Published: December 06, 2011

OWS, RT, Russia, What's Next?

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RT (Russia Today News Network) has covered the Occupy Wall Street movement so extensively and boldly that it begs the question: What does the Kremlin have to do with the OWS movement?

From what I have observed in both Russia and the USA, the answer is: Very little or nothing at all, to my regret, which I'll explain later.

More than a month - from September 17 when the OWS started in New York to October 21 when I returned from Moscow to Washington - I watched OWS the way Russians see it, through government-controlled TV channels.

Vladimir Putin
Photo: Official Kremlin photo

I was struck by how little attention Russian media paid to this massive explosion of discontent that was clearly embarrassing to the US government and media pundits who would much rather talk about "lack of democracy" in Russia than American 1% "plutocrats." In fact, I learned more of OWS watching EuroNews TV in Moscow than from any Russian source. After checking online reports from Truthout, I realized that in the US too this movement did not receive the coverage it deserved.

So I had remained unaware of its huge scale until I came back to my Alexandria home - and to a new TV set supplied with dozen channels, including RT. Now I'm glued to RT every morning. And what do I see?

A dapper Iraq war veteran, US Marine Corps sergeant, is trying to sober up rough-shod policemen after their brutal assault on peaceful occupiers.

Another veteran is struck with a tear-gas canister on his head so viciously that he required hospitalization.

Horror-stricken face of an 84 year old woman occupier disfigured by pepper spray.

A row of students, peacefully sitting, heads down, arms interlocked, in a gesture of defiance against the overwhelming force of 1% conscience.

Dozens of journalists arrested and manhandled by police.

I am not much of a TV watcher. Last time I watched RT was more than a year ago at my friend's home. Now I am pleasantly surprised at how much RT programming has grown and matured. I hear RT buzz from my neighbors, tennis club partners and casual acquaintances. "We learn more about the USA from RT than from any American channel," I hear them saying.

RT's American Success Story

I switch back to CNN, Fox, and NBC's Today Show I've watched for years. Cindy Lohan is in trouble again, as she was half a year ago; Herman Cain's sexual peccadillos are open for the world to see; so are Sandusky's alleged pedophilia. The brutality of some, NOT ALL, Middle East dictators is hypocritically condemned.

Click RT. It's not just the OWS coverage. RT deals with serious domestic and global issues. An array of competent reporters covers all corners of the world. Max Keiser dissects financial and economic woes. Thom Hartman frames them into The Big Picture. Peter Lavelle juxtaposes diverse views in Crossfire from a broad political spectrum.

Who else but RT would interview the likes of former US Senator Mike Gravel or Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary in the Reagan administration? Who else but RT would break the taboo on a discussion of Israeli nuclear arms? Only RT's guests call attention to Benjamin Netanyahu's dangerous gambling with world peace, as he plans an Israeli attack on Iran's alleged nuclear weapon production sites. As US media ratchets up Iran's demonization, the task of a gadfly of US politics squarely rests on RT shoulders.

No wonder that now RT is the second most-watched foreign language channel in the States after BBC. In fact, RT's coverage of the United States is so good that it could be just as well called UST.

But where is Russia?

If RT's coverage of US is commendable, this cannot be said of its coverage of Russia. To be sure, it has some good Russian programs, from Al Gurnov's Spotlight to a raucous travelogue with Mark Ames and Moscow Out with Andrew Marvyns. American viewers enjoy watching reels on the revival of Buddhism in Kalmykia, on the fate of Jewish diaspora in Caucasus and the survival of exotic languages in Siberia.

With the approach of December 5 elections in Russia, the Spotlight was aptly focused on leaders of major political parties vying for the seats in the State Duma. Still, I wish there were more RT discussions of Russian politics and foreign policy.

What is missing on RT is Russia herself. There is no sustained narrative of Russian history, religion, literature, philosophy, architecture, art, and culture in general. RT.com has a link to Russian language instruction, but "The Sexiest Philologist in the World" is more likely to distract from language learning. There seems to be no room for a discussion of Russia's socio-political system. There is no indication that there might be a special Russian perspective on the unrest in Middle East, EU financial crisis and the OWS movement.

Is Russia Still Shocked?

Since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, Russia still seems dazed by the "Shock Therapy" of the early 1990s. It regained its historical name but not yet its national conscience. Schizophrenia is perhaps a better description of a country which has a divided mind.

On the one hand, the country's traditional name is now restored. After all, ethnic Russians constitute over 80% of the population. The remaining 20%, assimilated in various degrees, can handle Russian language. Russia's national symbols, the Imperial Eagle and the tricolor flag, have replaced the ideological Hammer and Sickle, Red Star and Red Flag.

