Back in the USSR
They don’t call it the KGB anymore, but anyone with a normally developed sense of self-preservation will regard the FSB with a healthy measure of caution. Similarly, anyone who is interested in the life perpendicular will think twice about criticizing Russia’s perpetual president, Vladimir Putin. Those worried about the resurgence of a Soviet-style totalitarian empire can take some solace, perhaps, from the fact that Russia is a country in a demographic death spiral. Or perhaps that fact offers little solace. Putin, as Walter Russell Mead put it, may well be whistling in the dark as mother Russia declines, but I am not sure either the decline or the whistling does much for those caught in bombastic would-be dictator’s web of desperation.
What I’m thinking about at the moment is not jailed pop singers, murdered journalists, or poisoned former KGB agents. There are plenty of those. No, I’m thinking about Russia’s most helpless citizens (subjects?), the babies who might have been adopted by American families eager for children. In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, you could be shot for trying to escape. In the bad new days, Putin signs a bill banning U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children. “Russian officials,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “portrayed the latest legislation as a tit-for-tat retaliation against a new U.S. law that seeks to punish Russians accused of human-rights violations.” Right. Leave aside the question of whether the U.S. law in question makes political sense. The outrage here is that Putin responds by punishing his own citizens, denying them freedom and a chance for a better life in America. “Critics allege that the law makes political pawns out of Russian orphans,” the WSJ writes, noting that their “living conditions can be dire and prospects for adoption often slim.” That about sums it up.
Nor are Russian babies the only pawns in this game. The legislation that Putin signed today also bans U.S. charities from operating in Russia, thus depriving Russians of the sustenance those many charities offer. As Walter Russell Mead notes in his column today, “Russia is becoming an increasingly insecure and paranoid Putinocracy that fears the political appeal of Western ideas and the organizational ability of international NGOs.” Those ideas will eventually win, but in the meantime bully Putin seems bent on distributing a lot of misery.
Related:
Too bad that Americans are waking up to this reality only now. And I would say that only some are waking up. There is still significant number of the US experts, who are being financed by the EU to preach to the Eastern Europeans how Russia is wonderful partner of the US. /Some investigative journalists should be interested how US taxpayer money is used by the US Ambassadors…./ There are many, many experts in Congress, administration, think-tanks, army, media and academy who claim that Russian regime’s intention and strategic interest are different from the Soviet ones. They say: Kremlin is our friend and ally.
However Russia was never friend of the West. What about the enlargement of NATO? First enlargement of NATO met with the terrible anger of Kremlin. (Check the documents if you do not believe…) Others? I would say the most important test came with the Missile Defense System. US and NATO was not able to prove that the Eastern Europe is not a zone of the special interest for Russia… Killings of several journalists starting from Mr. Borovik in 1990′s to Mrs. Anna Politkovskaya in 2000′s should have been alarm for the USA. It has not been at all. Killing Mr Alexander Litvinenko who has never been a spy (to the contrary of the mainstream media!) but the Russian policeman of the Criminal Department should also cause diplomatic uproar. It did not. I am sorry to say but this Putin’s decision is not the worst one. Watch out. There are much, much worse things to come because USA has learnt nothing from tragic historical experience, which was documented recently, for instance, in the brilliant book “Bloodlands” by T. Snyder. Unfortunately.
It’s only fair to point out that Mother Russia has been suffering a severe orphan shortage since the decline of Stalinism. I’m thinking of the chapter in Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s “Russia a New Civilization” where they discuss the “philanthropic activities of the OGPU.” There we learn that the chekists in their OGPU stage maintained orphanages of the highest quality. Their zeal in orphan production is not mentioned, but may be assumed.
I guess the current administration will look at this and just see one more occasion that calls for the US to be more “flexible” in it’s dealings with the totalitarian wannabe.
Considering the typical NGO’s ability to spend lots of money without apparent result, fearing them is like fearing a toothless Chihuahua.
Good. When the fascists run out of people to rape, pillage, and murder, they can start on themselves.
Who’s worried about totalitarian Russia. I am concerned about a Democrat party intent on enslaving America.
I was just about to say this. I can’t worry about Marxists abroad when we have one in the White House. Not mention the many friends and relations I have who find Marxism to be just fine as long as they get theirs.
Truth is where you find it, even if he author is otherwise a nutcase
such as Lyndon LaRouche, who claimed that the (relatively) strong and
secure USSR was not nearly as dangerous as a weak and desperate Russia.
If Putin can see any chance at all of winning a war he may start one;
He has little to lose, and if he wins, the death toll amongst mmm
‘Non Great Russians’ will be an added bonus.
Come to think on it, maybe Ol’ LL wasn’t so frikken’ crazy, after all.
After all, you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.
Omelets and eggs. Or to translate for those not versed in the lingo of Progressive ideology:
Omelet: Enslave a nation.
Break eggs: Mass murder.
Putin has larger things to worry about than civil rights or standards of living, such as restoring Russian greatness. The idea that there could be a link between those is not relevant, at least not to the totalitarian mindset. “Guns or butter” isn’t even recognized as a choice in such states, it’s always going to be guns.
This was meant as a reply to your post, but some how got posted on its’ owm. Interesting post. Why did the USSR disintegrate? All guns, no butter! Can Putin expect differently?
I think most of us are more worried about the Soviet style regime in Washington these days. We won the cold war but lost the peace to the Marxists. Now there will be hell to pay.
No one gives a fig for what happens in Russia or in foreign policy in general anymore because what we have at home is no longer worth defending. The war is here and it is with our neighbors who would make us their milk cows and who would yoke our children to a crushing debt just so they can postpone the day of reckoning for our flirtation with socialism a few more years down the road.
We can’t worry about the Russian children when ours will be just as bad off if we keep electing innumerate Marxists like Obama.
If you look at Russian history, it is a country that has gone from one brutal regime to the next. Very occasionally, a forward-thinking, benevolent regime comes to power but is quickly overthrown. It is really strange.
“strange”? I believe what you have described is the standard course of human political history.
As frequently quoted by the Instapundit:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Robert Heinlein – Time Enough For Love (1973)
He has nothing to fear from Western ideas. The ideas being promoted by our mainstream media, our academic institutions and the current administration are more marxist that the failed regime he is trying to recover.
Wait a moment… If the country is in a “demographic death spiral”, would not a law that keeps children in the country become a sensible measure addressing the problem?
Long term, it’s true that Russia is in some serious trouble. No babies, no future. But a major country in demographic decline can still do a lot of harm. The panic that induces, can even drive militarism with a ‘now or never’ attitude.
Nazi Germany is an example. Despite all the Nazi rhetoric about need ‘living space’ for its people, Germany’s birthrate was low when the Nazis took power and the very generation whose population was cut back by WWI was the one the nation needed to stock its army when the fighting began in 1939. The never-born members of the generation whose fathers were fighting and dying in the trenches of WWI (conceived in 1914-18, born 1915-19) would have been 20-24 when the WWII began.
The key worry may be what China does when it looks north to vast and mineral-rich Siberia in a couple of decades. China has its own problems with birthrates, but starting from a much large base, it will still have quite a few young men then. Young men who, thanks to the one-child policy’s impact on girl births, are in excess of the nation’s needs.
My own sense is that, with nationalistic hormones raging out of control, the old Soviet Union as an Evil Empire has been replaced by one that we may soon be calling the Mad Empire. In this case, it’s an empire that is horribly neglecting and abusing its youngest members. From that, it is only a small step into turning them into cannon fodder.
–Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II
Meanwhile China gleefully looks west as the the only other competitive World-power, (where the intransigent-socialist-Left and the politically-retarded-Right battle), falls victim to the great war of ideology.
Part of the ban may very well be the fact that Russians are not replacing themselves. But you’re right about the effect. A relative adopted a Russian child a few years ago, a child that had spent the first nine months of his life being neglected in an orphanage (he was fed and kept clean, but otherwise ignored). As a result, his American family have spent the last few years overcoming the child’s delayed development (due solely to being neglected), and he is now just about at the intellectual and physical level of any other American child of his age. He’s a happy child, and they love him very much. Many other children like him will live lives of deprivation because of this ban.
What would you propose as a solution?
“I am not sure either the decline or the whistling does much for those caught in bombastic would-be dictator’s web of desperation.”
Jeez, for a second there, I thought you were writing about the United States.
Oh, wait…
Since western NGOs were used to cultivate and finance the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004, one can’t blame Putin for seeing them as a threat.
Ummm, there are plenty of American babies/children in need of a good home and loving parents. No need to run off to Mother Russia or any other country to snatch away their children to raise here. But guess a black baby from the Southside of LA doesn’t have the cache of an orphan from Siberia. If there were no American babies/children available for adoption I would agree with premise of this article. Til then Mother Russia has ever right to deny foreigners the “right” to snatch away its children for their own misplaced sense of entitlement and do-goodism.
