HAPPY NEW ERA

I think I can speak on behalf of thousands of journalists working both in Russia and abroad if I say that many of us are appalled by TIME's decision to name President Vladimir Putin the Person of the Year 2007.

“TIME's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor”, the magazine writes. “At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. [Putin] stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years. At significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize, he has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power. For that reason, Vladimir Putin is TIME's 2007 Person of the Year.”

TIME stresses that its choice does not suggest an endorsement of any sort, but only registers the person of year's power and profound influence on the world. In the magazine's view, that power is reflected in “the stability that Russia had not seen for a hundred years”. It is intriguing, what sort of stability TIME has in mind? “Stability before freedom, stability before choice” is what Russia had always had many times, with the exception of the rare revolutionary outbreaks, so it is only surprising that TIME considers that sort of stability as something new. And should the magazine have a true stability in mind, the kind that encourages people to invest in their long-term future, have several children and make other long-term decisions confident that a regime (whatever it is) will not change – that kind of stability is yet to seek. President Putin is the living proof to the absence of that stability as he does not even dare leave his position in power in the fear that the whole system he had built up would drown in chaos. Most people who vote for Putin and support him also do so out of fear. Not necessarily the sort of fear felt for a dictator, but simply the fear that an unknown someone else, change as such, would be more troublesome than the bearable status quo. The status quo that has doubled corruption statistics, squeezed life out of most of Russian regions and is based solely on high oil and gas prices. Are those stable? Putin's regime is their reflection. Would not it be more reasonable to choose OIL as the person of the year? Or even the past several years?

Even more so, considering the fact it was OIL that influenced many Western leaders' undemocratic moves, which both CNN and TIME have often failed to criticize on time .

Another very serious point is that TIME could not have possibly been so naïve as not to know that their choice of cover, their photoshopped Uberputin and their quotes on the Russian president giving Russia stability will be gladly adopted, recycled and blown out of proportion by the Russian propaganda. What TIME did will be presented as the ultimate approval (if even in shivering awe) of the new Russia “rising from her knees”, the so craved for recognition of the past and coming “elections”. Who cares now that the OSCE has called the 2 December elections dishonest!

And no one will tell the Russian people that Hitler and Stalin were also featured in the same nomination. As well as Ayatollah Khamenei. Very few Russians will bother to check that on the internet for themselves.

I have read in a brilliant book by Dutch publicist Joris Luyendijk about the Middle East that for many Western politicians it is actually more comfortable to deal with a mild dictatorship than an unpredictable democracy. I am afraid that is also why TIME chose Putin.

But TIME is wrong if its editors think they can only gain in sales and citations through their scandalous choices. Because any apologetics or even neglect of the worsening situation around human rights in Russia also directly affects the West: the malpractices of nepotism, secret deals behind closed doors without transparent reporting to the parliaments and the people, taking decisions depending on personal, pseudo-monarchic friendships and promise of material gain overpowering moral principles – all these typical characteristics of the way things are done in Russia today are already spreading westwards. Partially because the West is dependent on Russia and its practices (in terms of natural resources), but partly because the Western society does not yet see the full danger such practices carry. And TIME's publication is one of the mechanisms blinding the Western society even further.

And that is why after today those few Russians who still believe in building a (probably less stable) young democracy, such as the one in the Ukraine, feel even more alone and abandoned, even by their once supporters in the West.