On the other hand, Russia's official name, The Russian Federation, harks back to the USSR. President Yeltsin declared it a successor state to neither Russia of the tsars nor the Provisional Government which had run the country until the Bolsheviks overthrew it on November 7, 1917. It was Tsar Nikolai's successor, his younger brother Mikhail, who empowered the Provisional Government to conduct a general election to Constituent Assembly which was to decide on the form of government. (For more read my 2010 article "June 12: Russia Day or Remember Tsar Mikhail II Day?")

Upon learning that they lost the election, Lenin's Bolsheviks forcibly dispersed the democratically-elected Constituent Assembly. Willingly or not, Russia's present leaders got stuck with this illegal and violent legacy of Soviet State that goes against the grain of their democratizing aspirations.

Lenin's embalmed body still lay in the Mausoleum on the Red Square as a symbolic reminder that Russia's 73-year-long dalliance with Communism has not yet been buried. The question remains: Would Russian leaders want to emulate Russia's first democratic enterprise with universal suffrage and Constituent Assembly? Or do they feel fealty to dictatorship that spurned the will of the people?

That's where I wish that "the Kremlin," or whoever manages RT, would provide a Russian perspective on the OWS movement and global unrest in general. Since the Kremlin pays for RT's budget, one would expect that RT would serve Russia's national interests, even while eschewing censorship. One would expect that RT handling of OWS would be infused with a Russian perspective.

There is none. What is really Russia's view of OWS? I suspect that not only RT managers, but even the Kremlin cannot articulate one. Of course, the Kremlin likes to see the US embarrassed by OWS as well as by rough police tactics to suppress it. The brutality of Russia's own police in curtailing Moscow's own demonstrations begins to look "not so bad" when compared with the American pepper sprayers, man-handlers, and tear-gas canister throwers. The Kremlin can indeed feel a perverse pleasure at the fact that all demonstrations against it are MINISCULE compared with those in the States.

Oligarchy versus Plutocracy

But this is not a perspective. It's more like a glee at the distress of your competitor. The Kremlin is not too eager to show the OWS scenes to Russian viewers lest they get inspired for Occupying Russian Banks.

The truth is that Russia's economic system is not so much different from that of the USA. After all, the implementation of Jeffrey Sachs's "shock therapy" reforms was entrusted to a Harvard team of Neo-Liberal economists headed by Professor Andrei Shleifer and overseen by two Treasury Secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Comparing what the two did to the US economy with what the now jailed swindler Bernard Madoff did with his investors, the columnist Robert Scheer came to the conclusion that the two secretaries are "Too Big to Jail" as his recent Truthdig article is titled.

As to what the Harvard team has done to Russia, via the Anatoly Chubais clique next to Yeltsin, read Janine Wedel's "Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe," E. Wayne Merry's PBS interview "Return of the Tsars," and my own 2006 article "Would Harvard Ever Help Russia?"

The US-sponsored "Russian reforms" resulted in the oligarchic system of state-controlled crony capitalism. With Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the wings of a few oligarchs were clipped, but the oligarchic system has remained intact, insinuating itself into all pores of Russian economy.

A score of unscrupulous people, using their access to the Yeltsin government during 1991-1997, simply robbed Russia of its collective wealth. The wealth had been accumulated, first, by "communization" of all factories, shops, and private property during the civil war, and then, by the labor of all Soviet people, including GULAG prisoners, during 73 years of "blood, sweat, and tears" under Soviet rule. The robbers came to be collectively known as the "oligarchs." Now economic disparity in Russia between the super-rich and ordinary people is most certainly greater than in the USA. It is more like .01% versus 99.99%

The oligarchs have both the means and the reasons to keep the corrupt system intact. Powerless to rein them in, the government seems content with maintaining a semblance of stability, helped by wind-fall profits from sales of hydrocarbons and other natural resources. Whatever political and even military-strategic differences the Kremlin may have with the US and NATO, these are overshadowed by the fact that the Russian economy has been integrated with, or rather subordinated to, the demands of the "global economy" which, in turn, is controlled, by the might of the US dollar and the US military establishment.

The "success" of Neo-Liberal intervention in Russia has sent its US sponsors on a spree of exploiting "deregulated markets" that ended with the 2008 global crisis. The American big media sheds crocodile tears when it bemoans the death of democracy in Russia under Putin. If Bill Moyers, speaking of the United States, is right that "Plutocracy and Democracy Don't Mix," then one can surely say that the greatest obstacle for democratic development in Russia is not Putin, but the oligarchy.

Is the Kremlin Learning from RT?

Far from being the Kremlin's tool, RT may yet provide the Kremlin with important teaching lessons. If it watches RT coverage of the OWS movement, the Kremlin may well realize that Russian revolutionaries have misled the nation into two of the most tragic follies of the 20th century.

First, following Karl Marx's dogmas, they revolted against capitalism, nationalized all factories and collectivized all farms. Second, some seventy years later, their descendants reversed the course 180 degrees. Setting Russia on the course of Milton Friedman's "unfettered capitalism," they "privatized" just about everything. Russia moved back to Square One. However, property was not returned to its original owners, but went to crooks and the offspring of those who once nationalized it.

