The worst thing is that even though this story received a lot of attention in Russian media and people are well aware and furious about it, there is nothing that will be done about it. Neither the president nor the prime minister nor the parliament nor the government nor anyone else with any power in this country have done or are going to do anything about it. As if it's normal.
>>It is also a story about how Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today.
It is difficult to convey the depth of my disgust after reading the above sentence from the first paragraph of the article. I share both Russian and Jewish heritages and to my dismay I frequently encounter writings that belittle the history of Holocaust. In comparison, Stalinism and gulags are less known to the Western audience. It is just as despicable to use Holocaust as Stalinist atrocities to score points against political opponents. A death of a single lawyer behind bars or the deaths of numerous enemies of the modern Russian state should never be compared to systematic killing of millions of innocent people.
To borrow from a comment by rms further in this thread, it is "an argument about a difference of orders of magnitude". However morality of killing human lives should not be counted in orders of magnitude -- there is a qualitative difference between killing a man, a family, an ethnicity or a race. Saying that "Stalinism and the gulags are alive today" establishes a false moral equivalence.
Foreign Policy magazine editors should resign for allowing to publish drivel hurtful to lives of so many people.
EDIT: With respect to comments by 'cema', I also have family in former Soviet Union. None of them would compare the famine, repressions, kidnappings, prisons or gulags under Stalin to what is happening in Russia today.
You're obviously using the hyperbole at the start of the article to score points. You go on to impugn the character of the author, while not directly addressing the thesis at any point in your responses. You're relying on people to yield so as not to offend you -- but that's crap, they really shouldn't care. "hurtful" indeed...
What they can argue is that because of a bit of hyperbole at the start, you've implied the article can't make any valid points. It must be entirely wrong. Nice rhetorical trick, but quite insane -- and I argue much more disgusting than what is frankly an understandable gaff by the author at the start.
Can you explain how my following argument impugns the character of the author? The article claims to be "about how Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today". My counterclaim is that the article sets up a false moral equivalence from the start measuring a death of a lawyer to events at scale of Holocaust or Stalinist repressions. If you read my comment, it is obvious that it attacks the editors of Foreign Policy -- NOT the author. The author is entitled to his opinion but Foreign Policy should have reconsidered publishing the article that makes such outlandish claims.
Further, why are you so being so defensive that you feel the need to call my opinion crap? If I feel offended by how the author belittles most horrific events of the 20th century I will let people know about it. It is up to the readers to form their opinion about my reaction to the article.
While my claim doesn't attack the character of the article, you are explicitly defending him by interpreting his intentions to label the leading statement a hyperbole. How do you know that the author wanted to set up a hyperbole?
I am of the same ancestry as you are, but my opinion differs. My father, who was born in 1924 and thus survived both Hitler and Stalin, has recently told me that the situation reminds him of the Stalin's period. He is an old man now, but he has not lost his faculties (still working as an engineer, at the age of almost 86), and I am sure he has thought about what he was saying.
On the other hand, he was not afraid to say it over the phone, so the situation is not 100% like it was in the USSR (then I guess he would have been really afraid to say it anywhere anyone could have overheard him). But in some important ways it is similar.
With all due respect to your father who survived through very difficult times, I doubt that he agrees with the statement "Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today"
I think you're right in a certain strict sense, however I think most people understand that statement to be hyperbole. The sentence perhaps should have ended with 'in some respects', but I think that kind of goes without saying.
Secondly, in America everyone knows about the Holocaust, and the right wing's been using it for months now to bash healthcare reform and their own twisted definition of socialism. People will mangle history because it suits their purposes, not because of some little article in Foreign Affairs.
When people try to rewrite history to suit their purposes we should hold those people accountable through debate. Those who chose to use hyperbole (e.g. this article) or misrepresentations (e.g. healthcare reform) have their right to free speech but they should be ready to face facts and to respect rights of others to have a different opinion.
