With that in mind, I’m just going to excerpt my favorite bits from the article (I’ve also included an Interfax article in which the quotes are probably less manipulated, but also much less entertaining):

On beer in the stadiums (currently banned – with good reason – in Russia):

- Blatter: “[Beer] is a product that is very popular among football fans.” ”Beer is something that’s a part of life! How would there be a tournament in Germany without beer?! Fans want beer! In Brazil, the organizers don’t really want it…but they need to consider to consider the fans’ opinions!” And, of course the corporate sponsors – Budweiser among them – that put money in FIFA’s pockets – BL

Blatter, on drinking in moderation: “Beer is maybe not as destructive as some think. You should drink it in moderate quantities, that’s all.” “Everything can damage your health, any product! Let’s enjoy life, enjoy the game and let’s drink beer!”

- Putin, looking on in amazement: “Yes, you should know your limit – drink your three liters and that’s fine.” He then promised to have parliament re-examine the question of drinking in stadiums.

I don't know about the rest of you, but boozing with Putin would kick the shit out of a casual Miller Lite with Obama

If that bit of populism/corporate shilling wasn’t enough, Blatter clearly knew what other buttons to push with the Russian fans.

Blatter: “I began working on organizing these kinds of tournaments in 1978,” he said, “At that time, strong drinks were allowed in the stands, as was smoking. Although, CO2 is perhaps a more harmful gas for people.” Smoking in Russian stadiums, for all I know, might technically be banned, but you would never know that if you go to a game there. Blatter, you demagogue, you.

Of course, there was more.

On the elimination of daylight savings time by president Dmitry Medvedev:

Fan: “It’s very difficult for me, let’s say, when a football match (in a European tournament) starts at 9 and ends at 11; you need to get up in the morning, but you’ve lost an hour of your life [due to the time differences].”

Putin: “I’m not the author of this initiative.”

Fan: “No, but is it easy for you to get up in the morning now?

Putin: “It’s always difficult to get up.”

Again, Putin gets to throw a little more red meat to the masses (he’s just like us!) while also throwing Medvedev under the bus for making everyone in Russia stay up an extra hour to watch Rubin Kazan play Shamrock Rovers.

On the Unified State Examination (ЕГЭ – a recently instituted nationwide set of standardized tests required as an exit exam for high schoolers/entrance exam for Russian universities):

Fan: “Why are we moving to the American system of education when Americans themselves conducted IQ-test research to see if they, as a nation, were smarter or dumber and they didn’t reach 90%?” 90 percent, the fan helpfully explained “is considered a normal IQ and they didn’t get to that level. And this test, which we’ve now introduced, was created by an American scientist.”

Remember, Blatter and Platini are still in the room for both of these questions, nodding their heads and pretending to understand what the hell is going on. I can’t say for sure either, but that makes it that much more entertaining.

And finally, this gem of a line of from the Kommersant article from after Blatter and Platini left:

“Vladimir Putin was actively drinking beer, fulfilling, it was obvious, his norm (the aforementioned 3 liters -BL). The 2008 UEFA cup final in which Zenit defeated Glasgow Rangers was playing on some of the televisions in the room.

‘I’ve already forgotten what I wanted to ask’ loudly announced one fan from Rostov-On-Don after a short while.

‘So, let’s drink to that!’ proposed the prime minister.”

Just brilliant.

Look Rustam, if you want to be re-elected, you're going to have to give me that gold mini Big Ben you've got here

At its heart, the law allows for direct, popular vote election of the heads of Russia’s 83 regions – simple enough, but it does expand upon issues raised when Putin first broached the subject in December. Most interestingly, the draft law retains a “filter” of sorts, in which the president ostensibly reviews the potential candidates in regional elections to make sure they aren’t criminals or secessionists hell bent on destroying Mother Russia. While the idea was an integral part of Putin’s original proposal, the idea evoked confusion over its implementation and, frankly, its necessity. It is still in the draft law, but – if anything – the issue of the ‘filter’ is even less clear than before.

