A study commissioned by Germany’s Interior Ministry warns that 180.000 of the country’s 3 million Muslims are willing to commit violence in the name of Islam, which amounts to 6 percent of the Muslim population of Germany. The number is alarmingly high because a similar study a year ago showed that just 32.000, slightly more than 1 percent, were radical islamists representing a potential security threat.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble says in a foreword that the study leads to the ”worrying conclusion that a serious potential for Islamist radicalization has developed in Germany”.

Christine Haderthauer, secretary general of the conservative the Christian Social Union, told Der Spiegel that her party ”has always warned against the dangers of parallel societies. Our fears have been confirmed in a shocking manner.”

The study was conducted by two researchers from the Institute of Criminology at the University of Hamburg. The authors interviewed 1,750 Muslims of whom around 40 percent were German citizens. Almost 40 percent of the respondents think that ”physical violence is justified as a reaction against the threat of the West’s threat to Islam”. The study doesn’t clarify what is meant by ”threat” and for what exactly the West should be hold accountable.

The survey found that more than half of the respondents felt themselves excluded from German society, and felt they were being treated as foreigners. the study has caused a big debate in Germany about the need for better integration.

Unfortunately the study doesn’t specify what the respondents mean by ”being treated as a foreigner”. My Russian born wife feels being treated as a foreigner every other day, but that does’t make her want to commit violence in the name of the Russian orthodox church. Or that she is supporting terrorist attacks on the West, when she feels that Russia is being mistreated by the West or has not been given a fair hearing.

People from the countryside who arrive in Copenhagen and start to speak in a heavy provincial accent also risk being treated as ”foreigners”. If it means discrimination it’s bad and should be fought in every possible way.

But sometimes treating people as foreigners also implies some kind of reluctance to engage them in debate or being very polite without challenging their views if they say something outrageous. That’s the multiculturalist way of integration, and it has obviously failed.

In fact, the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark was an act of inclusion and integration of Muslims into the Danish tradition of religious satire, though a majority of Muslims saw it differently. The cartoons send an important message to Muslims saying: We don’t expect more or less of you, we expect exactly the same of you as of everybody else, and that’s a full recogniction of your presence in society as equal citizens.

The European left has for some time denounced Denmark as xenophobic due to strict immigration laws, and quite a few leftists saw the cartoon crisis as a case in point. The Danes were mocking a weak minority, and are not prepared to live and act in a globalized world. Being married to an immigrant myself and having spent 14 years abroad as a foreign correspondent I have always felt this was a narrow minded and provincial attitude.

The reality is quite the opposite. Since the conservative coalition of Prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen came into power in late 2001 the Danes have once and again proved that they are quite open minded when it comes to cross cultural dialogue and a positive attitude towards the process of globalisation.

Here are some figures: In 2001 when the Social Democrats were still in power Denmark granted permanent residence to 36.000 immigrants. Last year the figure had risen to 46.000. In 2001 37 percent of immigrants and refugees felt they were being discriminated against according to an opinion poll. In 2007, i.e. after the cartoon crisis, the number had fallen to 27 percent.

And now comes a new European Union survey showing that the Danes are the most cosmopolitan nation in the EU, a result that confirms the trend.

The survey’s fieldwork was carried out between 13 and 17 of november, 2007. More than 27.000 randomly selected citizens aged 15 and above were interviewed in the twenty seven member states of the European Union.

According to the survey 56 percent of the Danes are cosmopolitans followed by the Swedes and the Dutch with 48 percent and 47 percent.

The result is based on two factors: The Danes are more positive towards cross cultural interaction than the majority of the Europeans, and they don’t think that young people should be tied down by the traditions of their parents.

”We are a highly individualistic society,” Rune Stubager, associate professor of Aarhus university, told Jyllands-Posten.

”The Danes are not as sceptical towards immigration as Europeans from the east and the south,” Mr. Stubager added.

Mohammad Rafiq, a consultant on integration understands why Denmark is at the top of the survey, though the figures don’t necessarily translate into working integration.

Says Mr. Rafiq to Jyllands-Posten:

”The Danes are willing to commit themselves to building bridges and establishing contacts to people coming from a different ethnic background. They don’t succeed, but it’s because of the immigrants who are xenophobic towards the Danes. They tend to isolate themselves instead of meeting the Danes in sports clubs for example.”

Iran has agreed to pay for 60 pct. of the damages done to Denmark’s embassy in Teheran during the cartoon crisis back in February 2006, i.e. 120.000 dollars. The Iranian regime was behind a so called ”spontaneous” demonstration in front of the embassy. The compensation covers the material damage, while the Iranians have refused to pay for extra security measures and evacuation of the embassy staff right before the attack, February 6th 2006.

Says Denmark’s minister of foreign affairs, Per Stig Moeller:

”This is a very satisfactory solution from our point of point view. Usually it’s very difficult to get any kind of compensation from Iran in this kind of cases, that’s no secret.”

Last Tuesday Fuat Deniz, an 40 year old associate professor of sociology at the university of Orebro, Sweden, was stabbed on his way to the fitness center on campus. He died the next day. Fuat Deniz had his throat cut, and the murder has caused chock and bewilderment at the university, where he had been teaching since 2001. So far the police has no suspects, they are investigating the life of the well-liked scholar.

Fuat Deniz was of Assyrian origin and an international reknown expert on the mass killings of the Assyrians under Ottoman Turkish rule in the wake of the First World War, a politically charged and controversial matter in today’s Turkey. Mr. Deniz did his ph.d. on this issue, and yesterday he was scheduled to give a presentation at Leiden university in the Netherland about the treatment of religious minorities in a number of countries.

Though Mr. Deniz’ colleagues in the sociology department expressed chock and couldn’t come up with a possible motive for the killing, researches dealing with the same hot issue of the Assyrian’s fate in the Ottoman empire were not that surprised.

Says David Gaunt, author of Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Reactions in Eastern Anatolia During World War, to Svenska Dagbladet:

”Anyone who studies the Assyrians and the genocide in the Ottoman empire is subject to threats. Even if there hasn’t been been a specific threat, it’s always been part of the subtext. This is a very sensitive issue, academic research in this field is perceived as political action. Anyone interested in Christian minorities in Turkey is seen as a threat.”

David Gaunt who just received a grant from the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies in Sweden to continue his research on the genocide of the Assyrians, explains that unknown individuals show up at seminars devoted to the issue of the Assyrians in the Ottoman empire and present themselves as journalists. During the seminars these ”journalists” shoot photographs of everyone present, and on field trips to Turkey David Gaunt has been followed closely by security officers armed with automatic weapons.

David Gaunt has also been the target of a smear campaign in the Turkish press, and he knows about colleagues receiving death threats and being denounced as terrorists.

Firat Deniz, a cousin of the murder victim, also focuses on a political motive:

”Maybe somebody was upset because of his writings. It looks as if the killer knew what he was doing. He wanted to kill, he just stabbed his throat.”

The Assyrians are Christians and according to leading scholars close to 500.000 Assyrians lost their lives in the Ottoman empire in the years 1914 – 1924. Today they reside across the Middle East in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. An estimated 80.000 Assyrians live in Sweden, the largest diaspora in Europe.

This tragic episode reminds me of an attack in Copenhagen two years ago. A scholar of Islam was approached by three young Muslims on the streets of Copenhagen. According to colleagues the Muslims praised his teaching and suggested that he gets in the car so they can talk about it. In the car the scholar was beaten up and dropped off in another part of town. His kidneys were damaged, he was urinating blood and needed medical treatment.

This episode played a crucial role in the wake of the cartoon crisis. The illustrator who made the drawings of the prophet Mohammed for a children’s book by author Kare Bluitgen and insisted on anonymity, i.e. committed self censorship, referred to this attack as a major reason behind his decision to have his name removed from the cover of the book. This example of self censorship was the starting point for the commissioning of the cartoons.

