thank you everyone for joining us my
name is Olga mr. fava I am an assistant
professor of Russian in the Department
of religious and cultures and I'm also
the director of Reis Russian Eurasian
and East European studies program and it
is my pleasure to welcome everyone to
our Reis annual distinguished speaker
series event and this year we're
absolutely honored and delighted to be
hosting Peter Baker as our distinguished
speaker Peter is a journalist as you
probably already know from the
Washington Post
he's been at the post for 19 years and
currently serves as a White House
correspondent covering President Bush
during his tenure at the post Peter has
had a number of absolutely fascinating
foreign assignments including coverage
of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in
fact Peter Baker was the first American
newspaper journalist into Afghanistan
right where he lived with anti-taliban
rebels and spent eight months covering
the conflict and the new governments
Peters talk today will address another
one of his overseas assignments until
late 2004 he served as the posts Moscow
bureau chief covering Russia and the 14
former Soviet republics she's nearly
four years in Russia dovetailed with the
rise of current Russian President
Vladimir Putin and put Peter at the
center of several political economic and
terrorism events including the revival
of Russian economy the rollback of
Russian democracy the second chechen war
and such terrorist act as the Moscow
theater act and school and belong in the
fall of 2005 Peter in co-authorship with
Susan Glasser published a book entitled
Kremlin rising Vladimir Putin and the
end of revolution now the paper book the
paperback edition of the of the book
just came out about a month ago Peter
says that it sold out immediately
supposedly because Iowa State bought all
of the copies and the copies are right
on the table over there so they're
ordering whole other batch of them but
as you did get a whole batch of them so
Peter will be signing
books at the end of his talk I would
also like to acknowledge the sponsors of
today's event they are Russian East
European and Eurasian Studies Program
the comedian lectures the world affairs
series the Miller lecture is fund the
department of world languages and
cultures and the Department of Political
Science
Peter stalk is also part of the Greenlee
School of Journalism and communication
First Amendment Day celebration the said
please welcome Peter Baker whose talk
today is entitled Kremlin rising
Vladimir Putin and the Russian
counter-revolution
good evening everyone thank you for
coming this is a great crowd I you know
Rudy Julie I didn't get this many people
when I saw him Saturday so that's pretty
good I I don't let that go to my head
I'm not planning to announce for
anything but I'm very happy to be here
Thank You Olga it's a great honor to be
able to come talk to I was at university
I always been a fantastic host and I
want to thank her for everything it's
like an exciting time obviously to be on
campus first-amendment days that's great
I understand there's an anniversary
being celebrated this year for the
university is that right yeah well
that's it means it's all the better for
for me to come and and see the campus
and get a chance to talk with you guys
about something it means a lot to me and
I hope to some people here which is
Russia and what's happening there in
recent years how many people here have
been to Russia that's great that's great
and how many people are planning to go
or have some interesting studying in
Russia terrific that's great this is
going to be a fun evening I hope then
we're gonna I'm gonna my wife Susan
Glasser who was my co bureau chief and
co-author isn't here I'm sorry you're
not gonna get a chance to hear her talk
because that would be a great talk
instead you got me but as when President
Bush talks to audiences he tells them
you know before he came he asked his
wife he says what can I talk about
she says talk about 15 minutes so we'll
try to keep to 15 20 maybe a little
longer then we'll open up for questions
and we can get a real dialogue going I
think that's always the best way to get
a good conversation going for those who
haven't been to Russia but are planning
to go or study I really encourage you to
do it it's gonna be a fabulous
experience it's really one of those
extraordinary places you'll ever have a
chance to see interesting in so many
ways complicated rich layer deep as Olga
mentioned we my wife and I were there
for four years basically overlapping
with Vladimir Putin's time we went there
for the first time for our first
reporting experience that is in March of
2000 which was the month that Putin was
formally elected as president we left
and return home in November of 2004
coincidentally on election day here in
America which happened to provide a sort
of a fascinating counterpoint to the
democracy we've been watching for the
past four years in Moscow and as Olga
mentioned we got home we finished our
book Kremlin rising which as she
mentioned is over therefore available
for purchase the afterword is meant to
bring you up to date all the way up till
this year so it's an updated version of
the book of what we've seen and what
we've actually seen since we returned
from Moscow has only accelerated the
same trends the same storyline same
narrative arc has only continued even
more so up to the present day so it's a
