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Untitled Document
About Russian Democracy I Learned From Scooby Doo Cartoons
By: Aidan McCaffery
I exited Hanoi airport in Vietnam to find a taxi and was greeted by a large TV screen relaying that classic symbol of every red blooded, Communist nation: the stock exchange ticker reel. Scrolling from right to left (and perhaps from West to East), I felt the mighty roar of socialism in my lungs. The motorway that took me to my hotel was flanked by gargantuan billboards on either side of the motorway advertising the latest Vietnemese products. The television in my room had a variety of channels displaying enough stock data to make Gordon Gecko wet. Ah, Lenin would be proud.
It seems Communist countries these days bow less to the colour red and more to the colour green, both the green envious of Western economic strength and the green that features former presidents on the front and the signature of the US treasurer. I don't know what I was expecting when I touched down in Vietnam, the second Communist country I have visited on my journey through South East Asia. Maybe a white vested, muscular adonis grain farming with his son, both looking to that better future on the horizon. |
What happened to that good old fashioned, classic hammer and sickle Communism of old? Reading world news in the past few weeks points one in the right place to look for it. It's not in any of the world's socialist and communist countries, but a democratic one, namely Russia.
I use the term 'democratic' there lightly; in the same way you might use the word 'harmonious' to describe the current situation in Iraq or 'portly' to describe Nicole Ritchie's physique. There's a brief skit on an old episode of The Simpsons in which Russia reveals to the UN it's great secret: that the Soviet Union never disbanded. Immediately afterwards Lenin's embalmed body smashes out of his glass tomb and marches like a zombie for the exit, pronouncing "must.... |
Lenin |
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crush... capitalism!"
While it's far from gas-line hungry Putin's interests to crush capitalism, one can't help but feel that this Simpsons gag is becoming less of a gag and more a surreal shadow of actual events in Moscow. Putin, a KGB agent in the former USSR and the kind of person who probably doesn't consider a bonfire a bonfire unless it's being fuelled by official government documents, has taken to installing fake opposition parties and licencing them official protests. When real opposition parties, such as The Other Russia, engage in protest demonstrations they are met with violent force from the police and some protesters, such as Putin critic and former chess champion Gary Kasparov find themselves under arrest.
Putin calls this 'managed democracy.' Online dictionaries hold no definition of this term, but if they did it would probably look something like this:
Managed Democracy –noun. "The political orientation of those who favor government by people who feign the status of elected representatives and who cut their political teeth in a paranoid system petrified of any sort of unsanctioned public meeting." Putin is fast approaching the end of his two-term limit as president. |
Russian President Vladmir Putin photo: AP
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It'll be interesting to see whether he overturns this restriction, thus creating something closer to a long term, dictatorial rule, or whether he'll try and secure a 'legacy.' Both would no doubt be unpopular; judging by his second term behavior he probably thinks a good idea for a legacy is setting up camp in Germany and rebuilding the Berlin |
Wall brick by brick.
And so while most of the world's Communist nations enjoy healthy economic relations with the West and look hopefully to a more prosperous future, Putin's Soviet bred fear of public meetings is ultimately driving the post-1991 period of Russian democracy towards the classic Scooby Doo ending. Putin, come the end of his second term, will reach behind his collar and pull back the latex mask we all thought was his real face and reveal a mustached, 127 year old man in military dress. The world will watch with surprise and exclaim, ""Wow! It was old Joseph Stalin from the USSR days all along!"
Russia: A Scooby Doo democracy.
Send comments on Aidan’s column to a.f.mccaffery@gmail.com
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