Grigory Pasko: Saint Putin

Probably, these are good people - the actor, the footballer, the ex-minister... And the order, probably, was respected. After they handed it to Putin, I am confident, the attitude of many people in the world and in Germany itself to this order changed a great deal: the attitude became worse. The same way as this attitude changed in the whole world after the French started handing their famous order of the Légion d'Honneur to any and all comers.

Officially it was announced that they had conferred the cute little order on Putin for his supposedly existing merits with respect to the return of the so-called "trophy art" to Dresden. I am confident that few among the Dresdenites will be able to recall what specifically this Putin did in relation to this. The question begs itself: could it be that Vladimir Vladimirovich himself through his German friends had organized yet more PR for himself? After all, everybody knows that television is what made Putin, and now he, like some hard-core drug addict, can't go anywhere without it.

I am astonished as to why Putin is still not a Hero of Russia and the Whole of the CIS, not a Cavalier of the Russian Order of the Legion of Honor of Efesbeshniks [FSB-niks--Trans.] (isn't it high time to come up with such an order?); of the Order of the Golden Oil-and-Gas Pipeline?

Mister Putin has more than enough merits for this.

I will enumerate but some of them (more details - from Dmitry Shusharin at www.polit.ru):

• destruction of the political system: adoption of new draconian laws on the referendum, on political parties, on the appointment of governors, on the abolition of elections by voting districts; • innovations in criminal legislation in what concerns the jury court and the possibilities of political persecution; • creation of conditions for state raidership and political prosecutions of businessmen, civic figures, scholars, creation of conditions for the appearance of political prisoners in Russia; • rolling up of independent investigations of terrorists acts, starting with the house bombings in the year 1999 in Moscow, political murders and mysterious deaths; • statification of the economy; clanification of personnel policy; • grafting together of the state and the party of power • creation of youth organizations, found under the wardship of the state apparat; • the artless and aggressive foreign policy of Russia; • artless administrative, military and judicial reforms...

...And so on, and so forth.

One could, of course, give a cute little order to the young generation of the Putinite guard as well - for example, to Dmitry Medvedev, a person who has watered down the very concept of the term «president», having given it the meaning of a typical Soviet-clan one. Under him, as the human rights organization Human Rights Watch noted, the suppression by the powers of independent groups and activists has continued.

It is noteworthy that on the eve of the handing to Putin the order of «gratitude" of the Dresden Opera another human rights organization - Freedom House - published an annual report "On the state of freedom in the world". The authors of the research, as in previous years, put Russia in the category of "not free countries", noting that the situation has a tendency towards deterioration.

Photo credits: http://premier.gov.ru