Author: Nargizian David

ARMENIANS COMMEMORATE 1915 GENOCIDE -DESPITE TURKISH CENSORSHIP
Submitted by Bill Weinberg

World War 4 Report, NY
April 25 2007

April 24 marks the 92nd anniversary of the start of the Armenian
genocide, and Armenians worldwide commemorated the "First Genocide
of the 20th Century" with solemn religious and civil ceremonies.

However, little more than a week before the anniversary, the United
Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed
its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon-in response
to objections from the Turkish mission to the exhibit’s references
to the Armenian genocide, which Turkey denies happened.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements were assembled in
the UN lobby on April 5 by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust
campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali,
the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres
there in 1994.

Hours after the show was installed, a Turkish diplomat noticed
references to the Armenians in a section entitled "What is genocide?"

and raised protests. The passage said that "following World War I,
during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael
Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide,
"urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as
international crimes." James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis,
said he was told by the UN April 7 the text would have to be struck
or the exhibit would be closed down.

Armenian ambassador Armen Martirosyan told the New York Times he
sought out Kiyotaka Akasaka, UN under-secretary general for public
information, and thought he had reached an agreement to let the
show go forward by deleting the words "in Turkey." But Akasaka said:
"That was his suggestion, and I agreed only to take it into account
in finding the final wording." Turkish ambassador Baki Ilkin said:
"We just expressed our discomfort over the text’s making references to
the Armenian issue and drawing parallels with the genocide in Rwanda."

Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to
talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is
happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction." (NYT, April 10 via the
Armenian-American website MezunUSA)

Historical material realted to the Armenian Genocide and a list of
global commemorations is online at GenocideEvents.com. They write:

During WWI, The Young Turk, political faction of the Ottoman Empire,
sought the creation of a new Turkish state… Those promoting the
ideology called "Pan Turkism" (creating a homogenous Turkish state)
now saw its Armenian minority population as an obstacle to the
realization of that goal.

On April 24, 1915, several hundred Armenian community leaders and
intellectuals in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) were arrested,
sent east, and put to death. In May, after mass deportations had
already begun, Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha ordered their
deportation into the Syrian Desert.

The adult and teenage males were separated from the deportation
caravans and killed under the direction of Young Turk functionaries.

Women and children were driven for months over mountains and desert,
often raped, tortured, and mutilated. Deprived of food and water and
often stripped of clothing, they fell by the hundreds & thousands
along the routes to the desert. Ultimately, more than half the
Armenian population, 1,500,000 people were annihilated. In this
manner the Armenian people were eliminated from their homeland of
several millennia.

On April 29, 1915, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. United States Ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire, had stated that "I am confident that the whole
history of human race contains no such terrible episode as this. The
great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant
when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted,
the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community
as a crime against humanity.

(Westender, Brisbance, Australia, April 24)

Tens of thousands of people silently marched in Yerevan, Armenia’s
capital, in the annual remembrance of the estimated 1.5 million
victims of the Armenian genocide. The official commemoration of the
anniversary began with a prayer service at the genocide memorial
on Yerevan’s Tsitsernakabert Hill. It was led by the head of the
Armenian Apostolic Church, Garegin II, and attended by President
Robert Kocharian and other top government officials.

In a written address to the nation, Kocharian evoked the increasingly
successful Armenian campaign for international recognition of the
genocide. "The international community has realized that genocide
is a crime directed against not only a particular people but the
entire humanity," he said. "Denial and cover-up of that crime is no
less dangerous than its preparation and perpetration." Nearly two
dozen countries, among them France, Canada and Russia, have formally
recognized the Armenian massacres as the first genocide of the 20th
century.

Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian said genocide recognition will remain
on the Armenian government’s foreign policy agenda, but also called
for normalizing relations with Tirkeu. "We remember our past, but
Armenia is moving forward, seeking to establish normal relations
with all of its neighbors," he said. Sarkisian voiced solidarity with
dissident Turkish intellectuals who publicly recognize the genocide,
and recalled the recent assassination of Turkish-Armenian editor
Hrant Dink who also challenged the official Turkish revisionism.

