Earlier this month I had a post entitled ‘Russia: Mafia state’, where I wrote, among other things, that I found Russia to be a “terrifying place.” This led to a spirited exchange with one of my regular readers, who took exception to my take on that country. As Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s latest film, ‘Elena’—which won an award at Cannes last year—had just opened in Paris, I decided to see it illico. It’s good, indeed very good. And it did not cause me to modify my sentiment on Russia being terrifying. Zvyagintsev, in the words of Variety’s critic,
retaining his fascination with the moral impact of individual choices within a fragile family unit…spins a taut, engrossing yarn about a coveted inheritance, cruel class differences and quietly monstrous misdeeds.
He makes Russia out to be a brutal society, sans foi ni loi, where there is little solidarity beyond the immediate family unit. Reviews in the Hollywood press have been stellar—it hasn’t opened in the US yet—, with critics gushing over the pic, e.g. here, here, here, here. French reviews have also been tops.
A few days after seeing ‘Elena’, I ran out to see ‘Khodorkovsky’, the documentary by German director Cyril Tuschi on the rise and fall of the billionaire oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who’s been in prison for the past eight years on what are manifestly politically motivated charges. Not that Khodorkovsky was exactly clean himself when it came to corruption and other dubious practices, but that’s not why Vladimir Putin decided that he didn’t like him and wanted him out of the way. The documentary is quite good and informative. The review in Variety thus begins
Thoroughly researched and highly entertaining, “Khodorkovsky” recounts the strange story of its eponymous subject, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the famous oligarch who’s been languishing in a Siberian prison since 2003 on trumped up tax-evasion charges. Helmer Cyril Tuschi doesn’t disguise his admiration for the tycoon who defied Putin, but the docu never descends into hagiography, and along the way it delivers a pungent portrait of contempo Russia.
The “portrait of contempo Russia” is pungent indeed, in the malodorous sense. US and UK reviews have been positive, e.g. here and here, and in France too. If one has an interest in Russia, do see it.
@Arun: It has seemed to me that your prejudice won’t permit reasoned debate on the subject of Russia, and this post only serves to make that point. I would think it obvious that if you immerse yourself in anti-Russia propaganda, you’re unlikely to think clearly and evenly about the country. It’s like trying to argue issues with a listener of Rush Limbaugh in the US: nothing you can say is going to dissuade them because they have had their preconceived notions confirmed every day by their beloved and impeccable source.
For your other readers, though, I will point out that even Variety’s review of Khodorkovsky admits to the deep prejudice of the filmmaker. And while Variety (and apparently Arun) won’t say it, to admire this Khodorkovsky is a damning indication of one’s character. The word oligarch is blithely bandied about, but we should be clear about its meaning here: this is a man who has casually stolen billions from the Russian people. The claim that it was legal because the drunken and immoral Boris Yeltsin permitted it does not give this theft any moral backing.
Also for readers who would want to be open to alternative pictures of Russia, I would encourage them to avoid the films and books that are published in countries that are enemies of Russia. Imagining that you’re getting a clear and true picture of a country that way is the height of the art of self-deception. You can, as a counter-balance, watch Russia Today. While that is, of course, state television and therefore propaganda for the pro-Russian point of view, it can work as a counterweight to the equally prejudiced views being presented in Europe and the US.
Given that we can only learn about the country through either pro- or anti-Russia propaganda, how are we to know the truth? We probably can’t. But we owe it to ourselves to at least admit that and not smugly proclaim that our preconceived prejudices must be right.
@dojero: “I would encourage them to avoid the films and books that are published in countries that are enemies of Russia.” This is breathtaking. Substitute ‘Soviet Union’ for ‘Russia’ in your comment and the ideological pedigree is manifest. What you’ve written here is straight out of the Daily World circa 1970. I rest my case.
@Arun: The difference between us is not that we can’t agree that the Daily World in 1970 was filled with propaganda in support of the USSR. It is that you naively believe that somehow the media of the US and Europe is less so.
I see this kind of naivete frequently, of course. It’s the result of a lifetime of exposure to all the various ways in which the media and any state works to achieve the certain loyalty of the citizens of a country.