very current and timely important trend
that that's happening in Russia that
America needs to think about and focus
on 15 years ago this past Christmas Day
Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president
of the Soviet Union and the hammer and
sickle flag over the Kremlin was hauled
down in theory the Soviet Union ceased
to exist at that moment replaced by 15
theoretically ostensibly independent
democratic states including Russia the
biggest but there were no parades this
last December in Moscow to celebrate
this anniversary there were no fireworks
there were no national commemoration of
an event that in many ways is perhaps
the most profound moment in the latter
half of the 20th century instead that
same month
by contrast the hundredth anniversary of
the birth of Leonid Brezhnev was
celebrated it touched off a wave of
nostalgia wreaths and flowers were laid
at his tomb in Red Square conferences
were held on his legacy a street in a
park were renamed for him one state
television correspondent even rhapsodize
Donaire about how Brezhnev was really
quite a hit with the ladies
end quote a poll showed that when the
60% of Russians saw the Brezhnev era in
a positive light compared with only 17%
who did not so what should we make of a
Russia today that
misty-eyed over a period of stagnation
and and tyranny while growling that the
breakup of one of the world's most
authoritarian regimes in 1991 was as
Vladimir Putin put it the greatest
geopolitical catastrophe of the century
when we make of a country with all the
trappings of a western-style
capitalist democracy but the KGB style
cynicism
to seemingly reach out and kill a critic
with radioactive polonium in another
country Russia today defies easy
characterization it's not your father's
Soviet Union we're not in the new Cold
War as some people like to say it
doesn't pose a genuine military threat
to the United States communism is a
viable ideology is dead it's not coming
back and every day Russians today enjoy
enormous freedom to live as they choose
without worrying that their neighbors
are gonna rat them out for making a joke
about authorities they can walk down the
street and use their cell phones and
they can travel abroad and start
businesses and watch foreign movies and
surf the Internet and if you were to
visit Moscow and-and-and-and only sort
of walk around you would think of it as
much like a lot of European cities today
and yet behind that picture behind that
sort of surface normality that we might
recognize the Kremlin has completed
nearly seven-year project - we
consolidate power and eliminate any
serious opposition it started out by
taking over television and then
Parliament and business it manipulated
elections and then when that became
inconvenient to simply cancel them all
together for the 89 governors in Russia
and now it's considering doing the same
thing for big city mayors it's
intimidating human rights groups assume
controls of newspapers one by one and as
anybody who watched the news or saw it
on the news over the weekend any time
even just a handful a few hundreds maybe
a thousand or two protesters show up on
the streets it responds with nine
thousand police armed with batons and
using them quite quite freely three
hundred fifty some people were arrested
over the weekend for trying to protest
the Putin government including Garry
Kasparov the World Chess Champion that
has become who's become the leading
opposition figure meanwhile
10,000 people were rallying in behalf of
Putin in Moscow Pushkin Square and the
police very happily left them alone you
know when we first went to Russia in
2000 we thought we were going for what
would be a quiet time you know the era
of stability that Putin was promising
the Yeltsin era the era of tumult and
anarchy and tanks in the streets and and
mafia-style banditry and gangland
slayings that was supposed to be over
the Putin era was going to be a new era
of modernization consolidation but in
fact what we found during our time there
and since then I think too is the change
in Russia is every bit as profound now
as it was in the 1990s it's not as
dramatic it doesn't get on television
there aren't tanks involved but the
direction of Russia has changed that
what Putin has built is a very different
society from the emerging democracy that
the United States had hoped would
develop from the wreckage of the Soviet
Union it's more stable yes people now
have jobs they don't lose their life
savings
they don't resolve their political
differences through violence mostly but
it's also a less open society as well by
the time we left people who had happily
talked to us were happily returned our
phone calls for stories no longer would
let us quote them they wouldn't come to
the phone or if they did they begged us
not to use their names by the end of our
tour much more closed atmosphere has
settled in among the people who were
dealing in elite politics in business in
in certain segments of society so in
let's not over romanticize Yeltsin's
Russia by the way this is not to say
that that was somehow an idealized
Jeffersonian democracy it wasn't it
wasn't by any stretch it was corrupt and
manipulated by the few at the expense of
the many
it was it was imperfect on many many
levels it was not completely free in the
way we would hope it would be but it was
to the extent that Yeltsin had launched
revolution that however flawed and
