THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR BEGAN ONE HUNDRED TEN YEARS AGO; TODAY PUTIN AND ABE MET TO TALK ABOUT TALKING ABOUT SOME OF THE SAME OLD ISSUES

THE RUSSO-JAPANESE 

WAR BROKE OUT 

February 8, 1904 

THE SEA OF OKHOTSK 

off the Southeastern Shore 
of Sakhalin Island 

South Sakhalin ("Karafuto") was won by the Japanese as a result 
of  their victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 

Captured by the USSR in World War II; the entire island is part of Russia 

Still in contention: 

Four islands and groups of islets known as the Kurils (Kuriles) by the Russians, and as the Northern Territories by the Japanese;

under Soviet and then Russian control since World War II 

Some background, here 

Today on the sidelines of the Sochi Winter Olympics Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met and agreed to talk about the sticky island dispute, which has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty winding up World War II, at their next meeting, scheduled to take place again in Sochi, at the upcoming G8 summit in June of this year. 

President Putin will then visit Japan in the fall. 

SOCHI THEN AND NOW: HOME OF THE 2014 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES

SOCHI 

IN THE 

SPOTLIGHT 

SOCHI BACK IN THE USSR 
Summer of 1984 

"In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, when everything was government sponsored, it used to be packed here. You couldn't move on the beach without someone taking your place." -- Aleksandr Zakharov, General Director, Radisson Lazurnaya Hotel, Sochi, Russia, quoted in "The Road to Sochi," audio report by Robin Lustig, BBC, February 4, 2014. 

Robin Lustig also has an article in the Financial Times, "Observations from Sochi," which overlaps the radio "Documentary." The radio version has material not covered in print; well worth listening to. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Sochi today; addressed the International Olympic Committee; and cuddled with a Persian leopard. 

More Sochi here; more Putin here. 

NINETY YEARS SINCE LENIN'S BODY WAS FIRST PUT ON DISPLAY

LENIN'S FIRST 

MAUSOLEUM 

ERECTED 

January 27, 1924 

SPECTATORS AT 

VLADIMIR LENIN'S TOMB 

Red Square, Moscow, 1984 

Six days after Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin died on January 21, 1924, his body was placed in a wooden mausoleum on Red Square.  The permanent monument was installed in 1930. Sixty years and some months after Lenin's death, I made my first visit to the USSR, and joined the procession going past the embalmed body; the photograph above was made then, in the summer of 1984. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been periodic calls to find another burying place for the iconic Soviet leader (Stalin's body, which joined Lenin's after his death in 1953, having been removed long ago now). 

But, instead, in 2012 the mausoleum was closed for a re-do, re-opened the following spring.  And six days ago, pilgrims came to mark the ninetieth anniversary of Lenin's death. 

A vivid diagrammatic sketch of the mausoleum is here; a glimpse of the body and a quick look at the inside of the tomb can be found in a short video, here, with additional information here. 

A photograph of the former changing of the guards ceremony is here; another view of the mausoleum, here. 

DEMONSTRATIONS IN KIEV THEN AND NOW

KIEV (KYIV) 

AT A TURNING POINT? 

"DEMONSTRATION" 

KIEV, USSR 

September 1, 1984 

A mass rally for Peace and Knowledge Day (September 1) in Soviet Ukraine:  all the participants were vetted; the leaders and speakers (on the stairs) keep their distance.  The journalists are working in the no-man's land (a kind of dry moat) between the chosen citizens and their leaders. 

An independent Ukraine emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. 

Nine years ago the Orange Revolution toppled the government. 

Two months ago demonstrators took to the street in Kiev again, after President Viktor Yanukovych chose to partner with Russia rather than the European Union. This week there have been violent clashes between protestors and the police.  Legislation severely limiting demonstrations is due to come into force tomorrow. Today the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, weighed in, protesting against the protesters. 

Reporting and analysis (and photographs and video) can be found here and here and here and here and here and here. 

Update February 18, 2014: Violence and fire and a meeting of President and Opposition, but no meeting of minds, here. 

