Russia's Response to Protests Fuels U.S. Unease
When freedoms of expression are compromised in Russia, the friendship between the United States and Russia may be challenged as well. Protests by opposition groups in Russia last weekend were met by government violence. In response, the United States expressed "deep concern" toward the Kremlin's actions.
Copyright © 2007 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
DANIEL SCHORR: I was in the crowd in Red Square in 1988 when President Reagan, accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev, proclaimed the end of the evil empire.
BLOCK: NPR senior news correspondent Daniel Schorr.
SCHORR: In Crawford, Texas, in 2001, President Bush searched the soul of President Vladimir Putin and found it congenial. It was then that a Russian scholar who knows America wagged a finger at me and said: You will see, Mr. Schorr, one of these days you will be nostalgic for the Cold War.
That came back to me the other day as I recalled a Putin's speech denouncing America's unrestrained use of hyper-force, creating a world when no one feels safe. Then Putin proceeded to make the world unsafe for his peaceful opposition.
Managed democracy, he calls it. And in Moscow and St. Petersburg last weekend, hundreds of protesters, led by chess champion Garry Kasparov, were arrested, some beaten and interrogated about what the police called extremism.
Yesterday the Kremlin admitted that the police may have over reacted.
A new report by a former CIA officer, Reuel Gerecht, for the American Enterprise Institute says that Putin's Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe, a state dominated and defined by present and former security and intelligence officers.
At least 13 journalists have been killed during Putin's seven years in office. Often they've been shot at outside their apartment doors. One was a generally respected whistleblower on corruption, Anna Politkovskaya. Then there was the case of the British subject, Alexander Litvinenko, who died an agonizing death from a mysterious substance called polonium 210. The Kremlin, it seems, would like to make corruption a monopoly of the state.
It must be acknowledged that a recent Russian opinion poll showed Putin with nearly 70 percent popularity. A democratic opposition appears to have little support, which is why maybe Mikhail Gorbachev could say recently that protests are orchestrated from abroad and are unacceptable.
This is Daniel Schorr.
Copyright © 2007 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
Comments
Discussions for this story are now closed. Please see the Community FAQ for more information.