From our archives (revised edition, first published in 1990)—

The ecological abuses triggered by the pressure to develop in a hurry were compounded after WW2 by the bureaucratism and careerism that had begun to creep into many operations…”

PREFATORY NOTE: I wrote this article in the Fall of 1990 at a moment of heightened propaganda against the putative ills of communism and the Soviet Union, in particular, as the Western “democracies”, with the US in the lead, and already smelling the impending disintegration of their greatest ideological foe, stoked the fires of change and rebellion.

In this epochal process, Mikhail Gorbachev (left) played a pivotal role for which he has been both praised and—in my view— justifiably damned inside the former USSR.  But while his place in history remains to be determined, the facts are clear and indisputable. After assuming the reins of power in 1985, Gorbachev’s reforms as well as summit conferences with Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War, ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For these efforts, the West, recognizing an ally, awarded Gorbachev the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and the Harvey Prize in 1992 as well as Honorary Doctorates from Durham University in 1995,^[1] Trinity College in 2002^[2] and University of Münster in 2005. 

Not missing an opportunity to put as many nails in the coffin of their former enemy as possible, the western media crowed frequently about the “inevitability” of the USSR’s downfall due to its inherently “inferior” political and economic system, one which, it was loudly proclaimed, was riddled with cronyism, rigidities, corruption, and total indifference to the fate of the environment.  Considering the record of the West, and especially the United States in these matters, it took some cheek to point the finger at the Soviets for such sins, but the power of the Western media is so stiflingly total that few voices deemed it possible to file a dissenting view.  

For what it’s worth, honest dissent in this case could not have denied the USSR’s political errors. The Soviet Union, after all, perennially on the defensive, somewhat paranoid after decades of encirclement and intrigues, was usually trapped in complicated  historical processes that invited mistakes.  Many such mistakes stemmed from cataclysmic events over which the Soviets exercised little control, like the Nazi assault in 1941. Still, despite such painful paucity of options the USSR probably gave a far better and honorable account of itself  than its far richer opponents.  (The professional anticommunist punditocracy would probably choke on that statement and I wish they did. The world would be rid of some very toxic layer of manure). But the purpose of this paper is not to make a comprehensive comparison between capitalist and socialist nations, for which this is hardly the place, but to look at the environmental record of the USSR, and, if possible shed some light into its historical mainsprings.  We must concede at the outset that in the area of environmental protection the USSR—the largest nation on Earth—racked up a dismal record in practically every major ecosystem to be found in its eleven timezones.  But, here, at least, I believe the historical context goes a long way to explain this failure, something near impossible in the case of the West. The reasons for this position are set forth in the facts and arguments in the article that follows. One important caveat: It must be noted that the environmental record has not improved substantively since the overthrow of communism; if anything, under a regime of runaway kleptocratic capitalism, it may have gotten dramatically worse.—Patrice Greanville

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The Historical Framework for the Ecological Degradation of the Soviet Union

Let’s begin by taking a look at a summary provided by James Ridgeway, a dependable American journalist. Ridgeway, a frequent media critic, used to be a columnist for The Village Voice:

(Moscow)- A survey of the Soviet environmental situation reveals a country in desperate straits.

The USSR in Crisis, September 1990).

The WiKipedia provides a more recent assessment:

The Soviet Union transformed, often radically, the country’s physical environment. In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet citizens, from the highest officials to ordinary factory workers and farmers, began to examine negative aspects of this transformation and to call for more prudent use of natural resources and greater concern for environmental protection.

In spite of a series of environmental laws and regulations passed in the 1970s, authentic environmental protection in the Soviet Union did not become a major concern until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985. Without an established regulatory agency and an environmental protection infrastructure, enforcement of existing laws was largely ignored. Only occasional and isolated references appeared on such issues as air and water pollution, soil erosion, and wasteful use of natural resources in the 1970s. There were various reasons for not implementing environmental safeguards. In cases where land and industry were state owned and managed, when air and water were polluted, the state was most often the agent of this pollution. Second, and this was true especially under Joseph Stalin‘s leadership, the resource base of the country was viewed as limitless and free. Third, in the Cold War rush to modernize and to develop heavy industry, concern for damage to the environment and related damage to the health of Soviet citizens would have been viewed as detrimental to progress. Fourth, advanced means of pollution control and environmental protection can be an expensive, high-technology industry, and even in the mid-1980s many of the Soviet Union’s systems to control harmful emissions were inoperable or of foreign manufacture. (Geography of the Soviet Union)

Effects of the East-West conflict 

The 46-year-old Cold War and its older predecessor, the policy of communist containment unleashed at the end of World War I by  the victorious Western powers, cost the Soviet Union dearly. 

The Bolshevik regime that took power in 1917 found a nation in ruins as a result of Russia’s calamitous participation in World War I. Indeed, Russia at the time was an improbable candidate to launch a socialist utopia. A backward, largely agrarian nation with a tiny industrial nucleus, it hardly fitted the Marxian vision of a mature capitalist civilization capable of providing the abundance necessary to guarantee political and economic democracy. 

That simple fact was clear to most Western leaders, but their deep hostility towards the new Soviet state was not rooted in the reality of the situation, but in the new system’s promise. What if the Soviets showed the world that a worker-led revolution could assure peace and prosperity for all? What if the new state’s industrial clout surpassed the West, and, not inherently prone to recessions or depressions, continued to develop at an uninterrupted pace until it became not only a political threat by way of consumerist example but a very real military threat as well? 

