..:czalex:..

Good relations between Brussels and Moscow are bad news for official Minsk

2010-10-27T00:45:00.002+04:00

The integration with the European Union is an increasingly articulated priority of Russia’s foreign policy in recent months. Analysts close to the Kremlin frequently stress the complementarity of the economies of Russia and the EU. The draft foreign policy programme published some time ago by by Russian Newsweek speaks in the same spirit. The fact that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will attend the NATO summit in Lisbon next month is another clear sign of a continuing warming between Russia and the West, and especially with the EU.

After all, throughout its history Russia was and remains primarily a sovereign country within the European civilization. Given Russia’s eventual inability to maintain its status as a regional pole of power equivalent in weight to the European Union or China, this will only be more vivid. Rallying several post-Soviet countries around itself, in the coming years Russia will naturally be more and more drawn to the linguistically, historically and culturally closer Western Europe than to the Islamic world or China.

There are two noticeable, although not decisive, factors that stand in the way of Russian-Western rapprochement and that sooner or later will inevitably arise as issues within this cooperation. The first is the authoritarian regime in Russia. The second is Belarus under president Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

At this stage the West does not seem to be expressively concerned with the progress of democracy in Russia. It seems ready to accept economic and geopolitical cooperation with Russia in exchange for putting a blind eye on human rights issues, at least as long as these issues do not become too serious. The Russian side is aware of this and therefore does not cross the line, leaving room for a limited but still possible realisation of certain political freedoms by its citizens.

However, the political circumstances and the irreparably worse image of Belarus, which, after all, is not far from reflecting objective reality, does not allow the EU to ignore the lack of democracy and massive human rights violations in the country. Oddly enough, criticism of the Lukashenka regime and a careful expression of concern about the state of democracy in Belarus is also a chance for president Medvedev to demonstrate his modernity and progressiveness.

The regime in Belarus should therefore not expect a controversy between Russia and the European Union and should not try to use it to maintain its own existence in the long term. Strategic interests of both Russia and the EU require compromise and a constructive cooperation rather than confrontation. Russia already does have a common border and maintains well-established contacts with the European Union and NATO. That is why Belarus can neither be a serious barrier to (an objectively impossible) military intervention from the West, nor can it be a full-fledged economic bridge between Russia and the EU. Belarus may facilitate this Pan-European integration, also by possibly creating a collective third subject of this process together with Ukraine and several other European countries outside the EU. Otherwise Belarus can continue to be a stone in the shoe of Russia-EU relations and create barriers and difficulties of a local nature, from which it eventually will suffer the most.

It is obvious that the Belarusian issue will not be a priority or object to special focus in the relations between Russia and the EU. More likely, the parties will aim to resolve it as things move their way. In the near future Russia will significantly reduce its dependence on gas transit through Belarus, after the launch of the Nord Stream and South Stream. This will produce a situation of non-contradiction between the strategic interests of Russian foreign policy and the interests of Russian oil and gas business. Therefore we can not exclude that Russia, which has a much greater influence on the situation in Belarus, will be collectively appointed to resolve issues with Aliaksandr Lukashenka. This can create an objective threat to the economic and political independence of Belarus from its eastern neighbour.

Anyway, the banal and the obviously correct idea that Belarus should build partnership with both Russia and the European Union, is becoming less and less utopian and even more urgent. All concerned parties are interested in Belarus ceasing to play a destructive role and joining the Pan-European cooperation. The Belarusian society is interested in this more than anyone else. The current leadership of Belarus seems unable to lead the country in the appropriate direction, leaving it outside of the regional context, largely isolated from the EU and in a permanent conflict with Russia.

There is a strong demand for a different foreign policy of Belarus, but as of now there is virtually no prospect of the democratic opposition, demoralised and weakened by 15 years of political repressions, coming to power. In these circumstances the appearance of a reformist clan within the ranks of the current nomenklatura is a matter of time. A different question is, whether the current president of Belarus will have time to realize it and to align to this situation.

//

// http://n-europe.eu/en/columns/2010/10/25/kamen_u_botse

Ukraine Becomes More Important as a Factor in Belarusian-Russian Relations

2010-05-07T01:49:00.001+04:00

In the last months Ukraine has significantly increased its importance in the European part of the CIS.

The new president Viktor Yanukovych enjoys a honeymoon with Russia: Ukrainian-Russian cooperation has started booming after previous president Viktor Yushchenko had left office. Ukraine and Russia have agreed on lower gas prices for Ukraine [1], on the Russian Black Sea Fleet staying based in Ukraine till 2042 [2]. Vladimir Putin has even made a sensation by speaking of a possible merger of Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz [3]. Added to this, there come smaller initiatives to establish cooperation (or to sell relevant Ukrainian assets to Russians) in nuclear power, shipbuilding [4], aviation construction [5], power generation and supply [6].

At the same time, since the times of president Yushchenko Ukraine is an important partner for the largely isolated Belarus. Ukraine remains one of the very few European countries having official political contacts with the authoritarian Belarusian government and the contacts have only intensified with Yanukovych becoming president. Ukraine has recently become the transit country for the important Venezuelan oil supplies [7] to Belarus. In April the Belarusian parliament has finally ratified the border treaty with Ukraine [8], which has been the key issue of Belarusian-Ukrainian relations since the collapse of the USSR.

Relations between Belarus and Russia are currently in a crisis since Russia has imposed duties on oil supplied to Belarus. This came despite establishing a customs union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan at the very same time. The disappointment with absence of progress in the Russian-Belarusian integration have led to Russia unilaterally transforming the relations with Belarus into a more pragmatic and market-based form.

Ukraine could threat Belarus as a new strategic ally for Russia in Europe, for it would be psychologically easier for Russia to impose a hard line on Belarus when it isn't the only faithful satellite on the European continent. On the other hand, Ukraine could potentially act as intermediary between the two. In any case, Ukraine seems to become a more important actor not only in Belarus' relations with the EU, but also in Belarusian-Russian relations.

// http://belarusdigest.com/2010/05/05/ukraine-becomes-more-important-as-a-factor-in-belarusian-russian-relations/

Nothing personal, just business

2010-01-27T01:59:00.002+03:00

My commentary on the Russian-Belarusian oil duties dispute, for Novaja Eŭropa on-line magazine

Let's admit, Belarusian authorities have no effective arguments in the current oil dispute with Russia. Therefore we must accept the fact that they will loose this fight sooner or later. In close future oil will become expensive, the Belarusian economy will face increasing difficulties, and a whole new stage of relations with Russia will come. Nothing surprising - we were going towards this all the past fifteen years.

Nothing to answer with

Note, Russia proposes to continue to charge no export duties for oil supplied for internal Belarusian needs. The new duties will only affect the (bigger) portion of the oil supply which enables the Belarusian state oil refineries to gain excess profits. Thus, it will first strike the rent part of the Belarusian economy which rather benefits from artificial privileges granted by Russia instead of creating a product competitive on the market.

Some Belarusian journalists support the official Belarus' position on the reasonable ground that a customs union, which our countries seem to be building together with Kazakhstan, by definition means removal of customs barriers and not their introduction. Nevertheless, the full terms of the customs union treaty have not yet been published.

In any case, it would be strange to see Belarusian authorities talking of the implementation of signed agreements as long as they themselves are responsible for actual sabotage of so many previously signed agreements - of all those treaties on a common currency with Russia and on integration with it in "unions" and a "union state".

Fundamentally, Moscow has the stronger arguments in the dispute. Belarus, unfortunately, has nothing to oppose Russia's pressure with. In late 2009 Russia launched the first string of the Eastern Oil Pipeline (ESPO), which runs from Russia to China. The construction of the pipeline will be completed in 2014. Russians have diversified markets for their oil, so its price for Belarus and Western Europe will now only grow. Why didn't Belarus, in turn, diversify its sources of energy?

The cursing miracle

Whatever the result of the Russian-Belarusian oil war, lessons for both sides were evident before and will be stressed again.

In a comment to the New Year's greetings by opposition leader Aliaksandr Milinkievič on the website of the newspaper Naša Niva, one reader wrote that he could not imagine this politician holding tough negotiations with the Russians on gas prices.

But as a matter of fact, tough negotiations with Russian monopolists shouldn't have become a New Year tradition for Belarus at all. Latvia, Poland or the Republic of Lithuania do not conduct annual dramatic negotiations with Russia on oil and gas, as they have no preferences and pay the market price. The Czech Republic has even built a gas pipeline from Germany to provide access to Norwegian gas.

To the contrary, the strategy of the Belarusian regime in the last decade has been the exploitation of Russian post-imperial phobias and the struggle for the preservation of politically motivated preferences in regards of oil and gas supplies. Sooner or later it had to end. Playing manipulatory games with the Kremlin is neither perspective nor moral, even though the game has so far been successful for Belarus. Relations between our two countries should be market-based: Nothing personal, just business.

Politicians make reforms only when the absense of reforms threatens the stability in the country more than the changes. Another new year's oil crisis has once again shown that the reforms had to begin a long time ago and that the so-called Belarusian economic miracle of the recent years was in fact a curse for the country. Belarusian authorities have had a major source of cash but the economy could remain unreformed and non-upgraded. Now the cash source disappears but market reforms in Belarus, according to Belarusian businesspeople, still haven't got the proper quality.

Finally, the independence of Belarus means market-based relations with Russia, plus the diversification of energy sources, plus market reforms in the country.

Rebooting relations

The news about Belarus' intention to cut Russian electricity transit to the Kaliningrad region could only have brought you a sad sarcastic smile: the verbal "everlasting brotherhood" of Russia and Belarus has actually turned into open hostility. It is noteworthy that Belarusian authorities have begun to threaten Russia with leaving the just created customs union almost since the very beginning of this conflict.

For Russia the dispute must therefore be another demonstration that any integration initiative can become an arms against Russia in the hands of official Minsk. The Belarusian regime can use every opportunity to accuse the Kremlin of sabotage of the "brotherly integration".

Therefore, both Belarus and Russia need a rigorous audit (and possibly termination) of the empty "unions". Not only is the pathos of the Belarusian-Russian integration untrue, it also discredits the very idea of any constructive relations between our countries for decades ahead.

The hangover from the long-standing pseudo-integration extravaganza will for a long time spoil the athmosphere of Belarusian-Russian contacts. Constructive relations with the largest neighbor are absolutely necessary to Belarus, but they apparently will have to start from scratch. The time for it is coming.

By Alexander Čajčyc

Read original story

2000s for Democracy in Belarus: a Decade of Disappointment

2010-01-07T04:09:00.002+03:00

January 1, 2010 will not be just the beginning of a new year but the beginning of a new calendar decade. It is a formal and conventional event, but that’s the way our perception is constructed – it is easier for us to view history in decades. Swinging Sixties, Greedy Eighties, Noxious Nineties. The 2000s (or “noughties”) will be a separate segment in systematized history of mankind.

For Belarus, it was a decade of dictatorship. The first full calendar decade under the unlimited authoritarian power of Aliaksandr Lukašenka.

We have entered 2000 under the red-green flag of the Lukašenka regime and leave 2009 with it still over our heads. In the 1990s the key year for Belarus was 1996, when, after the infamous referendum, Belarus turned into a country where the whole power is concentrated in the hands of one man. 2006, with its tragic and disgraceful defeat of the opposition at the presidential elections, has become a landmark year in the 2000s. The lesson we should learn from these years is that 2016 is either unlikely to become the year of Belarus’ liberation from dictatorship.

In 2000, that seems so recent, one might have thought that Lukašenka is there for not a long time. A year, or two, or three, and Belarus will at last be free. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004 has spread much hope that was not destined to turn into reality. The noughties have been a decade of disappointment for Belarus, a decade which has completely turned Belarus into a very special country on the European continent.

Thirteen years have passed since the coup d’état of 1996. During this time a whole new generation of Belarusians has grown up – another generation of people with Soviet mentality, even though it’s been almost twenty years since the Soviet Union itself doesn’t exist any more. We may remind ourselves of 1957, thirteen years after the Nazi occupation of Belarus has been replaced back by Soviet occupation. By that time the anti-Soviet partisan movement in Belarus and neighbouring Soviet republics has almost completely vanished. Perhaps, this was not least because the society had realized that the Soviets came to stay. The same can be said about today’s Belarus, with its tired, demoralized and split opposition; with the fact that Belarusians have mainly concentrated on consumption and primitive physical survival so that even the economic crisis does not initiate political protest.

In 1999 there could still be doubts, but the noughties have proven one thing to us. Belarus might have gained juridical independence simply following the trend set by Baltic countries and Ukraine, who had really struggled for it. However, we couldn’t have got democracy the same way. A whole range of specifically Belarusian problems came into play: weak national self-identification of the people, lack of political culture and absence of national elite, the unfinished process of formation of the Belarusian nation as such. All the dark legacy of the Soviet age, which might not be so noticeable to an outside observer, has realized its potential in the 1990s and became institutionalized in the 2000s.

Belarus enters 2010 as a very specific European country. A political system that rather resembles the relationship of a feudal and his serfs. An archaic economy, where the government has woken up with reforms twenty years after liberation of the socialist camp and where it is not clear, if there is still something to be reformed. A nation that missed the train of 20th century’s romantic nationalisms and represents a mechanistic community of pragmatic and indifferent people without native language and historical memory.

Any difference is a potential advantage. Belarus may be able to transform its difference into an advantage, to realize its potential as a land untouched by investors in the middle of Europe or as a cradle for a post-nationalistic pluralistic traditionalism. Otherwise this potential will be spent in vain with sad consequences for the country. There is no third option, and there’s not much time left till we find out the answer. It is, of course, necessary to hope for the better, but it may be far more useful to be prepared for the worst.

http://belarusdigest.com/2009/12/30/2000s-for-democracy-in-belarus-a-decade-of-disappointment

The Russian Way of Being Free

2009-12-15T23:03:00.007+03:00

My article for Novaja Europa about freedom and Russian mentality.

"The severity of Russian laws is balanced by their non-obligatory execution".

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Is Russia doomed to be authoritarian? In order to answer this question, we must try to analyze both the Russian mentality and the political history of the country.

Do not mix politics and "mentality"

A common place is the assertion that authoritarianism is a necessary part of Russian mentality, unlike that of other European nations. Thus, the current dire situation regarding democracy and human rights in Belarus is often attributed to the fact that the Belarusian lands have been occupied by Russia for over two hundred years. During this time, it is assumed, oriental authoritarian mentality and manners have been planted in what is now Belarus.

Another common point is the assertion that the seemingly authoritarian mindset has not prevented Japan and Germany from becoming prosperous democracies after the Second World War. Both countries, though not without an external stimulus, have built their "economic miracles" based on economic liberalism.

Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between the possibility of building a social system based on liberal principles and, on the other hand, specifics of business and labour culture (within a liberal economy), which are influenced by traditions and mentality. This also applies to Russia, where traditions of authoritarianism should not be grounds for the idea that Russian people are somehow predisposed to slavery and dictatorship.

In what way are Russians freer than western Europeans?

Western Europeans are accustomed to an institutionalized freedom guaranteed by law and custom. Western liberal legal culture has a long history: from Magna Carta and the medieval German urban communes where "city air makes you free", to women's emancipation and the desire to overcome the effects of racial segregation in the U.S. (as evidenced by Obama's election for president).

Legal culture in Russia has gone through the tragic history of the Mongol yoke and has been forming differently, also influenced by the huge territorial extent of the country. At the core of this culture lays the balance of power between the rigid dictates of the center, on the one hand, and fragmented execution of orders on the regions, on the other side.

At the same time the Russian people have traditionally learned to see a greater importance of "objectivity" and of a justice higher than formal law. The law has traditionally been of poor quality, and therefore required a critical approach. Russians have been able to develop this critical approach to a much greater extent than western Europeans. Law in Russia is not a norm to be executed, but at best a "guideline" or, in some cases, simply an obstacle to be overcome. Western Europeans are not accustomed to such wit and intelligence in relation to execution of laws. A famous Russian proverb says "You can turn the law the way you want" - perhaps in this respect a Russian is more free than a Western person.

The Russian conflict: man versus bureaucrat

Russia has traditionally had an authoritarian and usually irrational government, which hindered realization of the people's potential. The history of Russia is the history of an eternal silent battle between reason and the law, between Man and the Bureaucrat. Because of the poor quality of modern Russian legislation, enormous intellectual and organizational resources used to withdraw assets to offshores and reinvest them back instead of developing the business.

