Elections and the electorate in Russia and the United States

I was very impressed by this interview in the journal Foreign Policy. The interviewee was the young journalist Evgeny Feldman, who struck me as intelligent, systematic, and sensible. As a result I found his description of the elections in both the United States and Russia to be useful.

It's worth thinking about how elections work in various countries in this kind of detail. Some electoral systems are completely corrupt, but they are not necessarily corrupt in the same way. Some electoral systems are fairly successful in keeping governments honest, but I don't think anybody in a country with free election thinks the system works amazingly well. (If you know any Americans, name five who think the system is just hunky-dory.) Maybe they are ignorant of how bad things are elsewhere, but I don't think that's the most important thing. I think there's lots of room for improvement, and honest well-run elections are part of it. But assuring high quality elections isn't simple, and might not mean the same thing everywhere. And honest elections may well be only a part of the puzzle.

Let me quote Evgeny Feldman, just to give you an idea of what he sounds like:

FP: Based on how your readers react to your journalism, can you tell what they have the most trouble understanding about our system?


Feldman: I quite often encounter the opinion that it’s all а show. But in large measure this comes from the position, which at least in Iowa is quite popular, that Washington is lying to everyone, that the liberal media is lying, and so on. All the top candidates in this election are saying this, in one way or another. So [my readers] kind of have a garbled, misunderstood version of this.


But I don’t think it’s so much a mistrust of the people who are in the [American] establishment — I think it’s more mistrust of the system of elections, as such. Because in Russia, there’s a syndrome of “learned helplessness.” For decade after decade, our society has seen that its opinions don’t affect anything. Since 1996, for sure. People don’t believe that one can really choose.


[Here in Iowa City], I spent a lot of time with this elderly couple. We’ve done a lot of talking. They went to see a Cruz rally in a neighboring town, and they came back having made a decision to vote for him. And their explanation really shocked me. They said: “We want to vote for him because he’s proposing term limits [in Congress].”


The fact that this was the deciding factor — Cruz’s position on how the political system should be set up in principle — is really a huge difference [from Russia]. It’s very cool — a completely different level of political thinking than what we have.


With us, it’s heavily weighed in the other direction — no one discusses tax rates, or whether we should have legal abortion. They talk about whether Russia should look towards the West or towards Asia, and about the overall makeup of the system, but not about term limits. It’s more about whether we should have competitive elections at all.


FP: So, in Russia, political discussions are on a much more general level?


Feldman: Not even general, more like illusory. The issues are discussed among major parties that are all controlled from the center. Those that are independent are barely allowed to participate in elections.


FP: Are there any similarities between Americans and Russians that have surprised you?


Feldman: I think that, both here and there, there’s a part of the public that’s inclined to various conspiracy theories. But here it’s a little more grounded, for example, people say the only reason Hillary isn’t in jail is because she’s part of the establishment. I haven’t heard anything about the Masons, whereas we have that [in Russia].


At the beginning, I had a strong impression of similarity between the campaigns here and what [opposition leader Alexei] Navalny did in Moscow [when he ran for mayor]. I knew that he was orienting his campaign on techniques that were developed in the United States, but still, the similarity seriously surprised me, at least at the beginning.

There are differences, too. As far as I understand, here the rallies are done mainly for the benefit of the media. They all take place in a closed building God knows where. No one who’s just walking by can get in, because there won’t be enough tickets anyway, at least if it’s a top candidate. The rallies are done to show the media an image: that we have many supporters. Isn’t that right?


FP: I think so.


Feldman: In Russia, of course, it’s quite different. In Russia, opposition candidates absolutely cannot get into any building.In Russia, opposition candidates absolutely cannot get into any building. Not in winter and not in summer. Because either it’s a government building, or it’s private, but then there’s a “burst pipe” or some kind of inspection, if they try to schedule a rally. Also, Navalny can’t get on TV, so he does rallies outside. At least this way he can have some access to the voters.


FP: Has your opinion about American democracy changed while you’ve been here?

 Feldman: I’ve always thought that the general elections are the most important stage. But now I understand that these primaries are even more important, because they allow more nuanced policy views to be spotlighted for the voters. So I’m really glad that I got to be here for this.


FP: So for you, this is a very serious exercise of democracy. It doesn’t seem like some kind of absurd circus?


Feldman: Of course there’s a certain element of “show.” But I can see that the absolute majority of people here take it very seriously. And I understand — this is probably mostly about Trump and his attempts to make the campaign about himself — that there’s an element of a talk show, and that’s probably bad.


But I follow the Democrats a little more, because their values are more understandable to me. For example, I live in a country that made abortions legal in 1920. So for me, the “pro-life” position is a completely incomprehensible thing. I understand, intellectually, where it comes from, but emotionally I can’t understand how anyone can support this. From this point of view, for me the Democrats are easier to understand.


FP: Of our candidates, who do you think would be most popular in Russia?


Feldman: On the surface, Trump is, of course, terribly similar to Putin.Trump is, of course, terribly similar to Putin.


Because in Russia, the elections are more like a choice between different aesthetics. That is, you have no chance to have an effect on actual policy. You can vote for the Communists if you’re nostalgic, for the screaming [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky if you want to bang your fist on the table, for [the ruling party] United Russia if you want to show your loyalty, and for A Just Russia if you’re loyal, but not very.


So in Russia, elections look different. It’s a ritual, a cult. You vote and it doesn’t change anything. Here it’s not like that — but in that way, on the surface, Trump is, of course, very similar to Putin. He’s the closest to this kind of Russian politics.


