Happy anniversary!

Europe.view

Happy holidays
Sep 24th 2009
From Economist.com


When to give good and bad news to east Europeans
HISTORY was a long time ago, unless it happened to you. Anyone with bad news for eastern Europe forgets that at his peril. The American administration stumbled this month when it cancelled a planned missile-defence base in Poland on September 17th. That is the anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland in 1939, which sealed the country’s fate for the next 50 years.

Poland produces more history than it consumes, so almost any day will be an anniversary of something—usually something miserable. But this was a blooper: it would be a bit like giving America bad news about its security in the Pacific region on December 7th. That (as many Poles probably don’t know) is the anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.

Some big dates are also national holidays, but many others are not. So here is a handy guide to days that carry heavy emotional baggage.

If modern Russia wants to reach out to Estonia, or if western countries want to offer support, February 2nd would be a good day. That is the anniversary of the 1920 Tartu peace treaty, when Soviet Russia recognised the newborn republic. It is still legally valid but presently ignored by the Kremlin. For Latvia, the counterpart is the Riga peace treaty signed on August 11th of that year.

Poland and Lithuania could settle their still-festering differences (mainly arcane wrangles about spelling) on February 2nd. On that date in 1386, the Polish parliament elected Jogaila, Lithuania’s Grand Duke, to be king, immediately after he renounced paganism and married his Polish counterpart, Jadwiga, starting a mighty dynastic union. May 3rd would also work: in 1791, the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth adopted Europe’s first modern national constitution.

Conversely, if the west has more bad news for Poland, it should at all costs avoid giving it between February 4th and 11th. Those are the dates of the infamous Yalta conference in 1945, when Stalin bamboozled Franklin Roosevelt into accepting the Sovietisation of Poland. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (signed between Soviet and Nazi foreign ministers on August 23rd 1939) has similar echoes.

For the Czechs and Slovaks, August 20th and 21st are the miserable anniversary dates of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Other bad days for Czechs include November 8th, when Bohemian nobility and Protestantism were defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620; and February 25th, when a communist putsch in 1948 extinguished a brief period of post-war freedom. Be particularly nice to any Czech foreign ministers you meet on March 10th. In 1948 the most famous of them, the much-loved Jan Masaryk, died in a mysterious suicide.

Tread carefully with Hungarians on June 4th. That is the anniversary of the treaty of Trianon which in 1920 dismembered old imperial Hungary. Hungarians are also particularly sombre on November 4th, when a Soviet invasion crushed their anti-communist uprising in 1956.

Every other country in eastern Europe and plenty elsewhere, have similar dates: they are left out this article merely because of reasons of space. Readers are welcome to complete the calendar by adding their comments.

But the big question is why the anniversaries still matter so much. One reason is the feeling of suffocation during communist rule, when marking the real version of history was risky. Another is the sense that historical wrongs are not yet put right. No outsider intervening in a wrangle between Denmark or Germany would worry about avoiding August 1st, which in 1860 marked a turning point in the bitter row about the Schleswig-Holstein Question. As you go east, the wounds are rawer.

Baltic turnaround?

Baltic economies

Feeling a bit fragile

Sep 24th 2009
From The Economist print edition

A Baltic meltdown has been averted, but the gloom may yet last a bit longer

WORRIES about a financial meltdown across eastern Europe have receded, thanks to generous outside support, some canny policies and the start of a recovery in western Europe. Poland, the region’s biggest economy, has managed to avoid recession altogether. But even the worst-hit countries are breathing more easily.

This week Moody’s, a rating agency, noted a “fragile stabilisation” in the three most vulnerable: Hungary, Latvia and Iceland. Some mildly encouraging signs are visible. Thanks to plunging imports, and foreign investors refinancing local subsidiaries, Latvia’s second-quarter current account showed a surplus of 14.2% of GDP. A year ago it was a 15.1% in deficit. The economy shrank by a grim 18.7% year-on-year, but the worst seems to be over and some industries are picking up.

The slowdown has hurt the banks, which have lost nearly $1 billion this year. That is a big hit for the shareholders, mainly Nordic, whose managers lent so recklessly. But contrary to expectations, only one big local bank had to be rescued and nobody has pulled out. Doomsters who forecast bank runs and devaluation in Latvia (followed by Estonia and Lithuania, which also have currencies pegged to the euro) have little to show for their gloomy prophecies.

Yet Latvia, in particular, is still in an economic and political mess. It survives because outside lenders, chiefly the European Union and the IMF, think it worth propping the country up with smallish loans (by bail-out standards). The European Commission lent €1.2 billion ($1.8 billion) in July, following an IMF-led €7.5 billion agreement in December. In theory, the money is conditional on spending cuts and tax rises. The IMF agreed, reluctantly, to a budget deficit of 8.5% of GDP in 2010, down from 10% this year. The measures have been striking: some civil servants’ pay is down by a third. But that followed big rises during the boom years.

The real shortcoming is that Latvia’s squabbling politicians have ducked deeper changes in the public sector and the civil service. The People’s Party, supposedly part of the ruling coalition, says it may block a planned property tax. The government promised its lenders it would implement this, but it has to secure support in parliament. Some senior politicians in the People’s Party want to swap the currency peg for a band. The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, lectured the Latvian prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, recently about the need for “national consensus” behind the austerity plan. But the prime minister cannot crack the whip over his coalition’s powerful party chiefs, who prefer carping about government policies to voting for them.

Outsiders find Latvia’s politicians unimpressive and exasperating. But they are unwilling to cut the country adrift or to push it into a devaluation. Turmoil in Latvia could easily spread to the neighbours, or even to Hungary (see article). Latvia’s biggest asset is its neighbours’ popularity, says one weary international banker. Foreign money may plug the public finances for a bit and so avert disaster. But it is not a recipe for prosperity. Latvia did not solve its growth-choking problems, such as corruption and poor public services, when times were good. Nor is it solving them when they are bad.

Fakt article

This is the English version. The Polish version (behind a pay barrier) is available here

Once is chance. Twice is bad luck. Three times is enemy action. That is the easy conclusion to draw about America’s treatment of what was until recently its strongest and most important European ally.

The first snub came over Radek Sikorski’s candidacy for the secretary-general’s post at NATO. His chances were slim, but he still deserved respectful treatment from America. Not a bit of it: Mr Sikorski struggled even to get a meeting at the National Security Council
Then came the commemorations on September 1st-a black day in Polish history and worthy of high-level attendance by Poland’s friends (Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband turned up, and politely sat in a back row listening to other people make speeches). The initial American choice to lead the delegation bordered on the insulting: William Perry, who as defence secretary under Clinton opposed Poland’s NATO application. Only belatedly did the administration send Jim Jones, the national security adviser. By then the damage was done.

The third snub was the worst. Militarily and technologically, the decision to scrap George Bush’s ambitious, costly and unpopular missile defence plans makes sense. It would have been easy to reassure Poland and the Czech Republic that America was still taking their security seriously. Beefing up NATO’s planning, holding some military manoeuvres (to match Russia’s sinister Zapad-09), making it clear that the Patriots would be real ones-all would have showed America’s commitment to Poland. Instead, there was a hurried, almost amateurish announcement, with late night phone calls and a low-level delegation scurrying between Warsaw and Prague. And all of it on one of the blackest days in Polish history.

