Left Coast Media
Left Coast Media
Wherein We Recover Stolen Elections
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It would be cool to get, I hope, but I think it would also be cool to just like have a a sudden bunch of people.
Speaker 2Yeah. Hop Is Putin closest to let's Dylan. We have a Pauline Alaska
Speaker 3and welcome to another edition of the left coast podcast. We have a one for the centrist today. I think if they didn't have insane conspiracy theories before, I really think these are absolutely not going to put them to rest. So let's go ahead, uh, introduce ourselves. I am Tiberius Caracas. I am with my host. Uh, I'll need all sauce and Erin and we have our guests a day. Uh, outer Siberia on Twitter. You had, uh, tell us who you are, what, what, uh, what's going on here.
Speaker 2Yeah, I am, I'm outers of area on Twitter. I'm, I guess I'm here because to talk about Russia, I guess, cause I'm a Russian immigrant who came here in 2000, but I was like four years old when we did. So I don't remember that much about Russia, but certainly my parents had a lot of experiences in Russia in the 90s. So, yeah, that's, that's why I'm here.
Speaker 1So I know one of the things that we're going to be talking about in part, is it immediately after the fall of the USSR and the fall of the Soviet Union and also, um, issues of the stolen elections, uh, Yeltsin, just in general and then any, any other stuff that comes up if you don't mind, I would like to start out with a question that I've already asked you. So, um, hopefully, hopefully your answer isn't completely different, which is in your mind, when the Soviet Union collapsed, was there any way that what came out of that could have been salvaged or could have, could have not been the terrible, horrible mess that happened?
Speaker 2Hmm. Well, I think that the way the Soviet Union ended up disintegrating sort of along the lines of the 15 republics that existed in the Soviet Union, there was, it was sort of a effectively a power grab by the leaders of those republics in the way that, like they saw that like they could use this opportunity to better their position by affected who become leaders of their own countries instead of being like a subordinate leader to the Soviet government in Moscow. And so I think that there was sort of like in, in, in the fact that they collapse itself, that that wasn't really a way to salvage that because it was just based on nationalism and it was led by these figures who intended to cooperate with Western powers in order to like implement privatization and, and things like that and their economies. So I think that that the Soviet Union collapsing it itself, it was too late to not have those countries go along that path of being told what to do by the IMF and international economic institutions that wanted to institute a capitalist market economies in those countries. I remember reading that
Speaker 4right after the collapse of specifically in Russia that Gorbachev had like was, was running in the first selection with like a social democratic platform or something. And then he was actually doing pretty well before Uncle Sam
Speaker 2kind of stepped in. Um, I don't know how true that is, but I, I read that somewhere. I think Gorbachev was mainly kind of sidelined after the collapse cause like that was the whole point of like what IELTS and was trying to do was to try to like take power. So like, after the, um, after the coup. So during, during 1991 in August, there was a coup by a hardliners in the Soviet communist party that attempted to like restore like the attempted to like preserve the old system with the way the Soviet Union function. And uh, that's when Yeltsin kind of became a major figure because while Gorbachev was being held captive by the [inaudible], which were the people who plan the [inaudible], he was in a creamy out in his, like Phil and they weren't like letting him leave. That's when Yeltsin kind of rolled up with like support from the military in Moscow and he sort of likes with them with the help of demonstrators, like overthrew the government that had been established. And so after that, Gorbachev was basically sidelined after that cause he had been, he'd kind of already been removed. And then when the leaders signed the, uh, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Bella [inaudible] at that point, like the people who are mainly left in the Soviet Union, when they signed the agreement to dissolve it at that point, garbage how basically had no power and then he was just kind of like a person that you can sort of see sometimes voice criticisms, but he doesn't have any like political power. Is this the same event where basically Yeltsin had the tanks roll up to, what was it, the, the Duma and essentially like open fire on parliament? So that was, that was a different, that was in 1993. That was after the Soviet Union was already gone. That was what, that was like Russian Federation politics. Yeah. Right. So, um, so explain that. So the, uh, the last vestiges of the old Soviet politburo essentially were crushed after they attempted a coup on the, the newly liberalizing, um, Russian federation. Right. Well, they weren't, I don't think they will, members of the police, there's some of the numbers of [inaudible], but deplete road is mainly dominated by Gorbachev's supporters at the time. So these were like, this was like the head of the KGB, um, who was participating in the cooler and some that were like six of them I think. I don't quite remember the entire history, but, um, that was the, they were like some of the hardliners in the party basically. And they were trying to like, um, topple the glade Gorbachev Lincoln of the Party. And then Yeltsin sort of, who was sort of like, uh, in the Gorbachev fling at the time. He used that to put himself in to make him, to make his name by like stopping the coop.
Speaker 1And then the first election after the fall, it was, it was really important that Yeltsin have kind of like a decisive win to, to prove that everything was going okay. Now that, uh, the capitalism was winning. And so that was, that was that, that was the first election that the USA helped Yeltsin steal that.