As a result of that, the small island of Cyprus has formally become the second largest foreign investor in Russia. Besides, countries that may potentially be used as offshores are the source for more than half of "foreign investments" into Russia: the Netherlands take 18.6% of the total volume, Cyprus - 16,6%, Luxembourg - 15,1%, the Virgin Islands - 2 8%. Up to USD 300m were being annually spent on bribes and kickbacks in Russia before the crisis. The large scale of tax evasion and license tricks greatly distorts national economic statistics.

There are also "everyday" examples of violations of the imperfect Russian laws. For instance, the prohibition of advertising of strong alcohol is being overcome by advertising vodka brands as mineral water, chocolates or even books - and that openly on TV.

Authoritarianism is considered a distinctive feature of the Oriental mentality, dominating in countries like China or Japan. But that authoritarianism is a functioning one, where people irrevocably subdue to the leader and do not grumble or sabotage the production process like Soviet workers did. Since the Mongol yoke, which largely determined the characteristics of the statehood of Muscovy and its derivative Russia, the Russian mentality is a mentality of a Western man enslaved by an Oriental ruler.

Italian-strike-like protest against the government, silent and motivated rather at a subconscious level, is a feature of such mentality. There is a corrosion of public institutions, but also is the converse: Russian society is capable of self-regulation and self-government. Along with the failing state institutions informal institutions arise. These informal institutions are often even more effective and more fair than the government.

Modern Russia: no czars and no great guiding idea

In modern conditions, where there is no will of the hated lord to be sabotaged, a Russian mind may start treating the legitimate interests of fellow citizens as this "obstacle to overcome". And this can, under certain conditions, become quite dangerous. In some respects such behaviour is demonstrated by the rulers of modern Russia. For the first time in Russian history these people do not feel some transcendental and spiritual mission upon themselves (by will of God Emperor of the Third Rome, the Head of Russian Orthodox Church, Father Czar), nor a secular but still global and pathetic mission (a Global Socialist Revolution, or, conversely, the romantic liberation from communist dictatorship of the early 1990s).

The current Russian leadership has been formed behind the scenes from representatives of middle and lower grades of Soviet and post-Soviet nomenklatura. Now these people do not have a boss over their own head, but are accustomed to act on the same schemes as previously. In such circumstances corruption becomes part of the governing mechanism, the real decision-making is quite different from what is defined in the Constitution. The state itself, among its priorities, pursues primarily the interests business groups close to the Kremlin.

In the 1990s Russia started a transformation towards a market economy and pluralist democracy. However, such transition could turn into stagnation, which apparently happened in this case. In such situation the "adolescence problems" may cause complications and increase the risk of destruction of the Russian state as such. Fortunately, considering statements of President Medvedev, some fractions within the Russian government seem aware of the danger.

Many peolpe speak a unique and special path to democracy and freedom for Russia. Those who use such rhetoric, if they do not aim to justify the de-facto deconstruction of democratic institutions, should really search for ways to make liberal reforms and to redefine the role of the state in relevant Russian national traditions. These traditions, these traits of national character existed before, and are still valid now.

// Novaja Europa

To Study, Study and Again Study Capitalism*

2009-12-02T22:48:00.006+03:00

My new article on market reforms and privatization in Belarus, for Naša Niva:

To Study, Study and Again Study Capitalism*

For several weeks, before and after the Belarusian Investment and Economic Forum, the media was being bombarded by news on developments around the privatization of Belarusian state property and plans for further liberal reforms in the economy of the country. Belarusian authorities finally outlined plans to make order in the Augean stables of the national tax system - the world's worst according to international rankings. Movement in the right direction is good, but its shortcomings must be corrected.

How to attract adventurers

The Belarusian economy is perceived as a high risk investment target. To improve the image of Belarus, more than just one year is needed. Old scandals (unsuccessful investors to Belarus in the 1990s, like "Baltika" or "Ford") are much better remembered than new success stories. No protection of investments, biased courts and the overall exotic totalitarian image of Belarus - the government has a huge scope of work to do. Positive changes must happen and be recognized by the international community.

Only adventurer-type investors would be ready to invest in Belarus now. For ignoring the risky image of Belarus they want high returns on their investments. Prospects of such returns are vague: Belarus doesn't have natural resources that attract investors to Russia or Kazakhstan It is hardly possible to transform Belarus from the "Assembly Shop of the USSR", as it was called in Soviet times due to Belarusian heavy industry supplying the rest of the USSR, to "a Small Assembly Shop Near the EU" because Belarus is not even a member of the WTO. Today, when Finnish wood processors sometimes find it easier to handle Russian wood in China, Belarus is not physically able to compete with Asian countries as an eventual location for foreign production facilities.

"To be proud of one's export potential is past century," a senior foreign delegates of the Belarusian Investment Forum said in a private conversation. Investors are more interested in domestic market and the effective domestic demand, on which Belarus is not very attractive, he added.

The government could sell state-owned companies, which it can't manage anyway, for a lower price, but today the Western investors have enough cheap objects at home. This makes them less interested in Belarusian enterprises. There are many assets for sale in Belarus, but many of them lack a realistic valuation, the forum participant complained.

Bluff as style

Arrogance and inflated self-importance are usual for the foreign relations of the Belarusian government under Lukashenka. Their speeches sound like foreign capital just can't wait to rush into the country. This is where the high prices for state companies, which still require a lot of work to be done prior to a sale, come from.

So, it was strange to hear Prime Minister Siarhiej Sidorski presenting the Belarusian centralized economy as a successful model compared to the crisis-causing free market capitalism. Just as free market has very little to do with the causes of the current economic crisis, even the Belarusian Investment and Economic Forum, where Mr. Sidorski has held this speech, seems specifically to have been organized because the old approaches to the Belarusian economy had stopped working. There is a need for Belarus to catch up two decades of market reforms. In 2010 Belarusian accounting standards will be brought closer to IFRS, the licensing system will be radically simplified et cetera. Just why couldn't it all have been done in the previous years?

Already too late, or not yet?

The Belarusian government only learns to act in the circumstances of a modern economy. There has been a comic phrase occasionally said by Chairman of the State Property Committee some time ago, according to which the government of Belarus had then finally realized, what the difference between transforming of a unitary enterprise to a joint-stock company and privatization was. However, some publications in the media or the sudden appearance of the still unitary Beltelecom on the privatization list for 2009 indicate that there is still large space for the elimination of illiteracy.

Belarusian officials have found out about such a thing as a listing on a stock exchange and carefully repeat words about preparations for IPOs of companies of the Belneftekhim holding. It brings optimism to hear such things from previously conservative officials. Professionalism of the key people in the government and their ability to learn - that is what gives hope to investors.

The reforms are advancing very rapidly and even demonstrate short-term benefits of an authoritarian regime, that is not burdened by a discussion of new legislation with the parliamentary opposition. The latter is what has been drowning reforms in neighboring Ukraine over the past years. The problem is that the effect of reforms and good international ratings can be expected only in not less than five years. Much earlier will we know whether the government of Belarus is not already too late with its today's reformist enthusiasm. Those who come too late will be punished by life, Mikhail Gorbachev used to say.

// Naša Niva, translated by myself and Google Translate

---

* "To study, study and study communism again" - a quote attributed to Vladimir Lenin

Ukraine's orange advance

2009-11-27T18:59:00.002+03:00

My newest article for Novaja Europa:

Ukraine's orange advance

These days have been the fifth anniversary of the the Orange Revolution in Ukraine - an event that has for several years shaped the political life in neighbouring Belarus and Russia. The orange color has since then irrevocably obtained a political sense.

Presidential elections in Ukraine of 2004 have turned to a play with a happy ending: a handsome, intelligent, positive Ukrainian-speaking Viktor Yushchenko has in a tense struggle won against the criminal, negative, bad-mannered Russian-speaking Viktor Yanukovych. The actors have picked up stereotypical roles and performed them on stage of the Ukrainian Maidan Nezalezhnosti square live on TV: tense hours and days of the struggle for vote counts, revoting, week-long concerts, demonstrations, the legendary victorious fight of Klitschko wearing an orange ribbon on his shorts, Yuliya Tymoshenko wearing the orange shirt of Shakhtar Donetsk. For many years Belarus and Russia's public political lifes haven't been giving us such a spectacle and the sense that the fate of the country could be decided by ordniary people. The forgotten taste of democracy once again, for only one month, came to our already Soviet-styled dissident lifes.

Supporters of democracy in Belarus and in Russia have perceived Ukraine's Orange Revolution much more emotionally than the Rose Revolution in Georgia a year before that. Georgia was a distant and strange country while Ukraine was here, so close and seemingly similar to us. Many of us watched the developments on the Independence Square via the Internet, came to demonstrations at the Embassy of Ukraine. The Revolution gave a burst of democratic activity in Belarus and Russia. In Belarus this wave broke in late March 2006. In Russia it has faded after several hopelessly undemocratic elections.

After five years, and in anticipation of the Yushchenko's upcoming resignation, we all ask ourselves whether the Orange Revolution has brought Ukraine what we wanted.

Unfortunately, Ukraine did not have its own Mikheil Saakashvili who would have used the window of opportunity for radical reforms and a radical improvement. Coming to power on a wave of enthusiasm, Viktor Yushchenko turned out to be not strong enough, and thus the moment of his election remains the most vivid event of his presidency.

Last five years in Ukraine were marked by infinite tense parliamentary battles, which are being so joyfully mocked by Russian and Belarusian official propagandists. Ukraine kept sinking in corruption, the economy landed in severe crisis. Ukraine has a democracy and poverty, Belarus and Russia are authoritarian and until recently had the dubious illusion of prosperity, which is now disappearing in Belarus. What is better? Ukrainian democratic government works badly. But at least it obeys the Constitution.

Indeed, the strengthening of an effective pluralistic democracy in Ukraine brought to light the overall lack of political culture: the inability to conduct a civilized dialogue between different political parties, the inability to compromise and generate solutions, the readiness to sabotage the functioning of the state. The fact that these phenomena have now so clearly broken out in Ukraine is in the long run still better than the situation in Belarus and Russia. In these autoritarian countries a democratic political culture is not developing at all.

Ukraine shows us the long path we still have before us to reach civilized political standards. While Ukraine is walking this path and while Ukrainians are learning from their mistakes - we have not even started to move. The way the Ukrainian parliament looks today is the way a democratic Belarusian parliament will look in ten years from now. What Western Europeans are trying to teach the Ukrainians now will be what Ukrainians themselves will be teaching us in ten years from now.

Ukraine has managed to avoid what has happened to Russia and Belarus. Censorship and propaganda on television, repressions against the opposition and shamelessly organized vote rigging - five years ago these methods of politics have been clearly set off the agenda in the Ukraine. Our neighbours have passed the test which Belarus failed in 1996.

During these 5 years Russia has finally turned into a sad example of a corrupt authoritarian petro-state, having buried expectations caused by the first relatively promising years of Putin's rule. During these 5 years Belarus has experienced the collapse of hopes for a democratic change in 2006 and was forced to start transformation of its authoritarian regime, for which the Orange Ukraine soon became an important partner and a bridge to the West.

Authoritarianism is ineffective and therefore short-lived and unsustainable. We see it in Belarus, where the existing system of governance has exhausted itself. Sooner or later Russia's rulers will face a similar destiny, perhaps with the same consequences as last time, when a late understanding ended by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In many ways Ukraine is now more stable state than Belarus or Russia. At least because the question "What will happen after Yushchenko is gone" does not contain this threatening uncertainty as the questions "what will happen after Lukashenka is gone" or "after Putin is gone". Heaven will not fall on earth, the country will not disintegrate, the will be no more revolutions. Yushchenko's victory gave Ukraine additional five years of crystallization of a pluralistic democracy, and none of the current political actors is strong enough to get the country under an authoritarian rule.

On the eve of the presidential elections in 2010 the disposition looks somewhat like a race between Yuliya Tymoshenko and and Viktor Yanukovych. Ironically, but watching Tymashenko's happy chat with Putin automatically makes one wish Viktor Yanukovych, Yushchenko's antagonist five years ago, to be the winner. It will be funny if he actually wins this election. But this victory will not be what it would be in 2004. The country is not the Ukraine of 2004 and well as Viktor Yanukovych is not himself of 2004 any more.

http://n-europe.eu/article/2009/11/27/aranzhavy_avans_ukraine

Nord-Ost: Terror in Moscow

2009-10-30T01:20:00.001+03:00

The Moscow theatre hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of a crowded Moscow theatre on October 23, 2002 by about 40-50 armed Chechen terrorists who claimed allegiance to the separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War. The siege was officially led by Movsar Barayev (aged 25).

After a two-and-a-half day siege, Russian Spetsnaz forces pumped an unknown chemical agent into the building's ventilation system and raided it. Officially, 39 of the terrorists were killed by Russian forces, along with at least 129 and possibly many more of the hostages (including nine foreigners). All but a few of the hostages who died during the siege were killed by the toxic substance pumped into the theatre to subdue the militants.

// Wikipedia

A good and terrifying western documentary about a tragedy do truly Russian: after a successful police operation the - already freed! - people died simply because they were not given the right treatment.

Forbidden to forbid: Georgia as Field for a Macroeconomic Experiment

2009-10-21T20:01:00.009+04:00

The idea to protect economic freedoms on a constitutional level has for the first time been thoroughly formulated in the post-Soviet region by the Belarusian economist Jaraslau Ramanchuk. In 2007 he presented the project of an Economic Constitution of Belarus[1]. This document was supposed to supplement the country's Constitution in terms of economic policy and to guarantee economic freedom for the citizens and limitations for government intervention in the economy on the constitutional level. This may look as an interesting, but utopian intellectual project for Belarus, but in Georgia it will soon be reality.

A liberal economic regime guaranteed by Constitution

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili proposes to protect and expand the country's liberal economic regime on the constitutional level. According to the Act on Economic Freedom and the relevant amendments to the Constitution, a draft of which he introduced to the Parliament on October 6. If passed, the new legislative acts will set limits on the size of government expenditures and public debt, prohibit the imposition of additional licensing and other restrictions on economic activity of private entities.

Besides that, it will be forbidden for the Georgian state to own shares in banks and put restrictions on convertation of the national currency or movements of capital. Any tax increase will have to be approved on a national referendum [2].

Given that the pro-presidential party has a constitutional majority in the parliament, the Act and the amendments to the Constitution are likely to be passed.

Georgia's success under Saakashvili

Just like any politician, Mikheil Saakashvili can be criticized for many things: for an authoritarian domestic policy, maybe for lack of flexibility and diplomatism in foreign policy (although it is difficult to imagine what a president of Georgia could make in order to avoid the war with Russia in August 2008). Even this initiative and the way it has been announced has a fleur of PR and populism on it. But what no one is able to question is the scale of socio-economic progress achieved by Georgia under Saakashvili.

According to most international rankings, Georgia has one of the most attractive environment for business and for investors in the region (and even in the world). Having almost no natural resources or major industries from the Soviet era, in 2004-2008 the country showed an average annual GDP growth of 9.3% which is comparable to the rate for Belarus (10% in 2008, 8.2% in 2007, 9.9% in 2006) with its preferential prices for Russian raw materials, Soviet industrial legacy and manipulation with statistics.

The flow of foreign investment in Georgia has not stopped even after August 2008 (although it dropped to USD 226.1 million in the first half of 2009 to USD 1.143 billion for the same period of 2008). Economic losses of Russia from the war in the form of capitalization of Russian companies fall (a few tens of billions of dollars), the withdrawal of capital from the country (up to USD 20 billion) and the drop in Central Bank reserves (USD 16 billion) were much greater than the loss of Georgia, so the question of who has really lost that war is not a rhetorical one.

Now Saakashvili together with Kakha Bendukidze, the father of the Georgian economic reforms and co-author of the Act on Economic Freedom, have led the country to a major turning point, when the economic transformation is about to get a real deeply institutionalized character.

The essence of the planned economic transformation

The new reform will not simply allow Georgia to get immunity from leftist populist politicians, because forced redistribution of wealth will be more difficult. Mikheil Saakashvili has a chance to remain in history not as a man who lost the war in South Ossetia or returned control over Ajaria, a different separatist region. Saakashvili and Bendukidze are starting an interesting large-scale experiment, perhaps unprecedented in the economic history. For the first time a country of several millions people will try to move to quite a revolutionary socio-economic system, which differs significantly from the generally accepted model of a Keynesian economy.

It is difficult to blame the current global economic crisis on the free market as long as the modern state holds the key control over the economy through manipulation with interest rates, currency or the amount of money in circulation, or even more through direct participation in economic life. Bendukidze and Saakashvili decided to give up some of these institutional postulates that seem to be axioms for ordinary people but which were not common practice even 100 or 150 years ago. If the experiment is successful, the Georgian experience might have a truly global significance, the example of Georgia could become an important step towards a new economic model.

Obstacles and successes: Georgia and other countries

The main thing that can prevent the success of the newest Georgian reforms are the well-known external circumstances and the well-known danger of war that hangs over the country. Those who wish the Georgian experiment to succeed may only hope for peace in the region. It is noteworthy that this reforms just makes Georgia very interested in peace with its neighbors: in fact, it is much more effective for Georgia (taking into account Russia's military presence, actually much more easy as well) to attract the Abkhaz and South Ossetians with social and economic progress than to return control over these regions by military power.

Circumstances have helped Georgia to carry out radical economic reforms: destroyed by war and corruption, the political leaders simply had no option but to make the economy regenerate itself by implementing radical liberal reforms. Reforms bring their results, and Georgia now looks very well compared to other post-Soviet Caucasian countries - Azerbaijan, where the economy is only driven by oil exports, and Armenia, corrupt and surrounded by enemies.

A low starting position, when there is nothing to lose, plus a strong-willed and well-educated authoritarian president turned out to be the ideal conditions for effective economic reforms. Belarus can only envy and closely monitor the Georgian economic experiment: the time will come to learn from the Georgian reforms, and it may come sooner than it seems.

___________________________________________________________

[1] for more details about the Economic Constitution of Belarus see here (in Belarusian)

[2] for details see here (in English) and here (in Russian)

// Novaja Europa

Belarus: a Reason for Cautious Optimism

2009-10-19T17:59:00.005+04:00

My newest article in the Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva, here translated into English (blame Google Translator for the errors! )) ):

Belarus: a Reason for Cautious Optimism

"For me there is no such country as Belarus," a British business coach told me three years ago. The man was proud to have taught in almost all European countries. More precisely, all except Belarus.

An isolated island between the EU and the more-less globalized Russia, Belarus just did not exist then for the international business.

Many things have changed since then. Belarusian authorities have started trying to diversify their foreign relations, to attract investments and privatize large enterprises. However, Belarus still remains a terra incognita for the international investment community.

The responsibility can be put on the global financial crisis, in the midst of which Belarus has entered the information field as an eventual investment target. The crisis dramatically reduced the number of investors and increased the number of objects for investment in countries with much lower risk than in Belarus.

One should still praise the Belarusian Government for its efforts: the economic liberalization goes on, even though sometimes strangely or slowly. There were statements as to Belarusian companies entering Western capital markets. There are negotiations on a tender among foreign investment banks to advise the Government of Belarus on privatization issues. Private investors are establishing joint ventures in the country. And at the beginning of the month the news came out that Beltelecom, the telecommunications monopoly, may be either offered for sale or transformed to joint stock company before the end of the year.

The backlog is growing every day

Despite the increase in the overall rating according to WB's Doing Business report, Belarus, according to the same study, has the world's worst (!) taxation system and is located in the bottom of the rating as to level of investment protection. As long as there is no progress there and as long as the government is using Soviet-times economic policies, especially related to price regulation, no investors will come to the country.

The Belarusian government seems to have set a formal goal of correcting two or three paragraphs of Doing Business each year: last year there was a sharp spurt in property registration and issuance of building permits, this year we saw a progress as to company registration. Hopefully by fall of 2010 we may expect progressive changes in the taxation system, international trade or protection of investors - the key framework characteristics to be improved by Belarus.

Besides that, it seems that the progress of market reforms is more concerned with implementation of formal criteria for Doing Business and is motivated by pressure from the International Monetary Fund rather than by the awareness of the necessity of these reforms for Belarus.

This applies to privatization, where the government is slow to pass key legislative acts. Negotiations on the partial privatization of MAZ, BelAZ, and a number of unprofitable enterprises are being held behind the scenes and opaque. Can the investor have certainty in this situation? There are two and a half months left till year end, and the public had not yet received a report about how the planned privatization of state companies is going on for 2009 - as it has newer seen a report on realization of the privatization programme for the year 2008.

Soviet culture of management, even in large enterprises, the inability to operate in a free market, and even poor English language skills - in these important aspects of Belarus remains if not the most backward country in Europe. The backlog is growing every day that the company is not sold to private investors who could modernize the business. With the growth of the backlog, the eventual privatization price goes down and so does the potential revenue for the deficit Belarusian state budget.

Belshyna on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

For the success of economic reforms Belarus needs an Agency for privatization and attracting of foreign investment, which would advise foreigners and inform the public about the progress in privatization of state industry.

It is not clear what the result was given an undisclosed amount spent on the British PR agency of Lord Timothy Bell. Interviews organized by the agency in the western media were rather some curious and exotic dictator interviews, but it is difficult to speak of their positive effect on investment attractiveness of Belarus. Perhaps the PR effect was the fact of signing a contract with Bell itself. Another effect was the sense that before engaging in PR you need to create something that would actually require this PR.

It would be interesting if the government of Belarus would organize at least one IPO of a big company, for example, the tire producer Belshyna on a stock exchange close to Belarus, for instance, the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The country should have enough resources to afford listing at least one state enterprise. In parallel, in such a case study would be to debug the legislation, which would allow to maximize the potential price of assets sold on the market in the future.

Belarus should use the experience of its neighbours and attract successful Eastern European reformers like Mart Laar, Vaclav Klaus or Kakha Bendukidze as advisers. Moreover it should make use of internationally recognized Belarusian economists like Jaraslau Ramanchuk or Aleh Tsyvinski. Unfortunately, it does not seem realistic that the government would do so.

Step into irreversibility

One shouldn't expect the return of politically motivated sponsorship of Belarus from Russia, therefore there is no alternative for Belarus but to attract foreign investment and to mobilize the entrepreneurial potential of the nation. The latter is possible only through economic freedom.

It is generally believed that economic freedom leads to political freedom. In fact, the demand for political freedom can appear only once there will be a group of wealthy entrepreneurs independent of the state. We have the example of modern Russia, where the regarding human rights, according to international organizations, is not much better than in Belarus, but where business conditions are much more favourable.

The Belarusian authorities have the opportunity to revise the social contract in the direction of stimulation of private entrepreneurship, refocusing on active and young people, as it is now in Russia. It is an uneasy but potentially very promising goal for the government of Belarus.

If the transformation of the economy will be conducted properly and if the country will avoid major economic shocks, the current regime will have time to adjust to new conditions and, possibly, to prepare for a step-by-step introduction of a pluralist democracy that will be demanded by its Western partners. With the progress of the reforms the Belarusian bureaucracy will adapt to them and start being interested in them.

Reforms in Belarus did not obtain the proper tempo, shape and transparency, but there is still reason for optimism: they have probably become irreversible. The effects of political and economic decisions are not felt immediately. But there is hope that after the past lost fifteen years, the country has entered a path towards constructive development.

// http://nn.by/index.php?c=ar&i=30692

A conversation about race

2009-08-11T23:42:00.003+04:00

A brilliant movie about racism and political correctness in the US. A must see for everyone, especially Western Europeans and Americans.

It is really a widespread bias in the West that "if it's aimed against whites, it's not racism". White people have a complex of guilt against the rest of the world - while it's been the white Europeans who have created this globalized world we now all enjoy benefits of.

The world should have one global currency

2009-05-05T19:25:00.002+04:00

A multi-currency system presents the governments a large field for export-import manipulation using the exchange rates: put your currency's exchange rate down and your imports will go up for some time not because your goods got better or cheaper or something - but for purely manipulative reasons. A whole system of risk management is in place in banks and foreign trade companies to respond to an artificial and unnatural risk as the one related to exchange rate fluctuations. A whole industry of forex traders is there to gain profit from not producing something, but simply from speculating on these governmental speculations. (I hate to sound like a primitive marxist physiocrat, but here it's the case when their argumentation sounds reasonable).

A globalized world should indeed have one single currency. Many libertarians, including the Belarusian economist Jaraslau Ramanchuk, propose a return to the gold standard. Even though at the university we were taught that abandon of the gold standard was quite an obvious thing to do (gold isn't liquid enough), afterall one can see the abandonment of the gold standard in 1970s as being politically motivated and driven by the US.

Still, more likely is it that the world will melt into one currency zone following the example of the EU. Regional currencies at first, to merge into one global currency zone after that. But this is something of a science-fiction scenario that could get real in a hundred or two hundred years. A big question is at all whether there would be enough motivation at all to abandon the multi-currency system and all its positive sides (possibility to generate profits from exchange rate fluctuations, possibility to diversify investments etc).

Non-Russian music from Russia

2009-05-02T16:53:00.002+04:00

Having listened to Huun-Huur-Tu, the famous Tuvan throat-singing band, I got inspired to search for some other non-slavonic music from Russia. It really gives an alternative impression of the country as big and as diverse as Russia.

Here an example Tatar pop music:

The beautiful national anthem of Udmurtia:

the Russian rock star Zemfira singing in her native Bashkir:

Сhuvash song

This Blog on BBC World Have Your Say

2009-03-30T19:48:00.003+04:00

This blog was quoted by BBC World Have Your Say on Friday. The topic was the racist statement by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, where he said that the world economic crisis was caused by "white people with blue eyes".

BBC people wanted to call me for a comment on the mobile phone, but unfortunately I was in a bus on the way to a RusHydro Seminar on Hydropower in Uglich. What a pity! :(

Still, I'm glad that almost all people in the comments there supported the idea that Mr. da Silva's statement was racist and unacceptable for a national leader. Racism is racism, ethnicity-based prejudices are ethnicity-based prejudiced.

Racist statement by Brazilian president

2009-03-27T09:44:00.004+03:00

Brazil president blames white people for crisis

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.

Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”

//FT

Now what was that for a second?

And this politician will get away with this openly racist (not?) statement? Oh yes, because as long as white people are libeled it's never called "racism". Should he have made a similar statement about black people, there would've been crowds of angry white (!) left-wings at Brazilian embassies all over the world.

Fight Club is the movie for the economic crisis

2009-03-10T11:32:00.002+03:00

Indeed, the best movie one should watch during the world economic crisis that promises us the worst recession since the Great Depression is David Fincher's "Fight Club". For economy is not your entire life. At least it should not be it.

Confederalization is Russia's only chance to survive

2009-02-20T14:36:00.003+03:00

A brilliant article in today's Gazeta.ru:

http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/02/19_a_2945783.shtml

I fully agree with the author.

Russia is a country too large to be effectively managed in a centralized way. And this means that the country has to be decentralized, has to be truly federalized (what it isn't now) or even confederalized.

You can't manage any problems in a same way in the Islamic Northern Caucasus, the Finnish borderlands and the semi-inhabited far eastern Kamchatka that have completely different economical, geographical, cultural conditions. It's impossible to even have a single educational system on a territory that large. Therefore functions should be transferred from the Federal power to local administrations, the more the better.

People should have the chance to achieve real changes on local level and not just to migrate to Moscow or St. Pete for opportunities and career. They should have the freedom and the responsibility instead of relying on the Federal government. The Federal government has to encourage people to develop their home regions - and the only way to do so is to decentralize the country.

Otherwise we will see Russia falling in parts as soon as it faces a serious economic crisis where Moscow starts lacking resources to control the regions. And this process would be accompanied by terrible wars that would make a second Yugoslavia, if not a second Rwanda, out of the Northern Caucasus and the Volga region.

On the other hand, there is the problem that confederalization and decentralization of a country like Russia may end in its collapse. We're used to be forced to live together and every loosening of the brutal binding power creates the temptation for the local elite to break away completely. Especially this relates to regions that are able to live separately like Yakutia, Kaliningrad (former German Eastern Prussia), Tatarstan, Vladivostok.

This means that some other motivation should be created for the regions to be loyal to Russia. One should not be proud of being Slave of an Empire, but should enjoy being a free member of a Federation that gives opportunities and is an attractive example for the neighbouring states.

How bad can the crisis get us?

2009-02-18T12:56:00.004+03:00

Somebody said that one should always hope for the better and be prepared for the worst. Looking at all those news related to the economic crisis, hearing about collapsing Eastern Europe, watching that incredible industrial production decrease percentage numbers, seeing the fund market's negative reaction on Obama's signing this Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Mr. Obama's election for US president itself should have already said us all that there's nothing good to expect), is makes you think of what could be the worst thing to happen.

Back to industrial age or even deindustrialization? Dissolution of the Russian Federation (I heard the Constitutional court recently officially re-approved the 1990 for-now symbolic Declaration of Independence of Yakutia, the Siberian republic)? An other world war?

Yeah, and here it reminds me of the Apocalypse scheduled for December 2012 according to the Mayan calendar. Would be funny to wonder in four years from now, how the hell the Mayas could have predicted it so precisely, heh?

Moscow yuppies and the economic crisis

2009-01-22T16:00:00.002+03:00

It seems to me that our generation of young Russian twens will be psychologically hit the hardest by the economic crisis. Today's Moscow yuppies and recent university graduates - how can they be ready for a crisis?

We were to young to feel whole gravity of the 1990s in Russia - no matter how hard it was, we were still children then and had our parents to care for us. I remember how we got humanitarian aid handed out in school in 1991 or early 1992. It was several tins of Danish Tulip meat conserves and a pocket of dry milk for every pupil and it was really the first time since very long before that we drank milk (no matter how bad) and ate meat. And - strangely - I did not feel suffering at that time. To the contrary, after that for a long time (psychologically the feeling went away only a couple of years ago) I had some inner impression that having bananas or yogurts on our table is luxury and that one could perfectly live without these now seemingly simple food products. And we really could survive without them and as a child I wasn't stressed about that.

In the crisis of 1998 many of us were still teenagers with our parents caring for us. I can not say for that time because we left to live abroad exactly 5 months before the August crisis.

Anyway, today my generation is a generation who became truly adult and economically active in the prosperous 2000s with oil prices above USD 100 per barrel enriching whole Russia and our sweet home Moscow in first line. It's only tiny 8 years since 2000, but the ones who just really started living in these years could get the impression that these wealthy years would last forever. It's bad when people take "special" for "normal".

We're not used to live in a crisis, we're used (or started getting used) to have our vacations in Egypt or, better, Spain, to take loans and buy cars and apartments. Our generation is a generation of young glamourous Moscow investment bankers, fund market analysts and brand managers. But it's not only about the top young bankers and analysts - there are much more middle class young people who work as white-collars in small (or big) companies just doing their jobs from 9am to 6pm and renting a flat, and they are going to be hit much harder than top professionals.

Psychologically many of us do not really know what it is to live in a crisis, to get fired having a loan to pay back. Only few of us can imagine what it is to go and work as a construction worker or to trade vegetables on a bazaar (*lol* I hope it won't get that bad, but still).

Of course, people have survived in worse times than these. Our grandparents had survived a world war and our parents survived the hopeless totalitarian USSR. What is a stupid economic crisis compared to a war or to decades of an isolated totalitarian system that seemed to stay there for centuries? We'll survive the challenge anyway and will hopefully remember these times as interesting and adventurous.

Russian ruble lost 41% of its value against US dollar in 6 months

2009-01-16T13:50:00.001+03:00

Bloggers write that today it's 6 months since the Russian ruble exchange rate starting falling against the US dollar. In June 2007 one dollar was worth 23.12 rubles and now it's 32.57 rubles.

During the same time the oil price went down from above 145 $/bbk to 45 $/bbl.

As sad as it is for Russian economy. The miracle couldn't have last too long without serious diversification of the economy.

Why Israel Finally Started Its Anti-Terrorist Operation in Gaza

2009-01-05T05:44:00.003+03:00

15 seconds: the time for people of Sderot, the Israeli town near Gaza strip, to get to bunkers to hide from rockets shot by Palestine terrorists.

Hamas rocket attacks were the reason for Israel's counter-terrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

The situation reminds of South Ossetia in August 2008. Ossetian militia were shooting at Georgian military units and villages for several weeks before Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili first called them to finally cease fire and then started the military operation. However, in Russian state media the whole was called "Georgian aggression against South Ossetia".

Now we had the Palestinians bombing Israeli towns for several months and intensifying the attacks after the end of ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in December. Once Israel finally decided to strike back we got the media around the world crying about "Israeli aggression" and about "Israel killing innocent people".

Here another even more shocking movie to get a feeling how the situation is seen from the Israeli side:

Let there be peace as soon as possible and let the terror finally stop.

Russian Finance Minister Kudrin: 2009 Worst Year Since World War 2

2008-12-28T02:06:00.002+03:00

Happy new year 2009: Finance minister Kudrin promises us a deficit of the Russian state budget as huge as RUR 1.5 - 2 trillion (USD 51bn - 69bn).

"2009 will be the hardest year for Russian and global economy. It will be the worst year since the end of World War 2", Mr. Kudrin said.

