The Volokh Conspiracy

The Americans, FX’s new TV series about KGB sleeper agents living in America in the early 1980s, has drawn mostly rave reviews. I have a somewhat mixed reaction. On the positive side, I thought that Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are extremely effective in the lead roles of Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, KGB agents who were inserted into the United States at a young age so they can pose as “ordinary” Americans while carrying out their espionage missions. While it is easy to dismiss this scenario as fanciful spy fiction, the KGB and its post-Soviet successors really did use sleeper agents of this type.

My main criticism of the portrayal of communism in much of Western popular culture and intellectual discourse is that it tends to ignore or downplay communist crimes and atrocities, as most recently evident in the fawning obituaries of the late British communist historian Eric Hobsbawm; a lifelong Nazi sympathizer would never have been so lionized by mainstream media and academia. To its credit, The Americans avoids this mistake. The Jennings’ superiors and the KGB generally get a uniformly negative portrayal. If anything, the KGB agents portrayed in the series actually commit more violent crimes and assassinations than actual KGB operatives in the United States did (in part because such activities greatly increased the chance of agents’ getting caught).

My biggest reservation about the series is that a key part of its premise breaks down if you think about it carefully. What makes the show work is that the Jennings (unlike their superiors) are in some ways sympathetic, and often portrayed as basically good people who happen to be in the service of an evil cause. The problem here is that, by the time the series starts in 1981, they have already lived in the United States for some 15 years, and have had a chance to see for themselves that the people are vastly freer and better off than those who live under the communism system they lived under in the USSR. Given that blatantly obvious reality, the Jennings would have to be either stupid (which they are clearly not) or willfully blind to see that they are in fact working for the wrong side in the Cold War. Moreover, as is pointed out in the very first episode, they could easily avoid punishment for their crimes and ensure themselves and their children (who are unaware of their parents’ true identities) a comfortable life by defecting and agreeing to cooperate with US intelligence agencies.

Matters might be more complicated if the Jennings were not communists, but believers in some ideology that is indifferent or hostile to individual freedom and material abundance. When radical Islamist Sayyid Qutb lived in the US in the 1940s, he came to hate America precisely because it was freer and wealthier than his native Egypt, which he (correctly) believed drew Americans away from Islamist-like values. Communism, by contrast, is not an ascetic ideology. Far from rejecting freedom and prosperity, its central claim is that it offers a superior way of achieving both. The Jennings’ many years in America (combined with their earlier experience growing up in the Soviet Union) should have led them to realize that that claim is baseless. Obviously, the United States circa 1981 was far from an ideal society. But it was so clearly superior to Soviet communism by communism’s own purported standards that the choice between them should not have been a difficult one for anyone who endorsed those standards and was genuinely knowledgeable about both nations.

Phillip, who is portrayed more sympathetically than Elizabeth, to some extent does realize the above. He seriously considers defecting. The audience, I think, is supposed to view him more positively as a result. To me, however, it makes him seem worse rather than better. To a greater extent than Elizabeth, he knows he is doing evil. Yet he keeps right on doing it, despite the fact that he could easily stop at little cost to himself or his family. Even if Elizabeth refuses to cooperate in his defection, he could probably cut a deal under which she would get immunity in exchange for his spilling the beans to the FBI. If you think about it carefully, the protagonists of The Americans come to seem like evil people serving an evil cause, rather than sympathetic servants of evil masters.

There are great TV series and works of literature that have villain protagonists who are utterly evil and unsympathetic, but seem interesting for other reasons. Shakespeare’s Richard III is a classic example, and House of Cards is a good recent one. But The Americans extensively relies on creating audience sympathy for the protagonists and it suffers when that sympathy is lost.

That said, this is clearly one of those cases where people’s reactions to a show are likely to be influenced by their own experiences and commitments. If I was not as steeped as I am in this particular subject, I might not have thought about the characters’ morality as carefully as I did, and might have perceived them differently – as many other viewers obviously did. And, my reservations notwithstanding, I still find the show interesting enough to keep watching.

UPDATE: I have made a few stylistic changes to this post.

UPDATE #2: I would like to briefly respond to two issues raised in the comments. First, it is possible that the Jennings are motivated by Russian nationalism rather than communism. Committed nationalists often support “their” country against rivals even if the rival is morally superior. The problem is that neither of the Jennings actually mentions nationalism as a motivation for their actions, whereas Elizabeth, at least, often refers to communism, including her hope that her children will grow up to be “socialists” (and, if they do, she suggests, she won’t mind if they think of themselves as Americans rather than Russians).

