The eXile
Yuck!-os Trial
The Big Ugly By Kirill Pankratov
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It is pretty interesting to recall what the Western media was writing about Khodorkovsky before he started throwing money at his huge PR campaign. The image was cold and clear-that of a poster child for Russian oligarchic abuses. Consider just one article in the Financial Times published on November 4, 1998. Khodorkovsky is contrasted-in not too flattering terms-with the hands-on and more humane approach, relatively speaking, of the boss of the neighboring Surgut, another oil major...
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Surely, one of the most infuriating aspects of modern media life -- at least here in the US where I happen to be nervously sitting at the moment -- is the lusty abandonment of narrative consistency and removal of even recent history from many 'news' stories.
So Khodorkovsky, described only a few short years ago by the 'quality press' as essentially a thief, was transformed, once the Putin vs. Khodorkovsky story was firmly in place, into a besieged reformer who looked anxiously (and innocently) out at the world from behind Euro-chic eyeglasses waiting for the West to save him. He only wanted to bring laptops, microwave popcorn and the 'western entrepreneurial spirit' to Putin's icy dictatorship we were told -- over and over again.
During the zenith of 'Trial of Khodorkovsky' mania the highlight of the inevitable K. moment was the carting out of the English speaking Russian who assured the audience that yes, everything about your life is awesome and everything about Russia is not -- with this terrible Khodorkovsky business being the most recent, unhappy example of Russia's general un-awesomeness.
'Is there any hope for democratic reform in Russia?' the interviewer would ask the Russian expert at the tail end. The answer always involved a lot of Putin bashing sometimes (depending upon which Russian expert was dishing and how much ass crack they were willing to lick) mixed in with a general condemnation of the Russian people for supporting this awful, awful man. Proof, the expert almost always sighed with a heavy sadness for his blind countrymen and women, of their political immaturity when compared with the dazzling West (we have large vehicles, low interest loans on houses the size of aircraft hangers and laptops made in Taiwan...are we not gods?).
After listening to, viewing and reading this Khodorkovsky story (with slight variations) several times in different outlets -- NPR, NYT, Wall Street Journal, etc. -- it occurred to me that it was long past time to just stop paying attention to what any of these people had to say about Russia and her neighbors.
.d.
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