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Evidence of Misstep by Putin

It is now clear that instead of restoring public confidence in the political system, the announcement that Mr. Putin and President Dmitri A. Medvedev would switch jobs annoyed many Russians. Mr. Putin’s approval rating briefly dipped to 61 percent this month, high by international standards but lower than at any point in a decade.

Meanwhile, the governing party, United Russia, has had to scale back its expectations for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections, when it is likely to lose the two-thirds majority it has held since 2007.

The announcement, in other words, seems to have had an unintended negative effect, a jarring outcome for a government that has proved itself adept at measuring and manipulating public opinion.

Russian Authorities Pressure Elections Watchdog

Though United Russia, which now has a commanding majority in Parliament, faces no powerful competitors in the election, opinion polls suggest that it will lose 50 to 60 seats, reflecting growing weariness with leadership that has not changed in a decade. State officials at all levels have been told to guard against significant losses.

With parliamentary elections only days away that are expected to reflect dwindling public support for Vladimir V. Putin’s party, Russian prosecutors have opened a case against the country’s only independent election monitoring organization.

The organization, Golos, has already posted reports of more than 4,500 violations of election law in the prelude to the voting on Sunday. Golos receives financing from Western governments, including the United States, and some Russian officials have suggested that the organization’s real aim is to incite an Arab Spring-type revolution in Russia.

Gorbachev Blasts Authoritarian Rule

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says Russia’s parliamentary elections scheduled for December won’t be fair, and he blasted “authoritarian” rule in Russia in a Wall Street Journal interview.

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Mr. Gorbachev said Tuesday that he believed an authoritarian government was necessary to pull Russia together in 2000 when Vladimir Putin first came to power. At the time, he brushed off concerns from a French colleague that Mr. Putin would “make a habit” of such tactics.

Now, however, the Kremlin’s “habit” of authoritarianism is undeniable and “a very dangerous thing,” he said.

Now “we in Russia are forced to seriously struggle to strengthen democracy, ensure honest elections, the independence of the judiciary and many other things,” Mr. Gorbachev said.

The Kremlin denies charges that it rigs elections, and Mr. Putin rejects accusations of authoritarian methods, saying he is committed to democracy in Russia.

Mr. Putin’s United Russia party is virtually certain to win parliamentary elections in December, and Mr. Putin plans to return to the presidency in 2012 elections.

“The elections will not be fair,” Mr. Gorbachev says.

Barnes v. Glen Theatre and Kitty Kat Lounge

“Respondents are two establishments in South Bend, Indiana, that wish to provide totally nude dancing as entertainment, and individual dancers who are employed at these establishments. They claim that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression prevents the State of Indiana from enforcing its public indecency law to prevent this form of dancing. We reject their claim.”

Read this Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice Rehnquist.

Zinn, A People’s War? (Ch 16)

The victors of World War II were the Soviet Union and the United States (also England, France and Nationalist China, but they were weak). Both these countries now went to work–without swastikas, goose-stepping, or officially declared racism, but under the cover of “socialism” on one side, and “democracy” on the other, to carve out their own empires of influence. They proceeded to share and contest with one another the domination of the world, to build military machines far greater than the Fascist countries had built, to control the destinies of more countries than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan had been able to do. They also acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques-crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States–to make their rule secure.

The war not only put the United States in a position to dominate much of the world; it created conditions for effective control at home…

Read Ch 16 of the People’s History

Answer these questions

George Kennan, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" (1947)

The single document that best illustrated American anti-communism and general suspicion of Soviet aspirations, was George Kennan’s famous Long Telegram of 1946. The Long Telegram was perhaps the most cited and most influential statement of the early years of the Cold War.

George Kennan had been a American diplomat on the Soviet front, beginning his career as an observer of the aftermath of the Russian Civil War. He witnessed collectivization and the terror from close range and sent his telegram after another two years’ service in Moscow from 1944 to 1946 as chief of mission and Ambassador Averell Harriman’s consultant. In 1946, Kennan was 44 years old, fluent in the Russian language and its affairs, and decidedly anti-communist.

The essence of Kennan’s telegram was published in Foreign Affairs in 1947 as The Sources of Soviet Conduct and circulated everywhere. The article was signed by “X” although everyone in the know knew that authorship was Kennan’s. For Kennan, the Cold War gave the United States its historic opportunity to assume leadership of what would eventually be described as the “free world.”