THE LAST DAY OF THE AUGUST 1991 SOVIET COUP

THE RUSSIA DELEGATION 

BRINGS MIKHAIL GORBACHEV 

HOME TO MOSCOW 

THE SOVIET DELEGATION 

IS ACED OUT 

Russia Vice-President ALEKSANDR RUTSKOI 
(center left, with dark hair and moustache) and 
 Russian Prime Minister IVAN SILAYEV 
(center right, with white hair) 
at the Congress of People's Deputies of 
the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic 
July 1991 

On Wednesday, August 21, 1991, a delegation of Russian leaders including Vice-President Aleksandr Rutskoi and Prime Minister Ivan Silayev flew to Foros in the Crimea, where Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was said to have been held against his will since Sunday, August 18th.  A delegation of Soviet leaders flew in a separate plane.  Gorbachev rejected them as implicated in the coup against him, and flew back to Moscow with the Russian delegation instead.  His arrival in the early hours of August 22nd definitively ended the coup, but Gorbachev was soon to find he had stepped back into a very different political world. 

More to come in  RUSSIA REDUX 

WHY THE AUGUST COUP? THE UNION TREATY WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN SIGNED TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO TODAY

DAY THREE OF 

THE 1991 AUGUST COUP 

August 20, 1991 

NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV 
President of Kazakhstan 
Photographed in 1997 
In office in 1991, and still in office today 

From RUSSIA REDUX, Chapter Eight: 

Gorbachev has described the coup plotters "as 'egotistical careerists' who decided to act against him when it became clear that there would be no place for them in the new order."  The new order was to be brought into being by the signing of the Union Treaty on August 20, 1991; it "would have reshaped the Soviet Union as a loose confederation of sovereign states and resulted in a major government shake-up."  So it was not just some abstract concerns about intergovernmental structures which drove the conspirators, according to their patron, but the detailed knowledge about kto kogo -- who was going to do what to whom. 

For Gorbachev was convinced, afterwards, that his conversations with the top republican leaders at Novo-Ogarëvo were bugged, and what they contained was dynamite.  Gorbachev has been releasing this dynamite in pieces.  In an early version he revealed that: 

Yeltsin, Nazarbayev, and I already had an understanding that once the Union Treaty had been signed, and without waiting for the new constitution, we would move toward new organs of power and new elections.  We were thinking in terms of agreeing this [sic] with other republic leaders too.  Thus, new people would have come to the fore. 

Yeltsin of Russia, Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, had reached an understanding. 

And so some of the "old people," people Gorbachev had appointed,  organized the coup -- the GKChPists, including Vladimir Kryuchkov (the KGB) and Dmitry Yazov (Ministry of Defense) and Boris Pugo (Ministry of the Interior).  

But they did not seize Boris Yeltsin. 

THE 1991 AUGUST COUP, DAY TWO

THE COUP BECOMES PUBLIC 

THE TANKS ENTER MOSCOW 

BORIS YELTSIN STANDS ON ONE 

August 19, 1991 

DMITRY YAZOV 

SOVIET ARMY MARSHAL 

USSR DEFENSE MINISTER, August 1991 

Photographed in 2005, after his membership in the failed GKChP coup attempt led to eighteen months in prison, and after the Presidential (Putin) award of the Order of Merit, November 2004 

TWENTY-TWO YEARS AFTER THE FIRST DAY OF THE AUGUST COUP IN THE USSR

DAY ONE 

GORBACHEV 

IN FOROS 

August 18, 1991 

BORIS YELTSIN (l.) and  

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (r.) 

Shake Hands at Yeltsin's First Inauguration 

as Russia's First President 

July 10, 1991 

Some background to the coup that helped precipitate the breakup of the Soviet Union: 

As of June 12, 1991, Russia had a popularly elected president, for the first time in its history.  As the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, though, Russia was one part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which had its own president, Mikhail Gorbachev, who, however, had not sought, and did not have, a popular mandate.  Gorbachev did attend, and speak at, Yeltsin's inauguration on July 10 (above). 

After the election, Yeltsin set about building up his Moscow as a power base and Russia as a sovereign entity, claiming resources the "Center" had hitherto controlled.  In August he made a tour of Tyumen', a major oil and gas province of Russia.  The day the coup began, Sunday, August 18, he was back in the Moscow region.  Gorbachev was vacationing in Foros.  It was there that the State Committee for the State of Emergency, or coup plotters, did or did not arrest the head of the Soviet state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  In any event, they announced that Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) was ill. 