To wait and do nothing was a gamble the Western rulers could ill afford: socialism had to be stifled in its cradle. But how to proceed? The most reliable option, though callous, was outright military intervention buttressed by economic strangulation. It was chosen, practically by consensus, as the best way to save the “civilized world.” (In our own time and backyard, a replay of this policy targeted Sandinista Nicaragua until the citizens of that nation, in their “assisted” wisdom, chose Violeta Chamorro, a pro-Washington candidate, as president.)

The opportunity for toppling the Bolsheviks presented itself in the inevitable fact that in most social upheavals a nation divides itself along class and property lines. In Russia after 1917 there were many powerful people who disagreed vehemently with the chief objectives and methods of the revolution. They soon found powerful external allies ready and eager to support them in a counter-revolution. These outside forces–14 countries in all–sent 180,000 troops and armed and trained 300,000 anti-Bolshevik troops within the Soviet Union in a three-year intervention that almost overthrew the new government. The U.S. participated in these pro-Czarist adventures; American troops did not leave Vladivostok until 1923. At the end of the civil war Russia was again a devastated country.  

 
Bolshevik soldiers killed by members of the Czechoslovak Legion, aided by the American Expeditionary Force in Vladivostok. Meddling in the affairs of the newly born Soviet Union began at its very inception. US, French, British, and Japanese forces intervened along with a host of minor powers to help restore the Czarist dynasty. The last American soldiers left Siberia in April, 1920.

The failure of military intervention put the West on its second strategic track: longterm economic strangulation. Since the Soviets cold not be overthrown, it was now absolutely imperative to make their economic model seem a total and permanent failure. Two methods eventually evolved to insure this goal: total economic and political isolation (the famed “cordon sanitaire” that treated Bolshevism as a dangerous contagious disease) and an all-out arms race. The latter would come into full swing right after the end of WW II as a vital part of the Cold War.

While economic strangulation made it extremely difficult for the new regime to obtain machinery and supplies needed to restart and modernize its economy, the arms race was calculated to take its toll in a more insidious way. Because of the severe disparity in economic size (the U.S. GNP has been at least 6 times larger than the USSR’s for most of the 20th century) an arms competition between the two blocs could prove highly affordable and profitable to the West but ruinous to the Soviets. In fact, having to match the U.S. dollar for dollar in the arms competition not only derailed Soviet civilian priorities, but eventually contributed to the crippling of their economy. Gorbachev’s reforms, if nothing else, were a direct response to this situation. 
 
German soldiers baffled by misplaced signs as they advance into Russia during Operation Barbarossa. 

Despite Stalin’s massive industrialization effort in the 1930s (much of it directed toward infrastructure and military goods— in keeping with the idea of “socialism in one country”, and the realization that the capitalist powers and the fascist powers would try a military “solution” to the “Communist threat” at the first propitious moment),  the resulting Soviet inability to turn out a plentiful supply of quality consumer goods had its anticipated political effects. At home, it sowed disaffection among the citizenry; abroad, as part of a huge anti-communist propaganda campaign that rarely let up since 1945, it served to “confirm” the supposed incapacity of Soviet-style socialism to “deliver the goods.” These political goals were quite desirable from a Western viewpoint, but the policy of encirclement eventually had an unintended effect: it forced the USSR to become a true military superpower. 

Confronted with an almost uniformly hostile world, and the ever-growing threat of another invasion my Western armies–especially by the rising Fascist powers–Moscow in the 1930s had no choice but to devote precious resources to heavy industry and weapons manufacturing. Starting from scratch, Soviet planners were instructed to design a complex economy to be run from the center–an extremely difficult undertaking under the best of circumstances, and a nearly impossible feat under wartime conditions.  Their solution to the demand for rapid development was simple and logical: the would try forced-march industrialization. Unfortunately, even today an experiment in forced-march industrialization cause by the threat of impending war would doom environmental concerns to irrelevancy. In the 1930s, then the Soviet infrastructure was being laid down, the very notion of ecological limits was unheard of. 

The ecological abuses triggered by the pressure to develop in a hurry were compounded by the bureaucratism and “careerism” that pervaded most operations. In a way, that too was largely inescapable in the historical climate of the ’30s and ’40s. With performance evaluation measured strictly along bureaucratic and party lines, and with planners, managers, technicians, engineers, scientists, farmers and other key economic personnel working under constant pressure to fill quotas at any cost, it would have been miraculous if someone had put ecological or humane considerations above his own interest. The ravages caused by forced-march industrialization and personal careerism were dwarfed, however, by the human, animal, and ecological losses suffered by the Soviet Union when the Nazi armies finally swept eastward in 1941.

Ecological and human devastation on an unprecedented scale

Of all combatants in World War II, the Soviet Union paid by far the highest price. The scope of the Soviet sacrifice has been well documented by MIT Professor Harold Freeman. (See, for example, Toward Socialism in America). The giant arsenal ordered by Stalin and assembled at terrible national cost–from five billion rubles and one million men in 1934 to 34 billion rubles and 7.3 million men in 1939–made it possible for Soviet military strength to defeat the Nazi armies encircling Stalingrad and Leningrad–victories that turned the tide of the war.  (As is well known, under the so-called “Lend-Lease” program the US provided assistance to its allies, including the USSR. A total of $50.1 billion— equivalent to $611 billion today—worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, and $1.6 billion to China. While these supplies were critical at some junctures, it is incorrect to say that the Soviet Union survived the Nazi onslaught chiefly as a result of American largesse.)