Others argue that the Jennings’ views are an understandable (even if not ultimately proper) reaction to the seeming bellicosity of the Reagan Administration. The problem with this theory is that their service to the KGB (and their extensive experience of life in the US) long predates Reagan’s election in 1980. They were doing the same kind work in the era of 1970s detente, and under Jimmy Carter.

For readers who may be interested, my father, Yefim Somin, will be speaking on his experience of immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA on February 28 at 7 PM. His talk will be part of a panel on the experiences of immigrants who have settled in Lexington. The other speakers will be Brandeis Professor Mitra Shavarini (Iran), and Weidong Wang (China). The address and other details of this event are available here.

My father’s account of his immigration experience is available in this recent book of Russian Jewish immigrant memoirs published by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which you can purchase either online or at the Cary event itself. Other contributors to the volume include well-known novelist Gary Shteyngart and artist Marc Klionsky. I have an essay in volume as well, an earlier version of which I blogged about here.

Copies of Prof. Shavarini’s memoir will also be on sale at the Cary Library event.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently signed a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans:

President Vladimir V. Putin signed a bill on Friday that bans the adoption of Russian children by American citizens, dealing a serious blow to an already strained diplomatic relationship. But for hundreds of Americans enmeshed in the costly, complicated adoption process, the impact was deeply personal....

The law calls for the ban to be put in force on Tuesday, and it stands to upend the plans of many American families in the final stages of adopting in Russia. Already, it has added wrenching emotional tumult to a process that can cost $50,000 or more, requires repeated trips overseas, and typically entails lengthy and maddening encounters with bureaucracy....

The bill that includes the adoption ban was drafted in response to the Magnitsky Act, a law signed by President Obama this month that will bar Russian citizens accused of violating human rights from traveling to the United States and from owning real estate or other assets there. The Obama administration had opposed the Magnitsky legislation, fearing diplomatic retaliation, but members of Congress were eager to press Russia over human rights abuses and tied the bill to another measure granting Russia new status as a full trading partner.

As the New York Times article quoted above points out, the new Russian law is a traumatic blow to American parents currently in the process of adopting Russian orphans, including some who have already formed relationships with particular children. It also probably violates a recent US-Russian agreement on adoptions, that requires a year’s notice prior to any termination by either side. Worst of all, the law consigns thousands of children who might have been adopted by Americans to life in Russia’s horrendous system of orphanages, which is among the worst in the world.

A few cases where Russian children were abused by American adoptive parents previously caused outrage in Russia. But, overall, such abuse is rare. And there is no doubt that on average, Russian children adopted in the US have vastly better lives than they would likely have had in Russia.

In any event, the current Russian adoption ban was adopted in retaliation for the human rights sanctions embedded in the US Magnitsky bill. One can argue about whether the latter law was wise or not. But there is no doubt that Russia’s human rights record under Putin has been atrocious. The fact that the nation is led by a former KGB colonel is itself an indication that human rights is hardly a high priority. And sanctions narrowly targeted at individual human rights violators are among the most defensible international efforts to deter abuses. Unlike generalized trade sanctions, they don’t harm the population of the target country as a whole.

It would be easy to blame Putin’s increasingly authoritarian regime for the adoption ban, and Putin does indeed deserve a share of the blame. However, a recent poll shows that the ban is supported by 56% of Russians, so it is possible that the law would have been adopted even if the Russian government were fully democratic. On this issue, as on many others, public opinion is influenced by ignorance and irrational nationalism.

The Russian government has argued that US sanctions against Russia are hypocritical, because the US itself has a flawed human rights record. I have myself criticized unjust US policies on issues such as the War on Drugs and immigration, and others. But America’s record, flawed as it is, is not nearly as bad as that of Putin-era Russia. And even if the US sanctions were indeed hypocritical or otherwise reprehensible, victimizing innocent children and prospective parents is hardly a proper response.

UPDATE: I have made a few minor wording changes in this post.

That was the provocative title of a seminar earlier this month organized by the Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy’s free market think tank. The event was the IBL’s 9th annual Mises Seminar. As is common at multinational seminars in Europe, the event and the papers were in English, which is today’s lingua franca among well-educated Europeans.

