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Putinism: the ideology - 02 - 2013. LSE IDEAS public lecture Date: Tuesday 12 February 2013 Time: 6.30-8pm Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building Speaker: Professor Anne Applebaum Containing elements of managed democracy and corporate capitalism – and reflecting the culture and values of the 1980s KGB – Putinism is now taught to Russian children and propagated in the media. It has an ostensible goal: along with protecting the power and wealth of Putin and his inner circle, it proposes to make Russia strong and feared again. Anne Applebaum is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2012-13 academic year. Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSEPutinism This event is free and open to all with no ticket required.

Podcast & Video A podcast and video of this event is available to download from Putinism: the ideology|. Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel|. Who was Leon Trotsky? Leon Trotsky was something of a hero for a part of the anti-Stalinist left from the 1930s through at least the 1970s. Sidney Hook and John Dewey offered substantive support to Trotsky and his reputation during and after the end of his life through Dewey's role in the "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials".

Trotsky was a theoretician of communism, a strategist, a man of letters, and the merciless chief of the Red Army immediately following the success of the Boshevik Revolution (represented by the character of Strelnikov in Dr. Zhivago!). Expelled from the USSR by Stalin in 1929, he spent the rest of his life in exile in a series of countries and was assassinated by Stalin's agent in 1940 in Mexico City. The Trotskyist left opposed Stalin's policies long before other segments of the European left did so. So it is all about ideas, political commitments, and the march of history (as well sometimes as the personal weaknesses of others). A PR disaster: Five views on Pussy Riot's war. There is a rock garden at the Ryoan-ji temple near Kyoto, Japan. Its fame consists of the spacing of its 15 stones, which are arranged in a manner such that an observer can only ever see 14 of them from any horizontal vantage point.

It represents a simple but profound idea: Only by contemplating an issue from many different angles can you discover the location of the 15th stone. Yet all too frequently, as regards Russia in general and the case against Pussy Riot in particular, Western journalists have eschewed walking. Instead, they bring along a big telescope, zoom in on two or three stones, and declare it a done deal: Putin pursuing a vendetta against his detractors; sinister black-garbed Orthodox monks attempting to theocratise society; a patriarchal order swinging the baton down on the pussies that dared riot.

It is a lot more complex than that. I do not claim to have found the 15th stone, but I promise to put away the telescope and take you on a leisurely stroll instead.

The Russian Economy

Turning the tables on Russia’s power elite — the story behind the Magnitsky Act. I have my family history to blame for the fact that I ended up working in Moscow. My grandmother was from Russia and my grandfather was the head of the American Communist Party between 1932 and 1945 (he was subsequently persecuted in the 1950’s). So when I was growing up as a teenager and going through my teenage rebellion, I thought the best way of rebelling against a family of communists was to become a capitalist.

I ended up studying economics at the University of Chicago, probably the most right-wing institution in America, and then I enrolled at the Stanford Business School. I graduated business school the year the Berlin Wall came down and as I started contemplating the next stage of my life, I had a personal epiphany: ‘if my grandfather was the biggest communist in America, I should become the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe’. So I set off to do just that. The Sidanco scandal Shocked by the financial and the moral implications of the scheme, I started a campaign to fight it.

"Putin’s Ironic Potential" by Lilia Shevtsova. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin’s recapture of the Russian presidency has been met with widespread derision, both at home and abroad. But the autocrat’s return to the Kremlin could be Russia’s best hope to escape stagnation. With his open contempt for Russian society – exemplified in his mocking response to widespread demonstrations – as well as his arrogance, readiness to stifle dissent, and fear of competition, Putin has singlehandedly quashed the long-held myth that he himself propagated: personalized power can modernize the country while preserving stability.

To be sure, Putin’s Kremlin – and his corrupt cohorts – still calls the shots. Moreover, Putin’s Kremlin has used the West – eager for engagement and a policy “reset” with Russia – to legitimize its authoritarian rule and to provide opportunities for its venal cronies’ integration into Western society. But cracks are forming in Russian society, threatening the status quo.

Russian Politics

Russia's Energy Diplomacy. Russian Foreign Policy. Russia in world politics. Articles. Russia - reading... In Moscow’s Shadows. Russia - curators... The Kremlin versus the bloggers: the battle for cyberspace. Russian’s cyberspace looks pretty free compared to that of China, where access to Facebook, Twitter and independent websites is blocked by the government.

The Kremlin has been involved in the creation of new media websites since 2000, but for many years the blogosphere and social networks were left to develop unnoticed. It was only towards the end of the 2000s that the Kremlin made its first incursions into the blogosphere, and the Arab Spring, when several Middle Eastern regimes were toppled, finally alerted the government and its security chiefs to the role of social networks in the organisation of protest actions. The security services’ position It looks as though the security services began to formulate a policy on blogging and social networks in the wake of the Arab Spring, but didn’t manage to come up with anything before the start of the December protests in Moscow. The Kremlin’s strategy Cyber-activism Intellectual support Who is winning the battle? P.S. Privatisation, but no private property. Every time I hear about yet another programme of privatisation I feel like asking: how can assets be converted into a form of property that does not exist in Russia?

For that matter things are not so clear with state property either. Let’s start with that. The collective-private property of the bureaucracy The concept of state owned property is to a large extent a judicial fiction. Especially when it is called public property, or ‘the people’s’ property, as it was known in Socialist times. After all, what is property but the right of control and disposal? To discover who owns something, we need to ask who has that right. 'Autocracy is a black box.

The radical critic of the State, American economist Murray Rothbard, had no illusions on this account. It could be argued that these definitions are not universally applicable. 'The early 90s saw the privatisation voucher campaign in Russia. Autocracy is a black box. Supposedly private or actually bureaucratic The hunting field. Mother’s boys: conversations with the parents of Russia’s neo-Nazis. I often observe them in court. They sigh and observe how their son – accused of 15 murders – has lost weight.

They wink at him furtively. They beg the guard to loosen his handcuffs, oblivious to the voice of the prosecutor: ‘…demonstrating their own superiority over people of non-Slavic origin, they attacked the victim K., whose external appearance indicated Asian ethnicity, and struck him with a knife no less than 26 times in the head and other parts of the body, causing wounds to the chest, which penetrated the right and left pleural and abdominal cavities with damage to the right and left lungs, the left part of the diaphragm, the spleen, the third and ninth ribs on the left, and the chest, as a result of which the victim died from severe loss of blood’.

I want to ask: did you know, did you guess, did you support this? Neo-nationalism in Russia is growing and becoming more overt. One has adopted the views of their only child and says that violence is necessary. ‘Vasya is a warrior. From Russia With Hate. To Our Faithful Current.com Users: Current's run has ended after eight exciting years on air and online. The Current TV staff has appreciated your interest, support, participation and unflagging loyalty over the years.

Your contributions helped make Current.com a vibrant place for discussing thousands of interesting stories, and your continued viewership motivated us to keep innovating and find new ways to reflect the voice of the people. We now welcome the on-air and digital presence of Al Jazeera America, a new news network committed to reporting on and investigating real stories affecting the lives of everyday Americans in every corner of the country. You can keep up with what's new on Al Jazeera America and see this new brand of journalism for yourself at Thank you for inspiring and challenging us.

. – The Current TV Staff.