Said Hrant Markarian of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun): "A state can not live by denying its past. Turkey
must recognize the Armenian genocide as soon as possible for the sake
of Turkey’s future."

Dashnaktsutyun branches in the worldwide Armenian diaspora have for
years lobbied the parliaments and governments of Western states to
officially recognize the Armenian genocide. The nationalist party
controls one of the two main Armenian lobbies in Washington seeking
to push a genocide resolution through the US House of Representatives
this year.

While praising Armenian efforts at genocide recognition, Raffi
Hovannisian, a US-born opposition leader, sounded a note of caution.

"I believe that we must not excessively concentrate on or be very
buoyed this spate of recognitions because the Armenian genocide and the
loss of our people’s homeland is a fact affirmed by many historians,"
he said. (Armenia Liberty, April 24)

AAA: U.S. PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS IS PART OF SHAMELESS GENOCIDE DENIAL CAMPAIGN

PanARMENIAN.Net
25.04.2007 17:18 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In his annual April 24th statement commemorating
the Armenian Genocide, President Bush characterized the events that
began on this date in 1915 as "one of the greatest tragedies of the
20th century" and honored the memory of the 1.5 million "victims of
mass killings and forced exile" but failed to properly acknowledge
the incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide, the statement of the
Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) says. "President Bush’s statement
fails to take into account the shameless campaign of denial and
distortion," Assembly Board of Trustees Chairman Hirair Hovnanian
stated. "In memory of our parents, and grandparents who perished
during that time, we will make sure that the Armenian Genocide is
universally affirmed. Despite the attempts of the deniers of the
Genocide, the truth will prevail," he underlined.

The statement also ignores the political assassination of Hrant Dink,
who was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for
"insulting Turkishness" by speaking the truth. Hrant Dink was murdered
in broad daylight and became the latest victim of the Armenian Genocide
and the consequence of its denial.

ARMENIAN ORPHANS’ LEGACY – CANADA’S AID TO VICTIMS REMEMBERED
By Ian Robertson, Sun Media

Toronto Sun, Canada
April 23 2007

Lorne Shirinian always knew something dreadful lay in the past of the
"Georgetown Boys" who visited his East York family home as adults.

The author of several books about the 1915-23 killings of 1.5 million
Armenians by Ottoman-Turks heard whispers and saw visitors’ tears.

It wasn’t until years later that Shirinian realized his dad, Mapre, a
realtor who died in 1988 at about 82, was one of 109 orphans brought
to a farm in Georgetown for a new life, Shirinian told more than
600 members of the Armenian community at their Scarborough centre
yesterday.

Many became farmers, others had trades, and all became "good Canadian
citizens," Shirinian said. "It was a hard life … many of them could
never forget the murders of their entire families."

Each year, and until the last died about two years ago, many
"Georgetown Boys" he met through his parents attended a Sunday service
ahead of April 24, the date recognized by Canada as the anniversary
of the genocide.

This year’s 92nd memorial event focused on the children rescued by
Ottawa. Numerous speakers and politicians urged young Armenians to
keep alive the memory of the genocide and lobby for Turkey to stop
denying that their Ottoman ancestors tried to destroy their culture,
language and Christian faith.

Shirinian, 62, an English professor at the Royal Military College,
learned from his parents and their visitors that "all of us were
victims of some great wrong. It was a history I could have lost."

Keynote speaker Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, an historian specializing
in Armenian history, said the aid given to orphans by Canada "played
a key role" shaping this country’s attitude towards humanitarian aid
and peacekeeping.

ndGTA/2007/04/23/4113357-sun.html

RAFFI HOVANNISIAN: THIS DAY ALSO HAS MEANING OF DRAWING LESSONS FROM MISTAKES AND SHORTCOMINGS

Noyan Tapan
Apr 24 2007

YEREVAN, APRIL 24, NOYAN TAPAN. This day has not only a meaning of
taking a direct look at our historical biography but also a meaning of
drawing lessons from mistakes and shortcomings, Raffi Hovhannisian,
Chairman of the "Zharangutyun" ("Heritage") party said during his
interview to NT at Tsitsernakaberd on April 24. "We are the masters
of our history, rights and values, and we should protect them by
uniting all the potential of Armenia and the Diaspora," he said.