My favorite paper was presented by Kaetana Leontjeva, who is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Lithuanian Free Market Institute. Her paper, Old-age state social insurance: may its failure be averted?, examines the history of old-age pension systems throughout Europe, with a special focus on the USSR, Lithuania and Georgia. She shows how these programs, initially of modest size, grew to an unustainable  level that is financed by borrowing. She argues that there are only two realistic alternatives:

1. Continuing the present systems, with only “technical” reforms. This will eventually lead to complete failure of the old-age pension system, as occurred in the USSR. “ This would lead to a sudden and dramatic change in conditions of the elderly, bringing about poverty and chronic insecurity.” OR

2. “managed failure.” This means starting to shrinking the existing pension systems, by requiring that they operate on a balanced budget. Young people should not be told to depend on the current system, but should be encouraged to start making plans for their own retirement, by setting aside some of their current income to provide for their retirement. “For the ‘managed failure’ approach to work, one generation has to concede and make a sacrifice by paying for the pensions of the current retirees and for their own. In the absence of such a consent and solidarity, the generation to make the sacrifice would emerge spontaneously, and the process of an unexpected old-age social insurance failure would be much more painful.”

Another interesting paper came from Peter J. Boettke (Mercatus Center, George Mason University) and Daniel J. Smith (Manual H. Johnson Center for Political Economy, Troy University). “Monetary Policy and the Quest for Robust Political Economy” examines the failures of economists in thinking about the Federal Reserve. It is possible to imagine a Federal Reserve which conducts its affairs in an economically sound and apolitical fashion. But in practice, the Fed has often been a pump-priming engine of inflation, for political reasons. In other words, “Technical optima are nonoperational in a contemporary democratic setting.” In the wake of the Great Recession, the economics profession has been busy dissecting recent technical mistakes by Fed. Boettke and Smith argue that economists instead ought to be analyzing the only solutions which can put an end to a century of Federal Reserve failures: the adoption of a monetary policy (e.g., based on an external standard, such as a commodities bundle) which removes Fed discretion to promote inflation. While such a policy might not be politically feasible in the short run, it is the only constructive alternative, and would become more politically feasible if economists did not self-censor their recommendations based on short-term political viability.

In “Bankruptcy: Why are Banks Treated Differently Anyway?,” Mathieu Bédard (Ph.D. candidate in economics, Aix-Marseille Université, and a Fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies) classifies and analyzes the 29 different forms of government intervention into bank failures. He argues that ordinary bankruptcy is often superior to liquidations managed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Even if you don’t agree with the policy recommendations in these papers, they are worth reading for their thoughtful analysis.

Occasionally, people ask me how things are in Russia, and I say that I haven’t been following Russian events in any detail. Still, I do have an opinion, albeit uninformed, and it echoes a poem by Bulat Okudzhava, my favorite Russian singer. As I mentioned eight years ago, the poem was written in 1989 — much has surely changed, some for the better and some for the worse, since then, but from what I’ve heard much hasn’t. I give a quick and dirty translation below, which unfortunately doesn’t preserve the rhyme, the meter, or much of the sensibility, but what can I do? (Note also that the translation borrows in one place from the version of the song that I heard, which differs in some respects from the written version.)

A bit of background that would be obvious to Russian listeners: Since Leo is an emigre returning from Australia, he’s certainly Jewish (only Jews and a few other ethnic groups were allowed to leave during the Soviet era, and the emigres of Okudzhava’s circle were overwhelmingly Jews). Okudzhava himself was a Georgian by ethnicity, but many of his close friends were Jews; judging by the dedication in the print version, the song was written with one particular friend (Leo Liukimson) in mind, though most of Okudzhava’s listeners wouldn’t know that.

From Australia Leo to Moscow returned
At his sister’s finally arrived
From the taxi’s window at Moscow he stared
Felt a chill running down his spine

These days, Moscow doesn’t quite look cruel –
Doesn’t shoot, doesn’t tie you in knots.
But suddenly asks “Are you scared, little kike?,”
And gives you a friendly wink.

In Australia, likely, the weather is hot,
Easy life that the pen can’t describe;
While in Moscow it’s worse than it was yesterday
But better than in ’37.

Down the boulevard, Leo, unhurriedly stroll
Look closely at the familiar faces
Maybe Moscow doesn’t have a vicious soul
But no-one’s born fortunate here.

To me the key lines are at the end of the third stanza:

In Moscow it’s worse than it was yesterday, but better than in ’37.

And, you know, that’s not chopped liver.

During my recent visit to Russia, I visited the Gulag Museum in Moscow, one of the few recent Russian efforts to accurately portray the horrible atrocities of communism. The mass murders and other crimes of communist regimes have often been neglected in both Russia and the West. In recent years, that neglect has deepened in Russia, because of Vladimir Putin’s efforts to whitewash the record of the Soviet regime in order to legitimize his own government and promote Russian nationalism.

The Gulag Museum, established by Gulag survivor Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, is an admirable effort to counter these trends. There are several interesting exhibits, and I certainly recommend it to visitors to Moscow who are interested in the subject and can read Russian. But I also have some serious reservations about the Museum and its approach to the subject matter.

First, the Museum simply lacks the resources and scale to do the subject justice. Most of the exhibits are primarily photos attached to bulletin boards, often with not very detailed explanations. If you are not already familiar with the relevant history, it’s hard to grasp the true scale and horror of what happened just by looking at the exhibits in the Museum. This problem is not so much the fault of the people who run the Museum as that of Russian government and society, which have been unwilling to devote enough resources to create a facility truly worthy of the subject. In contrast with Germany’s extensive efforts to document and publicize Nazi crimes and make the younger generation of Germans aware of them, Russian endeavors to acknowledge the horrors of communism are comparatively piddling.

The second problem with the Museum is more easily remedied: Far too much of the material in the exhibits focuses on Stalin’s purges of communist party elites, especially the “Old Bolsheviks” who led the communist regime early on but where executed by Stalin after the famous “show trials” of the 1930s. This shortchanges the millions of ordinary people murdered by the communists in favor of a focus on a tiny and unrepresentative elite. It is rather like focusing a museum on Nazi crimes primarily on the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler did away with various rival Nazi leaders. To the extent that the Museum is intended to focus on the Gulag system specifically rather than communist crimes as a whole, it’s also worth noting that most of the Old Bolsheviks were never even incarcerated in Gulags. They were mostly arrested, tortured, and executed in secret police facilities in Moscow.

Moreover, it is important to recognize (as the Museum does not) that the Old Bolsheviks were far from innocent. Led by Lenin and Trotsky, they themselves – not Stalin – had established the secret police, the Gulag system, and other oppressive institutions that were later used against them. They were all in favor of mass murder and political repression when it was directed at non-communist political parties, or just ordinary workers and peasants. When Stalin purged the Old Bolsheviks, he merely gave them a taste of the same treatment that they themselves had meted out to millions of others.

I wonder if the flaws of the Museum are in part due to Antonov-Ovseenko’s own background as the son of a prominent Old Bolshevik executed by Stalin in 1938. Obviously, the younger Antonov-Ovseenko cannot be blamed for the wrongs committed by his father, and he deserves great credit for his efforts to commemorate the crimes of the Stalin era. But it is possible that his background understandably skews his perspective on the subject.

I’m far from being a qualified museum planner. But, as I see it, a better-organized Gulag Museum would focus primarily on the impact of communism on ordinary people. It should perhaps devote about 95% of the space to that subject, and only 5% to purges of communist elites. It should clearly and dramatically explain the vast scale of the atrocities involved (some 10 to 20 million victims in the USSR alone). And it should make more clear than the present museum does that the origins of most of these crimes date back to the very beginning of the regime, rather than to the period when Stalin was in power.

The purge of the Old Bolsheviks and other elites does deserve some attention. But that section of the museum should note the irony that these elites were devoured by the very institutions of repression that they themselves had created. To a large extent, they got what they deserved, even though not for the reasons why they deserved it.

Finally, a well-run Gulag Museum would explain what happened in a way that is readily accessible to visitors who don’t have much prior knowledge of the subject. It should also have more and better material in English and other foreign languages.

The flaws of the Gulag Museum wouldn’t matter much if there were more other efforts to publicize the crimes of communism in Russia. But, as far as I know, it is the only such museum in Moscow, and one of the very few in Russia as a whole. For the moment, both the government and many ordinary Russians prefer to forget and in some cases even deny the crimes of communism. But that sad state of affairs need not last forever. Future generations of Russians may yet acknowledge these atrocities more fully and help ensure that they never happen again.

On a more optimistic note, I would note that attitudes towards communist crimes are very different in neighboring Ukraine, which I am presently visiting for the first time. Here, memorials and museums commemorating the victims of communism are ubiquitous. So far, the relatively pro-Russian government elected in 2010 doesn’t seem to have changed that. I may write in more detail about the Ukrainian approach to this subject in a later post.