Hey, I agree with those principles, I just think this guy was using a tiny bit of artistic license, and he had a reasonable expectation that his readership would understand that he did not mean that Russia was now exactly like the USSR under Stalin.
Good, so we do agree on something :) However there is a problem once we take the artistic license to its logical conclusion: Bill Browder, the author of the article, has an artistic license to voice his biased opinions. Given that he welds a certain amount of influence needed to publish in Foreign Policy, he is given an artistic license to persuade less influential readers. Thus we are faced with a situation where strong (i.e. influential) weld more powerful opinions than the weak (i.e. those who can't influence opinion by publishing in Foreign Policy). We can call this state of affairs a "rule of force". How is the rule of force with respect to opinion different from the rule of force with respect to money?
The implication that he is only able to convince less influential people with his writing is a mistake. IMO, his goal is to also influence people that have far more ability to effect change than he does and to entertain people who already agree with him on core issues. When you influence people with money it tends to target people with less influence than you have. (Excluding direct bribes.)
Outside of specific narrow areas our society is still more predicated on convincing people with power than those without it. Elections tend to ride on a tiny number of issues like abortion and outside of major issues like Chinese trade and Iraq there is little point to convince a Midwestern voter that you are correct.
This is an argument about a difference of orders of magnitude. I think it is possible for Stalinism and the gulags to be alive while impacting much less than the millions of people killed during Stalin's reign of terror, though I understand why you disagree.
Morality of killing human lives should not be counted in orders of magnitude -- there is a qualitative difference between killing a man, a family, an ethnicity or a race. Saying that "Stalinism and the gulags are alive today" establishes a false moral equivalence.
Digging deeper into the story, it appears that the author (Bill Browder) is someone who profited from the criminal pillaging of Russian economy in 1990s: "[Bill Browder's] business was very successful, profiting from the wave of privatizations occurring in the Russia at that time" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder. May I remind you of a Hacker's News thread that talked about Russia's corrupt oligarchs of 1990s: https://qht.co/item?id=998318.
In addition to a publication in Foreign Policy, the author managed to produce a very polished video which is also available from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6ljV-WfRw
The current politicians of Russia became popular precisely for what they've done to Bill Browder -- they have taken back the money that was stolen from people in the 1990s.
Wow, it sounds like you actually condone the spirit of what happened. As an American it's strange to imagine celebrating rule of force over rule of law. The US falls woefully short at times, but I can't imagine anyone cheering fraudulent theft of tax money to pander to voters.
I also find it hard to believe someone would behave as the lawyer in this story did merely over ill-intentioned greed.
I think what usually happens is the government can prove tax evasion, but they cannot prove "by a preponderance of evidence" (or "beyond a reasonable doubt," whichever is applicable here) so easily. Sure, everyone knew that Capone was guilty of more than tax evasion, but could they prove it in a way that his high-priced lawyer could not convince a jury of his peers otherwise?
In early 1990s, Putin was pillaging his part of Russian economy in those years, being in charge of metal utilization (huge para-criminal business in Russia until 2000s) under St. Petersburg oligarch and mayor Sobtchak. Somehow this part of his career is always overlooked by his proponents.
This of course is just as irrelevant to what has happened with the laywer as your attack on Browder.
There is plenty of corruption everywhere in Russia. There is no point in trying to find saints or sinners in the story. Rather one should recognize the hypocrisy of kettle calling a pot black.
He seems to be alleging that the author of this piece is potentially responsible for as much misery and destruction as the people who killed the lawyer in the story, and that this undermines the moral legitimacy of the article.
Whether osipov himself condones what happened is completely irrelevant.
Even if the author is responsible for misery and destruction, which is debatable, it still doesn't mean we should marginalize his accusations or condone the actions.
If everyone is doing it, why does the hypocrisy matter?
Don't know, it's not my argument. I was objecting to what seemed to be an attempt to make an issue of osipov's feelings on the matter. Arguments whose topics include the emotional state of one of the participants rarely end well.
