case, the effort seems to have been in vain. Putin never got around to putting in an appearance after all.
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Labels: history, leadership, political culture, Russia
Quick quiz
Dr. Nick Hayes, professor of history who holds the university chair in critical thinking at Saint John's University in Collegeville, MN, while
writing about Chechnya in MinnPost today said that "Grozny is the Potemkin village of Putin’s Russia…"
Do your students know what he was saying about Grozny?
Do your students know why the Potemkin Village meme keeps showing up in discussions of Russian politics?
Could your students use that phrase when answering a free response question on the exam next month?
 |
| Grozny, Chechnya |
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Labels: politics, Russia
NASHI video
I just came across a 12-and-a-half-minute
video from the New York Times on the Putin-organized youth group NASHI.
It's quite good. It contains a comment from Russian journalist Masha
Lipman that NASHI is a "
Potemkin Village" of grassroots political
activism. (Just as the Duma is a "
Potemkin Village" of a legislature.)
It's ripe for discussion or study questions or as a writing prompt.
And the precedents are...
Nick Hayes is a history professor at Saint John's University in Minnesota. His expertise is in Russian history and politics. Here is his analysis of the Putin-Medvedev dance. I'd add that what Hayes describes as Russian politics is a classic example of a
Potemkin Village.
Putin sends Russia's liberals a messageThe last week in Russian politics brought an end to one of the more phony chapters in recent Russian history…
And so the political charade of the Medvedev presidency came to an end.
Putin's announcement did not come as a shock. There were two aspects to the story, however, that were a bit outrageous even by his standards. First of all, Putin told the party meeting that his decision to run for the presidency had been made "several years earlier" in consultation with Medvedev.
If so, what was behind the spinning of the Medvedev story in the past two to three years?…
Putin has planted both his feet firmly in the past. There was an antecedent for Putin's gesture three years ago of stepping down from the presidency after his two constitutionally allotted terms, assuming the nominally secondary position as prime minister, and deferring in public to the authority of the new president. During the 1920s, 1930s and heroic years of WWII, it was not, as we tend to remember, Joseph Stalin who was the head of the Soviet state. In actuality, from 1919 to 1946, the nominal head of the Soviet state was the forgotten Mikhail Kalinin. Stalin served as the head or general secretary of the Communist Party, which was the actual seat of power and controlled the vast apparatus of the state, just as Putin over the past three years controlled the ruling United Russia Party and the Russian state bureaucracy. Medvedev was Putin's Kalinin.
Putin has also reasserted a tradition from the tsars. The autocratic power of the tsars rested in the person of the tsar, not the institutions of the monarchy. Putin orchestrated the Medvedev story to make a mockery of the Russian constitution, its offices and its legislative assembly, or "duma," and to emphasize that his personal power trumped legal institutions.
Putin has also resurrected an ominous symbol from the tsarist past as if to send a message to Russia's liberals that things could be worse. During the past year, Putin has led a highly public campaign to honor Pyotr Stolypin, one of tsarist Russia's most ambiguous political figures who served as tsar Nicholas II's prime minister from 1906 to 1911.
Stolypin oversaw sweeping agricultural reforms that transformed rural Russia and a political crackdown on the left that expedited the prosecution of real and suspected radicals. Executions by public hanging were so commonplace during the Stolypin's regime that the noose earned the nickname of "Stolypin' s necktie." His assassination in 1911 has not deterred Putin from publically identifying with the Stolypin legacy. Putin organized a national campaign to build a monument to Stolypin to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his assassination, which occurred on Sept. 18.
Russia's liberals get the message. They will have at least another 12 years of Putin. However, his regime could be worse. He could have been or could be another Stolypin…
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Labels: history, politics, Russia
Is Putin a powerful leader?
Here's a provocative analysis. It's written by Mark Galeotti, a professor of global affairs at New York University.
Can you find ways to test Galeotti's assertions?
Can you identify an example of a "Potemkin village" described in this essay?
The Putin myth: the Russian leader isn't nearly as powerful as you think
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin went through one of his ritual Direct Line call-in shows: a three-hour, 40-minute marathon… Putin himself seeming bored.
But the event, however staged and predictable, performed a function common to his public appearances: furthering the myth… that Putin is Russia, the unquestioned and solitary master of his realm.
But it’s not true. And when we buy into this idea, we give him more power than he deserves and make it harder to predict or even influence his next move.
