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STEPHEN COHEN: Well, let me sum it up. It will be social democracy plus Russian nationalism. That's been the Communist Party's attempt to build its electorate. The social democracy. or let's put it in plain terms. The old Soviet cradle-to-grave welfare state is much-desired and much-missed by a very large segment of the population, but mostly an elderly segment. The nationalism is, of course a rising force throughout Russia. This was the case before the Ukrainian crisis. So, the Communists, even though it's not really compatible with Marxism but they're Marxists but of a special kind, have latched onto this nationalism. And they fuse the two.
Here's the thing Aaron. Back in the '90s, you're probably too young to remember this but the communists actually got, in a number of parliamentary elections, the most seats of any parliament in the Russian Parliament. They didn't have a majority but they had the most seats. I vaguely recall about 27 percent. Putin comes to power in 2000 and essentially he steals the nationalism from them because Russia's in crisis, there's the Chechen War, Russia's in depression-driven collapse. So, Putin steals both the welfare state and the nationalism from the communists.
And they've never done anywhere near as well as they did in the 1990s. My recollection is that in recent years, they got about 14 percent but fell to about seven percent. I don't believe that number. All elections in all countries are more fair to some people than they are to other people. In our country, if you've got really a lot of money, they're fairer to you. In Russia, they're fairer to the people who have what's called "state resources, " television and things like that. The communists have not had none. I think if the communists were to get a completely fair shake, which would mean access to television because as in this country, television drives elections, turnouts, preferences, that they would probably get close to 20 percent of the vote. Putin would still win.
Let me end by saying on this point, that the fact that they're not running their titular long-time leader Zyuganov, but a guy who's known in the country but not well-known, suggests to me that the communists have given up on the presidency and they see their base as, their future as in the Russian Parliament. And probably they're correct to do so.
AARON MATÃ"degrees: So, Professor Cohen, in the second part of this conversation, we're gonna talk about the dynamics right now between the US and Russia. But since we're talking right now about the internal Russian situation, I'm curious your thoughts on how Russians are viewing this whole Russiagate so-called controversy right now. You were recently in Russia. You studied the country closely, how are Russians, the ones you speak to, looking at this national obsession here in the US and this widespread view that it was their president Putin, who got Donald Trump elected?
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, the kind of anecdotal wise-guy view in Russia is "They can't fix the roads, but they could chose the American president. " In other words, utter disdain for this story. But it has a serious consequence. I just read, and your viewers might wanna read, a long article by Nadezhda Azhgikhina, that's just been posted at thenation.com I think yesterday or today, about the impact that this Russiagate story and the media malpractice in this country, which is absolutely I think, unprecedented in modern times, is having on Russian liberal democratic journalists. It's utterly demoralizing them. They look to our media, they probably shouldn't have done so but they have, as a model for them.
And now they see the American media and not just "the media, " but the so-called avatars of professional journalism, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, wallowing, wallowing in the mire of media malpractice. And it completely demoralizes them, partly because they lose their model and partly because the people who can control journalism in Russia in a negative way, say to them, "See, what are you complaining about? It's even worse in America."
More generally, there probably are some people in Russia who believe the story that Putin, you know, the story that our so-called intelligence agencies gave us. Though we now know it was just a few guys, maybe a few women, hand-picked by Clapper and Brennan, that Putin issued an order to hack the DNC, take the emails, give them to Wikileaks and make Trump president. Or the story varies, just creates chaos in America because he really wants chaos in America. It's all preposterous. There are no facts, no logic to this.
But Russians regard this, some Russians who want to believe that Putin is all-powerful, probably take pride in this. You know, the Americans have pushed us around for 25 years, now Putin gave a taste of their own medicine. And since we helped Yeltsin rig his reelection in 1996, that's what comes to a Russian mind and we did do that. I was there, I watched it. There's even a movie about it, there are books about it, Clinton administration boasted on it. But I think most Russians who are educated and there are a lot of them, critical-minded, and who can process the evening news, even if it is Russian propaganda, think the story's preposterous. They think it has to do with American internal politics, and nothing really to do with Russia. That's the educated opinion in Russia today.
AARON MATÃ"degrees: You know, Professor Cohen, in the time we have, let's get into a little bit of the history that you mentioned. The focus right now is how Russia has allegedly been meddling in the US but you've pointed out that even if all the accusations against Russia are 100 percent true, the hacking of the emails, the so-called social media accounts and the troll army that posted messages on Facebook and Twitter. Even if all that is true, it would not be a fraction of what the US has done in Russia over the past 25 years, as you've been saying. Can you, in the brief time we have, can you sum that up for us as best you can, 'cause obviously it's a very long history?
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I'm not sure I formulated it the way you did,in beginning by saying if even all the allegations were true because I can't find any of the allegations that have been factually verified. So, I'm not sure I would go for a counter hypothesis like that.
But with the end of the Soviet Union and I wrote a book about this called Failed Crusade. I published it in 2000. Large parts of it appeared in The Nation Magazine. The subtitle was "America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia. " The book detailed, and there were other books on the subject not just my own, that essentially swarms of Americans went to Russia and decamped in government offices, in universities, at everywhere imaginable. And Americans wrote Russian legislation, wrote Russian textbooks or funded them, meddled, interfered in a tangible sense, not in this vague sense that we say "Russians meddled, " not sure what means. But I was there in the '90s. I saw the Americans there.
And this culminated in 1996 when Yeltsin ran for reelection. He was sick, he was faltering in the polls, polls showed him with very little chance not only of winning, but making the runoff because you have to get 50 plus one vote in a Russian federal election to avoid a runoff. It looked like he might not even make the runoffs. Clinton administration mobilized people that we call, I guess like Paul Manafort and people like that who ended up in Ukraine, election experts. They decamped at the presidential hotel. They were fully visible. Clinton arranged for Yeltsin to get, I don't remember the number, maybe five billion dollar loan from the IMF to pay back pensions. And Yeltsin squeaked through. He would not have won, I think, without the American intervention.
Now, at that time it was considered a patriotic thing to do because his primary challenger was the one and same Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party. But the stakes were very high. The Clinton administration had vested heavily in Yeltsin. Had he lost, that would have been the end of Clinton's Russia policy. I think it would have been a good thing but it would have been a catastrophe for Clinton and for American foreign policy.
So, we did everything possible to get and keep Yeltsin back in the presidency, and he lasted a few more years until basically his health gave out and then came Putin. But that was the most vivid, observable case of truly intervening in another country's presidential election. And by the way, they boasted on it. HBO made a feature film with actors and all, I think it's called
Spinning Boris " or "Saving Boris, " which you can get on HBO On Demand and still watch, taking great glee in how we had done this. And there have been books about it.
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