Kasparov’s forced hunger strike
by Robert Amsterdam
Were it not such a serious situation, the jailing of opposition leader and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov by the Putin regime would be richly ironic. For in what other nation are dissidents forced to go on hunger strikes while the price of bread and milk go through the roof?
It was one of the more interesting points raised in the interviews we published yesterday with his lawyers Karinna Moskalenko and Olga Mikhailova – Garry cannot eat nor drink anything the jailers offer him for fear of an all-too-well-known fate. Perhaps the state should thank Kasparov for sparing them the inflated costs of the gulag gourmet! We know all too well from the arrest of Sergei Storchak how many greedy hands of the siloviki are clutching at the state piggy bank – the spiraling prices of eggs and stale bread for political prisoners will likely not be tolerated much longer…
Kasparov’s forced hunger strike illustrates a number of severe incongruities resulting from Russia’s current distorted political reality. Why, for example, is the state cracking down so hard on candidates and critics who they’ve already barred from competing in the elections? Why does the president’s stridency and hostility to the outside world increase to new levels with each passing day, despite his overwhelming majority in the polls? Why is United Russia’s party line hammering away with its economic populism and revisionist history of the 1990s, while at the same time the country hosts the world’s most ostentatious “Millionaire Fair” and buys 158% more champagne? Why would the president order a man like Kasparov to be jailed, drawing international media attention, if he isn’t even expected to capture a small percentage of the vote?
Some people explain these incongruities as part of Russia’s historical political legacy. For example, Lilia Shevtsova argues in her new book that even after the fall of communism, “Russia’s claim to great-power status remains an important means of rallying society and preserving the centralized state. To this day the elite’s vision of the Russian state is based on territory, military power, international prestige, and personalized power as the means of attaining them, and, finally, on identifying an enemy to justify that form of governance.” Despite the fact that the siloviki would probably hold on to power in a real election, the president still must rail away at invented foreign enemies and their alleged opposition representatives because that’s what the Tsar’s subjects are used to.
Another theory put forward is that Putin wants much more than to just simply win the vote, but rather win it with a shocking overwhelming majority on such a scale that he could earn the alleged “political capital” and legitimacy for the rest of the world to overlook all of his broken rules, democratic dismantling, and unlawful manipulation. For this reason the government won’t tolerate even the smallest demonstrations, and are eager to show that if you publicly disagree with the president, you go to jail.
Here is the full story.
It’s just a sacrifice in the middle game. He’ll come out on top of this, and Putin’s form of “government” will not stand long.
Meanwhile here in the U.S., there is only passing mention of anything going on in Russia. Hey, it’s the Christmas season! We have I-pods to buy for our kids! Who wants to hear about all that ugly “stuff” in Russia, wherever THAT is?
I know, “Be slow to anger”.
Sorry, just agitates me a little.
Rich
Kasparov is right.
He can’t eat anything they give him in this Russian goulag.
Putin has already had a lot of his opponents assassinated.
Putin is an ugly dictator.
Well, I believe Putin is doing what is best for Russia, after Yeltsin raped the country’s wealth with the help of his cronies and with help from so-called Western economists and governments.
Now that Russia is growing stronger economically (and choosing to exercise its newly regained strength by differing with the US on a host of issues) the Western governments do not want to see this trend continue. So they are using this big pawn, Kasparov, to get public sympathy in the West.
Ask yourself how somebody with practically no capital could become billionaire almost overnight in Yeltsin’s Russia, and you’ll easily see that these so-called billionaire entrepreneurs were nothing but the most adept thieves who stole from the Russian national government.
Kasparov may well be a sacrifice made by his Western puppet masters, but like a pawn taken off the board, he will remain off the centre-stage of Russian politics.
An expedient political pawn of his Western puppet masters he is, and so he will remain. He should come back to the chess board and delight us with his skill.
Putin has been nothing but lucky. Very high oil prices are what’s driving the Russian economy, not the dictator and murderer Putin. Wait until the economic picture changes. The huge inflow of cash into Russia is starting to lead to inflation and there will be other problems as well. Wait until Putin’s luck changes and Russia starts to have economic problems again (it happens to every country), then let us see how much you love the dictator who has taken away your freedoms, put his cronies into power, and stolen more than Yeltsin ever dreamed possible.
Putin = Puto.