"YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS ARE AS DAZZLING AS YOUR SUBJECTS"

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

SOLIDARITY ESTABLISHED IN POLAND, THIRTY-ONE YEARS AGO

SOLIDARNOŚĆ 
b. August 31, 1980 


KATOWICE (POLAND) COAL MINE  
Published in the February 15, 1982, 
issue of BUSINESS WEEK (p. 68) 

On August 31, 1980, Lech Walesa, representing the striking workers in the Gdansk shipyard, signed the August Accords wrenching certain rights from the Polish communist government. 
The development of what became a ten-million-strong movement growing out of the strike, called Solidarność, or Solidarity, was amazing, but also fraught with complications. 
One of them was the relationship between Warsaw and Moscow, discussed in the Sol W. Sanders Business Week article ("The high price Russia will have to pay in Poland") for which the photograph above was the illustration.  His conclusion:  "The Soviet Union can only lose economically in the continuing crisis insider her largest satellite." 
The USSR ultimately lost far more than economically; a brief discussion can be found here
Today, thirty-one years after the founding, Poland's president, Bronisław Komorowski, came to Gdansk to honor Solidarity.  Walesa had a more bittersweet take on the movement:  "'It was such a big victory, but the effects don't match it,' he was quoted by TVN24 as saying." 

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

THE NAZIS ATTACK LENINGRAD, SEVENTY YEARS AGO

THE GERMANS 
REACH THE NEVA RIVER 
August 30, 1941 


THE NEVA RIVER 
LENINGRAD, USSR 
Now St. Petersburg, Russia, again 

Nine hundred dark days were to follow, with catastrophic casualties.  The Wehrmacht cut off the last rail connection to Leningrad on August 30, 1941, and the last land connection on September 8, 1941, which seems to be taken generally as the start of the Siege of Leningrad.  There is a new book by Anna Reid on the seventieth anniversary called LENINGRAD: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-44 (see here). 

Monday, August 29, 2011

THE END. OF THE PARTY. TWENTY YEARS AGO. AND THE ROLE OF BORIS YELTSIN.

THE SUPREME SOVIET 
OF THE USSR 
SUSPENDS ALL ACTIVITIES OF 
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF 
THE SOVIET UNION (CPSU) 
August 29, 1991 


BORIS YELTSIN IN HIS SEAT AT 
THE 28TH (AND LAST) CONGRESS OF 
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION 
(CPSU), MOSCOW, JULY 1990 

YELTSIN WALKING OUT OF THE PARTY, here 

Twenty years ago today, the USSR Supreme Soviet, then the highest government authority in the then Soviet Union, voted to suspend the activities of the previously ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union "pending an investigation of its role" in the August coup. 

As the New York Times report on the subject noted, "The fate of the party was already sealed before Parliament's vote. Individual republics had closed its offices and seized its vast properties and funds and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had quit as its General Secretary and had called on the leadership to step down." 

"Individual republics" -- yes, but, the individual republic that mattered was that of the RSFSR, or Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, whose duly elected president was Boris Yeltsin.

On July 20, 1991, Yeltsin had signed a "departization" decree "aimed against Party activity (officially, all parties' activities) in government organizations and state enterprises on Russian soil" (to quote myself in SIC TRANSIT, Chapter 8, "Endgame").

On July 30, 1991, after his meeting with American president George Bush in the Kremlin, Boris Yeltsin was happy to interpret his actions and intentions to those of us waiting to listen. [See here and here.

To continue quoting "Endgame," "Gorbachev, facing another hostile Central Committee meeting shortly, should thank him [Yeltsin] for opening a second front and providing a diversionary action, he gloated. The decree, due to come into effect on August 4th, had stirred up a storm of protest and condemnation from CPSU and Russian Communist Party bodies.  Its timing may have been chosen, as Yeltsin alleged, to draw conservative ire away from Gorbachev at a crucial juncture, but its main thrust continued the battle to break the Party's power from within. ... However weakened the Party might have been already, through Gorbachev's initiatives and subsequent internal hemorrhaging, it still had a grip on the Soviet polity and economy that enabled it to stifle real reform.  Yeltsin's decree was intended to cut off its tentacles in the government offices and workplaces of the Russian Republic, his domain, more than a month before Gorbachev was finally moved to take action against its head -- after the coup." 


Sunday, August 28, 2011

WILLIAM S. COHEN IS THREE SCORE AND TEN PLUS ONE

WILLIAM S. COHEN 
b. August 28, 1940 


CHAIRMAN & CEO, THE COHEN GROUP 
Photographed as U.S. Senator (R-Maine) 
at a hearing of the Armed Services Committee 

William S. Cohen was the highest ranking Republican in the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton, a former Senator (and earlier, Representative) from Maine chosen to be Secretary of Defense (SecDef) in Clinton's second term (1997-2001). 