incomplete was at least opening up
society his successor came to power
intent on putting an end to that
he said as much Putin said as much and
rather explicitly for anyone who wanted
to listen even from the beginning early
in his presidency we had an interview
with his top consultant Gleb pavlovsky
club pavlovsky is basically the Karl
Rove of Russia
he told us Putin has said he wants to
end the revolution not to start a new
one and that's what he did so who was
Putin that was the question a lot of
people were asking when we arrived but
who actually wasn't that much a mystery
he was by his own description a
childhood Street cool again somebody who
grew up dodging rats in a dirty cramped
common alka in saint-petersburg
he got into fights with boys who usually
bigger than he was and looked for
opportunities in fact to fight them to
prove himself like many young Russians
of the era he admired an old spy serial
the sword and the shield which recounted
the exploits of Soviet agents in it the
hero yogin vice said my ambition is to
have as few people as possible to order
me around and to have the right to
command as many as possible and that was
an ambition that clearly stuck with
Putin he joined the KGB but had a
relatively mediocre career he served in
a backwater in East Germany Dresden not
even East Berlin never raised never rose
above colonel and a service that made a
lot of people generals but he found the
right patrons and over time he found
that his loyalty got him elevated again
and again and strangely enough by the
end of 1990s he found himself in
position to become president of Russia
an athlete took office a Russian
journalist asked him what he liked about
being in the Kremlin and he said
something that sounded very familiar to
anyone who would watch joke on Vice he
said quote nobody controls me here I
control everybody myself actually he did
not at first but that's what he quickly
set out to do it became a very
methodical campaign he did as I said he
took over television he drove out the
so-called Democrats from Parliament he
jailed or forced select oligarchs who
dared to challenge him he manipulated
courts eventually citing this the
slaughter of schoolchildren in Beslan
two years ago three almost two and a
half years ago he eliminated the
election of governors and eliminated the
election of endo
members of parliament he's waged a
brutal war in Chechnya that's left
hundreds of thousands dead missing or
homeless and lately he's been trying to
take over his Kremlin and try to take
over a non-governmental organization
such as human rights groups and even
newspapers which have been relatively
free of state control we were there now
President Bush has confronted Putin
about this on several occasions and
Putin dutifully Talzin that he actually
is for democracy but he's also made
clear that he has a different definition
in September 2003 a group of US Western
reporters American journalists were
invited to meet with him at his dacha
outside of Moscow before the President
Putin headed off to America to meet with
President Bush at Camp David we asked
about some of the things have been
happening lately that it seemed to
rollback democracy and he here's what he
had to tell us he said quote if by
democracy one means the dissolution of
the state then we don't need any such a
democracy now of course we didn't mean
it that way and we didn't define it that
way but he did in sort of many Russians
you know what they the very word
democracy became associated in many
Russian minds with chaos and disorder
and crony capitalism and insecurity and
tanks in the streets and lost savings
and no guarantees and mafia and
corruption and so Putin basically had
tapped into this sense of discontent and
and defined democracy as something that
meant the collapse of the state
something to be avoided he said this
again to Bush in February 2005 when
President Bush again raised the subjects
Putin said democracy should not be
accompanied by the collapse of the state
and the impoverishment of the people now
I don't know anybody who thinks it
should but that was how he viewed it in
his eyes democracy and collapse the
state go hand in hand and that's what
happened to him
in 1991 the greatest geopolitical
catastrophe of the century so Russia is
left with what Lilia shevtsova the
carnegie moscow center very smart
observer of russian politics calls
imitation democracy a news media that
looks like CNN or Fox but actually
answers to the Kremlin core system with
trials and judges who still convict 99%
of it all
a parliament is formally elected but
actually has an opposition party
literally invented by the kremlin
elections were rivals who might actually
knock off the Kremlin's first choice or
then knocked off the ballot before
anybody can take a vote governors who
are ordered of reduced quotas of votes
in elections and now depend on the
Kremlin to keep their jobs a business
community that faces the prospect of
prosecution if it gets too involved in
politics you know Bouton's people have
been very clear about this Alexander
evolution was his first chief of staff
he would tell people around the Kremlin
Russian people are not ready for
democracy it may or may not be true but
that was the point of view that they
brought to the to the table others
weren't even keeping this quiet within
the Kremlin Valentina matviyenko is a
Putin advisor who became governor of st.
