AWAKENING TO THE REAL RUSSIA
March 8, 2004
By Toby Westerman
Copyright 2004 International News Analysis Today
www.inatoday.com
The Administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and the media are beginning to awaken to the reality of "democratic" Russia.
The Bush Administration has "caught on" that "democracy" in Russia is "dying or may be dead," and one experienced media figure declares that U.S. reporting on Russia over the last five years has been "dangerously naïve."
The remarks appear in the article "Blind Eye on Russia," by Notra Trulock from Accuracy in Media. The article cites the statements of Masha Gessen, former Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News and World Report.
We say "welcome aboard" to all, especially to Gessen who declares that U.S. coverage of present-day Russia is similar to the reporting of Walter Duranty, The New York Times correspondent known for his pro-Soviet reports during the 1920s and early thirties.
Duranty's biographer, Sally J. Taylor, entitled her work, "Stalin's Apologist."
Gessen criticizes The New York Times coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin as "unfailingly positive," and cites other major American newspapers which consistently refer to Putin as "liberal" and a "reformer."
Most U.S. media follow the lead of The New York Times, states Gessen, who also decries the lack of press resources covering Russia. Her former employer, U.S. New and World Report, has also closed its Moscow office, the article notes.
While a debate is developing in regard to "democracy" in Russia, a host of other trends are evident which point not merely to a failure in democratic government, but to the rise of a Communist super-state, an entity meant to cure the flaws in the old Soviet Union.
Democracy is not only "dying" in Russia - it is fading into neo-Communism. Russia is reviving Soviet-era military youth training programs throughout the country, and Moscow is giving vital aid to assist Communist China's impressive military build-up.
Putin has openly lamented the end of the USSR as a national disaster - and he is not alone in his sentiments. After a decade of so-called democratic and market reforms, many, if not most, Russians, and even those living across the territories of the old USSR, recall the Soviet Union with wistful reverie.
The democratic process is in desperate straits not only in Russia, but also in the nations emerging out of the Soviet empire. Strongmen and outright dictators reign throughout most of the territory of the old USSR. Charges of murder, intimidation and suppression of press are regularly hurled at these "post-Soviet" governments.
Though officially in control of no single government, Communism remains a potent, and even controlling influence within the politics and the military structures across the old USSR.
Russia's foreign policy, although officially "anti-terrorist," bears a striking resemblance to that of the old Soviet Union, and continues to support nations fundamentally hostile to the U.S., including North Korea and Iran.
A March 5th 2004 front page story in The New York Times quotes American government officials as stating that Russian engineers secretly provided technical assistance to Saddam Hussein's long-range ballistic missile program. Until the fall of Saddam's regime, Moscow was Iraq's largest trading partner.
Moscow's close relationship with China continues to develop into a deep strategic alliance. As far back as 1997, Moscow and Beijing promised to work together for a "New World Order" which would end what they term U.S. world domination.
The Moscow-Beijing alliance could evolve into an axis of power stretching from the plains of Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean, a region controlling much of the world's oil, gas, gold, and other precious resources.
Trulock's article concludes with the reminder that Russia is "one of only two countries in the world that could still annihilate American society." China is the other nation to which Trulock refers.
The question is not if democracy is dying in Russia, but what sort of superpower will emerge from the "democratic Russia."
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