Part of the explanation for the enormous difference between the two countries on this issue is that many Russian nationalists have an ambivalent or outright positive attitude towards the Soviet Union, despite its having killed millions of Russians. Under communist rule, Russia reached the height of its power, and nationalists lament its decline from superpower status after the USSR fell. By contrast, most Ukrainian nationalists unequivocally condemn the USSR because it not only killed millions of Ukrainians, but also repressed Ukrainian aspirations for independence. I’m no great fan of either nationalism in general or Ukrainian nationalism specifically. In Ukraine, however, nationalism has helped promote a more thorough recognition of communist crimes. In Russia, it has had the opposite effect.

For those of who have been waiting for an English translation of Russia’s arms statutes, your wait is over. Independence Institute intern Margot van Loon is the author of the new Issue Paper, Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation. Here is a synopsis:

• No permission or registration is needed to purchase and carry chemical defense weapons (e.g., tear gas guns) or electric defense devices such as stun guns.
• Citizens have the right to acquire shotguns for self-defense and sport.
• After five years of lawful ownership of a shotgun, a citizen may obtain a permit to purchase and use rifles for sporting purposes.
• An individual may own up to five rifles and five shotguns.
• Handguns are prohibited.
• All firearms must be registered.
• Before obtaining one’s first firearm, one must receive instruction in firearms laws and safety. Every five years, the firearms owner must pass a test demonstrating continuing knowledge of these subjects.
• The first-time owner must also obtain a medical certification that he or she does not have any disqualifying conditions, such as mental illness or alcoholism.
• In order to use a firearm for lawful self-defense, the crime victim must first attempt to give the criminal a warning, if practicable. Defensive use of firearms against women, the disabled, and minors is prohibited, unless they are attacking as part of a gang.

On the whole, the Russian Federation’s arms laws show considerably greater respect for the fundamental human right of self-defense than do the laws of some other European nations, such as the United Kingdom or Luxembourg.

The Russian Federation paper is part of continuing series of research papers from the Independence Institute providing full English translations of the arms laws of other nations. Other papers in this series are:

Colombia’s National Law of Firearms and Explosives. Full translation of the Colombian statutes, along with historical and narrative explanation. By Jonathan Edward Shaw.

Hungarian Weapons Law of May 2004. English translation and explanation, plus Hungarian text. By Crecy Azincourt.

Mexico’s Federal Laws on Firearms and Explosives.  By David Kopel.

If you would be interested in writing a paper for this series, please contact me using the information at the bottom of this page.

The New York Times has an interesting article on the political attitudes of New York City’s Russian immigrant community. Unlike most New Yorkers and especially most New York Jews (the Russian immigrant community is overwhelmingly Jewish), they tend to support the GOP over the Democrats:

To many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, the cornucopia in the shops along Brighton Beach Avenue — pyramids of oranges, heaps of Kirby cucumbers, bushels of tomatoes with their vines still attached and a variety of fish, sausages and pastries — seems like an exuberant rebuke of the meager produce that was available to them when they lived in the Soviet Union.

This contrast helps explain a striking political anomaly: immigrants from the former Soviet Union are far more apt to vote for Republicans than are most New Yorkers, who often drink in Democratic Party allegiance with their mothers’ milk and are four times as likely to register as Democrats than as Republicans....

One reason these voters tend to support Republicans is that they see them as more ardent warriors against the kind of big-government, business-stifling programs that soured their lives in the Soviet Union. Their conservative stances on issues like taxes and Israel seem to outweigh their more liberal views on social issues like abortion.

Tatiana Varzar came to the United States in 1979, at age 21, from the Ukrainian seaport of Odessa. She worked as a manicurist and then opened a small restaurant on the boardwalk that grew into Tatiana Restaurant, a spacious magnet for foodies who like a whiff of salt air and a sea view with their pirogen.....

“I am what I am because of capitalism,” Ms. Varzar said, “and Republicans are more capitalistic.”

Obviously, this article is not the first to point out the stark contrast between Russian Jewish political attitudes and those of most native-born Jews. I blogged about the phenomenon here, here, and here, including links to previous commentary on the issue by others.

The Times article does, however, provide a good summary of the major reasons why Russian Jewish voters support the GOP: a combination of a preference for free markets and a relatively hawkish foreign policy. The Times is also correct to point out that Russian Jewish immigrants tend to vote for the GOP despite the fact that most of them are socially liberal (they tend to be highly secular, pro-choice, and generally left of center on most social issues, with the important exception of gay rights, where many immigrants brought with them the homophobia that is rampant in Russia itself). For most Russian immigrants, social issues are not as salient as economics and foreign policy. In many of these respects, as the Times notes, Russian immigrants’ political preferences are similar to those of immigrants from other communist and former communist nations, such as Cuba and Vietnam.