Speaker 2Oh, I think that was the 96 election. That's mainly Yeltsin is, uh, commonly accused of stealing, which seems to be pretty true to the rescue. Yeah. Uh, but I think he did, um, I think there was an election in 92, uh, which she won. So I guess g question of could there have been something salvage that saw SAS, which is a really interesting one. It opens up a lot of different cans of worms. But one I would ask that maybe you might have insight just anecdotally from your family is like how many at that point, like late eighties, in right into 90 91 true believers in the Soviet project were there, I imagine a lot of them that remain, might've been of the older generations, but was there a general feeling of leftism or had that been completely severed from Soviet sort of collective psyche? Oh, I think that like if you look at the referenda that happened in [inaudible] 91 and 90 and 1990, that that took place around the Soviet Union about whether or not the Soviet Union should remain. Uh, most of those actually had people supporting to keep the Soviet Union and preserve it but like that then reform it in some way. So I think that like that was sort of the attitude of a lot of people. Uh, but the thing is that the way like nationalist politics is starting to play out and I'm like one common sense among people in Russia. I don't know if it was common necessarily, but there was only a sentiment among certain people in Russia that like the, the other republics, particularly the Central Asian republics, which were like less economically developed, that they were like holding rush it back, that Russia had to like support these, like people who like, or less I can less economically developed and the Russians and they were like, we just should make, be, aren't, make up your own country and then we'll be better off. Wow. The whole socialism in one country idea or was this like, well, on the way towards like liberalizing it was, this was like, this was like, it wasn't about necessarily social is one country, but it was just about like, look, we don't want to like take care of like these like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and other countries at Russian size, like, and not like, well, some Russian. So I was backwards and not like Russia. And so actually look, you see that like in those are for Endo, more Russian support dissolving Soviet Union than people in those areas right after the Afghan war. Especially, there's probably a, I imagine bitter taste in people's mouth or I'm trying to, right. That's definitely a thing too with the QC later, like, uh, in, uh, in Kitchener, the wars that happened there that are like really brutal and, yeah. Okay. So I guess maybe a little history. Um, backstep we all know
Speaker 4the Soviet Union was what it was and, um, it was a massive sort of collection of resources in the eyes of the West, I think. And so the best phrase I've heard to describe the collapse of the Soviet Union was a neo liberal firesale. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about how, um, western institutions like IMF and that those young rockstar economists that tried to liberalize using sort of shock therapy and the effect on just every day people on the ground. And if you have any sort of anecdotal stuff, I'd love to hear that.
Speaker 2Yeah. So the fires, that effect is definitely something that like, um, when I talked to my parents and they're like, yeah, it's definitely like, it's not just like if the vertical firesale like it's a literal like visible firesale that happened. So when the government was trying to like prioritize these massive, like entities at this, the Soviet government had controlled, uh, they handed out vouchers. Like they gave every citizen like this voucher and they're like, okay, this is like, would your, this is like the part of the company that you have now. And like, but what would happen is that people didn't really like, those weren't, you couldn't really do anything with those. It was people weren't really valuable to people. So these all the guards, so these would be all the guards would go around and just like collect them from people and basically give them like nothing in return. But like people in some like village in like rural Russia, they don't really care about it. They're like, okay, well what am I gonna do with this voucher? This is completely worthless to me. And like they'll give him like, like pennies or something, something like even like objects that are basically worthless and those people, and they'll be like, give me the voucher for it. And then those people would collect all those vouchers and use it. Like my mom said that she would trade like her voucher in some company. Like it could be like Norilsk nickel, which is like a huge like mining company now. And she'd be like, I had just traded for a pair of jeans or something. Like, cause like, why not? What am I gonna do with this voucher? I read a lot of, a lot of firsthand accounts of uh, going up to like vagrants and essentially homeless people and saying here's some vodka gimme the vouchers. Right. And that's definitely like how that, that privatization process worked. Like it looks just about like those people just like the people who were like friends of the government going around and just collecting up all those, it's insane because it wasn't like an open
Speaker 4using force power grab it like these weird symbolic sort of
Speaker 2process. They were also was a neo liberalization is what it was. That's exactly how the sort of neo liberal worldview works is is you use very little force but you use intense economic coercion. I think it was literal falls. Yeah there was definitely a lot of liberal arts as well. So the voucher thing is just one thing that happened. There were also like, there were also sold at like effectively illegal auctions cause like not that people are allowed to participate. So I'm like okay we're going to auction off. This is government property and then like they don't really like invite anyone except like this one guy and he bids like $2 for it and then they go, hey, I there, that's your company now the effective like literal force. So my dad, um, my dad worked at a bank for some time in the 90s. And the thing is that like in order to enforce like the banks would like hire gangs to like have a service security for them. So if you needed it to like, like you loan money to another bank but then the other bank isn't paying you back. So you would have your gang go fight their gang that they had for security. Like you would hire lake at lake and then like if you're getting one, then they go and get their money for you. Right. And like if you were really like, no, only my dad talks about it as a fuel Rico, really top notch bank, then you could hire the FSB, but you would hire the FSB. Like they wouldn't just like the, the state service. I wouldn't just like we're for any bank, but you could, you could hire them and like they would then obviously they were having like the best like ability to use force out of all of them. So like that's how it would usually work.
Speaker 4Literal cops as the policeman of capitalism and neo liberalism. Right. Just a more like laid bare, which is why I think it's such an important period to look at is the effects of just complete like you said, d nationalization and how it affected people to like declining lifespan, etc. And I really want to build a picture of chaos right now through just,
Speaker 2yeah,
Speaker 4what happened so that we can sort of explain the next phase. But as far as in the nineties um, can you talk a little bit about Yeltsin, what his relationship was to the u s and m
Speaker 2sort of thinking about Yeltsin? Was that, like I said, he was trying to like establish his power by like coming out of the fall of the Soviet Union and like his opposition to like his support of like dissolving it. And so he was basically willing to work with the West in order to make that happen. And so like when when the Soviet Union collapses a Yeltsin invites all these like American economists into the, into the Kremlin to like help him, um, you know, structure the new Russian economy. And, uh, the, the thing about the thing that ends up happening with those economists, a lot of them are like speculating on the Russian economy while while advising, uh, [inaudible] on how to govern it. So like people like, um, it's like friends of Larry Summers commonly I think one person was name was [inaudible], he was there from the Chicago school and he was like, it was found out later that he was investing in all these companies while he was suggesting to the Russian government of what they should do about them. So in that way, like the way that like American, like sort of not just economic knowledgeable political knowledge would come in and be like basically structured the new Russian system, which is why it's interesting always to see taco about like how now American political experts are like, well there it turns out the Russian economic political system sucks, but the fact is that they basically wrote all the rules for in the constitution and how it would operate. Right? So like they owe the Tucker commonly about how like the, the constitution gives so much power to the president for example. But that was the constitution that Yeltsin really 93 after, he overthrew the, the Soviet, the, which was not the Soviet Union, but the Supreme Soviet was the name of the legislature of the Russian Federation at the time. And when he over through them, he wrote the constitution that gave him more power, which is constitution that Putin is currently governing under it. Right? We've learned it from watching,
Speaker 3well, this is not something that's new at all. I mean we saw basically the same thing happen maybe with a little bit more bloodshed. And violence in Chile in the 70s when the social democratic government was overthrown. And, uh, Pinochet stepped in as a military dictator. He basically turned to the IMF, the World Bank and the Chicago School of Economics to essentially run the economy. So, so the, the entire, well not just the economy really put, but the entire country was being run by these neoliberal economists and they were the ones who were turned to for every single economic and political decisions. And it was basically, you know, up to the oligarchs and the politically powerful in, in July to to follow through on these for their own benefit.