There also seems to be a lot of presumptive sorting into binary opposition; osipov disliking the author of the article doesn't mean he supports the "other side", and my objection above doesn't mean I agree with osipov (in fact I don't, though it sounded like you and rbanffy assumed I did).
Aren't you confusing messenger and message? The fact the messenger is partially responsible (and that is debatable) for some misery has no influence on the legality of the acts described in the article.
I would also add the corruption of the 90's benefited some of the same government officials that ate being accused here.
Why not? Do you suggest we assume everyone corrupt just because there is "plenty of corruption everywhere in Russia"? Everyone is guilty by association?
"I frequently encounter writings that belittle the history of Holocaust", you bring this up but it's a red herring as I don't see any mention of the Holocaust anywhere in the article. In other words you seem to be trying to conflate some of the issues. A guy who tried to expose corruption was imprisoned and died from abuse and lack of medical care and the real culprits walk free and your first response is to call for the resignation of the editors of the publication exposing this because an admitted non-journalist compared the substantial corruption of Russia today (which directly descends from KGB et al) to Stalinist treatment of political opponents (i.e. putting opponents in dreadful prisons). That's your first response, really?
True, it's not on the scale of Stalinism, but there is continuity. Russia is a corrupt, authoritarian police state and it has been one for hundereds of years, almost without interruption.
I'm sure that the privatisations of the 1990s went horribly wrong. But the idea that the rule of law and democracy make it impossible to right those wrongs is a symptom of that authoritarian tradition.
Ok, I'll bite. How is there a qualitative difference between killing a man and killing a race? I'll grant you that the Holocaust was about 12 million times worse than killing Sergei Magnitsky. But how is that more than a quantitative (not qualitative) difference?
I don't know if I back the argument, but I'd suggest that widespread knowledge of a class of people being wiped out greatly increase the stress, fear and terror struck into the hearts of all others in that class who have yet to get rounded up. furthermore, if they flee, communities get uprooted. and, though I hate to say it, whilst the killing of a man is in some cases justifiable (self defence, death penalty if you're into that kind of thing, which many societies worldwide are, etc) i really cannot see any argument for systematic killing merely based on race.
Seems to me that this line was meant to convey that Russia isn't as cleaned up as people might think. It would be similar to a line such as "companies are still doing what Enron did and getting away with it." I think its important to keep in mind that the author was probably not attempting hyperbole (even if that is what happened).
From that point of view, I think the author felt this was his clearest method of communicating his point. Not that I think it needed to be communicated (how many FP readers really think Russia is not corrupt...?) but that is seperate from your point.
From that point of view, I feel that what was written is sensible... though I freely admit that I'm not able to take into account how hurtful this might to some people.
Well, there are several points in the article including: 1) failure of the rule of law in Russia, as evidenced by legal issues encountered by the author and his attorney; 2) politically motivated killing of author's attorney.
In my comment I wasn't addressing point #1. With respect to point #2, I think there is a better analogy than Enron: imagine that NYT publishes an article about a cop tasering a Jewish man to death. If the article started with a line about "Holocaust by police force is alive and well", it would be entirely fair to call out NYT for false moral equivalence and bad judgment in publishing the article.
Why shouldn't we keep Foreign Policy to the same standard?
The point of my Enron example is to show what the Stalinism/gulag example is trying to do. In my view, they are trying to say "things haven't changed as much as you think." Of course, there are other ways to put this, but the author needed to balance out the sadness/horror/etc... he felt with being historically accurate[1]/sensitive.
[1] As some here have argued, he may have thought the historical analogy was accurate enough. Just from some of the replies, it can be argued that this view isn't totally nonsense.
ach, I clicked the wrong button and upvoted by accident.
Anyway; I think your latching on to one phrase for your own aims. "Belittle the holocaust"; well if that isn't a sentence to garner a sympathetic audience I don't know what is....
