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Russia Presidential Election Panel Session: Council on Foreign Relations, March 5, 2012

via www.youtube.com

"On the eve of the Russian elections, Masha Gessen, journalist and author of The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, and Stephen Sestanovich, CFR's George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies, sat down to discuss Putin's strategy and public response."

Putin Past, Putin Present, Putin Future, Author Masha Green on the "Charlie Rose Show."

SEE INTERVIEW HERE I was not able to insert the video from Charlie Rose's site. At Charlie Rose's site, click inside this image and the interview will begin.

Some of the points I found interesting:

KGB archives that were once opened to shed light on the Soviet past are now closed.

Did he aid the overthrow attempt of Gorbachev in 1991? It seems he might have had a play in it, but I would like to hear more evidence. But how young was he then? Did he have a rank high enough then to be involved in KGB decisions?

Gessen predicts the protest movement will make Putin step down, one way or the other.

Some evidence that police in Moscow and St. Petersburg have sympathy for the protest movement. 

Oligarchs is a murky term in Russia any more.

Putin was just a faceless bureaucrat amongst a number that Yeltsin chose as his successor. I wonder, was it, "Eeeney, meaney, miney, moe?"

He wishes to make Russia into one large KGB organization, because that is what he knows of power.

Gessen claims there was never a true de-Stalinization.

Despite the uncertainty, Gessen is optimistic.

I had never heard Gessen interviewed before the recent presidential election. I cannot say she is my favorite Russian observer, but she is none the less interesting to listen to for the information she brings.

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Masha Green's new book is called, "The Man Without a Face: the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin."

Zakaria: Putin's "return" – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs

Zakaria: Putin's "return" – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs

 

"....He doesn’t seem to understand that he is the source of many of those problems. He is the architect of the system that he is creating, and that’s where you wonder if there’s some kind of strange self-delusion where he doesn’t understand that he is at the heart of the reasons that Russia can’t progress in the way that he is describing...."

Will it be a "Russian Spring" in 2012?

This twenty-minute documentary from Journeyman Pictures looks at the political tensions in Russia as 2012 continues. I found Journeyman Pictures production to be excellent. One of the most interesting facts stated was that about twenty percent of the population still supports communism. Is it just Soviet nostalgia? As a whole, Russia is a very conflicted nation, not knowing which way to turn. Go forward with a Putinesque future? Go back to a socialist utopia that was an illusion? Another way? I have always found Russia fascinating and continue to study it. I also pray for its future, for peace, for freedom and for a more stable world.

 

Russia: So Much Potential Here, So Little Fulfilled

Russia: So Much Potential Here, So Little Fulfilled (Actual Report Title: Putin's charge for national pride)

Supporters of a Russian national revival party gather near a monument to Leo Tolstoy as they mark National Unity Day in central Moscow, Nov. 4, 2006. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)

This is a sad report about the state of modern Russia both rural and urban almost twenty years after the end of the Soviet Union. It is like after being let out of the time lock of history that was the Soviet Union, the clock started up for Russia again. The 1990s seemed like they had become 1920s Chicago, now the clock seems to be running slower and slower. What will become of Mother Russia? They grasp of models of living, old ones and new ones unworkable and untenable. Russia is a great country, but too many are stuck between materialistic greed and whiling their lives away inside the vodka bottle. Will the clock of history eventually run out on Russia? I pray not.