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Washington Post, May 30, 2003

Potemkin Democracy

Editorial

WHEN HE VISITS St. Petersburg this weekend, President Bush will see gleaming spires, fresh paint and the faces of hundreds of officials and diplomats, all there to celebrate the city's 300th anniversary. He will not see any homeless people or meet many of the locals: The homeless have been cleared from the streets in anticipation of the event, and the locals have been told that they would be better off leaving town. Some of the unrestored buildings will be masked by large billboards. A fence will line the road from the airport so that the dignitaries cannot see the poverty.

In other words, the tradition of the Potemkin village lives on -- and not only in St. Petersburg. In recent weeks the Bush administration has recommended a large cut in funding of aid to Russia -- more than a third from the past fiscal year -- which will probably kill off some of the programs Russia needs most: those that promote human rights and democratization. The Office of Management and Budget has told both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that it is time for Russia to "graduate" from democracy assistance, presumably on the grounds that Russia is now a democracy. But while Russia is a far more open society than it used to be, many of the media are still controlled, the judicial system is still corrupt and opponents of the president find it ever harder to maneuver. If the administration believes this is full democracy, then it has been fooled by a barely plausible facade.

Some suspect the real justification for the cuts is financial. If so, that is extremely shortsighted. Relatively speaking, the amount of money involved is small and the impact of these programs is potentially large. If, as others suspect, they are being cut because President Vladimir Putin no longer approves of them, then the shortsightedness is even more pronounced. Congress rightly spends billions of dollars every year to ensure that Russia's weapons of mass destruction are dismantled -- but if Russia were a more open society, with a fully free media and more robust opposition, control over these weapons would be easier to establish. Congress should fully fund the aid programs, as well as the grants it has authorized -- but not appropriated -- to organizations in this country, such as the Andrei Sakharov Archives, that promote human rights in Russia.

Many in Washington long to build a "strategic partnership" with Russia in the war on terrorism; but until Russia shares more of America's values, that relationship will always be fragile, as Russia's behavior in the weeks before the war in Iraq proved. The democratization of Russia is something the United States should care about, not merely because it is right but because it makes strategic sense.

 

See also:

Russia-US Relations

Washington Post, May 30, 2003

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