Mikhail Gorbachev, 1931-2022

 By no reasonable person's standards could he be considered a saint. Attaining the position he held at the apex of his power, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which he held from 1985 to 1991, required a high degree of ruthlessness. He combined this with skill at making allies who would support his ambition. According to his New York Times Obituary, as a student "[h]e became familiar with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel and Rousseau." 

During his time as General Secretary he pursued perestroika, or restructuring, and later glasnost, or openness (though perhaps not quite transparency). These were pragmatic moves. Throughout his career he became keenly aware of the sclerotic condition of the Soviet economy and politics. He sought a way to change Soviet society so as to eliminate the sclerosis while staying within the Marxist-Leninist tradition. 

In December of 1990 I attended a Christmas party given by a friend and law school classmate and his wife. My friend had become a United Nations official and worked in a division of the Secretariat that, under U.N. protocol, was always headed by someone from the Soviet Union. My friend's boss, who to hold that position most likely was at least a KGB colonel, was there. He was quite the contrast with a predecessor of his whom I had met at a Christmas party during the Reagan years who, when I asked him how he liked living in New York, scowled and said, "Why should I like it?" The new boss was nothing like that, and I recall his insisting that we should take what "Michael" - he deliberately used the English version of Gorbachev's name - was saying and doing seriously.

It's tempting to use the buzzword "transformative" to describe Gorbachev's time as General Secretary. In some important ways the transformations he helped to bring about endure today. The former "captive nations" of Eastern Europe are now independent, though some, Hungary in particular, are lapsing into authoritarianism, as Russia itself unfortunately has. In his later years, Gorbachev had an uneasy relationship with Putin; the Times reports that he praised the seizure of Crimea and Putin's restoration of order after the chaotic Yeltsin period, but opposed "Mr. Putin's crackdown on news media freedom and his changes in electoral laws in Russia's regions." Gorbachev described Putin as thinking himself "second only to God".

Peter Stampfel sings "I'm Snooki" on a rooftop in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Peter Stampfel is best known among devotees of the bizarre in music as having been, along with Steve Weber and, at times, others, part of the Holy Modal Rounders, once described as "the originators and sole exponents of the genre known as acid-folk." The clip above, for which I'm--as so often--indebted to Michael Simmons, shows Stampfel on a rooftop in St. Petersburg, Russia singing a song he wrote along with Jeffrey Lewis about a now passé reality TV cynosure from New Jersey. As Michael put it, "Utterly twistoid."

Parental advisory: Stampfel lets loose a few f-bombs. Who knows what this may do for Russo-American relations?

Mega-yacht Topaz arrives in New York

On my morning walk I spotted this enormous yacht sailing from New York Harbor into the Hudson River. I guessed it must belong to some Russian oligarch, since a couple of other such yachts--see here and here--have recently arrived here. Searching the net, I was able to determine that this yacht is Topaz, which arrived here today from Algeciras, Spain. Topaz, which is one of the world's largest yachts, is of mysterious ownership, although the owner, as reported here, may be His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.

Leningrad Cowboys and Red Army Choir do "Sweet Home Alabama".

Who'da thunk it: a Finnish neo-punk band and Russian soldiers covering Lynyrd Skynyrd. Thanks to Jean Moshofsky Butler for cluing me in, and mwezz for the clip.

Mussorgsky-Chernov, "Night on Bald Mountain"

Boris Berezovsky (the pianist, not to be confused with the exiled oligarch) does a breathtaking rendition of Chernov's piano transcription of Mussorgsky's macabre classic. Thanks to medpiano for the clip.

Happy Halloween!

"Wag the Dog" in the Caucasus?

My friend Geoff, ever alert for chicanery by the present Administration and the GOP, circulated an e-mail a couple of days ago speculating whether Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili might have been "baited" by U.S. assurances that there would be "strong action" by the U.S., and perhaps NATO, if Russia sent troops to respond to a Georgian military incursion into South Ossetia. By so doing, Geoff reasoned, the Bush Administration would have given the McCain campaign a boost by setting up a crisis with Russia that would appear to warrant electing a "tough" and "experienced" leader. If so, this may be working, considering the most recent poll result reported by Reuters.

Today, Mikhail Gorbachev weighed in on the New York Times, op-ed page. In his column, Gorbachev clearly is carrying water for the Medvedev/Putin government, putting the best face on Russia's actions and the worst on Georgia's and those of "the West", including western media. He observes:

If this military misadventure was a surprise for the Georgian leader's foreign patrons, so much the worse. It looks like a classic wag-the-dog story.

It's interesting that he uses the title of a 1997 movie (see trailer above) in which administration aides manufacture a foreign policy crisis in order to divert attention from a charge of sexual misconduct against the President. This movie, obviously inspired by the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, has since been regarded as oddly prescient in some respects, such as the inclusion of a WMD threat (by Albania!) in the invented crisis.