Hallo allerseits,
gerade habe ich den Newsletter von Sharon Tennison erhalten, die für 22 US-Bürger eine 14-tägige Reise kreuz und quer durch Russland organisiert hat. Als erstes will ich mich entschuldigen, dass ich ihren Brief im Original, d. h. Englisch auflege, weil er fast 8 Seiten lang ist und ich viele andere Dinge zu erledigen habe. Aber Sharon
spricht und schreibt ein klares, einfaches Englisch, das relativ leicht zu verstehen ist. Vielleicht gibt es ja eine liebe Seele hier, die es auf sich nimmt, den Text für die weniger geübten Englisch-Leser/innen zu übersetzen. In dem Fall lege ich den Text gerne auf.
Sharon beschreibt in den ersten 6 Absätzen, wann und wie der grundlegende US- Wandel im Verhältnis zu Russland eingetreten ist. Am 3. Juni begann sie mit ihrem Mail und den Rest schrieb sie im Hochgeschwindigkeitszug nach Volgograd, dem vormaligen Stalingrad. Ihre Truppe hat in der Zwischenzeit dutzende Treffen mit den unterschiedlichsten Menschen absolviert - mit Unternehmern, Akademikern, Studenten, Menschen aus den unterschiedlichsten Berufen. Sie beschreibt die ganz außergewöhnlichen Veränderungen, die seit Putin in dem Land vor sich gegangen sind. Eine aufschlussreiche Lektüre. Und sie haben auch ein Video gemacht, das aber noch nicht fertig ist. Ich werde es später hier hinzulegen.
Citizen Diplomacy Travel begins again
-- June 2015
Sharon's Newsletter
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 23:10:56 -0400
Email begun on June 3, 2015
Dear Friends,
The relations between the two nuclear
superpowers, Russia and the U.S.,
deteriorated so rapidly during the
Ukraine build-up to war in 2014 that it
seemed to us critical to try to rebuild
citizen diplomacy again –– even
though this attempt feels like David
and Goliath with the slingshot.
Our 22 Americans from 15 states (and
one from South Africa) came together
to travel to Russia May 30 through June
15. Our goal? To learn how Russian
citizens perceive the situations in
Ukraine, Crimea and the
Washington-based economic sanctions
they are now under. We wanted to get
clarifying information from them, to
share our views with them, and to
examine how to begin new efforts to
break through the existing barriers
between our two countries.
Our non-traditional travel had no tour
guides, no tour buses, no palaces,
no concerts, no normal rounds of canned
meetings. Fortunately CCI has
sufficient connections across Russia to
organize meetings with ordinary
Russian business people, journalists,
professionals, university students
and yes, Russia's venerated TV anchor
over the past 40 years, Vladimir
Pozner with whom we spent an evening in
Moscow.
No other country has been so
persistently maligned in US mainstream media
(MSM) over the past decade as has
Russia; this demonization has been
initiated by a thin segment of
Washington's current policy makers and
America's compliant MSM. It is said to
have started in 2000 when Yeltsin
turned over the reigns of the "new"
Russia to then unknown Vladimir Putin.
I was told by a State Department
diplomat that on that very day when it
was announced that VV Putin would
likely be Russia's next president, "The
knives were drawn." Actually I
think it was even earlier in 1990, when
Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney,
Brzezinski, et al, came up with "The Wolfowitz
Doctrine."
At that time, a fragment of
Washington's power structure declared that the
Cold War was over, that America was the
victor––and a policy was set forth
to prevent any country including the
former USSR, from getting strong
enough to challenge America's
superiority in the future (Google the
Wolfowitz Doctrine). Another strategy
soon emerged––"Full Spectrum
Dominance;" that is, whatever
power it takes to maintain superiority over
land, air, water, subsoil, and outer
space on the planet. To some, this
meant total security for Americans in
the future; to others, it meant
sinister plotting to do whatever
necessary to maintain America's power and
hegemony (Google Full Spectrum
Dominance).
With the emergence of Vladimir Putin in
2000, a serious effort began to
coalesce around Russia to hem her in.