Speaker 1So what we see is immediately after the fall and the first few years we see the denationalization, we see the rise of these oligarchs and this, this capital accumulation. And in the meantime, while that is going on, we're also being told, you know, the, the, the Russian economy is not doing well because they just need to tighten their belt. They just need austerity. That the issue is that the economy isn't being being run effectively because there's all these vestiges of communism, all these stuff like social programs and people being able to eat food and stuff. Um, whereas really the problem is this accumulation of wealth and uh, the self fulfilling, um, a cycle of staff money from the, the people and then claim that it's the economy's own fault and what you have to do is pull even more money out and then tighten, um, use, I'll start at t to, to fix that.
Speaker 2Right. And there's this, there's the, uh, yeah, like that, that's definitely the, like the ideological narrative that's happening in Russia at the time. And like if you look at the media, so under the, I mean obviously in the media was, uh, almost entirely state controlled. Um, and after the Soviet Union collapses, there starts to be, there's still state media, but you also see like private media, but the private media is took going back to like Latin America if you let it. Latin America and a lot of the countries to private media that exists is held by like the oligarchs in those countries like this held by the rich. Like if you look at like Brazil in particular, like so much of the private media is basically all like owned by uh, the rich in Brazil and they, you see us very similar thing happened in Russia where the oligarchs also take control of the media. Um, in addition to the state, which is obviously working with them. And like the way my dad talks about it was like the common narrative was that like because the Soviet Union was so bad, like we have to endure this like suffering because like it's like self flagellation cause like for the sins that we did under, under, under the Soviet regime.
Speaker 1Definitely none of us know how that feels. Right.
Speaker 2So this sounds like a horrible,
Speaker 4terrifying place to live. What were some of the horror stories that you've heard of just day to day survival?
Speaker 2Well, like my family was, I think the way my dad talks about it, he's like, we were relatively lucky, but I know that like commonly like you had to, you would bring like teachers at schools, you would bring them gifts because teachers wouldn't be paid by the government like a lot, like for months until the government decided that it had the money to pay them. So stuff like that would happen. Like my grandma would like, her pension payments would just like show up whenever, obviously the whole time the IMF was saying that when you cut a public worker salaries you have to cut these pensions, otherwise we won't loan you money. Um, which obviously you need a loan money to have a functional capitalist economy. Um, so like my dad would talk about how the prices like because of the way the eye, because of the rules of the IMF imposed like you go to until like January 1st and like the prices would quadruple from the word they were the previous day because of like the, the way the IMF said it had to work. Um, yeah. And there was like the joke that like when you go on the bus, by the time you get to your destination, the fair would be higher than when you got on. Uh, yeah. So stuff like that. All right.
Speaker 4Say like if terrorism is using
Speaker 2mmm hmm
Speaker 4immiseration and fear to control people for the sake of political ideology and then the IMF and the World Bank are the world's biggest terrorist Oregon.
Speaker 2Right? Like, cause if you look at it like this, like well this is one of the largest piece time losses of life in like history and know what happened in the 90s in Russia. So yeah. It's cause we have an interesting definition of peace time where what was done during that time is economic warfare essentially. Yeah.
Speaker 1That time, the first few years at least after the collapse though was I suppose an overwhelming narrative, especially in the, the state and the oligarchs owned media that the u s where we're helping that this was, this was all going well. They were all partners. They will your partners. And the narrative that I've, that I've heard is that that really only started to change after, after Kosovo. Does that match you and your family's experienced that up until that point it was they were presented as allies?
Speaker 2Yeah. I think that that uh, I think that a is true even after Kosovo in the way that like Kosovo was kind of an unfortunate step. I think in terms of both like the Yeltsin government and the Clinton government where they're like, okay, this was like unfortunate that this happened. But Yeltsin was more willing to lay, kind of just look past that because his sort of power depended on being able to be supported by the United States, which is also what then Putin sorta fries to build on hit territories to build his power on later. So I think that's the way the US is sort of scene. I think for, for my dad, at least the way it, the way that period worked for him is that Lahey, that's what his like Russian nationalism became more developed because of how, what, what, how he felt about what was happening. And he's like, well, we're being like exploited by these foreign forces, these like the u s the u s stuff like that. So I think in terms of like the public perception, that might've been one aspect of why, uh, of, of rising Russian nationalism in a different sense in, in Russia.
