KPRF Candidate Wins Mayoral Election in Novosibirsk

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Early returns from the Novosibirsk Mayoral election tallied almost 100 percent of the votes cast. KPRF candidate Anatoly Lokot won the election. Gorizbirkom processed the data, with 99.5 percent of polling stations reporting in. Lokot gathered 43.76 percent of the vote. His main competitor was Vladimir Znatkov of United Russia, who got 39.56 percent of the ballots cast. None of the other nine candidates seriously competed with the leaders. Third place went to Vladimir Anisimov from “Cities of Russia” (3.25 percent). One of the taildraggers was rocker Sergei “Pauk” (“Spider”) Troitsky . Interfax reported that he took the second-to-last position with 1.07 percent of the vote. Gorizbirkom will announce the final voting results Monday at a meeting set for 12.00 MSK (15.00 local time. 18.00 AEST. 09.00 BST. 04.00 EDT. 01.00 PDT). However, the figures are unlikely to change much. The special mayoral election for 6 April was to finish the term of former Mayor Vladimir Gorodetsky, who left office to become Vice-Governor of Novosibirsk Oblast. Voting had a fairly low turnout… 31.3 percent, but there were no disturbances to report.

Editor:

Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia. In short, this isn’t a minor win. Bet on “red”…

BMD

7 April 2014

NTV

http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/889496/

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Putin Names Russia’s Top Political Figures

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President Vladimir Putin listed Gennady Zyuganov, the First Secretary of the KPRF, and Vladimir Zhironovsky, a firebrand nationalist, as Russia’s most influential politicians. When asked Thursday at his annual press conference marathon who he deemed Russia’s No. 2 politician, Putin first named KPRF head Zyuganov, raising giggles among the 1,300 reporters assembled. He then named populist LDPR leader Zhirinovsky, who first came to prominence in the 1990s, but whom pro-Westerners dismissed as a clownish presence on the political scene. Next, Putin named the leftist leader of A Just Russia, Sergei Mironov. Only then did Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, head of the ruling United Russia bloc receive a relatively cursory reference. Medvedev served as President from 2008 to 2012, during which time some thought that he had a liberalising, if ultimately minor, impact on public life. Putin has since rolled back some of his “reforms”. All the first three figures named by Putin are mainstays of the Russian political scene, but pro-Westerners in Moscow accuse them of working with the Kremlin. Putin didn’t mention any leaders of the mass protests that erupted in 2011-12, including Aleksei Navalny, a popular Kremlin-basher and runner-up in last September’s mayoral elections in Moscow. Putin refused to state whether he’s picked a successor, saying, “I say nothing because there’s nothing to say”.

18 December 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/politics/20131219/185724067/Putin-Names-Russias-Top-Leaders-But-Appears-to-Snub-PM.html

Editor’s Note:

The reporters giggled because most of them are neoliberal sorts from Moscow. VVP knows better. He knows that in the REAL Russia… the Russia outside the two capitals… the zapadniki have no cred whatsoever. A spectre haunts the neoliberals in contemporary Russia… the only real organised political force in the country is the KPRF, especially, in the provinces. VVP knows this… he knows that the days of the oligarchs are numbered… the country is returning to its roots. Look at the 2013 Victory Day parade… and look at any Red October or Victory Day parade from the ‘80s. Russia has embraced Christianity and rejected the West’s godless capitalism. The Church has picked up the Red Banner (HH just gave the second-highest church decoration to Soviet icon Iosif Kobzon) and it EMBRACES socialism. After all, socialism is Christian, whereas American-style crapitalism is the vilest anti-Christian rot out there.

This development discombobulated the woollier elements in the ROCOR. They’re in communion with the MP… but they don’t want to give up their Far Right notions. Ergo, there’s all sort of wild stuff circulating from the First Families. Some actually pump up Maria Vladimirovna Romanova (the disgusting pretender who calls herself the “Grand Duchess of Russia”… what a maroon!)… she has about as much chance of attaining real power as I do! Therefore, most priests are hunkering down and repeating Potapov’s silly drivel. No one knows what they really believe, but they’re not crackbrained John Birchers, that’s for sure! Cut ‘em some slack… if they don’t parrot the Party Line, the First Family apparat would dump on them, and the First Families make Stalinists look like choirboys (in fact, the First Families are the last of that noxious breed… don’t let their “niceness” and smarmy pious exteriors fool you).

A new world is dawning… both in Russia and in the Russian Orthodox diaspora. There are those who don’t want it… oppose them. Don’t argue with them… oppose them. You can’t dialogue with those who’ve sold out to Mammon (and, thusly, to Satan). After all, Christ was a WORKER… NOT an oligarch… NOT an official… NOT a salesman… NOT a clergyman… reflect on that, if you will…

BMD

 

For Russia, Size Matters

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Earlier this month, a lawmaker known for loyalist legislative proposals introduced a bill that would criminalise even talking about separatism in Russia. In an apparent attempt to emulate the law that bans promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors, Yevgeni Fyodorov, a deputy of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, proposed, along with two other lawmakers, making the promotion of separatism a crime punishable by up to six years in prison. If one promotes separatism in the media, the punishment could be up to 20 years. There’s little evidence that the legislation will pass. For one thing, fellow United Russia member Pavel Krashennikov, who heads a RF Gosduma legislative committee, criticised the proposal for being excessive, which is usually a signal to ultra-loyal deputies that they need to curb their enthusiasm.

