Experimental Blog # 214

Quotations from and comments on "Democracy - Stories from the Long Road to Freedom" by Condoleeza Rice

"Russia's own democratic transition at first appeared promising but ultimately failed entirely, replaced by Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule and expansionist foreign policy."

" ... as a child, I was part of another great awakening: the second founding of America, as the civil rights movement unfolded in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and finally expanded the meaning of "We the people" to encompass people like me."

"Look closely at the constituencies that support Turkey's Erdogan, Hungary's Orban, and Russia's Putin and you will see substantial similarities: older people, rural inhabitants, religiously pious people, and committed nationalists."

"Like most black Americans, they{the author's ancestors} were both slaves and slave owners. My great-great-grandmother Zina on my mother's side bore five children by different slave owners. She somehow managed to raise them all and keep them together as a family. My great-grandmother on my father's side, Julia Head, carried the name of the slave owner < > you could look at her and see that her bloodlines, like mine, clearly bore slavery's mark: My DNA is 50 percent African, and 40 percent European, and there is a mysterious 10 percent that is apparently Asian."
"There were so many martyrs to the cause of gaining equal rights, including my friend Denise McNair and three other little girls killed in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in September 1963."

"Vladimir Putin personifies Russia's struggle to find its footing. < > In the end, he rode the wave of the population's frustration and fear, pulling the country back to its authoritarian past."
" ... too many lost wars and internal revolt destroy tsarist rule and bring Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power."
"Can democracy ever take hold in this rough and vast land? < > Russia is not Mars and the Russians are not endowed with some unique, antidemocratic DNA.."
"And on December 25, 1991, the Hammer and Sickle, the flag < > was lowered from above the Kremlin for the last time. More than seventy years of communism ended quietly and was buried with few mourners and little fanfare."

"When Putin came to power in 2000, his support was remarkably broad < > His supporters spanned all age groups, income brackets, and levels of education. Today, his most ardent support comes from rural voters, older people, the military, and those middle-class citizens who are dependent on the state for their income."
"The annexation of Crimea propelled Putin to new highs. < >  In their version of events, Catherine the Great conquered Crimea in 1783; the idiot Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine as a gift for three hundred years of Russian-Ukrainian friendship in 1954 < > Vladimir Putin set all of that right. Crimea was once Russian, and it was Russian again."
"He presents himself as a strong, conservative ruler who has the backing of the Orthodox Church. He has the support of the salt-of-the-earth people - soldiers, workers, farmers. < > He has a security apparatus that enforces his arbitrary application of the law. And the motherland{ or Rodina, as Russians call it} is once again secure."

"The Russians and the Ukrainians are ethnically the same < > and they speak similar but not identical languages. Russians tend to overstate the links between the cultures and ignore the distinctiveness of Ukrainian national identity. Ukrainians resent this and sometimes overstate their uniqueness."
"As the Wehrmacht pushed east, Ukraine was devastated by the Nazi's occupation and extermination policies, which resulted in the deaths of five million Ukrainians{about one-eighth of the total population} and a majority of its one and a half million Jews."

"In Russia, rapid privatization was the culprit{of economic chaos}. Ukraine did the same, privatizing a large industrial base, but one that did not rival Moscow's for sophistication and talent. Still, a class of oligarchs found plenty to buy, and, as in Russia, these rich beneficiaries dotted the landscape in Kiev and across the country."

These quotations are not intended to be a coherent summary of the chapters on Russia or Ukraine. The author, Condoleeza Rice, also writes very informatively about Poland, Kenya, Columbia, the Middle East, and other countries{and America, too, of course}.

On the fourth from last page Condoleeza Rice says, "In the United States, a new president{she never mentions his name} was elected with absolutely no experience in government of any kind < > He has made clear what he thinks of America's political elites whatever their ideological stripe. They have ceased, he believes, to represent the American people - their aspirations and their fears."