FP: In that, by voting for him, you’re more showing who you are than voting.

"Winning" the war in Ukraine

Foreign Policy:

The Russian-occupied Donbass enclave in eastern Ukraine is on the verge of economic and social collapse. That grave fact casts the Russo-Ukrainian war in a different light. Normally, wars are fought over prize territory: winners gain it, losers lose it. In this case, the implosion of the Donbass means that whoever controls the enclave is, in fact, the loser. As the man who owns the enclave and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future, Vladimir Putin is thus the loser. And both Russia and Ukraine know it.

According to United Nations data, of the 5 million people who formerly populated the enclave, nearly 2 million have left since March 2014. Since many of these refugees are educated, middle-class professionals who are unlikely ever to return to a war zone, the enclave has suffered an irreparable loss of its intellectual and human capital.

Of the 3 million who are left, about 2 million are children and pensioners — leaving 1 million working-age adults to support them, service the crumbling economy, and do the fighting. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, GDP in the Donbass has collapsed, with industrial production falling by over a third in 2014, and construction by over a half. Many bridges and rail tracks remain destroyed. Only one third of residents receive a steady wage. Large swathes of the territory suffer from gas, water, and electricity shortages. And Kiev stopped paying pensions to enclave residents in late 2014. Unsurprisingly, the decline of the Donbass has continued apace in 2015.

Although refugee streams appear to have abated — those most able to flee have already left — economic decline and flight will continue as long as the war does. In time, the enclave’s population will consist of senior citizens barely surviving off their private plots, children forced to fend for themselves on the street, overworked women, and desperate men who opt either for alcoholism or for the material compensations of fighting — and dying — within the separatist ranks. (In the photo, a resident of the Donbass village of Nikishino talks to neighbors outside her destroyed home.)

The longer the fighting continues, the less will the Donbass be able to sustain itself and its war-fighting capacity and the less will the separatists be able to create a functioning political entity.

Ship lift on the Yenisei River, Siberia

And they say everything is bigger in Texas!

(From the Big Picture; click for a good look.)

Nevsky, by Ben McCool and Mario Guevera

In our time artists have a lot of choices of which genre  they will use to tell stories that inspire them. One common strategy has been to take tales that originate in comic books or graphic novels and fill them out by using all the resources of the movies. The Marvel superhero saga dominates film production these days. A somewhat different example can be seen in the transformation of a popular graphic novel,300, into a film whose artistic roots are unapologetically in comics.

Here we have an example of other artists  going the other direction: taking an epic film and turning it into a book that can be held in one's hands. I would be interested, sometime down the pike, to know how successful, commercially and artistically, this project is, how popular it turns out to be with the target audience.

This is certainly a labor of love. It is a faithful rendering of the 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, one of the most famous products of Sergei Eisenstein's filmmaking genius. There is no effort to disguise how much the authors owe to the original version of this story. In fact, quite a bit of space is devoted to telling the reader about both the historical Alexander Nevsky and his interpreter, Eisenstein.

Alexander Nevsky was a 13th-century Russian warrior who was remembered for fighting for Mother  Russia against two dangerous enemies, and East (the Mongol Golden horde) and West (the Teutonic Knights). In the late 1930s the story seemed both relevant and useful to Eisenstein and the Soviet regime that employed and often abused him. Japan loomed in one direction, Nazi Germany in the other. Whatever the facts of the historical Nevsky, he was needed as a symbol of Russian/Soviet determination in the face of daunting odds.

A story of great courage and heroism defeating treason and cruelty was right up Eisenstein's alley. If you like your heroes unsullied and your enemies black as black can be, Eisenstein is your man. The successful conjuring up of such figures makes the movie unforgettable once you see it. And the stark contrast is clearly what has inspired the two creators to take on this remarkable project.

Of course, the success of Nevsky will depend to a very great extent on its artistic appeal to aficionados of the genre. I'm not really in that crew. To my eye it looks pretty good. The art combines rich colors, heavy shading, and the occasional use of odd angles to emphasize some aspect of a scene.

I have to wonder whether this book will result in a new audience finding Eisenstein's films.

Young women in Chechnya

A compelling piece from the Big Picture.

More from Moscow

From msnbc.com:

For many protesters, the animosity goes way beyond Putin the candidate. Vasily's father, Fyodor, now 50, says he watched in shock as the Soviet Union fell 20 years ago, then in horror as Russia passed, rudderless, through a decade of economic collapse and war. And then came Putin. Stability. Prosperity. "All over the country there was a scream of joy when we got rid of this alcoholic, Yeltsin. We finally saw a man who was sane, who was physically fit, and he wasn't reading from his notes," recalled the older Gnuchev.

His son Vasily says he was too young to remember the bad old days of democratic Russia. But he prospered under Putin, and always felt free. And that's the real problem. The Putin regime's reportedly widespread electoral fraud pulled the rug from under a whole generation who believed in their leader, who believed in Putinism. "Now we see that everything is a lie," Vasily explained. "The Kremlin just stole our votes  -- it's just incompatible with the picture of the world we grew up in."

It's that humiliation -- indeed, violation -- mixed with anger that seems to drive many Russian, middle-class protesters into the streets -- even when the elements are conspiring against them -- and will keep the pressure on Putin, with promises of more protests to come. But what if this "people power" movement really blossoms, only to be thwarted yet again, not in a free and fair election come March, but by another brazen, Putin-led ploy to retain power?