However, the interesting thing about this proposal and others like it is that they unwittingly express some of the government’s most pressing anxieties. The gay promotion ban, for instance, isn’t as much about homophobia among officials (Russian officials aren’t particularly homophobic) as it is about patriotism and the wish to unite people against a common enemy, whilst the supporters of the ban on American adoptions rationalised it as a way to “force” Russia’s dysfunctional foster care system to get its act together. In a bid to show their loyalty, lawmakers will go for provocative measures to try to solve problems that government can’t solve in the first place.

Meanwhile, the threat of separatism is direr than meets the eye. Following the breakup of the USSR, the government faced two bloody separatist insurrections, both of them in Chechnya. President Vladimir Putin’s administration, for lack of a clear-cut ideology, credited itself with reining in separatism after the tumultuous 1990s. The way the government and its supporters see it, Putin’s first two terms were primarily about making sure that the country remains in existence. The state credits itself with a lot of things, but counts keeping the country together as a major achievement. One shouldn’t brush off the government’s preoccupation with this issue as protectionist paranoia.

Historically, Russia was touchy about what it perceived as foreign threats… unnamed forces seeking to tear it asunder. This mentality of a country under siege was the ideological justification for everything from a crackdown on protesters (Putin blamed the US State Department for protest activity) to the gay promotion ban. It may look like the Kremlin is battling bogeymen, but the separatist threat is actually very real, and it has a name… Russia’s size.

Russia’s enormous size is the elephant in the room from which its major problems stem. The threat of separatism isn’t just about the conflict in Chechnya. It’s as much about the country’s lack of road infrastructure, a problem that’s a function of Russia’s size, climate, and economy. If that weren’t enough, it’s also about the very identity of Russia as a multinational state… and if keeping one-sixth of the world’s landmass intact is a challenge, consider the fact that this landmass now includes 21 ethnic republics with different languages and cultural identities.

Fyodorov introduced the draft proposal soon after supposed calls for separatism that came in response to last month’s ethnic unrest in Moscow and the resulting rise in nationalist sentiment. In that regard, many view Russian nationalism as a separatist problem… Putin himself said as much in his address to the nation last year. Taken together, all of this means that the government really is under siege… not from the outside, but from within. The state spends a gargantuan amount of energy dealing with the one thing that makes it great and is its own enemy at the same time… its size. Let’s keep that in mind when we complain about crazy legislative proposals.

21 November 2013

Anna Arutunyan

Moscow News

http://www.themoscownews.com/potemkin_tales/20131121/192063453/For-Russia-size-matters.html

9 April 2013. Maggie the Hag Passes… An Era Passes, As Well (With Reflections on the New Era Coming)… Thank God!

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This was a colloquy with a Cabinet member… I’m in regular type; they’re in italics:

Ding, dong, the witch is dead… Maggie Thatcher croaked. It’s the End of the Neoliberal “End of History” Era…

She was a truly wicked being. I hope you do a good exposé of the hag! 

She was the worst of the Unholy Trinity. Gorby was only a Western brown-noser, and Slobberin’ Ronnie was only a figurehead for unelectable oligarchs… but Maggie was a True Believer. She’s the authoress of the present wicked age that we live in.

I can’t stand any of them, but especially not Gorbachyov. You’d be one of the few people here that know how much all the former Soviet peoples despise him and Yeltsin.

Gorby’s lower than Yeltsin was. Yet, Gorby’s a nonentity… waste no time on him. Interesting things I’m hearing… one of my friends at the Centre says that VVP might put in a “Red monarchy” (her words). That is, a communist government, a strong Church, a strong army, with a tsar as a constitutional figurehead (à la Scandinavia)… after all, VVP’s pushing 60, and he’s the sort to look to the future (he knows that he has ten years left as leader, at best). That’d give Russia a four-point system (not the three-point one it’s had since Pyotr Veliki (including the USSR)), which would be more stable and capable of weathering crises.

Zyuganov has mentioned a “Red Tsar” several times. His job would be to defend the Revolution from enemies and treason. It solves the problem of (real) democratic elections vs a strong and stable leader.

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I wrote this to another Cabinet member:

Is Putin thinking of instituting a constitutional monarchy? After all, the only real organised political force in Russia is the KPRF (United Russia is only an ephemeral bloc; it’s a coterie collected temporarily around a personality). It’d institute a four-point (State-Army-Church-Sovereign) system instead of the traditional three-point (Party or Church-Army-State) system, which is inherently more stable. If so, it means that VVP’s looking to the future (he’s 60 this year, after all… probably, like all of us, he’s feeling his mortality). I’ll guarantee you this… VVP would NEVER put the fatso Maria Vladimirovna and her pack of drooling jackals on the throne (they’re all pro-Western lickspittles, in any case). It wouldn’t be beyond him to put Michael of Kent on the throne (he’d be MUCH more biddable than Maria is, and he’s much more telegenic, to boot).

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I saw this on the net:

I’ll be brief:

BURN IN HELL, THATCHER!

Back to work…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcXi-VYy_Yw&feature=youtu.be

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The passing of Mag the Hag was the end of an era… just as her entrance in the late ‘70s was the beginning of the present neoliberal fool’s paradise. However, her intellectual heirs won’t go quietly… but they WILL go, that’s for certain.

BMD