THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN

A friend of mine summed up Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine perfectly, saying that it is important to remember that historically the inhabitants of the Kremlin have never tended to do subtle either externally or internally. When it comes to ‘Soviet / Russian intervention’ to suppress striking East German workers (in 1953), the crushing of the Hungarian revolution (in 1956), the invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague spring (in 1968), the invasion of Afghanistan (in 1979) and the invasions of Georgia (in 2008) and recent events in Ukraine most people would be hard pressed to describe them as subtle.  

The shadow of a gunman...

Orchestrated by the Kremlin Russian nationalist elements active in eastern Ukraine are busy throwing their weight around and the realities of President Putin rule in Russia are coming home to roost.  News filtering out from eastern Ukraine is beginning to suggest a pattern to disappearances as journalists, local politicians, and ordinary citizens have begun to go missing at an alarming rate. The Kyiv Post and the Committee to Protect Journalists have compiled lists of documented cases of kidnappings in the region.

We are where we are because of Russia’s long planned but hastily implemented occupation of the Crimea which followed the collapse of the corrupt oligarchic pro Moscow government in Kyiv in the face of a bloody but popular revolt. The US Secretary of State John Kerry has rightly accused Russia of "distraction, deception and destabilisation" in eastern Ukraine. In the strongly worded statement, he has called on Moscow to help defuse the crisis or face further sanctions.

The  continuing unrest of eastern Ukraine has more to do with deflecting public opinion in Russia away from the example of Kyiv than anything else. That said the unrest in Eastern Ukraine was stirred up after, from the Kremlin’s perspective, a pro western revolt succeeded. The key and as yet unresolved issue remains as to whether the Ukraine looks east to Moscow or west to the EU looms large in the Kremlin’s thinking.

Last month Russia annexed Ukraine's mainly ethnic-Russian Crimea following a questionable referendum in the region which ‘choose’ to that backed joining the Russian Federation. Both the West and Kiev have said that the referendum was illegal and have refused to recognise it. The problem is that the Kremlin’s concerns for ‘Russians in zones of legitimate interest’ posses potential problems for Moldova (including in the Trans Dniester region) and other eastern states with Russian minorities.

For a man originally brought in as a safe pair of hands to safeguard the interests of a clique of oligarchs who made their fortunes plundering the privatised assets of the former Soviet Union while ordinary Russians lost their savings, President Putin sits securely (and genuinely elected with a large popular mandate) in the Kremlin. The President’s popularity is higher than ever, state’s coffers are full of accrued energy revenues, former oligarchs have been tamed, the bear has roared, Russia has expanded territorially for the first time since 1945 and the West’s criticism has been dismissed.

To a great extent we are all still living with the consequences of the second world war and the cold war – parallels between President Putin and the dictators from the 1930’s and 1940’s have already been drawn.  The legacy and legacy of Stalin’s terror continues to overshadow modern Russia to the day. Communist tyranny died of apathy and inertia in the early 1990’s this meant that there were no real consequences for the former communists and the agencies of the communist state. 

There was no day in court to answer for terrible crimes and abuses inflicted on the Russian people. There was no equivalent of a post cold war Nuremberg tribunal to bring the former communist functionaries (including the KGB) to account for their crimes against the Russian people continue to haunt the Russian people and the rest of us. Unlike in much of Eastern Europe the former dissidents never inherited political power the former communist bureaucrats did.

The West preferred to work hand in hand with former communists to saddle Russia the inheritor of much of the former Soviet state with a dubious legacy of privatisations. Now while there are some in the West who are quite happy to admire President Putin’s values the problem with appeasement is not how it starts but how it ends. If the West accepts that eastern Ukraine President Putin’s final territorial demand then we will be on seriously unstable political ground for the foreseeable future.

Disturbingly the modern Russia’s ‘brown’ vote long targeted by President Putin appears to be the home to some extreme views long dispatched to the home of the extreme right wing.  The Crimean Tartars, who suffered deportation at the hands of Stalin and years of discrimination at the hands of the Soviet authorities, now find themselves back in Russia and like some other ethnic and religious minorities at risk.

When it comes to articulating the consequences and realities of appeasement these are the times when we seriously miss people like Michael Foot who would have stated in no uncertain terms exactly what Russia’s intervention in Ukraine actually signifies. That murmur of Munich that drifted through the West’s chancelleries in the 1990’s over Bosnia clearly has not gone away. 

