Russia – Page 3 – artdiamondblog.com

“Rebel” Russian Thugs Kill Plans and Entrepreneurship in Donetsk

(p. A13) “We do not go out at night,” said Irina, a journalist who lost her job when the rebels closed her newspaper in May. “We have stopped planning.”
Her boyfriend, Evgeny, lost his job, too, when his security firm folded. He said the business collapsed after the rebels seized money from the central bank and armored vehicles from other banks, leading them to close. He turned to his secondary business, fixing motorbikes, only to be ordered at gunpoint to fix some stolen motorbikes for the rebels.
“I came to the conclusion there is no sense,” he said. “You start a business and get a bit successful, and two weeks later men with guns come and say, ‘Good boy, get lost.’ “

For the full story, see:
CARLOTTA GALL. “Lured Back by a Cease-Fire in Ukraine, but Not Feeling at Home Yet.” The New York Times (Thurs., SEPT. 11, 2014): A6 & A13.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 10, 2014.)

Russia and China Redistributed Wealth “to Disastrous Effect”

Shane Smith, entrepreneur behind VICE media company. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 10) You believe that young people worldwide are disenfranchised. Do you think popular uprisings will fix things? No. I’m actually worried, because I believe that it’s going to get worse. Look, economic disparity is bad. But we’ve already tried having governments redistribute wealth. We tried it in Russia and China to disastrous effect.

News Corp. bought a 5 percent stake in Vice, and now James Murdoch is on the board. Why did you sell to them? I’ve said that I want to be the next MTV, the next CNN, the next ESPN. Cue everyone rolling their eyes. MTV went to Viacom, ESPN went to Disney and Hearst, CNN went to Time Warner. Why? Because to build a global media brand, it’s almost impossible to do it alone. James has been involved in one of the largest media companies in the world since he was in short pants.
Do you ever fear that Vice will become legacy media itself? It’s our time now. Then, I don’t know, it’ll be holograms next, and some kid will come up and eat our lunch.

For the full interview, see:
Staley, Willy, interviewer. ” ‘Have We Unleashed a Monster?’: The Vice C.E.O. Shane Smith on His New Kind of News.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., MARCH 23, 2014): 12.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date MARCH 21, 2014, and has the title “Vice’s Shane Smith: ‘Have We Unleashed a Monster?’.”)

Little Estonia Prepares Defense Against Russia’s Evil Empire

Toomis Hendrick Ilves, President of Estonia. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Perched alone up in eastern Baltic are Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Their fear of Moscow propelled them to become the first and only former Soviet republics to seek the refuge of NATO. But now doubts are appearing. The West has responded tepidly to the Crimean aggression. Military budgets are at historic lows as a share of NATO economies. The alliance, which marked its 65th anniversary on Friday, has never faced the test of a hot conflict with Moscow.

In this new debate over European security, Mr. Ilves plays a role out of proportion to Estonia’s size (1.3 million people) and his limited constitutional powers. A tall man who recently turned 60, he has the mouth of a New Jersey pol–he grew up in Leonia–and wears the bow ties of a lapsed academic. Americans may recall his Twitter TWTR -0.15% feud two years ago over Estonia’s economy with economist Paul Krugman, whom Mr. Ilves called “smug, overbearing & patronizing.”
. . .
Estonia managed on Thursday to get NATO’s blessing to turn the brand-new Amari military airfield near Tallinn into the first NATO base in the country. This small Balt tends to be proactive. While European governments axed some $50 billion from military budgets in the last five year amid fiscal belt-tightening, Estonia is only one of four NATO allies to devote at least 2% of gross domestic product to defense, supposedly the bare minimum for security needs.
“It lessens your moral clout if you have not done what you have agreed to do,” Mr. Ilves says of defense budgets. His barb hits directly at neighboring Lithuania and Latvia, which both spend less than 1% of GDP on their militaries.

For the full commentary, see:
MATTHEW KAMINSKI. “THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW; An American Ally in Putin’s Line of Fire; Estonia’s president, who was raised in New Jersey, on how Crimea has changed ‘everything’ and what NATO should do now.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 5, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 4, 2014.)

Better Policies Explain Why Poland Prospers More than Ukraine

“Yaroslav Rushchyshyn, a garment manufacturer, wants to end penalties when his company reports a financial loss.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) LVIV, Ukraine — Every kind of business in this restless pro-European stronghold near the border with Poland has an idea about how to make Ukraine like its more prosperous neighbor.

