Article on Russia in The New Yorker

[Alina Israeli]

On Jan 31, 2007, at 4:53 PM, Sergey Glebov wrote:

> Wouldn't that sentence suffice as evidence of the author's expertise:
>
> "Leaders of several Russian regions, including Siberia and Yakutia- 
> both with
> vast reserves of diamonds, oil, and gold beneath their frozen  
> ground-began
> to speak openly of seceding..."

Mari El's secession aspirations: http://www.regnum.ru/news/620277.html

Tatarstan's aspirations: http://pfo.metod.ru/data/territories/ 
tatarstan/issues/politic-1-elect-elect/viewpub

Yakutija: 61% населения хотел бы для Якутии  
особого статуса в составе Российской  
Федерации, что фактически означает,  
что республика находится в шаге от  
объявлении о референдуме. http:// 
www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2006/68/12.html

Siberia: http://72.14.209.104/search? 
q=cache:vb3VwksIPBEJ:www.sapa.sib.ru/kafedra/Polit/st1_may.doc 
+Сибирь+%22отделение+от+России% 
22&hl=ru&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4

The latter is not strong, but they do toy with the idea.  I  
personally think that Kalinigradskaya oblast' and Xabarovskij kraj  
are closer to secession.


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Malavika Jagannathan [mailto:mjagannathan at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 4:12 PM
> Subject: Re: Article on Russia in The New Yorker

> I'm not defending all the reporting done on Russia; in fact, some  
> of it is
> grossly inadequate.  Many of the reporters who land these overseas
> assignments (fewer and fewer it seems as newspapers cut down their  
> foreign
> coverage) do not have a background in the country they are assigned  
> to.


Some of the reporters from Russia include names like Hedrick Smith  
and Robert Kaiser, and already mentioned David Remnick. Several  
generations of Russian studies students used their books to learn  
about the S.U. and Russia.

As for assignments, Robert Kaiser himself said that it is impossible  
to teach journalism to a Russian major (or African major, if such a  
thing exists), but one can teach about the country to a journalist.  
He probably knows what he is talking about.


On Jan 31, 2007, at 1:48 PM, Josh Wilson wrote:

>> I think that western coverage of Russia is beautifully summed in  
>> how it
>> has
>> reported on the Russian weather....
>>
>>
>>
>> Last year, Russia had one of the coldest winters in history. The  
>> Western
>> media reported that the Russians were miserable.
>>
>>
>>
>> This year, Russia has had one of its warmest winters in history. The
>> Western
>> media has reported that... the Russians are miserable.
>>


I fail to see the joke. Last year it was -35C°, which was rather  
extreme (and not easy to bear), this year there was no snow, not just  
in Russia, anywhere in Europe to be precise, which is also rather  
extreme. It is rather simple to understand that an extreme deviation  
in either direction would cause misery, torrents and droughts,  
starvation and overeating, overcrowding and loneliness.


Here's Edward Lucas of the Economist — feed:// 
edwardlucas.blogspot.com/rss.xml (offering his articles for free):  
"Point one: Russia is different. Whether you think of it as  
Gazpromistan, or as Kremlin Inc, the Russian state now is as  
inelegant a creature as ever it was in communist times. It is an  
authoritarian bureaucratic-capitalist arrangement in which a  
squabbling elite, drawn largely from the security services, extracts  
enormous rents from raw materials, steals some, and uses the rest to  
vie for power, spouting nationalist and sometimes xenophobic rhetoric  
to maintain popularity."


The whole gas/oil situation has been analyzed by specialists in all  
media, and there is no point to rehash it here. I would say this  
however,  in response to

On Jan 31, 2007, at 12:21 PM, Michael Denner wrote:

> But Shell suddenly, and with no real
> explanation, doubled its bill for expenses, from something like $25
> million to $50 million. Imagine! Russia reacted poorly to this!!  
> (Think
> if your contractor suddenly doubled the estimated materials cost in a
> home renovation.)


I also would not be happy if my utilities company suddenly doubled  
the price of electricity (we have no oil or gas in our house), and I  
don't think the commission that governs rate hikes would either. I  
could envision doubling in case of extreme shortage or emergency;  
even in California (ENRON induced) crisis this did not happen. If you  
need to double the price do it over a five-year period, 20% a year.  
This way you get even more than 100% and maintain some good will.

2.5¢


Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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