BELOW: Soviet soldiers attempt to set up a beachhead under heavy German bombardment  in Kiev, 1943.

The disproportionate burden borne by the Soviets during the war can be gleaned from some eloquent statistics. From 1941 to Normandy in June of 1944, Nazi Germany kept two to eight divisions on the Western front and, except for the first six months of that period, an average of 180 divisions on the Russian front. Repeated pleas from the Russians to their allies to open another front in the West to relieve pressure in the East went largely unheeded. Until the victory at Stalingrad, the Soviets alone faced the full might of the Nazi ground military machine. As a result, by conservative estimate, 14 million Soviet soldiers died in the struggle, plus 6 million civilians–fifty times the American casualty rate, which, of course, included no civilians. Visualized another way, the Soviet losses amounted to three times the population of California in the 1940s. In  Leningrad alone, during the Nazi siege, up to 850,000 people perished from bombardments, disease, starvation and cold, but neither the resistance nor the war effort could be  stopped. Hence, in one single battle, Leningrad, the Russians sustained 17 times more casualties than America did in almost 20 years of intervention in Vietnam. 

Picking up the pieces 

The end of the war found the USSR in a paradoxical situation. The Red Army controlled most of Eastern and Central Europe, but the homeland was again at a point in which forced-march industrialization was necessary. To make matters worse, the 1946 harvest failed, and 1947 brought starvation to many. The extent of the destruction was impressive even by modern standards. The war had completely or partially destroyed 15 large cities. 1,710 towns, 70,000 villages, 32,000 enterprises, 6,000,000 buildings, 65.000 kilometers of railroad track, 3,000 tractor stations, 13,000 railroad bridges, 10,000 power stations. Animal losses were not reliably recorded, but various archivists put the number conservatively between 25 and 45 million wild and domestic creatures. 

In a nutshell, this is the historical backdrop for Russia’s drive toward economic and military parity with the West at any cost in the years following the “Great Patriotic War” and it is within this framework that we must judge current Soviet environmental degradation and the nation’s efforts to rectify it. For, with the advent of the Cold War, and suggestion by Western leaders that a nation so severely crippled actually represented an imminent danger to the security of the “free world,” wartime production and its attendant paranoid psychology again took hold of the Soviet economy. Unfortunately, Cold War “pragmatism” did more than simply deform the economy; it buried for decades the possibility of bringing to the forefront more humane and ecologically enlightened policies. For much of that dislocation, not to mention the incalculable human, ecological, and animal suffering involved in long years of conflict, Western [bourgeois] leaders must bear a heavy responsibility. 
_________________________________________
Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post‘s editor in chief.  
This article first appeared  in the magazine The Animals’ Agenda (Sept. 1990). At the time, the author served as Editor at Large for that publication. The article was prompted by the continuous vilification of the USSR by the American press in particular, a campaign of malicious propaganda that continued right up to the moment the USSR imploded in 1991. This is a slightly revised version.

With special thanks to my editorial associate, B. Havlena, for invaluable support. 

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The Communist Comeback

by ISRAEL SHAMIR
 
Communism in Russia: premature obits? 

Moscow saw its biggest demo in a decade last Saturday. It was a feel-good, peaceful manifestation of youthful Facebook users, and it was already nicknamed the Likes Parade, as the prospective participants had clicked on “like” in response to the call to demonstrate. The predictions were dire: some expected clashes and bloody martyrdom, others hoped for a conquest of the Kremlin and revolution. However things went smoothly. Police were friendly too; riot police were stationed far away near the Kremlin gates so as not to annoy the people. The speakers stressed their desire to avoid revolutionary upheaval; there were speakers from diverse groups including nationalists, the far left, liberals and the far right.

The big winners of the elections (the communists of KPRF and Fair Russia) sent some token representatives but stayed away en masse, leaving the ground to small opposition groups. Crowd assessments varied from 30,000 to 90,000; not too many for a city of 15 million inhabitants, but undoubtedly impressive.

It could also serve as a wakeup call to the Putin administration: for too long a time, they banked on their hold on the mainstream media and on the passivity of the people. Now they have begun to act: the state-owned TV broadcasted pictures of the demo and provided overwhelmingly conservative commentary. Until now, this TV network had preferred to show non-political entertainment, completely blocking out real current events.

The TV program included frightening stories from Cairo, where the Tahrir revolution undermined the economy and brought the Islamists  within reach of power; pictures of the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov on its way to Syria; and even a previously lost interview of the late writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn speaking against revolutions in general. Memories of  traumatic 1990 were brought back to scare a lot of ordinary Russians. The message was for peaceful and consistent changes, as against revolutions and upheavals, and this resonated well with the rather conservative Russian public outside of the big cities.

However, there are strong voices for change; and these voices found comfort in  US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s support. The communists could not stay away from the protests, fearing their own marginalisation; they will demonstrate on December 18.

Putin has some time left until March when he is due for re-election or removal. There is a feeling that he will lose if he should continue to rule by the old methods and rely on the same people. Apparently he understands that,  and has decided that his campaign will be run by the recently formed Popular Front instead of tarnished United Russia. But this is hardly enough. The opposition is demanding a recount and/or reelection; this call may be beaten only by more impressive real deeds.

Putin has to find broad popular support — rely upon the communists, the winners of the parliamentary elections, and remove the most hated and most corrupt officials he inherited from Yeltsin’s administration. This would entail parting ways with neoliberalism’s model and embracing nationalization of  resources, mobilization economics, putting an end to the offshore activities, repatriation of  funds from overseas banks, progressive taxation (if not confiscation) of the super-rich and their assets.

This is a tall order, for Putin played ball with the “offshore aristocracy” and supported the neoliberal agenda. But he may do it in order to survive. US ex-presidential candidate McCain recently threatened Putin with the fate of Kaddafi, and this threat was repeated by some pro-Western protesters in Moscow. This will hardly make him more flexible to Western pressure: Kaddafi followed instructions from Washington for the last five years until his murder — Putin will not repeat his mistake.

Was there election fraud to any great extent? Up to a point, though not to the degree of the general suspicions  I reported last week. United Russia did well in the countryside, in small towns (above 50 per cent) and in the national (ethnic) republics (above 80 per cent). It did less well in the big cities and in the Russian (as opposed to ethnic republics) heartland – about 35 per cent of the vote. The total probably is similar to the official result.

The best tool to judge are the  polls: if the results were manipulated, they would be at great variance with the predictions. The US Moscow embassy confidential cable 09MOSCOW2530 available to us courtesy of Wikileaks assesses Russian pollsters as rather reliable: “Russian public opinion polling firms and their staffs exhibited a thorough knowledge of current survey methods, and the staff we spoke with demonstrated high standards of professionalism. Presnyakova felt that, all other issues aside, the well-educated analysts working at the four organizations maintained a high level of professional ethics. She said they would not “massage” data to achieve a particular result. Nothing we found contradicted this sentiment. …The Duma elections of December 2007 provide a worthwhile test of the four polling organizations. By comparing how these organizations predictions square with actual results, a clearer picture emerges of how well each firm does in estimating public opinion”.

“The table below provides the estimates for the organizations in the week just prior to the Duma elections. The bottom line provides the actual results.

                            United  Just Russia  KPRF     LDPR

VTsIOM                    62                   12                   8                 7

Levada Center          66                   12                   8                 6

Election Results       64                   12                  8                 8

Apparently their predictive ability is quite good. As for last week elections, they predicted the results with a similar degree of precision:

Polls, November 19-20, 2011        

54  per cent 17  per cent 12  per cent 10  per cent

Levada Center, November 11, 2011 —

53  per cent 20  per cent 12  per cent 9  per cent

Election results                          

49 per cent         19 per cent         11 per cent

For this reason, one should take the cries of fraud with a grain of salt. This does not mean the elections were fair and honest: the communists and the opposition had very little access to the mainstream media. I was told by an editor of a large Moscow newspaper that the communists refuse to grease the media’s wheels, and as a result they are being blocked from the printed media as well. United Russia, I was told, pays very well, and this ensures its good image in the press. This is the case on  public TV as well. Though state-owned TV is not allowed to charge parties, my TV contacts told me that other parties pay for their coverage with  funds provided by the Kremlin, while the communists get no funds and do not pay. In short, the Russian elections are as unfair as anywhere in the money-based world.

Vengeance of history

However, the most interesting part of the story remained obscured for  Western readers, and that is the comeback of communists. In the 1990s, the story of the decade was the demise of communism. It was supposed to be dead for good, this aberration of sacred property rights; and celebrating its death, Francis Fukuyama declared The End of History. But apparently rumours of its death were somewhat exaggerated.

The comeback has some good reasons in the Russian experience. While for the West the 1990s were not bad, the Russians (and other post-Soviet states) had an awful time. Their leaders derailed the country in order to kill communism, as they admitted later. Research institutes, hospitals, military and industry had been turned off at the source and sent to “make money and to become self-reliant.”  In scientific centres this drastic ‘market reform’  led to starvation and to mass emigration; while the father of the reform, the late Egor Gaydar, called for “adjustment to the means”.  Though things have improved greatly since 1992, they are still not as good as they were in  Soviet days. Now people refuse to view the restoration of capitalism as the final chapter, which can’t be overturned.

This success of communists is not surprising to careful readers of the Wikileaks cables. In a cable called “Communist Party: Not Dead Yet”, the US Ambassador in Moscow reported to the State Department in 2006: “Most observers describe the Communist Party (KPRF) as a party on life-support sustained by nostalgic pensioners. The cliché has it that as party stalwarts die off, so too will the KPRF. This assessment, however, ignores a relatively constant level of support, despite the demographics, and the attraction that some feel for a well-defined political party structure. The KPRF accommodates not only the “Soviet” socialist traditionalists, but also a new generation of intellectuals who wish, literally, to overthrow Russia’s current system which they believe only helps a select few.”

For a while (between 2003 and 2008) the Party lost its following as Russia received oil revenues and Putin stabilised economy, but after the 2008 crisis, it picked up again. The US Ambassador wrote in 2009: “The Communist Party has benefited from the economic crisis by attracting increased membership and strengthening its position as a populist alternative to the party of power, United Russia. The invigorated Communists demonstrated that they can organize rallies across the country, and most observers expect KPRF will pick up votes in March 1 regional elections. These successes have resulted from the party’s three-pronged strategy: parliamentary initiatives aimed at pocketbook issues; public protests and actions that demonstrate party vigor; and an “ideological campaign” to communicate their message and appeal to new and younger voters.”

“Communist leaders have lambasted the ruling government’s handling of the economic crisis, claiming that it favors the rich and ignores systemic weaknesses of the capitalist system. In a February 5 meeting, KPRF Deputy Chairman Ivan Melnikov told us that the government’s anti-crisis strategy was ‘not effective’ and was ‘the same as the Titanic’s after it hit the iceberg…to save the first-class passengers first.’  The KPRF has responded to the government’s anti-crisis measures with far-reaching proposals for nationalization and aggressive state intervention to bolster production and employment. KPRF Chairman Gennadi Zyuganov has repeatedly called for complete government takeover of all natural resources in Russia in order to distribute the country’s wealth directly to its citizens. Zyuganov also called on Putin and Medvedev to sack Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin for his alleged bungling of the government’s anti-crisis policies”.

This wish of communists was recently fulfilled, and Alexei Kudrin has been sacked.

The financial crisis in Europe and in the US makes this shift of Russian public opinion especially important. The position of the 99 per cent went south with the destruction of the communist option in 1991, when the 1 per cent succeeded in convincing the rest that there is no alternative to their version of the market and that resistance is futile. With the resurrection of Russian communism,  Americans and Europeans will regain some leverage vis-á-vis  their elites, and, who knows, perhaps they will find their own way out of the impasse.

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

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A Punch in the Face for the Capitalist Way

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By Stephen Lendman
Pointing the finger hypocritically and with total impunity at other nations’ election processes is made possible by the totalitarian and pervasive power of American media. In all critical topics for the health and survival of the nation and the world, the US corporate media function as a colossal engine of omission, escapism and disinformation, a huge criminal enterprise, a consciousness plague, by any reasonable standard.—Eds.

 

RIA Novosti said Medvedev/Putin’s United Russia party won 238 seats, falling slightly below a majority with 49.67% of the vote.

It added that it’s “a far cry from the commanding two-thirds constitutional majority the party held in the State Duma for the past four years” based on tabulated results so far.

United Russia is the nation’s dominant party. In December 2001, it was founded by merging the Unity and Fatherland-All Russia parties. 

Vladimir Putin served as acting President after Boris Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999. From May 7, 2000 – May 7, 2008, he was President. Dmitry Medvedev succeeded him. Putin now serves as Prime Minister. He’s United Russia 2012 presidential candidate. On March 4, presidential elections will be held.

After a decade in power, it’s common for incumbent parties to lose strength. Nonetheless, despite likely coalition agreements on some issues, United Russia remains dominant. Moreover, Putin’s heavily favored to win in 2012.

With near final Duma votes counted, results were:

• United Russia – 49.67%

• the Communist Party – 19.15%

• Just Russia – 13.16%

• the Liberal Democratic Party – 11.67% 

• Yabloko – 3.21%, and 

• two small parties getting under 1% each.

Under Russian electoral laws, Duma seats are proportionally distributed to parties getting at least 7% of the vote.

Because several didn’t qualify, United Russia maintains a ruling majority. Nonetheless, President Medvedev expressed willingness to have coalition partners, saying: 

“We will have to take into account the more complex configuration of the Duma and for some issues we will have to join coalition bloc agreements.”

Ballots were cast in 94,000 domestic polling stations across Russia and about 370 overseas locations in over 140 foreign countries.

CEC officials said irregularities disqualified 1% of electoral ballots.

Major Media Bashing

On December 4, New York Times writers David Herszenhorn and Ellen Barry headlined, “Majority for Putin’s Party Narrows in Rebuke From Voters,” saying:

United Russia “suffered surprisingly steep losses in parliamentary elections on Sunday….The three minority parties….all made strong gains….”

“Critics of the government have said for weeks that they expected widespread campaign abuses, and reports of electoral violations streamed into online social networks during the early morning hours….”

On December 5, Russia Today (RT.com) reported that on election day, a Russian Internet site claimed an alleged United Russia scheme “to conduct an illegal throw-in of ballots at one of the polling stations in Moscow.”

It said “some obscure political specialists had gathered a group of about 40 people, described as ‘drunks and low-lifes,’ and handed them special secret pockets and packs of filled ballots, marked United Russia.”

In fact, three of the 40 were undercover reporters. When the alleged group arrived, they claimed fraud. Other reports about throw-in ballots also surfaced. A top Central Election Commission (CEC) official admitted some violations occurred. 

CEC’s Leonid Ivlev mentioned “invisible ink, illegal propaganda, and the so-called ‘merry-go-round’ false voting” by especially prepared people.

However, the invisible ink scheme was uncovered and stopped.  “Merry-go-round” fraud was grossly exaggerated. Only minor violations occurred. They’re common everywhere in contrast to major US electoral fraud.

Notably in 2000 and 2004, Democrats Gore and Kerry won popular and electoral college victories, but George Bush became president for eight years illegitimately. 

In addition, key Senate and House elections were also tainted. No wonder under a system where corporate-controlled machines vote, not citizens. 

Ivlev said “many reports (about alleged Russian electoral fraud) simply showed a lack of understanding of the election procedure.”

