Heh, but Chris that was from the American Outlook, a rag put out by the rightist Hudson Institute (founded by Herman Kahn, no?). And, I've seen Kagarlitsky cited on the stuff that the rightists at the Jamestown Foundation put out too. Betcha, I could find him cited at CSIS and AEI's magazine too.
I take your point though! Too often harried lefties here designate one figure from abroad to be the EXPERTMAXIMUS. (Or, like Z magazine publishing, the RCP's, Revoltionary Wanker correspondent, Larry Everest on Tibet! Next time Dennis Bernstein on KPFA's Flashpoints has that geek on, I'll send the show the article on Tibet from the latest New Left Review.) Michael Pugliese ---------------- Kag also shows up on left.ru, which tends to have a pan-Slavist nationalist flavor.
It has often perplexed me how Kagarlitsky got to be the Voice of Russia of Western lefties. Don't get me wrong, I respect Kagarlitsky as a person, but the man's analyses are just plain wierd and sometimes strike me as almost willfully ignorant of reality, like he's completely reforming everything to meet the demands of his utopian worldview. He makes demands that are absolutely impossible, like expecting the Kremlin to both a) crack down on the oligarchy and b) not be authoritarian. It is impossible to crack down on the oligarchy without being authoritarian. It cannot be done.
There are lots of other interesting commentators on Russia -- Medvedev, Delyagin, Menshikov, Shubin among many others. Somehow Kagarlitsky seems to have eclipsed them all in the Western lefty view, I think in part because he writes like a Western lefty.
Z magazine has as its Russia Watch link Trotskyist dogma-filled International Solidarity with Workers in Russia, which has just about zero relevance to contemporary Russia. Blech.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal