Putinland entertains the G8

So much has been expected of the G8 meeting in St. Petersburg and so little has been achieved. They have talked about energy security, about the global hotspots and the ever attention-hungry middle east and as usually not much than "on-the-spot-commenting" could be seen by the world. But what they have forgot to talk about is the most pressing subject: the ever so important and ever more distant transformation of Russian society. Nothing seems to change in Russia. No achievements in press freedom, no move to freer and more independent courts, no fightings against corruption, no cleaning up of the weird foreign politics (we just think of Iran and Syria) and ... and that is the worst of all ... an ever growing ignorance and indifference among the bigger part of the Russian civilization regarding the internal affairs of Russia and the staggering progress and steps back this country makes.


(What exactly were we here for, Wowa? Courtesy of AP)

In his Wall Street Journal Article from the 10th of July 2006, Edvard Radzinsky made a few interesting observations. Russia, he writes, saw 3 civilzations during the last 70 years; the Czars, the Stalinistic time (and communist era) and the post Gorbatchev time of the 1990s until today. Each time was characterized by strong autocratic (at-best) individuals who broke with their predecessors, Lenin with the last Czar, Stalin with Lenin, Jelzin with Gorbatchev and Putin with Jelzin. Radzinsky says: "You can imagine the chaos of ideas and beliefs in the hearts of the russian citizens".
What does this have to do with the G8 summit? A lot and nothing at all at the same time. The G8 summit has degraded to a mere afternoon tea talk. It has no powers and no real tools (its agenda and pre-summit meetings look like an ordinary provincial conference). And the world will probably not really continue to look at this event in the future, just like the average Russian will more or less stop to care about politics at all if the russian state continues to incapacitate its people and discourages participation in politics for the average Oleg and Olga . Putin is risking that his society will turn fully away from engaging itself in politics on a regional and local level. Maybe this is exactly what this show is all about. The Pew Global Atiitudes Project recently said that:

"Russians have been considerably less enthusiastic about democracy in recent years than they were in the early 1990s. Today, unlike then, when public cries for freedom were leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a majority believes that their country would be better served by a strong leader rather than a democratic government. And the latest Pew Global Attitudes poll finds the Russian people would choose a strong economy over a good democracy by a margin of almost six to one."

Try to tell this a russian citizen and (s)he will find nothing wrong about that.