Actually, it is not enemy action-just carelessness and ignorance. I have tried explaining to American officials that September 17th is the Polish equivalent of Pearl Harbour. They sometimes seem only dimly aware of what I am talking about. For the youngsters at the White House and State Department, this is ancient history. At the top, there is the same feeling of detachment. Mr Obama is the first president of the United States with no sentimental or family ties to Europe. It would be quite unfair to say that for Mr Obama, Europe stands for slavery. It just doesn’t stand for much.

In particular, on the foreign-policy to-do list, eastern Europe’s security jostles for attention with other far more pressing problems (Afghanistan, Middle East, climate change, North Korea, Iran-and of course Russia). Until something goes badly wrong, it won’t be a priority.

The worst thing is that Russia knows this. America doesn’t need to sell out eastern Europe. Neglect will do fine. In theory, NATO’s security guarantee still holds. But without real contingency planning and regular manoeuvres, this is pleasant fiction, not hard fact. Once it becomes clear that Washington’s attention is elsewhere, Russia and its west European friends (Germany chiefly, but also Italy, Austria and others) can do their dirty deals, especially in energy, unchecked.. Without a powerful outsider to act as a counterweight, Europe’s power-politics are always vulnerable to a Russian-German deal. It has happened before and now, with America weak and distracted, it can happen again.

Sunday Telegraph on Obama

Published: 8:30AM BST 20 Sep 2009

President Barack Obama is beginning to look out of his depth

It is lovely to feature in other people's dreams. The problem comes when they wake up. Barack Obama is an eloquent, brainy and likeable man with a fascinating biography. He is not George Bush. Those are great qualities. But they are not enough to lead America, let alone the world.

Admittedly, the presidential to-do list is terrifying. The economy requires his full-time attention. So does health-care reform. And climate change. Indeed, he deserves praise for spending so much time on thankless foreign policy issues. He is tackling all the big problems: restarting Middle East peace talks, defanging Iran and North Korea and a "reset" of relations with Russia. But none of them are working.


Regimes in Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran simply pocket his concessions and carry on as before. The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.
The grizzled veterans of the Democratic leadership in Congress have found Mr Obama and his team of bright young advisers a pushover. That has gravely weakened his flagship domestic campaign, for health-care reform, which fails to address the greatest weakness of the American system: its inflated costs. His free trade credentials are increasingly tarnished too. His latest blunder is imposing tariffs on tyre imports from China, in the hope of gaining a little more union support for health care. But at a time when America's leadership in global economic matters has never been more vital, that is a dreadful move, hugely undermining its ability to stop other countries engaging in a ruinous spiral of protectionism.
Even good moves are ruined by bad presentation. Changing Mr Bush's costly and untried missile-defence scheme for something workable was sensible. But offensively casual treatment of east European allies such as Poland made it easy for his critics to portray it as naïve appeasement of the regime in Moscow.
Mr Obama's public image rests increasingly heavily on his extraordinary speechifying abilities. His call in Cairo for a new start in relations with the Muslim world was pitch-perfect. So was his speech in Ghana, decrying Africa's culture of bad government. His appeal to both houses of Congress to support health care was masterly – though the oratory was far more impressive than the mish-mash plan behind it. This morning he is blitzing the airwaves, giving interviews to all America's main television stations.

But for what? Mr Obama has tactics a plenty - calm and patient engagement with unpleasant regimes, finding common interests, appealing to shared values - but where is the strategy? What, exactly, did "Change you can believe in" – the hallmark slogan of his campaign – actually mean?

The President's domestic critics who accuse him of being the sinister wielder of a socialist master-plan are wide of the mark. The man who has run nothing more demanding than the Harvard Law Review is beginning to look out of his depth in the world's top job. His credibility is seeping away, and it will require concrete achievements rather than more soaring oratory to recover it.

Edward Lucas writes for The Economist and is the author of The New Cold War (Bloomsbury, £8.99)

Thoughts (unpublished) on conspiracy theories

Mysterious terrorist attacks prompt public panic, allowing a cynical government to trample on the constitution. Would that be Russia after the 1999 apartment block bombings, or America after the terrorist attacks of September 11^th 2001? Russia Today, a pro-Kremlin television station has been casting doubt on the idea that the 9/11 attacks were a surprise and promoting the allegation that they were an “inside job”. That is striking enough. But it also juxtaposes these pieces with coverage of the 1999 bombings in Moscow and elsewhere.

Many challenge the official account of 9/11, using an array of anomalies, loose ends, contradictory testimony, signs of official bungling and so forth. Their main case is inferential: 9/11 “allowed” the Bush administration to go to war in the Middle East.

The apartment block bombings in Russia have also attracted speculation from those who believe that they were part of a state-sanctioned plan. This case too rests on holes in the official story plus an inference. The popularity of the newly nominated prime minister, Vladimir Putin, rocketed as the public welcomed his strong response to a terrorist onslaught. That staved off the impending impeachment of Boris Yeltsin, and saved Kremlin cronies from jail. If Mr Putin and his backers were the main beneficiary of these murders, maybe they were involved in perpetrating them?

But the similarity is only superficial. For a start the 9/11 conspiracy theorists cannot agree on what theory they are propounding (were the hijackers real? Were the planes real? Did the authorities deliberately fail to prevent the attack or actually stage it?). The theories mostly involve implausibly intricate scenarios (planting large quantities of high explosive in skyscrapers, for example). The official account of the 9/11 attacks in America is certainly open to criticism. But nobody suffers from questioning it. The conspiracy theorists’ case is aired on television; their books get published.

By contrast, those who have challenged the official version of events in Russia largely stick to the same, straightforward story. Those who have tried to investigate it have fared badly. Yuri Shchekochikin and Sergei Yushchenkov, for example, two members of a commission in the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, died mysteriously. Mikhail Trepashkin, a lawyer for the commission, served a four-year jail sentence after a controversial conviction on flimsy evidence. The official account does not account for the puzzling incident of a bomb discovered in a basement in Ryazan, apparently planted by two FSB officers. The authorities’ reaction to that has looked very like a cover-up—perhaps of a bungled anti-terrorist drill, perhaps of something more sinister.

Cynics would argue that juxtaposing the two events sends two messages, aimed at different constituencies. To those who think the conspiracy theories about 9/11 are lunatic paranoia, the comparison suggests that questioning the account of the Russian bombings is similarly batty. For those who believe that the Russian bombings were indeed suspicious, it suggests that mass murder by governments is the norm: the American government conspired to kill thousands of its own citizens, so why worry about Russia killing mere hundreds? That could be seen as a subtle form of “whataboutism” (never mind about our shortcomings, what about yours?)

Neither the atrocities in America or Russia will ever be explained to the complete satisfaction of the most suspicious minds. Those criticising the official explanations have their own, sometimes questionable agendas. Their theories certainly deserve the same scrutiny and scepticism that they turn on their opponents. But for all that, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Russia Today is exploiting a non-issue to deflect attention from a more dangerous one.