Speaker 3Would that be sort of the flavor of Russian nationalism that is embodied by Putin's rise to power?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think that it's actually interesting if you look at Putin's government though, because really the conflict with the u s comes like much later. So like if you're going, it comes to power in 2000, uh, and then like the Iraq war happens, then you've kind of sound what happens even though Russia doesn't support the Iraq war, uh, Russia does help the u s with this invasion of Afghanistan, they're like, have fun with that guys. Yeah. Well, and uh, Bush at the time called him Hoodie poot or something like that. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. So you see that actually that kind of friendly relations between the government, the Russian government, and then like later it starts to like emerge that with the Georgian conflict there's a little bit, oh oh of tensions, but it's actually not that bad. But when you, I think it was actually recently when you hit the Ukrainian conflict, that's when it really, the tension between Russia and the u s really returned to like, like
Speaker 3now Syria where essentially Russian interests are, are directly opposed to American interests where the Americans are essentially like giving anybody in everybody arms who wants to overthrow the, the Syrian government. And it is in Russia's interest to have a stable government in Syria because that's a very important, um, warm water port for
Speaker 2them. Right. And sort of like when I talked to my dad about this, because he does kind of have this Russian nationalism that isn't as politics and he talks the way he sees it is definitely in that way. That kind of Yeltsin let the u s walk all over us. And Yeltsin, like even in Kosovo, like he didn't really care that much and he wasn't really concerned and he didn't really protect Russian national interests. And then Booton the way my dad sees is that like Putin is doing that now, uh, because Putin will stand up to the u s or whatever. Right. And then the sort of elephant in the room here is NATO. Do you want to talk about NATO? The Warsaw Pact and the promises I made to not expand? There's definitely a lot of like within like current Russian national is a lot of resentment at, uh, what happened with NATO because effectively was promised to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand past Germany. Could we just take a step back and define what exactly is NATO? I bet a few people will be really happy about that. So NATO is the sort of a US analog to the Warsaw Pact? Well, it's not actually, I should say the Warsaw Pact is the analog to NATO because NATO came first. It said North Atlantic Treaty in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is basically the, the, the military alliance between the Western European countries in the u s where the u s stations, it's troops and nuclear weapons in western Europe. In order to like that, that's the sort of power basic instance of a union. Otherwise it can't, like, it has to be able to keep those trips there in order to, cause the Soviet Union could do that because it was in Europe. So the agreement with Gorbachev was that NATO would not explain it. So the agreement with Gorbachev, with regard to Germany was that when German unification, what's happening? The agreement was that if Corbis have allowed it to go through then the, then Bush, the elder Bush promised him that verbally promised him that the cause Germany would be part of NATO and therefore east Germany would be part of NATO promised him that NATO would not expand past that point east of Germany. Uh, but then NATO does do that and then just do it through the 90s and still it's currently doing it right now. Uh, look, Montenegro and places like that, that NATO is trying to absorb into its alliance. So yeah, that's, I think that's in sort of the resentment there is that Yeltsin kind of let that happen and that like, um, and, and Gorbachev also let that happen. That's the resentment. And within Russian national politics, like I'm not endorsing Russian nationalism and just to try to describe, uh, what kind of, how my dad sees it then in terms of that perspective. Um, so like when Gorbachev sort of pulled out the troops out of East Germany, pulled them out like so fast that like the troops didn't even have anywhere to go. So they were just kind of like camping and like some park, cause like the, they were all just like coming in from Germany and obviously the u s still has troops in Germany, um, and even farther east now in Poland and places like that. So that's sort of that resentment is there and the way that, um, a lot of people explain like what the analog
Speaker 3would be in America if, if we had a Warsaw, Warsaw Pact countries, uh, with, you know, nuclear allies and potentially nuclear missile stations in them popping up and like mutual con and Baja California. Uh, and all of a sudden there is a, a hostile nuclear power right on your border. Like that makes everybody nervous like that. That is a, that is an obviously, um, a hostile act. Even if it is not an open declaration of intent to war, that is still a very, very threatening thing to do.
Speaker 2The attitude of, you talked about how nuclear weapons, how would the feel of nuclear weapons were close to the u s well, we can look at the Cuban missile crisis for example, where the, when the Soviet Union tried to put it to nuclear weapons in Cuba, which was an allied country of the Soviet Union, they like the u s effectively like almost started a global nuclear war about that. So like if you look at the way like JFK acts in that, during that crisis, it's actually like, it's like very, very aggressive. And the way that like, cause blockading Cuba, which is what the u s did was, is an act of war under international law. A blockading a country, uh, is not something that you can do. Like, I mean, that's, unless you're declaring war on them, which was sort of like the, if you look at the options JP had, they were like, okay, we can ignore it. We can declare war on them or we can blockade them, which is, and they're like, well, it's kind of, it's not going to look like we're declaring war on them, but like legally, that is a declaration of war. Uh, and the way that like this, this is a, that that blockade was effectively like a war against the allied country of the Soviet Union about its nuclear weapons. So that was like basically the u s making it as about it as aggressive posture as you can make without firing nuclear weapons. Uh, and at that time, the, I think the Soviet leadership actually didn't expect that kind of reaction because like the u s had nuclear missiles in Turkey, which are on the border of the Soviet Union. And so they didn't expect that the US would have such as, uh, aggressive reaction to that. Actually,
Speaker 3I was actually just about to say, or you know, option d, which would have been the sane option, would be to recognize that they, that the u s government had put nuclear weapons into Turkey, thus prompting and Soviet Union to put weapons into Cuba. Going back to Russia. It's, it is essentially economic colonialism, which is, you know, what happened there with, through institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, they basically holds their economies hostage. Uh, because within, within the system of global capitalism, it is very easy to destroy a country by destroying their economy, by essentially isolating them. Which is why, you know, blockading a country is an act of war.
Speaker 2How would that Mesh with the idea of sanctions or with regard to like sanctions? I think that um, the sanctions the US has put on Russia so far functionally like I'm out to lake, um, sort of a disapproval of Russian leadership. But the problem is it for the US sanctions don't really matter cause the really the interaction between the u s economy and the Russian economy is uh, economically negligible. Like this is the whole GDP impact or the trade between Russia and Europe and western Europe is much more relevant. Um, and I think that that's Texas at the central question of the sanctions is how long they can last. Considering that like people in Europe and people in Russia don't really aren't just getting hurt by them. Yes, sanctions
Speaker 4was hurt. The people that have the least amount of power and resources and it's looked at as like a reasonable sort of nicer way of enforcing certain things. But it, it really is like we're saying economic violence, I think sanctions maybe are more state impose whereas like the IMF and World Bank have this weird sort of in between Ngo like independence from any state. Even though in reality they really just serve kind of,
Speaker 2well, they are the capital literal governing body of the bourgeoisie. Right, exactly. The bourgeoisie has no state, it's only alliances with other bourgeoisie. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. And we can talk about the alliance between those sort of the emerging Russian bourgeoisie that comes out of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the American bourgeoisie does. That's basically functionally how it works. And like you talk about economic coercion, but there's also like, there's like different elements too. Like the IMF doesn't just use like illegal under international law methods of like imposing conditions on debt. But, um, in the 96 elections, um, which are famously known to have been stolen by Yeltsin, the what happens is that like, at this point, like people in Russia are really unhappy with everything that's happening in Russia and like, uh, is, uh, Yeltsin's approval rating is about 8%. Uh, because of the war in Chechnya. There's corruption, there's obvious the, and the big privatization program. So the communist party is just one, the last, uh, Duma elections and Nielsen's party comes third. When I was writing an article about this, I saw a poll that showed that like at that time 63% of Russians strongly agree or somewhat agreed with the statement that under the communist everything was better. And I wish it was like that again. And so you see that like the, the media has a strong reaction to this in the media. It starts, the media basically runs a slander campaign against the, uh, well I don't know if it's necessarily slander campaign. It's not like he's a great guy, the leader of the Communist Party. Um, but they stay vilify him in the media and they talk about how Yeltsin is the only one who can like keep rush on the path of modernization and the communist party wants to take us back into the dark ages and uh, everything's going to be bad. And the, the u s government because is strongly alarm by this cause it looks like Yeltsin isn't going to win these. And so what happens is the u s goes to the IMF and the US says we need to give a to Russia now. And when you do it urgently and the w sort of like just before the election, the u s basically gives Russia all this IMF aid that suddenly the government's like, oh look, we can certainly pay all our teachers and we can suddenly pay all these pensions that were behind on. And, and not only that, but illegally, the IMF money is used to directly fund Yeltsin's election campaign. And then after that also they fixed the vote. They, they do election fraud and they fixed the vote counting and all this stuff. And then Yeltsin ends up winning the election even though it's with widely believed that the communist party actually one which so like the Americans like hacked the Russian elections. Yes. They found that they've found [inaudible] gone us emails. I wish
Speaker 4liberals had fucking memory. The memory hole is so enraging it's like, this wasn't that long ago in everything. It's like just the collective historical imagination in this country just runs like you remember like a year back and there's no historical context for anything.
