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PapersPapers noticed.

The anti-utopian revolution

“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.” Adam Michnik.

Watching Putin beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, NYT columnist Roger Cohen thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984 and also remembered Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970. And writes: "Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever. Ask the Poles. They know"

"He speaks very well ... but still do not know for whom he works"

I once asked my russian landlord his opinion about president Putin. "He speaks very well ... but still do not know for who he works." Russian sense of humor is sometimes indecipherable, but perhaps because of that is the best clue to understand this huge country.

Putin, former KGB agent, is now prime minister of a country were people think that "there are no ex-KGB agents, they never cease to be."

What does not kill, fattens. So it would not be surprising that the carnage on Monday in Moscow would make Putin more popular. One of his most famous phrases is: "Who does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Who wants it back has no brain." Today poverty is not rare, but Saint Petersburg welcomes you with a huge Lenin.
 
Ninotchka is a 1939 film in which Greta Garbo plays a Russian communist agent who is sent to Paris to investigate the work of three comrades lured by the trappings of capitalism. They ask:

- And how is Moscow?
-Okay, mass trials have been a success. Russians will be less but will be better.

Pruning is becoming more fine now: only the elites matter, the murder in the right dose. Lenin said that democracy is a form of government in which changes every four years tyrant. Surrounded by the Urals and the North Pole, some Slavs want to last forever.

In Lithuania: cut, cut and cut again

Credit rating agencies said the worst appeared to have passed for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after the crisis .  But NYT writes that if many indebted countries want to see what austerity looks like, they might want to visit this Baltic nation of 3.3 million. Lithuania cut public spending by 30 percent — including slashing public sector wages 20 to 30 percent and reducing pensions by as much as 11 percent. Even the prime minister, Andrius Kubilius, took a pay cut of 45 percent. The baltic countries rode a boom driven by banking and real estate earlier this decade. Low interest rates spurred a housing boom. Many Lithuanians took out low-interest-rate mortgages denominated in foreign currencies. With the crisis, house prices plunged and thousands lost their jobs and began to default on their debts. Now austerity has exacted its own price, in social and personal pain. 


The article of NYT about Lithuania is among the most emailed of the week from Business section.  Another proof of Lithuanian power?

The Russian Indy?

You read the headline this week: Russian Billionaire Buys U.K.'s Independent for $1.49‎ 

In his early life in London Alexander Lebedev was a KGB man. "He is now businessman willing to make the investments he thinks necessary to produce a superior product that will win back readers and if that doesn't work then he would likely give up the ghost . That gives him an easier time than Rupert Murdoch who does not want to go down in history as the man who killed The Times of London even though it is now losing more than £1 million a week", says Philip M. Stone 

He said this week: "I invest in institutions which contribute to democracy and transparency, and at the heart of that are newspapers which report independently and campaign for truth. I am a supporter of in-depth investigative reporting and campaigns which promote transparency and seek to fight international corruption. These are things The Independent has always done well and will, I am sure, continue to do."

Quality papers have found it close to impossible to bring revenues and costs into equilibrium, let alone generate a sustainable profit margin. Robert Peston says his strategy may be to challenge the internet at its own game, by giving the Indie away (as he has already done with the Evening Standard in London) Advertising rules...

In addition to the London Evening Standard, the Lebedevs also co-own, with former president Mikhail Gorbachev, Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia's few pro-democracy newspapers. The paper has a reputation for independence and high-quality reporting and was where the celebrated journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006, worked.

The Guardian wrote that Lebedev will bring hope, not instant salvation