There are people capable of being both objective, decent and critical of the Kremlin (like, oh, Jerome...)

I do appreciate them.

(And that quote about Putin and Khodorkhovski did jump at me too - and it is one I actually agree with)

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

As for wasting my time with LR - I should point out that this is the first in a series of interviews with people who blog about Russia, and I'll be speaking to both pro- and anti- Kremlin bloggers (as well as bloggers of pretty much every shade in between).  

Really, I'm just asking the questions and providing the platform - its up to the interviewees to convince you of their wisdom.  Or lack thereof...  

(1) I rarely post comments on blogs other than ET and Daily Kos.  

(2) Off the top of my head, Stephen Cohen, Georgi Derlugian, Jerome, several of the writers at intelligent.ru (which appears to be kaput), and ... ok, definitely not decent, but Mark Ames has written some otherwise impressive articles.

I don't personally feel it is my place to save the Russians from themselves.  So far as fruitful efforts to change Russia go, I'm struggling to make a fruitful effort to change my own country, you know, the one running about invading countries, spying on its citizens, imprisoning people without cause and torturing prisoners, rigging elections, becoming frighteningly isolationist, and in the grip of some maniacal ideologues.  Hint: it's not Russia.  So, my hands are full.  You're on your own.  Good luck and Godspeed.  I'm confident the Russian people will adore you when your blogging finally succeeds in freeing them from their oppression.  Though they'll inevitably get sick of your shit and wage a possibly bloody coup on your mythology a few decades later.  

(3) Congratulations.  Especially considering all the competition out there.

(4) Save for one or two times I've been led astray, I don't read your blog.  I only know of you because you visit all the blogs focusing on Russia and say confrontational and nasty things to the people writing them.  Instead of accepting that fact it's a big world and there are bound to be people who disagree with you, you seem to be under the misguided impression that you can harass people into either agreement or silence, which is profoundly ironic given your concern about freedom of thought/speech in Russia.    

(5) Ignore you?  Impossible.  (See above.)

P.S.
I should let you know that I am no expert and have never asserted any kind of objectivity when writing about Russia.  I make it clear that I am just trying to get the pendulum to swing the other way and to illustrate the hypocrisy of the American media and its coverage of Russia.  I have a deep and perhaps irrational love for the country and its people, and while I can champion democracy with the best of them, I've experienced enough to know that I don't have the answers for Russia, that I don't even have the answers for my own country, and that the answers America has tried to give Russia have been the wrong ones.  I don't think there is anything implicitly negative about state-run operations or anything implicitly positive about capitalism.   I know that the people I've known are not the backwards crazies unable to get their act together, or amoral and duplicitous figures that the American media has for decades portrayed Russians as.  I know that Putin's regime is not a beacon of democracy, but that things are notably better than they were under Yeltsin, and that I'm having "smart and savvy leader" envy at the moment.   I can appreciate Putin, Khodorkovsky and Limonov at the same time, though I can't say I'd want any one of them running my country.  But then, that's not my predicament, choosing who should run Russia or deciding how they should do it.  My predicament, Russia-wise, is monitoring the propaganda spread in my own press, wondering what kind of ideology the belief that "Khodorkovsky is simply too hot to be stuck in Siberia like that" comes under, and generally being in awe of the audacity, resilience, beauty and absurdity of this country.  

It's a rather satisfying feeling, once you let it start being about Russia and stop being about you.  I hope you can one day experience it.


Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Interesting info, thanks.

Is this close enough:

You see, Gaidar believed that there was a really good possibility that, given the chance, Russians would go right back to Soviet dicatorship. He thought they'd vote for it. Everybody told him he was crazy, it would never happen, the changes in Russia were "irreversible." But Gaidar still worried. So he decided that it was necessary to transfer Soviet power into other hands just as fast as humanly possible, and he knew it would be messy, very messy. That's why he sold off assets as fast as possible, and why he had Boris Yeltsin tell local leaders to "take all the power you can grab." Granted, many problems would result. But the alternative was USSR II, and a second round of cold war with the USA and a second massive failure, something Gaidar wasn't sure his country could survive.

And uh... Gaidar was right. That's exactly what the people of Russia did when given the chance. They didn't give democracy even one decade to work, not even two different presidents. They didn't build a variety of political parties and send forth able leaders. They kept voting for the Communist Party.

This is an absurd analysis IMHO, but anyway it does lend itself to the interpretation that "La Russophobe considers Gaidar and the Locusts some sort of 'move towards democracy'". Does it not?

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

See also the thread starting here and the links in that diary (some of which are also listed in the above sentence).

There's been more in the comments around stories (in the daily Salon, where we discuss the news of the day). We discuss Russia regularly, feel free to jump in.

Generally, my position is clear: Putin is a small time despot who grabbed power thanks to the genocidal war in Chechnya, got lucky as world energy prices jumped through the roof (so much so that he and his mediocre siloviki cronies cannot even steal it all) and got even luckier as he has to face the stupidest and most criminal leaders in the West for a long while. He is popular because for most Russians, subsidized authoritarianism is better than empoverished chaos.

I usually defend Russia against the blatant hypocrisy of the West; I really don't like Putin otherwise.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes