YES, the “shock therapy” system of piratizing state industries was a ginormous disaster for Russians.

But, NO, Putin is not some friend of the common man who is fighting oligarchs and the US on a common front.

Investigations and prosecutions have been pitifully few given the scale of the waste of public wealth.

Putin has not taken steps to recover that wealth.

Russia is, like China in different ways, getting the worst of both dictatorship and capitalism.

To see what sort of publications he writes for, try “Northstar Compas” which is a neo-Stalinist rag “Dedicated to the Re-Establishment of the Soviet Union as a Socialist State.”

Scroll down to the cartoon which features an antisemitic caricature of a hook-nosed Jew in an Uncle Sam hat to getthe flavour.

Walberg credits his article (unreadably bad) to both his pseudonym and his real name: “Andijan Massacre In Uzbekistan, By Simon Jones, With thanks to Eric Walberg.”

I would suggest that, if you disagree with something someone has written, you provide a better argument, and don’t descend into infantile name calling. Just because people don’t accept your view of the world doesn’t mean they are “brainwashed.” Who designated you the person to decide who is sane and who is not?

What credentials do you have to evaluate what has or has not been going on in Russia?

“Dangerous combination of populist pressure from below and international pressure from above.” What a fantasy! Popular pressure from below is dangerous? Tell that to the editors of DV! What kind of elitist are you? International pressure? To do what? To feed their people and listen to them? Your Russian friends tried to murder Viktor Yushchenko, and you’re only concerned about “international” (read Western pressure). Well, we did express ourselves about the murder of Georgyi Gongadze, as did many of his fellow Ukrainians. You have of course heard the Kuchma tapes? Pretty vile stuff. Frankly what’s wrong with destroying these post-communist regimes? They weren’t even socialist so why should you care about them?

You have a strange view of democracy. It all boils down to feeding the Russian masses chicken legs? The moral authority of any regime rests on the consent of the governed, not on whether they sign on to any Western aid programs. Since when and by what definition is democracy building a “pretense”? Your defense of Lukashenko is truly absurd. “quirky charismatic leader”? Try despot. How does the U.S. “lecture” to the minorities of Russia? What proof do you offer to your assertion that the Uzbeks and Georgians are tired of being “lectured” at. Actually, the Georgians look to the U.S. and the West as their only bulwark to preserve the territorial integrity of their country which happens to be occupied by Russian, not NATO troops.

Western advisors didn’t help Yeltsin to dismantle the USSR – it collapsed on its own after the August 1991 coup. Remember? What they did try to do was to offer economic advice and assistance to smooth the transition to a market economy – something where they accomplished very little.

Check the words of the Russian anthem and compare them with “Soiuz Nerushimiy.” The music is the same but the words are quite different. Less damming view of the Soviet past? Only 5 million people were sent to the gulags? Even Hitler built the autobahns. More disinformation. Polotivskaya’s murderers have not been brought to justice, although the Russians arrested some hapless Chechens. Look at the litany of murders that have been going on unpunished in the “sovereign democracy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya_assassination

Noisy parliament exacerbating regional and ideological differences? Hey, wake up! Some people call that DEMOCRACY. The Russians don’t aspire to be the ideological alternative to European democracy as they have nothing to offer on that score. What they do aspire is to reclaim control over the errant respubliky, including the Estonians, whom they outnumber by 100 to 1 who dared to interfere in their own internal affairs. Remember that the Russians sent in a Zhdanov-style delegation to demand the resignation of their government? There’s a word for that in Russian, “imperializm.”
Finally, to pander to his Al Ahram readers, Mr. W wrote:.
Then there’s the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which sets out just such a programme in albeit an overtly grotesque form and is solemnly disowned by Zionists as a forgery, though a forgery of what is never made clear.

Mr Walberg is just a pathetic old man clinging desperately to an ideology that the world has left high and dry!