Will this get him killed eventually?

The question has been asked before, however it remains as relevant as ever. I still believe the most likely answer is no, but I’m pretty sure a lot of other options are still on the table. Via Susan Polgar’s blog:

MOSCOW — Chess master Garry Kasparov staged the latest of his guerrilla hit-and-run protests against the Kremlin on Wednesday, showing up at the criminal trial of a former billionaire and engaging in a brief, heated debate with one of the prosecutors.

Spectators gawked and whispered when Kasparov sat on a front bench in the courtroom where Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, is being tried on charges he embezzled billions of dollars while he was the chief of the Yukos Oil Company.

Kasparov and other supporters of Khodorkovsky say he is chiefly guilty of making an enemy of former President Vladimir Putin.

Last week Kasparov used a similar gambit, popping up Friday at a ceremony in Sochi during the mayoral race in that city, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. He managed to do what the challengers on the ballot hadn’t: confront the Kremlin-backed candidate, Anatoly Pakhomov.

…

Kasparov, one of the most famous of the Russian opposition leaders, said before the trial began it was his “civic duty” to demonstrate support for Khodorkovsky.

…

The latest Khodorkovsky case is seen as a test for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has called for judicial and political reforms and for broader participation in elections.

These measures would reverse the course set by Putin, Medvedev’s mentor and predecessor, who rolled back democratic reforms during his eight years as president.

“As long as this trial continues, the talk of liberalization remains just talk,” Kasparov said at one point. “It makes the whole concept of law and justice a sad joke.”

…

I must admit that I admire Kasparov. He has had a wonderful career, he’s one of the most brilliant chess players that have ever lived, and he could do pretty much whatever he wanted to for the rest of his life. He has a lot to lose, and the expected personal gains from his current activities are very small. Yet still he spends most of his time now working for democratic reforms and speaking out against the tyranny of the current regime. He has some idiosyncrasies, yes; some of his ideas are a little odd, yes; but that’s the case with most of the world’s significant dissenters.

Oh, a short addenda: I have not written about Iran during the last weeks, even if I’m well aware a lot of stuff is going on there. If you want to know more about that subject, read about it somewhere else – preferably other blogs. The short version of my owns views is this: a) (Of course) the whole election was a fraud, both in theory (who were allowed to run) and in praxis (massive voting fraud). b) Ahmadinejad sucks, and most of the alternatives, including Mousavi, suck marginally less. c) I know very little about Iran and thus do not feel confortable writing about this subject. Also, I wouldn’t say that I don’t care about what goes on in Tehran these days, I just don’t care enough to blog much about it. As said, lot’s of other people do.

A little recycling is probably in order:

The First Circle (1)

I have quoted from the book before, here are two other quotes from the book. The first one is from a conversation between two students living in Moscow (one of which is Nadya, Nerzhin’s wife from the first quote):

“Well, forgive me, I’m completely worn out. I don’t have the strength to revise it again. How many times can you revise a thing?”
With this, Olenka’s anger completely disappeared, and she said in a friendly way, “Oh, you’ve got to throw out the foreigners? Well, there, you’re not the only one. Don’t let it get you down.”
“Throwing out the foreigners” meant going through the thesis and replacing every reference to a foreigner: “Lowe demonstrated,” for instance, would have to read, “Scientists have succeeded in demonstrating”; “as Langmuir demonstrated” would become “as has been shown.” Or if a Russian, or a Dane, or a German in the Russian service had done aything at all to distinguish himself, then you had to put in his full name and duly emphasize his high patriotism and immortal services to science.
“Not foreigners. I got rid of them long ago. Now I have to throw out Academician B—–.”
“Our own Soviet?”
“— and his whole theory. And I’d built the whole thing on that. And now it turns out that he — his –”
Academician B—— had fallen into the same abyss as Nadya’s husband.
“Well, don’t take things so hard!” Olenka was saying. “At least they’re going to let you revise it. It could be worse. Muza was telling me—”
But Muza did not hear her. She was buried in her book now, and the room around her did not exist.
“— Muza was saying there was a girl in the litterature department who defended her thesis on Zweig four years ago, and was made assistant professor. Suddenly they discovered that she had said three times in the thesis that Zweig was ‘a cosmopolitan’, and that the thesis supported it. So they called her in to the Highest Credentials Commission and took her degree away. Awful!”

(p.322-23)

…

In freedom Isaak Kagan, who had never completed his engineering course, had been head of a stockroom of materials and parts. He had tried to live an obscure life and pass through the Era of Great Accomplishments sideways. He knew it was more peaceful and profitable to be quietly in charge of a stockroom. In his seclusion he concealed an almost fiery passion for gain, and this was what occupied him. Yet at the same time, as far as possible, even in the stockroom he observed the laws of the Sabbath. He was not drawn toward any sort of political activity. But for some reason State Security had selected precisely this Kagan to be hitched to its chariot, and they had dragged him to closed rooms and conspiratorial assignations, insisting that he become a secret informer. That proposal was repulsive to Kagan. He had neither the candor nor the boldness – who did? – to tell them to their faces that what they were suggesting was vile. But with inexhaustible patience he kept silent, mumbled, dragged things out, demurred, fidgeted on his chair – and never did sign an agreement to work for them. It was not that he was incapable of informing. Without a tremor he would have informed on anyone who had harmed or humiliated him. But it would have nauseated him to inform on people who had been good or even indifferent to him.
But because of this stubbornness he was in the bad books of State Security. One cannot protect oneself against everything in this world. There was talk among the people in his own stockroom. Someone cursed out a tool. Someone complained about supplies, someone else about planning. Isaak said nothing and went on writing out his invoices with his indelible pencil. But it became known – indeed, it had probably all been prearranged anyway – and everyone told on everyone else, and all of them received, under Section 58, Paragraph 10, ten years each. Kagan underwent five confrontations, but no one proved that he had said a word. If Section 58 had been tighter, they would have had to let Kagan go. But the iterrogator knew that he had a last resort, which was Paragraph 12 of the same section: failure to inform. So it was for failure to inform that they gave Kagan the same astronomical ten years as the others.

(p.341-342)

…

I’m not finished with it yet, it is a long book, but I’ve read enough to know that I highly recommend it.

Btw. I’ve also completed Stjernfeldt & Thomsen. I thoroughly enjoyed Stjernfeldt’s contribution, whereas I was a little bit disappointed with Thomsen’s part of the book. I might write more about it later in a separate post, but I make no promises.

August 1914 (II)

Ok, so now I’ve finished the book. Some more quotes:

“You must realize that the grand-duke is simply waiting for the arrival of the telegram announcing the capture of Lvov. They’re all waiting for that telegram,” Svechin went on insistently, unsmilingly, with irrefutable logic, his eyes glaring ferociously as he pressed the point home. “And that telegram will simply be used to obliterate the whole Samsonov affair. They’ll set the bells ringing all over Russia to celebrate our own incompetence – because the truth is we had the Austrian army in the grip of a pincer movement and let it go, so that when we captured Lvov it was empty.” [...] “Russia is doomed to be governed by fools; she knows no other way. I know what I’m talking about.” …

Most of the book describes the actions of the military, however there are also parts of the book that takes place very far from the front. One of these is the following passage, which I shall quote at some length, from a dinner-conversation between a middle-aged engineer and ex-revolutionary (Obodovsky) and two young arts students (Naum, Sonya). Words in bold are words that were emphasized in the original text:

Obodovsky smiled gently. “What is an exploiter?”
Naum shrugged his shoulders. “To my mind, it’s only too obvious. You ought to be ashamed to ask a question like that.”
“No one who earns his living in industry is ashamed to ask such a question, young man. The person who sits with his arms folded and pronounces judgment from afar is the one who ought to be ashamed. Today, for instance, we were looking at a grain elevator where not long ago there was nothing but long grass growing, and then we looked at a modern mill. I can’t begin to convey to you how much intelligence, education, foresight, experience and organization have gone into that mill. Do you know what it all costs? It costs ninety percent of the future earnings! The labor of the workers who laid the bricks and hauled the machines costs ten percent – and even that could have been largely replaced by cranes. And they got their ten percent. But then along come some young men, art students … You are reading the arts, aren’t you?”
“What difference does it make? well, yes.”
“Along comes a bunch of art students and they explain to the workers that they are earning too little, and that that little engineer over there in spectacles is earning God knows how much, and that it’s sheer bribery. And these simple, uneducated people believe it and they are indignant: They can understand the value of their own work, but they’re incapable of understanding or putting a price on somebody else’s.”
“But why should Paramonov, the mill owner, make all that profit?” Sonya shouted.
“He doesn’t get it all for nothing, believe me. Remember, I said ‘organization’. He works for his share too. And if anybody does get something for doing nothing, then we must gradually see to it that that money is channeled elsewhere, by rational political measures. We mustn’t try to take it away by throwing bombs, as we did.”
He could not have expressed his backsliding and apostacy more openly. Naum gave a scornful sneer and exchanged glances with Sonya. “Does that mean you have rejected revolutionary methods forever?”

[...]

He gave his concluding reply: “I would rather put it differently. Before, I was most concerned with how to distribute everything that other people had created without my help. Now my main preoccupation is how to create. The best brains and hands in the country should concentrate on doing that; we can safely leave distribution to the second-raters.”

[...]

“How impatient you are for this revolution! Of course it’s easier to shout and it’s more fun to make a revolution than to build Russia up. That’s too much like hard work. If you were older and could remember 1905 and how it all looked at the time…” [...] A reasonable man cannot be in favour of revolution, because revolution is a long and insane process of destruction. Above all, no revolution ever strengthens a country: It tears it apart, and for a long, long time. What’s more, the bloodier and more long-drawn-out it is and the dearer the country pays for it – the more likely the revolution is to be dubbed ‘great’”.

August 1914

Dostoevsky, Tolstoy… Solzhenitsyn!

A few excerpts from the book:

Although every officer was supposed to have a map of the area on his map board, no one in their company did; and Grokholets was the only officer in the battalion to have one. Even this was a reprint of a German map; the place names were barely legible and it was inaccurate. Among the platoon commanders, Yaroslav was the one who hovered closest to Grokholets to take every opportunity to have a look at his map. The Germans had burned all the signposts, and as the names of villages were passed orally from officer to officer, they became more and more distorted…

…

[English general Alfred...] Knox showed particular interest in VI army Corps on the right flank, because this corps had driven deeper than any other into enemy territory and was now not much farther from the Baltic Sea than the distance which it had already covered.
Yes, VI Army Corps should have occupied Bischofsburg yesterday, and by today it was probably already farther north.
It was shown on the map as being in that position, and for the Englishman’s sake, Samsomov had to pretend that it really was there; he could not admit to his Allied colleague that Russians marked their maps with information they did not really possess, that not all radio signals reached their destination, and that apart from radio there were no means of communication except dispatch riders, who were highly insecure since they were sent out unescorted across enemy territory. Blagoveshchensky’s corps had, in fact, strayed so far over to the right that it had ceased to act as a flank guard at all; it was no longer performing a screening role but had become a detached, independent corps, the victim of a quarrel…

[...]