When we examine things in a vacuum, we miss far more than we discover. So, for example, when we look at Russia and Putin ONLY through the writings and films of prejudiced Western writers and film-makers, we limit ourselves so severely as to make it impossible to reasonably assess the situation there. As I mentioned earlier, that doesn’t mean that reading ONLY Russia Today’s web site will result in a better understanding. It means that reading it in conjunction with the NY Times et. al. will result in a much better chance of getting at the truth. And so people should also read and watch PressTV if they want to get at the truth regarding Iran. And so people should read China Today.
The Daily World wasn’t and isn’t always wrong. And the fact that you think it is betrays exactly the prejudice and close-mindedness to which I referred in my original comment.
I hasten to add that I continue to believe that on many issues, you seem quite intelligent and well balanced in your views. Your hatred of Russia is blind however. I think that’s unfortunate, but unchangeable.
@dojero: So are you equating the Daily World – and, by extension, Pravda and Izvestia – with, say, the New York Times, Le Monde, and La Repubblica? That the aforementioned Communist organs were as serious and reliable sources of information and analysis as the latter US and European ones? You can’t be serious.
@Dojero: with all respect due to the other side of an intelligent debate, you seem to confound “hatred of Russia” with “critical comment on the state of things at the moment in Russia”.
I live in Finland, you see, and I know lots of people like you, thinking of themselves as the embattled few, defending all things RUssian against a hostile and mischievous world.
I have also lived in Russia, you see, and Belarus as well for some times, for different reasons and at different times (post-Cold War, though). I know sympathetic, friendly Russian people, and have a deep fascination for Russian culture – probably the reason that pushed me to cross Germany at age 18 to go to Saint-Petersburg, Minsk, Moscow, then Irkutsk. I have fished in the Baikal. I know some of the places, I know some Russians, their diversity and feelings. When I hear Sergei Ivanov speaking of Syria, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, to understand what he means. There is so much “normal” about Russia, not better nor worst than others.
But there is also much wrong, and you have to see that. There is a society where I have been arrested along with the entire crowd of a disco, for no reason, put standing by armed officers in a field, shouted at, and sent walking back to town. There is something deeply flawed in Russian society, something broken in the depth of the social fabric. It doesn’t owe only to the condition of the state, but also to the way people act, the visions of the world, the behaviors and thoughts that are rewarded, accepted, and those that are considered stupid, misplaced.
For you not to see it, it means that naivety and blindness are on your side. There is nothing you or Russia will benefit from this “my country – right or wrong”-attitude. Hitler is dead, man – get over it. The big bad Americans trying to invade Russia or Iran are in your head. They do not exist.
@Arun: sorry for the rant – I would hate to hijack the thread. Talking from outside France, I would say there is a measure of heavy-handedness in the treatment given to Russia by the French media. I do not feel it to be always entirely fair nor very explicative. But well, guess you could say that on the French treatment of American news as well…
@louisclerc: Excellent comment, and most interesting. Merci !
@louisclerc: It’s unfortunate that you’ve chosen to respond to my comments without thoroughly reading them. I would challenge you (or Arun, who thought your comment excellent) to find a single instance in my comments above that say that I believe in Russia “right or wrong”. Indeed, there isn’t a single instance of my saying that Russia is a good place. The entirety of my comments are rather about the unfair and ill-advised effort by Arun (and many, many others) to equate what they read and hear about Russia in their media with truth.
Your own experiences in the country are interesting and your comment that there is a serious malaise in Russian society may well be valid (or not…there’s no way for us to know based only on your anecdotal experience). And that’s fine.
But none of this, including your silly personal attack on a non-existent argument (one that I didn’t make about Russia), changes the real need for people to try to understand Russia by getting a full picture, instead of succumbing to the propaganda that is spawned in the Western media.
As I said earlier to Arun, I understand that my comments in this regard will fall on deaf ears. Not because I am somehow prejudiced in favor of Russia (for the record, I think Russian society and politics are deeply flawed), but because they can’t be read clearly by people who come to the question with a host of prejudices themselves. You confirm this by your comment, which attacks a non-existent defense of Russian society and politics.
I repeat one last time for emphasis: the challenge is not to find fault with Russia (or any country for that matter); that’s easily accomplished because all countries are deeply flawed. The challenge is for reasonable people to try to find the truth in a world that publishes only prejudicial forms of communication. In the case of Russia, that means not simply accepting the presentations of writers and film-makers who have the proveriable axe to grind. It also means not simply accepting louisclerc’s comments about his experience in Russia as significant indicators or the situation there.
Let me put it differently: suppose someone asks me about life in America. After all, I lived there for 54 years. Would you accept my anecdotes of harassment by the police as being any less telling about the state of the country than your anecdote about the disco?
@Dojero: No I would not, and of course this is my mistake to bring personal anecdotes forward. I don’t ask my anecdotes to be taken as face-value, but I think they served to flesh out my argument. Anecdotes become useful when they pile up – and in that case, one could say there is a trend which makes my experience not so isolated.
I should as well apologize for over-interpreting your post: obviously yours is not the confrontational, obsessional, knee-jerk defense of Russia I witness so often in complaints on the way “the Western media” treats the dear old Narod. I have been reading too much comments on the Internet lately – I easily misinterpret peoples’ intentions.
So we will agree on a few things, after all. I also feel, as I added at the end of my comment, that the media in France, and elsewhere, bring forth a truncated and not entirely fair image of Russia. I don’t feel so strongly about that because they do that also for many other parts of the world – far-flung places nobody knows nothing about. I don’t see it as the result of a will of “the Western media” to distort truth, though, because I don’t think the “Western media” exist as a category. Journalists are often more lazy than manipulative.
Probably we could also agree that clear-headed information and pedagogy would be a better way to approach the question than “propaganda”. So maybe we will agree on a redefinition of our goals: instead of picking out at each others for being “propagandists”, we could try to explain what is going on in Russia. That would be useful.
Let’s start with a good English-language book on the country today. Any ideas? In French, for example, one could get acquainted with Michel Foucher’s or Marie Mendras’ work. Foucher is an excellent geographer/diplomat, and Mendras a Russia specialist of old, generally critical of “Putin’s Russia” but often with good reasons.
@louisclerc: Thank you for the response to my last comment. I think you’re right when you say we have much that we can agree on and much that we can’t. I don’t agree with you, for example, about Western media, which I think is far more monolithic than you give it credit for. I do believe it exists as a category: the major television and newspaper outlets of the US and Europe. The currently in-vogue approach is to challenge the use of the word “Western”, because, after all, it isn’t really inclusive of all countries in one section of the world. But the word actually has a long history in the English language and the complaint seems to me quite beside the point.
But I agree emphatically that it would be interesting to try to explain what’s going on in Russia. In that regard, and in specific response to your question about work in English on the subject, I would suggest starting with Stephen Cohen’s latest book, “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War”. Cohen is a professor of Russian studies at NYU and I think his perspective is more reasoned and balanced than most.
Stephen Cohen is very good, that much we can agree on…
I’ve seen Marie Mendras speak and have read her op-eds in Le Monde etc over the years. She’s excellent. Don’t know Michel Foucher. Will check him out. It’s been many years since I’ve read an actual book on Russia/the Soviet Union. Stephen Kotkin’s work looked very interesting and I thought about checking out his books. Maybe I will soon.
@Dojero: thank you for that.
@Arun: Mendras is indeed very good. Foucher is a former diplomat, but also a bona fide university geographer and writer (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucher). He has opinions on Russia I don’t entirely share, but he is incredibly erudit. Coming from both the academic and the diplomatic side he also has a very broad vision of things. He is also quite influential as a Foreign affairs authority – not so much anymore under Sarkozy, but under Jospin as the head of the Centre d’Analyse et de Prévision. Someone to keep in mind.
From Le Monde: La Russie face au scandale des tortures policières http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2012/03/28/la-russie-face-au-scandale-des-tortures-policieres_1676973_3214.html
@Arun: I wonder how this is even remotely relevant to the discussion that’s been held here. Surely, you aren’t taking this particular scandal and suggesting that it proves something about Russia in general? About Russian police? Or perhaps we should now begin what would be the endless process of showing links to the police all around the world who have committed torture? If so, why not start a thread on that issue. It is certainly ubiquitous.
@dojero: I linked to the Le Monde article because it was relevant to what Louis Clerc wrote, notably his anecdote about the police. I didn’t feel like doing a whole new post around it.