How creepy is this?:

New Russian youth movement sets out manifesto

The new democratic and anti-fascist youth movement, Nashi, intends to eliminate the "regime of oligarchic capitalism".
Speaking at a congress of initiative groups to set up the movement, Marching Together leader Vasiliy Yakemenko who was today elected one of the new commissars or leaders of the new Nashi movement, read out its manifesto, which states: "The elimination of the regime of oligarchic capitalism is a necessary consideration of further modernization."
The text of the manifesto says that the "regime of oligarchic capitalism was created by the previous generation of political, administrative, economic and cultural leaders".
"Our generation does not intend to preserve it. On the contrary, we must eliminate it since this regime is in essence not fair or free and lacks solidarity. It maintains a weak and ineffectual state that is incapable of protecting the country's national sovereignty and the safety and rights of its citizens. It destroys social solidarity and enshrines inequality of opportunity for specific social groups," the manifesto says.
At the same time, the document says, "the first person to issue a genuine challenge to the regime of oligarchic capitalism by strengthening the state was Vladimir Putin". "Putin was first to state Russia's claims to world leadership in the 21st century. However, the impulse engendered by Putin encounters rabid resistance from opponents at home and abroad. At home it is supporters of the regime of oligarchic capitalism and political feudalism who are stopping the modernization of the country and abroad it is impeded by opponents of the country's gaining economic and politic strength in the global arena," Yakemenko said, quoting the manifesto.
"In this situation the Nashi movement will support Putin. This will not be support for Putin as a person but support for his political line which aims to preserve the country's sovereignty, implement its economic and political modernization, ensure its stable and non-violent development and its achievement of future global leadership," the manifesto stresses.
The movement's activists believe preserving the country's sovereignty and integrity is another important condition of modernizing Russia.
"We see Russia as a society where people are able to unite to solve common problems independently but without coercion or quotas. Freedom, justice, cooperation - these are our ideas about a future Russia," says the manifesto read out by Yakemenko.
Among the Nashi movement's tasks is the formation of a functioning civil society as well as the prevention "of the expansion in the country of the ideas of fascism, aggressive nationalism, religious intolerance and separatism that pose a threat to Russia's unity and territorial integrity".
Yakemenko also said that the movement intends to be one of Russia's main political forces in the 2008 presidential election. "We will take part in the presidential election as one of the main political forces and as for the parliamentary election, we'll just wait and see," he told a news conference during a break in the constituent congress.
In addition, he said that Marching Together would hold an election of a new leader in the next two weeks. At the same time Yakemenko let it be known that Nashi and Marching Together will not merge into a single structure and Marching Together will continue with its existing programme.
Speaking of the possibility of turning the movement into a party, Yakemenko said: "If it's necessary, then yes."

I heard a radio piece (not sure if it was NPR or not) that indicated that Russia was emerging from their rebuilding/crisis phase, had paid off all their debts and was sitting on a bunch of cash. If Russia's collapse in 1991 can mark their entrance into their 4t, is this a turning point or the crest of their crisis phase shift into rebuilding? Or, was it just a radio spot on Russia that I'm unnecessarily elevating to importance?

Originally Posted by eekelsey

I heard a radio piece (not sure if it was NPR or not) that indicated that Russia was emerging from their rebuilding/crisis phase, had paid off all their debts and was sitting on a bunch of cash. If Russia's collapse in 1991 can mark their entrance into their 4t, is this a turning point or the crest of their crisis phase shift into rebuilding? Or, was it just a radio spot on Russia that I'm unnecessarily elevating to importance?

Russia is deep in a wooly 3T. Their leadership is absolutely thuggish.

Russia Leaves the West by Dmitri Trenin

"...Until recently, Russia saw itself as Pluto in the Western solar system, very far from the center but still fundamentally a part of it. Now it has left that orbit entirely; Russia's leaders have given up on becoming part of the West and have started creating their own Moscow-centered system.