Good point about babies here in the USA, but the difference is that in the USSR, these are actual orphans being raised in state institutions. In the USA, it’s more a matter of a mother choosing to put her child up for adoption. That’s a tougher sell, for lack of a better term, especially if there’s an extended family (like grandma) available to raise the child.
Not arguing that point at all. But…..say you are a white couple interested in adopting one of these children. Good luck with the roadblocks put in your way because you are the “wrong” color.
Did you actually read Mr Kimball’s article? If you had you would know that the ban in question has been imposed by Mad Vlad Putin. His response to being called out for the murdering tyrant he is, is to poke some orphans in the eyes!
The average Russian is perfectly happy to have the Americans take out the trash, which is exactly the way most of their orphans are treated. ” . . . to snatch away their children . . .” indeed! These babies are being rescued. There have been several PBS specials exposing, overcrowded institutions with underpaid staff. If the average Russian cared about these orphans, THERE WOULD BE NO NEED FOR ORPHANAGES!
Two previous posts detail the difficulties in adopting out of South L.A. Read the and pay attention.
Babies are not that plentiful in US, thanks to abortion on demand. Older children and sibling groups are unfortunately common, though. Mostly AA kids, especially in cities. Which is okay, if that’s what you are looking for. I worked for a time in foster care and adoption, so I got a bit familiar with the supply/demand side (sounds cold, but that’s the way it is.) Anyone desperate for kids who can pass the (very complex) screening and paperwork process, and who wants to adopt a ten year old AA child who has been in the ‘system’ for a while, or three AA siblings of various ages.. will do fine with getting kids. Btw, many people foster these kids first and then adopt, which IMHO is a prudent idea.
Having known couples that adopted Russian and other foreign children “sense of entitlement and do goodism” are not the attitudes I have ever seen by the adopting parents. Love, anguish and desperation for a family of their own are what I have seen.
The west uses NGOs to help flip the Ukraine. NATO expands to Russia’s borders and then proceeds to arm Georgia. Western countries go after Russian allies in the Middle East. So, yeah, there’s more going on here than tit-for-tat politics – Russia has a reason to not trust the west.
If the Ukraine and Georgia were actually aligned with Russia, they would have naturally looked to Russia. As I recall, it was they who looked to the West for help. As for NATO expanding to Russia’s borders? I must have missed the NATO invasions of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic . . . Russia had no allies just occupied peoples. Please name the Russian allies in the Middle East.
In any event, what does your post have to do with the topic at hand?
As a refresher: “Russian officials,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “portrayed the latest legislation as a tit-for-tat retaliation against a new U.S. law that seeks to punish Russians accused of human-rights violations.” Right. Leave aside the question of whether the U.S. law in question makes political sense. The outrage here is that Putin responds by punishing his own citizens, denying them freedom and a chance for a better life in America. “Critics allege that the law makes political pawns out of Russian orphans,” the WSJ writes, noting that their “living conditions can be dire and prospects for adoption often slim.” That about sums it up.
You didn’t actually write about the demographic death spiral of low birth rates. Perhaps Putin is keeping the babies in Russia to help with that? I don’t know, but I thought you were going to come from the birth rate angle.
At least Putin loves his country and is looking to promote Russia’s influence. The current American president hates his country and is looking to diminish American influence. And Putin’s the bad guy in this story?
Let’s see here who’s worse, Jack the Ripper or The Boston Strangler???
In the other wing one should also look at the birth rates in the US which if I remember correctly is lower than the period of the great depression and going down, it would be negative if not for influx of immigrants. The pro abortion at any cost – anti child culture is one major cause, hate of marriage, war on men in general and the feeling with the dictatorship taking power in DC that among woman in the prime child bearing years that its “just not worth the risk” is predominate. It is going to get much worse in this country and soon when the self appointed elite masters in Washington realize the fix they and the country as a whole is in. When they get desperate a second civil war is the likely outcome. “We” and Russia are in the same boat, one is just sinking faster than the other and the Captains trying to stop the leaks with duct tape.
When I first read the headline I thought it was talking about America.
Silly me.
It’s also well known that Russia pawns off their worst babies on foreign adopters.
By that I mean the ones most likely to be mentally defective due to fetal alcohol syndrome or other known deficiencies. Anyone trying to adopt from Russia should know that they’re playing a rigged game.