// http://www.vz.ru/news/2008/12/27/242613.html

Inflation will rise but the government still does not plan cuts in financing the construction of Sochi 2014 Olympic infrastructure.

Russians protest against the government rising automobile import duties

2008-12-22T14:38:00.006+03:00

Russian car-owners protest against the government's plan to seriously rise import duties for automobiles starting 1 January 2009. Mass protests started in the Far Eastern regions where the majority drives Japanese cars.

People say the rising of import duties was lobbied by Russian car makers (AvtoVAZ and GAZ and probably foreign players who have production facilities in Russia: Chrysler, Ford, Renault, Nissan, Peugeot-Citroen, GM, Toyota, Volkswagen).

I just found an other reason not to buy myself a car in the coming spring :,)

Kremlin-backed liberal party to attempt spoiling of the radical opposition's rally?

2008-12-12T21:40:00.004+03:00

As usual, Kremlin-created kinda-liberal kinda-opposition parties turn out to act as spoilers for the radical democratic opposition.

This time, the newly created pro-Kremlin liberal party "Pravoe Delo" organizes a demonstration on Moscow's Pushkinskaya square on the same day and almost at the same time when the radical opposition marches from Triumfalnaya sq.

It just couldn't have been more predictable. It's so sad to see a bright and talented man like Euroset founder Evgeny Chichvarkin involved in this thing. This is my first "minus one" sympathy point for Pravoe Delo.

No chance for them to win sympathy of Russian liberals if they keep on acting as a spoiler party for the democratic opposition, no matter how good or bad the latter is.

Unemployment in Chechnya over 65%

2008-12-09T12:07:00.005+03:00

An impressive number: according to the Russian governmental statistics service, 65.3% of the population of the sadly known republic of Chechnya is unemployed (Source).

I wonder what all those people are just doing out there? Probably, a large part of the employed is simply working for the local government or in local military units (police, president Kadyrov's private guard etc). The unemployed must mostly be living from shadow economy or own-grown food.

Since the end of the Chechen war, the republic keeps living on subsidies from the Federal government that keep the former rebels from starting a new war again. As oil price has already shrunk below all pessimistic forecasts, and so may the state budget of Russia, hot times may come back to North Caucasus.

The Soviet Story (Padomju stāsts, 2008)

2008-11-30T00:35:00.001+03:00

The Soviet Story (Padomju stāsts), a 2008 Latvian documentary about Communist crimes (in English and Russian with Latvian subtitles). Includes interviews with Russian and European historians, a Finnish EU Parliament Member, a former member of KPSU Central Committee, with the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. Very worth seeing.

Part 1: http://irc.lv/video?id=YrHosaqsKcUW

Part 2: http://irc.lv/video?id=q8Fyk1CH4vUw

The very good thing about this movie is that it underlines that roots of Soviet terror lay in Marxist ideology itself. Stalinist USSR was not a misinterpretation of Marx' Socialism - it WAS Socialism just as Socialism was supposed be.

Hitler was a National Socialist and the Soviets claimed to be "International" Socialists. There's no difference as all of them were fans of social engineering and constructed totalitarian states that should define and control all aspects of a person's life. Hitler killed people according to their ethnicity, Stalin killed people according to their social status. I'd call that difference a matter of taste.

There must be a Nuremberg Trial for Communist crimes. Not really to forbid something - but for people to get the right attitude to the USSR and to left-wing ideology. Although it's "uncool" today to be a fan of Hitler and "not very cool" to be a fan of Stalin, it is still completely acceptable to be Marxist or Maoist and even "cool" to be a fan of Che Guevara. While there's not really a big difference between them all.

Russian rouble to fall soon?

2008-11-11T17:03:00.002+03:00

Seems like devaluation of the Russian rouble is on its way:

1. «Я не исключаю повышения гибкости валютного курса рубля <...> с некоторой тенденцией к ослаблению рубля в отношении иностранных валют», — предупредил Игнатьев.

"I do not exclude an increase of the flexibility of rouble exchange rate <...> with a tendency towards weakening of the rouble against other currencies" - Sergey Ignatiev, head of Russian Central Bank

2. На наш взгляд, резкая девальвация национальной валюты, с макроэкономической точки зрения, более предпочтительна, чем постепенное ослабление, так как в последнем случае значительные ресурсы страны в течение длительного периода времени отвлекаются от реального сектора и начинают использоваться в валютных спекуляциях. Мировой опыт подобной политики, в том числе и в России 90-х, показывает, что резкого падения курса национальной валюты все равно не избежать"

"In our opinion, a radical devaluation of the national currency is <...> more preferable than a gradual one<...>. Global experience <...> shows us that a drastic fall of the national currency exchange rate can't be avoided anyway" - Raiffeisenbank analysts

Kinda debut...

2008-06-07T15:59:00.001+04:00

Svyazinvest should not be broken up ahead of privatisation, AFK Sistema will participate in tender

Svyazinvest, the Russian, state-owned telecommunications group, needs to be privatised as as a whole and not be broken up in separate parts, AFK Sistema chief executive officer Alexander Goncharuk told dealReporter.

Speaking shortly before his resignation from the CEO position at Sistema last week, Goncharuk, whose company controls a blocking 25% + 1 share stake in Svyazinvest, said that the Russian government has already approved a privatisation plan for the company. He was, however, unable to reveal the plan due to confidentiality undertakings.

Both Svyazinvest and the Russian Federal Agency for Federal Property Management (Rosimushchestvo) that controls a majority stake in the company declined to comment regarding the future privatisation of the company.

In a formal interview in his Moscow office, Goncharuk said that it was his opinion that Svyazinvest should be privatised as a single entity rather than being broken into parts. He also said that the subsidiaries of Svyazinvest would be consolidated and then merged into the Svyazinvest holding company.

Goncharuk said that breaking up Svyazinvest would entail the separate privatisation of profitable and unprofitable regional service providers that are now subsidiaries of the overall holding. Of 18 companies in which Svyazinvest owns stake, only five are profitable and are practically used to subsidise the rest.

He said that the privatisation of parts of Svyazinvest would be difficult as prospective buyers would seek to cherry pick the company’s best assets and not the company’s loss-making operations.

He also said that the divisions of Rostelecom used for strategic government services will more than likely be separated and kept under state control. Also, there will probably be limitations set for future private owners so that the communication needs of the depressed and geographically disadvantaged regions, for instance, of the far north, will still be satisfied.

Goncharuk added that Svyazinvest has urgently to be privatised because of the company’s managerial weakness and inability to keep on track with technological advances. The company’s equipment does not get renewed and becomes increasingly obsolescent. Svyazinvest needs an efficient owner and this owner could only be a private one. Besides that, without a private owner Svyazinvest would not be able to cope with its current debts and attract new loan stock, Goncharuk said.

Goncharuk stated that AFK Sistema will definitely be among participants of the privatisation process. Among others, there will probably be interest from oil companies as they tend to show interest in high-tech and media sectors. An obstacle for them may be limits set to participants of the tender.

For instance, a limitation can be set allowing only established telecommunication companies to bid. Foreign investors may be allowed to take part in the auction but are unlikely to. Recent changes in the government and the new role of former telecommunication minister Leonid Reiman do not change the situation significantly because decisions are made on a “far more senior level,” Goncharuk said.

However, a top Russian industry source said that Reiman was a key player in the government’s planned privatisation of Svyazinvest and will maintain an important role in the privatisation process.

While he no longer has a formal position in the current government, Reiman is a direct advisor to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

However, the deputy director general of Russian investment bank Kit Finans, Maxim Tsyganov, said he does not believe that the privatisation of Svyazinvest is currently the best option for the company. In his opinion, the privatisation must be preceded by significant improvements of the corporate governance and an overall reorganisation.

”A simple transfer of the company to a private owner is not in the interest of the government as the current shareholder,” Tsyganov said.

Svyazinvest is a unique asset that presents a good platform for telecommunication business development in Russia.

Due to the current stable economic situation in Russia, the state budget does not need additional finance, and can even make investments in Svyazinvest to increase the company’s market value. A possible scenario of the company reorganisation should start with a consolidation, followed by a business model improvement and only then should it be privatised, he said.

Still, Tsyganov did not state the probability of the government deciding not to start the privatisation process. Kit Finans would not invest in Svyazinvest if it were privatised, Tsyganov said, but it may buy shares of the company on behalf of its clients if they show interest in it.

Svyazinvest is a Russian state-owned telecom holding company that holds a majority stake in seven inter-regional fixed line service providers (CenterTelecom, North-West Telecom, VolgaTelecom, Southern Telecom Company, Uralsvyazinform, Siberia Telecom, Dalsvyaz), and holds stake in other companies mostly related to telecommunication: Central Telegraph (51%), Dagsvyazinform (51%), Rostelecom (51%), Giprosvyaz (51%), MGTS (28%), Kostroma GTS (37%), MobiTel (100%), Svyaz-Bank (1%), United registration company (9%), StarKom (25%) and RTComm.Ru (0.5%).

// me for dealReporter

Belarus not in CEE?

2007-11-27T18:33:00.000+03:00

An interesting research on Roland Berger's website: CEE Headquarters: Effectively managing a fragmented growth region

Belarus is for global business as usual a Terra Incognita in the centre of Europe: no information on Belarus on p. 6 (although the GDP growth rates and population could have been found easily), and an expressive "?" on Belarus' map for wage cost relation on p. 7 (my estimate would be around 27). The country simply does not exist for westerners. Not because they want to, but because it really does not exist as a place to consider as a potential investment goal. A pity now, but - may be a great opportunity for the future, when it will finally be over with the regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

On the Social and Political Role of Audit

2007-10-17T15:26:00.000+04:00

Audit plays an important symbolic role in the economy and society. May sound odd, but one could speak of the social and political role of the auditing profession.

We are all used to the state having the central controlling function, meant to be on behalf of the society. But the more the society liberates itself from the state’s meddlesome “services”, the better. The state is per definition a bad and inefficient service provider, not only historically and in terms of its “corporate culture”, but also simply because of its scale: a small local enterprise will certainly be better able to concentrate on the demands of the local “small” ordinary people than a big universalized machine trying to fit all the interests of all the multiple different people at the same time. The same with the state: it has traditionally has the goal to be “everything for everyone”, grant welfare to all the people. But as a result it just wastes time, money and human resources; or is more often just an instrument of influence in the hands of certain immoral persons.

So, audit is exactly the instrument and hopefully only one of the first signs of how a society can take over the functions of the state. As far as not only the shareholders, but also the general public too, are users of the audited financial statements, here we see how a company builds its relations with the society. I don’t like the word “public control” as no one should control anything that is not his private property – and a private company is certainly anything but a “private property” of the public. But what we see here is exactly how a company communicates with the society and the society “has its eye” on the company without a slight participation of the archaic bureaucratic state in the process.

Of course, the bureaucrats are trying to put their fingers into auditing and establish their control there. Remember the stupid situation with the Russian authorities getting PwC to court for the audit of YUKOS.

At the end of the day, the auditing firm’s only real asset that allows it to do business is reputation. The auditor simply states that after having done some procedures it has the impression of the financial statements to be true and fair. Not more and not less then that, and whether to rely on the auditor’s statement or not – is up to the individual user of the financial statements. Of course one will be more likely to rely on them is the auditor is Deloitte or E&Y than if the statement comes from some unknown little audit company. But even if having trusted a brand – it’s always, always the user’s own risk and decision.

That’s how important audit is as a symbol of civil society’s self-regulation replacing the state. In some way it makes me proud to have worked in this noble profession, no matter how hard it was at some times and how much the work process itself has to be improved and will be improved as technology advances.

"European Choice" As A Ticket to "Titanic"

2007-10-10T09:20:00.000+04:00

A translation of my yesterday's post to http://www.pozirk.org/ by the guys from http://blogs.tol.org/belarus

The "European Choice" as a Ticket to the "Titanic"
It is more than popular in the democratic community now to talk about European standards and that Belarus should follow the European path, introduce “European reforms” to comply with “European Quality Standards”. No one explains what it is, being European, making a “European Choice”, but everyone for sure knows that it is something attractive, sweet, warm, and tasty. Chruschov promised every family to have a flat and live in communizm by 1980. Like this, lots of naive people in Belarus suppose that Belarus should join the EU by ANY means, and the effect of this accession will be close to that of getting into comunizm waters.

Therefore when I read those calls to come to European March, I simply don’t know what to feel or think. Please don’t misinterpret me: we should go there - but for a different reason.

Calls for eurointegration resemble calls to provide everyone with free meet for the rest of their lives: here is an example of a typical logic employed today:

"Belarusian pension is something you can only cry on, not live on. Like an elderly lady who had worked all her life like an accountant asks why a German accountant who had worked at the same job, with the same responsibilities (but only in Germany) gets 600 EUR pension and can travel on that. Whereas she gets only 150 USD. They both worked the same time, with the same effort, but the Belarusian lady can survive only with her sons help, whereas the German Frau can travel around Europe. This cry shows all! The lady wants to live in Europe, get European pension for a European work . And the only thing that barrs her from that is that she lives outside Europe. Just a bit outside… "

So, what are we being offered now? That Europe is a magic key to all our problems. Should it come - and our life will turn into heavenly succession of problemless days. But it is never immediate. The German and the Belarusian accountants did DIFFERENT things as they worked for different economies. The Soviet woman worked for an ineffective socialist economy which was destined to die, sooner or later. This is the real tragedy, and not only of that lady in question, but of millions of people who wasted their effort to do useless work for a useless system. C’est la vie.

Democratization and europezation won’t GIVE people their long-wished well-being: they will ALLOW them to EARN it through hard work. It is difficult to fight agains Lukashist populizm without being a populist yourself, but democratic populism still remains demagogy, from whatever side it comes. Or may be Belarusian nation can not accept more complicated arguments?

No one asks a question how long European heaven will hold and what will it bring us. We just hear a “hardtalk” which all the time finishes in a conclusion that “we should move to Europe coz we are Europeans”, and that “when we join the EU, we will start earning like the Europeans”.

However, eventual accession of Belarus to the European Union brings lots of negative things as well. Bureaucratic apparatus created by Brussels weighs so much that the “old Europe” economy almost does not grow. This is the reality where shops are forbidden to work after 7 and where tax pressure exceeds 50% on average. These tax money are further redirected into such welfares when unemployed people get subsidies reaching an average salary in their country. They are also transferred into salaries of bureaucrats in Brussels. Salaries which are more than high.

This is a real social union. And social union (or state) is inflation plus unemployment, and that exactly what we see in the EU case. If it had been limited by just some states - one could carry that, but such standards are being imposed on all new members. Say, Estonia had to stop its several liberal trade programs and even increased import tax for some non-EU goods just because membership conditions required that.

European socioeconomic model does not simply deeffectize economy, but turns some categories of people into parasites (in a milder form than in social economies, but they still think that the state should take care of them in difficult situations).

And this is the main thing that immigrants living on subsidies in their ghettos learn about European life. And what is the awfulest thing here - that those people living on subsidies are RATIONAL in their behaviour: “Why should I care when the state will take care about me. Why should I work when the industrious pay half of their income to support such lazybones like me?”
// Source

Actually, there was also a second part of the post published today, hopefully they will translate it as well

UPD here it is:

Talented people were usually leaving Europe for America and Canada, and had been doing that till the very recent days. Entrepreneurs could realize their ambitions much easier in more liberal United States, Australia, or Canada, than in socialist Europe. Just recall Arnold Schwarzenegger who quitted his European Austria for the US dream.

Demographically Europe is dying, and after 50 years is going to turn into one big house for elderly people. That concerns not just the age, but also dinamism, innovativeness, proactiveness of position. Even now Western Europeans are the people who need nothing else from the world but to have their social guarantees and a croissant in the morning. They are sure the state will take care of them. And as a result, European culture is retreating under a passionate influence of active immigrants from Turkey, Africa or the Middle East.

Economically, countries of South-Eastern Asia together with the USA, Brasilia, India, and China are going to dominate in the world of the 21st century. Ok, adding up Russia whose oil influence will not decrease until Chinese economy is growing. The EU has no strategy for development, and has no clear view for the next 10 years. This might end in one of the 2 variants; either acceptance of liberal values and imminent economic and political increase, or a crisis with a post-acception of liberal values. Now Europe walks more the second way.

Once having joined the EU, there will be no way back. Accession to the Union means loss of state sovereignty. Once and forever. And this is not just about national honour, but about a simple ability to act as you want without a repressive influence of the social bureaucratic EU machine from outside. The machine which has no idea of what is going within. The Union is bound to centralize more as time passes, with local and national powers being left just with current-day questions to solve. As a small country, Belarus will have no weight inside the EU. And when joining, the EU will centralized more than ever.