I read the sentence not as an assertion that Russia suffers the same atrocities as those of the Stalinist era - but rather as a statement about how people in power still have not learned all of the lessons and still commit acts of crime and violence against others.
The conditions described (if accurate) are certainly pretty severe and the level of corruption (again, if accurate) awful - only one section of Government seems to have replied seriously to any of the accusations.
So, no, it is not Stalinism and not the Gulag; but the strong similarities are there. And the obvious connection must be drawn.
I have travelled in Russia both personally and on business and some of the areas of government I have seen are extremely corrupt and brutal. The association to Stalinism would seem justified in my limited experience.
> A death of a single lawyer behind bars or the deaths of numerous enemies of the modern Russian state should never be compared to systematic killing of millions of innocent people.
Could you specify the difference between "numerous enemies of the modern state" and "innocent people"? I was under the impression that most vicious people believe the people they kill/imprison/torture/etc are enemies of the state.
The only good that can come, now, out of Stalinism and the gulags, is the opportunity to learn from an ugly past. It is essential that we understand the atrocities committed throughout Russia's history and critically analyze the events of today's Russia through this historical lens. If we get offended any time any parallel is drawn between current events and past evils, how can we hope to apply the lessons learned from them in any meaningful way?
Stalinism has two widely known parts to it. One part is starving millions of people. This is not happening. Another part is killing enemies of the state. This, and some other high-profile political murders in and relating to Russia, fits that second definition perfectly, and in that way it is Stalinist.
This is the kind of event that sets your credibility as a business-friendly country back ten, twenty years. How far does the rabbit hole go in Russia? All the way to the other side of the earth, apparently. Disgusting.
Well at least getting the word out will do some good. If companies stop trying to establish a presence in Russia because of actions like this then maybe some change will come about. The biggest problem at the moment is that Russia supplies vast amounts of crucial energy to Europe. With that kind of leverage it's hard to see how political leaders in the EU will have the backbone to encourage Russia to stop acting like a corrupt dictatorship.
There are a number of people prattling on about "the rule of law."
"The rule of law" is not an unmitigated good, like clean air. Laws can be and are written to benefit the lawmakers, their pets, and their puppetmasters - as they were in 1990s Russia.
It's a damn sight better than "the lawmakers, their pets, and their puppetmasters get to do whatever they want whenever they want" which is the usual alternative.
Please, please, let us not start a "not Hacker News" meta-discussion. If you think this post is egregiously off-topic, flag it, don't complain in the thread.
If something doesn't interest people here it shouldn't get many up votes and not really be seen, obviously for an article to be sitting up the top it must interest a fair section of the community.
Something so viscerally horrible sets off an empathy reaction in many people, and it's not obviously off-topic as it is well-written, in-depth, and not something covered on TV news. Not to mention it does have a connection to entrepreneurship, capitalism, and general business.
It is also startup-relevant because it illustrates the "Wealth and power" section from Paul Graham's "How to Make Wealth" http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
Wealth and Power
Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. For most of human history it has not even been the most common. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the only ways to acquire these rapidly were by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation.
Two things changed. The first was the rule of law. For most of the world's history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. [10] Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. So for the first time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds' lunch money. This was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the second big change, industrialization.
A great deal has been written about the causes of the Industrial Revolution. But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who made fortunes be able to enjoy them in peace. [11] One piece of evidence is what happened to countries that tried to return to the old model, like the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Britain under the labor governments of the 1960s and early 1970s. Take away the incentive of wealth, and technical innovation grinds to a halt.
Well, obvious to some, I suppose. The point is that people with an entrepreneurial bent should be familiar with business environments around the world. When you hear that Russia is a country ruled by an ex-KGB/military mafia you may get a false picture of a Don Corleone style of doing business: live and let live; pay up and you're OK. This is quite false. A story like this may save somebody from making a very grave mistake.