Speaker 2And you talk about how like, Oh, a Putin, you know, supported one candidate or the other. And the U s election. And like it, even though in his public statements he never did that. Whereas when you look at later Russian elections in [inaudible] 96, Bill Clinton like on several occasions explicitly like endorses Yeltsin basically, which is usually, uh, under the international decorum. You're not usually supposed to do that, but, um,
Speaker 4like he does a cover of Time magazine was, uh, said Yanks to the rescue, which I just still am so shocked by that. Just bragging about it. The deterioration of society's after, um, the fail failed Soviet project and the tastes that left in everyone's mouth that led to this sort of end of history vibe of sort of it's liberal capitalism for the rest of time. And I really find that interesting because that really damaged any sort of left wing movement. I think one of the functions, while this is not like a revolutionary theory of the IMF and the World Bank was by having the boot on the throat of a population through austerity and forced, um, sort of upward distribution of wealth, you really prevented any possibility of organizing. Um, labor unions often mean word straight up, assassinated the leaders of labor unions, but also just there was no possibility of any sort of left wing, you know, people's organizing. So the economic cores and on one side and then you had, I mean when it comes to like Latin America or you know, South Asia, um, you know, actual death squads that we just told like, here's how you torture people and then spread the information around so that no one wants to rise up, et Cetera, et cetera. Yeah.
Speaker 2Can you sort of see in Russia that there's this sort of, this, after this collapse happens and what comes out of it, you see this like this sort of depression just fall over like Russian politics? Like obviously like, like I talked about many people supported leaving the support of keeping the Soviet Union at the time, the Soviet collapse, but the, even the people who opposed it, like there's interviews of people who went to protests in Moscow against the Soviet government and will lead to its collapse and they're just like, I didn't want this to happen. Like they lied to us. They told us that they told us that we were going there to get freedom and then all they gave us was privatization and like the really depressing ones that people who are like, yeah, I wish that the, that the red army had fired on the protesters and it just crushed us because wow, that would have been better than, that would have been better than what happened.
Speaker 4Common sort of like collective ethos of the American bourgeoisie and sort of like centrist, um, you know, media mouthpiece, privatization is freedom.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, and, and you look at the, the way that the, I think it's the UN, I can't remember exactly which, which, you know, we're all body, it does this, but they, they have, they're a human freedom index and private property is, is one of the major things that they look at for a, for determining how free your country is.
Speaker 4Like, uh, on that note, uh, Amnesty International Human Rights Watch all of these NGOs, the way they define human rights is also kind of pernicious. And you obviously they do a lot of good work, but there's no, if you look on their website, what their criteria are. There's nothing about the ability of workplace organization. Poverty is not a violation of human rights, the inability to eat unless it's like some sort of forced famine. There's a lot of ways. This is another way that um, things are enforced in. I think that sort of human rights, uh, jargon use to justify imperialism after the fall of the Soviet Union. You didn't have a countervailing, um, sort of, uh, oppositional force in the world. And so we need to create this like sort of neo-con cover did you sold
Speaker 1the chaos almost off post post Soviet Russia, early privatization Russia and the feeling amongst, amongst the populace that it was out of control, that this was all happening on a level that they had no control over. And then Lutin uses that to project this, the strong man image that we saw even even through the two thousands, 2005, like all the way up to like 2011, 12. Even if you know him shirtless, riding a bear, that kind of thing. Um, this idea that I think, I think you said at Sipi is really playing to this Russian nationalist, this, this fear that if you let some things go free, if you do not have someone strong controlling it, everything will go to the worst possible option.
Speaker 2Okay. So, so we have essentially the ruble is worthless and there's like wheelbarrows full of it where, I don't know if that actually happened, but that's the visual image everyone paints when, you know, like why am our era Germany when things are going to shit and then putting comes in and sort of, uh, projects as authority in a way that provides security and material comfort to the panel thing is that he, does she change a certain economic policies basically to make it function in a less horrible way? Um, I think that the way my dad sort of sees it, cause my dad has his fan of Putin largely influent does have, he's pretty well liked in Russia. Overall his approval rating is pretty hocking. Americans don't get, that is the point. We're waiting. It's like, but usually how between 60 and 80% somewhere around there and the way he sees it, is it like he put in, came in and like, well sort of like, I always think of the what Hillary Clinton said when she told she told Wall Street to knock it off. That's sort of the way Putin did to cause I'd have like, yeah, he had a meeting with the oligarchs and he told him to stop it. So that's, it's kind of, it's kind of the same thing where like it's like this air of like I'm going to control the like Paula guard, but the reality is just working with them just in a different way.