"...From the beginning of the post-Cold War era, the West saw Russia as a special case. Armed with nuclear weapons, its great-power mentality shaken but unbroken, and just too big, Russia would be granted privileged treatment but no real prospect of membership in either NATO or the EU. The door to the West would officially remain open, but the idea of Russia's actually entering through it remained unthinkable. The hope was that Russia would gradually transform itself, with Western assistance, into a democratic polity and a market economy. In the meantime, what was important was that Russia would pursue a generally pro-Western foreign policy.

"...Moscow found such an offer unacceptable. It was only willing to consider joining the West if it was given something like co-chairman ship of the Western club-or at the very least membership in its Politburo...

Originally Posted by Dmitri Trenin

The new democratic and anti-fascist youth movement, Nashi, intends to eliminate the "regime of oligarchic capitalism"...

I'll croak for this!

Russia is just going down the same road it did under the Czars and Bolsheviks. They put a more humane face on it and the body count may not actually reach the million this time. But Putin's thuggish behavior is definitely reminiscent of Stalin's around 1927-1928 when Stalin offed all the other Bolshies. His imprisoning or killing of oligarchs and centralization of local rule into fedreal hands, total censorship of all media, and nationalization of the oilk industry seem primed toward making Russia more like it was during the time of Brezhnev or Kruschevs or those other chevs.

I peronally think that Russia is in something like a late 3T/early 4T like we are and the border seems somewhat blurry there, just as it does there. I suppose the Russian reinvasion of Chechnya starting in 1999-2000 or the Beslan massacre might mark the start of their 4T. But I don't know. I'll leave that to the experts on Russia here.

Originally Posted by JayN

Russia is just going down the same road it did under the Czars and Bolsheviks. They put a more humane face on it and the body count may not actually reach the millions this time. But Putin's thuggish behavior is definitely reminiscent of Stalin's around 1927-1928 when Stalin offed all the other Bolshies. His imprisoning or killing of oligarchs and centralization of local rule into fedreal hands, total censorship of all media, and nationalization of the oilk industry seem primed toward making Russia more like it was during the time of Brezhnev or Kruschevs or those other chevs.

I peronally think that Russia is in something like a late 3T/early 4T like we are and the border seems somewhat blurry there, just as it does there. I suppose the Russian reinvasion of Chechnya starting in 1999-2000 or the Beslan massacre might mark the start of their 4T. But I don't know. I'll leave that to the experts on Russia here.

I am not a Russia expert either, but I agree with everything above.

Originally Posted by JayN

Russia is just going down the same road it did under the Czars and Bolsheviks. They put a more humane face on it and the body count may not actually reach the million this time. But Putin's thuggish behavior is definitely reminiscent of Stalin's around 1927-1928 when Stalin offed all the other Bolshies. His imprisoning or killing of oligarchs and centralization of local rule into fedreal hands, total censorship of all media, and nationalization of the oilk industry seem primed toward making Russia more like it was during the time of Brezhnev or Kruschevs or those other chevs.

I peronally think that Russia is in something like a late 3T/early 4T like we are and the border seems somewhat blurry there, just as it does there. I suppose the Russian reinvasion of Chechnya starting in 1999-2000 or the Beslan massacre might mark the start of their 4T. But I don't know. I'll leave that to the experts on Russia here.

Russia slips into authoritarianism because it was assembled by autocratic rulers and genuine democracy is counterproductive to it keeping its mammoth state together.

The Putin era has seen a repudiation of the Yeltsin era. People like Yeltsin, Yakovlev, and even Gorbachev - those who led or created the Russian revolution of the late 80s and early 90s - it's own "color revolution" - are looked down upon as creating chaos and anarchy.

I still have faith in Russia. The post Communist generation is not like the Putin generation of 1950s Khrushchev boys. Putin is trying to drape himself in the robes of former imperialist glory - but I am sure than Justin and Al Blanco will attest that young Russia is of a fairly different mindset.

I think they like the semi-stability of the Putin years, but they find his reactionary politics silly.