Moreover, Deputy Interior Minister Aleksander Gorovoi said police registered 2050 violations all day. However, none compromised final results. Most “concerned illegal propaganda and the police had started administrative cases into these matters.”

Independent (CEC-invited) international monitors checked voting in over 30 Russian regions. They concluded the process was calm and orderly. Polish monitor Mateus Piskorski said, “All complaints are about technical issues and not about violations of election law.”

Institute for Democracy and Cooperation director of studies John Laughland called electoral procedures “absolutely excellent.” He added that polling station workers were “extremely competent.”

Nonetheless, The Times said cellphone video footage showed “heavy-handed politicking, including attempts at bribery, campaign law violations and other manipulation.”

It added that throughout the day, scattered reports cited “voting irregularities, a smattering of protests and some arrests.”

Times and other major media writers, commentators and editorials notoriously bash electoral results in non-US client states. 

In contrast, when the Supreme Court reversed America’s 2000 popular vote (and electoral one learned months late) to install its own favorite, a Times editorial supported Bush’s illegitimacy and “unusual” post-election “gracious(ness).”

Electoral fraud wasn’t mentioned nor was cheating John Kerry in 2004. Moreover, America’s corrupted duopoly power gets no coverage whatever.  

Instead, reports claim model US democratic governance when, in fact, it’s not tolerated, never was, and on December 1 lost all legitimacy. 

Following last May’s House vote, the Senate followed suit. They authorized detaining uncharged US citizens indefinitely in military dungeons, based on spurious allegations of supporting terrorism.

Media scoundrels don’t object, including Washington Post writers, commentators, and editorial writers.

On December 3, its editorial headlined, “The farce of Russian elections,” saying:

 “Russia’s hermetic political system – a parody of democracy that begrudges dissent and bristles at independent voices – is growing even less tolerant.”

“Vladimir Putin has turned from glowering at the country’s only independent elections watchdog to outright intimidation. In the process, he has reverted to Cold War rhetoric and cemented the Kremlin’s reputation for thuggery in high places.”

Fact check

Money power in private hands controls America’s media. They’re a platform for managed and junk food news. Dissent in America is an endangered species. On US television, it’s entirely absent, and little appears in corporate controlled print. 

In contrast, Iran’s Press TV, Russia Today and Voice of Russia air diverse discussions and opinions on major global issues. US viewers can access them online to stay current and well-informed, free of [the] Western propaganda tainting America’s media.

Putin is one of the few world leaders with backbone enough to challenge US lawlessness. As a result, America’s media pillory him instead of explaining destructive US policies threatening humanity’s survival.

Russian officials “turn(ed) up the heat on Golos (Russian for ‘voice’), an independent group of election monitors largely funded by US and other Western groups.” 

Fact check

Golos gets National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding. It supports “regime change” in Venezuela, Syria, Iran and other non-US client states. It backs opposition groups, conducts propaganda campaigns, and does openly what CIA operative do covertly to destabilize sitting governments. 

Its mission is subverting, not promoting democracy. It operates with State Department funding and direction. It serves US imperial interests destructively against targeted countries.

So do USAID and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). They meddle internally against sitting governments. One way is by funding Golos. It calls itself a Russian NGO established in 2000 to defend democratic rights and civil liberties. It’s Russia’s only allegedly “independent” electoral watchdog.

The UK Telegraph calls it “one of the few organizations able to catalogue and publicize (Kremlin) attempts at fraud and intimidation.” 

In fact, Russian electoral authorities found it violated election laws by publishing polls during a prohibited “quiet period” preceding voting. Of course, taking US funding with strings corrupts its independence entirely and violates Russian law.

Fact check 

America has well over 1,000 global military bases. Many encircle Russia and China. No nation threatens America. Yet it spends more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined.

To achieve unchallenged global dominance, perpetual wars are waged. Alleged missile defense weapons and tracking radar are for offense. Russia and China are targeted, not Iran or other Middle East countries. 

Nuclear-armed Aegis class warships patrol the Eastern Mediterranean, equipped with SM-3 ballistic missiles and anti-satellite interceptors. Upgraded versions are being developed. 

Instead of abandoning Bush’s scheme, Obama plans more extensive, sophisticated, flexible, mobile systems to be developed through 2020. Doubling the number of Aegis class warships to 38 will be completed by 2015. They’ll be equipped with state-of-the art missile interceptors for offensive first-strike capability.

Russia’s justifiably furious. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, nuclear war was narrowly averted when cooler heads on both sides comprised. 

Obama’s no Jack Kennedy. He’s an imperial tool, ravaging the world one country at a time and challenging Russia menacingly with encroachment. 

A Final Comment 

Under Putin, Russia’s back, proud and re-assertive. It’s not about to roll over for America, especially in Eurasia. Washington’s gone back to the future with a new Cold War. This time it’s for much greater stakes and far larger threats to world peace. 

Instead of reporting it, America’s media cheerlead supportively. They blames victims, not Washington’s rogue policies threatening humanity.

In the 1930s, Roosevelt wanted war with Germany and Japan to end America’s Great Depression and achieve US global dominance. During today’s hard times, will Obama follow suit, no matter the potential catastrophe no legitimate leader would risk.

A possibility this frightening and real may be happening in real time as America lurches from one war to another and enacts police state laws quashing dissent.