Speaker 1And this brings to mind something we've not really touched on, which is that part of the exploitation of, of all these Russian, I guess resources. You used the nickel as an example of one of the, one of the vouchers. Obviously there was not really much reason to be environmentally conscious during the last days of the, of the Soviet Soviet restaurant. It was mostly about exploiting national resources, but when everything was privatized, even the small amount of care or the small amount of regulation that was put in place and has completely vanished.
Speaker 2Right? Yeah. So the thing that I don't have that much knowledge about the ecological movement that happened in the late eighties and the Soviet Union, but I think that there was, uh, the beginning of like some, there was like, so even though the Soviet Union had obviously like sort of mine, the strip mine the nickel in the same way that it's currently being done, uh, Soviet scientist trying to, we're starting to realize that like, okay, this is actually not good and we're starting, we're like, we're realizing the effects of climate change and stuff like that and scientists and like the sort of eastern bloc countries. We're starting to see that, that, that was happening, but after the Soviet Union collapses in all these countries have prioritized economies, this basically just disappears. And it's like sort of becomes a footnote in history
Speaker 1that came to mind because you, you told me previously that official, you know, Russian equipment to the EPA have have measured uh, amounts of, of pollution and and um, like heavy metal poisoning and that they are way out of line and they are way out of allowable limits and they announced that and that's it. That there's no, there's no actual enforcement. Yeah.
Speaker 2So mostly like if we talk about something like the Rosc Nicole, which is a big like Nicole mining company in Russia that operates in the neural screeching, like the mining that goes on there is incredibly damaging to the environment and like the, the like the, the heavy, the heavy metal, that's a byproduct of nickel mining like platinum and palladium was actually so concentrated in the soil that you can now mind that also like the, the byproduct of the metal mining. So like, and the Norway has offered to pay to help clean it up because it's affecting Norway also. But generally this hasn't really happened. And like the, yeah, the Russian like environmental agency sort of sense like, yeah, this is the, the like the water run off. This is way beyond the legal limits, but then that, that just say that and then nothing really changes. Right. That's intense.
Speaker 1Well that's probably where we would be with Hillary's approach to Wall Street and where we always put putting this approach to oligarchs. Yeah.
Speaker 2I think that the similarities between the u s is that when the Russian system or something is that like also nobody wants to talk about, cause like on the one hand, the US government wants to be like, yeah, this is the word to look what we're so much better. And the Russian government wants to be like, yeah, it's different work, our own thing. But really, in reality, like a lot, I'm not saying it's exactly the same, obviously this would, that would be reductive, but I think there's lots of useful comparison is to be drawn, especially since the Russian constitution is still heavily influenced by like American political, uh, experts. Right. And, you know, I, I see a lot of, um,
Speaker 3temperamental parallels between the leadership of the Democratic Party and Putin and his inner circle because they're, there doesn't really seem to be a sense of longterm strategic planning. And it is almost entirely about, you know, there's this technocratic managerial approach to the status quo that, you know, has the ability to respond to various emergencies or opportunities that come up but doesn't have a kind of actual vision rather than other than don't let things turn into utter shit.
Speaker 2Right, right. And that's sort of like the, that the political party that Putin sort of represents United Russia, which is the largest political party in Russia. That's sort of like their image of, they tried to present Overlake sort of sons' ideological image, whether like how we're just like trying to do what's best for Russia or whatever. And then there's the other minor parties who have more of an express ideological line, like the Liberal Democratic Party, which is fascist, that, nevermind the name of
Speaker 3that is actually really common for a liberal democratic parties to be like incredibly nationalists or, or even like outright fascist. Um, like the, the Lib Dems in, uh, Australia for example, they are incredibly reactionary or the Lib Dems in the United Kingdom. Kidding? Yeah,
Speaker 1no, the Lib Dems in the United Kingdom of basically just a small slice of Flan.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. There's, there's the communist party of Russia, which is sort of like vaguely social democratic. It's Christ to propose like more like progressive taxation, like which is actually retro has a flat tax planning tax if the 13%. Yeah, it's pretty bad. And like, so the, the Communist Party like supports progressive taxation and stuff like that, but mostly they're also like pretty close with the church now and social conservative policies and stuff like that. And then there's the other party which is adjust Russia, which is actually the Russian or a percentage of the social center national, which is the smallest of the party. Then the, in the, that's represented in the legislature and it's sort of also vaguely social democratic. But yeah, basically they're kind of minor and not like not nearly as important as Putin's party, which literally like as the majority in the Duma basically. And the other parties are kind of smaller. Yeah. So that's sort of the, that's the, and they sort of present this non ideological dimension like you were talking about where like yeah, they're just like United Russia and even in the name of you can see it's just about La, how like Russia is just one thing that has a national interests, which I think that like the sort of like the way that tries to play off a soft nationally, which doesn't go in, which they don't want to go too hard in a hard nationalism because there's also all these like Nazis in Russia that they sort of like alternatively supporting and don't support. So this sort of nationalism where we're all just have one interest in, like we're going to have all the oligarchs and the people work together or whatever.
Speaker 3Right, right. That's very familiar. But at the same time, there are certain maybe more clear cut issues that are in the Russian interests. Whereas with here, it's nakedly serves just the
Speaker 1ruling class in terms of politics is that much regionalism in terms of you know, local politics or even just certain areas of Russia being ignored or being given too much attention. So
Speaker 2like Moscow is basically the most important city in Russia and like everything, like most of the development economic development does happen in Moscow actually commonly see, well sometimes you'll see that liquor people get injured like badly and like some kind of like accident or attack or something like that in another city, they'll actually have to airlift them to Moscow to get them the best possible medical cause. That's where it would be. So Russia is, it is constitutionally a federal state. So there's like different, like sort of devolved government but not, not that devolve. There's like a republic of Tatarstan. Uh, there's a chicken now which does have its own sort of government, but the, the like the independence of the government, like it's sort of questionable. I mean it doesn't, more or less a client kingdom, right? Well, yeah, it's sort of like states. I mean, yeah, it's sort of like states in the u s I guess in that sense. Um, yeah. But so in terms of like the regionalism, it definitely like there's a lot of focus on Moscow mostly. And like Siberia, uh, intern, I said were you guys mostly used for mining stuff and not that much else, although you could sit in board, cause I think seen some, like there's more like development therapy, even some like tech stuff.
