Washington Post - 01.09.2006

Washington Post

Russia, Without Interference

letter

As the chairman of the opposition party Rodina ("Motherland"), I was surprised to learn that Russia has "spent this year [2005] positioning itself as a leader of the world's pro-tyranny camp" ["Champion of Freedom? Bush and the Year in Democracy," op-ed, Dec. 26].

Fred Hiatt suggested that Russia has become so tyrannical under the "anti-democrat" President Vladimir Putin that President Bush should decline to attend the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg in July. Indeed, it seems Russia should be ejected from the G-8.

A supposed benchmark of Russia's undemocratic course is a new law, near finalization, regulating foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations. To Russia's foreign critics, this law is equated with the stifling of democracy, but it would continue to permit foreign money for political activities and is less restrictive on individuals than similar laws in the United States, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Few Russians support the notion that the measure of "democracy" is whether Russians can be induced to vote for a "color revolution" along the lines of Ukraine's or Georgia's. "Democracy," in that sense, would mean a program that is imposed from abroad.

No one is suggesting that the new NGO law is perfect. Revisions may be necessary. But Russian elections should be conducted by Russians.

The United States requires persons and organizations supported and directed by foreign interests to register with the government. It also has strict limits on foreign involvement in its political processes. If these measures are good for democracy in the United States, why would they be bad for democracy in Russia?

DMITRY ROGOZIN
Moscow 

The writer is chairman of the Rodina Party and a deputy in the state Duma of the Russian Federation.


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Washington Post - 12.26.2005

Washington Post

Champion Of Freedom?

Bush and the Year In Democracy

Op-Ed

By Fred Hiatt

In 2005, President Bush set before the nation the goal of "ending tyranny in our world." In 2006, he is scheduled to attend the first meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Russia, which spent this year positioning itself as a leader of the world's pro-tyranny camp.

At best, Bush's attendance in St. Petersburg in July will demonstrate the complexities of claiming freedom-promotion as the central goal of foreign policy. At worst, it will be seen as proof that Bush's commitment to liberty is highly situational.

Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that tracks trends in liberty more closely than anyone else, insists that 2005 actually was a pretty good year. There are 89 free countries, 58 partly free and 45 not free, by its tally. Trends were positive in 27 countries, negative in only nine: "The global picture thus suggests that the past year was one of the most successful for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972," the organization maintained.

.....

Russia, a major oil exporter, found its energy revenue sufficient to prop up friendly dictators and even to buy a German ex-chancellor. President Vladimir Putin at year's end was poised to stifle the last outpost of uncontrolled civil society, with a law regulating nongovernmental organizations. The president and his ruling clique of former KGB agents already had brought television, provincial government, business and parliament under their control.

And Putin was not only a non-democrat at home; he was an active anti-democrat in the world. He threatened to raise gas prices for Ukraine's democrats and lower them for Belarus's dictator. He embraced Uzbekistan's strongman for bloodily suppressing a Tiananmen-like demonstration. He orchestrated phony elections in war-ravaged Chechnya. He saw democracy as a threat, at home and abroad.

So how does he come to be hosting the Group of Eight -- what used to be known as the club of leading industrialized democracies? Bill Clinton, who pressed to expand what was then the G-7 to include Boris Yeltsin's Russia, said he offered membership so that Yeltsin "would agree to NATO expansion and the NATO-Russian partnership." And when finance ministers objected that Russia's shrunken economy didn't rate inclusion, Clinton argued that "being in it would symbolize Russia's importance to the future and strengthen Yeltsin at home."

Whatever the merits of those arguments at the time, the tactics didn't work. The prospect of membership in Western "clubs" isn't inducing much cooperation, and democracy was not given a chance to gel. Russia remains "important to the future," of course, but its economy is smaller than those of non-G-8 democracies India and Brazil, and certainly smaller than China's.

St. Petersburg is lovely in July, and a U.S. president has to maintain a relationship with Russia's leader, come what may. Still, maybe Bush ought to think about spending his summer holiday with a host who shares his freedom agenda. There ought to be plenty of options in the Group of 89.

view response by Rodina party chair Dmitry Rogozin