Putin is indeed the "decider" who has the final word on every major policy issue… Yet for all that, if we think that he can and does control everything Russia does at home and abroad, we dramatically misunderstand how the country really works.
First of all, Putin reigns only so long as he can pacify, balance, and over-awe Russia’s sharp-toothed and unforgiving elite. But he can also only rule through the elite…
Time and again during the performance, Putin was in effect confessing to his own political impotence.
He can intervene in specific cases, sure… But Putin cannot fix his country himself, street by street, and the fact that he resorts to these sorts of case-by-case interventions shows his limits.
In the past, he has consolidated his legitimacy as the "good czar" through such individual cases. But after 16 years, and as life is getting harder for Russians, this is becoming an increasingly threadbare act and instead underscores the extent to which he is... not in command…
This dynamic even applies to foreign policy, traditionally the preserve of the head of state. In Ukraine’s Donbas region, for example, a recent spate of ceasefire violations is likely to have been initiated by local rebel militias rather than Moscow. Putin's control is finite.
To be sure, Putin is a very powerful leader. It is not just that he is president in a hyper-presidential system, with a wide range of powers, a toothless and obedient legislature, no meaningful opposition, and sky-high personal approval ratings. Arguably he has hollowed out all Russia’s institutions. The fact that in 2008 he could hand over the presidency to his prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, yet remain the power behind the scenes and take back the job in 2012 demonstrates the level of his personal power.
After all, Putin is not powerful because he is president; he is president because he is powerful…
This gets to something important: The Kremlin’s policymaking can be more shortsighted and arbitrary than the myth of Putin would have us believe. Russia is not always a rigidly centralized dictatorship but is at times a marketplace of ideas in which Russia’s oligarchs, officials, commentators, and interest groups are engaged in constant competition to pitch their ideas to Putin through the press, think tanks, reports, and personal contacts.
In theory this could be a form of pluralism, but in practice it is a system in which the policies that catch Putin’s eye and imagination have the best chance of success, regardless of their true merits. Given that the real discussions over policy tend to take place behind closed doors and within a very small circle of Putin’s closest cronies, it also means they rarely get careful and professional examination…
We need to be honest and realistic. Putin has often played a weak hand very well. But that does not always mean he gets it right. His intervention into Ukraine has become a messy, expensive stalemate; he is lucky his Syrian adventure has not blown up in his face…
We have no way of penetrating the small circle around Putin where decisions are ultimately made. However, by better understanding the haphazard means by which elites signal their desired policies to Putin, we can watch those more public channels and, perhaps, get advance warning of what is being discussed there…
Trying to make sense of all the little clues, of all the overt and covert attempts to lobby the Kremlin, is hard work. No wonder we tend instead to fixate on Putin, and the degree to which he presents himself as the sole master of Russian policy. But this leaves us prone to being wrong-footed every time.
Back in Soviet times, the West had armies of scholars and analysts practicing "Kremlinology," the arcane arts of trying to predict shifts in Soviet policy and politics through clues from the order in which officials were seated at parades to reading between the lines of editorials in Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper. These days, the ranks of such skilled practitioners of such arts have been thinned, with no new generation to replace them. So instead we watch and marvel at the latest macho Putin photo op, and miss out on the chance to understand the politics behind the poses.
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The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
. $2.00.
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Labels: leadership, politics, Russia
Whose law?
If law is so complex that people cannot know what is legal, is that really rule of law? Or is this another example of a
Potemkin Village in Russian politics and government?
Fear and loathing: How the Kremlin is using the law for political ends
FOR generations of Russian leaders, the law has been a tool of state power, not a limit on its abuse. In recent months, as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and his advisers have navigated an unfamiliar political environment, they too have fallen back on a kind of nominal legalism, in which the law is less for protecting the citizenry than an instrument of power.
As the Kremlin sees it, compared with uglier measures of neutralising dissent, the law is an “efficient and civilised tool”… In practice, that means the law can be deployed selectively against political opponents, or laws can be drafted to solve immediate problems.
 |
| Gudkov |
On September 14th a majority in the Duma voted to strip Gennady Gudkov of his seat in parliament… Mr Gudkov, a deputy with the left-leaning Just Russia party, says he was targeted for being the most outspoken member of a small anti-Kremlin group of lawmakers…
He says that his expulsion shows that not only “is it possible to distort the law as convenient” but that “it’s possible to go entirely beyond the law without consequence.”