Originally Posted by Uzi

Originally Posted by JayN

Russia is just going down the same road it did under the Czars and Bolsheviks. They put a more humane face on it and the body count may not actually reach the million this time. But Putin's thuggish behavior is definitely reminiscent of Stalin's around 1927-1928 when Stalin offed all the other Bolshies. His imprisoning or killing of oligarchs and centralization of local rule into fedreal hands, total censorship of all media, and nationalization of the oilk industry seem primed toward making Russia more like it was during the time of Brezhnev or Kruschevs or those other chevs.

I peronally think that Russia is in something like a late 3T/early 4T like we are and the border seems somewhat blurry there, just as it does there. I suppose the Russian reinvasion of Chechnya starting in 1999-2000 or the Beslan massacre might mark the start of their 4T. But I don't know. I'll leave that to the experts on Russia here.

Russia slips into authoritarianism because it was assembled by autocratic rulers and genuine democracy is counterproductive to it keeping its mammoth state together.

The Putin era has seen a repudiation of the Yeltsin era. People like Yeltsin, Yakovlev, and even Gorbachev - those who led or created the Russian revolution of the late 80s and early 90s - it's own "color revolution" - are looked down upon as creating chaos and anarchy.

I still have faith in Russia. The post Communist generation is not like the Putin generation of 1950s Khrushchev boys. Putin is trying to drape himself in the robes of former imperialist glory - but I am sure than Justin and Al Blanco will attest that young Russia is of a fairly different mindset.

I think they like the semi-stability of the Putin years, but they find his reactionary politics silly.

I see Gorbachev and Yeltsin's generation as of the Artist archetype, and Putin's a Prophet generation. Would you agree?

Originally Posted by Uzi

Putin is trying to drape himself in the robes of former imperialist glory

People keep saying that, but I really haven't seen it. The vast majority of the things Putin does that get decried as 'imperialism' on the TeeVee are perceived elsewhere as simply standing up for the sovereignty of his own country and the interests (an important one of which is stability) of his people -- not that there is unanimity behind him, but even the dissent tends to grant him some measure of grudging respect on this count.

Essentially, I look at the "Imperialist Bear" meme much the same way I regard the "Coming War with China" meme: as an absurd bit of silliness, edged with the danger that it may lead people to make disastrous decisions.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Originally Posted by Uzi

Putin is trying to drape himself in the robes of former imperialist glory

People keep saying that, but I really haven't seen it.

Putin has draped himself, and the state he has reformed, in the accessories of the Soviet Union - which was the old Russian Empire with a nifty, new name, starting with the readoption of the old Soviet anthem in 2000.

I personally think that the old Soviet symbols mean less each year for young Russians who were too young to remember the USSR pre-perestroika.

They mean more for the diaspora - but all diasporas are stuck in a time warp anyway. Russians come to Brighton Beach in NYC and feel as if they've stepped back in time to the 1980s.

Here's a great article from Slate about that big, confusing country:

Victory Day, Moscow 2006
Can a Westerner understand the Russian people's love of strong leaders?
By Peter Savodnik
Posted Sunday, May 14, 2006, at 12:48 PM ET

MOSCOW—I live in a Stalin-era building built 64 years ago by German prisoners of war. This is one of the first things my real-estate broker, 23-year-old Elenora, told me about my building before it was actually my building. In Moscow real-estate circles, "Stalin" and "German" add value: They connote quality and sturdiness; they suggest an aesthetic missing from the flimsier, five-story Khrushchovki built after the war.

The apartment building is massive and beige. Square towers rise out of the concrete trunk like a medieval castle. On the ground floor, there is an overpriced, 24-hour grocery story and a Citibank. Crumbling balconies, some bearing miniature satellite dishes, peer down at the Garden Ring, the 15- to 18-lane monstrosity that encircles the city center. For no obvious reason, men in suits and turtlenecks often roam around outside. This is the same species of stiff you see in hotel lobbies, restaurant vestibules, and nightclubs everywhere in the city.