What could he tell this uninvited guest? That all his units were under-strenght, and that XXIII Army Corps was still not mustered? That the force under his command was an army only on paper, that in reality it consisted of no more than two and a half army corps in the center, toward which he was now driving? And that he was not even sure of their positions either?
Knox was now interrogating him ad nauseam about the center corps. Where were they?
Samsomov pointed at the map with his large finger. ‘XIII Corps is here … approximately there … It is moving northward in roughly this direction, between these two lakes …’
‘Moving northward?’
‘Yes, it’s advancing northward … toward Allenstein. It should take Allenstein today.’ (it should have taken Allenstein yesterday, but had been too slow.)
‘And what about XV Corps?’
‘Well, XV Corps should be level with XIII Corps and also moving northward. Yesterday it should have taken Hohenstein.’ (Had it?) ‘And today it should have moved far beyond Hohenstein.’ …

Flat tax: A review of the Russian experience

Mark Perry points me to an interesting paper. Perry’s graph, the one below, is not in the original paper, but I think perhaps it should have been ( ) – it is a graphical representation of a subset of the information contained in table #1 from the appendix:

From the conclusion:

In this paper we focus on the impact of the flat income tax rate on tax evasion, an issue that was, and continues to be, a major problem in Russia as well as in many other transition and developing countries. We argue that the flat tax reform was instrumental in decreasing tax evasion and that, to a certain extent, greater fiscal revenues for Russia in 2001 and several years beyond can be linked to increased voluntary tax compliance and reporting.

According to the authors the by far greatest effect of the flat tax is that of increased compliance, the contribution from ie. effects on the labor supply are much smaller. Naturally, both the compliance- and labour supply effects are higher for high income groups, that is the groups where the resulting tax savings from the -reform are high.

The standard economic argument in favour of lower taxes is that taxes are distortionary (remember that it is important which questions you ask here) and that lower taxes means increased efficiency. It’s worth noting that what this paper implies is that even if taxes are not all that distortionary – it’s still a good idea to lover the taxes.

If Kristian Jensen really wanted to lower the amount of undeclared work taking place in Denmark, he should seriously considering a tax reform. I know we just had one, but it didn’t solve any of the major problems – how could it anyway, it was never meant to do that (what the reform was meant to do, in case you were in doubt, was to secure Fogh four more years in office). Even if the effects on the labour supply from a -reform would turn out to be quite low, there might still, judging from this study, be significant compliance effects that would lower the costs of the reform (if it did not turn out to finance itself altogether; under the current tax regime some reforms, flat tax or not, undoubtedly would if they were to lower the top marginal rates).

Garry Kasparov and Stephen Cohen on Russia

Garry Kasparov and professor of Russian studies at New York University Stephen Cohen debates Russian politics here. The program lasts an hour, and I don’t expect the link to continue to work indefinitely (because of the 10 minute limit on youtube videos), so if you’d like to watch you should not hesitate to click the link. The debate itself lasts approximately half an hour.

In case you were in doubt, Kasparov is not a crackpot. It’s far too easy to just discard his views like this – on some points I must admit I agree far more with Kasparov than with mr. Cohen, especially when it comes to his evaluation of Gorbatjov. Yes, if you look closely you’ll find some stuff you don’t like, but that’s just the way it is no matter who you’re dealing with, especially if you’re actively looking for the flaws (Kasparov has a few of those of course – ie. his obsession with oil prices). Remember by the way when watching this debate that English is his third language (after Azeri and Russian).

A concise history of the Russian Revolution

I have hinted to the contents of the book a few times, now I’ve finally completed it.

Even if it is just a précis of The Russian Revolution and Russia under the Bolshevik regime, it is a long book, 400+ pages. I liked most of it, a lot of new stuff and only a few things I don’t yet know if I agree with (to the untrained eye they would appear to be nothing but insignificant technicalities; ie. I am not sure if I agree with Pipes evaluation of the impact of Stolypin’s reforms before the Revolution) – however one horrible thing really, really annoyed me: Sources! He pretty much doesn’t tell us anything about his sources in the book, there are only 13 references altogether. I assume they are saved for those who read the two aforementioned books – according to the introduction, they have a combined 1300 pages and 4500 references. But it is still very annoying if you don’t have them at hand and wish to dig a little deeper. I shall have to buy the other two…

If you don’t care about this, then the book is just great. I would say that some knowledge about World War One is an advantage (I have already mentioned where to start – by reading both you get more of “the full picture”), but it is not absolutely necessary.