Obama, Missile-Defence and Europe

Missile defence in Europe

Pie in the sky

Sep 17th 2009
From Economist.com

America calls off plans for missile defence in Europe, pleasing peaceniks but worrying hawks

AP

MAYBE some jam tomorrow, but none today. That is the American message to its most stalwart allies in the ex-communist world as Barack Obama’s administration shelves plans to deploy ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.

The timing of the announcement is poor, coming on September 17th, the anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland in 1939. In a country highly tuned to symbolic snubs, it matters that nobody in Washington seemed to know or care about that.

The news was broken clumsily too: the Czech prime minister was woken by a brief phone call from Mr Obama the night before the decision was made public. Poland is at least gaining some promise of a beefed up American contribution to its security. The Czech Republic receives nothing, for now, in exchange for its loyalty to a controversial scheme that was supposedly a symbol of America’s commitment to the region. Atlanticist politicians in Prague feel humiliated by that.

From a practical point of view, the American change of plan is understandable. The technology of the planned scheme was unproven, and the Iranian threat it was supposed to counter only nascent. “A scheme that doesn’t work, against a threat that doesn’t exist, in countries that don’t want it” was how Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish former national security adviser to the Carter administration, has described it. As with the decision to deploy cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe in the 1980s, something that was meant to strengthen the Atlantic alliance ended up putting it under strain. Czech and Polish public opinion was increasingly sceptical, or outright hostile to the bases. Other countries worried that pro-American hawks in ex-communist countries were risking an unnecessary confrontation with Russia.

America’s new plan is different. Mr Obama described it as a “stronger, smarter, swifter” defence of American forces in Europe and of American allies. Reinforcing existing defences against possible long-range Iranian missiles is seen as a problem for the future, given that America now says the Iranians are working more on short- and medium-range missiles than on long-range ones. For now, the extra deployments will be less capable sea-based Aegis missiles which could shoot down any medium-range Iranian missiles aimed at Europe. After 2015, with further development, the scheme could involve land-based versions of the SM3 missile that would, the Pentagon says, ultimately cover all of Europe by 2018.

That would probably start off in bases closer to Iran but it might include central Europe too. “We will look forward to working with Poland about how they might fit into that,” says a senior State Department official. If a future Czech government wanted to take part, it would also receive a sympathetic hearing.

The administration has tried to sweeten the pill by reiterating a promise to place a battery of Patriot short-range missiles to defend Warsaw. Poles expect that these will be American-financed, part of NATO’s commitment to the country’s defence, and fully integrated with Poland’s own air-defence system. American officials are more cagey, saying only that there is still plenty to discuss.

Russia has welcomed the decision to shelve the existing scheme. It is unlikely to be pleased about any replacements based anywhere in the former Soviet empire, which the president, Dmitry Medvedev, has described as a sphere of Russian “privileged interests”. If America can obtain Russian help in squeezing Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, and if Russia also backs down on its threatened deployment of missiles in the Kaliningrad region, which borders Poland, it would be easy for the administration to walk away even further away from missile defence.

Although Poles may bemoan the timing, America's calendar may be shaped by the forthcoming UN General Assembly. Russia and China have been reluctant to agree to further sanctions or other pressure on Iran. Mr Obama may hope that by demonstrating a willingness to engage Russia in Europe he might have a better chance of co-operation in the Middle East.

But the big task for America now is to reassure the Poles and other twitchy ex-communist countries such as the Baltic states, that it remains committed to their defence. It stresses that plenty of high-level structures exist to discuss these worries and that NATO is actively rethinking its plans for defence in the east. The question is what will really be on offer in these discussions. The east European countries, squeezed between an increasingly close Russian-German friendship, look anxiously towards America to safeguard their interests. But is America looking at them?

praising Poland and Ukraine

Europe.view

Wreath by wreath

Sep 10th 2009
From Economist.com

How east Europe can step over history's long shadow

TWO of the five most-commented-on articles on The Economist’s website last week were about east European history. One concerned the icy relations between Slovakia and Hungary. The other was about Russia’s failure (in some eyes) to apologise properly for the Soviet past.

In each case the tone of the comments was often strikingly unpleasant, with sweeping accusations of anti-Semitism, genocide, imperialism, treachery and mendacity. It would be easy for outsiders to conclude that the ex-communist countries are prisoners of their past, tediously fighting the same old battles with the same old stereotypes.

All the more reason, therefore, to highlight the happy state of Polish-Ukrainian relations, which is especially remarkable given the two countries’ miserable common history.

AP

Make grins, not war

Take just a few events from (nearly) living memory. In interwar Poland, Ukrainians suffered savage repression; seen from another viewpoint, they behaved disloyally and ungratefully towards their country. During the war, the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army murdered some 60,000 Poles in Volhynia. Were they vicious Nazi stooges or fighters for their country’s stolen independence?

In 1945 Polish anti-communist soldiers shot hundreds of Ukrainians in the village of Pawlokoma. That was either an understandable retaliatory action for previous anti-Polish atrocities in the region, or a brutal and unprovoked massacre. In 1947 the country’s new Communist rulers deported 200,000 Ukrainian-speakers from south-eastern Poland. That could be seen as Bolshevik barbarity, or evidence of Polish ethnic nationalism. The town known as Lwow in interwar Poland is now in Ukraine. Some think that is where it should be, others think it tragically stranded. And so on.

These are true controversies, about which even the best historians disagree. Evidence for what exactly happened and why is scanty and needs careful weighing. Just as it would be lazy and wrong simply to apportion equal blame to both sides, it would also be wrong to paint the history as a one-dimensional story of vicious Ukrainian attacks on Poles (or vice versa). The Wikipedia discussion pages for these events give a good flavour of the passions aroused and the scope of the disagreements.

What is commendable, though, is the way in which politicians have behaved. For 20 years Polish and Ukrainian leaders have worked hard to accentuate their countries’ shared history and common tragedy, rather than stoke disagreements for political ends. In 2006, for example, presidents Lech Kaczynski and Viktor Yushchenko (pictured above) jointly unveiled a memorial in Pawlokoma. Previously, the Ukrainian authorities had supported the restoration of a war memorial in what is now Lviv, for Polish soldiers who died in the 1918-1920 war. This week Mr Yushchenko visited Poland, laying yet more wreaths jointly with his host.

That is not just good business for florists. It could be a template for other countries seeking to step over the shadow of history. Neither Poland nor Ukraine tries to rub each other’s nose in its wrongdoing, nor does either insist on seeing their own soldiers as untainted heroes. Neither side expects the other to see history exactly its own way. Much more important is to focus on the common factors: the conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians were made immeasurably worse by the activities of outside powers, Nazis and communists alike. Disagreements remain, but are eased by practical cooperation. The planned Polish-Ukrainian-Baltic military brigade is a good example of this. Only 65 years ago, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Poles were killing each other.