Speaker 1I realized that it was probably a very naive question of question of mine, but I wonder, especially after, you know, things like Chechnya, um, whether the chance or the risk is all federations or part of the Russian Federation breaking away.
Speaker 2Yeah. You sort of see some interesting things. Like if he talk about a tar tar, which is the language spoken in Tatarstan will not, it's not that it's the Russian has spoken at Carter's. Dot. But there's also taught art. There was sort of this sort of interesting constitutional battle about which alphabet it should be written then because, so Tara, Tara was originally written in Arabic and the Arabic script. Uh, and then after the Soviet Union, after the Russian revolution, it's written in the Latin script, but then in the third is a half inch to the cyrillic script. And so, and then in the late nineties, there was sort of a thing where the tar tar legislature tried to say, tried to put it the, uh, the Latin script on the equal level of the cyrillic script. And then the Russian Duma passed a law that says that no languages in Russia can be officially written anything other than cyrillic script. Hmm. So then, then, and so now, like in the sort of, there was a supreme court ruling, we're actually now the tattered alphabet is like a ruling by the Russian Supreme Court. Um, it has to be that at least the illegally, so that that's what our government, it's like tries to like they can only answer it a communications in Cyrillic, but the like, except in Latin or Arabic. And then they only answer it in Israel. Like though. Yeah. I would say
Speaker 4that for the most part, any region or country or federation that would break off would have support either in from the get go or as an opportunistic sort of jump in from the West. I mean, you hear a lot of stories of like Georgia and the color revolution in Ukraine and Chechnya, I don't actually know specifically, but I would imagine like just spooks, just western spooks all over their hands are all over it. And um, even if that wasn't there would, if you break away from Russia, you would need, um, a powerful backers. So whether that's like Saudi Arabia, which is by kind of by proxy America or China or China, which is fascinating.
Speaker 2So there's like
Speaker 4this chaos and it's, we've, we've talked very explicitly about the immiseration after the fall of the Soviet Union in one thing I'm really interested in, because I was raised in the states and I remember very clearly how I was taught history is to talk sort of objectively about the quality of life in the Soviet Union. I know that things really fell apart in the last couple of decades, but there was still a much higher standards of education and health care. From what I understand. Is there, I mean, how was the general feeling about just these basic material concern?
Speaker 2I think that, um, if you talked to Russian people in America and then it'll be different than if talking to question people in Russia. Um, this sort of similar to the Cuban effect that happens. But I think that if you look at polling numbers in many of the ex Soviet republics, a majority of the population believes that life was better for them under the Soviet Union and generally under the Slovenian. Like there wasn't homelessness like the Soviet Union guarantee would guarantee a home to all its citizens. And so Americans, that blows our fucking, so all these things that like playing, my mom would talk about, oh, well this was in the 90s but it was sort of carried over this of eating order. You could get like milk for your baby. Like if you had a baby that was just like a milk shop that you go to and you could get the milk for free, you just get milk, stuff like that. The stuff that's sort of like disappeared in Russia later and you feel look at like income inequality now. Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world. I think it might be the most unequal country in the world. It's getting pretty close. Yeah. Um, and that's like, you can sort of look at the graph of the Russian Gini Coefficient, but like since 91 and it just like skyrockets basically. Oh yeah. Um, good life expectancy dropped. What was it like 15 years in the first five years of the, of the nineties? Right.
Speaker 1As I said before, we were recording that. That's really one of the times when we, we over here in that in the states in the West began to see the, the rise again of the stereotype of Russian and Russian men and Slavic men, especially as a depressed, an alcoholic and suicidal when some of that may have been true, but it really amped up and came into our consciousness during this time when coincidentally everything in Russia was going to shit.
Speaker 2I mean, yeah. It's not surprising. You see the same thing here in you know, White, rural America, the, you're seeing the same kind of economic immiseration and
Speaker 3the, you know, the decimation of cities and support networks and you're seeing skyrocketing rates of all the same things. Right.
Speaker 2Definitely seeing the rise of nationalism in the same way, but coming from exactly like, I think it's somewhere to where it is in Russia, where like it comes from the people, not the poorest people in those areas, but the people who are in the poorest areas, but not the poorest.
Speaker 3Exactly. It's, it's the, it's a petite bourgeoisie who are living next to the beat down proletariat, who, who look at their own economic situation and recognize that they are not economically powerful enough to prevent that from happening to them. And they are willing to use sort of any kind of authoritarian means in order to maintain their economic status as bourgeoisie. And this is, this is exactly the same kind of, um, you know, uh, a fascistic reaction that happens all over the place. And, and even even like it, um, marks in his own time, like a recognize this as, as a trend in a, as a possibility when, when he calls out reactionary socialism, he's talking about exactly this kind of thing. Perfect opportunity for me to segue into the concept and the presence of Antifa in Russia, which is something that I know you've, you've written about. So could you, could you fill us in? It's, it's really good. Difficult
Speaker 2to try to do antifa work in Russia. There was, uh, uh, in the, in like 2007 or somewhere around that time, uh, there were [inaudible] who was a prominent Russian anti fascists was murdered by Russia, Neo Nazis who stabbed. That's a common thing that happens in Russia that like you, you, it's very dangerous to do that kind of work. And it was definitely like the, especially around soccer like, so if it's 1% of the all of Europe, it's at fascists love soccer in Europe and it's pretty similar in Russia even though Russia sucks at soccer. So they, they're mostly just sad all the time. But tribalistic nationalism. Yeah. So that's sort of like, I, I write up the stories in like in my question football news about how like interviews with Antifa activists who are trying to like make Russian football fandom less racist. Um, but it's, it's, it's really tough. Like the prominence of like Nazi-ism in that kind of on that level is like very high and like, yeah, it's, there's some organizations, there's a left organizations in Russia, there's after norm, which is like an anarchist sorta. Erica is organization and there's other organizations. It's like, it gets complicated, but some of them are close to the communist party in some ways in the communist party is not that great. It's pretty bad, uh, in many ways. But some of them are like close to it but have better politics senate, but like they're sort of adjacent to it. It, so it's sort of complicated in that way. There is um, [inaudible] who is an activist with, with the um, AKM which is the vanguard of red