Obviously, as with voters from other groups, Russian immigrants’ attitudes are affected by political ignorance. Many may be unaware of the massive extent to which the GOP has sometimes deviated from support for free markets, especially in the Bush years. At least in my experience, many of them also overestimate the dovishness of the Democratic Party (though I hasten to add that I haven’t seen scientific polling data on this). That said, there is little doubt that, at least in New York – which has one of the most economically liberal Democratic parties in the nation – the GOP is significantly less economically statist than the Democrats.

Because New York is so overwhelmingly Democratic, the GOP leanings of Russian voters make little difference in statewide elections. They do, however, as the Times points out, sometimes make the difference in local and congressional races, which are more closely contested.

For now, the political clout of the Russian Jewish community is severely limited by its small numbers and by its concentration in areas (Boston, New York, Silicon Valley) that are overwhelmingly Democratic. Most Russian immigrants also lack the wealth and political connections that are more common among native-born Jews (though there are some striking exceptions, such as Google founder Sergey Brin). However, as Russian Jews continue to grow as a proportion of the total Jewish population and continue to increase their income and influence, they could have an effect on internal Jewish community politics. There are now some 700,000 Russian Jewish immigrants in the US, about 12% of the total Jewish population. And that percentage may well grow, if only because Russian immigration is continuing (though at a reduced rate), while the native-born Jewish population has a low birth rate.

Russian Jews have also begun to have an impact in the academic and intellectual worlds. Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer and the VC’s own Eugene Volokh are among the best known of a growing contingent of Russian Jewish immigrant academics who have had a significant impact on their fields. In sharp contrast to most other academics, Russian immigrant scholars in the humanities and social sciences are overwhelmingly conservative or libertarian (more commonly the latter), perhaps to an even greater extent than the community as a whole.

UPDATE: I suppose I should add that I do not mean to suggest that most Russian Jewish immigrants are consistent economic libertarians. Very few voters are rigorously consistent adherents to any ideology, and Russian Jews are no exception. They are, however, on average more sympathetic to free markets than the average voter – especially in liberal areas such as New York City.

UPDATE #2: Neither the article nor I distinguish rigorously between former Soviet Jews from Ukraine and those from Russia, although obviously these are now two different countries, and Ukrainian nationalists are not fond of Russia. Most Ukrainian Jewish immigrants are Russian-speakers and identify far more with Russian language and culture than Ukrainian. However, it’s worth noting that non-Jewish Ukrainian immigrants (like my wife’s mother’s family) who arrived since the rise of communism also tend towards the political right.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has just published a book of thirty immigration memoirs by Soviet Jewish immigrants, which is available for sale here. My father, Yefim Somin, and I are among the contributors. There are also several well-known contributors such as novelist Gary Shteyngart and artist Marc Klionsky.

I blogged about my contribution here.

This Sunday from 3 to 5 PM, I will be at an event sponsored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York City, for the launch of a book of memoirs of immigration by Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

The book includes contributions by thirty different immigrants, including a short version of my own immigration memoir. Among the speakers at the event are several authors of chapters in the book, and Gal Beckerman, author of an important recent work on Jewish emigration from the USSR that I commented on here. The location is the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16 Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) New York, NY 10011. You can get tickets at the door or here.

Officials in the Siberian city of Barnaul recently banned an anti-government protest using toys on the specious justification that “toys, especially imported toys, are not only not citizens of Russia but they are not even people” [HT: Julie Ershadi]:

There hadn’t been many – indeed any – rallies like it before in Russia. Last month saw dozens of toys, from teddy bears to Lego figurines, standing out in the snow of a Siberian city with banners complaining about corruption and electoral malpractice.

At the time, Russian authorities in Barnaul declared the protest “an unsanctioned public event”.

Now a petition to hold another protest featuring 100 Kinder Surprise toys, 100 Lego people, 20 model soldiers, 15 soft toys and 10 toy cars has been rejected because the toys have been deemed not to be “citizens of Russia”.

“As you understand, toys, especially imported toys, are not only not citizens of Russia but they are not even people,” Andrei Lyapunov, a spokesman for Barnaul, told local media.

It’s easy to see the flaw in Lyapunov’s reasoning. Yes, toys are not people. But owners of toys are. The toy protest is an exercise of the owners’ rights to freedom of expression, not the rights of the toys themselves. Banning a toy protest because toys are not people is much like banning the publication of antigovernment articles in a newspaper on the grounds that newspapers are not people.