A joint Polish-Belarusian-Russian peacekeeping force serving in some troubled and faraway corner of the world may seem unimaginable now. But it is not impossible. Poland and Ukraine have shown readiness to overcome some of their most painful historical traumas. Can Russia do the same?

Mikhalkov obit

Sergei Mikhalkov

Sep 10th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Sergei Mikhalkov, the Kremlin’s court poet, died on August 27th, aged 96

TALENT without flexibility was a dangerous thing in the Soviet Union, as thousands found to their cost. Sergei Mikhalkov had talent aplenty, as a poet, playwright, children’s writer and satirist. But, more important, he was flexible.

Mr Mikhalkov penned the words to two versions of the Soviet national anthem, one glorifying Stalin and one ignoring him. After Russia shrugged off communism he wrote a third version, to the same tune. In between he denounced two of the country’s greatest writers, Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Every regime he served gave him medals.

Servility towards power is a ubiquitous phenomenon. An 18th-century English song, “The Vicar of Bray”, tells of a country clergyman who changed his allegiance with the times, Romish under James II, strongly Protestant under the Hanoverians, through every other point of the ecclesiological compass. The chorus runs:

And this is Law I will maintain
Until my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

Mr Mikhalkov offered a Soviet version of the theme.

He was born in the Russian empire to a noble family, with admirals and princes among his forebears. Many of that breed fled from the Red Terror that followed the Bolshevik revolution; those that stayed behind had their lives blighted, or ended, by the communist hatred of “class enemies”. But young Sergei slipped through that net, working humbly in a Moscow loom factory and writing poetry on the side. That was his ticket to the new aristocracy of proletarian cultural workers. He remained, at heart, a courtier and a cynic.

He gained his first success with a children’s verse fable about the exploits of a very tall policeman, “Uncle Steeple” (Dyadya Styopa). Given what the real-life police were doing in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it should probably be classed as escapist fiction. A little later, he wrote a poem praising—he claimed—a girl with a dark-blond plait whom he had met at the House of Writers. Her name was Svetlana. Since that was also the name of Stalin’s daughter, the poem brought the tall, tinny-voiced, stuttering young man to the dictator’s notice.

In 1944 he was commissioned, along with Gabriel El-Registan, a Soviet Armenian poet, to write the words for a new national anthem to replace the “Internationale”. The rousing hymn of the international workers’ movement—freedom thundering against oppression, starvelings rising to end the age of cant—was felt not to fit the needs of the contemporary Soviet Union.

Its replacement, set to a stirring tune composed by Alexander Alexandrov, was a sentimental and militaristic ditty that gave equal weight to Lenin and Stalin:

Through days dark and stormy where Great Lenin led us
Our eyes saw the bright sun of freedom above
and Stalin our Leader, with faith in the People,
Inspired us to build up the land that we love.

Admittedly, national anthems rarely make great literature, and other Soviet poets, including on one occasion even the great Anna Akhmatova, found it expedient to put their pens at the service of the regime. But Mr Mikhalkov’s loyalty was exceptional. A good example of his work is “I want to go home”, a 1948 propaganda play about post-war orphanages in Germany, in which sinister British officials try to brainwash and kidnap Soviet children to use them as spies and slaves in the imperialist cause. The plot is foiled by heroic and kindly Soviet officers. The truth was exactly the other way round: it was the Soviet secret police who organised ruthless repatriations, often dividing families.

Songs without words

Mr Mikhalkov’s lyrics did not long survive Stalin’s death in 1953. From then until 1977 the anthem was played without words, neatly illustrating the Soviet Union’s ambiguous attitude to Stalinism. Mr Mikhalkov adapted to the times, becoming a pillar of the Soviet literary establishment and a notable enforcer of party discipline in its ranks. He wrote, in 1970, some new lyrics to the national anthem. To mark the introduction of the new Soviet constitution in 1977, the authorities adopted them. They ignored Stalin, praised Lenin and highlighted Russia’s role in welding the “unbreakable union of free-born republics”.

The union proved anything but. Given a whiff of freedom under Mikhail Gorbachev, the captive nations of the Soviet empire bolted for the exit. They found, or restored, their own songs. But Russia was tongue-tied. It dumped the Soviet anthem and adopted a resonant tune by Glinka, called simply “Patriotic Song”. It failed to catch on. In 2001 Vladimir Putin ordered the restoration of the Soviet tune—and it was Mr Mikhalkov’s turn to write, once again, the words. The anodyne doggerel that resulted is no better (and certainly no worse) than other countries’ national anthems. It praises Russia’s uniqueness, mentions God, and concludes: “Thus it was, is, and always shall be!” Except that it isn’t, and wasn’t. Few knew that better than the wily Mr Mikhalkov.

US-CEE woes

America and eastern Europe

End of an affair?

Sep 10th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The Atlantic alliance is waning in Europe’s east

Illustration by Peter Schrank

AFTER two decades of sometimes fervent Atlanticism in the ex-communist world, disillusionment (some would call it realism) is growing. At its height the bond between eastern Europe and America was based, like the best marriages, on a mixture of emotion and mutual support. The romance dates from the cold war: when western Europe was sometimes squishy in dealing with the Soviet empire, America was robust. When the Iron Curtain fell, ex-dissidents and retired cold warriors found they had plenty in common. America pushed for the expansion of NATO, guaranteeing the east Europeans’ security. In return, ex-communist countries loyally supported America, particularly in providing troops for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That relationship is now looking more wobbly. A new poll (see chart) by the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank, shows that western Europe is now much more pro-American and pro-NATO than the ex-communist east. Until last year, the eastern countries swallowed their misgivings about George Bush, while the west of the continent writhed in distaste at what many saw as his administration’s incompetence and heavy-handedness.

The ascent of Barack Obama has boosted America’s image in most countries, but only modestly in places like Poland and Romania. Among policymakers in the east, the dismay is tangible. In July, 22 senior figures from the region, including Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, wrote a public letter bemoaning the decline in transatlantic ties.

One reason is that the Obama administration is rethinking a planned missile-defence system, which would have placed ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, in order to guard against Iranian missile attacks on America and much of Europe. That infuriated Russia, which saw the bases as a blatant push into its front yard. Changing the scheme—probably using seaborne interceptors—risks looking like a climb-down to suit Russian interests.

Poland is also worried that a promised battery of Patriot air-defence missiles, originally to protect the interceptors, may now be only a temporary loan of dummy rockets for training purposes—“just a sales exercise”, says an official in Warsaw, crossly. America says it never intended to station real rockets there permanently.

The administration also botched its participation in Poland’s 70th anniversary commemoration of the start of the second world war on September 1st. Other countries, including Russia and Germany, sent top people. America, initially, offered only a retired Clinton-era official. William Perry, who was a notable sceptic about NATO expansion. After squawks of dismay, Jim Jones, the national security adviser, went too. But Poles sensed a snub.

Another sore point concerns leaks from America suggesting that Poland, Romania and Lithuania hosted secret bases for the “rendition” and interrogation of terror suspects. All three strongly deny this, but in at least some voters’ eyes, the American alliance is now tainted with connivance in kidnap and torture, followed by cover-ups. The next time American spooks want some secret help, they may find their allies less handy, an official notes.