Petersburg and she told reporters once
who asked her about the idea of making a
more parliamentary democracy in Russia
she says we're not ready for such an
experiment the Russian mentality needs a
baron Azhar a president in a word a boss
now Putin's tough fisted rule combined
with soaring oil prices have transformed
Russia today when I visited last year a
massive new shopping mall had opened
just about a block or so from our
apartment where we had lived didn't they
hadn't even started construction when we
left they say it's the largest shopping
mall in all of Europe the day we arrived
in Rus Russia to report on Putin's
election in March 2000 akia opened his
first store in Russia 40,000 people
showed up that first day there was such
a craving for western-style consumer
goods and lifestyles that they flocked
to the doors of this of this new entry
into the market by the time I went back
last year to visit IKEA had five
furniture stores and eight malls in
Moscow and plans for 11 more it's now
the second largest landlord in all of
Moscow it's a dynamic City these days
it's it's traffic is horrendous but it's
because there are three times as many
cars on the roads because people can
afford them there is now at the
beginning of a middle class you now see
four hundred restaurants opening every
not all just the the high-end stuff for
the oligarchs and XPath but actually
stuff for the middle class for everyday
Russians the markets where most people
bought their meat and their their
vegetables and so forth when we first
got there have been closing down and is
instead you now see western-style
shopping you know grocery stores
supermarkets with much very good quality
food the economy overall you know is is
swimming in money it's grown fivefold
under Putin from 200 billion dollars to
920 billion dollars and a government
that in 1990 was basically an
international beggar today has paid off
all its foreign debt into in full and
early so this is a good thing obviously
to some extent this is obviously a
changing Russia so many Russians are
seeing themselves living better than
they ever have at the same time this
wealth hasn't trickled down everywhere
it's still confined mainly to Moscow and
to some extent st. Petersburg and the
second-tier cities some are unusually no
good and so forth in many places in
Russia many villages in Russia you can
go to and you'll see people who are
living the same way they did frankly
hundreds of years ago so it's a very
it's a country with multiple parts
multiple layers it's also a country that
demographically is in crisis Russia it
doesn't the government doesn't focus on
it as much as perhaps it ought to but in
fact it's a country that in some ways is
literally dying off every tent for every
ten babies born in Russia today 17
people die think about that think about
that the average lifespan for a Russian
man today is 58 years old they don't
have a Social Security problem because
people don't live long enough to collect
it Russians drink more smoked more
commit suicide more than practically of
any other people on earth they suffer
for some of the world's worst rates of
heart disease accidental death
tuberculosis hepatitis syphilis some
41,000 Russians die each year from
alcohol poisoning and what do you think
number is new nice days 417 thousand
Russians drown each year why they get
drunk and go swimming in Moscow alone 20
100 Russians fall out of windows every
year why they get drunk are they and
they fall or they push their their
friends are pushing them or what have
you I mean this is a crisis this is a
crisis and this crisis actually gotten
worse some people you know dismissed it
all said well it's always been this way
it's not in fact always been this way
it's a crisis that continues to escalate
in some ways and it's gotten even worse
in the last year because of hiv/aids
during the Soviet times they didn't have
hiv/aids as a problem there was a closed
society and only a handful of thousands
of people had it even as late as the the
mid to late night night 1990s but the
drug trade from Central Asia brought it
up in a fury through the heart of
Siberia into European Russia and it has
taken hold in a powerful way
grew faster in the time that we were in
Russia than any place on earth as a
matter of growth today the number of
Russians who were estimated to be
infected with Russia with with hiv/aids
is roughly comparable to the United
States which is a country now has twice
as much population and and more than two
decades of experience with the disease
and yet the Department of Health and we
were there had only four people dealing
with with hiv/aids and only a handful
basically of people were getting the
triple cocktail that's become much more
prevalent here in America by 2050
according to some estimates Russia's
population will fall from 144 million to
102 million and that's just one of the
most optimistic cerumen areas the one
that's the worst case scenario has it
following 277 million which would be
literally half its current population so
for all sorts of reasons then there's a
sense of unease still in Russia a sense
that they've lost something and that's
what Putin taps into when he calls the
collapse of the Soviet catastrophe one
recent poll found that 15 years later 61
percent of Russians regret the fall of
the Soviet Union we saw that repeatedly
in our years in Moscow
once at our own dinner table we had a
party a dinner for a variety of people
some Russians Europeans if we were the
only Americans maybe one other American
was
and young woman a friend of ours
yeah I think she maybe early 30s early
to mid 30s westernized smart educated
got very mad when we were talking about
Stalin and the negative way she says you
people don't understand we didn't have
it so bad in the Soviet Union things
were not so bad in Stalin was a good man
her husband is American and by
definition than their their son at the
time was an American citizen and they
clearly had his argument before and he
says to her but but honey you know how
can you say this Stalin did this he did