A combination of increasing EU dependence on Russia gas supplies and potential loss of trading opportunities seriously threatens to put the skids under any EU diplomatic response to recent events in eastern Ukraine. If we in the West choose to do nothing , then what message does that send to Russian and Belarusian democrats and would be democratic movements across Eurasia and the rest of the world? 

WHAT PRICE LIBERTY?

BBC Newsnight'S Sue Lloyd-Roberts was smuggled into Homs, which is the scene of some of Syria's strongest anti-government protests and most violent army crackdowns, to see what life is like for people there.



The Syrian city of Homs was one of the first cities to join the Syrian anti-government uprising when it began back in March. Thousands of city residents gathered in the main square to call for the lifting of the government's emergency laws and a genuine democracy.

Since that time the city has been effectively besieged by President Bashar al-Assad's armed forces and has been the scene of almost daily attacks. The unofficial title of the "Capital of the Syrian Revolution" has been earned at a heavy price without almost half of the killings of civilians since the uprising began, estimated to be at least 3,000, having taken place there.

ANNIVERSARIES

With the twentieth anniversary (9^th November 1989) of the fall of the Wall rapidly approaching it is worth remembering a few things about the then East Germany and the East German Government. The nominally Communist (but fully Totalitarian) Government maintained its hold on power by subjecting its own citizens to the full weight of fear and intimidation via its own secret police.

Ordinary people were turned into informers or collaborators to remain “safe” from the attentions of the Stasi: estimates as to the numbers who turned informer vary between one for every 50 people to one in seven (in Ceausescu’s Romania it may have been one in three). The secret police happily ruined the lives of anyone it decided to: men, women, teenagers and children. During the really dark days this meant the murder, or “liquidation”, of their opponents.

As East Germany mellowed in the 1970s and 1980s the regime opted to destroy its opponents psychologically — spreading rumours, ruining careers, destroying marriages, taking peoples children away, wrecking peoples chances of higher education, or exiling them. The East Germany State (and the Stasi) was effectively at war with its own people, if you kept your head down, did not rock the boat, towed the party line, and parroted that the current line in ideological claptrap; then you might get by. The Stasi (at the behest of the East German State) demonstrated a degree of viciousness and utterly disregarded basic human rights and cast aside any trace of human dignity.

As had been well documented elsewhere the Stasi broke into people’s flats and bugged them; they actually irradiated objects and people (with some pretty lethal consequences) so they could track “suspects” with Geiger counters; and also used drugs to wreck people’s lives, literally drugging the East German States opponents whilst detaining them under house arrest. The East German State waged a brutal and vicious war upon its own people, who could with a literal stroke of a pen became “traitors”, “asocials” or “negative-enemy elements”.

As has been well documented elsewhere, there is a trend in totalitarian states towards excessive bureaucracy and record keeping; East Germany was pretty typical in that respect to other equally unpleasant totalitarian repressive regimes. Since the fall of the wall historians and archivists have revealed that between 1949 and 1989 the East German party Bureaucrats managed to accumulate more paperwork (mostly relating to their own people) than the whole of Germany throughout the Middle Ages.

Ironically some twenty years after the fall of the wall, a heated debate is taking place in Germany as to how East Germany should be remembered! Some of the former Communists (many of whom shrugged of their inconvenient outdated and irrelevant ideology) would no doubt like East Germany to be remembered as some sort of idealistic, left wing utopian well intentioned but failed socialist experiment – within which they had hoped to look after the people from literal cradle to grave - the non rose tinted reality was sadly very different.

Many former human rights activists, political prisoners and most historians would have East Germany remembered exactly the way it was. It is worth remembering that few people defected to East Germany (save for at least one former NUM deputy leader and he rapidly changed his mind and quietly came back to the West) to embrace its nominally Communist values.

Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, but, it won’t bring back those people who were murdered by the East German state and it won’t heal the damage done to people’s lives. It is also worth remembering that many thousands of ordinary East German’s risked life and limb to escape to the West over the years and that some paid the ultimate price in the attempt. As we remember the events of twenty years ago (in the winter of 1989) we should also remember that thousands of East Germans rose in courageous and peaceful revolt to topple the tyrannical East Germany Government and cast their rulers deservedly into the dustbin of history.