NATO’s credibility is under scrutiny too. New members say that their voters will not support out-of-area expeditions—the alliance’s big focus just now—unless it is properly defending the home front against any threat from Russia. It does not help that Russia and its ally, Belarus, have just started a large joint military exercise, ostentatiously named “Zapad” (West).

At a big NATO advisory conference in Brussels in July, east Europeans were aghast to hear one prominent German academic describe Article V, the alliance’s cornerstone collective-security guarantee, as a “fiction”. In the event of a Russian threat, say to the Baltic states or Poland, would NATO act or merely consult? A worried easterner describes the alliance as “like an 18th-century Polish parliament, hostage to its most irresponsible member”.

NATO is trying to soothe those fears. A committee that writes the threat assessment has rejigged its view on Russia. Contingency planning, once taboo, is taking shape. The Obama administration has been more vigorous on this front than its predecessor. But what Poland wants, especially if the missile-defence base is cancelled, is practical preparations, such as regular manoeuvres, and fuel and ammunition stockpiles.

Part of the problem is the much-publicised attempt by the Obama administration to “reset” relations with Russia. Few in eastern Europe object to that in principle. But many worry about how it will work in practice. Will Russia demand greater sway in the region in return for help, say, in squeezing Iran? The State Department has tried hard to reassure America’s allies. But the official at the National Security Council directly responsible for Europe, Liz Sherwood-Randall, used to work for Mr Perry and shared his views on NATO expansion. East European officials flinch when her name is mentioned.

Admittedly, America has many other bigger problems than its relations with eastern Europe. Self-importance and public whingeing do not win arguments in Washington. The east Europeans may have been naive in their dealings with America in the Bush years. But for all that, even people inside the Obama administration agree that it could do better.

Putin in Gdansk

Russia, Poland and history

Mr Putin regrets
Sep 3rd 2009
From The Economist print edition


Russia bandages a wound in Poland




IT IS hard to imagine modern Germany haggling with Poland about opening wartime archives, let alone over who started the war. With Russia, it is different. Vladimir Putin’s visit to Gdansk, where a ceremony this week marked the first shots of the second world war in September 1939, was both a step forward and a depressing sign of continuing difficulties.

Polish officials struggled to stay polite before the Russian prime minister’s arrival. In June the Russian defence ministry website argued that Poland had caused the war by provoking Hitler. Last month a Kremlin-controlled television channel claimed that Poland had been conspiring with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. Russian intelligence echoed this in a new dossier. And Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, denied that the Soviet Union bore any responsibility for the outbreak of war.



Poles find such talk outrageous. The liberation of Poland from the Nazis, in which some 600,000 Soviet soldiers died, is seen as a mixed blessing, as it led to 45 years of ruinous and sometimes murderous communist rule. The country’s president, Lech Kaczynski, spoke for many when he reminded Mr Putin that the Soviet Union had “stabbed Poland in the back” with its own invasion on September 17th 1939. He compared the wartime Katyn massacre of 20,000 captured Polish officers by Stalin’s secret police to the Holocaust. When the president’s twin brother, Jaroslaw, was prime minister, such blunt talk put relations with Russia (and with similarly detested Germany) into the deep freeze.

Since he became prime minister in 2007, the emollient Donald Tusk has made friends with Germany and is now thawing relations with Russia too. He hoped that inviting Mr Putin to Gdansk with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, would make it impossible for the Russian leader to promote a Soviet-style version of history. Poland’s own account of its history may never quite chime with its neighbours’. But disagreements with Germany—chiefly over post-war expulsions of ethnic Germans—are manageable. With Russia, history is an open wound.

Mr Putin lightly bandaged it without admitting any responsibility. He called Katyn a “crime” and said that there were “good reasons” for condemning the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (secret protocols to that deal divided up eastern Europe). But he did not use the unambiguous language that Poles had hoped for. He said the pact was one mistake among many, likening it to the Munich agreement of 1938 when Britain and France bullied Czechoslovakia into accepting dismemberment (a dismemberment, Mr Putin spikily pointed out, in which Poland participated).

Today Munich is seen as a shameful low point in British diplomacy. Few Russians see the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that way. Indeed, no sooner had Mr Putin finished speaking than Konstantin Semin, a presenter on Russia’s official television station, said “we have nothing to repent of and we should not apologise to anyone: the pact was the only possible solution, which preserved the lives of Poles, among others.” He also doubted the authenticity of the pact’s secret protocols.

Even the hoped-for declassification of Soviet archives is proving inconclusive. Mr Putin said this would go ahead, but only on a strictly mutual basis. That may be tricky: Poland’s wartime archives are already declassified—and somewhat scanty, not least thanks to Russian visitors.

leading article on Russia and history from this week's Economist

Russia's past

The unhistory man
Sep 3rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Russia should do more to condemn Stalin’s crimes—for its own sake



EVERY country highlights the good bits in its history and ignores the bad. Russia’s keenness that none should forget the great sacrifices its people made in the second world war—it did more than any other country to defeat the Nazis—is therefore understandable. Yet its determination to whitewash the darker bits of its past goes far beyond normal image-polishing and ranks among the most sinister features of Vladimir Putin’s ten years as Russia’s dominant political force.

At this week’s commemorative ceremonies in Gdansk, Mr Putin offered his Polish hosts some comfort (see article). Unlike Russian official media in recent weeks, he did not blame Poland for starting the war, or try to claim that the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland on September 17th 1939 was justified. Unlike several Russian commentators, he did not maintain that the Nazis rather than the Soviets had perpetrated the Katyn massacre of 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in 1940. And unlike official Russian history books, which talk mostly of the “Great Patriotic War” that started only when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, he accepted September 1939 as the beginning of the conflict.

Yet Mr Putin’s remarks still reflect a worrying blind spot. Under his leadership, Russia has rewritten history to reinstate the Stalinist version, in which the Soviet Union bears no guilt for the war or for the enslavement of eastern Europe. Mr Putin has been evasive about the iniquity of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the secret 1939 deal that led to the carve-up of Poland and other east European countries. And he has described the Soviet Union’s collapse as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, which jars with those who see the end of communism as a blessed liberation. No wonder some in eastern Europe detect a worrying new revanchism.



As well as rewriting the past, Mr Putin has closed Russia’s archives again and criminalised attempts to rebut his version of history. Under a new law, anyone who “falsifies” the Kremlin’s version of history, for example by equating Hitler and Stalin, two of the 20th century’s worst mass murderers, may be prosecuted. Suggesting that 1945 brought not liberation but new occupation for eastern Europe is also banned.

All this marks a big step back from the 1990s, when Boris Yeltsin bravely came to terms with the horrors of Russia’s past. In 1991 he apologised to Estonia for its forcible annexation by the Soviet Union. He also opened up previously secret Soviet wartime archives. That put Russia on the same track as post-war Germany, which has spent decades in the commendable pursuit of reconciliation with victims of Nazism.


The biggest victims at home
Just as the Russians suffered most from communism, so the worst damage from revived Soviet-style history is done to Russia itself. It has become an ingredient in the toxic mix of xenophobia and chauvinism that the official Russian media, especially television, repeatedly serve up. The Kremlin uses history as a weapon to imply that east European countries which see the past differently are closet Nazis. It also tacitly justifies the loss of freedom at home as a price worth paying to defeat imaginary external enemies.

The renovation of Kurskaya metro station in Moscow last month restored a Soviet-era plaque glorifying Stalin for inspiring “labour and heroism”. The dictator’s rehabilitation is a shameful betrayal of ordinary Russians’ suffering. The Kremlin should admit that Stalin was Hitler’s accomplice before 1941, and that this nefarious alliance made the war far more dreadful than it otherwise would have been, not least for the people of the Soviet Union.

europe view 148 what putin should have said

Europe.view

Mentioning the war
Sep 3rd 2009
From Economist.com


What Vladimir Putin should have said in Gdansk
Honoured Guests, Dear Excellencies:

My German counterpart Willy Brandt launched his country’s reconciliation with Poland by bending his knee at the Warsaw ghetto memorial in 1970. My aim today is less ambitious, but I would like to begin by stating unequivocally that my government regards the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, especially its secret protocols, as a crime, and a direct contributor to the Nazi attack on Poland that we are marking today.


Those were dark and shameful years for many countries. Out of deference to my British friends I will not mention the Munich agreement, and out of politeness to my hosts I will not cite the Polish land grab of Cieszyn that followed it. But many wrongs do not make a right. As a Russian leader it is my responsibility to ensure that my country acknowledges both the bright and black spots in our history. Our pride at the sacrifice and heroism showed by the Russian people—and by many others in the Soviet Union—in defeating Hitler does not mean that we cannot mourn the victims and crimes of Stalinism both at home and abroad.

I represent the Russian Federation; I cannot take direct responsibility for the actions of another country. So I cannot apologise for the Soviet Union’s shameful and unprovoked attack on Poland on September 17th. I can certainly condemn it, and I do so now. I similarly condemn the illegal annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, just as I rejoice in their renewed statehood after 1991.



I should like to make special mention of the Katyn massacre. I deplore attempts in Russia to revive the Soviet-era lie that this was the work of the Nazis, or to claim that other tragic events somehow justify the atrocity. I am ordering with immediate effect the declassification of all files relating to this event, and look forward to the speedy judicial rehabilitation of the victims.

I would also like to clarify my much-quoted remark about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the geopolitical catastrophe of the past century. Like many Soviet citizens, I found the end of the life we had known to be shockingly disruptive and painful. The human, and particularly demographic, consequences of the stress and upheaval that it caused are with us to this day. But let me be clear on two things. The collapse of communism was a liberation for the Russian people, just as it was for the other—and I stress other—captive nations of the Soviet empire. Secondly, my government has no desire to recreate the Soviet empire. Any talk of a sphere of privileged interests must not be misunderstood: the privilege of close ties is a mutual one, based on mutual respect, not on old imperial sentiments.

We will never see history quite the same. Russian hearts will always freeze at the sight of veterans parading in SS uniforms in Latvia, Estonia or Ukraine, however much we may with our heads try to understand the impossible choices that led people to wear them. We may never quite see Hitler and Stalin as two sides of the same coin, as some of you do. But I hope we can at least agree to disagree in a spirit of mutual respect. I urge my compatriots, in public office, in the media and elsewhere, to join me in this endeavour.

Europe view 147--history again

EUROPE

Europe.view

Sticks and stones
Aug 27th 2009
From Economist.com


Russia needs to play nice
NAUGHTY and tiresome children like insults (both overt and needling) as well as implausible and elaborate excuses. “He wouldn’t give it to me and it was mine anyway and also I was going to give it back so I hit him”.

As your columnist’s children grow up, the need to untangle their tantrums, feuds and nonsense is becoming pleasingly rare. Sadly, the same can’t be said for some grownups.


Start with the needling. As Paul A. Goble, a foreign-affairs analyst, noted this week, Russia’s president Dmitri Medvedev has pointedly used the preposition “na” [on], favoured during Soviet times, rather than the more recent “v” [in] when referring to Ukraine. That is the sort of thing that children do: habitually mispronounce someone’s name in order to irritate them.

Mr Medvedev’s prepositional condescension came during a scathing personal attack on the Ukrainian president in which he said Russia would not be sending another ambassador to Kiev (or Kyiv, as Ukrainians prefer it spelled). At a childish level, this is badmouthing a classmate and refusing to acknowledge his birthday.

The 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on August 23rd provided more opportunities for what until recently would have been seen as extraordinary behaviour. The same day, a film called “The Secrets of Confidential Files”, broadcast on Russia’s Vesti national television channel (meaning it had official endorsement), said that the pact was a necessary response to Poland’s signing of a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934. That is like a child explaining a playground scrap on the lines of “Bill was friends with Phil so when Phil beat Bill up I joined in too.” Except that in this case the result was not a black eye and scraped knee, but the deaths of many millions of people.



This is not just nonsense, but revoltingly insensitive. It is rather as if German official media were casually blaming Jews for the Holocaust. And it is not a one-off. An article on the Russian defence ministry’s website in June claimed that Poland’s unreasonable behaviour towards Nazi Germany had justified Hitler’s attack.

These and other insults come as Poland is awaiting a visit by Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to a ceremony in Gdansk on September 1st, marking the anniversary of the Nazi attack. Poland hopes that Mr Putin will at least express mild regret about the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17th 1939. At events in Prague on the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, and in Budapest on the anniversary of the crushing of the 1956 uprising, Mr Putin managed that, soothing his hosts while not engaging in what many Russians would see as unseemly breast-beating.

Poland hopes that the visit will bring some practical movement on what are tactfully known as “difficult issues” (diplo-speak, in this case, for mass murder). The biggest of these is the Katyn massacre. Paying compensation to the relatives of the 20,000 Polish officers and prisoners of war murdered in cold blood in 1940 is probably too much to ask. But it might be possible to reach agreement on, say, a joint documentation centre.

Even a chance of that modest prize comes at a high price. In order not to jeopardise Mr Putin’s visit, Poland has to swallow hard when its history is traduced.

As last week’s column pointed out, no country can look back on its history without shame, and modern Russia does not need to feel perpetually burdened by the crimes of the Soviet Union. But neither must it revel in them. Knowing how to end an argument by saying “sorry” nicely is a sign of a well brought-up child (and of a decent human being).

Europe view 146, Criminalising history

EUROPE

Europe.view

No comparison

Aug 21st 2009
From Economist.com

Criminalising historical investigation is wrong

HOW far does context determine blame and praise? That is a question facing anyone who wants to pass a judgment or make an observation on Hitler, Stalin or the weather. Taken to one extreme, when every attribute is seen in complete isolation, morals and reason disappear. Hitler was nice to animals. Stalin loved children. Churchill drank too much. John F Kennedy was a philanderer. It is a cool day in summer, so global warming is a nonsense.

