Tag: Putin

Homophobia on the Offensive in Russia

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

Russia is preparing for the elections to its parliament (called Duma.) Everybody knows that the elections will be a sham. The government forces state employees to vote for the party that is currently in power by threatening to fire them. It forces business people to vote the “right” way by threatening them with sanctions in case they refuse. There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that the results of the elections have been predetermined. The Russian Prime-Minister Putin doesn’t even try to conceal that he is the puppet-master behind the current lame-duck President Medvedev.

So what do you do when you are planning to perpetrate such a massive electoral fraud against the people of your country? The answer is clear: distract them by something that will make them feel good and in control. It is no surprise that the authorities of St. Petersburg have introduced a bill that will impose fines on everybody who “engages in propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia.” Of course, the idea that homosexuality can be “promoted” makes as much sense as a plan to promote tallness. I’ve tried asking many a homophobe how much “propaganda” of gayness would be enough to make them gay. The answer is always the same: “Of course, nothing would make me gay, but I’m just worried about others.” Equating homosexuality and pedophilia, like this bill does, is also egregiously offensive.

However, many people in the fiercely homophobic Russia that inherited its hatred of homosexuality from the Soviet Union are happy about this bill. The authorities humiliate them by using them to pretend that there is some form of democracy in Russia. In reality, though, people are powerless to choose who will be in charge of their country. The attacks on gays make these downtrodden and humiliated people feel proud of their heterosexuality because there isn’t much else to be proud of. The suggestion that homosexuality can be promoted makes the heterosexual majority feel that sexual orientation is a choice and congratulate itself for making the “right” and the “moral” choice on this issue.

The anti-gay bill in St. Petersburg is still under review. Other areas in Russia, however, have already implemented this kind of legislation (Arkhangelsk and Ryazan). The economy in these areas is in even worse shape than elsewhere in the country, which gives their inhabitants more reasons to be unhappy with the government. And whenever popular discontent in Russia grows, you can always expect to see a distracting maneuver aimed at getting people to concentrate on their hatred towards some marginalized group instead of questioning the ruling party.

Russians Are Hilarious

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

So the Russian leader Putin went to a boxing match and got booed. The Russian government immediately announced that it never happened and he hadn’t gotten booed. Reports from the event were edited so that the booing wouldn’t be there. However, many people recorded the event and placed videos of it online.

Then, the Russian government placed an announcement that it had been a positive booing rather than a negative one. Instantly, hundreds of bloggers and journalists published articles analyzing the pitch of the boo and stating that it was decidedly negative in tone. They also drew everybody’s attention to the very distinctive yells of “Putin, go away!” from the audience.

After millions of people had familiarized themselves with the video of the booing incident and it became impossible to deny that the booing was very negative, the Russian government suggested that the person who was getting booed wasn’t Putin but rather one of the boxers.

Immediately, crowds of people started sending messages to the boxer explaining that everybody loved him and he was not the one being booed.

Let’s see what the Russian government’s next move is going to be.

Here is the video so that you can decide for yourself whether Putin was booed positively or negatively.

Why Medvedev?

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

Why was Dmitri Medvedev chosen by Vladimir Putin 4 years ago to serve as a puppet President? This is a question many people are asking. Medvedev was not known to anybody, had a zero recognition rate among the people of his country, had no leadership skills or experience. He was just an insignificant, lower-level bureuacrat which are a dime a dozen in any country. How was this guy even chosen for the role of Russia’s president?

I have an explanation, and, as weird as it will sound, I believe it is the only one that makes sense.

Putin is a very self-centered, insecure guy with an inferiority complex of enormous proportions. He is also much shorter than an average Russian male. While the average male height among Russian men (not the men of the Russian Federation, mind you, but ethnic Russians) is 6’1, Putin is only 5  feet 5 inches tall. This is quite rare among men in his country.

I don’t think that Putin’s ego would have been able to withstand appearing in public next to a guy who’d tower over him. Putin has become notorious for coming up with devious ways of avoiding being filmed standing next to taller people. So he chose Medvedev, a political nobody, whose one great quality is that he is only 5 feet 2 inches tall.

Why Do the Russian People Like Putin So Much?

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

In spite of all the fraudulent elections and the utter disrespect for freedom of speech and human rights that characterize Putin’s regime in Russia, he has very high approval ratings in the country. Simply put, the absolute majority of people love him. In order to understand the reasons for this seemingly strange attachment of the Russian people to a KGB guy with zero charisma and totalitarian tendencies, please consider the following:

1. In the 1990ies, FSU countries went through the period known as “bandits’ wars.” It was the time when criminal organizations engaged in brutal struggles over the property that use to belong to the state but was now massively privatized. Now that these criminals have served their purpose, Putin has jailed some and pushed others into exile. Many people see him as a politician who has brought back law and order rather than a member of an organization that is responsible for unleashing the gangsters to begin with and then clamping down on them after they stop being useful.

2. Putin uses the money he gets from peddling Russia’s vast supply of natural resources to keep people somewhat fed and provided with basic social services.

3. He also conducts a huge patriotic, imperialist propaganda campaign that allows people to feel proud to live in such a big and powerful country. Putin routinely ridicules Western politicians in a very public manner, and it makes the Russian people who saw the loss of former colonies as a huge trauma to feel vindicated.

4. Putin is openly dismissive towards his wife. In a culture of domineering women and weak men, a strong, powerful male politician who doesn’t allow his wife to walk all over him is very appreciated because he embodies fantasies of many people of both genders. One of the reasons Soviet people hated Gorbachov so much was that he was obviously in love with his strong and powerful wife.

5. The reason why people don’t value the loss of the freedom of speech is their memory of the late eighties when there was a lot of freedom and a lot of speech but all that eventually degenerated into the bandits’ wars.

Putin is still pretty young, which means that there are many decades ahead of us of his regime in Russia.

Russian Politics Is Hilarious: Russia’s Next President

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

While the US politics is dramatic and filled with tensions, Russian politics is absolutely hilarious. Probably, not for the Russian people, but for those of us who observe the events in the country from the outside, Russian politics offers an endless supply of material for jokes.

The people of Russia are preparing for the elections. Today, Russian leaders made an announcement that Prime-Minister Putin will “run” for President. As you must remember, Putin had moved out of the Presidential seat for the last elections and allowed his puppet Dmitri Medvedev to take his place. This was done to pretend that Putin respected the Constitution that didn’t allow him to run for the third term. Now, after Medvedev’s interim Presidency during which this poor puppet didn’t dare to breathe without Putin’s approval, Putin will move back into the President’s office once again. When his new two terms expire, he will probably perform the same trick: appoint some interim schmuck as President, sit out his term as the Prime-Minister, and become President all over again.

This has all been decided before the elections because the elections in Russia have become such a joke that nobody in their right mind takes them seriously. To give an especially egregious example, one of the leaders of one of the strongest parties of the opposition discovered – to his huge surprise – that at the polling station where he and his family voted, not a single vote had been given to his party.

Putin’s ruling party has become so shameless that it just ships in fake ballots by the kilo and substitutes all the actual ballots people deposited in the voting booths.

This is why when I hear people talk about “democracy in Russia” and the “collapse of the Soviet Union” I always have uncontrollable fits of laughter.