Author: old_wp_importer

[crosspost from [livejournal](http://oedipamaas49.livejournal.com)]

Despite what a few people seem to think, I really didn’t [come here for the rioting](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6078052.stm). Still, I did spend a couple of hours wandering around the town centre – I may be spending most of my time at home, but you can’t listen to sirens and helicopters without getting a little curious.

In case you’ve missed the backstory: the political right have been pissed off for the past month or so, since somebody leaked a recording of the Prime Minister admitting (in pretty colourful language) that he lied to win the last election. Partly because of that, his party did badly in the local elections a few weeks ago. The president hinted that he wanted the Prime Minister to resign, the PM won a not-particularly-resounding vote of confidence, and things settled down a bit.

Then comes today, which is the 50th anniversary of an uprising against the Soviets. So that gives an excuse to start the whole thing again. Everybody has the day off work, there’s lots of flag-waving anyway, and it’s not hard to turn it against the Prime Minister who, being a socialist, gets painted as a sort-of communist clinging on. Veterans refuse to shake his hand, the opposition organise a demonstration, and by lunchtime it’s moved on to teargas and rubber bullets.

So I walked around a bit, stood around with a crowd of similarly-uninvolved gawkers and watched the police tear-gassing a protest. Then decided it’s a bit silly to get too involved in it all, given that I don’t even agree with the rioters. Plus there was far too much flag-waving for me – it’s something I have a not-entirely-irrational loathing of. Would have taken some photos, but -despite all your advice – I’ve not got my act together enough to buy a camera.

As before, there were an impressive number of 60-something-year-olds, although the angry young men were out in force again. Also: a total absence of ghouls around the edges selling whatever the right-wing Hungarian equivalent of the Socialist Worker is, and generally a sense that people don’t know what they’re doing. It’s nothing like, say, France, where everybody knows what happens at protests, they treat them as a fun day out, segregate themselves into little blocs and cliques.

Anyway, I think I’ve now fulfilled my quota of paying attention to Hungarian politics, so now I’ll just sit in my room and see how many hooligans get beaten up by the police.

Despite what a few people seem to think, I really didn’t come here for the rioting. Still, I did spend a couple of hours wandering around the town centre – I may be spending most of my time at home, but you can’t listen to sirens and helicopters without getting a

little

curious.

In case you’ve missed the backstory: the political right have been pissed off for the past month or so, since somebody leaked a recording of the Prime Minister admitting (in pretty colourful language) that he lied to win the last election. Partly because of that, his party did badly in the local elections a few weeks ago. The president hinted that he wanted the Prime Minister to resign, the PM won a not-particularly-resounding vote of confidence, and things settled down a bit.

Then comes today, which is the 50th anniversary of an uprising against the Soviets. So that gives an excuse to start the whole thing again. Everybody has the day off work, there’s lots of flag-waving anyway, and it’s not hard to turn it against the Prime Minister who, being a socialist, gets painted as a sort-of communist clinging on. Veterans refuse to shake his hand, the opposition organise a demonstration, and by lunchtime it’s moved on to teargas and rubber bullets.

So I walked around a bit, stood around with a crowd of similarly-uninvolved gawkers and watched the police tear-gassing a protest. Then decided it’s a bit silly to get too involved in it all, given that I don’t even agree with the rioters. Plus there was far too much flag-waving for me – it’s something I have a not-entirely-irrational loathing of. Would have taken some photos, but -despite all your advice – I’ve not got my act together enough to buy a camera.

As before, there were an impressive number of 60-something-year-olds, although the angry young men were out in force again. Also: a total absence of ghouls around the edges selling whatever the right-wing Hungarian equivalent of the Socialist Worker is, and generally a sense that people don’t know what they’re doing. It’s nothing like, say, France, where everybody knows what happens at protests, they treat them as a fun day out, segregate themselves into little blocs and cliques.

Anyway, I think I’ve now fulfilled my quota of paying attention to Hungarian politics, so now I’ll just sit in my room and see how many hooligans get beaten up by the police.

Trivial thought of the day brought to you by “I need to buy a *lot* of postcards some day soon”

Does anybody else feel silly writing somebody’s full name on envelopes? I mean, assuming there aren’t seven Mary-Sue’s or whatever at an address, it makes no difference to getting the thing there. And I’d never use the surname of a friend in conversation, unless there was some confusion over who I was talking about.

Yes, folks, you’ll have to head elsewhere for heartfelt confessions and words of wisdom tonight.

Do you ever get the feeling of

this is where it’s at

? That’s what I’ve been feeling as I start following Russian livejournals more closely. Every time I look, I find another embryonic political or social movement, full of potential to change Russia – and being largely ignored by the outside world.

Take the debates. Run by the youth movement “[Democratic Alternative](http://www.daproject.ru/)(*)” Every few weeks in Moscow, some of the leading lights of Russian livejournal get together for a [public political debate](http://dadebatam.ru/). They’re judged by the audience, and by a panel of popular bloggers.

The audience at an earlier debate

Many photos from yesterday’s event here

Their latest event was yesterday, pitting nationalist [Dmitri Rogozin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Rogozin) against economic liberal [Boris Nemtsov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Nemtsov). The debate was about Georgia, and Rogozin won, but the transcript of the debate hasn’t been posted yet.

Also, this blog doesn’t seem to like cyrillic much. I wonder if it’s Movable Type in general, or my setup, or what?

*: I’m not sure who funds them or what their background is, but they feel less astroturfed than most Russian ‘youth movements’

From [Anthony Cordesman’s latest paper](http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,3537/), via [Abu Aardvark](http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/10/cordesman_iraqi.html), a chart of violence in Iraq:

Spot the Askariyya mosque bombing.

Since I’ve been reading so many Russian livejournals recently, I figured I should do something useful with it. So I’ve got involved in Global Voices, a blog translation project. The plan is that I’ll post occasional snippets from Russian blogs, once a month or so. Here’s my first post, translating a Georgian post about the treatment of Georgians in Russia.

If Russia decides to escalate the dispute with Georgia, one option is for it to recognize Abkhazia as an independent state. Abkhazia is [pushing](http://www.regnum.ru/english/722014.html) Russia to do just that.

What makes this a plausible scenario is Kosovo. From Russia’s perspective, the situation of Abkhazia within Georgia is parallel to that of Kosovo within Serbia: regions enjoying de facto autonomy within hostile states, and pushing for formal self-determination. In [Putin’s words](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b55abaf4-dfc0-11da-afe4-0000779e2340.html):

“If someone believes that Kosovo should be granted full independence as a state, then why should we deny it to the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians?”

The implied ‘someone’ is the UN, where glacial negotiations are moving towards the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. Russia is unlikely to let this through the UN without demanding a similar decision on Abkhazia. It might not even wait for Kosovo to come up at the UN – ten days ago, for instance, [Mikhail Gorbachev](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/5b958386-975f-40ca-9824-90f0c1f1048f.html) wrote that the “

logic of international development may lead Russia to a situation in which we will have no other choice but to recognize Abkhazia

”