Subtly, and not so subtly, Russia
found itself being criticized for doing
the normal reforms and
state-building necessary to put Russia
back on its feet after communism and
the disastrous 1990s. Those of us
intimately involved with the collapse of
the USSR and its impact on 150 million
Russian people were bewildered by
why Washington's policymakers were
deliberately taking a hostile stance to
the "New" Russia." A
pattern emerged from 2001 on. We continued to try to
make sense of it until the demonization
of Russia and Russia's president,
Vladimir Putin, became such virulent
attacks that we had to question the
intentions and psychology of the
Washington's perpetrators.
Psychologically healthy human beings
don't continuously attack, demean,
bully, and sanction other people––or
whole nations. The 2014 Sochi Olympic
events were the capstone––an
all-out effort occurred to blackball Russia's
attempt to show the world a healthy and
new Russia. Sochi was a monumental
success which could not be discounted.
On to our Travel in Today's Russia:
On May 31 we arrived Moscow, now 12
million people––our schedule was packed
with simultaneous meetings with
journalists, entrepreneurs, think tank
leaders, US corporate persons and
university faculty and students. We
traveled the miles from N to S, E to
W, on the famed Moscow Metro system
with the help of delightful students
and travelers who knew the system. Our
travelers were stunned by the range of
meetings they attended, some three
or four of them going out in multiple
directions to discuss the issues that
divide our two countries. We found
total openness, honesty and multiple
points of view. Most Muscovites were
impressed by the new Russia emerging
over the past 15 years––and some
were quite vocal about their gripes
regarding Putin and the governing
system. Our student helpers were from the
relatively new Moscow School of
Economic and Political Sciences. One of
the last meetings, and one that all of
the delegation attended, was at
their academic institution. The room
held about 50 people with long tables
on all four sides, with all
communicants facing each other. Russians on
the left and Americans on the right.
Young professor Alexander Abashkin,
began with a few informal remarks, gave
the floor to me, after which we all
quickly introduced ourselves and began
asking informal questions of each
other, one person having the floor at a
time. It was civil, revealing and
powerful––there was no party line
from either side of the table. We began
to deal with solutions for the current
political standoff -- proposing
possibilities for future
people-to-people exchanges with both sides being
responsible for their own travel money
and providing pro bono support for
any future activities. As for CCI, we
will approach our US lists as we
gear up to repeat some of our earlier
programs which broke down barriers
between our two countries in the 1980s
and 1990s. You may want to
participate or to contribute to one of
the program possibilities.
Our last evening in Moscow was spent
with Vladimir Pozner, an old friend
since the 1980s. We interrogated him
on current issues and got straight
answers, including those not shared by
the current Putin government. Our
videographer captured the extraordinary
discussion we had with Pozner. It
will be available as a Youtube. We will
send you the URL after we get home
and edit the footage.
As
this is written, we citizen diplomats
are on an overnight train from
Moscow and traveling into the heart of
Russia. The next stop will be
Volgograd, the battleground that turned
the tide of WWII. We are on one of
the tens of thousands of new train
tracks and new economy trains, thanks to
the efforts of one Vladimir Yukanin,
the first president of Russia's new
railroad industry. I ponder the days
when I sat with him on a small board
in 1987 when we were trying to start a
small children's private art school
in Leningrad; also a lunch with him in
1991 in a small new private
restaurant in the Petrogradski
District; afterward he arranged for CCI to
have a free small office in the
Smolney; and then in 1993 listened to his
pain, with head in his hands, about the
devastatingly sordid changes in
Russia's tragic 1990s. This cultured
young man at the time was lamenting
that he and his wife moved their
television out due to the predominance of
America's B grade movies which they
couldn't allow their children to watch.
Never would I have guessed this
thoughtful young man would someday revamp
the largest train system in the
world––and I would be riding on his trains
in awe. Even train lavatories have
metamorphosed into attractive, efficient
and pristine-clean rooms at the end of
each car.
It's 6 am, we are approaching Volgograd
within the next couple of hours. I
arose at 4 am to take in the scenery
outside our train windows. This is
such a verdant countryside, vast
stretches of forests, so full of foliage
they looked to be stuffed with solid
green trees along side the tracks.
I'm struck by the tiny ancient towns we
are passing through, formerly
broken down Soviet buildings––now
showing newly added repair and paint on
everything in site. Structures sport
new coats of color not seen in the
Soviet days. I'm fascinated by their
use of the most simple of available
products to create beauty. For
instance, many carefully designed circular
flower beds made of what appear to be
old cut-in-half tires. They are
painted a slightly different but
corresponding color from the main
buildings, with the effect being
scalloped circular beds of blooming
annuals, each about 15 feet in
diameter. Why describe something this
simple? It's just one small example of
thousands of details I'm noticing
which are telling me that "Beauty
is Back" in today's Russia. The garish
appearances from the last couple of
decades are giving way to a new sense
of harmony and color––even in
outposts like these that the train is passing
through.