Sadly, this is true. My sister in law has adopted two Russian children. One who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and whose father murdered her mother in front of her and her siblings. The other was thought retarded and nearly deaf. His problem was a very bad build up of ear wax which was caught upon his first check-up in the U.S. Their lives are immeasurably better, but forever stunted. The victims are those children who will never receive care or a loving family. Politics is beyond cruelty.
Let me take one mometn to explain a fact of life to you fine people who don’t know that many Russians, Ukrainians, etc. Not third generation American, I mean real, died in the wool, been here three months, Russians:
It is technically IMPOSSIBLE for any Russian male and female to beget anything BUT a fetal alcohol syndrome baby.
Their definition of drunk is the same as the British Navy’s, circa 1812: “passed out in liquor. Unable to respond to command”. Not slurring their speech. Not walking a crooked line. NOT being able to walk anywhere and not being able to respond to ANYTHING!!!is “drunk” to a Russian. Until that point, it is merely “drinky-drinky”, with a dismissing nod and wink. Without threat of death, they will do this every day, as long as they have access to booze.
Kinda like American Union workers.
Buyers of Russian babies: be really aware!
This is a red herring. Russia has suffered repeated depopulations since WW1 – civil war, famine, red terror, holodomor, collectivization, multiple genocides, removing nations to Siberia, great terror, Barbarossa, and on and on. Supposedly 27 million dead in a three year period, although since that is a Soviet statistic probably much fewer. Nevertheless: through all this, Russia managed to organize the takeover nations and quasi-nations, Everywhere, for 80 years – all while convincing a critical mass of the intelligent members of the target societies that they – the Kremlin and its instruments – didn’t even exist. Are they really in demographic decline – and, in light of the evidence, does it even matter?
” Those worried about the resurgence of a Soviet-style totalitarian empire” are probably already aware that this time it is happening in the USA
If a country is in a demographic death spiral, then allowing its children (especially ethnically Russian children as opposed to Muslim minority children) to be adopted and taken to a foreign country makes no sense. Putin and his government should be working to have their Russian orphans adopted by Russian families. Americans should be finding American kids who need adopting. There are certainly enough of them here so that childless Americans don’t need to go to Russia or some African country to find a child to raise.
In reality young adoptable children are rare in the USA, and there is a very long waiting list for them, for several reasons:
1. Many mothers cant raise their kids, but refuse to give up permanent custidy. So they end up languishing in foster care forever. We should have firmer rules about permanently taking away custody at an adoptable age, when the mother is obviously incapable, and likely to remain so.
2. There are more adptable minority babies, but many of the social welfare types are obsessed with race, and refuse to OK cross racial adoptions.
Russia today is what Russia has always been, a dysfunctional nation whose worst enemy is itself.
It would be wonderful if the country would evolve into a free and prosperous republic, a valuable trading partner and eventual partner in freedom for those of us here in the west. That is not going to happen. It has once again fallen into authoritarianism at home and antagonism abroad. It is unlikely to emerge from this anytime soon.
Interesting post. Why did the USSR disintegrate? All guns, no butter! Can Putin expect differently?
Putin is a vicious, amoral little grub who has spent his whole working life in the secret police; whose model of the selfless public servant is the paranoid murderer Yuri Andropov; and who thinks that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. His minions stage murders of troublesome journalists to terrify dissidents into silence — we know it’s him and he knows we know it — a tactic not even his bumbling predecessors (apart from Stalin) descended to, preferring mock-trials and mock-due process. He has no real ideology except power, and his domestic and foreign policy can be summed up as a kind of aimless and vengeful desire to discomfit and thwart the US as much as possible, and to restore, opportunistically as the occasion allows, the power and the structures of the former Soviet Union.
What HAVE the poor Russians done to deserve him?
Want a short answer? They are Neanderthals.
I predict that in 3 years Obama will sign a bill that prohibits South Koreans from adopting American babies.
I predict that 10 years later Obama will sign another bill preventing Vietnamese from adopting America babies.
no worries. i heard obummer say on an open mike to russian (boris) that after the election he would have more flexibility. wonder what exactly he meant?
a. he has been taking yoga and can now put both feet in his big mouth while selling guns to murderers, all the while intercepting a joint in mid-air.
b. he will now be able to play lots more golf w/ putin.
c. there is some kind of sexual thing going on here that i don’t even want to think about.
d. he and putin can now patent their new super duper electronic remote controlled method of stealing elections. just sold several in the m.e. and s.a. after demonstrating the results in the u.s. just ask harry, the first to try it out.
e. he and putin have thought of some really cool dictator-like ways of bringing America slowly and painfully to her knees.
f. all of the above.