{"id":15002,"date":"2017-05-25T13:25:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T17:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=15002"},"modified":"2017-05-25T13:25:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T17:25:43","slug":"russian-support-for-vladimir-putin-and-freedom-of-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/25\/russian-support-for-vladimir-putin-and-freedom-of-expression\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian support for Vladimir Putin and freedom of expression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Growing up in the 1970s I was told by American media that Russia was to blame for everything that wasn&#8217;t going well here in the U.S. This is apparently still true today. A one-day (May 16) sample from Facebook:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Trump Revealed Highly Classified Intelligence to Russia&#8221; (nytimes; referenced by a concerned Facebook friend)<\/li>\n<li>The guy under investigation for illegal ties to Russia leaks classified material to the&#8230;Russians! Yes, but she used email<\/li>\n<li>Another Russian Connected To Trump Has Turned Up Dead \u2013 That\u2019s 8 So Far<\/li>\n<li>DEMAND A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR ON RUSSIA (<a href=\"https:\/\/action.aclu.org\/secure\/demand-special-prosecutor\">ACLU<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Trump&#8217;s business network reached alleged Russian mobsters<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Top Senate Democrat Calls on White House to Release Trump-Russia Meeting Transcripts&#8221; (nytimes)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Our media portrays Russians as living under a cruel dictatorship. Vladimir Putin and his friends are stealing all of their money. Our go-to &#8220;look how they abuse their women&#8221; slam against enemies doesn&#8217;t work with Russians (since women obtained an equal role in their society 100 years ago) so we decry the cruel oppression of gay and transgender people by a heteronormative government.<\/p>\n<p>What was it like on the ground? I visited Moscow, which I was told was the part of Russia <em>least<\/em> likely to support Putin. Nonetheless, I met Putin supporters and Russians of all political persuasions agreed that Putin would win 65-70 percent of the vote in a completely free election. Putin is credited with eliminating corruption and chaos at local and intermediate levels of government. Although Russians might be happy to live in an English- or German-style parliamentary democracy, they don&#8217;t see this as the alternative to Putin. Instead they envision pervasive corruption, violence, and looting. What about the fact that Putin and people close to the government seem to have become richer than typical civil servants? [Though let&#8217;s keep in mind that these folks haven&#8217;t made anywhere near as much money, in the aggregate, as cronies of the U.S. government! Consider\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/30\/business\/30aig.html\">the $182 billion A.I.G. bailout<\/a>, for example, and all of the Wall Streeters protected from their own incompetence thereby.] &#8220;I look at Putin as a hedge fund manager,&#8221; said one Russian. &#8220;We have about $500 billion in foreign currency reserves and Putin should get a fee for managing that. At least he hasn&#8217;t buried us in debt the way that Bush and Obama buried the Americans.&#8221; (A Boston-based emerging markets bond fund manager confirmed Putin&#8217;s basic fiscal prudence:\u00a0&#8220;When oil prices went up, Russia paid off a lot of its debt early. Compare that to Venezuela where they spent it on social programs and making Hugo Chavez&#8217;s daughter a billionaire.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Russia has a flat 13-percent individual income tax, a flat 20-percent corporate income tax, and a European-style value-added tax of 10-18 percent (<a href=\"http:\/\/taxsummaries.pwc.com\/ID\/Russian-Federation-Corporate-Other-taxes\">PWC<\/a>). They are suffering from more or less permanent &#8220;austerity&#8221; because the government\u00a0spends only about what it takes in via revenue. I.e., they don&#8217;t have deficit spending.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/31\/tyler-cowen-asks-if-we-can-do-big-projects\/\">Tyler Cowen said<\/a> that the stagnation of the U.S. economy shouldn&#8217;t make us weep\u00a0because we now have the option of\u00a0same-sex marriage (and, fortunately for litigators, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realworlddivorce.com\/\">divorce<\/a>). Russians certainly don&#8217;t have this option. Is the oppression of gays as bad as portrayed in the American media? &#8220;You can be as gay as you like here,&#8221; said one expat. From the <em>Lonely Planet Moscow<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Moscow is the most cosmopolitan of Russian cities, and the active gay and lesbian scene reflects this attitude. Newspapers such as The Moscow Times feature articles about gay and lesbian issues, as well as listings of gay and lesbian clubs. Visit Gay.ru (http:\/\/ english.gay.ru) for up-to-date information, good links and a resource for putting you in touch with personal guides.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Students at the university that I visited had a much more diverse set of opinions regarding social and political issues than their American counterparts. On the issue of gay rights, for example, students at the same cafeteria table might range from someone actively interested in promoting LBGTQ issues (maybe not the Transgender part, though; I didn&#8217;t hear anyone mention gender ID) to someone who would openly say &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t bother me if people want to have sex in their apartments, but I don&#8217;t want to hear about it.&#8221; They could all go back to eating after discovering these differences, instead of one group trying to enforce political orthodoxy on the other! What do university students who don&#8217;t put energy into enforcing conformity do with all of their leftover time and energy? I met economics masters students who not only knew the names of a bunch of (Russian-language) poets, but actually had poems memorized!<\/p>\n<p>As in Soviet times, though there is probably more freedom of expression in social and work situations than we have here in the Boston area (e.g., you can express your opposition to race-based hiring preferences at your employer, but you won&#8217;t have a job a day later!), running a mass-market TV network with 24\/7 anti-government stories wouldn&#8217;t work. People thought that Putin would still win in totally free elections in a country with totally free media, so restrictions on media may not have any practical effect on the government.<\/p>\n<p>What about something that corresponds to our obsession with Russians controlling important events here in the U.S.? Are there Russian stories about how various officials are being manipulated by Americans or the American government? There don&#8217;t seem to be. Government-influenced Russian media do seem to enjoy pointing out American hypocrisy and of course we give them plenty to choose from. The\u00a0Land of Liberty (TM) has the world&#8217;s highest incarceration rate. The Land of Opportunity (TM) has a massive underclass. From those two contradictions alone the Russians can fill all of the pages that they want with stories that make us look ridiculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing up in the 1970s I was told by American media that Russia was to blame for everything that wasn&#8217;t going well here in the U.S. This is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Russian support for Vladimir Putin and freedom of expression - 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