His Congressional-plus biography is here; the lengthy and quite informative Pentagon report on Cohen's time as SecDef is here; his own Cohen Group website is here


Saturday, August 27, 2011

HERBERT STEIN b. August 27, 1916


HERBERT STEIN  
August 27, 1916-September 8, 1999 

Author, PRESIDENTIAL ECONOMICS 
Reviewed in the March 5, 1984, issue of 
BUSINESS WEEK (photograph on p. 10), 
"A Conservative Rebuff to Reagaonomics," 
by Seymour Zucker 

Herbert Stein was on the Council of Economic Advisers (including as Chair) under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and professor of economics at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute afterwards. 

The obituaries and appreciations (see here and here, for example), mention his wit and his original, or contrarian, approach to, and prescriptions for, U.S. national economic policy-making. 

Some of what Dr. Stein said and wrote resonates quite strongly today:  he was, for instance, scathing on the subject of supply-siders, "who hold that tax cuts will help bring the budget into balance by raising the gross national product enough to produce more, not less, tax revenue and that government expenditures can be reduced simply by cutting waste.  Stein now refers," Zucker writes in Business Week, "to these theories as 'the economics of joy'" -- and, more importantly, demonstrates that they do not work in practice. 


Friday, August 26, 2011

ZHOU JI TURNS SIXTY-FIVE

ZHOU JI 
b. August 26, 1946 


PRESIDENT, CHINESE ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING 
Minister of Education, People's Republic of China (PRC) 
2003-2009 

Poster here 

Some discussion of the controversy over Zhou's 
losing his post as Minister of Education, here 


Thursday, August 25, 2011

EDWARD M. "TED" KENNEDY GONE TWO YEARS


EDWARD M. KENNEDY 
February 22, 1932-August 25, 2009 

Simplicity 

THE GRAVESITE OF 
SENATOR & FORMER PRIVATE 
"TED" KENNEDY 
Arlington National Cemetery 

The obituary and much more; 
multi-media stories of a life; 
from the Boston Globe, here 


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

GORBACHEV RESIGNS AS GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION, August 24, 1991

GORBACHEV 
GIVES UP ON 
THE PARTY 
LOOKING OUT ON THE KREMLIN 
THROUGH A WINDOW 
IN THE PALACE OF CONGRESSES 
ON A RAINY DAY 
DURING THE TIME OF THE 
28TH CONGRESS OF THE CPSU 
MOSCOW, JULY 1990 
Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), was still planning in the summer of 1991 to hold a 29th Congress.  Even after the coup that targeted him collapsed and he was able to return to Moscow, he did not immediately see the need for changes.  He pleaded with Boris Yeltsin not to suspend the activities of the Party in Russia (Yeltsin's bailiwick).  On August 24 he got it, and resigned as General Secretary. 
More on the story here and here and here and here

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

WAR & PEACE II: SARAH CALDWELL'S & SERGEI PROKOFIEV'S & LEO TOLSTOY'S


WAR & PEACE  
II 


SARAH CALDWELL'S PRODUCTION 
OF PROKOFIEV'S OPERA 
WAR AND PEACE 
Boston 1974 

For a photograph of 
Donald Gramm as Marshal Kutuzov, 
see here 


Monday, August 22, 2011

BORIS YELTSIN "THE OBSCURE" & THE COUP III


'THE COUP MADE 
BORIS YELTSIN' 


BORIS YELTSIN OUT IN TYUMEN' 
TEN DAYS BEFORE THE COUP 
WORKING ON BUILDING A 
NEW RUSSIAN STATE 
(see here and here

August 22, 1991:  Mikhail Gorbachev arrives back in Moscow from his imprisonment in the Crimea, and fails to notice the new realities on the ground. 

Boris Yeltsin does. 

Why the coup plotters did not actually grab Yeltsin, however, puzzled him. 

Now we have a commentary in the New York Times, by one Victor Sebestyen, invoking once again the image of Yeltsin on the tank:  "This stirring scene was foolishly allowed to be shown on TV that evening, turning the obscure Yeltsin into a figure of world significance overnight." 

The "obscure Yeltsin".... 

Well, if you had not been paying attention. 

There had, for example, been an election in which millions of Russians had voted, and a few other developments before that.... 


Sunday, August 21, 2011

YELTSIN THE HARD HAT AND THE COUP II


RUSSIAN STATE 
RUSSIAN ENERGY 
 

BORIS YELTSIN 
meets with 
Tyumen' Oblast oil rig workers 
August 1991 


The hardliner coup attempt dominates our collective memories of August 1991 in the USSR, but Boris Yeltsin had not been idle before he suddenly broke into the news by climbing on the tank in front of the Russian White House. 