Did Russian reformers have any choice but follow the Neo-Liberal "Washington consensus"? Would it not have been better to take a more gradual evolutionary way and follow, say, the Swedish model which combined the principles of the free-market with a socialist welfare state? They would probably reply that the IMF, to whom the Russian government was indebted, gave them no choice. They simply had to follow Neo-Liberal precepts then in vogue-and in power-and ignore such outstanding critics of "market fundamentalism," as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the author of "Globalization and Its Discontents." (See especially his June 2000 interview in The Progressive magazine.)

A Third Way for Russia?

At any rate, Russia should not have thrown away its unique experience in running a centrally-planned economy, no matter how ineffective it was. Before plunging back to the very same "capitalism in its highest imperialist form," from which Lenin's Bolsheviks "freed" Russia in 1917, post-Communist Russia should have tried a third way that takes advantage of all the virtues of the free market while retaining some central planning and state welfare.

At the very least, it should have gone for its own form of free enterprise when workers of a factory are also its co-owners. To be sure, Western advice was needed in both organizing such enterprises and marketing their products. There was already considerable international experience in running such enterprises, like the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in the United States which includes dozens of successful companies employing over 10 million people.

All the US government (via the Harvard neo-liberals) had to do, was give the Russians a realistic choice of different forms of private enterprise, including ESOPs, so that they could take what was most compatible with their already "socialized" economy and their national tradition. Instead, the US government gave the "Russian reform" contract to the now defunct Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). According to Wedel, the exclusive contract was granted after normal bidding procedure was waived "for foreign policy considerations."

As it turned out, the Harvard team not only set Russia on a wrong macroeconomic course, but also violated US law. In 1997 the contract was cancelled as two team leaders, Professor Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay, were accused of illegal investment in enterprises they "reformed." After a long litigation, in 2005 Shleifer and Hay agreed to repay the Treasury $2 million each, and Shleifer's wife was fined $1.5 million. Harvard University was forced to pay $26.5, the largest penalty in its history. (For more see my article "Would Harvard Ever Help Russia?")

Secure a Free Market for Ideas First

One of the lessons of modern global unrest should be the first and foremost pre-condition for a normal functioning of the free-market in a global economy. That precondition is the existence of a "free market" for ideas, including the idea that each country has the right to choose an economic model that is suitable to its national character and history. Unless there is a free exchange and dissemination of ideas, beyond the Neo-Liberal fetishism, the "free market" for finance and commodities will inevitably favor those who want to impose it, by guile (as in Russia) and force (as in Serbia, Iraq, Libya etc.), on the rest of the world.
Where is OWS going?

On Thanksgiving afternoon, November 24, I went to McPherson Square in Washington to check out what occupiers were doing there. There was a camp of dozens makeshift blue-colored tents and a crowd of about two hundred people. The weather was balmy, the mood relaxed; some occupiers were throwing football; others small-danced, ate sandwiches, talked to onlookers and took camera shots. I talked to some of them. None complained about police harassment.

The overwhelming concern was "What do we do next? Where do we go?" The consensus was that "we are not against capitalism as such, but against CRAPITALISM," that is against financial manipulation of global market by the 1% or fewer people. These manipulations threaten to undermine the very idea of free enterprise of which America is a great practitioner. After all, the US gave rise to such high-tech giants as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps their wealth is excessive but it was gained due to their special talents.

On top of this, Bill Gates joined forces with Warren Buffet, the financier, asking American billionaires to give half their wealth to charities. Russian oligarchs, by contrast, are not in a rush to embrace charitable causes.

As to the direction of the movement, I heard of none from the crowd or among RT's commenters.

The only suggestions I have seen were made by Matt Taibbi who once ran, jointly with Mark Ames, the American expats' The eXile magazine in Moscow. Matt proved his journalistic independence by making eXile a gadfly of both Russian authorities and US media. Recently he published "My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters" in Rolling Stone magazine. Considering Matt's raucous past in Moscow, his suggestions are rather measured in content and tone. One may agree or disagree with them, but that's where a discussion of the future of OWS might start.

Finally, this article could not have been written without another American high-tech invention, the Wikipedia, founded by Jimmy Wales in 2001. It has since become the most reliable and accessible source of information for millions around the world, in their own languages. Thereby, Wikipedia has upheld the good image of the United States by far more effectively than all US/NATO wars "to spread democracy and globalization" to the "benighted" nations beyond our borders. Since Wikipedia staff upholds its operational integrity by refusing to accept commercial advertisement, they ask all users for donations.

I am happy to contribute whatever proceeds I get for this article to Wikipedia. Oh, yes, don't forget to click Occupy Wall Street!

W. George Krasnow, Ph.D., runs the Russia and America Goodwill Association, a non-profit organization of Americans for friendship with Russia. Formerly, he was a professor and director of Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.