Unfortunately, such dubious justifications for restricting political speech are not limited to Russia. Right here in the United States, many claim that the government should have a free hand in restricting political speech by corporations because corporations aren’t people. As I explained here, they are making exactly the same mistake as Lyapunov.

UPDATE: Some commenters are confusing the “corporations are not people” argument for allowing government to restrict corporate speech with the very different claim that the state should be allowed to do so because corporations are state-created legal entities. I’m well aware of the latter argument, and have answered it in some detail here. But it is distinct from the one discussed in this post. There are a variety of different arguments for restricting corporate speech only one of which is closely analogous to Lyapunov’s justification for banning the toy protest. However, that one is extremely common – made by people ranging from Supreme Court justices to Occupy Wall Street protestors – and it is important to understand its flaws.

In addition to being the last day of the year, today is also the twentieth anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union, when the last Soviet government institutions shut down. Today’s quasi-authoritarian Russia is far from admirable. But, despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s lame and self-serving claims to the contrary, it is still a vast improvement over the USSR. In addition to the benefits for Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, the fall of the USSR also created important benefits for the rest of the world. I covered the many advantages of the end of the USSR in more detail in this post.

With the demise of the USSR, we were spared a regime that slaughtered millions both within and outside its borders, inflicted numerous other human rights violations, and created a threat of nuclear annihilation that hung over the entire world. Compared to that, the very real dangers of the post-Cold War world seem minor by comparison. I recognize, of course, that the USSR in the last years of Gorbachev’s reign was much less dangerous and oppressive than it had been previously. But had the regime survived, it is far from clear that Gorby’s reforms would not have been reversed. Previous episodes of Soviet liberalization in the 1920s and 1956-64 had been followed by waves of repression at home and expansionism abroad. Moreover, Gorbachev himself was not as much of a liberal democrat as he is often portrayed in the West. He used force to try to suppress the independence movement in the Baltics, and otherwise sought to preserve the Soviet regime, not end it. He was certainly much less ruthless and repressive than his predecessors. But that is judging him by a very low standard of comparison. Nonetheless, it is fortunate that Gorbachev’s efforts at limited liberalization spun out of his control and led to a beneficial outcome that he did not intend.

Bryan Caplan has a interesting post on George Orwell’s portrayal of democracy in his classic work Animal Farm. As Bryan notes, the initially egalitarian and democratic regime established by the animals gets subverted in large part because of political ignorance. Like Bryan, I would be interested to know more about Orwell’s view of real-world democracy. Did he believe that the problem of political ignorance could be overcome by education or some other means? Or perhaps he thought that the problem of ignorance was irremediable, but democracy was still the best form of government. Given that he remained a socialist to the end of his life, Orwell obviously could not adopt my and Bryan’s preferred solution of limiting and decentralizing government in order to mitigate the problem.

It’s also interesting to note that Orwell’s portrayal of democracy at Animal Farm was actually far more positive than the Soviet history he based the novel on. Unlike Animal Farm, the USSR was a brutal totalitarian state from the start and was never democratic. Opposition parties (including even left-wing socialist ones) were suppressed from the beginning, and there were never any free elections or any direct democracy of the kind Orwell depicts.

I’m not sure whether Orwell deviated from Soviet history on this point in order to make a statement about democracy or because he was in thrall to the view (common among anti-Stalinist Western leftists in his day) that the Soviet experiment only went awry under Stalin. His modestly favorable portrayal of Snowball – the pig who serves as an analogue to Trotsky – is compatible with the latter idea, though Snowball is not a completely positive figure in the novel. Some degree of rot is evident even in the “pre-Stalinist” era at Animal Farm, though the animals are described as “happy as they had never conceived it possible to be” during this period. In reality, large-scale totalitarian repression began under Lenin, not Stalin. And the real Trotsky was almost as bad as his rival, in some ways even a little worse.

Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that he intends to return to the presidency after the 2012 election has been rightly denounced as a deepening of authoritarianism in Russia. Having effectively repressed Russia’s opposition parties and media, Putin is now consolidating his position as a dictator. Barring some sort of sudden collapse of his regime (which is by no means impossible), he can now rule into the 2020s with little or no effective opposition.