Do we want Belarus to become part of such construction? After mere 15 years of independence to have come after 300 years of historical absence, do we really want to become pensioneers of this world?

There is a sence for Belarus to become a part of NATO. Accession to this organization will mean a guarantee for us that we are not going to assaulted again; this is a sign of democratic, choice in favour of freedom, democracy, and progress. A guarantee that not a single Eurasian empire will take our country out of that.

We need a non-visa and free-trade regime with the EU - exactly like with the other neighbors and in general with as many countries - as possible. But by no means we need to hang ourselves on the chain of eurobureaucrats, which depend on those social regime, and by no means we need to abandon our state sovereignty.

We should say NO to fetishization of the EU; we don’t have to behave like Georgia or Albania begging to accept us into the European family: we ARE Europeans. We should aim not at the EU accession, but at building a market competitive economy which would allow all people to earn decently and live with honour, which is based on democratic principles. Eurointegration might be a means on that way, but not an objective in itself.

There is only one valid argument in favour of European choice which can cross all arguments against. Pragmatic reality often dictates the choice which is far from the desired one. After years of anti-NATO ideology and in the wake of the fact of the NATO allergy people have now, the only option against new integration into an “Axis of Freedom” of some Eurasian dictators or into some new formation of the CIS which strengthened revanchist Russia will start assembling is a socialist, but at least democratic UE.

Good news!

2007-08-12T13:08:00.000+04:00

After quitting smoking, having one or two drinks a day is the best single thing you can do for your cardiovascular health. It's better than losing weight, better than getting more exercise, and better than lowering your cholesterol.

[...]

The benefits to alcohol consumption are absolutely clear. Drinking five to six drinks a week reduces the risk of sudden cardiac death by 79 percent. It cuts heart attack risk, both in men who exercise and eat right and in men with hypertension. It also protects against type-2 diabetes and gallstones. In middle-aged women, moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with a 17% reduction in death from all causes.

// Wisebread.com

I'll quit smoking one day, I promise! )

Atlas Shrugged

2007-07-05T02:43:00.000+04:00

My essay on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", kindly translated from Belarusian by the guys from TOL Blog Belarus

***

written by czalex
translated by meramo

The world of Ayn Rand might seem exaggerated, but if you take a minute and look around, read the news, you can see this world: a world we live in. Characters of corrupt politicians, of so called "public opinion leaders", for whom "there's no black and white" but only gray unscrupulousness – all these things are described in the book. Positive characters – strong, conscientious men and women. They, may lack some "human" features, some liveliness or human weakness. But it's so because Rand first of all a great essayist, and only then – a writer.

"Atlas Shrugged" is a famous novel by the American philosopher Ayn Rand. It's among the first books in the genre of a business-novel, and is the first fiction book in the library of 3dWay. The novel was published in 1957 and was later recognized as one of the best and most important literature works of the 20th century. The story takes place in an unclear period in the future in the United States. Almost all countries of the world have become socialistic "people's republics". The USA is one of the last democratic and market-oriented countries, but is following other countries' path very quickly. The economy is in recession and survives only because few profitable enterprises led by talented and skilled businessmen. One of these companies is Taggart Transcontinental, a railway company . Its chief is Dagny Taggart, the book's main hero, has to fight for her business under the press of corrupt bureaucracy, which introduces more and more restrictions of the business initiative and as by that only worsens the situation.

Ayn Rand describes an absurd world and society where a person's disadvantage is the cause for rewards, where the initiative, intellect and ability for a creative work are punished by the obligation to take care of losers. This world is ruled by people who can talk about spirituality and refusal of the material while living in dirty bungalows instead of prosperous cities burned as a result of their Utopian "human-loving" projects. The rich ones have to take care of the poor, the strong ones – of the weak , the successful ones – of losers, the talented ones – of the untalented and the intelligent ones – of fools. Sweet speeches about public interests hide the real faces of amoral and corrupt people. Public life in these cruel conditions becomes entailed by oppression and violence, which lead the country to a complete disaster.

But there are people who resist the system, the "atlases" who hold this world on their shoulders – the business elite. The state uses them as it wants. But as they give wealth, technologies, working places – they are more and more blamed for selfishness and "oppression of the working people". As this happens, they one by one disappear, leaving the society to the hands of people, who curse them. When the working people have rights to strike, so the businessmen take this right for them too – and very soon it becomes obvious, what is the key element in economy. Labor can do nothing without intelligence and business talent; it is nothing but an instrument in the hands of businessmen.

The world of Ayn Rand might seem exaggerated, but if you take a minute and look around, read the news, you can see this world: a world we live in. Characters of corrupt politicians, of so called "public opinion leaders" and "philosophers" for whom "there's no black and white" but only a gray absence of any principles – all these things are described in the book. Positive characters are strong, conscientious men and women. They may lack some "human" features, some liveliness or human weaknesses. But it may be so because of Ayn Rand's being first of all an outstanding essayist, and only then a writer.

The economy of a country has to be maximally efficient, therefore maximally rational, therefore maximally liberal. The caring about other people can not be put above giving the chance to care about themselves to those who are able to.

The same works in politics and social life. When we hear that some monumental goals have to be put above a person's private interests, the road back to Stone Age begins. And it doesn't matter whether these goals are used to camouflage some hidden agenda or are a product of naivety. Fascism, theocracy, socialism – all regimes, which legitimize themselves in any ways but a neutral and cold-blooded democratic procedure, or that start talking of Utopian ideas – these regimes are unfair, irrational, and therefore inefficient, and therefore wrong.

The system of values, where people doing their best to achieve their own purposes and wealth is the best basis for love and friendship, because the relations between people in this way grounds not on charity, but on the mutual respect and utility.

All these things are described in the novel. Rationality is the only criteria for determining the social order. Any excesses are excessive and harmful. A very talented description of the way a society not following this principle develops is the main thing that makes "Atlas Shrugged" a book to be read by every educated person.

Source

Blogging about blogging

2007-06-28T14:24:00.000+04:00

Thanks to Andrew Kable I started discovering the English speaking business blogosphere - and I'm very happy to do that!

For example, Penelope Trunk's blog has a very interesting series of articles on blogging.

I have my Belarusian-Russian blog since 2003. First it was just a diary, then a means to communicate with friends who also have a blog at Livejournal and to find new friends among Belarusian speakers. Livejournal is very popular in post-Soviet countries exactly because it offers broad opportunities to communicate and not just to blog. Practically, it developed into a social network above a blogging service.

Finally, it more and more became a blog on current political issues concerning Belarus, leaving less and less place for private stuff. Currently I have more than 440 Livejournal users subscribed to my blog, and landed among Top 30 Belarusian Livejournal bloggers a couple of month ago.

There is still much personal stuff there, and it'd probably make sense to transer this part to a new blog. I see the problem that a huge part of my Russian real-life friends who subscribe to my blog are not much interested in politics, especially in Belarusian politics, and mostly do not even speak any Belarusian :) . On the other hand, some people interested in politics may find it less interesting to read about travel, jokes and other life impressions.

But an argument against that is that serious essays and columns are also posted to http://www.pozirk.org and/or http://bielarus.3dway.org, so that interested people might subscribe to it there and http://czalex.livejournal.com may be left over as a portrait of my interests in common.

A completely different thing is with the blog you are currently reading. The blog was originally created to practice English and German, then there was a a period of it's being inactive, and now it is being revived as a blog in English (except for the tag names :) ) on professional issues. It's still far from some specialization and a concrete niche - but I hope to develop it as I grow professionally.

At least some directions covered here might be named:

- Business, economics of Belarus and Russia

- Personal career experience

- Notes on audit, consulting with an accent on banking industry

- Rare inputs on social issues in Belarus, like my Belarusian articles translated by TOL Blogs Belarus.

Even this list of 4 is too broad if I'm aiming to attract people with what I write and not just real-life friends. But I let time show what's gonna be the blog's final specialization.

-> Gotta find some interesting blogs about strategy consulting, audit and finance to add to my Google Reader

The US Budget graphically

2007-06-11T14:42:00.000+04:00

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/poster/

Might sound shocking for a post-Soviet: 67% of American state expenses go for the Military and for National Security.

"Evil American Militarist Imperialism"?

No, just what a state is actually there for.

Sports

2007-06-04T02:34:00.000+04:00

It's very important to do sports for a successful career.

- A success comes from the inner motivation to succeed. And the taste of success comes from past successes and from small victories from the every-day life. A won football match, a distance run or rode by bike – that all gives the feeling of having achieved something, supported by the relevant physical impressions

- Every football or basketball match you play is training on team working skills, first of all on psychological level

- Every bike ride is you ruling the space, getting the flying feeling of from your fast move and therefore a physical impression of changing the reality on your own wish

- I'm not a specialist in medicine and may therefore sound naïve, but I know that sport makes the organism produce hormones and initiates processes inside you that improve your productivity

- Sports just give you a good feeling and a fit look. And if you feel well and look well and know you look well, you’ll do better.

When I was small I was a child who preferred to sit at home, watch an interesting movie or read an interesting book or play Lego instead of going out and play some football outside – and therefore I tend to like single sports like swimming or bicycle. That's something I'd like to be changed - but nowadays my low football skills may be a problem :(

The main thing s to get the time for sports, and this may be a problem when you leave work at 9 PM.

Yeah, now I’m motivated to go to the swimming pool tonight! :)

From E&Y to the embassy

2007-05-31T01:29:00.000+04:00

From 22 January 2007 – Ambassador of the Republic of Hungary to the United Kingdom.

Borbala Czako, Country Managing Partner of Ernst & Young in Hungary and Deputy Managing Partner Central Europe South worked as the TAS service line leader of the firm between 2002 and 2005. She joined Ernst & Young in January 2002 from the World Bank Group, where she worked for 10 years. She was the Chief of Mission of IFC with investment banking responsibilities in Hungary and the region. On special assignments from the WBG she worked in Washington D.C. and Africa as well.

She has extensive experience in large private sector transactions in greenfield investments, privatization, mergers and aquisitions (Westel, Matáv, TetraPack, Suzuki, Pannonplast, Rambox) and financial sector investments (Raiffeisen Unicbank, InterEuropa Bank, First Hungary Fund, Euroventures). In her recent assignments Borbala worked on securitisation, environmental, energy efficiency, SME, health and educational projects.

Embassy of Hungary in the UK

// originally read about in Accountancy, march 2007

That's a career of my dream.

Grown up in a diplomatic family, in my childhood I inertially imagined my career as a one in foreign relations - but pragmatism prevailed as when it was to decide where to go after school, and international economics was the correct decision :)

Now, as I do not work at a foreign ministry (inclusively because there is no foreign ministry I'd like to work for: neither the Russian, nor the Belarusian until it's over with Lukashenka), my only possible way of becoming diplomat is to become something comparable to Entrepreneur of the Year (as this lady did) and then be invited for ambassadorship for the sake of prestige.

Gotta do that!

Russia: Authoritarianism Means Ineffective Economy

2007-05-30T01:34:00.001+04:00

Right as I was writing the reply on Karolus' comment here about that foreign investors are not afraid of political risks involved with Russia, the Russian fund market started its fall. I just wonder at what stage to sell my investment fund shares.

MICEX Index last week

Yeah, and somebody thought here that democracy and economy do not relate to each other and that you can make business without taking care of politics as if it was something from a different planet. Indifference towards politics is common among my fellow yuppies and generally among Russians - they just go and vote for Putin without actually knowing a bit about what this man is.

For the Russian society as a whole the absence of democracy means the following:

- No transparency of state governance caused by lack of freedom of speech, especially in the regions outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. The media are state-controlled and therefore dependent on people in the administration and have no possibility of objective coverage of their faults

- No or blocked legal ways of influencing and adjusting the state policy: no democratic elections means no democratic parliament. Currently the only opposition party in the Duma are Communists. The governors’ elections were cancelled after the Beslan tragedy as a means to “fight terrorism” (yes, it was really said so). Instead, governors are directly appointed by the president and have therefore no accountability before the region’s population

- No guaranty of property rights, see YUKOS affair, the current raid on Russneft. In the regions the whole is, again, much harsher than in Moscow or St. Pete. Once a local authority sees an attractive business, it does not take too long for him to make the owner sell it for a low price after a couple of fiscal, medical, fire inspections coming across and after a “warm and confident” talk in the bureaucrat’s office

- Absence of independent courts and therefore no chance for victims of state despotism to bring the authorities or entities related to them to trial and, especially, to win. Judges are bought and sold.

- Monopoly rather than Oligopoly, both in politics and economy. Instead of Yeltsin era “oligarch clans” we now have the “different towers of one Kremlin”, several groups inside the ruling junta (e.g. “siloviki”, remainders of the Yeltsin “family” etc). Gazprom is becoming an anti-Utopian-style empire corporation with its own bank, media, football club, airlines and soon even armed forces. Rosneft is going the same way.

- No or blocked legal ways of publicly discussing the state policy except for the internet. Without publicity and exposure to criticism the state is limited in sources of creative ideas

- Corruption has nowadays a much greater scale than at worst Yeltsin's times

For businesses it means:

- Extra expenses on corruption: a sad but true fact is that budgets of most investment projects have bribe and kickback expenses a special article

- Extra bureaucratic burden: difficulties in registering a business, taxation – it all goes hand in hand with state authoritarianism

- General decline in [business] ethics in the society, therefore development of an unhealthy business culture and business climate.

So for all that we see a wave of non-resident investors leaving the Russian fund market last week.

I sometimes have the feeling that we are in danger to see the BRIC missing the "R" in a mid-term perspective. For this to be prevented, Russia must get back to the democratic path as soon as possible - at least to the limited democracy of Yeltsin times. A sort of a chance is coming up in 2008 where we'll have presidential elections. The elections will of course be anything but fair and democratic, but we have a chance that the new czar will be more liberal and democracy-oriented (Russia's democratic and modernization tendencies always depend on who's head of state). It seems that Putin's appointing of Dmitry Medvedev (current deputy Prime Minister) as The Kremlin Candidate would give us better chances than the of militarist former KGB-spy Sergei Ivanov, an other vice PM and #2 prospective Putin's pick.

Work/live convergence

2007-05-27T16:45:00.000+04:00

At the office full of twentysomethings where my girlfriend, Niki, works, everyone was comparing their salaries, and the owner of the company got really angry. And his being angry made for a tough week, so Niki asked him if she could take Friday off.

He said, “If you’re going to be successful you need to start putting your career before your life.”

Of course she took the day off.

When she told her mother about the situation, her mother said, “If you don’t put your life before work you will never be happy.”

Hearing this conflicting advice from two of the most influential elders in your life is confusing. What does Niki’s boss say to his kids when he gets home? Does he tell them to put work before life? What would Niki’s mom say to young people she works with? Would she tell them to go home early?

This whole notion of needing to separate work and life implies that your career, which takes up about 75% of your day, is something you simply try to get through so you can go home and do what you really enjoy for the other 25%. What a terrible way to live.

Interesting post at penelopetrunk.com

The main thing is that you really enjoy your work so that it does not leave your interests and potential unrealized. Plus, very important is that your friends and/or family members work with you. Plus a maximally flexible working schedule.

The answer is own business

It's time to win

2007-05-25T02:53:00.000+04:00

My article on the Manifesto of new generation f Belarusian politicians

- kindly translated into English by the guys from TOL blog Belarus

and

quoted on Global Voices Online

Following a scandal

2007-05-24T01:53:00.000+04:00

A strange feeling to find an account of one of the money laundering SPEs mentioned in a recent money laundering scandal at the bank currently audited. (see (1) and (2), both in Russian)

Russia is a country of thieves run by thieves. Everywhere you step in business, you can always expect something semi-illegal, and the further the more. Anywhere the state has a role - everywhere, absolutely everywhere there is corruption. Hardly a single sign of things like business ethics or simple human moral. And there is also a plenty of people in the West who take benefits from the Russian intransparent undemocratic regime and money laundering by the KGB&oligarchia-driven Russian semi-criminal economy, just like the former German Bundeskanzler Schröder.

Even if the article by Natalia Morar or the Frenkel Letters, about the Cyclopean schemes of milliards of USD flushing to unknown accounts of unknown people, are not 100% true, they do perfectly reflect Russian reality. In the wild 1990ies the criminals wore vulgar pink jackets, golden chains and sports pants, now they wear Brioni, drive Bentleys, have a "Yedinaya Rossia" party member's card and a "honorable veteran of the KGB" certificate in their pocket together with a second passport of some Maldive islands.

Every bank is surely involved in some money laundering, or "obnalichka" (something like the opposite of money laundering, i.e. hiding illegal usage of legally earned money) or at least tax avoidance schemes via bloody Cyprus. And while auditing it is even senseless to look for fraud, because 1) it is obviously there and 2) if you find something, reporting to authorities will not bring anything because some people in the authorities are most likely to have a share in the scheme themselves.