On Victory Day, May 9, the Garden Ring, usually clogged with traffic, was empty. Police officers and militia in sundry shades of camouflage—blue-gray, hunter green, green-puce—clustered, clot-like, outside the grocery store smoking cigarettes and harassing the cab drivers from the Caucasus. Red-orange flags with five-point stars and hammers and sickles festooned both sides of the street. I tried to convince several cab drivers parked outside to take me to work, but every artery between my apartment and the newspaper office, just north of the Garden Ring, had been closed for the parades.
Click Here!

Victory Day commemorates the victory over the fascists. Most of the Russians I know speak about it in personal terms. Victory Day is for remembering the sacrifices, miseries, and braveries of people in their own families: my grandfather who was killed in battle at Volgograd, my mother who suffered through the Leningrad siege, my father whose village was razed. Naturally, the government (first the Soviets, then the Russians) has always portrayed Victory Day as something more abstract. The personal accomplishments of tens of millions of Russians are melded into a great, collective accomplishment. Each loss is fused into a single mourning. A wartime solidarity is re-experienced. A powerful, even primal, emotion is summoned, and that emotion is channeled into a commemoration of a war that, like all nostalgias, almost certainly didn't happen the way it is remembered.

Last year, Victory Day was big. The 60th anniversary of the 1945 Nazi defeat gave President Vladimir Putin a chance to host a grand celebration that included, for the first time, the German chancellor. Other world leaders, including President Bush, also attended the Red Square ceremonies. The Lithuanians and Estonians stayed home—they don't believe the war really ended until the 1991 Soviet collapse—and the Latvians probably regretted that their president accepted the Kremlin's invitation. But the general tenor of the festivities was positive, if somber, injecting some staying power into a holiday that has, inevitably, lost some of its currency with the passing of the years.

This year, Victory Day's slide toward oblivion resumed. Thousands turned up for the parades, speeches, and demonstrations in central Moscow. Millions tuned in to the Soviet-era war movies that played on state-run TV stations. But there was less excitement than in 2005, and the distractions of the popular culture seemed to crowd out the state-sponsored mythologies that once shaped the public consciousness.

For 15 years, at least, a cultural-cognitive gap has been growing between the people and the state. That space is a manifestation of the public's alienation from its government. Attempts to paper over that alienation, to foist a new solidarity on an old people, are absurd. The people, especially the young people who are impervious to the old dogma, know this.

So, too, does the president, who's not a Soviet premier so much as a tsar, dispensing with ideology and reappropriating the powers of 19th-century imperialism. Whether it's single-handedly rerouting massive oil pipelines or reorganizing the federal bureaucracy, Putin has not so much resurrected a dead superstate as responded to Russians' long-festering desire for a "strong hand."

And so the day after Victory Day, the president gave his State of the Nation address and told Russians that they need to have more babies. Noting that the population has been declining—from roughly 150 million in the early 1990s to 140 million today—he mapped out a series of financial incentives for women to have more children.

Whether more Russians women will become mothers for the sake of the motherland is unknown. There is, of course, something odd about a president telling his people to make more babies—procreation tends to be a personal matter. But this is not how tsars think. And the Russian people—most of them, at least—love their tsar.

I don't understand this love. I don't know why so many Russians I've met think their leaders are extensions of themselves, like arms or toes or earlobes. After all, they have less power to choose their leaders than we do in the United States.

This is what I thought when my real-estate broker told me that German prisoners of war had built my apartment building, when a dictator who killed tens of millions of his own people was vodzh—the great leader—and that this makes my apartment more valuable. She smiled at me when I asked if anyone thought it a bit eerie living in a place that smelled of a violent past. Did this make the building tainted perhaps? "You can't do better for this price," she said—a bit smugly, I should add.

yes, we are a bit crazy
I would look a you, if you lived 70 years under the communists

Originally Posted by Al Blanco

yes, we are a bit crazy
I would look a you, if you lived 70 years under the communists

And hundreds of years under the Czars, and hundreds of years under the Mongols, and hundreds of years under the Vikings.

Russia really, really deserves some better luck!