In his words, the Armenian Genocide recognition-related statements
made by various countries, parliaments and local authorities reconfirm
the fact of historical tragedy which consisted not only in the loss of
1.5 million human lives but also the loss of homeland. "The issue of
the Armenian Genocide is the imperative of our national perspective:
national interest, national security and democratic perspective –
their unity will bring us to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
and a complex solution of the Armenian-Turkish relations, with all
dividing problems being embraced and solved," the leader of "Heritage"
stated. He expressed a hope that Turkey striving to join the European
Union will change its state policy by the 100th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide.

US Fed News
April 20, 2007 Friday 6:48 AM EST

WISCONSIN: Sen. Plale Introduces Bill Regarding Special Observance
Days

by RAJESH SWAIN US Fed News

MADISON, Wis.

MADISON, Wis., April 20 — Sen. Jeffrey Plale, D-South Milwaukee, has
introduced a bill (S.B. 149) that would add April 24 to the special
observance days list.

The Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau provided the following
analysis:

"Current law requires school boards to observe certain dates (special
observance days), such as January 15 for the birthday of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. This bill adds April 24 to the list of special
observance days, for the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1923."

The bill, introduced on April 18, has 11 co-sponsors.

The measure was referred to the Wisconsin State Senate Education
Committee.

The full text of the legislation can be accessed at:
pdf

For more information about this report, contact US Fed News through
its Washington, D.C.-area office, 703/304-1897 or by e-mail at
[email protected].

"Russia-Armenia" press club to participate in World Congress of Journalists

PanARMENIAN.Net
21.04.2007 15:24 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "Armenia-Russia" Moscow International Press Club
will participate in the World Congress of Journalists due to be
held from May 29 till 1 June in Moscow, Viktor Krivopuskov, head of
Russian Society for Friendship and Cooperation with Armenia (RSFCA)
told the PanARMENIAN.Net. This decision was made at the first session
of "Russia-Armenia" international press club. Co-Chairs of the press
club – Secretary of Russian Union of Journalists and member of RSFCA
board of directors Nadezhda Azhgikhina and RSFCA First Vice-President,
member of Supreme Creative Council of the Union of Russian Writers
Valentina Osipova said "Russia-Armenia" press club will prepare a
wide program of professional meetings and cultural events reflecting
Russian-Armenian relations and role of media in its development for
the sake of peace and progress. Over 1 500 media representatives from
all over the world will participate in the congress.

EX-KARABAKH LEADER ASSERTS OPPOSITION CREDENTIALS
By Astghik Bedevian and Hovannes Shoghikian in Syunik

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 20 2007

Samvel Babayan, the Yerevan-based former military leader of
Nagorno-Karabakh, dismissed on Friday widespread suggestions that
he was pressured by the Armenian government into bowing out of an
election showdown with a brother of Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian.

Babayan and businessman Aleksandr Sarkisian were the main candidates
in a single-member constituency in the southeastern Syunik region,
in what many regarded as the most intriguing individual contest in
Armenia’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Sarkisian is strongly
backed by the governing Republican Party (HHK), while Babayan’s Dashink
(Alliance) party claims to be in opposition to the Armenian government.

Babayan unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy from the constituency
encompassing the town of Goris and surrounding villages in late March,
saying that will contest the elections only on the party list basis.

In an interview with RFE/RL, the once powerful retired general blamed
the media for the decision. "The media wanted to personalize things
and turn an ideological struggle into a personal one," he said. "I
just did not want to allow that and decided to score a team victory
[for Dashink] instead."

Babayan also dismissed speculation that the pullout from Goris was
the price he paid for being deemed eligible to stand in the May 12
elections. Under Armenia’s constitution, only those Armenian citizens
who have permanently resided in the country for the past five years
can run for the National Assembly. Babayan moved to Yerevan from
Karabakh in 2004.

"I have not met Robert Kocharian in the past two years," argued
Babayan. "We are an opposition, but an ideological, program-based one,"
he said of Dashink, dismissing lingering suspicions about his secret
ties with Armenia’s Karabakh-born president.