For Yaroslav Rushchyshyn, founder of a garment manufacturer, it is abolishing bizarre regulations that have had inspectors threatening fines for his handling of fabric remnants and for reporting financial losses.
For Andrew Pavliv, who runs a technology company, it is modernizing a rigid education system to help nurture entrepreneurs.
For Natalia Smutok, an executive at a company that makes color charts for paint and cosmetics, it meant starting an antibribery campaign, even though she is 36 weeks pregnant.
. . .
(p. B10) Victor Halchynsky, a former journalist who is now a spokesman for the Ukrainian unit of a Polish bank, said the divergence of the two countries was a source of frustration.
“It’s painful because we know it’s only happened because of policy,” he said, adding that while both countries had started the reform process, Poland “finished it.”
Ukraine has been held back by a number of policies. Steep energy subsidies have kept consumption high and left the country dependent on Russian gas, draining state coffers. Mr. Pavliv said the state university system, which he called “pure, pure Soviet,” was too inflexible to set up a training program for project managers, or to allow executives without specific certifications to teach courses. An agriculture industry once a Soviet breadbasket has been hurt by antiquated rules, including restrictions on land sales. Aggressive tax police have been used to shake down businesses.

For the full story, see:
DANNY HAKIM. “A Blueprint for Ukraine.” The New York Times (Fri., MARCH 14, 2014): B1 & B10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 13, 2014.)

“Andrew Pavliv, who runs a technology company, wants to help turn Lviv into a little Ukrainian Silicon Valley.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Global Warming Allows Russians to Build Liquefied Natural Gas Plant in Arctic

“A rendering of Novatek’s proposed $20 billion liquefied natural gas plant on Russia’s Arctic coast, scheduled to be done by 2016.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) YURKHAROVSKOYE GAS FIELD, Russia — The polar ice cap is melting, and if executives at the Russian energy company Novatek feel guilty about profiting from that, they do not let it be known in public.

From this windswept shore on the Arctic Ocean, where Novatek owns enormous natural gas deposits, a stretch of thousands of miles of ice-free water leads to China. The company intends to ship the gas directly there.
. . .
Novatek, in partnership with the French energy company Total and the China National Petroleum Corporation, is building a $20 billion liquefied natural gas plant on the central Arctic coast of Russia. It is one of the first major energy projects to take advantage of the summer thawing of the Arctic caused by global warming.
The plant, called Yamal LNG, would send gas to Asia along the sea lanes known as the Northeast Passage, which opened for regular international shipping only four years ago.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW E. KRAMER. “Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas.” The New York Times (Thurs., July 25, 2013): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date July 24, 2013, and has the title “Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas.”)

Behind the Iron Curtain, Those Who Opposed “Were to Be Destroyed by “Cutting Them Off Like Slices of Salami””

Source of book image: http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/iron-curtain-20882-20130113-95.jpg

(p. 16) That Soviet tanks carried Moscow-trained agents into Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany was known in the West at the time and has been well documented since. When those agents set out to produce not only a friendly sphere of Soviet influence but also a cordon of dictatorships reliably responsive to Russian orders, Winston Churchill was moved to warn, just days after the Nazis’ surrender in 1945, that an Iron Curtain was being drawn through the heart of Europe. (He coined the metaphor in a message to President Truman a full year before he used it in public in Fulton, Mo.) And Matyas Rakosi, the “little Stalin” of Hungary, was well known for another apt metaphor, describing how the region’s political, economic, cultural and social oppositions were to be destroyed by “cutting them off like slices of salami.”

Applebaum tracks the salami slicing as typically practiced in Poland, Hungary and Germany, and serves up not only the beef but also the fat, vinegar and garlic in exhausting detail. She shows how the knives were sharpened before the war’s end in Soviet training camps for East European Communists, so that trusted agents could create and control secret police forces in each of the “liberated” nations. She shows how reliable operatives then took charge of all radio broadcasting, the era’s most powerful mass medium. And she demonstrates how the Soviet stooges could then, with surprising speed, harass, persecute and finally ban all independent institutions, from youth groups and welfare agencies to schools, churches and rival political parties.
Along the way, millions of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians were ruthlessly driven from their historic homes to satisfy Soviet territorial ambitions. Millions more were deemed opponents and beaten, imprisoned or hauled off to hard labor in Siberia. In Stalin’s paranoid sphere, not even total control of economic and cultural life was sufficient. To complete the terror, he purged even the Communist leaders of each satellite regime, accusing them of treason and parading them as they made humiliating confessions.
It is good to be reminded of these sordid events, now that more archives are accessible and some witnesses remain alive to recall the horror.

For the full review, see:
MAX FRANKEL. “Stalin’s Shadow.” The New York Times (Sun., November 25, 2012): 16.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 21, 2012.)

The book under review, is:
Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. New York: Doubleday, 2012.

Catherine the Great as Benevolent Despot

Source of book image: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653083743832432.html?KEYWORDS=Catherine+Great

(p. C3) Bereft of husband and child, a lonely Catherine began to read the histories, philosophy and literature of Greece and Rome and of the Enlightenment. Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of Laws,” which analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of despotic rule, had a powerful impact on her. She was particularly interested in his thesis that the conduct of a specific despot could partially redeem that form of rule. Thereafter, she attributed to herself a “republican soul” of the kind advocated by Montesquieu.

Voltaire, the venerated patriarch of the Enlightenment, had concluded that a despotic government might well be the best possible form of government–if it were reasonable. But to be reasonable, he said, it must be enlightened; if enlightened, it could be both efficient and benevolent. Soon after ascending to the throne, Catherine began a correspondence with Voltaire that eventually extended to hundreds of letters over more than 20 years.
. . .
Near the end of her reign Catherine was asked how she understood the “blind obedience with which her orders were obeyed.” Catherine smiled and answered, “It is not as easy as you think…. I examine the circumstances, I take advice, I consult the enlightened part of the people, and so in this way I find out what sort of effect my laws will have. And when I am already convinced in advance of good approval, then I issue my orders and have the pleasure of observing what you call blind obedience.”
Catherine died in 1796, when George Washington was finishing his second term in office. Since then, the temptations of absolute power have remained great; despots have continued to appear, afflicting people everywhere. We have learned, at enormous cost, the difficulty of combining despotism with benevolence. Few rulers have even tried. Catherine tried.

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT K. MASSIE. “Catherine the Great’s Lessons for Despots; Russia’s erudite empress tried to redeem absolute rule; her failures highlight dangers still present today.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., November 12, 2011): C3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

For Massie’s full biography of Catherine the Great, see:
Massie, Robert K. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. New York: Random House, 2011.

Campion Plant Sprouts from 32,000 Year-Old Seed

“OLD DNA; A plant has been generated from the fruit of the narrow-leafed campion. It is the oldest plant by far to be grown from ancient tissue.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D1) Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.

This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel.
Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim, too, with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupines were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants.
. . .
The new report is by a team led by Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center at Pushchino, near Moscow, and appears in Tuesday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
“This is an amazing breakthrough,” said Grant Zazula of the Yukon Paleontology Program at Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada. “I have no (p. D4) doubt in my mind that this is a legitimate claim.” It was Dr. Zazula who showed that the apparently ancient lupine seeds found by the Yukon gold miner were in fact modern.

For the full story, see:

NICHOLAS WADE. “Dead for 32,000 Years, an Arctic Plant Is Revived.” The New York Times (Tues., February 21, 2012): D1 & D4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated February 20, 2012.)

Russia Boldly Seeks Oil in Arctic

“The Prirazlomnaya oil platform was brought to the Arctic seaport of Murmansk, 906 miles north of Moscow, to be adjusted.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) MOSCOW — The Arctic Ocean is a forbidding place for oil drillers. But that is not stopping Russia from jumping in — or Western oil companies from eagerly following.

Russia, where onshore oil reserves are slowly dwindling, last month signed an Arctic exploration deal with the British petroleum giant BP, whose offshore drilling prospects in the United States were dimmed by the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year. Other Western oil companies, recognizing Moscow’s openness to new ocean drilling, are now having similar discussions with Russia.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW E. KRAMER and CLIFFORD KRAUSS. “Russia Embraces Arctic Drilling.” The New York Times (Weds., February 16, 2011): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the article was dated February 15, 2011 and had the title “Russia Embraces Offshore Arctic Drilling.”)

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Statue of Mass Murderer Finally Removed from Gori’s Central Square

“Georgian authorities, seeking to purge their country of Soviet monuments, on Friday removed a statue of Stalin from the central square of Gori, Stalin’s birthplace. It had stood there for 48 years.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) GORI, Georgia — In the predawn darkness on Friday, Georgian authorities carried out a clandestine operation in Gori’s central square. Wrapping thick cables around Stalin’s neck and under one of his armpits, they hoisted him off the pedestal where he has stood for 48 years and set him nose-first on the back of a flatbed truck.
. . .
On Friday, the culture minister, Nikolos Rurua, dismissed reports that the removal was intentionally kept quiet, pointing out that several camera crews were present. He said the vast majority of Georgians shared his view of Stalin as “a mass murderer and a political criminal.”
. . .
Last summer vandals painted the statue’s base with the phrases “Get off your pedestal!” and “Your place is in the museum!”
Mikheil Jeriashvili, a 19-year-old medical student, said that he was delighted at the news and that he would be happier if the authorities “removed this statue completely, or burned it or something.”
“I would prefer if he had been born in another town altogether,” he said.

For the full story, see:

SARAH MARCUS and ELLEN BARRY. “Georgia Knocks Stalin Off His Pedestal.” The New York Times (Sat., June 26, 2010): A4.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 25, 2010.)
(Note: ellipses added.)