Does anyone know what is going on in Russia?

[liberal72]

I just rea this article about millitary exercises in Russia and it sounds disturbing the language Putin and Russian gov. is using. Dois anyone think that Putin might become the dictator of Russia?

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-russia-military-exercises,0,5173243.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[Loonman]

1. He's sure not happy

His nukes don't work, he just fired his entire cabinet.

[everythingsxen]

2. Yes

I think he has wantedd to return to the old ways since he took office.

:shrug:

We will see..

[truhavoc]

3. They have many more steps until a free democracy is

created, but I don't think this means they are leaning towards democracy. For example the state-controlled media. Elections will be soon, and I guess we'll see then. Putin has been exercising more forceful language recently but I see it merely as an elections ploy.

[Gloria]

4. Russia seems to be going backwards......

Have been tracking this election and the parliamentary election in the World Media Watch, as well as the increasing lockdown on the opposition press.

From the current World Media Watch, posted last night in LBN....It all sound eerily familiar....


http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/03/01/006.html

Monday, Mar. 1, 2004. Page 8

OPINION
Russia's Electoral Time Bomb
By Lilia Shevtsova

SNIP

The current round of elections play a qualitatively different role -- they mark the end of Russia's liberal democratic experiment. They are not about development, but about the formalization of the post-Communist system. From now on, it will not be possible to alter the rules of the game, create a party bottom-up, win an election without approval from the authorities or force one's way to the top independently. Provided, of course, that there is not a crisis which forces a reorganization of the whole political system on Russia. In any case, the period of spontaneous development in Russia is over. From now on, the only source of spontaneity will be the unintended consequences of the authorities' own actions.


snip

Electoral manipulation, by creating a gulf between the authorities and the public, and depriving the regime of a true understanding of what's going on in society, undermines the stability and the durability of the system as a whole. But the Kremlin cannot revert to free elections, fearing that the edifice it has painstakingly constructed may come tumbling down in a landslide. Even liberals and democrats, observing the strengthening of nationalist and populist tendencies (incidentally, a trend inspired by the authorities themselves), are forced to ask themselves what would be preferable: free and fair elections that could hand power to Dmitry Rogozin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, or elections controlled by the bureaucracy?

Putin finds himself in a contradictory position: He is clearly in favor of Westernization, but the electoral farce is forcing his alienation from the West. At the same time, this farce also undermines the stability of his power in the eyes of the Russian public.

What will happen when it becomes manifestly apparent that by renouncing political competition not only is the Kremlin endangering its modernization project but is also undermining stability: Will it choose to abandon elections altogether, a la Turkmenbashi, or will it abandon its attempts to control the outcome of elections?
***
Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

[maggrwaggr]

5. seems like Putin is inexorably making himself dictator

slowly but surely.

He's Bush's role model, that's what's scary.

I wish the fact that his secret police staged "terrorist" bombings in Moscow that he blamed on Chechens would get more press over here.

[tom_paine]

6. No, I think Bush is Putin's role model

Putin is only achieving quicker results with his transition to "Managed Democracy" because Russia doesn't have the Constitution and Bill fo Rights and a heavily armed citizenry to force him to move slower than Bunnypants.

But Putin and Bunnypants are Birds of a Feather, even if Putin makes it to Tyrannical Dictatorship, err, I mean "Managed Democracy" BEFORE Bunnypants.