The return of autocracy in Russia continues :

Originally Posted by herbal tee

The return of autocracy in Russia continues :

tell me about it....

So far Kasparov doesn't threaten the Putin-Lavrov generation's access to their huge bank accounts. But the day he does, it will be a cup of Polonium Tea, gentlemen. There will be no shame. However I am sure that it will have been Boris Berezovsky who was responsible [of course!], or even better -- the CIA

There's something nice about a chess champion of all things taking this upon himself at a time when most Russians are reportedly absorbed with DIY projects and have no time for democracy. I hope there are many more such protests. It's not the objective that counts. It's the attention to the homefront. If Russia has to pay more attention to its Garry Kasparovs, it can spend less time buying deputies in Ukraine and telling Auschwitz survivors that they don't know their own history.

http://edwardlucas.blogspot.com/2007...auschwitz.html

I really despise the whole Stalinist fixation of the current crop of Kremlin leaders. I hope one day their bank accounts in Switzerland and Bermuda are found suddenly empty. At the demand of Berezovsky, I would suspect.

Originally Posted by Uzi

I really despise the whole Stalinist fixation of the current crop of Kremlin leaders. I hope one day their bank accounts in Switzerland and Bermuda are found suddenly empty. At the demand of Berezovsky, I would suspect.

Is that all it takes for a cold-blooded murderer to become a hero? Flee the country and talk bad about the scumbag current-leader?

There are, you know, genuinely good characters in and out of Russia. Why hang around with the bad guys? I mean, there are lots of them and all, but they're not the only ones.

(Though credit for noticing Kasparov; so far as we can tell, he's honest)

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Is that all it takes for a cold-blooded murderer to become a hero? Flee the country and talk bad about the scumbag current-leader?

There are, you know, genuinely good characters in and out of Russia. Why hang around with the bad guys? I mean, there are lots of them and all, but they're not the only ones.

Just because Berezovsky is a scum bag -- and he really is one, isn't he? -- doesn't mean that Putin and Lavrov and Ivanov aren't jerks.

Meanwhile it seems the Georgians attacked their own gorge -- to stir Western sentiment of course.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12357893.htm

Originally Posted by Uzi

Just because Berezovsky is a scum bag -- and he really is one, isn't he? -- doesn't mean that Putin and Lavrov and Ivanov aren't jerks.

Not at all. F-ck 'em all, I say.

Meanwhile it seems the Georgians attacked their own gorge -- to stir Western sentiment of course.

It's hardly 'their own' gorge. Abkhazians and Ossetians have made it pretty clear for quite some time now that they don't want to be part of Georgia. That part of the world, it's best simply to assume that no one is in the right.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Not at all. F-ck 'em all, I say.

It's hardly 'their own' gorge. Abkhazians and Ossetians have made it pretty clear for quite some time now that they don't want to be part of Georgia. That part of the world, it's best simply to assume that no one is in the right.

The point is that the attack was most likely performed with Russian military assistance, but they deny it, and the excuses they come up with are often entertaining.

Originally Posted by Uzi

The point is that the attack was most likely performed with Russian military assistance, but they deny it, and the excuses they come up with are often entertaining.

It is silly that they deny it. After all, the Abkhazians are their friends; I'd see not much shame in admitting that you help out your friends.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

It is silly that they deny it. After all, the Abkhazians are their friends; I'd see not much shame in admitting that you help out your friends.

I recent spent some time in the company of a Georgian bigwig at a conference. I got the sense that they see the reintegration of South Ossetia as much more doable than Abkhazia. The Georgian perspective on the gorge attack was that it was an attempt to get Georgia's young and hot-blooded president, Mr. Saakashvili (age 39) to overreact again. Fortunately he's been getting international etiquette lessons from his friends in the EU bureaucracy lately.

The October Revolution and Civil War that followed were in a Third Turning, after the Civil War had been won, 'War Communism' was replaced with the New Economic plan (which allowed elements of capitalism), while the Soviet Leaders argued about what economic plan the Soviet Union should have. Almost identical to the debate we are currently having on reductions in greenhouse emissions.

