Russia

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Anne Applebaum and Matthew Parris discuss how far we should let Putin go”] Listen [/audioplayer]It’s been a generation or so since Russians were in the business of shaping the destiny of the world, and most of us have forgotten how good they used to be at it. For much of the last century Moscow fuelled — and often won — the West’s ideological and culture wars. In the 1930s, brilliant operatives like Willi Muenzenberg convinced ‘useful idiots’ to join anti-fascist organisations that were in reality fronts for the Soviet-backed Communist International. Even in the twilight years of the Soviet Union the KGB was highly successful at orchestrating nuclear

Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in literature and in many other things. The ballet sequence was tops, especially the acrobatics by the black-clad dancer portraying the cruel officer in War and Peace who seduced Natasha. All those hysterics about boycotts and terrorism, they were just hypocritical sensationalism by those PC jerks that seem to be running our lives nowadays. We westerners are averse to any discipline, impervious to duty, and disinclined to belong to a nation. We owe allegiance only to ourselves and love only ourselves. Not so over in Russia, where there’s a mystic connection

Last month’s terrorist attacks in Volgograd were doubtless an attempt to warn foreigners off the Winter Olympics in Sochi next month. An attempt, too, to remind Vladimir Putin that his problems in the Caucasus – many of them at least partially made in Moscow – haven’t gone away. For understandable reasons the bombs have caused plenty of folk to wonder about the security of athletes and visitors in Sochi. Those concerns are, plainly, real even if we may also, I think, expect the Russian state to erect several rings of steel around the Black Sea resort. The real concern, frankly, is that Russia was awarded the games in the first

Yad Vashem, Israel’s vast Holocaust memorial complex, dominates a hillside above Jerusalem, surrounded by bare rock and pines. Vast though it is, it manages to be both harrowing and restrained; both rooted in the times it commemorates and thoroughly modern — not just in style, but in the way it harnesses the most advanced technology to its cause. As an enterprise, let alone a monument, it is impressive: a testament to the commitment of Israel and the survivors of Europe’s Jewry to ensure that what happened is never forgotten. But it aspires to more: to convey a sense of the communities that were destroyed and to memorialise, so far as

I was on the Daily Politics earlier, discussing the Guardian / Snowden leaks and debating against a representative from the campaign group ‘Liberty’. The ‘Liberty’ representative kept saying what a lot of apologists for the actions of the Guardian (now including Vince Cable) have been saying – that Snowden and the Guardian should in some way be respected because they have started ‘a debate’. They appear incapable of realising that while such leaks may be simply fascinating to them, they are infinitely more fascinating to the Kremlin, Chinese Communist Party, al-Shabaab et al. One other thought. Does anyone know why, if a journalist or editor can be arrested and tried

The age-old question cui bono (who benefits) should be asked regarding Russia and the United States’ diplomatic agreement on the international control and subsequent destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons. Amidst the hopefulness and optimism, the answers to this question prove disturbing. We must remember that it might take a disaster even worse than 100,000 dead and the use of WMDs against civilians before this light touch regulation of crimes against humanity is shown to be immoral and flawed. Who benefits? The Syrian government’s response is indicative, with Ali Haider, who has the Kafkaesque title of Minister of National Reconciliation, claiming ‘a victory for Syria won thanks to our Russian friends’. The Assad regime