Day One. 

SEVENTY YEARS SINCE THE BATTLE OF KURSK

A TURNING POINT 

IN WORLD WAR II 

A VETERAN OF THE BATTLE  
OF THE KURSK SALIENT 
at the 50th Anniversary 
ORËL, RUSSIA 
August 1993 

The largest tank battle 

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY BEGINS CONSTRUCTION, May 31, 1891 (N.S.)

RIDING THE RAILS

THROUGH SIBERIA

1984

FLOWERS FOR THE AMERICAN

When the дежурная, the woman on duty in my train car on my first trip to Siberia, in 1984, discovered I was an American, she put these together for me.

"I was that summer wandering around the Soviet Union for seven weeks by myself, exploring and taking photographs." More on 1984, the USSR, and the US, here and here.

More photographs from the Trans-Siberian Express here and here; more from Siberia, here.

JAMES A. BAKER, III, TURNS EIGHTY-TWO

JAMES ADDISON BAKER, III

b. April 28, 1930

Soviet Foreign Minister EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE (l)

& U.S. Secretary of State JAMES A. BAKER, III (r)

in the cabin of a hydrofoil on Lake Baikal, USSR, August 1991

James Baker, Chief of Staff and then Secretary of the Treasury for President Ronald Reagan, in his role (above) as Secretary of State for President George Bush, on the eve of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, with his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze. More information here (including a photograph of Baker in the White House) and here (Baker as tough negotiator) and here (with Shevardnadze in Irkutsk) and here (more about Baker, and especially the connection to Gulf War I).

GRIGORY YAVLINSKY IS SIXTY

GRIGORY YAVLINSKY

b. April 10, 1952

YAVLINSKY CONTEMPLATIVE

after his first run for the presidency

(Yeltsin won; more here and here)

When we last checked in with Grigory Alexeyevich Yavlinsky of "500 Days" and Yabloko fame, he had been counted out of the presidential race by the Central Election Commission.

He never was allowed into the March 4 contest; Vladimir Putin won "handily" in the first round. Now that Prime Minister-President-Prime Minister-President-to-be-again Putin has his six years' prize stretching out in front of him, promises of reform have been bruited. Maybe some openings for opposition leaders, like Yavlinsky. Protesters (not too many of them!) have even have been allowed to walk near the Kremlin.

The Inauguration is May 7.

Yavlinsky's website-cum-blog is here (in English, here).

A PLANE CRASH IN TYUMEN', RUSSIA; A FLASHBACK TO YELTSIN'S INSPECTION TOUR

PLANE CRASH

IN THE WEST SIBERIAN

OIL PATCH

April 2, 2012

BORIS YELTSIN IN TYUMEN'

The Severe Inspector General

August 1991

Today a passenger plane carrying forty-three souls crashed not long after take-off from the city of Tyumen' in Western Siberia, center of Russian oil and gas production. Thirty-one were killed as the plane (an ATR-72, French-Italian, not Russian or Soviet) burst into flames and broke up.

Speculation seems to have begun more or less immediately about the cause of the crash: Was it improper de-icing? "Technical malfunction"? Fingers were pointed at "Russia's poor safety record." (More details here.)

Amidst concerns for the survivors, and for Russian aviation, I could not help flashing back to the start of my plane ride out to the area to accompany Boris Yeltsin on an inspection trip, back in August 1991 (see photograph above, and here and here and here):

Finally I was on the plane, and settling in, when I was startled by a strange movement by the emergency exit across from me. Something black, and furry, was shadowing the small airplane window. A German shepherd was keeping tabs on the takeoff! "Only able-bodied passengers who are willing to take responsibility for occupying the seat next to the emergency exit may sit there" flashed through my mind. But this was Aeroflot, the Soviet airline. The dog licked the door handle; fondled it with his teeth. I wondered, not really idly, how much force it would take to open the door. A human hand reached out to coax the dog's teeth away from the handle. We were off for Tyumen', Russia's premier oil and gas region.