The past months have been a busy season for the Russian legal system. In August three women from a punk collective, Pussy Riot, were sentenced to two years each in prison for an anti-Putin stunt… In June a package of new repressive laws… raised fines for unsanctioned demonstrations and required foreign-funded NGOs to register as “foreign agents” (the authorities have just told one of the main sources of such grants, America’s USAID aid agency, to cease operations). Other laws recriminalise libel and create a blacklist of (loosely defined) offensive websites.
Taken together, these new laws are not as likely to be consistently enforced as much as they are meant to intimidate. Above all, the goal is to put the opposition and its supporters in a state of permanent legal jeopardy.
The Russian legal code is a thicket of often contradictory rules and responsibilities. Ella Paneyakh of the Institution for the Rule of Law at the European University of St Petersburg says that owners of small and medium-sized businesses “cannot even keep track of the law, let alone decide whether to follow it.” That leaves them vulnerable to arbitrary predation by law-enforcement bodies.
This sense of opacity and impenetrability gives the authorities the upper hand. The overall impression, says Igor Kalyapin of the Committee Against Torture, is that the “law is the property of those of who enforce it, and written exclusively for them.”…
The danger in using the law to solve short-term political problems, say people inside the Kremlin as well as its critics, is that it risks creating a precedent. Legal sanctions, even when subjectively applied, can take on a momentum of their own…
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Labels: concepts, politics, rule-of-law, Russia
High fashion on Red Square
I was startled in 1990 when I saw a Xerox copy shop and a YSL store on the ground floor of East Berlin's Young Communist League building.
Many Moscovites, were startled to see a Louis Vuitton pop-up store on Red Square. The political upheaval of this symbol of capitalism on Communism's holy ground was too much.
Even as a "Potemkin village" it was too much for politicians to stomach. The high fashion holiday store is coming down before it opens.
Outrage as Russian government rents out Red Square to Louis Vuitton
Vladimir Lenin wanted to be buried beside his mother in his St. Petersburg. But since he isn’t, someone should check whether lying on Red Square beside an oversized Louis Vuitton suitcase does indeed have him spinning in his tomb.
 |
| Louis Vuitton pop-up in Red Square |
Many Russians – led by Lenin’s heirs in the Communist Party – are stunned by the appearance of a nine-metre-high, 30-metre-long Louis Vuitton trunk on Red Square, a cobblestone plaza more famous for demonstrations against the evils of capitalism and displays of Russian military might.
Modern, heavily commercialized Moscow bears little resemblance to its Soviet-era self, but many here remain unconvinced that the luxury brand’s signature wares should be displayed alongside the red-walled Kremlin…
“[Red Square] is a sacred place of the Russian government. There are symbols like this that cannot be trivialized or denigrated, because the future of the government depends on it,” said Sergei Obukhov, a Communist deputy in Russia’s parliament, the Duma…
The giant trunk is actually a building intended to house an advertising display featuring what the company is calling “historical suitcases” and video installations, and labelled L’Ame de Voyage, or the spirit of travel…
The trunk is supposed to help commemorate the 120th anniversary of GUM, a showpiece mall that spent much of the Soviet era as an office building. It now hosts flagship shores for Louis Vuitton and other Western brands…
"The suitcase, which had been due to house an exhibition about
luggage produced by the luxury brand, had caused outrage among some
Muscovites.
Some MPs had decried the installation as trivialising a "sacred space" for the Russian state.
"The department store GUM, under whose auspices the case was installed, said on Wednesday that it would be removed...
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Look over here
Mikhail Prokhorov has been flirting with politics for quite awhile. Some of the flirting has been done with the cooperation of Putin and Medvedev. Now, he seems to be taking on the leadership directly. Or has he been recruited as
Potemkin Village candidate?
Billionaire to Oppose Putin in Russian Presidential ElectionAmid a crescendo of complaints from Russians fed up with the country’s tightly controlled political system, two prominent figures — a billionaire industrialist and the recently ousted finance minister — sought to fill a void in the opposition leadership on Monday.
Mikhail D. Prokhorov announced his plan to contest the Russian presidency on Monday in Moscow.
The billionaire, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, who owns shares in a major gold mining company and an array of other ventures in Russia as well as the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise in the United States, said he will run for president, challenging Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
“I made a decision, probably the most serious decision in my life: I am going to the presidential election,” Mr. Prohkorov said at a news conference. He has barely appeared in public since mid-September, when he was dramatically removed as the head of a pro-business party, Just Cause, after clashing with Kremlin political strategists.