At the other extreme, when everything is connected, judgment becomes impossible for fear of leaving out some important comparison. Why complain about Stalin when you could write about Mao? What about the 19th century colonial empires? They killed millions more than the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Who are you as a British/American /German/Chinese/Russian commentator to say anything about Russia/Germany/China/America/Britain? That may be a good debating tactic, but it leads to mental paralysis: when everything matters, nothing matters.

The stormy response to a recent column about an OSCE resolution equating Stalin and Hitler highlights the issue. One line of attack goes like this: the article “forgot” to mention the crimes of the British. It is certainly true that Britain has much to be ashamed of before, during and after the second world war. The Munich agreement with Hitler to eviscerate Czechoslovakia is one (which the article mentioned); the deportation of Cossacks and other anti-Soviet forces to certain death after the war in Operation Keelhaul is another. A third was decades of denial that the Katyn massacre was the work of the Soviets, not the Nazis (that subject occasionally surfaces in this column too).

But the article was not trying to argue Soviet history is more (or less) wicked than Britain’s. Any such comparisons are fraught with difficulty, not least over how you measure wickedness. It does not come in convenient units (evils, giga-evils, tera-evils) that can be neatly added up to produce a balance sheet of murder and mayhem.

What can be said, quite clearly, is that Britain, like almost all other countries that claim to be civilised, does not criminalise investigation into its history. If you are an Australian who wants to research the genocidal treatment of Tasmanians, or an American who wants to write about the bombing of German civilians, you may even get a scholarship. Unlike in Russia, you certainly don’t risk a jail sentence. The resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is chiefly admirable because it challenges the Kremlin’s attempt to put this area of inquiry off limits.

The OSCE resolution is open to legitimate challenge. John Laughland, a British historian at the pro-Kremlin Institute for Democracy and Co-operation in Paris, argued on the Russia Today channel that politicians make bad historians. Nobody comes out well from the run-up to the second world war. Poland, he noted, helped dismember Czechoslovakia, seizing the town of Cieszyn/Tĕšin. Hitler’s plan to attack Poland predates the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, so that deal, shameful though it was, did not provide the definitive go-ahead for the invasion. Mr Laughland also argues that Nazism’s central features were war and racial persecution, whereas Soviet communism was neither racist nor (under Stalin) expansionist.

These are indeed good subjects for historians. But it does not mean that politicians should ignore them. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is not a uniquely iniquitous event. Even Mr Putin (shown here speaking on the issue at a press conference on May 10th 2005) seems a bit hazy about the details. So the 70th anniversary of the Stalin-Hitler deal is a good time to raise it in discussion—particularly in countries where doing so runs no risk of prosecution.

Europe view 145, Georgia one year on

EUROPE

Europe.view

The fog of war
Aug 13th 2009
From Economist.com


Unravelling the Ossetia conflict, one year later
ONE year after the Georgian war, its outcome is as debatable as the cause. Depending on where you stand, the war can be seen as the sinister culmination of a systematic provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia or as a murderously aggressive gambit by a Caucasian strongman wrongheadedly backed by the West.

The truth is somewhere in between. Russia did systematically provoke Georgia in the months leading up to the war. Its military counter-attack was disproportionate. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that President Mikheil Saakashvili’s inner circle was badly penetrated by Russia, that decision-making processes were chaotic and amateurish, and that the move to retake the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali (pictured), played into his enemy’s hands.

EPA

Whose fault was it?




With a detailed chronology of who did and decided what in the days and hours leading up to the war still (oddly) unavailable, an accurate assessment of the causes of war is still impossible.

Depending on where you stand, what happened next is similarly foggy. One variant is that Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, intervened with panache and elan to prevent catastrophe, brokering a ceasefire deal in a way that only a big European country could have done. From another viewpoint, Mr Sarkozy was a meddling egomaniac whose amateurism and self-importance gravely impeded the EU’s ability to intervene. People familiar with ceasefires in the Yugoslav wars certainly thought the documents he brought away from the talks with Vladimir Putin (and his sidekick-boss Dmitri Medvedev) were remarkably vague.

From another point of view, the EU and NATO reaped the harvest of their neglect of Georgia in previous months. The agreed sanctions after the fighting stopped were feeble. Suspending the NATO-Russia council, or the putative Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Russia, was not even turning a cold shoulder (more a soggy one) to the Kremlin. The outside world showed it would sacrifice principle for profit. It just requires a decent interval.

Lenin’s famous dictum “Kto kovo” (“who did what to whom”) is the best way of clearing the fog. Georgia is weakened, but not destroyed. Its economy has not collapsed. Political pluralism survives. War-weariness has not brought a pro-Moscow regime to power. Even Mr Saakashvili’s erstwhile friends are heartily fed-up with his presidency, but Georgian politics is still commendably open and contestable.

That cannot be said of Russia. The war has made apparent to outsiders some of the worst features of Russian politics. The Kremlin propaganda machine has used it to stoke xenophobia: Saakashvili is a monster, it says, so the West is monstrously cynical in backing him. Yet Russia has not pursued military aggression elsewhere. Fears for the future of Crimea and the Baltic states, vivid a year ago, now seem overblown. The military adventure in Georgia was bad, but it was a one-off. If it will be repeated anywhere, it will be once more in Georgia. And confident predictions of that, earlier this year, have come to nothing.

One reason for that is that the West has not abandoned Georgia. For all the frustration with the administration’s autocratic tendencies, and despite all the pressing priorities elsewhere, the core commitment to Georgia is intact. America’s “reset” of relations with Russia did not uninstall the program “Georgia 1.0”. Partly because of the principle of defending sovereignty, partly out of enthusiasm for Georgia’s political and economic achievements, and partly because of energy politics (remember the pipelines), America and Europe are staying engaged.

Not that anybody has worked out what to do. Not giving up is a good start, but only that.

Europe view 144 summer reading

EUROPE

Europe.view

Summer reading

Aug 6th 2009
From Economist.com

Investigations, analyses and a rediscovered novel

NOTHING happens in eastern Europe during August, save the odd war, coup or financial collapse, so people interested in the region have a whole month to catch up on good books, old and new. This summer brings a crop that should keep even a speed reader busy. “Revolution 1989”, by Victor Sebestyen, offers a digestible and colourful history of that miraculous year. Andrew Roberts’s “The Storm of War”, is a rare example of a British writer giving the second world war's eastern front proper prominence. “Londongrad: From Russia with Cash,” (pictured below) by Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley, is a racy and alarming investigation of the effect of Russian money on Britain.

At the more specialist end of the spectrum, Tom Gallagher’s new book about Romania and the EU—subtitled “How the weak vanquished the strong”—gives a bleak and gripping account of how wily ex-communist bureaucrats bamboozled the outside world and swindled their own people. Those who read his previous book, the excellent “Theft of a Nation”, will know what to expect. Espionage aficionados will enjoy the densely written but convincing “Spies” by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, which tells the (true) story of KGB activities in North America.

