On the eve of Barack Obama's historic trip to Moscow, which starts Monday, a group of American pundits from both the left and the right has appealed to the president to make democracy and human rights a top priority on his visit. Meanwhile, in a video on his blog, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asserted with a straight face that our two countries share common values of "respect for human life and human rights and freedoms." Yet the actual situation in Russia with regard to those values is rather grim--and, despite Medvedev's "liberal" reputation, it has not improved much in the year since he took office.
There is, to be sure, a difference between Medvedev and his predecessor and mentor, Vladimir Putin (still powerful as prime minister). Medvedev, whose most famous statement is "Freedom is better than non-freedom," clearly does not share Putin's visceral loathing of the free press and political opposition. His first extended interview to a Russian publication was to Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper strongly critical of the government. He has appointed several outspoken dissenters to his advisory council on human rights.
reprint
newsletter
comments
share
del.icio.us
Digg It!
yahoo
rss
But is this substance or style, real change or cosmetic tinkering? So far, Medvedev's talk of rights and freedoms has been accompanied by very little action.
There are a few positives. Last month at Medvedev's request, the Russian parliament, the State Duma, passed a bill softening Putin-era legislation, which hobbled civic groups and other independent nonprofits; registration for such groups will be simplified, and they will be subjected to less frequent and more limited audits.
Also, earlier this year, parliament members close to Medvedev quietly shelved a bill proposed by Putin's government that would have greatly expanded the state's ability to charge critics with treason for activities deemed harmful to national security.
That's about it for the good news. The bad news is that egregiously illiberal policies that trample the civil and political rights of Russian citizens are largely unchanged.
Thus, censorship--especially on television, the primary source of news for most Russians--remains pervasive. Last December, all the major news channels in Russia ignored the mass protests against stiff new tariffs on imported used cars that erupted around the country. (The story was briefly covered on REN-TV, a semi-independent television network which still gives a platform to opposition views but which is not available in all areas.) The brutal dispersal of a peaceful rally in Vladivostok by riot police was likewise given the silent treatment, even on stations whose own reporters and cameramen were among those arrested and roughed up. And opposition figures such as chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and former governor Boris Nemtsov are still blacklisted from national television.
Last month, Medvedev signed a bill approving a package of TV and radio channels for mandatory nationwide access. However, this package does not include either REN-TV or Ekho Moskvy ("Echo of Moscow"), the only genuinely independent radio station.
Nor has there been any letup in official and unofficial harassment toward the opposition. Meetings of the Solidarity movement, a democratic coalition launched last year, are routinely sabotaged and its activists detained on spurious pretexts. In April, a regional Solidarity conference in the city of Tambov had to be rescheduled at the last minute since the premises rented for it suddenly became unavailable. A local organizer received death threats. After the event, a member of Solidarity's leadership council, Elena Vasilieva, was stopped by the police at the train station on her way back to Moscow and questioned at length. On board the train, she was assaulted and beaten by a man who had been tailing her in Tambov. As in other, sometimes deadly attacks on activists and journalists, no arrests followed.
Political protests and demonstrations are still routinely banned or restricted; city governments either refuse permits for such events, in violation of the law, or grant them for locations with minimal visibility. In his Novaya Gazeta interview, Medvedev openly criticized this practice and blamed overcautious bureaucrats, but so far his remarks have made no practical difference. On June 26, police in Moscow arrested 29 supporters of Russia's best-known political prisoner, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for strolling down a pedestrian mall in T-shirts with his picture and initials and the words "We want freedom" in celebration of Khodorkovsky's birthday.
Russia's Medvedev-era authoritarian Hall of Shame would not be complete without last April's mayoral election in Sochi, the coveted site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Challengers to the ruling-party incumbent, including Boris Nemtsov, were subjected to a local media blackout except for smears on TV news. Over 100,000 just-printed Nemtsov campaign leaflets were confiscated by police because they were post-dated, a technical irregularity. There are credible reports of massive vote-rigging as well.
Is Medvedev unable to embark on true liberalization because Putin and his cronies are still in control--or unwilling to do so because liberal reform would threaten the system from which he gets his own power? The answer, perhaps, is a mix of both. So far, at least, he has whitewashed the regime's abuses in his public statements, declaring that the Khodorkovsky case is not political and calling the farcical Sochi elections a "full-fledged political contest."
Moreover, a recent move denounced by Russian human rights activists as a new assault on freedom of speech has been initiated by Medvedev himself: the creation of a state commission to combat "the falsification of history to the detriment of Russia." The obvious goal is to enforce a "patriotically correct" version of Russian history and intimidate those who don't follow it.
Modern-day Russia, of course, is not the Soviet Union. It still has some independent print media, as well as robust and virtually unmolested free speech on the Internet (now accessible, by some estimates, to nearly half of the population). Dissenters facing charges related to their activism have a chance of acquittal. However, any activity which could jeopardize the power of the ruling clique is stamped out.
It has been argued that the average Russian doesn't care about political rights and freedoms. Yet there is a clear connection between the lack of such freedoms and the indignities and abuses ordinary people in Russia endure daily at the hands of corrupt officials and rogue cops.
What can and should Obama do in this situation? For one thing, he should remember that human rights are not, as some foreign policy "realists" claim, irrelevant to U.S.-Russian relations: Russian authoritarianism tends to go hand in hand with aggressive nationalism. He should also know that the message he delivers as President of the United States has power. The fact that Obama is meeting with human rights activists and opposition groups in Moscow is a good start.
Some, including a few Russian liberals, have suggested that Obama should try to shore up Medvedev's position vis-à-vis Putin and empower him to be a reformer. It would be imprudent for Obama to personalize his Russia policy too much (a mistake previously made by President Bush and President Clinton). What should be made clear, however, is that regardless of who is in charge, a true Russian-American partnership is possible only when the shared values of freedom and human rights are more than talk.
Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine and columnist for RealClearPolitics.com, is the author of Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood (1989). She blogs at http://www.cathyyoung.wordpress.com/.
Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien's ''The Luxury Strategy.''
Read Full Article »