Nonetheless, the Washington Post accuses Russia of Soviet era saber-rattling when it should be sounding the alarm. 

Responsible major media journalism was never America’s long suit. At a time of grave global dangers, they’re pointing fingers the wrong way. 

Senior Contributing Editor Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.     

¶

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What terrible threat does Serbia pose? One wonders. It seems that Serbia’ very existence is a threat to the New World Order. You just never know what those rebellious Southern Slavs will do next. Untamed, all they think about is enjoying life. Dancing and drinking, the Belgrade slogan. Belgrade, voted the world’s Number One Party City. Endless bars and cafés, its great rivers, the Danube and the Sava. Its blasting brass bands. Joyous Serbs, living the present, but not forgetting its recent brutal past.

Bulgaria to Serbia’s southeast is subjugated, NATO and U.S. military bases marking its landscape. The huge city-like bases in Germany for 100,000 troops are no longer necessary. America is “reconfiguring its footprint”—that is, reviewing global deployment of troops in order to be capable of applying military force anywhere rather than just sitting in place. More mobile bases. Lily pads, they are called in military jargon, bases from which troops hop from one to another.

Like frogs hopping from water lily to the other, U.S and NATO soldiers and mercenaries are  jumping on demand (JOD) from one to another of a growing number of the empire’s foreign bases. Frogs equal battle-ready troops. Saudi Arabian restrictions on the use of U.S. bases there resulted in the construction of the Qatar lily pad. The air war against Serbia and the theft of its historic territory of Kosovo made possible the creation of a giant lily pad-state there. (Cf Camp Bondsteel) Lily pads-military bases now dot Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic, northwards to the Baltic States, across the Black Sea to Georgia, another lily pad-state, to lily giant pad-state Iraq, and on to Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. The circumference of the Earth is the only limit today to U.S. military expansion but the moon and Mars are not excluded from military Strangelove ambitions and dreams.

According to NATO strategy these joyous Serbs need a lesson in realism. “We of NATO want to help them learn to live democratically and in true freedom.” Even if temporary chains are required to educate them. A good shock is needed to shake them out of their lethargy. These unruly and lazy peoples are lacking in ambition. They don’t even attempt to exploit the oil and minerals lying under the surface of their lands.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen admits that “for understandable historical reasons there might be some skepticism in Serbia regarding a relationship with NATO. Might be some skepticism, he says! “My mission is to see all countries in the Balkans integrated in the Euro-Atlantic structures of NATO and the EU.” NATO insists that since Serbia is a European nation, its future can only lie within the European community … that is, in warlike NATO. All the other Balkan countries are already normalized and integrated. Or the process is underway.

However, there is that small matter of the NATO 98-day air war against Serbia in 1999, a little over a decade ago, to be absorbed. NATO bombing of a major European capital city. Feature that! And then also the minor matter of the U.S. theft of the key Serbian province of Kosovo, declaring its independence, then recognizing it diplomatically and transforming it into a NATO military-intelligence, lily pad stronghold.

Serbs do not forget. War by the West against Serbia, by the way, is not new. Nazi Germany destroyed Belgrade in World War II. Italian Fascism treated Communist Yugoslavia viciously both during WWII and in its aftermath. In the 1950s the city of Belgrade still lay in ruins just as did the cities of defeated Germany. The West at the time then partially boycotted Tito’s Communist Yugoslavia even after it broke with the USSR. The Italian extreme right still today holds powerful grudges and prejudices against Serbia as the heartland of Yugoslav Communism.

Public opinion in Serbia hasn’t forgotten NATO’s unilateral decision to wage war against it. Despite Belgrade’s partially pro-Western government, surveys show that two-thirds of Serbians oppose NATO membership. Chiefly because planes of the NATO alliance departing from air bases in Italy bombed worker-managed factories in Serbia allegedly in order to put a stop to President Milosevic-led Serbians’ cruel crackdown on ethnic Albanian rebels in breakaway Kosovo. NATO-USA bombed what remained of Socialism in East Europe to make way for the multinationals.

That NATO’s intentions were humanitarian, Serbs are convinced, is bullshit.

Since then relations with NATO have improved somewhat, even though Belgrade—which has close ties to Russia—adopted a policy of military neutrality in 2007.

Twelve years have passed since NATO sent its bombers of death over Belgrade and Nish. Serbs have not forgotten. Opposition parties organize manifestations in their maltreated though joyous capital city. Nationalists oppose contacts with NATO and the very idea of a scheduled NATO summit right in the capital of Belgrade. “Shame for the country and the nation.” The ruins that NATO left behind are still there. A reminder of the real nature of NATO.

“Never in NATO,” says former Serbian Premier Kostunica, recalling the NATO bombing as does every Serb. Today nationalists point out the similarities between the bombardment of Tripoli and those of Belgrade in 1999. The Serbian Foreign Affairs Minister, Vuk Jeremic, says that “citizens of Serbia are not indifferent to the bombing in Libya. We have seen the sufferings of civilians in the attacks on us. Therefore we feel solidarity with Libyans.”

Any actions of the pro-western government in Belgrade alarm Moscow. Premier Putin on a recent visit to Belgrade stressed that Moscow does not want Serbia in NATO. “If NATO installs its missiles in Serbia,” he said, “Russia will be obligated to direct its nuclear potential against Serbia.”