Babayan, who commanded the Karabakh Armenian army from 1993-1999, has
kept a low profile since he and several of his aides were reportedly
taken to Armenia’s the National Security Service for questioning in
early March. But he sounded bullish about taking on the authorities
as he kicked off Dashink’s election campaign in the southern town of
Echmiadzin on Thursday.

"We must find the strength to remove the government," he said in
a campaign speech there. "Otherwise we will be doomed to living
in slavery."

Meanwhile, Aleksandr Sarkisian, notorious for his flamboyant behavior,
seems assured of victory in the Goris constituency. The area close
to Karabakh has long been considered a de facto fiefdom of Surik
Khachatrian, the equally controversial governor of Syunik affiliated
with the governing Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).

Government critics fear that people there will simply be bribed or
bullied into voting for the government-backed candidate.

Earlier this month, Sarkisian visited the local village of Tegh, the
birthplace of the his father, on a campaign trip. "He said, ‘People,
I don’t like making speeches. Just elect me and I’ll then tell you
how I’m going to support you,’" Laura, a resident of Tegh, told RFE/RL.

The middle-aged woman admitted that she and two other members of her
family would readily accept a vote bribe. "We have three votes and we
would sell all of them. He will do nothing for the village anyway,"
she said.

But as one man in the neighboring village of Khndzoresk observed,
"They don’t have to hand out flour or something else. They just show
force and you start shuddering."

He said villagers are too scared to even report inaccuracies in the
local voter registry to election officials. "Whatever the governor and
the village mayor say has to be executed," he claimed. "If you defy,
your end will come."

A climate of fear is even more evident in the town of Goris where,
unlike in most other parts of Armenia, many people avoid speaking
out against the government or supporting the opposition loudly. "The
governor is intimidating everyone," explained one elderly man.

In Syunik’s capital Kapan and the nearby industrial town of Kajaran,
power effectively belongs to another senior member of the HHK. Maxim
Hakobian is the chief executive of a German-owned mining giant which
is the area’s main employer. "Our decision depends on the director,"
one resident of Kajaran told RFE/RL in reference to the elections.

"We do whatever the director tells us to do."

Hakobian will, no doubt, tell them to vote for the HHK and its
candidate in the Kapan-Kajaran constituency. That might explain why
local residents showed little enthusiasm when Raffi Hovannisian, the
leader of the opposition Zharangutyun party, visited the town on a
campaign trip to Syunik this week. Two of them stopped Hovannisian’s
campaign motorcade on its way out of Kajaran to apologize for not
approaching him and shaking his hands.

"We could lose our jobs because of that," one of the men told
the popular opposition politician. "There are no other employment
opportunities here."

Things looked similar in Syunik’s most remote district bordering
Iran. "If somebody from the Republican Party holds a meeting here,
all school students, factory employees, schoolteachers, and other
workers will be forced to attend," said one woman in the town of
Agarak. "But if the opposition comes to town, you’d better stay away
from the square."

EU: MALATYA ANOTHER INCIDENT IN SERIES OF ANTI-REFORM PROVOCATIONS

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 20 2007

The European Union believes the killing of three people in Malatya
is yet another provocation by those who want the reform process to
grind to a halt.

While the EU Commission has condemned the killing very strongly,
as did the Council of Europe and several MEPs, it thinks the motive
behind the killings was to stop the reform process that has deepened
since the AK Party came to power. A senior official from the EU
Commission told Today’s Zaman that those responsible were those who
were against the reform process, human rights and the deepening and
strengthening of Turkish democracy. Drawing attention to the murders
of priest Andrea Santoro and Turkish journalist of Armenian origin
Hrant Dink, the official said it was no coincidence that Christians
were targeted in all three incidents.

Meanwhile, Joost Lagendijk of the European Parliament’s Turkey
delegation, visiting the nearby southeastern Anatolian province of
Diyarbakýr, said the killings would send a negative message to Europe
and that there was paranoia about missionaries in Turkey. "The public
reaction to be shown against these murders is actually important,"
Lagendijk said, while also calling on the Turkish government to deliver
a call for tolerance. "Europe will perceive the killings to mean that
those who attempt to seek converts to other faiths in Turkey will
face a similar fate. It is very important for the government to appeal
for the acceptance of different religions and ethnic backgrounds."

