Vladimir Putin: becoming more and more qualified with age

Vladimir Putin, currently serving as Prime Minister of Russia and former President (2000-2008), has said he is considering a run to regain his presidential title. The Russian constitution restricts a person to two terms yet the amount of time for each of these terms has recently been increased to six years rather than four. As such, Putin could run to serve four more years. The Russian electorate, not to mention international observers, may be uneasy with the dynastic power Putin seems to want but he has one clear-cut advantage that his opponents may not have. He is bald.

Indeed, there exists a conspicuous alternation between full-haired and bald rulers of the northern empire/Soviet state/republic, a superstition which is taken very seriously by electing citizens. It would be the first time that a leader actually hand-picks his successor and then returns to power himself but the important thing is that he was bald(ing), his chosen successor President Medvedev has a nice head of hair and he will be back balder than ever.

Two Revolutions, a Cold War and some “Heads”

1. Georgy L’vov (Bald) – March 1917-July 1917 – 1^st President of the Russian provisional government between the two revolutions of 1917.

2. Alexander Kerensky (Hair) – July 1917-November 1917 – 2^nd President of the Russian provisional government that lasted until the Bolshevik coup.

3. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov Lenin (Bald) – 1917-1924 – First chairman of the council of people’s commissars. Along with adjutant Trotsky and disciples such as Stalin, his Marxist vision of things to come for Soviet Russia was a more economic and philosophical one than what would be enacted by his successors.

4. Joseph Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili Stalin (Hair) – 1924-1953 – General Secretary of the communist party of the Soviet Union, he gained power by pushing aside Trotsky and his supporters. Stalin was a major antagonist to his people as well as to the Western World, in part provoking the Cold War.

Just to be safe, an epic mustache doesn't hurt

5. Nikita Khrushchev (Bald) – 1953-1964 – He was the eastern counterpart to John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. His “loss” of this conflict led to his ultimate humiliation and forced resignation.

Look at that chump Kennedy with his silky man mane

6. Leonid Brezhnev (Hair) – 1964-1982 – He directed the ruin of the Russian economy by excessive military build-up at the height of the Cold War. Outlasting many of his international counterparts, archives of his “presidency” remain highly classified and thus all analysis remains circumstantial.

7. Yuri Andropov (Bald) – 1982-1984 – He oversaw an uneventful administration that ended with his death. He worked for peace but was shunned by both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

8. Konstantin Chernenko (Hair) – 1984-1985 – His was another short, 13-month period that announced a pacification of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

9. Mikhail Gorbatchev (Bald) – 1985-1991 – He ended the Cold War by encouraging independence in Easter Europe with his Perestroïka (openness)program and through reconciliation with the West through his glastnost (transparency) policy.

10.  Boris Yeltsin (Hair) – 1991-1999: First President of the Russian Republic and father to the economic collapse of the country.

11.  Vladimir Putin (Bald) – 1999-2008: He stabilized the economic situation but has also acquired the surname “butcher of Grozny” for his violent reactions towards Chechen separatists. He will consider a third term in the future, a prospect that will not be hindered by his hair (or lack of).

12.  Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (Hair) – 2008-…: Putin’s hand-picked successor must live in the former President/new Prime Minister’s shadow and with very tense relations with the Western World. For now, Russia is working to solve its antagonistic relations with the United States, with Europe and especially with its former Soviet satellite states.

A picture of the current President

In the end, Putin is an extravagant character that likes to shock and have worldwide media talk about him. This is why he stipulated on a third term during a self-initiated public forum called “A Conversation with Vladimir Putin: The Sequel”. One would be tempted to not take the statement too seriously but that would be ignoring the limitless ambition of the one they call “The Butcher of Grozny”.

End.

Russian president Medvedev: clever politician or mad genius?

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev recently announced at a conference that his country had too many time zones. From their current 11, Medvedev would like to standardize them all into 4 accessible time zones for the benefit of the Russian people, businesses and regional politics. Subsequent uproar, locally and internationally, has centered around one crucial question: would this change be truly a useful shift for the people and the economy of the country or is it simply a political whim aimed to strengthen the power and standing of the Kremlin?

Firstly, there are several difficulties of implementation and practicality that would be immediately obvious with such a change. There of course would be the problem that the sun wouldn’t necessarily obey the edicts of Moscow and may simply rise around 3:45 in the morning in some places and at 9:30 in others. The other immediate difficulty is that of acceptance. Medvedev can announce the change, have it diffused through television and newspaper but it is not until everybody has been informed that this change can take place. Consequently, it will be no easy task to reach everyone from the Ural mountains to inner Siberia and over to the very last eastern city of Magadan bordering Alaska (and Sarah Palin’s house presumably*).

*Sees Russia from her house

Despite these difficulties and assuming everyone would be on board, perhaps the proposed change would be as beneficial as the president has claimed. Medvedev affirms that business with Europe would be greatly improved and that business hours in Russia would now coincide whereas the business day in the east used to close hours before the business day of the west would open. President Medvedev also cites a stronger rapport with local governments, keeping in mind that Russia is governed in a highly centralized manner but that many provinces have to operate while Moscow sleeps. “It could explain why Russia has so many problems with governance” Medvedev says about the current 11 hour difference, surely corruption and organized crime have a part to play in it too but Medvedev affirms the time shift will change everything for the better. That being said, there doesn’t seem to be any incentive for the majority of Russia’s rural population. Business and governance are certainly important but it is the poorest and least-involved of farmers that will have to start cultivating fields for hours in the dark.

Indeed, Mr. Medvedev may be thinking that the people were the prime factor when we devised our time zones in the first place. He would be wrong to think so; the time zones were motivated by, like in the Russian case, a speculation in favour of business and governance. Before 1929, sundials mostly indicated the “correct time” based on solar position for each city and village. This meant that everyone on earth got up at precisely 7 AM with the sun but it also meant that neighbouring cities were minutes apart in time. The invention of the locomotive, railway system and advanced telecommunications made the whole endeavour obsolete and a standardized measure needed to be adopted. Thus, following 1929 most nations adopted the system based on Greenwich Mean Time that delimited time zones based on Longitude and which made international communications and business possible. It came with the concept of Daylight Savings time introduced formerly in 1916. This was actually a wartime measure to conserve coal but it stuck nonetheless and many of us contend with it twice a year thinking that productivity or comfortable living may have been the point of it. With tweaks here and there, we now have 40 time zones around the world, very few of which have the people, much less solar position, in mind.

Oh yes, 40

Why 40? Well, 24 would make more sense but over the years, many governments have used the intangible concept for political legitimacy and power. Afghanistan runs 30 minutes ahead of its neighbours and Nepal even runs 15 minutes faster than the actual time zone it was given. 15 minutes don’t help anyone, it may very well help business and governance in some small way I can’t see but no Nepalese goat farmer is better off this way.

Political whim was our second option for this proposed change in Russia and there are indeed a few examples of this in History. In 1949 for example, to legitimize the communist leadership of China and to prove the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party over time itself, the nation’s five time zones were unified into one. This single hour is of course the one that is correct on a solar level only with Beijing in the far eastern part of the country. The sun rises four hours late in Tibet but at least everyone knows Beijing and the Communist Party are the important ones.

Protesters get confused

More recently in 2005, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela moved his country’s time 30 minutes ahead claiming that it would make his population more productive. This makes no sense once we realise that he didn’t create 30 more minutes of time during the 24-hour day, he simply shifted around the time of sunrise and sunset. With this he showed that he had supreme power over the governance of Venezuela, this, despite the opposition of the United-States to his socialist leanings.

Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England summarises the political motivation of time zone tampering as such: “It is an ultimate statement of power to show your people that you have control over nature in this way.”

Other analysts even claim that President Medvedev just threw this crazy notion into a conference where he had to announce some very unpopular measures. He only wanted to distract people and has no intention of even proposing this measure in government that would eventually cost millions in implementation. Touché Mr. Medvedev, touché.

End.