youth. Uh, and it it's AKM yes, because of the weapon. So in Russian it, the acronym works right, but then it like also is the, is the weapon, um, yet who've been who I've been doing like some radical like street stuff. Like there was a, when there were protests in Paris, there were like some protests in Moscow and like there's some quote from a Russian activist, the shouting lake, we're going to turn Moscow into Paris. But yeah, he's, the well itself is actually a sentence to a labor camp by the Russian government. Uh, recently he's in a, he's in a labor camp. He's like, again, he sort of like close to the Communist Party, but the communist party is also like very close to the government so they don't want to like, they don't really care that he happens to be in a labor camp. Uh, even though he also said it's like, it's like a complicated thing cause like they're close to the communist party but there have better policies to coming to party. But the comments part is that the comics where he kind of abandons them but also kind of embraces them alternatively, the communist part doesn't want to go too hard and be like, oh, why are you putting on people in labor camps? Because they also want the benefits of like being the formalized opposition or whatever. Or we're um, you know, rapidly approaching time. So are there any other, uh, anything you wanted to wrap up or any other topics you wanted to hit before we went off the air? Um, yeah, we could talk about the 1993 constitution twice a little more. Cause I think we've been talking around it a little, and maybe it might be useful to just like, we'll go, people know what exactly I'm talking about when I talk about that. So in 1993 there was a conflict between the presidency in between Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet and the, the opposition, the Yeltsin controlled the Supreme Soviet, which were composed of various leftwing and also far right nationalist forces that were kind of like United in their opposition to, uh, Yeltsin. And like, so they were, they were, they had like a political conflict in which the Russian constitutional court sided with this Supreme Soviet. So that ended up escalating because the Yeltsin decided that he needed to rewrite the constitution. And the Supreme Soviet said they didn't have the right to rewrite the constitution. Uh, and so he did it anyway. And then when they protested, then he, uh, with the support of the military. So the military decided to back IELTS and most of the military that were in Moscow, because most of the, most things are happening in Moscow. My Dad said that he didn't live in Moscow at the time. Uh, he said that basically he wasn't really aware of what was happening because elsewhere in Russia people were just trying to survive the 90s. Wow. And, but this was happening in Moscow mostly. And Yeltsin had the support of like the military leadership in Moscow. So the protestors, uh, in Moscow were basically like shot by the army and Yeltsin shelled the, the, the White House, which was the home, which is not, not the White House, the White House in Russia, which is the, which was the seed of the Supreme Soviet. And then he dissolved the Soviet, he does all of the Constitutional Court. He wrote the constitution. That's why we have the Duma now. Cause that was, tell us what Yeltsin, that's unreal. Since constitution that he implemented and he a bunch of opposition media. Yeah. And yeah, that's, that, that was the constitutional crisis in which the, the u s basically lent him their full support during that time. So Bill Clinton said he's doing the right thing and not only vocal it to basically every major western government. After this after he'd shelled the Soviet and crush the protesters, they said that they supported him and China was the only government that uh, issued a statement of formal protest. So basically, and that was it. The, the casualty numbers, they are kind of similar to the tenements core protests that happened in China in 1989. But this is, it's something that's not talked about in again because like American politics obviously they don't want to discuss that because that makes them look bad. It's not the thing they want to talk about. But also like Putin, even though he's nominally opposed to America doesn't really want to talk about that either cause he came from the Yeltsin period and if he's like they also don't want to talk about the fixed election like uh, uh, they also like it made you just mentioned to in private and there was a big scandal when he did that because they don't, that really damages the legitimacy of the entire current Russian political system that nobody wants to do. That the people in power and the people who are opposed to it don't want to do it either. Because they were the people who did it and the people who are in power don't want to do it because then who knows what could happen if they did that. So yeah. Yeah. I can also mention that like the sort of way you talk about how like chaos is scary to people from there now, like of the way my dad sees it is like when I talked to her like what's happening in America right now? He's like, well this is bad. You can't disrupt the political system because if you stop the political system, that's something even worse could happen. Like you don't even, you don't, you don't want to do that. So he's always talking about this is a very important to have public order. And I think that helped. That's why people will see it and the image is presented as it's chaos when really I think it's more of a structured chaos cause it's not, it's not chaos for the people who are benefiting. Right. It was a very deliberate kind of order where it was all privatized and it in a, if not a formal, these structural way. It was at least a structural way in terms of like it benefited the same people every time. It's not like it was random. Right.
Speaker 1Chaos imposed on the proletariat. Right. But anybody who was in the Bush was, he did not have to experience that. Yeah. All right. Well thank you very much for blessing us with your wisdom. Anybody who is interested can follow you at Outer Siberia on Twitter. Is there any anywhere else that they can follow you or are you,
Speaker 2nor do you have any medium would like to plug medium, outer Siberia also. Cool. Yeah, I think it's the only social media I have. I don't use Facebook and I wouldn't tell you if I did good policy.
Speaker 1Okay, well thank you for listening and can sign out now. I am a communal sauce.
Speaker 2I'm Erin and I am type areas, Caracas. You can find us all on Twitter under our various handles. Cotu at left-pad on Twitter and you can find a Sarah in the description. If you want to get in contact with us over email, you can find us@leftcoastpodcastsatgmail.com we are
Speaker 3on reddit and sauce. I know you're going to tell people not to go on Reddit, but were there anyway, don't go on reddit. Yeah, don't go on Reddit. But if you do, were there and you can find us a, you can find the show notes on soundcloud as well as our RSS feed, a soundcloud.com/left coast podcast. And we are hopefully going to be coming to iTunes soon. Uh, yes, I uh, I recently being heckled here by a small dog, a small dog and a very tiny t 34. Uh, yeah. So, um, you know, every submitted, uh, there is another podcast that is also the left coast podcast who managed to squat the iTunes first. So it's very confusing because I saw somebody on Twitter talking about going on left coast podcast and how they'd just recorded an episode and I was like, wait, what? Oh, real left coast pockets. What you call yours, Brca diary, left coast podcast, original left coast. Fuck. Uh, yeah. So with all that having been said, go in peace and be in solidarity comrades. Cheers.
Speaker 5[inaudible]. Yeah. [inaudible].