I would say Russia's last 4T began in 1928, with the Stalin introducing the first Five Year Plan which firmly established a centrally planned economy. By 1932 the stunning success of the First Five Year Plan, which met it's goals in 4 years is when the last 4T for Russia was well under away.

The 4T went on through the 1930's and 1940's encompassing the Purges and Great Patriotic War. The Great Patriotic War is celebrated by Russians even now, like WW2, the Civil War or Revolutionary War as a defining event, when the whole Russian nation came behind the effort to defend the motherland.

The Last 4T turned Russia into a super-power and created an empire greater than last Russian Empire.

Originally Posted by Tristan

The October Revolution and Civil War that followed were in a Third Turning

Yeah. Because at the end of the Revolution era, Russian society was all fragmented and people were very shortly afterwards to bemoan its focus on the hedonist individual at the expense of society. Classic 3T...[/sarcasm]

...'War Communism' was replaced with the New Economic plan (which allowed elements of capitalism), while the Soviet Leaders argued about what economic plan the Soviet Union should have. Almost identical to the debate we are currently having on reductions in greenhouse emissions.

Again, right on, ozzie. Since the increasingly stifling social conformity and centrality of the ruling party (not to mention the dire personal consequences meted out to those out of favor with the ruling party) are exactly the same sort of stuff going on in the GW debate[/sarcasm]

By 1932 the stunning success of the First Five Year Plan, which met it's goals in 4 years is when the last 4T for Russia was well under away.

Successful grand plans are the very stuff of an early-4T, don't you know.[/sarcasm...again]

The Great Patriotic War is celebrated by Russians even now, like WW2, the Civil War or Revolutionary War as a defining event, when the whole Russian nation came behind the effort to defend the motherland.

This is the kind of thing that happens when the generational cycle is oversimplified down to a war cycle. That is, you get woefully inaccurate characterizations of the social environment (which is what a Turning is about, after all) about which someone is ignorant, based on events that are external to the society. WW2 for Russia is a great example. The war came to them not because Russian society, led by fire-breathing Prophet-ideologues saw it as an opportunity to impose their grandiose visions, but because the guys on the other side invaded. They celebrate it for the same reason that any nation would celebrate the successful defense of its homeland.

But thanks to the war-cycle fallacy, you have people trying to shoehorn things into a shape to fit non-turning-related events.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Yeah. Because at the end of the Revolution era, Russian society was all fragmented and people were very shortly afterwards to bemoan its focus on the hedonist individual at the expense of society. Classic 3T...[/sarcasm]

Again, right on, ozzie. Since the increasingly stifling social conformity and centrality of the ruling party (not to mention the dire personal consequences meted out to those out of favor with the ruling party) are exactly the same sort of stuff going on in the GW debate[/sarcasm]

Successful grand plans are the very stuff of an early-4T, don't you know.[/sarcasm...again]

This is the kind of thing that happens when the generational cycle is oversimplified down to a war cycle. That is, you get woefully inaccurate characterizations of the social environment (which is what a Turning is about, after all) about which someone is ignorant, based on events that are external to the society. WW2 for Russia is a great example. The war came to them not because Russian society, led by fire-breathing Prophet-ideologues saw it as an opportunity to impose their grandiose visions, but because the guys on the other side invaded. They celebrate it for the same reason that any nation would celebrate the successful defense of its homeland.

But thanks to the war-cycle fallacy, you have people trying to shoehorn things into a shape to fit non-turning-related events.

I am not denying there was a lot of repression during rule of Lenin and Stalin, Lenin was as bad as Stalin, expect he killed less people.

However Stalin managed to do what Lenin only dreamed of. Lenin was forced to backtrack from 'communism' with the NEP because of internal disputes and economic problems.

Ever since the overthrown of Communism Russia has been unraveling literally, apart from a new political system has been put into. Such is the woeful state of the institutional order in Russia as of late, they can't even defeat the mighty Chechens.