-- from "RUSSIA REDUX," Chapter Five ("On the Road Again on the Eve of the Coup: Tyumen' and Oil and Gas)

IN HONOR OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

MET IN THE USSR

1984

VOLGOGRAD ENGINEER

In Honor of

International Women's Day

from

"The Girl in Mechanical Drawing Class"

BORIS YELTSIN b. February 1, 1931

BORIS YELTSIN

February 1, 1931-April 23, 2007

BORIS YELTSIN

TALKS TO THE SHIPS AT SEA

OFF SAKHALIN ISLAND, RUSSIA,

FROM THE CAPITAL, YUZHNOSAKHALINSK,

BY RADIO CONFERENCE CALL, AUGUST 1990

For more on Yeltsin and Sakhalin, see "RUSSIA REDUX," Ch. 2 ("The Peoples' Choice"), here. For much more on Boris Yeltsin, click the label "Yeltsin," below.

MOSCOW UNIVERSITY (MGU) IS 257 YEARS OLD

MOSCOW UNIVERSITY

FOUNDED BY

EMPRESS ELIZABETH

(TSARINA ELIZAVETA)

January 25, 1755

MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY (MGU), 1984

One of Stalin's Skyscrapers

The Seven высотки (vysotkyi)

Official website here

ST. PETERSBURG BECOMES LENINGRAD, January 24, 1924

ST. PETERSBURG

IS RE-NAMED IN HONOR OF

VLADIMIR LENIN

January 24, 1924

(Three days after the Soviet leader's death)

KAZAN CATHEDRAL

LENINGRAD, RUSSIA, USSR, 1984

Sixty years after the former capital's name was changed from St. Petersburg

&

seven years before it was changed back to St. Petersburg

A RAINY DAY IN LENINGRAD (1984)

DOM KNIGI

THE HOUSE OF BOOKS

THE FORMER SINGER BUILDING

LENINGRAD (ST. PETERSBURG)

RUSSIA, USSR, 1984

VLADIMIR LENIN dies, January 21, 1924

VLADIMIR LENIN

April 22, 1870-January 21, 1924

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

AT THE LENIN MAUSOLEUM

MOSCOW, 1984

Another view of the Mausoleum, here

More Lenin, here and here and here and here and here and here and here

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE RUSSIAN WINTER I

WHITE HOUSE

KREMLIN

KREMLIN

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

GOVERNMENT HOUSE ("THE WHITE HOUSE")

MOSCOW (right), AT TWILIGHT

The beginnings of some musings re Prime Minister, President, President, Prime Minister, Russia/The USSR:

Once upon a time, just a bit over two decades ago now, when there still was a Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin got himself elected first (in 1990) to chair the Russian parliament, and then (in 1991) to occupy the newly established office of President of a "Russia" still a constituent republic of the USSR. The white marble building above came already with the first post, and soon it was being called "The White House." After winning a popular election for President, Yeltsin finagled an office in the Kremlin too. Twenty years ago yesterday, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was deprived of both his Office and his office in the Kremlin.

The White House went back to being the Government House, home of the Russian government, headed by the prime minister, while the Kremlin was the bailiwick of the Russian, rather than the Soviet, president.

Vladimir Putin has been both, twice (prime minister both before and after he was president). The trouble seems to have started when he decided he preferred the latter to the former, the Kremlin to the "White House" which was not the president's house.

For the last almost four years, his man, Dmitry Medvedev, has been president. Strange how quickly commentators have accepted the rationale for Putin's giving up the presidency after two terms: because the constitution forbade it! This is not some ancient document; it was only a decade old when the time came to set up the Tandem, and surely has been otherwise honored in the breach.

Nonetheless, we catch a glimpse of the value of the presidency, the name and not just the power he was thought to have anyway, to Vladimir Putin. For it seems to have been the announcement on September 24 of this year that Putin and not Medvedev would run for president this coming March 4 that really tore it -- tore away the strategic ambiguity of the Tandem, and tore away any possible chance of projecting "modernizing" desires on Medvedev. An earlier change of the length of the term of president contributed to the sense of "Enough!" -- for now there lay in prospect not just two more four-year terms, but two more six-year terms for President Putin.

The Duma elections which had helped make Putin in 1999 backfired this December 4 -- too much fraud findable by an already motivated part of the populace, and -- just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union -- a massing of some sizable numbers of the citizenry in real mitings again, protest mitings.