Stop the pointless demonization of Putin | The Great Debate
by Stephen F. Cohen
Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics and Russian Studies at Princeton University and New York University. His book “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War” has recently been published in an expanded paperback edition.
American media coverage of Vladimir Putin, who today began his third term as Russia’s president and 13th year as its leader, has so demonized him that the result may be to endanger U.S. national security.
For nearly 10 years, mainstream press reporting, editorials and op-ed articles have increasingly portrayed Putin as a czar-like “autocrat,” or alternatively a “KGB thug,” who imposed a “rollback of democratic reforms” under way in Russia when he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president in 2000. He installed instead a “venal regime” that has permitted “corruptionism,” encouraged the assassination of a “growing number” of journalists and carried out the “killing of political opponents.” Not infrequently, Putin is compared to Saddam Hussein and even Stalin.
Well-informed opinions, in the West and in Russia, differ considerably as to the pluses and minuses of Putin’s leadership over the years – my own evaluation is somewhere in the middle – but there is no evidence that any of these allegations against him are true, or at least entirely true. Most seem to have originated with Putin’s personal enemies, particularly Yeltsin-era oligarchs who found themselves in foreign exile as a result of his policies – or, in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in prison. Nonetheless, U.S. media, with little investigation of their own, have woven the allegations into a near-consensus narrative of “Putin’s Russia.”
Cohen is a thoughtful analyst. Once, back in the early 90’s on a McNeil/Lehrer News Hour, he eviscerated Jeffery Sachs’ notions about post-USSR Russia with such brute elan that one wishes it were on Youtube, if only because it turned out to be so prescient ;/
![Russia’s It Girl becomes high-profile campaigner against Vladimir PutinGuardian »
She is an unlikely figurehead for the political protests that have rocked Russia over the last few months. Ksenia Sobchak, 30, is a family friend of Vladimir Putin and the host of a reality TV programme known for its scandalous scenes. But it is her new political talkshow that has caused a real stir – and that has just been ordered off Russian television.
Sobchak was once dubbed the Paris Hilton of Russia because of her similarity to the American hotel heiress. She used to be just a rich society girl: thin, blonde, with a sharp tongue and a reputation for being spoilt.
She has written books on how to be a success and hosts Dom-2, the longest-running reality show in the world, which has been memorably described as the worst thing to hit Russian culture since the Mongols.
… “It has been interesting to watch her change. When she came to the first meeting, she said we need to talk [with the government]. Now she is radicalising in front of our eyes.” >continue<](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzn3jlp51P1qebfjho1_500.jpg)