It's rational for people to violate over-strict and unlogical, or even harmful, laws that are not strictly defended by the corrupt state. And the more the laws get violated, the more strict and unlogical they become. We end up in a vicious circle that forms a culture of principal disrespect to laws and rules and value of evasion of legislation. That's the situation in Russia.

Russian banks are fit for IPO

2007-05-23T01:56:00.000+04:00

My article for The Deloitte Times on IPOs of Russian Banks. Yeah, IPO is a trendy topic they're really fit or it! ) It's good that their going public will at least nominally reduce the state's role in the banking system. Though, this fact is rather like a water drop in a desert...

Russian banks are fit for IPO

Russian banks must raise equity through IPO to secure their own finances. Alexander Chaichits Čajčyc argues they are fit for the challenge.

Russian capital markets are set to take a new step in their evolution this year with the flotation of the first major banks and other financial institutions. Two large Russian banks, Sberbank and VTB, are conducting IPOs this spring.

Sberbank is the largest national bank in Russia and one of the few with shares already traded on the stock market. A successor of the Soviet system of savings banks, it has over 20,000 branches and sub-branches, and the value of its assets is six times higher than that of its nearest rivals. The bank is also fourth among Russian companies in market capitalization. The bank’s share placement in March, known as the “people’s IPO” from the state’s efforts to distribute shares among the public, raised RUR 230.2bn (USD 8.8bn) by selling 2.587mn shares. Funds raised will finance the development of the bank for the next three years.

VTB (former Vneshtorgbank) has the second largest net assets among banks in Russia. Amongst debt issued by Russian banks, VTB’s bonds and Eurobonds have the highest credit ratings with Moody’s and Fitch. VTB’s IPO is the next step in a large-scale strategy to expand into the Western European market of investment services.

The current major shareholder of Sberbank and VTB is the Russian government, with a 99.9 percent share in VTB. The bank’s IPO will decrease the Government’s stake by to 75 percent plus one share. The state’s majority ownership of Sberbank fell from 63.7 percent to 60 percent in its March offering.

The media and business communities are keeping a keen eye on Sberbank and VTB to see who will secure a more successful IPO. Analysts predict that the stateowned banks’ IPOs are just the beginning of a future IPO boom for Russian banking.

The advantages of a public offering for banks are generally the same as for non-financial institutions. As the bank grows, it becomes unfeasible to sustain the debt/equity ratio required by the Central Bank by simply regulating loans raised. To have its two feet firmly on the ground, the bank needs to increase its equity. This may be done in three ways: by raising funds from existing shareholders, by selling a stake to a strategic investor, or by issuing equity or debt on public markets.

All three capital raising initiatives have their pitfalls. Existing shareholders are not always ready to absorb the complete issue, especially when it is a large amount. The sale of a large stake to a strategic investor requires care and precision in the search for an investor, which will in turn result in the emergence of a new power balance among shareholders, and changes to the management structure. Again, a strategic investor’s resources may not be large enough to cover the needs of a fast-growing bank.

The most reliable tool in this respect is an initial public offering. First, the market is more able to cope with a large issue than a strategic investor. Second, capital dilution through an IPO does not necessarily result in the emergence of a new major shareholder which challenges the existing power balance.

Floating a Russian bank on a stock exchange and complying with tough issuer requirements on reporting and transparency can demonstrate its business management standards. Publicly traded shares are liquid and quoted in real time, making them sensitive to the continuing performance of the bank. All this makes a positive impact on the bank’s reputation, which should potentially allow it to raise additional capital at a lower price.

2005-2006 saw the IPOs of three Chinese and three Japanese banks, as well as others in Austria, France, Greece, and the Netherlands. In 2006, two new world records were set for IPO capital raised. Both the world’s largest IPOs were from state-owned banks.

On 1 June, the Bank of China placed its stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising USD 9.7bn. In the six months following this, the record IPO volume was beaten again, also by a Chinese bank. In October, the Hong Kong and Singapore Stock Exchanges started trading shares in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which managed to raise almost USD 22bn.

Sberbank is one of just a few Russian banks currently traded on the stock market. Last year, AKB Rosbank prepared for an IPO, but the whole package was sold to a strategic investor at the last minute. Many large and mid-sized banks intend to go public, encouraged by The Central Bank of Russia. All this is evidence of a potentially massive inflow of banks’ shares to the stock market: Russian banks are considered fit for IPO. Much of the preceding IPOs’ success will depend on the pioneers, Sberbank and VTB, which explains the particular interest in their placements. Hardly anyone doubts that the first fry will be far from a flop.

Alexander Čajčyc, Deloitte
Rosbank, Russian Banks and Brokers Reports

Tropical Moscow

2007-05-23T01:48:00.001+04:00

The weather is purely tropical here in Moscow. +30 degrees, and we auditors as usually get sat the into most stifling room. And moreover I have missed my session of swimming pool (

Solidarity with Belarus

2007-05-18T01:38:00.000+04:00

The 16th of every month is a Day of Solidarity with the victims of political repressions in Belarus

One of the few things we can do to support the people struggling for democracy in Belarus.

The Belarusian community of Moscow usually puts flowers to the monument to Janka Kupała, one of the most important Belarusian poets of the 20th century who died under unclear circumstances in Moscow in 1941. There are versions that his fall from a stairs in the Moskva hotel was inspired by Soviet secret police - just as in 1999 the politicians Viktar Hančar, Jury Zacharanka, Anatol Krasoŭski disappeared [and were obviously killed] and Hienadź Karpienka died of a "heart attack" in the moment when they all were most dangerous to the dictator Lukashenka.

More photos on my Belarusian-Russian blog

Eurovision'2007

2007-05-14T01:47:00.000+04:00

Eurovision Song Contest

Every year everybody says that Eurovision is crap and they do not want to see it. But still, for at least several days it becomes the most discussed topic in Russian media and blogs.

The winning song from Serbia is though not bad, but nothing special at all at the same time. Just an other whiny ballad in Serbian - I even liked the Bosnian song that took 3rd place on ESC'2006 more.

Ukraine's trashy Verka Serdyuchka - that's who was supposed to win! :)

The man (hm!) is famous in post-Soviet countries for his unfunny humorist shows and sketches, and only a couple of years ago he started to sing songs that were of bad taste too but still something good for moving one's body after some vodka on a village disco.

An important topic discussed in Russia is now whether it says "Lasha Tumbai" or "Russia, goodbye!" in Serdyuchka's song. Some Russian bloggers already proposed to boycott him just as they hysterically called for a boycott on Estonian goods a week ago because of Estonian government replacing a Soviet monument in Tallinn. Ridiculous and lächerlich! As most neighbors with a complicated history of relations do, many Russians and Ukrainians don't like each other. As I have noticed, Russians express this in rudeness and aggression; and Ukrainians laugh Russians off and put them in situations where they look stupid. This is a typical case.

Russia's Serebro and Belarus' Dźmitry Kałdun aka Koldun were nothing special at all. Just an other two Eurovision songs: not bad, but not brilliant neither. Much more I liked the songs presented by Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland (I can't believe they got the last place!).

As to me, the very best song of this year's contest was Sopho Khalvashi of Georgia with "Visionary Dream". The promo video is as marvelous as the song itself!

That girl just broke my heart! The song got few votes - but that's because it's just too good for Eurovision, if you ask me.

Scylla defeating Charybdis: WW2 in Belarus

2007-05-11T00:04:00.000+04:00

My article on TOL blog Belarus

Reflections on the official holiday of Victory Day, 9th of May, 2007 by Aleś Čajčyc for Pozirk.org.

Translated from Bełarusian by eolonir and ox populi.

The Ninth of May. The “red day” as it is also known, one marked red both in the calendars and in peoples' memories. The Victory day. The day which I can't help calling the day of Pobeda. (Pobeda means “victory” in Russian, whereas in Belarusian it is called “pieramoha”). I catch myself at trying to use this Russian word in my language. The Russian and Soviet clichés and stereotypes are rooted too deeply in my mind – it is difficult to separate the Soviet myth and Soviet name of the event from the actual event.

In the Soviet mythology the victory over Fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War – Vialikaj Ajčynnaj Vajnie (in Belarusian) -- Velikoj Ociečestvennoj Vojnie (in Russian) was a part of a long and awesome epic story about the power of communism. Soviet propaganda aligned all anti-communist movements, among them the “White Army”, the Western Democracies, the Belarusian Liberation movements under one category -- the enemies of communism, the dark forces. Victory over the Nazis was presented as the first step to the world communism domination.

Such holidays are usually celebrated to honour a victory against an external enemy and to honour the national army which made that victory possible. For Russia, the predecessor and successor of the Soviet Union, this war had really been the national patriotic war, the war for the national liberation. One can understand that it might be possible for the question about crimes of Stalinist regime and terror inside the country to be moved down the agenda – considering the threat to the existence of Russia as a country. The Russians were fighting for the very right to exist. Incidentally, the tradition to commemorate victories long after they have taken place is typical of Moscow – the 1812 Victory or taking over Kazan' had been celebrated for decades.

Lukashenka's Belarus has added another, special meaning to the celebrations of the 9th of May. Having no ideological or metaphorical grounding on which to build up the state system, the regime keeps grappling at the remnants of the past, at these emotional Soviet symbols. Moreover, it enslaves the present within the remnants of totalitarian past. How “patriotic” had this war been for those who had been occupied themselves? How much of a holiday is this for Bełaruś?

Liberating from the liberators

The fact is simple: no party in that war should be considered an ally of Bełaruś and a representative of its interests. Both communists and Nazis have made enough good and bad things for us.

Communists have tolerated our conditional sovereignty within the USSR. Bełaruś existed as a marionettic, but de-jure an independent state inside the Soviet Union. Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus of the 1920ies represented to at least some extent a reincarnation of the Bełarusian People's Republic, when communistic government has allowed development of Belarusian culture and usage of our language – although that period had been quite short. At the same time the Germans returned private property, formed Belarusian National divisions and allowed using our national symbolics by local administrative units.

Acting in accord, the two had actually served for unification of the Western and Eastern parts of the country according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Before that Belarusians lived in two prisons, while after September 1939 all of them got into one Soviet cell. Albeit not for a long time – a month after the unification, Vilnia has been given to Lithuania and renamed to Vilnius. Also, the Belarusian-populated region of Biełastok (Białystok) has been given as a present to Poland after the war.

Still, the criminal record of both “great leaders” is a great deal longer. Hitler has commenced a war which has taken every forth Belarusian life away. All acts of war perpetrated by the Nazi forces are widely known – and I perhaps even the Soviet propaganda did not inflate the count by a considerable margin. Slave labour in German factories, villages burnt with all their inhabitants, gallows stretching along village roads, atrocities of the Nazi who have lost all their resemblance to humans. Mały Traścianiec, Chatyń, Miensk ghetto. 800 thousand Bełarusian Jews had perished in Nazi camps and as the result of Nazi “clearance raids”. Every seventh victim of Holocaust originates from Belarus.

The Soviet Union has entered the Second World War in alliance with Hitler's Germany: the date of 1st of September 1939 marked the date of another disaster in the European history as the Soviet Army acted in accord with the German counterparts and entered the Polish territory from the East. Pre-war Soviet period on the “newly liberated” territories had been short, but it had been enough for Western Bełaruś to get a taste of what its Eastern sister had been suffering for more than a decade already. Thousands of villagers and city dwellers who used to stand out either with their money, intelligence, or civil position, had been stripped of their property and exiled to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Tens of thousands have died on this road and their bodies had been thrown away from the dirty cargo trains where all these unlucky human beings had been travelling to their destinies. Thousands had been killed in Kurapaty, Vańkovičy forest by the Soviet NKVD. This list can be continued endlessly.

After the war was over, assimilation and repressions have restarted. Repressions against national culture in Soviet Latvia, for instance, are comparable to the long-term occupation and assimilation plans of the Nazis. Belarus has become a part of the evil Soviet project, a part of an empire which existed only for the sake of inflaming the Second and then –- in perspective -- the Third World War and would never stop until communism would dominate on the globe. Belarus was meant to become a platz-d'arms for the new invasion to the West –- and the first victim to the returning blow in that awful apocalyptic war of the Soviet Union against the human civilization. The Chernobyl catastrophe happened to be the finishing chord . It has become a symbol of corruption, inefficience, and what is more – indifference of the Moscow functioneers to the people of their “Western territories”.

They only managed to do one thing right -- either side liberated us from the other. However, every next liberator did not intend to leave himself afterwards.

Was the Soviet Union really better than the Nazi Germany? Can one totalitarian bloody system be better than another one? The only hope for the independent Bełarus had been democratic Europe toppling Hitler and starting a new war against the USSR. Luckily for the world that wasn't ever meant to happen.

Commemoration Day

Flowers on the victims' graves and at the pedestals of monuments, tears in the eyes of people who were born many decades after this war was over. What would be the true meaning of this day for us after all?

It should become the Day of Memory. The day when we recall and commemorate one of the most tragic episodes of Belarusian history. The Day of Commemoration without militaristic pathetic parades, without blood-coloured “Victory Banners” and definitely without the mascarade shows on the renovated “Stalin defense line”. On the other hand, this should not be a Day for SS-commemorating parades or demolishing the Soviet memorials. May 9th should become the day of the Belarusian soldiers fighting on different sides should be finally reconciled -- they were fighting for one Belarus and for the right to live their lives as humans, not like animals. In the end what does it matter which uniform they used to wear -- one of the Soviet Army, of the BKA (Belarusian Local Self-Defence), of the Anders Army or even of Waffen-SS. Uniforms of innocent victims are the same before the face of death.

Let the May 9th become the day to commemorate war and post-war forest partisanship and the anti-fascist Christian democratic resistance movement. Let it become the day to honour the memory of Belarusian Jews, an integral and valuable part of our nation who had fallen victims to Nazi genocide and the survivors of whom were later forced by the Bolsheviks to emigrate. Let it be the commemoration day for all those who have not lived to see the end of that catastrophe.

There is no Victory we should be celebrating this day. De-facto that had been the victory of one Belarusian enemy against another, liberation from Nazi occupation by the Bolshevik occupants. A paradox, but Belarus is perhaps the only country generally seen as “winner” which has lost territories after the war finished. Belarus simply had no chance in the war, where enemies had been standing on both sides of the frontline.

Still, there is something to celebrate. We can celebrate that the war had finally come to an end, and that the peace was established -- even under another occupation. Cities were no longer burning and useless butchery was no longer the agenda. While there is life -- there is hope. We have lived through 70 years of Soviet occupation -- and we will live through the 10, 15, even 20 years of stupid post-Communist dictatorship. While we are alive -- we shall fight: the fathers had been fighting against much deadlier evil. Victory of life over death – maybe this is the real meaning of the “Victory Day”? Our Dzien pieramohi?

http://blogs.tol.org/belarus/2007/05/10/scilla-defeating-haribda-ww2-in-belarus/

Auf Kosten von Respekt zu sich selber

2007-03-23T01:56:00.002+03:00

In Russland lebt man nicht – man überlebt, oft auf Kosten von Respekt zu sich selber. Das Land ist korrupt von A bis Z, von den größten Kremlbonzen bis zu dem kleinsten lausigsten Militärkommisariatbeamten. Es ist unfassbar.

Dabei ist dieses System nicht reformierbar – schlicht weil niemand an einer Reformierung interessiert ist. Keiner von denen hier ist. Alle leben damit von Geburt, alle werden früher oder später zu Opfern der Korruption, alle Eltern müssen eines Tages der Kinderärztin oder Kindergartennanny schöne Bonbons schenken, damit sie ihre Arbeit anständig macht; für alle Autofahrer ist es ein Teil des Lebens, dem Straßenpolizisten 50 oder 100 Rubeln zu spenden, damit er ihnen keine Strafquittung ausschreibt. So gehörts halt.

Imbezile russische Gesetze sind nur dazu da, um denjenigen zu bestrafen, wer ihnen zu folgen versucht – genau wie in Ayn Rands “Atlas Shrugged”. Zwei Jahre russische Armee sind eine Folter wie zwei Jahre russisches Gefängnis, mit Selbstmordraten im Durchschnitt 1-2 Soldaten pro Tag. Da besticht man schon lieber den fetten Schleimer beim Militäramt, statt in diese Hölle zu geraten. Und so ists überall.

Die Menschen wollen überleben, deshalb kein Ausweg außer Korruption. Und da Korruption etwas ganz unschuldiges und normales wird, werden die Leute immer selbst zu Korrumpanten sobald sie eine Möglichkeit dazu kriegen.

Europe's Extinction

2007-01-08T23:45:00.000+03:00

Europe's Extinction

2007-01-06 08:08 / Aleś Čajčyc

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." (Mt. 5:5 KJV)

The Western civilisation and democratic culture seem to be going to their fall, and this fall might happen rather sooner than later. And it will not be an economic crashdown, it will not be some nuclear terrorist attack and will not be a third (fourth?) World War. It will be the West's silent physical extinction.

We are all used to the information about Europe's catastrophe-approaching demography. By 2025 40% of UK's population will be over 50 years old. Italy's population will fall by 2050 by 22%. The population of Germany is going to shrink from today's 83 Mio to approximately 70 Mio. Among them 10 Millions will be people aged more than 80, the average age of the Germans will by that time be 50 years. The annual difference between deaths and births will be about 600 thousands deaths over births, compared to already 150 thousands nowadays.

It is mostly spoken about the economic and financial consequences of the approaching demographic crisis. A bigger percentage of pensioners will have to be supplied by a smaller part of generative working power. Still, the modern economy seems to have found a possible solution for this problem as the pensions are more and more supplied by money invested by future pensioners into retirement insurance and private pension funds. Working people in the West start providing for their future pensions by own investments and corporate pension schemes, although it is very questionable whether all working people will be able to use this scheme. An other option is to keep on rising the retirement age.

One can imagine the further development of this process with Europe finally transforming into a society of renters. Less and less human resources are needed for the economy, as the industry is more and more outlaid to countries with cheaper workforce, lower ecological standards et cetera. The capital resides in London, Frankfurt, New York and the production is in India, China. Globalisation melts the whole world into one society, where new social classes will at the first stage be constructed on the base of nations, with the West, especially Europe, becoming "capitalist" and the rest of the world becoming "proletarian". The Western society will herewith not be interested in renewing the population: just remember the prognosis of Russia's income per capita growing drastically within the next decades because of a slight growth of income, but a drastic decrease in population.

Without speaking of the danger of a globo-social revolution, the obvious trend is that one day in several centuries Europeans will simply die out.

Certain political powers put a taboo on discussions of political and cultural aspects of Europe's extinction. But the problem is still there and unfortunately can not be ignored: the extinction of Western political culture will obviously threaten the global democratic progress. Even immigrants in European countries often face problems in accepting their new home countries' liberal values, forming isolated ethnic and religious groups that live and promote totalitarian ideology. The global progress of liberty and democratic transformations will not be able to continue without having a base of adherents who have grown up in democracy and have the values of liberty as a cornerstone, as an essence of their mentality and world-view. The further Europe's depopulation progresses, the fewer of these people-born-in-freedom the world has.

There is also a more individualistic issue in the problem. Solving Europe's demographic problem is a question of simply whether we want to survive as a culture and as a civilisation, whether we do care about anything further than our personal animalistic interests, or we don't. The living conditions of a country may be good or bad or even very bad, the living standards may be high or low or even very low. But as soon as there are physically people there in the country, there will be a future for the nation, there will always be a chance for the situation to improve. That is exactly the strategic advantage of the "developing" African and Asian countries over the "developed" Europe. Is Europe's time up? Or are we still there? Do we care about existence of the European cultural identity in the future? These are the existential questions that must be set and must be answered above all.

Different solutions to the demographic problems are proposed by the political elites. The mainstream left wing seems to prefer leaving the problem as it is. It simply tries to handle external symptoms of the problem by introducing new pension schemes burdening the private business and trying to compensate decrease of population merely by means of migration. the conservative right wing sees the problem more deeply, but their proposed measures are even less adequate. The conservatives' vision means regress and abandonment of liberal and democratic freedoms, going back to the Kinder-Küche-Kirche-formula of woman's role in society, putting restrictions on migration.

Here we see an acute need for a "third way" in solving the problem. Finding the solution will substantially be put on our generation's shoulders, as those around-50-years olds of 2025 are us, today's twens. It is going to be our generation who will bury the European civilisation and the global democracy by simply not giving new bearers to them - or will find out how to overcome this challenge. Everything is up to us.

Third Way

Christmas in Moscow

2006-12-24T23:50:00.000+03:00

Today's Christmas mass

Tadevuš Kandrusievič, bishop of Moscow. The man is originally from Hrodna, Belarus.

The Cathedral of Moscow

Merry Christmas to everybody!

finally winter in Moscow

2006-12-24T23:41:00.000+03:00

today's foto

Nazi terrorism in Moscow

2006-12-23T17:28:00.000+03:00

http://maskodagama.livejournal.com/440179.html

An other attack against an antifascist activist in Moscow. The youngster was coming home with his mother. On their flat's door they saw a Hakenkreuz and a papersheet saying "~~Juden~~ Khachi (derogatory for "Caucasians") live here". The boy was about to tear the paper away as he saw a bomb connected to it. They immediately called the police. As the policemen tried to neutralise the bomb, it exploded and heavily injured them.

The Livejournal post above has some comments supporting the "Russian Warriors Fighting Bastardic Antifa" that are also more than illustrative.

And this is not the first such case. Skinhead attacks against people from Caucasus countries, the Central Asia, Africa or even (and more often) from the Russian Northern Caucasus are more than usual news here. The democratic opposition says that this increased activity is supported by the Kremlin to maintain a feeling of insecurity among the people. Besides that, the nazis should therefore become the most probable alternative to "good guys" from the pro-Kremlin parties and movements, so that people would face the choice between neo-Putin and nazis at the coming parliamental and presidental elections.

Be it so or not - we really seem to live in a Russian Weimar Republic that has a realistic chance to become a Russian Third Reich.

Are you too selfish for kids?

2006-12-15T00:36:00.000+03:00

We are less likely than our predecessors to ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask if we are happy. We shun values such as self-sacrifice and duty as the pitfalls of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical

[...]

There is no generalisation in this article, no matter how harsh, that would not apply to me. I care about my own life in the present. I think I should be, but - doubtless because I don't have children - I'm honestly not very fussed about what happens after I die. I'm proud of the Shriver family, but not enough to help to ensure that it outlasts me. As Nora pointed out, my genes are swell. But like my friends', my sorrow at not having passed them on is vague, thin and abstract, and no match for Be Here Now. I fancy I work very hard; in socially crucial respects, I am lazy.

[...]

Meanwhile, as the west's childless have grown more prevalent, the stigma that once attached to being "barren" falls away. Women - and men, too - are free to choose from a host of fascinating lives that may or may not involve children, and across Europe couples are opting for the latter in droves. My friends and I are decent people - or at least we treat each other well. We're interesting. We're fun. But writ large, we're an economic, cultural and moral disaster.

[...]

In its darkest form, the growing cohort of childless couples determined to throw all their money at Being Here Now - to take that step-aerobics class, visit Tanzania, put an addition on the house while making no effort to ensure there's someone around to inherit the place when the party is over - has the quality of the mad, slightly hysterical scenes of gleeful abandon that fiction writers craft when imagining the end of the world.

Not to disparage old people, but "senescent" is not a pretty word. Large sectors of western population have broken faith with the future. In the Middle East, birth rates are still sky-high, whereas Europeans, Australians and many European-Americans cannot be bothered to scrounge up another generation of even the same size, because children might not always be interesting and fun, because they might not make us happy, because some days they're a pain in the bum. When Islamic fundamentalists accuse the west of being decadent, degenerate and debauched, you have to wonder if maybe they've got a point.

// a very good article indeed

My dream is to have at least two or three children.

Also I'm sometimes visited by the idea of converting to Islam, for that part of my heritage has definitely a better chance to survive in the future. Why belong to a group of people that are on their way to extinction and do not have a slight desire to do something for their own survival...?

Yeah, I'm a true volatile Russian inteligentsiya who is never satisfied with the way things are going. Because things really couldn't have been going worse!

Amazing

2006-12-15T00:14:00.000+03:00

KPMG in the UK has rented its new office in London for the period of...
...999 years! %)

Former East German athletes get compensation for doping

2006-12-14T00:43:00.000+03:00

Germany's Olympic Committee has agreed to compensate former athletes who were victims of systematic doping in East Germany under the communist rule.

The committee (DOSB) said 167 sportsmen and women would each receive a one-off payment of 9,250 euros (£6,200).

The deal ends a five-year legal dispute between the athletes, many of whom were made ill by the drugs, and the DOSB.

The athletes argued that the DOSB of unified Germany inherited the liability of East Germany's sports body.

'Moral responsibility'

They said they had been given drugs without their knowledge from an early age.

Many said they had suffered psychological problems as a result. Some female athletes said they had become infertile.

DOSB head Michael Vespers said his committee had a "moral responsibility" to compensate the victims of state-sponsored doping regimes.

"This is a day of celebration. We can now look to the future and stop looking back over years of arguments," Mr Vespers said.

The DOSB will pay a third of the compensation package - the remainder will be given by the federal government.

The former athletes have agreed not to seek any other legal action.

It is the second time that damages have been paid to former East German athletes - 194 received compensation 10,400 euros (£6,900) each.

Some 10,000 athletes are thought to have been given performance-enhancing drugs to help East Germany compete with the major sporting powers like the US and the former USSR.

BBC

I wonder how far this drug story can be applied to training of Soviet sportspeople.

Ah, who cares - whether or not, they will never get a single penny from the "Motherland", even if they'd kill themselves for its glory. That's the way it is in Russia

Listening to English-speaking on-line radios

2006-12-11T00:02:00.000+03:00

American English is definitely much more understandable than British. Maybe because it's a language that went through its being learned by millions of non-native speakers who somehow simplified its pronounciation. At the end of the day, most Americans are descendands of originally non-English speakers - Germans, Polish, Spanish, Africans.

Do all New York radios have weird names? Some British web-radios don't let you listen to 'em from abroad due to some British law.

Internet is a great thing. You may feel like you've left your country with all its bloody dictature, putin and gazprom - without physically leaving your room. A sad illusion indeed

Wafa Sultan: the Arab-American activist discussing with Islamic clericals

2006-12-10T02:51:00.000+03:00

Wafa Sultan, the Arab-American Muslim secular activist discussing with Islamic clericals on the clash of civilisations. Wise and brave.

Because of her ethnicity she may say some of that true things that unfortunately could have been labeled by some leftist as "oooh! bad ugly intolerant racist lies!" if said by a WASP or European.

Watched Princess Mononoke

2006-12-09T00:05:00.000+03:00

Never ever watch Miyazaki's movies alone so you don't have anybody to share this sweet undescribable feeling with.

Yesterday I finally watched his last previously unseen movie - Princess Mononoke". Now I'm having this sweet and painful hangover when listening to downloaded soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi :,)

Yeah, Miyazaki is the man who made me come to the answer about my favourite movie. Almost all his works are.

Coming back to reality, I can't get rid of the disgust of the insensible pragmatic quadratic world we all live in. We Europeans can only brutally tear something out of the environment, chew it up, let it through ourselves and create the product of our human, ehm, culture. This harmony between nature and human is something typical not only for Miyazaki, but for the whole Japanese culture.

I have written more in Belarusian, but am too tired to translate more

Washington Post about the Litvinenko case

2006-12-08T21:15:00.000+03:00

That Murder in London

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 8, 2006; Page A39

The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, renegade Russian spy and fierce critic of Vladimir Putin's government, is everywhere being called a mystery. There is dark speculation about unnamed "rogue elements" either in the Russian secret services or among ultranationalists acting independently of the government. There are whispers about the indeterminacy of things in the shadowy netherworld of Russian exile politics, crime and espionage.

Well, you can believe in indeterminacy. Or you can believe the testimony delivered on the only reliable lie detector ever invented -- the deathbed -- by the victim himself. Litvinenko directly accused Putin of killing him.

Litvinenko knew more about his circumstances than anyone else. And on their deathbeds, people don't lie. As Machiavelli said (some attribute this to Voltaire), after thrice refusing the entreaties of a priest to repent his sins and renounce Satan, "At a time like this, Father, one tries not to make new enemies."

In science, there is a principle called Occam's razor. When presented with competing theories for explaining a natural phenomenon, one adopts the least elaborate. Nature prefers simplicity. Scientists do not indulge in grassy-knoll theories. You don't need a convoluted device to explain Litvinenko's demise.

Do you think Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was investigating the war in Chechnya, was shot dead in her elevator by rogue elements? What about Viktor Yushchenko, the presidential candidate in Ukraine and eventual winner, poisoned with dioxin during the campaign, leaving him alive but disfigured? Ultranationalist Russians?

Opponents of Putin have been falling like flies. Some jailed, some exiled, some killed. True, Litvinenko's murder will never be traced directly to Putin, no matter how dogged the British police investigation. State-sponsored assassinations are almost never traceable to the source. Too many cutouts. Too many layers of protection between the don and the hit man.

Moreover, Russia has a long and distinguished history of state-sponsored assassination, of which the ice-pick murder of Leon Trotsky was but the most notorious. Does anyone believe that Pope John Paul II, then shaking the foundations of the Soviet empire, was shot by a crazed Turk acting on behalf of only Bulgaria?

If we were not mourning a brave man who has just died a horrible death, one would almost have to admire the Russians, not just for audacity but for technique in Litvinenko's polonium-210 murder. Assassination by poisoning evokes the great classical era of raison d'etat rub-outs by the Borgias and the Medicis. But the futurist twist of (to paraphrase Peter D. Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal) the first reported radiological assassination in history adds an element of the baroque of which a world-class thug outfit such as the KGB (now given new initials) should be proud.

Some say that the Litvinenko murder was so obvious, so bold, so messy -- five airplanes contaminated, 30,000 people alerted, dozens of places in London radioactive -- that it could not possibly have been the KGB.

But that's the beauty of it. Do it obvious, do it brazen, and count on those too-clever-by-half Westerners to find that exonerating. As the president of the Central Anarchist Council (in G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday") advised: "You want a safe disguise, do you? . . . A dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb? Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool!"

The other reason for making it obvious and brazen is to send a message. This is a warning to all the future Litvinenkos of what awaits them if they continue to go after the Russian government. They'll get you even in London, where there is the rule of law. And they'll get you even if it makes negative headlines for a month.

Some people say that the KGB would not have gone to such great lengths to get so small a fry as Litvinenko. Well, he might have been a small fry, but his investigations were not. He was looking into the Kremlin roots of Politkovskaya's shooting. And Litvinenko claimed that the Russian government itself blew up apartment buildings in Moscow and elsewhere in 1999, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, in order to blame it on the Chechens and provoke the second Chechen war. Pretty damning stuff.

But even Litvinenko's personal smallness serves the KGB's purposes precisely. If they go to such lengths and such messiness and such risk to kill someone as small as Litvinenko, then no critic of the Putin dictatorship is safe. It is the ultimate in deterrence.

The prosecution rests. We await definitive confirmation in Putin's memoirs. Working title: "If I Did It."

Washington Post

What a gottverdammt pretty country I was born to

15 years no Sovok

2006-12-08T11:26:00.000+03:00

Today it's the 15th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR. Something worth a party! ;)

Multilinguism and no schizophrenia :)

2006-12-07T00:37:00.001+03:00

Was it Goethe who said that you are as many times a person, as many languages you speak?

That's indeed my case, my life is - how do you say it? - quatrolingual! Most verbal communication and information inflow is, obviously, in Russian. Workpapers are prepared and ACA is studied in English. Most news and blogs read and a minor part of verbal communication is in Belarusian. Also there is a certain amount of thinking in German - mostly when I am tired or in a bad mood and want to isolate myself from the surrounding. And moreover, I have omitted the Ukrainian language in my life - I even started a blog in the language, but do not update it too often.

Amazing that it really is so that you are each time a different person depending on the language you currently think/speak. Every language with its own grammar sets its own scheme of structuring thoughts and the way thoughts flow and come to the mind. Different words, different vowels and consonants create different emotions and associations and give a different path to the thinking process. The whole really gives you a new viewpoint, and I often find myself thinking on a problem switching from language to language in my mind. Language is indeed an important factor forming the national mentality - and that itself is primarily formed by mentality.

Accounting and Philosophy

2006-12-05T00:16:00.000+03:00

It gets interesting when you try to put principles of accounting and corporate governance on a human's life.

For every debit there is a credit, every asset has an amount of liability as its shadow. Profits are credit and losses are debit. The financial statements always balance.

All you have in your life comes from something you have given for it or from something you'll have to pay for one day, or was invested into you by the shareholder God. To get something you have to loose something. Debit equals credit, and that is like the Harmony of the Universe. At the end of the day, not your assets do matter, but the profit or loss you bring to the Shareholder.

