“Yanks to the Rescue,” 7/15/1996 Time cover. US proudly interfered in Russia’s 1996 presidential election to re-elect Yeltsin: “The Americans were “vital,” says Mikhail Margolev, who coordinated the Yeltsin account at Video International…. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin’s campaign.” Re-published 6/24/2001, “Rescuing Boris,” Time, Michael Kramer
Added: “One reason why Yeltsin was the West’s darling-while Mr. Putin is the target of virulent attacks–was that his policies perfectly suited the Western agenda for Russia, a superpower-turned economic and military weakling, a subservient client state and a source of cheap energy and minerals. By contrast, Russia’s resurgence under Mr. Putin is seen as upsetting the global balance of power and threatening the U.S. unipolar model….The West outrageously ignores the opinion of the Russian people.”
3/20/2008, “Why the West loved Yeltsin and hates Putin,“ thehindu.com, Vladimir Radyuhi
“One reason why Yeltsin was the West’s darling—while Mr. Putin is the target of virulent attacks–was that his policies perfectly suited the Western agenda for Russia, a superpower-turned economic and military weakling, a subservient client state and a source of cheap energy and minerals. By contrast, Russia’s resurgence under Mr. Putin is seen as upsetting the global balance of power and threatening the U.S. unipolar model….[Link, Yeltsin Time cover, “Yanks to the Rescue,” 7/15/1996]
In Russia, Yeltsin is associated with plunging the country into chaos, reducing a majority of Russians to abject poverty and awarding the country’s oil, gas and other mineral riches to a handful of rapacious oligarchs, who plundered Russia and played Kremlin powerbrokers. The West lauded him as the “father of Russian democracy” who buried communism. Yeltsin remained “Friend Boris” to the West even after he sent tanks to blast his political opponents from Parliament in 1993. In Russia, he faced impeachment charges for this and other “crimes against the nation.”… Mr. Putin’s “controlled democracy” involves centralisation of power, government control over most electronic and some printed media, and Kremlin-supervised grooming of political parties. This policy helped to curb the chaos of the 1990s and bring about political stability that has underpinned economic growth.
At the same time, the communist-era restrictions on personal freedoms are gone. Russians can choose where to live, what books to read and how much money to earn. They are free to marry foreigners and emigrate. They love travelling abroad, fondly drive Fords, Mercedes and Toyotas, and shop for Western goods in the crowded malls lining the streets of Russian cities. The West has denied Mr. Putin’s Russia any democratic credential because it “challenges the prerogative of the dominant democratic powers, in practice the U.S., to judge what is and what is not democratic,” says Russia expert Vlad Sobell of the Daiwa Institute of Research.
According to the petrified “ideological orthodoxy” of the West, “modern democracy was incubated predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon culture and, following the defeat of totalitarian empires in the 20th century, it was spread by the victorious powers throughout Western Europe and Japan,” and more recently in the former Soviet Union and also initially in Yeltsin’s Russia.
The rise of new Russia has undermined America’s self-arrogated right to decide what is good and what is evil, to award marks for good or bad behaviour, and to impose “democratic transformation” on other nations, either by war as in Iraq, or through “colour revolutions” as in Georgia and Ukraine.
If Mr. Putin’s Russia is accepted as an emerging democracy, rather than as a successor to the “evil empire,” it will be difficult to justify the new containment policy the U.S. has set in train, surrounding Russia with a ring of military bases and missile interceptors. Nor would one be able to easily dismiss Moscow’s criticism of the aggressive and arrogant U.S. behaviour across the world.
As Mr. Putin asked in his famous Munich speech, if Russia could carry out a peaceful transition from the Soviet regime to democracy, why should other countries be bombed at every opportunity for want of democracy? Hence the Herculean effort of Western opinion-makers to paint everything Mr. Putin does in evil colours.
The U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights in 2007 mounted the harshest attack yet on the state of freedom in Russia, while the U.S. Freedom House listed it as one of the several “energy-rich dictatorships.” Republican presidential candidate John McCain has accused Mr. Putin of “trying to restore the old Russian empire,” and “perpetuating himself in power” by installing his “puppet” Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin.
In sticking labels on Russian leaders, the West outrageously ignores the opinion of the Russian people. Russians showed what they thought of Yeltsin’s legacy when they voted out of Parliament twice in recent years the liberal parties that had supported his policies in the 1990s. They demonstrated their support for Mr. Putin’s policies when they triumphantly re-elected him for a second term in 2004 and when they overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Medvedev in March 2008.
Mr. Putin bluntly told the West that its criticism of his policies would not induce his successor to strike a softer posture in foreign policy. “I am long accustomed to the label by which it is difficult to work with a former KGB agent,” Mr. Putin said at a recent press conference. “Dmitry Medvedev will be free from having to prove his liberal views. But he is no less a Russian nationalist than me, in the good sense of the word, and I do not think our partners will find it easier to deal with him.”
For his part, Mr. Medvedev, while pledging that “freedom in all its manifestations — personal freedom, economic freedom and, finally, freedom of expression” — would be “at the core of our politics,” said democratic values would be adopted in line with Russia’s “national tradition.””
9/9/2016, “Clinton and Russia: Has US Media Forgotten the 1990s?" New Eastern Outlook, Caleb Maupin
“US media is filled with unproven allegations that Russia is working to defeat Hillary Clinton at the polls in November. Despite no solid evidence being provided, [Mrs.] Clinton continues to allege that Russia is responsible for the leaking of DNC e-mails, and mainstream media echoes her allegation.
What motive could possibly exist for this alleged crime?
According to [Mrs.] Clinton it is about ideology. As Clinton put it in her recent speech: “The grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Essentially, [Mrs.] Clinton argues that Putin holds similar political views to Trump, and is trying to get him elected.
The unproven allegations based on a rather loose perception of ideological similarities, forces students of American history to recall the Cold War rhetoric of the far- right. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. was frequently called a Soviet agent by the US right-wing simply because both Soviet Communists and the Civil Rights Activists believed in racial equality. In the early 1960s, a widely circulated documentary from Edward G. Griffin purported to “prove” a link between the Civil Rights Movement and the Cuban government because “Venceremos” and “We Shall Overcome” have a similar meaning.
Regardless of unproven allegations and perceived ideological similarities, when discussing Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, and Russia, there is an obvious factor that is being left out. It’s an entire decade called the 1990s.
[President Bill] Clinton’s Man-Made Famine
Americans generally have no idea what life was like for Russians during the 1990s. They naively assume that because Russia swiftly adopted capitalism, the result was great economic prosperity. The reality was quite different.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin took office and dramatically re-organized Russia’s economy on free market lines. When Bill Clinton was elected as President of the United States, it was widely understood that Yeltsin was “Clinton’s man.” According to the US Bureau of Public Affairs, Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton were very close. The official US government website states: “Clinton was strongly inclined not only to like Yeltsin but also to support his policies, in particular, his commitment to Russian democracy.” US President Bill Clinton met with Boris Yeltsin 18 times while he was in office.
The US Bureau of Public Affairs goes on to explain exactly how the administration of Bill Clinton pushed Yeltsin’s free market policies : “At the time, and periodically throughout his term in office, Yeltsin faced growing opposition at home to his efforts to liberalize the economy and enact democratic reforms in Russia. At Vancouver, [Pres. Bill] Clinton promised Yeltsin strong support in the form of financial assistance to promote various programs, including funds to stabilize the economy… Although not always able to deliver such assistance, [Bill] Clinton also supported Yeltsin and his position on economic and political matters by other means.”
While only 6% of the Russian public approved of Yeltsin’s “reforms,” the Clinton administration directed and sponsored the Yeltsin administration’s efforts in Russia. With the approval of Washington, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, Yeltsin privatized state owned industries, lifted price controls, and in the process left millions of Russians in desperate conditions. US economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University was dispatched to Russia in order to oversee the process.The result was not the establishment of a free market paradise, but rather a huge catastrophe. US Senator Bill Bradley explained it this way: “30% unemployment, rampant inflation, pensions gone, savings gone, 30 or 40 years… it’s all gone. No jobs. A few people doing very well, who bought all assets from the state, but the average person, no.”
According to Naomi Klein’s 2007 book “The Shock Doctrine” between 1991 and 1998 “more than 80 percent of Russian farms had gone bankrupt and roughly seventy thousand state factories had closed creating an epidemic of unemployment.” As a result, 74 million Russians were living below the poverty line. Klein goes on to say that “25 percent of Russians – almost 37 million people – lived in poverty described as ‘desperate.’”
During the 1990s, when Yeltsin was dramatically changing the country under the direction of the Clinton administration, the rate of drug addiction in Russia increased by 900 percent. The suicide rate almost doubled. HIV, which had previously only infected no more than fifty thousand Russians, became a nationwide epidemic with millions contracting AIDs.
An entire population of people who had lived with guaranteed employment, guaranteed healthcare, old age pensions, and a planned economy saw the social safety net swept from underneath them, as widely unpopular policies, backed by Washington, were imposed on the country. US Senator Bill Bradley describes the tone of US diplomats in their interactions with Russia, saying Clinton administration officials spoke of “stuffing shit down Boris throat,” gleefully taking pleasure in ordering him to wreck his country’s economy.
Anti-Communist scholars frequently accuse Stalin and other Soviet leaders of creating “man-made famines.” Sometimes the anti-communist scholars will say these “man made famines” amounted to “genocide.” The words used by many people to describe what US President Bill Clinton and economist Jeffrey Sachs presided over in Russia during the 1990s sound a lot like descriptions of a “man-made famine.”