New development in the Litvinenko-case

Apparently the Brits now have not only a prime suspect, but also enough evidence to charge him. It would be nice to know who ordered the hit, but we shall not get that information from Lugovoy.

It shall be interesting to find out what’ll be the diplomatic consequenses of this event. If the Russian government cooperates and extradite Logovoy relatively quickly, they will quite likely want something in return. In a way this could be thought of as a litmus test: How seriously has the missile defence program, and the critique of Putin in Western medias (Chechnya, the pipeline-issues and Putin’s dictatorial behaviour in general) hurt the relationsship between Russia (read: Putin) and the West?

I believe that the decision to kill Litvinenko came from the top of FSB, if not from Putin himself. Very few others would have both access to polonium and would have a good reason to kill a former KGB-agent. This of course complicates the matter further: If Patrushev or some other high-flyer promised Lugovoy exemption from punishment, an extradition could easily turn out to be a very complicated thing not likely to happen anytime soon. The two most likely scenarios are 1) Logovoy will end up as a bargaining object for Russia, 2) he will go unpunished, because the Russian authorities “can’t find him”.

Update: “Russia’s” initial response: No extradition.

Kasparov arrested – and the double standards of UNHRC

From debatableland, a new blog I did not know about (HT: Megan McArdle), I learn that Kasparov was arrested yesterday at a demonstration in Moscow. Even with the aid of his bodyguards he could not stop this from happening. Until now Putin has mostly treated him like a circus clown or some crazy has-been, and I have seen this angle reflected in a few western medias as well. I guess Putin has become annoyed enough by now to want to draw a line in the sand.

Surely, this doesn’t really mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean that Russia has any problems when it comes to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech – she is after all on “our” side in “the war against terror”, rigth? This means that she sides with freedom and democracy and can thus do no wrong. Of course it means that. And of course it was all right to detain Kasparov. Even if it wasn’t, “we” should not risk losing an important ally by criticizing Putin. He, or his successor, might choose to side with the Arabs, who knows? No need for any international reactions. What’s the big deal anyway – lot’s of countries break up peaceful demonstrations and throw their participants in jail, right? Why should the US or Denmark or the UN criticize this, just because it takes place in Russia? After all, it’s not like if there are any double standards at play here – we sure wouldn’t expect to hear anything about it if stuff like this happened in, say Israel, right?

Oh, wait a sec, we in fact do not _ever_ hear about something like this happening in Israel, even though we hear about a lot of other things that takes place there. Why is this, I wonder? Perhaps it’s because in Israel, like in Denmark and the US, people are _not_ thrown in jail for going out in the streets to complain about stuff. That in turn is because, unlike in Russia, Israelis are allowed to express their anger and recentment in the open, because the media are not controlled by the government. Not everything is all rosy of course. But Israel is a democracy in which people who are discontent are allowed to speak out and criticize the things they don’t like. They don’t risk ending up dead by criticizing the president. As far as I’ve understood the situation, this is what half the population spend most evenings doing. Not much different from the situation in the US, is it?

It’s a funny thing then, that during the nine months the UN Human Rights Council has existed, it has passed nine resolutions against Israel for human rights violations. That’s not the whole story of course. And well, this is not the funny part either. The funny thing is that _no other country_ has been subject to resolutions from the Council yet.

The illegal and immoral abuse of power exercised by Vladimir Putin these years is one of the things that I’d like to be higher on the Council’s list of priorities. As is the genocide taking place in Sudan. “Deep concern” doesn’t quite cover it now, does it? I’d love it if they got the, hrm, time to look into things like Kareem’s case. A lot of things to talk about wrt. China as well.

For some reason or another, I doubt that the Council will change it’s ways in the nearest future. I’m not holding my breath.

The UN Human Rights Council is a sick joke.