For starters, the draft law (which you can find in Russian here) has two methods for candidates to stand for election. Under the first, political parties can put forward their candidate after “consultations” with the president – this would be the ‘filter’ discussed briefly above. The law gives the president the responsibility for working out exactly how this “consultation” would be structured. Under the second format, candidates can run as independents – they just have to collect enough signatures to get on a regional ballot; the responsibility for creating the rules for how many signatures and in what timeframe is given to regional legislatures. No ‘presidential filter’ needed.

This, as you might guess, has caused some head scratching. The deputy chairman of the Duma’s committee on constitutional legislation – the LDPR’s Sergey Ivanov – told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that he didn’t understand how there could be different rules for different candidates. “‘If there are consultations, then they should be for everyone,” he said, “but there are [consultations] for party candidates and, for independents, there aren’t for some reason.” It is a difficult position to argue with – there is a basic disconnect here. Then, to confuse things more, Larissa Brychyova, the head of the Kremlin’s State-Legal Directorate, told journalists that the consultations were voluntary and that even if the parties do consult with the president, then they don’t have to listen.

So why even have the ‘filter’ in the first place? According to Brychyova, the consultation mechanism is needed “to caution parties against personnel mistakes” in certain situations.  One would think, however, that independent candidates – who would not be vetted by a party – would pose more of a threat in this respect. Moreover, in a normally functioning party democracy, the president would only be happy if an opposition party put forward a weak candidate to run against his/her party’s candidate, but then again, Russia ain’t that. More interestingly – and I think more plausibly – Aleksey Makarkin of the Center for Political Technologies posited that the allusion to ‘consultations’ in the text of the law was Medvedev’s attempt to ‘save face’ after Putin made the ‘filter’ a part of his original proposal. Without Putin backing down on the idea, it leaves those opposed with little room to maneuver. With this in mind, Brychyova’s announcement that the consultations would be ‘voluntary’ can be seen as an attempt to move away from the idea of a filter without completely jettisoning it.

No matter how the ‘consultation/filter’ process was included in the draft, it is a curious idea at best. As I’ve argued earlier, it strips the initiative of a lot of the democratic credibility it needs to start placating Russians disaffected with the political situation in the country. Moreover, as Makarkin points out, if the president were to veto a popular candidate’s bid for governor, then that just puts the Kremlin in a bad light; it would show an explicit disregard for what people actually think. Finally, the pre-election filter mechanism is not even really necessary – the Russian president still maintains the ability to remove a governor from office, so any ‘personnel mistakes’ could be corrected.

That process, however, will be made a little more transparent and constrained under the proposed law. A situation like when longtime Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov was fired for ‘losing the confidence’ of the president would be, in theory, more difficult under the new law. Now, the president would need to show that the governor to be fired was guilty of corruption (the law says “corruption or an [illegal] outstanding conflict of interest”) and the governor would, in theory, be able to appeal the decision to the Russian supreme court; the governor would also be eligible to run again in the next election regardless of the outcome of the appeal, according to a Rossiiskaya Gazeta article.

If that seems to limit the ability to get ride of governors guilty of “drinking vodka and not going to work” as Brychyova joked, then there is another option. Interestingly, the draft law allows for direct recall elections after a governor has served one year in office. In order for a governor to be recalled, a court would first need to find that the governor in question either a) violated local or federal law or b) is guilty of not fulfilling their official duties. After that, signatures would be collected and, if enough are gathered (the exact number is to be determined by the regional legislatures), then a recall election would be held. In that election, a majority of voters would need to vote in favor of the recall in order for it to come into effect.

The law, which could go into effect as early as this spring, also sets governors’ terms at five years and does not impose any term limits.

The Initial Verdict

Insert generic caption for this horribly generic election picture

In all, the draft law on direct gubernatorial elections has some interesting ideas, but the main questions revolve around its implementation. With almost any major piece of political legislation in Russia, there is a large divide between what is written on paper and the legislation’s actual effect. In this case, the divide looks to be particularly pronounced.