Naomi Klein quotes a Russian Academic named Vladimir Gusev as saying “The years of criminal capitalism have killed off 10 percent of our population.” Russia’s population decreased by 6.6 million between 1992 and 2006. Klein quotes US Economist Andre Gunder Frank calling what took place in Russia as “economic genocide.” Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi used the same words as the policies were beginning in 1992, saying it would have catastrophic results for children and the elderly.
[Mrs.] Clinton Represents Neo-Liberalism
When people speculate that Russia is intervening in US elections, why is Clinton’s record in Russia not discussed? The last time Hillary Clinton was residing in the White House, though only as the first lady, millions of Russians lives were ruined in what some have called an “economic genocide.” Is this fact not relevant in discussing Russia and 2016 US Presidential elections?
It has only been since the ascension of Vladimir Putin that the situation in Russia has improved. During the first eight years of Putin’s presidency, wages doubled and the poverty rate was reduced by 14%. During this same period Russia experienced overall industrial expansion of more than 70%. The country’s Gross Domestic Product increased from $764 billion to $2096.8 billion between 2007 and 2014. John Browne, the CEO of BP has praised Putin’s policies saying “No country has come so far, in such a short space of time.”
What was the secret to fixing Russia’s economy? Putin dropped many of the extreme free market policies that had been championed by Clinton and Yeltsin. Russia’s economy re-emerged primarily due to public control of oil and natural gas. The Russian economy is now centered around state controlled natural resources with a very high rate of public ownership. Putin’s “National Priorities Project” focused on building a social safety net for the population. The Russian government has also created “Nashi” summer camps, hoping to cultivate and train the best and brightest young Russians to work for the good of their nation.
Despite being described as “left,” both Hillary Clinton and her husband are closely identified with neoliberalism and privatizations. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political careers are closely associated with the Democratic Leadership Council, a non-profit organization that maneuvered within the Democratic Party to push for free market policies and undermine the remaining Social-Democratic and Rooseveltian factions that existed in the late 1980s. Bill Clinton signed the widely unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
In the aftermath of de-industrialization, which escalated under Bill Clinton’s presidency, some regions of the United States are experiencing things similar to what took place in Russia during the 1990s. Factories have closed their doors, with the stable employment and high wages they symbolized being eliminated. Heroin addiction and suicide rates across the United States are the highest they have been in decades.
Donald Trump’s campaign has made a point of reaching out to those who have been highly affected by de-industrialization in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to left-wing Film-maker Michael Moore: “Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton, as the first lady of President Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State during the first years of the Obama administration, is associated with the swift imposition of globalist capitalism and the deregulation of markets.
As Secretary of State, Clinton directed NATO’s destruction of Libya. Libya once had an Islamic Socialist government that was centered around publicly owned oil resources. Libya had the highest life expectancy on the African continent. Like her husband’s efforts to dismantle the Soviet system in Russia, [Mrs.] Clinton’s toppling of “Islamic Socialism” and imposition of “Free Markets” have been disastrous for Libya. The conditions in Libya have gotten so bad since the 2011 intervention that thousands of people have drowned, fleeing the country on rafts, hoping to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe.
In the minds of many people across the planet, Hillary Clinton stands for free market policies,imposed by globalist banking institutions based in western countries. These policies have arguably resulted in an extreme amount of societal decay, and won [Mrs.] Clinton many enemies.
When discussing the prospects of Hillary Clinton re-entering the White House, and how this is perceived across the planet, including Russia, this factor cannot be ignored.”
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Added: From link above, State Dept. Historian, Pres. Bill Clinton and Yeltsin, 1993-2000:
“[Pres. Bill] Clinton objected to Russian military intervention in the autonomous region of Chechnya, including the siege of Grozny, which began in January 1995; and Yeltsin objected to U.S. military intervention in Bosnia, including NATO airstrikes in September. The Dayton Agreement, which ended the Bosnian War in December, and the Khasavyurt Accord, which ended the First Chechen War in August 1996, did not resolve growing tensions between the two countries. At its meeting in Madrid, July 1997, NATO formally invited three former Soviet satellites—Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—to join the [NATO] alliance; and in March 1999, less than two weeks after their membership became effective, NATO began to bomb Serbia, Russia’s ally, in an effort to end its military operations in Kosovo.
Yeltsin denounced but could not deflect either development. Likewise, Clinton could do little but protest five months later as Russia began a massive bombing campaign in the Second Chechen War. When Yeltsin suddenly resigned from office in December [1999], however, Clinton praised his counterpart for helping to achieve “genuine progress” in U.S.-Russian relations.”
“Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
https://journal-neo.org/2016/09/09/clinton-russia-has-us-media-forgotten-the-1990s/”
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Comment: US elites are just as scornful of average Americans as they are of average Russians. In 2016 they made it quite clear that US presidential elections are just for show, no different from elections in Communist China.
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