Yeltsin had won his election as the first Russian president; gotten his proper American tour and two meetings with the U.S. president, one in the White House and one in the Kremlin; and cut a deal with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev on the future of the USSR. 

Now, in the first full week in August, as Gorbachev headed off for a vacation in the Crimea, Yeltsin took off on his first inspection tour of Russia as its president. His destination: the province (oblast') of Tyumen' in Western Siberia, home of the country's biggest oil-and-gas complex. 

Declarations of sovereignty were all very well and good; electing your own president even better.  But a sovereign Russia had to be able to fund itself; having oil and gas production plummeting was devastating to its chances of really making a go of it. 

The story in RUSSIA REDUX Chapter Five 
"On the Road Again on the Eve of the Coup: 
Tyumen' and Oil and Gas" 


Saturday, August 20, 2011

BORIS YELTSIN & THE AUGUST 1991 COUP, TWENTY YEARS ON

THE (SOVIET) UNION- 
BUSTING COUP 
August 18-21, 1991

BORIS YELTSIN 
 making a presidential inspection tour 
of Tyumen' province, 
ten days before the coup 

The web is awash with stories marking the twentieth anniversary of the failed August coup in the USSR, many full of buyer's remorse.  New angles are sought; one has Boris Yeltsin climbing up the tank in front of the White House knowing that no one would shoot at him, so big deal. 

I have long thought that there was more to Yeltsin than this iconic moment; and put it on the record:  "It is his [Yeltsin's] mounting of the tank outside the White House in August of 1991 that remains in most people's minds, but it is his actions on behalf of Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia in January of 1991 that are perhaps the more remarkable." [SIC TRANSIT, Ch. 8, "Endgame"] 

I think there is still a story to be told about what Yeltsin was actually doing in that fateful 1991 summer of his election to the presidency of Russia, a country within a country.  That is coming in RUSSIA REDUX. 

Friday, August 19, 2011

BILL CLINTON HITS SIXTY-FIVE

BILL CLINTON
b. William Jefferson Blythe III
August 19, 1946
BILL CLINTON
AT THE 1988
DEMOCRATIC
NATIONAL CONVENTION

In four years he would win the nomination and then the presidency,
and keep it through eight years and one impeachment (and one acquittal).

So -- now we have the second of our older Baby Boom presidents turning Medicare age. George W. Bush is the elder by forty-four days; both he and Clinton are first year Boomers (the first year after World War II). Barack Obama, who just recently did fifty, was born near (1961) but not at the end (1964) of the Boomer years.

For both Bush and Clinton I have given you pre-presidential pictures to compare what the office and the years did.

I have a riff on the subject of age -- or youth ("Youthiness Can Be Overrated") -- of presidents American and Russian here (the March 5, 2009, entry).

More on Clinton as the "Russia Hand" here. More to come in RUSSIA REDUX.

The news of the day about Bill Clinton is that he has become a Vegan (see here).

For more on this Clinton, click the label "Bill Clinton," below.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

CASPAR WEINBERGER b. August 18, 1917


CASPAR WEINBERGER 
August 18, 1917-March 28, 2006 


"CAP" WEINBERGER 
as Ronald Reagan's 
Secretary of Defense 

Published in BUSINESS WEEK 
September 28, 1981 (p. 73) 

A product of San Francisco on the one coast and Harvard College and Harvard Law School on the other, with a stint in the Pacific Theater in World War II, Caspar Weinberger fairly quickly entered Republican politics in California.  In time he went to work for Governor Ronald Reagan in Sacramento and then for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in Washington.  He came to head the Federal Trade Commission (FTC); Office of Management and Budget (OMB); and Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). 

But Weinberger's career peaked when Reagan named him Secretary of Defense right at the outset of his presidency, and he stayed for almost seven years; only Robert McNamara before him and Donald Rumsfeld before and after him lasted longer in the office. 

As Nixon's OMB director Weinberger gained a reputation as "Cap the Knife."  As Reagan's head of the Pentagon he was anything but.  It turns out what he was interested in cutting was not budgets generally but social programs in particular. 

My direct impression of Weinberger at the time was that he was much more Cap in the Candy Store than Cap the Knife -- or that he was an enabler for Pentagon procurement sometimes run amuck. 

It is quite interesting reading now how a range of observers seem to agree with this assessment.  One of the most interesting comes from the Pentagon itself, and can be found here

There are many other notable points in this long career.   Besides his role the defense buildup in general (and what it did to the budget), Weinberger was influential in the Reagan administration on the Soviet Union, the missile build-up, and SDI ("Star Wars") and the many crises of the day, and nearly undone by the Iran-Contra scandal (saved by a pardon by President George Bush).  Some informative sources besides the DOD one cited above can be found here and here and here

(A side note:  As the Pentagon biography talks about Richard Perle's work with Weinberger, you may want to have a look here.)