“You may remember, the Kremlin removed me and my allies from Just Cause, and we were not allowed to do what we wanted,” he said. “It is not in my nature to stop halfway. So for the last two and a half months we sat and worked, very calmly and quietly, and we created all the infrastructure to collect two million signatures,” which are needed to get on the ballot…
For Mr. Prokhorov, whose business interests include a stake in the Atlantic Yards development in downtown Brooklyn, his leap into presidential politics could be risky. He is the first wealthy businessman to pursue a political goal in Russia against the governing authorities since the 2003 arrest of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the former chairman of the Yukos Oil Company, who was jailed after he began financing an opposition party. He remains in prison.
The Kremlin is clearly considering blessing a liberal party, after the backlash that has emerged in recent days.
In an interview that was posted Tuesday on the Web site of Ekho Moskvy radio station, Kremlin strategist Vladislav Y. Surkov said he supported the creation of “a mass liberal party or, more precisely, a party for the annoyed urban communities,” and that in order for Russia’s political system to survive, it needed to open up to “new players.”
Previous blog posts about Mr. Prokhorov
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Danger, Vald Putin! Danger!
Are the Olympic Games a Potemkin Village?
As Olympics Arrive, Russia Experiences a Downturn
[T]he Games have for Mr. Putin and his allies become a self-evident triumph of Russia’s will…
“Its realization is already a huge win for our country,” Dmitri N. Kozak, a deputy prime minister and one of Mr. Putin’s longest-standing aides… He went on to use a phrase attributed to Catherine the Great when she intervened to halt the court-martial of a general who had stormed an Ottoman fortress without orders in the 18th century: “Victors are not judged.”…
With Russia’s natural-resource dependent economy slowing as commodities prices fall, and with foreign investments drying up, the Kremlin has already signaled that it would have to cut spending. The $50 billion or so lavished on Sochi is becoming a political liability…
The stalling of the economy, despite the stimulus of Olympic spending, has raised worries about popular unrest directed at the Kremlin and a tightening of political freedoms in response once the Games are over.
Growth last year slowed to 1.3 percent, the lowest in a decade…
“Structural reforms to improve the business climate are key to raising potential growth and economic resilience,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development wrote in its survey of Russia’s economy last month. “As energy prices stagnate and labor and capital become fully utilized, growth is falling behind pre-crisis rates. Making the economy stronger, more balanced, and less dependent on rents from national resource extraction is therefore a key challenge.”…
Russia is not about to collapse. Nor does Mr. Putin’s rule face any foreseeable challenge… Mr. Putin’s approval rating, bolstered by lavishly positive coverage on state television, remains as high as when he first came to office…
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Look at my words, not my actions
Maybe thinking of Russian politics as a magician's performance would help. Or you could think of the promises of reform as
Potemkin promises.
Political Promotions in Russia Appear to Belie President’s Promise of ReformPresident Dmitri A. Medvedev has responded to the street protests in Moscow with proposals for political reform, but his recent personnel appointments seem to tell a different story: top posts went to former officers in the K.G.B. and long-serving loyalists of his political mentor, Vladimir V. Putin…
The highest position went to Sergei B. Ivanov, a former colleague of Mr. Putin’s from the Leningrad office of the K.G.B….
In another change, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitri O. Rogozin, who is known as irascible and an outspoken nationalist and who once hung a poster of Stalin in his office in Brussels, was appointed a deputy prime minister overseeing the military-industrial complex.
Finally, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Y. Surkov… moved to a deputy prime minister’s position in the cabinet. He was replaced by Mr. Putin’s former chief of staff in the prime minister’s office, Vyacheslav Volodin, a loyalist who helped form a pro-Putin national political movement this year called the People’s Front…
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Prototype election?
Protests led to promises of investigations and reforms. Is this election real change or, in Russian terms, merely a Potemkin Village?
Residents Vote in Chinese Village at Center of ProtestLess than two months after staging a bold protest against official corruption and chasing away their local leaders, thousands of people in the southern Chinese village of Wukan did something many had once thought unimaginable: they cast their first ostensibly independent votes…
The voting in Wukan for an 11-member electoral committee marked the peaceful denouement of a revolt that had drawn heavily armed security personnel, and a large contingent of foreign reporters…
The 11-day confrontation was defused in late December after senior Communist Party officials from the provincial capital reached an agreement with Wukan’s self-appointed leaders, promising free elections and an investigation into the questionable real estate deals…
The newspaper People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the party, upheld the resolution as a potential model for officials managing the tensions — and distrust — that plague villages across China…
The election on Wednesday by Wukan’s 4,000 voters was for an election committee that will be charged with overseeing another ballot on March 1 to determine the village leadership.
Although some analysts have described the Wukan election as a watershed moment that could influence other villages in rural China others were skeptical about the long-term prospects for democracy given the Communist Party’s undiluted hold on power.
Local elections for the committees that manage sanitation, social welfare and other daily matters in thousands of Chinese villages are not new in China, but they are generally viewed as flawed. Party officials often determine who ends up on the ballot or stage-manage the voting. Once elected, committee members can be easily swayed by the money that readily flows from township and county-level party offices.
Li Fan, an election expert at the World and China Institute in Beijing, thought the best one could hope for was an uncompromised election in Wukan. “It should be better given that all the media is watching,” he said. “If it is a good election, that will be unusual for China.”…
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Voting without democracy
Democratization might seem like a growing trend, but is it more than a facade (Potemkin democracy)?
How to steal an election[C]rude ballot-rigging is far from extinct… Of the 70-odd states holding national elections in 2012, Freedom House, a lobby, counts only 40 as full “electoral democracies”.
For the most part, however, technology and the presence of outside observers is complicating the election-rigging business, requiring dodgy politicians to work harder and more cleverly. Most manipulators make only sparing use of blatant election-day frauds, says Sarah Birch of the University of Essex. She compared observer reports of 136 elections held between 1995 and 2006 and found that a more frequent tactic is to alter election laws, often as a means of deterring opposition candidates or gerrymandering unlosable constituencies…
Also more common are attempts to influence the genuine choices of voters—frequently through vote-buying, using state resources in campaigning, and exploiting partisan media…
Some fraud masquerades as incompetence. Judith Kelley at Duke University crunched American government reports on more than 1,000 elections held between 1980 and 2004. The most blatant forms of cheating were recorded, on average, in about 40% of polls, but the biggest rise in complaints concerned electoral administration. Too few voting slips, patchy voter lists, and long queues at polling stations distort elections as surely as burnt ballot boxes and bribes. Yet election observers are likely to withhold their worst scoldings if the line between cock-up and corruption is unclear…
Another dodge is to invite more than one mission. Observers disagree about a third of the time…
With so many possibilities for subtle rigging, it may seem odd that the crude stuff remains so popular. Perhaps election-rigging is a hallmark of ill-run political systems, where corrupt local officials instinctively revert to the malpractice that comes naturally. Or perhaps, since the clever stuff can go wrong, ballot-stuffing is a safety valve. Politicians in shoddy democracies are learning what leaders in real ones have long known—you can fool only some of the people, and only some of the time.
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Labels: concepts, corruption, democratization
More on leadership politics in Russia
Just an hour after posting the blog entry about Mikhail Prokhorov and "his" party, Right Cause, I opened this morning's
New York Times to find this article. It makes me more certain that the Prokhorov/Right Cause move is a
Potemkin Village designed to manipulate public opinion.
Before Voting, Russian Leaders Go to the PollsEvery Thursday, a bearded, bespectacled man arrives at the Kremlin bearing a sheaf of data… There, a roomful of decision makers are gathered to hear the latest installment of What Russia Thinks.
As strange as it may sound to outsiders, the people who run Russia are obsessed with approval ratings.
Political competition has been all but extinguished since Vladimir V. Putin came to power, so elections serve as little more than a ritual display of loyalty. But Kremlin insiders see popularity as a key to the survival of a government that, 20 years after the Soviet collapse, has few stable state institutions other than its leaders’ personalities…
Both Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev are entering the campaign cycle with approval ratings that — though enviable by most international standards — were lower this summer than at any point since 2008, according to the state-owned All-Russian Public Opinion Center. More striking is a slide in the popularity of United Russia, the political party that Mr. Putin leads.
To stop this drift, coming elections “need to attract the real support of the population,” said Sergei A. Markov, a United Russia deputy and Kremlin-connected analyst…
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Trivia question
Dr. Nick Hayes, a professor of history who holds the university chair in critical thinking at Saint John's University in Collegeville, MN, wrote in
MINNPost, about cleavages in Russia. Just as trivia, could your students come up with other examples from recent Russian government and politics?
Putin playing Olympic games with centuries-old ethnic conflicts
Putin’s “Potemkin Village” in Sochi…
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Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