It’s worth remembering that Putin had to leave the presidency in the first place because Russia’s 1993 Constitution bans presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms. Therefore, he turned the office over to his handpicked successor Dmitri Medvedev, who will now become prime minister after Putin’s nearly inevitable victory in the 2012 election, from which most opposition parties are effectively excluded from participating. Putin’s return to the presidency cuts off any hope that the Russian government will continue Medvedev’s moves towards modest political and economic liberalization.

The whole sorry situation highlights the wisdom of the US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, which not only bars presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms, but also forbids two-term presidents from ever holding the office again in the future. That prevents American presidents from pulling off the trick that Putin used with Medvedev – leaving a loyal flunky in power for four years and then returning to office. It thereby makes it much harder for any one man to consolidate dictatorial dominance.

Obviously, there are many other differences between the US and Russian political systems that make authoritarianism a lesser danger in the former. Nonetheless, the power of the modern presidency is great enough that a popular leader who could serve indefinitely might consolidate enormous power and gradually undermine democracy. At the state level, term-limited governors who are allowed to return to office later have sometimes used relatives or friends as placeholders for a term until they can return to power. George Wallace, for example, used his wife Lurleen.There is no reason why a president could not adopt the same tactic.

In the Russian case, Medvedev might well have taken a more liberal and independent line if he knew that Putin could not come back. Even if Medvedev did not do so, other Russian political elites might have acted differently if not for the spectre of Putin’s return hanging over them. At the very least, it would have been harder for Putin – or anyone else – to concentrate power in the hands of one man and the narrow clique surrounding him. In theory, Putin might have been able to just ignore the Constitution in 2008 and stay in power anyway. But doing so would have undermined his legitimacy with the West, and probably at home as well. That’s why he chose to leave office in 2008 rather than stay on illegally.

Despite Putin’s imminent return to the presidency, his power is not completely secure. Even with government control of much of the media, public opinion is starting to turn against him and especially his government. If the price of oil falls, Russia’s oil-dependent economy will decline with it, and other elites might then find it in their interest to turn against the regime. Putin’s government is not nearly as brutal and oppressive as its Soviet predecessor, and there are still many active opposition groups who could take advantage of the government’s difficulties. For the time being, however, Putin has successfully consolidated his authoritarian regime. And his ability to return to the presidency after a four year hiatus is one of the reasons why.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall. In November 2009, I wrote a post on the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s destruction. What I said then is also appropriate to today’s less happy anniversary:

In several ways, the Wall and its collapse are fitting symbols of communism. They demonstrate several truths about that system that we would be wise not to lose sight of.

First and foremost, Cold War-era Berlin was the most visible demonstration of the superiority of capitalism and democracy over communism and dictatorship. Despite the fact that East Germany had one of the highest standards of living in the Soviet bloc, it had to build a wall to keep its people from fleeing to the capitalist West. By contrast, West Germans and other westerners were free to move to the communist world anytime they wanted. Yet only a tiny handful ever did so. Decisions to “vote with your feet” are often even better indicators of peoples’ true preferences than ballot box voting, since foot voters have better incentives to become well-informed about the alternatives before them. Even more powerful evidence is the reality that many East Germans and others fled from communism even when doing so meant risking their lives.

Second, the Berlin Wall was an important symbol of the way in which communist governments violated the human right to freedom of movement, one of the most important attributes of a free society. If people are forcibly trapped under the rule of the government in whose territory they happen to be born, they are not truly free; rather, they are hostages of their rulers.

Finally, the sudden collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 vividly demonstrated the extent to which communist totalitarianism relied on coercion to maintain its rule. Some Western scholars and leftists contended that most Russians and Eastern Europeans actually supported communism or at least preferred it to the available alternatives. The events of 1989 gave the lie to this notion, though a few writers still defend it today.....

Despite all of the above, I am somewhat conflicted about the status of the Berlin Wall as the symbol of communist oppression in the popular imagination. My reservations have to do with the underappreciated fact that the Wall was actually one of communism’s smaller crimes. Between 1961 and 1989, about 100 East Germans were killed trying to escape to the West through Wall. The Wall also trapped several million more Germans in a repressive totalitarian society. These are grave atrocities. But they pale in comparison to the millions slaughtered in gulags, deliberately created famines in the USSR, China, and Ethiopia, and mass executions of kulaks and “class enemies.” The Berlin Wall wasn’t even the worst communist atrocity in East Germany.....

It is important to remember the Berlin Wall and the lessons it teaches. But doing so is only one small part of the task of rectifying the longstanding neglect of communist crimes.

UPDATE: I have corrected a few formatting errors in this post.