Your columnist flirted with some ambitious ideas such as rereading Czeslaw Milosz in Polish, or finishing the Miklos Banffy trilogy about aristocratic life in pre-communist Transylvania. What he actually ended up packing was a newly republished (by Faber & Faber) edition of William Palmer’s neglected 1990 classic, “The Good Republic”. Good contemporary fiction about the region is rare (Tibor Fischer’s “Under the Frog” is an exception). Corny spy thrillers, littered with topographical howlers, unlikely plots and plonking sex scenes, are the standard fare.

Mr Palmer’s book set a standard for an east European historical novel that has yet to be matched—an especially impressive feat for an outsider.

It is mainly set during the Soviet takeover of the Baltics in 1939-40, so this year’s anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact makes it highly topical. Even more vivid than the deportations and executions are the descriptions of the swift decay of statehood and legality: the policeman trampled by pro-Soviet demonstrators, civil servants struggling to uphold the constitution, the sinister placemen issuing instructions, the president a prisoner in his palace. Then comes the Soviet retreat and the Nazi occupation—a sinister non-liberation, bringing a terrible fate to the Jewish population, and a moral abyss for those who directly or indirectly abet it.

All this comes as flashbacks, seen through the eyes of the young Jacob Balthus. At the start of the book he is a Baltic émigré in London, who has spent decades running the pointless and, by the 1980s, almost defunct “Congress of Exiles”. He returns at the invitation of the nascent pro-democracy movement in his homeland, where his father was a senior civil servant in the days of interwar independence.

The fractious and futile-seeming life of east European émigré organisations is well drawn, as is the trembling excitement of the late 1980s when once-forbidden contacts were first permitted and then flourished. But even better is the description of the (composite) pre-war Baltic country in which the young Balthus grows up, so solid from his point of view, so terrifyingly fragile for his wise, well-informed father.

Remarkably, Mr Palmer did not visit the Baltic states before writing the book; his research mainly consisted of reading transcripts of evidence given to congressional hearings by senior Baltic figures who had escaped to the West. It is a tribute to his novelist’s skills that anyone reading the book has the feeling of complete authenticity in both history and geography. Readers are left longing for a sequel.

Moldovan elections

Moldova's elections

In the balance
Aug 6th 2009 | CHISINAU
From The Economist print edition


The ruling Communists narrowly lose an almost-fair election
ALREADY the poorest country in Europe, Moldova has lately been doubly cursed by its politics. Protests after a parliamentary election on April 5th turned violent and led to three dead and hundreds detained in beastly conditions. Blame for that is still unclear: the authorities say that they were fighting off hooligans; protesters say that provocateurs hijacked their peaceful demonstrations against election rigging.

A mixture of international pressure, domestic discontent and a deadlocked result led to a rerun last week. Despite renewed claims of ballot-rigging the ruling Communists did worse than last time, with only 45% of the votes and 48 places in the 101-member parliament, a loss of 12 seats. The Democratic Party of Marian Lupu, a former senior Communist who split with the party after the April troubles, now holds the balance of power, with 13 seats. He could put the Communists back in power, or govern in coalition with three former opposition parties. They are a fractious lot, including some who want to reunite Moldova with Romania (to which it belonged in the pre-communist era) and others lobbying for business interests.


The immediate issue is who should replace the country’s serving president, Vladimir Voronin. He masterminded the Communist Party’s return to power in 2001. His second (and constitutionally final) term expired in April. The professorial, polyglot Mr Lupu would certainly raise Moldova’s international profile (it could hardly be lower). But some in the anti-Communist camp doubt his credentials.

Beyond that comes the task of kick-starting overdue reforms. Moldova’s wobbles between East and West have left it isolated and neglected. Mr Voronin has veered heavily towards the Kremlin in the hope of settling the frozen conflict with Transdniestria, a breakaway region backed by Russia. Despite yielding on issues such as the status of Russian military forces there, his soft line has brought no results.

The biggest boost to reunification would be economic and political success in the rest of Moldova. But Mr Voronin’s crony-capitalist approach has kept the economy backward. The machinery of government is stuck in the 1990s. Relations with Romania, which should be Moldova’s main advocate in the European Union, are astonishingly bad. Whatever coalition emerges, the new government will have plenty to deal with.

Moldova pre-election (Europe View)

Wooing wrong
Jul 30th 2009
From Economist.com


The tough sell of soft power
FOREIGNERS visiting Moldova have plenty of people to talk to. Poverty and geopolitical woes mean that the country attracts an above-average bunch of outsiders. But local voices are even more impressive. One of them is Natalia Morar, a feisty 25-year-old investigative journalist. Finding Ms Morar at home in Moldova used to be rather difficult—she worked as an investigative reporter for New Times, an independent magazine based in Moscow. But in late 2007 she published an article called “The black cash of the Kremlin” about the way in which rake-offs from business were used to finance Russian politics. For that she was expelled from Russia (and even marrying a Russian colleague has been not enough to get her back into that country).

Now Ms Morar is in trouble in Moldova too. She was charged with sedition after the protests in April against election-rigging. Since then she has been unable to leave the country. That makes it easy to meet Ms Morar to discuss both authoritarian crony capitalism in Russia and its more diluted but still unpleasant local equivalent.

It is harder to meet another luminary of Chisinau life: Alex Grigorievs. A Latvian-born veteran of that country’s independence struggle, he runs the National Democratic Institute, an American-funded think-tank that has been trying to help Moldova’s fractious politicians to work together better—“coalition-building”, in NGO speak. That has gone down poorly with the authorities: Mr Grigorievs has been hounded out of the country and is now based in Odessa, in neighbouring Ukraine.

Other countries that are supposedly getting closer to the European Union have similar stories. In Belarus, the authorities are hassling an independent protestant church, New Life, (which just happens to be popular with the country’s downtrodden Roma minority). In Azerbaijan, two hapless bloggers have been jailed for producing an amusing and harmless video sketch in which a donkey holds a news conference in front of a respectful audience of journalists (any resemblance to the country’s politicians and their relationship with the pliant local media is entirely coincidental). And in Georgia Vasili Sulkhanishvili, the director of a London-based asset-management company, has been arrested and placed in solitary confinement until he pays $1m to settle a dispute about back taxes (there are doubtless two sides to the issue, but the story so far supports those who believe that the bad old ways of doing business in Georgia are not yet extinct).

An alarming aspect of all this is that western protests have been so minimal. The American embassy in Moldova, for example, has not exactly championed Mr Grigorievs’ case. Nor has anyone much been sticking up for Ms Morar. An official invitation to Brussels, Berlin or London, say, would signal opposition to the way she has been treated. It is the same story in Azerbaijan (where the West worries about pipelines, not bloggers) and in Belarus, where the regime’s relations with Moscow are pleasingly icy.

The assumption seems to be that by overlooking abuses of power, the West can persuade the rulers of the countries in Russia’s shadow to loosen their ties with the Kremlin. If so, that is a disastrous mistake. Geopolitical armwrestling favours the more ruthless partner: Europe will never beat the Kremlin there. The long-term hope for expanding the EU eastwards lies in its soft power: the idea that political freedom, the rule of law and an open economy work, whereas protectionism and cronyism do not. If the West doesn’t believe that, and promote it, why should anyone else?