If you see God as your ultimate shareholder, the stewardship concept and the priority of shareholder wealth maximisation suddenly gets a deep Christian meaning! :) You haven't actually done anything to be born into this life, to get the opportunities you got. It's just that the General Meeting of your plc takes place only twice: at your birth and after your death.

Bank departments and genders

2006-12-01T00:37:00.000+03:00

Testing many business cycles of a bank at the same time can be really fascinating. This giant mechanism consisting of dozens of people, information, orders flowing from side to side; this giant organism you feel yourself inside of.

One can compare the allocation of functions within a traditional family, as it is since the Stone Age, with the structure of a bank. The man traditionally serves (served) as as the family's "front office" by bringing home food/money from the external environment and representing the entity on the "market". The woman, to the contrary, had traditionally a "back office" function in the family, being responsible for managing and processing the resources brought in by the man, concentrating on internal issues of keeping the houshold.

Similarly, the bank's front office is the most masculine department of the bank, especially if we take its activities on the fund market. Aggressive adrenaline addict traders taking high risks for high returns, with cold coffee in the cup and an unfinished Counter Strike battle one Alt+Tab far away. The back office is the feminine opposite of it. This cosy place is usually, although not always, inhabited by calm 30-years-old-girls chatting about men and TV series and listening to oldies-radio.

A big pity that this exciting adventure is coming to its end, back to much less interesting substantive tests.

Partyzanfilm: paradocumentary about Antisoviet resistance in Belarus

2006-11-28T23:44:00.000+03:00

http://www.partyzanfilm.net/

Meanwhile, yesterday the web site of the amateur film studio Partyzanfilm was launched. It will really be the first documentary movie about the anticommunist resistance in Belarus after its reoccupation by the Soviets in 1944, including reconstruction of battle scenes from that time.

Here you can download a 7 minutes scene.

The most exciting about it is that the whole movie is made by amateurs, young Belarusian emigrees in Western Europe. Łukašenka's regime may erect dozens of Stalin monuments and produce dozens of propaganda movies about those "brave heroes" from the NKVD, but as long as usual people spend their time and money for making projects like Partyzanfilm - this Neosoviet propaganda will never succeed.

86 years Słuck Defence Action

2006-11-28T00:55:00.000+03:00

Yesterday was the 86th anniversary of the beginning of the Słuck Defence Action - an armed attempt to defend the independence of Belarus in 1920, after the country was simply divided up between Poland and the Bolsheviks on the Riga Conference, where a delegation from Belarus (unlike Ukraine that was divided there as well) was not even invited to.

Here photos from a celebration organised by the Concervative Christian Party in Słuck at the building where the Słuck Congress took place to announce mobilisation and resistance against approaching bolshevik hordes. So good that Lukashist administration allowed this to take place.

More on Radio Liberty

Congratulations from Ivonka Surviłła, current head of BNR government in exile:

We should also remember our young heroes who showed to the whole world this March their readyness to fight for freedom and independence of Belarus

Congratulation letter from Zianon Paźniak, the leader of the Belarusian Popular Front and the Concervative Christian Party, in exile since mid-1990ies:

Słuck Defence Action is a clear example for us: to fight for your country you should not care about how strong your enemy is.

Žyvie Biełaruś!

Russian swimming pools

2006-11-26T15:50:00.000+03:00

Again having a cultural shock after visiting a Russian swimming pool. There are no dressing cabins and old babushkas clean the floors just next to naked men undressing. Wicked and Sovoque! %(

Latvia's Independence Day

2006-11-18T18:07:00.000+03:00

Today it's the Independence Day of Latvia.

Dievs, svētī Latviju,
Mūs' dārgo tēviju,
Svētī jel Latviju,
Ak, svētī jel to!

Kur latvju meitas zied,
Kur latvju dēli dzied,
Laid mums tur laimē diet,
Mūs' Latvijā!

I'm proud to be a 1/8 Latvian (The modern English language does not distinguish anymore between Latvian and Lettish. All this bloody "political correctness":) ).

So sorry that my relation with this beautiful Fairyland will probably only shrink by the time. My Latvian relatives are very far and their younger generation, my brother and sister I never met, won't be so eager to keep contact with us "Russians". And it's such a pity that with my Russian passport I need a visa to go to almost all European countries, including Latvia, the land of my forefathers.

I've only got some good old AIESEC-friends there I can visit. And the old cementary in the village Ķuļciems, where almost all the graves have my mother's maiden name.

Borat - meine Meinung zum Film

2006-11-15T22:15:00.000+03:00

Habe mir endlich “Borat - Kulturelle Lernung von Amerika um Benefiz für glorreiche Nation von Kasachstan zu machen” angesehen.

Hier in Russland hat das Staatliche Kommitee fur Kinematographie den Film zur öffentlichen Demonstration "nicht empfohlen". LOL weil Kasachstan Putins großer Partner und Verbündeter ist haben die staatlichen Trotzköpfe es angenommen, besser zu wissen, was ich mir für mein Geld im Kino ansehen soll. Egal, stoppen kann uns keiner, außerdem kann ich mir kaum eine belachbare russische Fassung vorstellen (genau so wenig wie eine sehenswerte deutsche). Es gibt Filme, wo man den Pepp nur in der Originalsprache mitkriegt.

Im heutigen linken Europa kann wohl nur sexuell oder fökal gefärbter Humor als letzter als politisch korrekt gelten. Ach ja, Scherze über Jesus Christus, egal wie derb und unverschämt, sind auch willkommen. Von allem davon gibt es im Film genug, doch ist es nicht das, was ihn so amüsant macht. Auch begrenzt sich das durch den Kakao gezogene Auditorium nicht auf homophobe und chauvinistische US-amerikanische konservative Rednecks.

Viel lustiger ist es sich die Reaktion Kontinentaleuropäischer Sozis, die ich ja sooo gerne mag, vorzustellen. Linke Political-Correctness -Hysteriker brechen wohl zusammen schon nachdem sie tabuierte böööse Wörter wie "Jude" oder "Zigeuner" vom Bildschirm hören. Dann wachen sie gegen Ende des Films auf und schreiben in ihren Zeitungen, was der Film für eine schreckliche Tragödie ist. Ogottogott! Gerade gegen diese Menschen ist - ob absichtlich oder nicht - die versteckte Provokation des Films gerichtet.

Außer dem wirklich kasachisch klingenden Namen und der blauen Fahne hat Cohens Borat Sagdiyev mit echtem Kasachstan nichts zu tun.

In Wirklichkeit ist Kasachstan ein Land mit viel Wüste und Steppe, bewohnt von nomadischen mongoloiden Kasachen und Nachkommen russischer Kolonisten. Vor wenigen Jahren bin ich dort gewesen, auf einem AIESEC-Treffen in Almaty. Ich bin aus Moskau 5 Tage lang mit dem Zug durch Steppen und Wüsten gefahren - und das nicht ohne Abenteuer. War das ein Megarlebnis!

"Borats Heimatsdorf" wurde in Rumänien gefilmt. Was Borat als "Kasachisch" spricht, ist Hebräisch und seltens Polnisch (und zwar sind es allgemeine Phrasen aus einem Touristensprachbuch wie "Guten Tag!", "Wie geht es Ihnen?", "Sprechen Sie Englisch?". Das klingt sooo genial! :D ). Der Soundtrack besteht hauptsächlich aus balkanischer Musik, darunter Goran Bregovics Orchester.

Borat ist eine Parodie auf Osteuropa generell und wider Willen insbesondere auf Balkan, weil Balkaner die Farbenprächtigsten Osteuropäer sind mit ihrem grellen Cocktail aus Armut, Provinzialität und Temperament. Ein Vorgänger von Borat in dieser Hinsicht ist das weniger bekannte Projekt Molwanien, jedoch ist Borat vielfach starker und lustiger.

Man muss zugeben, dass keiner es im Westen wagen würde, sich auf solche Weise uber Afrikaner oder Araber lustig zu machen. Aber uns Osteuropäer darf man schon egal wie lächerlich darstellen, und der Film ist ein gutes Beispiel dafür. Und das nur deswegen, weil wir trotz allem ziwilisiert genug sind, um über sich selber lachen zu können, statt dänische Botschaften anzuzünden. Und so habe ich den Film auch empfunden, wo zwar grotesk und übertrieben, aber grundlegend viel Wahres von uns allen hier gezeigt wurde, weswegen man sich nicht beleidigt fühlen muss.

Techinsches

2006-11-06T15:49:00.000+03:00

Einz muss ich zugeben: das Interface von Livejournal ist viel verständlicher und einfacher als das von Blogger. Oder ich kenne mich noch nicht so gut aus hier.

Warum wird man die ganze Zeit gebeten, das Blog von neu an zu veröffentlichen?

Optionen wie Current Music und Current Mood fehlen auch sehr.

Kann mich auch nicht über die Sprache, in der ich mein Blog hier führen will, entscheiden. Soll es doch Deutsch sein oder Englisch? Oder beides - mal so, mal so?

Belarus is visited by one thousand times fewer tourists than Czech Republic

2006-11-06T13:55:00.000+03:00

An interesting comparison of numbers of tourists visiting Belarus and other countries.

"Proud" 90,000 tourisit per annum to Belarus versus 90 millions to Czech Republic or 500 thousands to "poor" Georgia "suffering from the ugly-Orange-liberal-Saakashvili-regime"

But still - these low numbers for Belarus keep the hope and make one wait for them to grow high after the collapse of Łukašenka's dictatorship. Because even after all the Russian and Soviet vandalism over the country, their destruction of Belarus' architecture, there is so much to see in Belarus.

http://www.tolblogs.org/belarus/en/?p=282

To Be a Belarusan in Bialystok

2006-10-31T21:17:00.000+03:00

dziki dzik gave me a link to an article about the situation with the Belarusian minority in Biełastok (Polish: Białystok) in eastern Poland. It is as sad as everything related to Belarus is...

To Be a Belarusan in Bialystok

Wojtek Kosc

What does an average Pole think when asked about Belarus? A neighbouring country with a grotesque president; a backward economy and a huge Polish minority, not always treated well by the authorities. Oh, and there are some of them here in Poland. Belarusans (not Belarussians) form a 250- to 300-thousand-strong minority in Poland (estimates vary), not always well-treated by the authorities either.

To an outside observer everything might look fine. Belarusans have their organizations such as the "Center of Citizen Education: Poland - Belarus," and their events, such as an annual rock festival in Grodek. In other words, Belarusans can be Belarusans in Poland. Even at the "Small Europes" festival, organized by the Solidarity-owned Gazeta Wspolczesna daily, a band from Belarus performed freedom songs. The band, whose concerts are forbidden by the present-day Belarusan authorities, sang about its dreams of a democratic Belarus. But should the band's members perhaps take a closer look at Poland, the hospitable country that allowed them to play their songs of freedom?

They should. In recent years - since the electoral victory of the Catholic right-wing coalition, Jednosc (Unity), in 1994 to be precise - Belarusans in Poland have experienced the effects of quite overt anti-Belarusan policies. Apparently, in this case "unity" does not mean sticking together for the sake of Bialystok's future but rather unifying along religious and nationalist lines. This is an observation made, not by some disappointed Belarusan or a blindly anti-right-wing leftist voter, but one expressed on the pages of Kurier Poranny (Morning Courier), a Bialystok daily, not associated with any political force and valued for its impartiality.

It is also an observation made by Mieczyslaw Wnuk, an essayist from Jerzy Giedroyc's respected Paris-based journal Kultura (Culture). In an article entitled "Big City of Bialystok," (Kultura 8, 1998), Wnuk describes how the city's authorities carry out their policy of erasing Belarusans and their culture from Bialystok's image, creating a wholly artificial picture of the city - which has always been a city of many cultures. Wnuk writes:

"The victorious Catholic right-wing make it no secret that they want no Orthodox officials (and no ineffectual ones either) in the Bialystok region."

As a Catholic party, Unity sees no role for Orthodox followers. And since the words "Orthodox" and "Belarusan" are synonymous in the minds of Bialystok authorities, both groups are discriminated against equally.

However, those two words are not synonymous. Belarusan national awareness stems from Catholicism, and the Orthodox Church in Poland steers clear of both national and ethnic identification.

Some striking facts illustrate the growing discrimination against Belarusans. After the AWS (Solidarity Election Action) parliamentary victory in 1997, money for renovation of the Orthodox monastery in Suprasl (which had been kept in a special budget reserve) was taken away. Last year, the Belarusan Society was refused funding for all its projects. The Belarusan Social-Cultural Society has yet to receive any money this year, although the Ministry of Finance has apparently already transferred the funds to the Ministry of Culture. Moreover, it is already known that next year's allocation will be ten percent less. Bialystok's 250th anniversary was celebrated without any reference to Belarusans' and/or Orthodox followers' contribution to the city's development.

When Member of Parliament Jozef Mozolewski (AWS) said that the money originally allocated for the renovation of the Suprasl Monastery was a "thank you" from the former Communists for the Belarusans' vote, the true reasons underlying the policy of Bialystok's authorities became clear. It is true that before 1989, Belarusans were quite loyal to the Communists, who allowed them to advance financially and socially, often at the price of denying their national identity. But if this were to serve as a basis for discrimination, it would be a very short-sighted policy indeed.

Belarusans and followers of the Orthodox Church have always formed a vital part of eastern Poland's society. Not only after 1945 but long before that as well. Exacting political revenge on them for choosing a particular political affiliation may be appropriate for a totalitarian country, but not for the model Central European democracy that Poland wants to be.

The amount of money involved in subsidizing Belarusan/Orthodox projects is not that large, and, to cite Wnuk again, "it will save neither the region nor Poland, but may seriously harm Poland's image."

Wojtek Kosc, 17 September 1999

http://www.ce-review.org/99/13/kosc13.html

Technical problems with LJ. wtf?

2006-10-28T14:45:00.001+04:00

The whole morning I'm getting problems with opening my own posts to Livejournal and posts of my friends.

All I get is

[Error: Database handle unavailable]

LJ sux definitely. I keep on developing my new blog here.

Werner-beinhart!

2006-10-27T23:51:00.000+04:00

Der Film ist einfach soooooo geil! Taugt mir viel besser als die folgenden Werner-Filme, die sind schon viel weniger lustig, auch wenn sie 100% animiert sind. Hab “Werner-Beinhart!” in Emule zu downloaden begonnen. Ist zwar viel, aber das finde ich sicher nicht auf CDs nirgendwo hier in Moskau.

***

“Werner – beinhart!” - клёвы трохі пахабны нямецкі мультфільм пра байкераў. А гэта самая клёвая сцэна зь яго

Das russischsprachige Informationsfeld verlassen

2006-10-27T23:28:00.000+04:00

Diesen Blog führe ich auf Deutsch und Englisch mit manchmal Inhaltsangabe in Belarusisch. Als Akt meiner inneren Emigration aus dem russischsprachigen Livejournal und der dortigen russischen Hoffnungslosigkeit.

Plus, ich musste doch etwas mit meinem jetzt beruflich unnötigem Deutsch tun

Proletariat der Postindustriellen Epoche

2006-10-27T23:26:00.000+04:00

Kapitalismus wie er von Marx beschrieben wird, wo die Arbeit zur totalen Ausbeutung und Folter der Arbeiter wird, existiert schon längst nicht mehr in der Industrie oder in der Landwirtschaft – dabei ist es gerade das, was in manchen von in unserer modernen postindustriellen Wirtschaft dominierenden Branchen aufgefunden warden kann, wo Broker und Consultants genau so mühevoll in gesundheitsschädlichen Umständen pauken müssen.

Gut, wenn man dafür entsprechend gut bezahlt wird. Richtich Scheiße ist es aber, wenn das nicht der Fall ist, und die Motivation (Anführungszeichen?) auf Karrierestart und die Auswegslosigkeit für gestrige Uni-Absolventen beruht.

SUP с котом

2006-10-23T23:40:00.000+04:00

I wasn't really too much engaged in all these anti-Nosik and anti-SUP activity, and I do not really beleive that they seriously want to start some sort of cendorship in cyrrillic-writing (*LOL*) LJ.

But just why didn't I have that problems with loading www.livejournal.com before that?

***

Paśla pačatku ŭsioj hetaj afery z rasiejcami, kupiŭšymi Livejournal, u mianie čamuści čas ad času pačalisia prablemy z ładavańniem staronki. Čamu?

Usim pryvitannie

2006-10-18T23:19:00.000+04:00

Прывітаньне ўсім з гэтага новага мейсца :)
Паспрабуем абжыцца тут патроху. Калі-небудзь, мабыць, штосьці тут будзе.

***

Hi everyone.
Just getting to know blogger.com One day I'll be here maybe :)