A very good edition of News of the Week
The premier Sunday evening news program on Russian state television hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov seems to run longer and longer. Last night’s edition of Vesti nedeli (News of the Week) came in at three hours. For those of you who have a command of Russian, the show is accessible online the day following its first transmission and is packaged in thematic segments which are easy to navigate: https://smotrim.ru/brand/5206?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=serp&utm_campaign=serp
Selection of segments was, of course, not an option in the live broadcast. But for those of us with the required Sitzfleisch, uninterrupted viewing was still worthwhile. I am thinking in particular of the coverage of the St Petersburg International Cultural Forum that took place in the Northern Capital over three days, Tuesday through Thursday; of the lengthy coverage of the Ukraine war from the Vesti correspondents in situ; and the presentation of Russia’s archival materials about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to mark the 60th anniversary of his death in Dallas.
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This was the 9th Cultural Forum and the first to be held under normal in-person conditions since the onset of the Covid pandemic. It was meticulously prepared and brought together not only many of the country’s cultural leaders in the various arts but also sizable delegations from abroad, including the United States and other “unfriendly nations.”
As always, the round table discussions were mostly suitable for experts, though most were open to the public subject to advance registration. As in the past, the organizational center of the Forum and site of many events was the tsarist era General Staff building located just across the Palace Square from the main corpus of the Hermitage Museum. In the late 1990s this enormous complex was extensively rebuilt to suit the needs of the Museum for additional exhibition space. The building is best known to tourists for housing a remarkable collection of the French Impressionists, which is the pride of the Hermitage. And whereas the Winter Palace often has immense lines, which will only grow longer now that Chinese mass tourism to Russia has been restored, the General Staff building presents no difficulty in procuring tickets at the entrance. Meanwhile, the building’s use as a conference center was foreseen from the beginning and there are large public spaces such as the multi-story high atrium configured as a grand staircase on which seats can be arranged to accommodate several hundred guests.
It was precisely in this vast space that has a Mussolini era scale and de-humanizing grandeur that the organizers convened the culmination gathering of the Forum, its plenary session. In keeping with tradition, President Vladimir Putin delivered a set speech and then interacted with honored guests in the audience. None was more honored or politically important than Pierre de Gaulle, grandson of France’s towering military and political leader of the 20th century, Charles de Gaulle.
Pierre de Gaulle attracted the close attention of Russian journalists by declaring during his visit that he would be honored to acquire Russian citizenship. Excerpts from his short speech when given the microphone in the plenary session were carried on News of the Week. The main point was his admiration for Russia for “fighting for traditional values, the family and spirituality.” He claimed that these values have disappeared in the West. Pierre de Gaulle left no doubt that he sides with Russia in its conflict with Ukraine.
Putin’s response was in part spontaneous: he expressed his pleasure at seeing this descendant of France’s greatest 20th century leader present in the auditorium. The greater part of his response was prepared in advance and was well calculated to put the present stand-off between Russia and Western Europe in perspective.
Putin remarked that in WWII France had two leaders who embodied sharply contrasting responses to the German occupation of their country. There was Marshal Petain, who remained in France as head of state and followed orders from Berlin in line with a policy of ‘acquiescence.' And there was General de Gaulle, who decamped abroad to lead the fight against the Germans.
Putin then likened the present day ruling elites in the European Union as practitioners of the Petain policy: they have surrendered sovereignty and national traditions while acquiescing in domination by the USA. He was placing Pierre de Gaulle squarely in the tradition of his grandfather as a fighter for national sovereignty and values. Putin concluded, based on what he heard from Pierre, that perhaps France should submit an application to join BRICS.
It is interesting to note that mainstream French media have been quick to denounce Pierre de Gaulle. RTL.fr tells us that “De Gaulle would turn over in his grave” upon hearing the words of his grandson.
However, the logic in the grandson’s position cannot be so easily dismissed. After all it was Charles de Gaulle who withdrew France from NATO (1967). It was Charles de Gaulle who favored ‘a Europe from Brest to Vladivostok.’ The General had no wish to kowtow to Washington.
Curiously, the French commentary on Pierre de Gaulle has said nothing about his father Philippe, the General’s son, who rose in the French navy to the rank of rear admiral. Following his retirement from military service in 1982, Philippe de Gaulle became an ambassador for French big business. It was in about 1987 that I encountered Philippe when he appeared as a genial host to a delegation of Polish telecoms officials during their visit to Paris and talks with Alcatel, my employer at the time, over transfer of the world’s leading digital switching technology in a highly valued contract. Let us remember that Poland was at the time still Communist run and the technology in question was state of the art. Clearly the General’s son had no problems pursuing a major contract on behalf of France against other international competitors, chiefly in North America.
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The very long segment of front line reporting by Russia’s war correspondents on last night’s news wrap-up of the week made it manifestly clear that Russia is moving forward, from ‘active defense’ as Putin modestly described it a few weeks ago, to open offensive action that is advancing by several kilometers a day into Ukrainian lines thanks to massive artillery barrages day and night and drone-targeted bombing of Ukrainian trenches and strong points. As one soldier said frankly, ‘I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of this, but they have a choice if they want to survive – surrender.’ The soldier in question carries the nom de guerre Stary (old) and indeed by the unmasked part of his face he looked to be 55 or more. Like other fighters from the Donbas, he has been actively engaged on the front lines for 9 years, since 2014.
Listening to these people on the ground, it is clear that they will settle for nothing less than Ukrainian capitulation. Those in the West who are negotiating among themselves about some ‘frozen conflict’ outcome of this war miss the point entirely.
The whole report makes it plain that Russia will dictate the terms of a peace from a position of strength and Ukraine will be the supplicant. That is the reality as seen on Russian television.
Finally, allow me to offer a few remarks on last night’s segment devoted to the 60th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. It was based on documents pertaining to the case from the Soviet Central Committee archives that were only recently opened to the public. These included materials dispatched to the Kremlin by the then Soviet ambassador to the United States Dobrynin and materials from Nikita Khrushchev’s personal archival files. The presenters let the documents speak for themselves and did not venture to say more than was set down in 1963-64.
The point is that Kennedy and Khrushchev established some kind of personal rapport following the conclusion of the Cuban Missile crisis. The two leaders set up a backchannel for secret communications between themselves. On the American side the go-between was Pierre Salinger. The two sides were in agreement that nuclear war must be avoided and were taking steps to deconstruct the Cold War.
President Kennedy’s speech to the American University in Washington a few weeks before the assassination was remarked upon in Moscow by those who saw the possibility of a page being turned. JFK mentioned the Russian experience of war, its having lost 20 million in WWII, more than any other combatant country.
Khrushchev’s papers show that he was greatly shocked and saddened when he learned of Kennedy’s death. His wife Nina wrote personally to Jacqueline Kennedy to express her sadness.
The investigation report into the assassination issued in the States several weeks after the event was read with great skepticism in Moscow, where intelligence experts found the notion of a single murderer Oswald acting in isolation to be incredible. They believed the assassination was carried out by a group with unlimited financial and technical resources.
The Russians conducted their own investigation into Oswald and his several years spent in Minsk, where he married his wife Marina. They passed this information over to Washington in good faith.
As I say, last night’s News of the Week segment on JFK was aimed at removing any suspicion that Russia was involved. It did not point a finger in any direction, but with a little imagination, you might easily conclude that the CIA did it.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023