One asks why Russia should stand up for Serbia? One recalls the long historical affinity between the two countries. Russia has long seen itself as the great protector of the Serbian people, traditionally due to their common Slavic background. Russia is the most powerful Slavic country and feels its duty is to protect struggling Serbia under attack from the West.

Russians, Serbs and other Slavic countries once shared a common belief called Pan Slavism. Pan Slavism meant that all Slavic countries shared a common heritage, as well as common language affinities. Russia long headed this movement. When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in WWI, Russia entered the war also to protect their cousins.

Serbia once stood as the bulwark in southern Europe of Eastern Orthodoxy, which after the fall of Constantinople had its greatest champion in the ‘Third Rome’, Moscow. The Catholic Hapsburg Empire lay just to the west, as close as Croatia, while the Muslim Ottoman Empire occupied Serbia for centuries. In Serbia’s defense, the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrated the strong religious ties between the two countries when it inserted itself into the debate about Kosovo’s independence: “That act has unilaterally upset the balance in the world.”

The real reasons for Russia’s position on Serbia today are more pragmatic. Historically, everyone in the Balkans loves a good conspiracy theory. Today, especially the one that involves energy pipelines and military bases is not theory, but fact. According to NATO and its many intelligence agencies, Russians are plotting to create a thinly-disguised military base in Serbia. If true, that would be the Kremlin’s first new European base since the end of the Warsaw Pact, a natural response to NATO’s expansion in the region. For the reality is that every country around Serbia is either in NATO or wants to be.

The story of the Russian base started when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Belgrade last October. A new joint center for emergency co-ordination was to be created in the Serbian city of Nish. The site was to be on an all-but-unused airport there. Serbia’s Russian partner would be a powerful semi-military outfit whose activities include disaster relief, but allegedly with close ties with Russia’s security services.

Speculation mounted that the Nish facilities could be used for spying or military purposes. Nish is close to the point where Russia’s planned gas pipeline, South Stream, is to cross Serbian territory. The pipeline is a joint venture between Russia’s gas giant, Gazprom, and Italy’s energy company, Eni. The route crosses the Black Sea, enabling Russia to bypass Ukraine, seen as a troublesome transit country, and is to deliver gas direct to the Balkans, central Europe and Italy.

Serbia denies that Russia is opening a military facility. Officially Nish will not be a military base. Some eleven countries from the region were invited to a conference in Belgrade to discuss their part in the establishment of the logistics and training facility in Nish.

At the same time many observers now believe that oil, not worries about Serbian brutality or genocide in Kosovo, lay behind NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999, just as today in Libya. It’s the oil. Always the oil. After the war Americans built in Kosovo the huge military base, Camp Bondsteel. It appeared evident that the real purpose of the base was to safeguard the U.S. promoted AMBO oil pipeline that aimed to pump Russian and Caspian oil across the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania to Europe.

Militarization in Serbia is a valid consideration. This time however by Russia as a response to NATO occupation of the Balkans and East Europe. Serbia is a major buyer of Russian arms. Belgrade stands to receive from Russia a 10 billion USD loan, 3 billion of which to be spent on Russian arms to upgrade outdated Serbian defensive weapons. Russia also offers Serbia sorely needed fourth-generation jet aircraft.

The Serbian missile defense system which was practically destroyed during the war in 1999 showed that it was impossible to repulse NATO aggression with missile complexes developed during the 1960s and the 1970s. Serbia may now purchase two divisions of Russia’s renowned S-300 surface-to-air systems or an export variant of S-400.

Practically all radar stations in Serbia were also destroyed during the 1999 war. The country was deprived of the opportunity to control its own air space. There is every reason to believe that Belgrade will purchase Russian radar stations as well.

However, three billion dollars is not enough to modernize the air force, to rebuild the missile defense system and re-equip radar troops. Two divisions of Russian surface-to-air missile systems is not enough. What can two divisions do if the alliance can use hundreds of its fighter jets as it did in 1999? Nonetheless, Serbia is determined to rearm. Serbian rearmament is the result of NATO’s war on Serbia and the theft of Kosovo.

According to the Independent Military Survey newspaper, NATO would not impede Serbia’s initiative to rearm its armed forces with Russian arms. Even though part of the Belgrade administration wants to join NATO, the possession of Russian hardware was not an obstacle for other countries of Europe in obtaining NATO membership. Greece, for example, a member of NATO,  buys S-300 systems from Russia.

The brutal reality however is that the EU and the USA would not welcome such a deal. Not for Serbia. NATO does not conceal its plans to separate Serbia from Russia. For the great secret across the world is America’s maniacal fear of Russia. Now, today, appear many such signs of a Russian renaissance in the troubled Balkans

On the other hand Serbs believe that their problems have not been solved. After the collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia, many conflict areas remained in Serbia. There’s every reason to believe that the NATO shield would not defend Serbia in the future in cases of serious conflicts. For the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took the side of the Albanians in Kosovo and detached it, that is, stole it, from Serbia.

And lest anyone forget, bloody World War I began when the Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the Hapsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. In Yugoslavia. In the Balkans. So, an eye on the Balkans, NATO-USA occupied. Except for lonely Serbia.

 

(*Thanks to Sergei Balmasov for his article in Pravda about Russia and Serbia.)

Our senior editor Gaither Stewart serves as European Correspondent, with base in Rome. His latest book is The Trojan Spy. The book can be acquired through Amazon and other sellers.

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