Letters to the Editor

"Would God forgive Lenin?"
BY JEFFREY TAYLER
(12/01/99)

I have lived all my life in the very Krasnoyarsk Jeffrey Tayler writes about. I look at the faces of my co-workers, trying to find the traces of "hangover pallor" we all should have. Then I come to the window -- where are all those bums in threesomes, those picturesque proletarians, and the factory walls topped with barbed wire? The real Krasnoyarsk doesn't have much in common with the city of Jeffrey Tayler's gloomy imagination. The city behind the window is covered with snow -- white streets, white trees, the sky of all shades of blue, gray and pink -- a nice view, by the way.

I am an ordinary middle-aged woman, with a perfectly average salary, and my lifestyle is incredibly average -- go to work every day, go to the gym twice a week. (We are not supposed to go to the gym, are we? We are to experience "cabin fever" and to find "escape in vodka-drenched oblivion"), I try to watch my diet, like good movies and books, have a boyfriend -- sorry, not an exotic mafia guy, just an ordinary Web programmer. And I am shocked by this article.

It is not worse then the usual image of Russia in Hollywood movies or novels. But this article is not about the real place or the real people here. The line between journalism and fiction is blurred. This is a comic-book Russia, with the usual set of stereotypes and common places. To the hackneyed "proletarians, vodka, Russia, balalaika, Lenin" collection Tayler adds some new facts, but he often he distorts and misinterprets them. He feeds his readers with little lies, exaggerations and banalities, and you buy it because you like it.

Yes, the situation here is worse than in the United States during the Great Depression. There are millions of unemployed, lots of homeless -- we are in the middle of a crisis, and life in Russia is understandably hard, sometimes tragically absurd, often depressing. But take a look at any Russian and you will find a person with the same desires, feelings and aspirations as yours. We hope to have decent jobs and careers, to have loving families, to be successful, we try to live our lives in dignity, we want peace and justice, we need to have something to be proud of and something to believe in. Not all of us are bums. We are not always depressed. We are not weary, gloomy proletarian masses who are able to find escape only in vodka or in fanaticism of Orthodox Christianity. This is just not fair.

In Russia, it seems, Tayler can be as outrageous as he wishes and get away with it. His heart is more empty and cold than all the Siberian tundra.

-- Svetlana Lusik

Who were those masked anarchists in Seattle?
BY L.A. KAUFFMAN
(12/10/99)

It's really simple: Acts of destruction directed at either property or at human beings are "violent." That said, there's a clear distinction that must be emphasized. Violence against humans is always wrong, under all circumstances, but violence against property is sometimes justified as a political strategy. And the violence against property in Seattle was doubly justified. It worked as a counter-weight to the continuing Reaganesque worship of property rights as ascendant over social justice and environmental balance. And it worked as a device to attract the media attention without which the "Battle in Seattle" would have been relegated to a minor story.

-- David C. Orr

Anyone who advocates violence as a solution for political problems needs only to look at Northern Ireland. It doesn't work.

-- Genevieve Carnell

I find it strange that L.A. Kaufman refers to the Wobblies without mentioning that the IWW is not a historical curiosity, but a viable, active union. There were a lot of Wobblies in Seattle protesting the WTO, marching and getting tear-gassed and beaten. These protesters were entirely distinct from the Eugene brick-throwers.

-- Marya Janoff

Isn't it interesting that, according to Kauffman, the most notable accomplishment of this fringe group is the occupation of Federal property? Their first impulse upon gaining any sort of power is to set up a new state, run by themselves. Instead of anarchy, we find order. Instead of elimination of private property, we merely find property changing hands. Sound familiar? These "anarchists" are anarchists in name alone.

-- Alex Sheppard

• View blog reactions