In Seoul, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said murders in Malatya
would not be helpful for Turkey’s EU process. "I call on the Turkish
government to be diligent regarding democratic rules concerning
living together. The Turkish government should not let these kinds
of tragedies to change the political line that they have pursued,"
Prodi said. The right-wing opposition parties in Italy, meanwhile,
urged Prodi to inform the Italian Parliament concerning the incident
in Malatya.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the attack
"in the strongest terms," and said he expected Turkish authorities
would "do everything to clear up this crime completely and bring
those responsible to justice."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party, which
opposes Turkey’s bid to join the EU, said the attacks that included
a German citizen showed the country’s shortcomings in protecting
religious freedoms. "The Turkish state is still far from the freedom
of religion that marks Europe," the party’s general secretary, Ronald
Pofalla, said in a statement. Turkey is under pressure to guarantee
the protection and freedom of non-Muslim minorities as part of its
efforts to join the EU, but a recent series of attacks has raised
concerns that nationalism and anti-Christian hostility are on the rise.

In February 2006, Father Santoro, was shot dead as he prayed in his
church in the northern city of Trabzon. A teenager was convicted of
the murder and jailed for nearly 19 years. In January, journalist
Hrant Dink, a prominent member of Turkey’s Armenian community, was
gunned down in an Istanbul street. A 17-year-old, detained along with
11 other suspected ultra-nationalists, confessed to the killing.

SELCUK GULTAÞLI, Today’s Zaman with wires BRUSSELS, ANKARA

–Boundary_(ID_nXdOhzTQs3qLLbdY3OGa6g)–

PUTIN WILL STOP AT NOTHING
by Anne Applebaum

Spectator.co.uk , UK
April 19 2007

About two years ago, Mikhail Kasyanov, ex-prime minister of Russia,
made a private visit to Washington. Off the record, he told a handful
of journalists that he was disturbed by the authoritarianism of
President Putin. Then, in maybe a dozen or so more ‘off the record’
meetings, he told more journalists, several politicians and a
lot of other people in Washington that he was disturbed by the
authoritarianism of President Putin. In other words, he might as well
have got himself a megaphone and walked down the street, shouting his
intention to oppose President Putin. There was no reaction in Russia.

Round about the same time Garry Kasparov, the former world chess
champion, decided to abandon his chess career in order to oppose
President Putin. ‘Russia is in a moment of crisis and every decent
person must stand up and resist the rise of the Putin dictatorship,’
he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, definitely not off the record.

Again, there was no reaction in Russia – though an angry fan did hit
him over the head with a chessboard. (‘I’m lucky the national sport
of the Soviet Union is chess, not baseball,’ he said afterwards.)

Both men are now vocal opponents of President Putin – though any way
you look at it, they don’t have much in common. Kasyanov is a slick
talker, a technocrat and a former insider who is, fairly or not,
suspected of corruption. Kasparov is a blunt-speaking outsider,
half-Armenian and half-Jewish. No one suspects him of corruption,
since his chess career made him plenty rich.

But if the two have little in common with one another, they have even
less in common with the rest of President Putin’s open opponents.

They have little in common, for example, with Anna Politkovskaya, the
extraordinary journalist, Chechen war reporter and Kremlin critic who
was murdered late last year. They have little in common with Lyudmila
Alekseyeva, a former and current leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group
– a venerable institution created in 1976 to force the Soviet Union
to live up to the international human rights treaties it had signed,
now re-organised to protest against the creeping authoritarianism of
Putin’s post-Soviet Russia. They have little in common with Eduard
Limonov, a writer and ex-punk rocker whose National Bolshevist Party,
though best known for thuggishness and stunts, also opposes Putin.

Moreover, none of these opposition figures seems to have anything at
all in common with President Putin’s loudest opponent either: Boris
Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch, who told the Guardian last
week that ‘we need to use force to change this regime’. Asked if he
were plotting a revolution, he said ‘you are absolutely correct’
– thereby inspiring mocking headlines in Moscow about Berezovsky
following in the footsteps of Lenin.

Actually, I should rephrase that. It is perhaps possible to imagine
a bond between Kasyanov, a politician who knows the value of money,
and Berezovsky – though the former denies it. But a political pact
between Berezovsky and, say, Alekseyeva? A slick mogul who hungers
for media attention, and a ferocious, white-haired lady who hungers
for justice? Not a chance.

On the contrary, if there is anything that characterises this new
generation of Russian dissidents, it is their deep differences. Some
want street demonstrations, some want television time. Some are
incensed about the Chechen war, some are interested in personal
power. Some live in British country houses, others in grubby Moscow
flats. No wonder they have yet to formulate a cohesive movement.

Oddly enough, in their mixed motives and varying backgrounds this new
generation of dissidents does resemble its Soviet predecessors. They,
too, were unpopular. Peter Reddaway, then the leading scholar on
the subject, reckoned that at its zenith in the early 1980s the
dissident movement had made ‘little or no headway among the mass of
ordinary people’. Today, the mass of ordinary people are probably not
merely indifferent but actively hostile to Kasyanov with his liberal
economics; to Kasparov with his mixed ethnic origins; to Alekseyeva
with her high principles; to Limonov with his madness. Yet despite
this – or perhaps because of it – the Putin regime increasingly
treats these new dissidents in much the same manner as the Soviet
regime once treated its dissidents.

Until recently, the Putin doctrine of managed democracy was
relatively mild and rather clever. Although television was entirely
Kremlin-controlled, small opposition newspapers were allowed to exist,
so long as not too many people read them. Although they would never
receive serious airtime, small opposition political parties were
also allowed to exist. Anyone who went too far was slapped down,
of course: they could receive visits from the tax police or, if
they got too powerful, they could be arrested by the tax police,
as was the oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Still, this system was
mild enough to allow President Putin to go on posing as a ‘reformer’
for many years, and to continue being invited to the G8.

But in the past year or so, that carefully calibrated tolerance for
a manifestly weak political opposition has begun to deteriorate. The
visits from the tax police are now augmented by visits from the secret
police. Independent groups of all kinds – environmentalist, human
rights, even educational – find it difficult to register legally. Most
of all, two extremely open and brutal murders of two well-known people
– Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko – appear to have changed the
terms of the game. Politkovskaya was shot in broad daylight, in her
apartment building, by a confident killer who left his weapon at the
scene of the crime. Litvinenko, as we all know, was murdered in central
London with radiation poisoning. These were not murders carried out
by people who were anxious to prevent bad publicity, or indeed cared
in the least what the rest of the world thinks about Russia.

Most recently, the language used publicly about President Putin’s
opponents has begun to change too. No longer tolerated as powerless
oddballs, they have begun to appear in the press in a new,
more demonic guise. Kasparov is a particular target: last week,
the website Pravda.ru called him a ‘political pawn who has sold
his soul to the traitors who plot Russia’s demise’ as well as a
‘wild-eyed Azeri Berezovsky supporter’ who ‘sits amidst his Western
habits in his millionaire apartment’. The same article called the
new dissident organisations a ‘motley army of deviants, criminals,
wannabe politicians, fraudsters and gangsters on the fringes of
Russian society’. Nice, no?

Embedded in the insults is a deep, Soviet-style paranoia about
foreigners, who are suspected of supporting this motley army of
deviants with money and asylum. Though America is usually the main
target – the claim that the US funds Chechen terrorism comes up
regularly – Britain has begun to play a prominent role in this
line of public propaganda too. Since agreeing to speak at a small
opposition conference, organised by Kasparov and Kasyanov, the
British ambassador has been followed and harassed by a group of
thuggish nationalist Kremlin supporters, one of whom accused him of
assault. (‘When I go out of the house to buy cat food, they follow me
and start waving banners,’ he has said.) Now that London has become
the residence of choice for exiled oligarchs and ex-KGB dissidents –
Berezovsky is wanted by Russian police, after all – it isn’t hard
to find headlines referring to the ‘British Bullshit Corporation’
(following a news item on Siberian pollution: ‘Suppose the BBC tried
for once to report the truth about Russia instead of distorting it?’)
and articles gloating over the British hostages captured by Iran
(Pravda.ru wrote gleefully last week that the hostage incident had
‘humiliated’ Britain, destroying forever the ‘myth of their stoicism’.)