Railroad tracks in most cities are
usually the ugliest of places, but not
so in Russia today. Shiny trains pull
up in the cities, young women and men
in sharp fitted uniforms with hats step
out and welcome guests. Gone are
the sour-faced elderly ladies who
looked suspiciously over our tickets and
passports. Even the small train stops
are obviously cared for. We just
passed a small Orthodox church with the
four cupolas and one central one
looking as though they have been
recently renovated with pure gold. Surely
not, but it appeared so. Off in the
distance as we pull away from the town
are the two and three-story new homes,
none of them alike. Obviously tract
homes haven't come to Russia yet.
These are the homes of entrepreneurs,
including bureaucrats no doubt, the
latter unfortunately having made their
livings off of the entrepreneurs in the
1990s and 2000s. Even nondescript
outlying regions like these have
developed a new face. At the train stops,
the traditional babushkas usually
selling foods to train occupants from
their baskets are not there! The old
bent shoulders are being replaced
with rural people who are young,
slender, shoulders back––they walk at a
different pace than their fathers,
mothers and grandparents. Their clothing
is similar to average Americans (since
the Chinese are making most of what
both peoples' wear today).
Now back to the seemingly endless miles
of landscapes with cultivated farm
lands in between thick green forests.
Volgograd is now about an hour away.
So, yes, to this veteran watcher of all
remnants in this country, it is
clear that beauty is back; much of the
older generation has died off, and
a new Russia is being born here. Over
the past decade I've been able to
finally see the blossoming of their
deep respect for their rich Russian
culture––its literature, poets, and
musical geniuses are coming
back––thankfully it was not lost in
the miserable turnstile between the
Soviet era and this new period of
societal development.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We, the Baltic peoples, the Ukrainians,
or any country, have NOTHING to
fear from today's Russia. From all
conversations we are having, Russians
have NO interest in more land mass;
they have more land than they need,
and the worst situation of all, would
be to have resentful Baltic countries
or other nations under their rule
again. The constant allegations that
Russians are looking to take over
additional territory are totally
manufactured propaganda.
We do need to understand that Russians
will never submit to a world culture
that is different from their own––any
more than we in America would.
Russians have regained their national
pride over the past decade and are
capable of defending their right to
exist––and they have a government today
that will protect their deeply embedded
culture. Russia will never be
precisely like America, nor should they
be; their history and national
conditionings are quite different from
ours. However, they are completely
ready to let America be America ….
and for us and other countries to
develop what is comfortable for
ourselves. They have NO intention to
impose their culture on others.
The narrow slice of today's American
policymakers need to get accustomed to
this fact and stop their incessant
preoccupation to remake the world in
America's image.
On to Volgograd ….. Sharon
When referring to the policies that are
currently being made in the West, I
find it more appropriate to designate
them as "Washington policies," not
U.S. or American policies.
I KNOW middle America. I've been
traveling from state to state over the
past three years speaking and selling
my book. Even though many Americans
are frequently misinformed by MSM,
Americans are truly good people with
good hearts and would never wage wars
on other countries …. or on Russia.
From Rotary and Kiwanis clubs to
business forums, libraries, churches,
universities and even high schools,
Americans are good stock, doing good
work in their cities and states. They
want to know the truth and are open
to new inputs. Our MSM has been
relentless and of one voice on Russia
over the past few years --- to the
place where the average American hardly
realizes that the "sanctions"
are an all-out attempt to take Russia down
economically. If you are interested,
I can send Internet URLs by
responsible investigative journalists
and international news services which
will give multiple points of view on
these topics. Wars have been fought
over such tactics as economic sanctions
in the past. Fortunately Russia
has kept a cool head and is able to
survive––and has as a result, developed
serious supportive relationships with
China, India, Brazil and South
Africa–the BRICS countries. More on
this to follow.
If you are interested in a trip to
Russia of this type, please let us know,
Sharon Tennison
Please excuse poor sentence structure,
typos, etc. No editors available.
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