that and he says yes yes yes but you
know everybody has to kill people in
order to make a country run and he says
what do you think history is going to
remember Stalin as a hero or as a
villain and she says as a hero of course
he built our country one pole in Russia
today finds that 25 percent of Russians
say they would vote for Stalin for
president today now it's important to
understand this not because we're right
and they're wrong but because if we
don't understand how Russia sees their
own history and how Russia sees their
own past and their own experiences then
we can't possibly understand what
they're going to do today or tomorrow
you know to cover our eyes and pretend
that you know they're a westernized
country like us is to miss the very
essential nature of Russian history and
what they have been through and the
experiences they've had and how they
look at their life today and their place
in the world all this helps us explain
that Brezhnev nostalgia we were talking
about one Russian journalist wrote on a
website in December that Russians were
aching for the illusion of stability
that Brezhnev provided he wrote quote
people remember that wonderful feeling
of not having to worry about anything
because it was all decided for you and
you had simply to live peacefully go to
work and pick up your wages give the
people peace and quiet immerse them in
Nirvana and they will celebrate your
hundredth birthday with pleasure -
that's what the Russian journalist wrote
now as long as they remain peaceful
inquire Russians today can live
relatively unbothered by the state there
is those who try to influence the
country in a significant way though that
are risking harassment
Prison and violence you all have heard
I'm sure of Alexander Litvinenko the
former KGB officer who died from
radioactive poisoning in London and
captured such attention in the West you
know but he was actually only the latest
who had fallen out of favour to find
himself in harm's way
last year alone a woman named marina let
vinovich who had been a Kremlin adviser
but joined the opposition was attacked
in the street and what everybody not
everybody most people regarded as a
politically motivated assault she was
hit on the back and in the head from the
back she lost two of her teeth or leg
and back were injured faces bloodied and
bruised Marat Gelman was another guy who
had been an advisor to the Kremlin both
these who by the way are not Brooke and
you can read more about them he had
helped him create he'd helped the
Kremlin create this sort of faux
opposition party the the Nationalist
Party called Rodina he was a he was a
ally of the Kremlin and yet he was
beaten and when his art gallery hosted
the show by a Georgian artist because of
the time Russia and Georgia were so at
odds
ten men showed up into his in his
gallery with masks on beat him and tore
apart his gallery the list goes on and
on you may have heard of Anna
Politkovskaya who was the most prominent
Russian journalist she earned an
international reputation for her
crusading coverage of Chechnya she went
down there and tried to tell the stories
that nobody else was allowed to tell or
brave enough to talk about she was
gunned down last year in her apartment
building on Putin's birthday some people
actually believed it was a macabre
birthday present to him opposition
leaders such as Garry Kasparov we talked
about former prime minister Mikhail
Kasyanov who was Putin's own prime
minister you know are targeted by raids
and financial investigations and what's
at stake is not just political power and
I think that's one of the things you
have to keep in mind too as you watch
what's happening in Russia today Putin's
top lieutenants these days generally
serve not only as cabinet ministers but
also as the chairman of various
state-owned entities with billions and
billions of dollars under their control
lose the Kremlin and you lose access to
those accounts
so that's why Russian officials bristle
when we talked to them about democracy
they feel like their lecture they feel
like their condescended - and they also
feel threatened because their vast
interests at stake the 2008 question is
one that people in Moscow talked about
what will happen in 2008 what will
happen when Putin steps down
Constitution says he has stepped down
after two terms he has said he's going
to respect that and not change the
Constitution I have my doubts but let's
just say he does do that the question is
who does he pick as his successor and
that's the real question not who will be
elected but who does he pick because the
election will be a contest between
chosen people they'll be the one that
they want to win and they'll put out
some other people that they intend to be
competition but we're not genuinely
competitive and in fact actually swear
loyalty to the Kremlin so what we see
now is what I believe Churchill once
called critical is called watching
Russian politics like watching a pair of
Bulldogs fighting under a carpet you
sort of see the movement but you can't
quite define what's happening under
there and that's what's happening now
condi rice recently told us as she
looked back at the 15 years since that
promising moment when the Soviet
collapsed he says look it has not been a
straight line since then and that's true
it has not been there obviously a lot of
things that have changed for the better
in Russia it's still not the Soviet
Union and we have to remember that but
it also has not been a straight line to
the new future that everybody in the
West had thought might happen important
view all this talk from the West is just
a way of keeping Russia down he said
this last year he said quote their
devoted Soviet ologist who do not
understand what's happening in our
country and who didn't understand the
changing world there's no need to argue
with them they deserve a very brief
response to hell with you and that's
Putin's message right now to the west so
I'll open it up for questions and see if
we can't get a good dialogue going here
if we got a microphone if we got a
microphone