Soon, no doubt, the Russian government will be printing posters of
fat British capitalists in bowler hats squashing Russian workers with
their shiny boots. A recent survey reported that more than a quarter
of Russia’s leaders – in the presidential administration, government
and parliament – had served in the KGB or another intelligence
service. A whopping 78 per cent appear to have had some relationship
with intelligence services, clandestine or otherwise.

Slowly, Russia’s new political class is bringing not just a change
in rhetorical tone, but a familiar kind of violence. Last weekend,
some 2,000 members of the political opposition – among them Kasyanov,
Kasparov and Limonov – organised a march in Moscow. They were met by
9,000 club-wielding riot police. At least 170 people were arrested,
among them Kasparov, who was charged with ‘shouting anti-government
slogans in the presence of a large group of people’.

Kasparov has deemed these harsh new police tactics evidence that the
regime is ‘scared’. Others suspect the Kremlin fears a repeat of the
Ukrainian Orange Revolution, whose adherents used street protests to
change the regime. I am not so sure. The new aggression might, on the
contrary, be evidence that the Kremlin is now so self-confident that
it no longer needs to make any gestures to Western public sensibilities
at all.

There are many reasons why this might be so. That 80 per cent public
support – backed up by a television monopoly which gives no time to
potential opponents – is part of it. High oil prices are even more
important. Soviet dissidents at least knew that even in the darkest
times, they could get some attention paid to their cause in the West:
in 1980 a group of Russian women political prisoners sent a message to
President Ronald Reagan, congratulating him on his election. It arrived
within three days, to the President’s delight, infuriating the KGB. But
nowadays, the West is so anxious to please President Putin, and so
keen to buy his gas and oil, that Kasparov and Kasyanov can’t count
on much press coverage. Reagan is not in the White House; it is hard
to imagine a letter from a Russian prison raising many eyebrows today.

In the end, though, some of that self-confidence surely comes from
a sense of vindication. For a brief period, in the early 1990s, it
looked like the KGB was finished. Now it is back, and more important
than ever. If nothing else, the past decade has proven to Putin and
his colleagues that the values they imbibed during their years in
the Soviet secret services were the right ones. They no longer care
if others disagree.

Anne Applebaum is a contributing editor of The Spectator and a
Washington Post columnist and member of its editorial board.

IN AHARON ADIBEKIAN’S WORDS, FIVE PARTIES HAVE REAL POSSIBILITY TO OVERCOME 5% THRESHOLD IN ELECTIONS

Noyan Tapan
Apr 18 2007

YEREVAN, APRIL 18, NOYAN TAPAN. Among the political forces
participating in the coming parliamentary elections by the
proportional electoral system, the Republican Party of Armenia,
"Bargavach Hayastan" (Prosperous Armenia), "Orinats Yerkir" (Country
of Law), Armenian Revolutionary Federation, "Zharangutiun" (Heritage),
"Azgayin Miabanutiun" (National Unity) parties have real possibility to
overcome the 5% threshold. Those are results of the April 14 surveys
of the "Sociometer" center, which were made public on April 18 by
center head Aharon Adibekian.

The surveys were held in Yerevan and in 29 cities, among 1500
voters. It was mentioned that compared with surveys held in March,
the RPA rating grew about 20%, coming close to the "Bargavach Hayastan"
rating. The level of acknowledgement of the "Zharangutiun," "Dashink"
(Alliance) and National Democratic parties also grew among the voters,
compared with the previous surveys. In A. Adibekian’s words, besides
2 latter parties, the People’s Party of Armenia and the United
Labour Party also can have possibility to approach transitional
threshold. And in the sociologist’s words, the People’s Party headed
by Tigran Karapetian has serious problems of "loss of speed:" votes
of the PP "melt in the sun like snow."

According to 45.3% of those surveyed, the elections will be held like
the previous ones, with serious violations, in the opinion of 50.6%,
they will be fairer, and 4.1% found it difficult to respond.