There will be direct elections of governors, probably as early as later this year, after the bill is passed. This much is sure. After that, the basic conditions of the Russian political system as they currently stand will keep the law from becoming a vehicle for real democratic change. The presence of a ‘filter’ makes this pretty clear, but there are other reasons as well. For example, the recall provision apparently puts the power to dump governors into the hands of the voters, but the lack of a truly independent judicial system in Russia means that initial requirement for a court review could scupper any recall effort. It is not particularly difficult to imagine a governor leaning on local courts – assuming the governor even had to resort to putting a carrot/stick proposition to the court – in order to throw out a legal challenge to his administration.

Moreover, as the point has been made in my earlier article on this topic, the law doesn’t prevent manipulation of election results or the resorting to administrative means to keep viable opposition candidates off ballots. New legislation lowering barriers of entry to political parties could mitigate this second possibility, or it could not – again, the devil is in the implementation.

The real benefit of the law is clearly not, then, that it provides a masterstroke dramatically improving the standard of democracy and elections in Russia – there are too many factors at play for any law to accomplish that. Rather, as I’ve said before, the benefit consists of moving some of the basis for the actual authority of regional governors away from the Kremlin and to the regions where they actually rule. In some cases, like that of former long-term Tatarstan governor Mintimer Shaimiev – who named his successor upon stepping down in 2010 after more than 20 years in office, that authority is based mostly locally, but in others, governors are entirely dependent on the Kremlin for their position. These governors are less likely to be able to act without the direction and authority from the Kremlin behind them. Injecting more energy into the federal system, in order to better deal with local conditions and challenges, is needed and this law represents an opportunity to do that.

Plenty of questions remain. How the law will be implemented and its actual impact are two obvious questions. How many governors will be relieved of their duties before the law comes into effect – Volgograd governor Anatoly Brovko and Arkhangelsk governor Ilya Mikhail’chuk have been fired in recent days – is still in question, although news reports have cited Kremlin sources saying a massive shuffling in the governor ranks is unlikely. Finally, at a more speculative level, there is the question of what, if anything, will happen to the 8 federal districts and their leadership with the new legislation. It won’t be until late Spring that we could start seeing the very earliest effects of this law, but it certainly be an interesting few months to see if, and how, this legislation evolves.

The maxim that “History is written by the victors” is a truth we often hear about, but rarely question. Yet, in the case of Napoleon’s famous invasion of Russia in 1812 and the next two years, the opposite has largely been true. Most major English-language histories on the period have preponderantly favored the accounts of the French and their German, Italian and Polish allies in telling the story of the war to the neglect of the winners – the Russia. In fact, the Russo-centric account of the invasion most familiar to English-language readers is Tolstoy’s War and Peace – incidentally, not a work of non-fiction. Moreover, most people familiar with the final years of the Napoleonic Wars only through their school textbooks are as likely to know that the war ended with Cossacks sauntering down the Champs-Elysee as they are to know the names of all nine U.S. Supreme Court justices (that would be basically no one). It is this state of affairs that Dominic Lieven sets out to rectify in his illuminating work Russia Against Napoleon – the True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace.

To this end, Lieven, a professor of Russian history at the London School of Economics, employs a wide ranging set of primary sources from Russian state archives, personal letters, diaries and published accounts and published histories in Russian that other Anglophone authors have neglected either out of choice, an inability to read the language or a simple lack of access to the material. Lieven explicity sets out, in the first pages of the introduction, to correct the half-truths and distortions that surround Russia’s campaigns in 1812-1814 and in this, he does the job superbly. It is impossible to finish the book and still maintain the opinion that the Russians only defeated Napoleon in 1812 because of an unholy combination of the Russian winter and Napoleon’s own mistakes. Lieven dispels these half-truths by pointing out that the Russians themselves suffered massive losses due to the weather and shows that whatever errors Napoleon may have committed, the Russians were not passive observers and benefiters of these mistakes. And these are but two of the myths that Lieven explodes through his reset of the narrative.

The book is Russia-centric, but not Russia-biased. Lieven shows no favor to a Russian account of a battle if a Prussian account is more believable. Similarly, Lieven does not shy away from pointing out how Russia’s own mainstream view of the war – influenced by decades of nationalist and later, Soviet-inspired ideological tainting – suffers from its own problems and he seeks to correct those misperceptions as well.

Alexander I, implacable foe of Napoleon

Finally, there is the case of Tolstoy’s treatment of 1812 in War and Peace. Lieven pokes holes throughout the mystic-infused myth that Tolstoy spins in the novel, which has informed so much of what the English-speaking world knows of that fateful year. Tolstoy, to be sure, did a copious amount of historical research in his writing, but his account of the battles, generals and – most famously – the ordinary soldier serves more as a vehicle for his philosophical beliefs than as history, strictly speaking. Lieven never waves his counter-arguments to any of these half-truths in the reader’s face, but at the end of the 528 pages, one is left with no doubt that most previous histories have missed the mark with regards to Russia’s war effort.

Of course, Russia Against Napoleon is not a massive argument against biased scholarship, but is in the main, a hugely informative narrative of the last two years of the Napoleonic wars. Lieven focuses his attention not just on an accounting of the historical figures and the battles, but also on the context in which we should we view these people and events. For example, he devotes a few chapters to the Russian rear theater in 1812 and 1813, moving deftly from the issues of how taxes/donations were collected and conscripts were organized into new units to the immense supply challenges faced by the Russian armies as they advanced into Europe. He also provides a much-needed explanation of how Russia’s internal political environment affected the conduct of the war. Lieven, for example, provides the reader with numerous examples showing that despite Alexander’s position as Autocrat of all the Russias, his relationship with the nobility was much more symbiotic than his title would suggest. It is insights like these that make the book an indispensible addition to the bookshelves of people interested in Russian military history or in the history of the Napoleonic wars more broadly.

Lieven shines elsewhere as well. Three of his more striking points made throughout are that: 1) Alexander and his Minister of War Mikhail Barclay de Tolly had always planned on action going past 1812 and it is in this context that we have to view decisions made during Napoleon’s invasion and retreat; 2) Russia’s dominance in light cavalry – Cossacks and other irregular troops as well as more traditional cavalry – played a decisive role in the campaigns because of the havoc they wrecked in the French rear and; 3) that Russia’s unquestioned excellence in conducting organized, fighting retreats allowed it to face down and eventually better Napoleon’s military machine. These points are critical to understanding how Russia was ultimately successful in the war and are arguments not readily found elsewhere.

The book is also very well balanced – for a military history anyways – as the reader is always aware how the battles and characters fit into broader contexts – both in the cultural/organizational/political context of turn-of-the-century Russia and in the chronological context. Lieven manages to put forward his explanations of the underlying conditions of the Russian war effort without really ever disrupting the chronological flow of events. It is this balance – and Lieven’s very readable prose – that keeps Russia Against Napoleon from getting bogged down in details or tangents at any point.

There are no real flaws in the book worth mentioning. As mentioned above, the book is accessible to casual readers due to Lieven’s writing style. It also contains enough detail and advances the kind of sophisticated arguments that more academically-minded readers look for. Some readers may not agree with my assessment of the book’s balance of political and military elements, but Lieven, in his introduction, disabuses people of the notion that Russia Against Napoleon is anything other than traditional military history – people interested only in a social history should like elsewhere. In any event, the political context of the war’s twists and turns that Lieven provides is critical to understanding Russia’s conduct and gives the book a different (if related) dimension to the purely military side of the story. The story is largely told through the eyes of the generals and officers, but since the vast majority of rank and file Russian soldiers were illiterate, Lieven surely cannot be faulted for the lack of written accounts from ordinary soldiers. The maps of the battles and campaigns – at least in the edition reviewed here – are somewhat annoyingly put in the front of the book instead of in the body of the book for easier reference, but the excellent appendix listing every Russian infantry, cavalry and artillery regiment that participated in the war more than makes up for this.

In short, people looking for a survey of the last two years of the Napoleonic wars from the Russian perspective should not miss this book. Along with Adam Zamoyski’s excellent treatment of the invasion proper, Moscow 1812, Dominic Lieven’s Russia Against Napoleon provides an informative, well-balanced and much needed English-language account of Russia’s long-ignored war effort against Napoleon.

Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace Viking Adult; First Edition edition (April 15, 2010). Hardcover 656 Pages

December 26

This has to be a bad idea, right? The threat of flooding on Dec. 26 forced St. Petersburg officials to close the Neva River to shipping (photo from - you guessed it - RIA Novosti)

December 27

"Slava, everything will be OK, I promise. We just have to convince them for a couple months that we don't like you anymore." "But you do actually still like me, right?" (photo from Radio Svoboda)

 December 28

The parliament of the Republic of Adygeya forwarded a resolution Dec. 28 to Dmitry Medvedev supporting the resettlement in Russia of the Circassian diaspora in Syria

December 29

And yes, somewhere in that fire is a nuclear submarine. The fire, however, didn’t spread inside the missile sub Yekaterinburg or touch its reactors, so instead of trembling under your blanket as you watch the China Syndrome, you can just read about it at the BBC.

Read more (in Russian) here:

“Circassian of Syria ask President of Russia and head of Agygeya to take measures for their resettlement in Russia” Caucasian Knot

“Russian Circassian organizations support their compatriots in Syria” Caucasian Knot

December 18:

Picture of the 'Kolskaya' drilling platform, which sank in a storm in the Sea of Okhotsk Sunday morning local time (photo from RIA Novosti)

December 19: 

“There is no place for the President in the Kremlin.” — presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov

Prokhorov laid out his first proposal on his blog for what he would if elected president, arguing that the presidential residence should be moved from the Kremlin because of the disruptions caused in central Moscow when the president or various other VIPs travel to and from the Kremlin.

December 20:

Watch what you say on the phone, you f-ing hamster bitch (photo of B. Nemtsov from Kommersant)

December 21:

Aleksey Navalny surrounded by journalists after being released early in the morning of Dec. 21 after spending 15 days in jail (photo from Ekho Moskvy)

 December 22: 

No posting

December 23: 

Sergey Ivanov - participating in the trial by ordeal required of all new Kremlin Chiefs of Staff (photo from Kommersant)

December 24:

"Not to be used repeatedly" - my vote for most witty of all the Putin - condom references at today's rally on Prospekt Sakharova in Moscow

Quick, how many people are in this crowd? There'll be a quarter in it for the person with the fastest correct answer (photo from ITAR-TASS)

Ennumerating crowd sizes is a notoriously inexact science and open to such a wide degree of interpretation that it’s difficult to reach a meaningful number. There will inevitably be people on all sides scoffing at the numbers that don’t support the narrative they are backing. So, I would argue that any debate over the numbers will not be overly informative except in one important sense. Even the MVD’s almost certainly low-balled number suggests that there has not been any momentum lost in the campaign to overturn the election results and the relatively more objective media figures suggest that the movement might have even gathered steam despite a 2 week hiatus. For a comparison, between 35,000 and 50,000 people are generally thought to have attended the Dec. 10 rally at Bolotnaya Square.

This momentum will need to be carried through the holiday season starting in January and to the next rally, planned in February. That rally will be even more important than the previous two as it will demonstrate whether the current opposition has staying power and could represent a sharp challenge to the planned re-election of Putin at the beginning of March.

December 14

(from top right to left): “I re-tweeted Navalny” - “I put a white ribbon on my avatar” - “We swore about the unfair elections on our smoke break” - “Well, the motherfuckers have gone all out this time” (from Arkday Babchenko's blog)

December 15

Phew, after drinking this tea, I could go for another 4 1/2 hours. Anyone?

December 16

Hadjimurad Kamalov, publisher of the independent Dagestani weekly 'Chernovik' was killed outside his office in Makhachkala late Thursday night (photo from kavkaz-uzel.ru)

December 17

18 years of waiting and all we get are these awkward T-shirts? (photo courtesy of BBC.com)