Constantine Pleshakov - The Japan Times

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jul 7, 2001

If one wants to single out a decisive reason for the spectacular collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1985-1991, the variety of choices is staggering. The war in Afghanistan, the exhausting arms race, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the food shortages, Voice of America broadcasts, oil and gas prices -- and so on and so forth. Another possible answer is Pope John Paul II.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jun 19, 2001

Putin plays the smile game

The first summit of U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin was shaped by an indigenous American principle, "Keep smiling." Bush said he had looked the man in the eye and found him to be "very straightforward and trustworthy." Putin said he was looking forward to "a constructive dialogue." The talks, scheduled for half an hour, went on for 90 minutes.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jun 15, 2001

Bush and Putin square off

On Saturday, U.S. President George W. Bush is meeting his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Ljubljana, Slovenia in what will be the first Russo-American summit of the 21st century. The issue that will dominate the talks is clear: Bush's grandiose plan for national missile defense. Like chess champs preparing for a match, the two leaders are going through elaborate notes prepared by their aides, trying to figure out what the other's stance will be. But Putin has the advantage.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jun 9, 2001

Putin picks a new gas czar

Behold, Russia has got a new czar. No, the Romanovs did not rise from their graves. No, the Russian people did not invite a Romanov cousin, Prince Charles, to claim the throne of his Russian ancestors. No, the authoritarian Russian president, Vladimir Putin, did not crown himself Vladimir I. He just replaced the CEO of the biggest Russian company, Gazprom.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

May 27, 2001

Big money vs. big brother?

It was recently announced that U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit in mid-June. This is going to be a tense conference. The ghosts of the Cold War will arrive uninvited and bring a confrontational agenda with them. Both participants, having achieved a degree of notoriety, should be prepared for harsh treatment from the world's media.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

May 13, 2001

Don't take China so seriously

These days China is always in the news. If it's not the U.S. spy-plane incident, then it's Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics or the Chinese Communist Party's human-rights record or Beijing's bullying of Taiwan. After decades of condescending reporting on China, the international media is finally starting to take China seriously -- sometimes a bit too seriously.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Apr 23, 2001

Moscow exiles a mogul with good taste

The Kremlin wins one: President Vladimir Putin's bitter critic, Media-Most media empire, is dead. Its assets have been transferred to pro-Kremlin stockholders, its journalists have been fired or silenced and its owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, is hiding abroad.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Apr 7, 2001

The U-2 affair all over again

Spy-plane pilot is one of the few professions we should strongly discourage our sons from developing an interest in. Rich in experience, critically important and thrillingly challenging, it is, nevertheless, a career charged with personal and collective disaster. Along with the ongoing anxieties of parents and spouses, there are potential complications for one's nation as a whole and even, occasionally, for world politics.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Mar 26, 2001

Russians living 'la vida loca'

This semester I am teaching a Dostoevsky course. Implausible plots, stumbling dialogues, everybody in love with everybody, romantic triangles overlap like mating frogs, passions mount, money changes hands and is thrown into the fire -- the normal Dostoevsky stuff.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Mar 8, 2001

Putin plays a bad hand well

"I was deeply touched, when he smiled and looked at us with his blue eyes, my old sweet memories flooded back to me," a middle-aged Soviet-trained Vietnamese woman told the TV crew. The blue eyes in question belonged not to a movie star, but to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was visiting Hanoi, and the sweet memories in all likelihood related not to some romantic experience of the past but to the decades of lavish aid, pumped by the Kremlin into Vietnam during Cold War years.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Feb 11, 2001

Yeltsin and Reagan revisited

This year there were two sad anniversaries in the first week of February: two former political superstars, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Boris Yeltsin celebrated their birthdays in the shadow of severe health problems. Confined to hospital, they were unable to appreciate the cheering of fans and the fanfare of the mass media.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jan 28, 2001

A return to chillier times?

The Cold War is dead, long live the Cold War. Such seems to be the mood in the corridors of power in Moscow. Many Russians believe the inauguration of U.S. President George W. Bush may initiate a new period of tension between Washington and Moscow

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jan 13, 2001

Muscovites get all fired up

"Real Chechnya" -- this is how Muscovites sum up their experiences during the recent holiday season. Fortunately, except for routine scuffles ignited by the excessive consumption of alcohol, there was no fighting in the Russian capital.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Jan 1, 2001

Much ado about nothing

In a fierce fit of free-market commercialism, ads in Moscow subway insist that the real new millennium will start today. With the economy weakened by crisis, revenues from the advent of Y2K were not as impressive as in the West, and now Russian boutiques, travel agencies and software stores are trying to make up for profits unclaimed 12 months earlier. Here we go: invitations to celebrate New Year with pyramids in Egypt, golden necklaces that will be remembered by grateful recipients until Doomsday, new software with which to log on to your computer in the new year.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Dec 17, 2000

No place for tainted symbols

The Soviet Union is dead; long live the Soviet Union. This seems to be the current mood in the corridors of power in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has persuaded the Parliament to restore the Soviet anthem as Russia's national hymn and the czarist red banner, which was used in Soviet times as well, as the flag of the Russian armed forces. In a fit of nostalgia -- or servility, depending on one's point of view -- the Parliament voted 381 to 51 to support this historic initiative, thus returning communist paraphernalia to the limelight.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Dec 2, 2000

The new American autism

George W. Bush, Al Gore or civil war? This is the question being asked now by alarmists, especially those with a taste for theatrical overstatement.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Nov 18, 2000

Russia delights in U.S. electoral confusion

Delightful. This is how many Russians describe the postelection crisis in the United States. For 10 years, Russian elections have been a favorite target of the American media. Finally, Mother Russia is allowed to retaliate. The delicious irony of the moment is that two weeks earlier hardliners in the Russian Parliament dispatched a group of observers to the United States to check on the voting process there. Sick and tired of U.S. preaching and patronizing, Russian conservatives regarded that as a necessary but virtually hopeless propaganda counteroffensive. Ridiculed by the Russian press for their ambitious and seemingly silly enterprise, the conservatives did not suspect they would be present at the most problematic U.S. election in the last 100 years.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Nov 2, 2000

Kim's diplomatic slam dunk

Good news from North Korea. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il with a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan; the dictator treated the diplomat to a spectacular theatrical performance. Rejoice: Peace in East Asia is at hand.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Oct 7, 2000

And now, the green peril?

Today, the green banner of Islam inspires almost as much fear as the red Soviet flag did several decades ago. This fear is not entirely unjustified. Of course, it would be silly to label Muslim culture "aggressive" or "intolerant"; yet too many acts of aggression and intolerance have been conducted under the green banner in the last 50 years. Christian fundamentalism rarely, if ever, crosses national borders. Admittedly, people who oppose a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy do feel a certain solidarity with people of similar beliefs elsewhere in the world. They go to all sorts of international conventions; they try to influence the "global village" through the Internet; they distribute their flashy brochures worldwide. But it is unimaginable that a Christian fundamentalist group would form an army of its own, unleash civil war at home and then threaten to export warfare to foreign lands. Yet this is precisely what is happening with the Islamic Taliban movement. Having gained control over Afghanistan after a ferocious civil war and imposed the strictest fundamentalist regulations on its own people, the Taliban has begun exporting its model of militant Islamic statehood to neighboring countries.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Sep 24, 2000

From lady killer to whale protector

So Japanese fishermen are banned from U.S waters. Whales rejoice, environmentalists celebrate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush loses a point, U.S., President Bill Clinton drafts a chapter for his memoir called "After Monica: Whales!", I grieve.

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