According to the police the three young men demanded that the scholar refrain from reciting the Koran in class. Later the scholar said to the daily Berlingske Tidende:

”I am pretty sure that I was attacked by Wahabis. They have a strict, Taleban-like understanding of Islam.”

Three weeks before the attack the scholar, who has a Jewish-Moroccan background and is a Danish citizen, was invited to recite from the Koran in a class. The teacher suggested he read verses from a chapter about the devil.

”The recited pieces involved Adam’s encounter with the devil, and Satan refuses to submit to Adam, and he is being thrown out of heaven,” explained the teacher present at the reciting to the weekly Weekendavisen.

Two years later it appears that the crime hasn’t been solved.

Grayson Perry, the British artist who not long ago admitted that he was avoiding Islam in his work due to fear, elaborates in a comment for The Art Newspaper. He speaks about a combination of political correctness and fear that is pervading the art world:

Awell-known London department store has asked me to design a fabric—but one topic has raised its head in the planning meetings: religion. The design team has asked me not to address the subject in my work for them. I never thought in my lifetime religion would be such a hot topic again. But it’s not religion per se, it’s fundamentalism—and specifically Islamic fundamentalism.

If you look at stories that have been in the news in the last few years such as the assassination of Theo Van Gogh [the Dutch film- maker who made a film about Islamic culture and was shot dead in Amsterdam in 2004] and the Danish cartoon episode, the use of Islamic imagery in both cases provoked furious responses.

It’s a minefield because of Islam’s attitude to the image of the prophet and the Koran; I’m just not aware of what the limit is and don’t know how elastic Islam’s use of imagery is, with even seemingly innocuous illustrations. I shy away from even fairly mundane references to Islam. Every time I might be tempted to draw a mosque on one of my map pieces, I think, “Is this dodgy?”. I resent the fact that I have to think twice about whether it’s offensive. It’s a mixture of ignorance and fear. I’m a fan of religion, know Christian myths and can play with those. But I aim to make work about when belief gets muddled up with fact and I think Islam makes that confusion just as often.

It feels unfair because I regularly use Christian imagery. A few touchy evangelists may well take offence but I like vicars on the whole. I had great fun at a recent talk in St Paul’s Cathedral in London, discussing transgender issues. Can you imagine how that would go down in a mosque?

When you’re working in traditional crafts, you’re dealing with very basic vocabularies. In order to convey messages and ideas, I reach for archetypal symbols, but with Islam, I wonder what I can use to represent those parts of that world. It’s not to say, however, that I’ve not touched upon the subject. My tapestry Vote Alan Measles for God [Alan Measles is Perry’s teddy bear] is based on Afghan war rugs and refers to the war on terror. It’s a combination of middle-eastern weaving styles and war imagery.

But I wouldn’t want this one subject to become a defining issue for me. People sometimes say to me: “You’re the artist who makes those paedophile pots, aren’t you?” to which I reply: “Which pot do you mean?” If I were to use Islam in my work often, it would inevitably define me as an artist, but I do, however, want to make work that’s slightly charged which is important. My work’s based on the subject matter making it unique, it’s a central plank of my practice—otherwise I’m just a pot-maker.

A combination of political correctness and fear comes into play in the UK. The “Jerry Springer: the Opera” controversy is a case in point [nine regional UK theatres scheduled to host the musical last year pulled out after Christian demonstrators threatened to picket the venues] along with the closure in 2004 of the play “Behzti” in Birmingham [following protests from the Sikh community]. This “censorship” is based on fear, not sensitivities towards ethnic and religious minorities. It’s all about closing down debate. I don’t deliberately want to offend anybody but the crux of the matter is the threat of violence. It’s more about a fear of violence and not about any particular religion. People don’t actually admit to being frightened very often and religious people can be extreme people. Personally, I don’t want to see a world run by people who consider God their “invisible friend” and make decisions or laws based on their religious beliefs which then affect everyone.

I have spend the past two days in Latvia – I was invited to to take part in a public debate about free speech – and came across some disturbing news. December 5th the head of Latvian Public Television was forced to resign after taking responsibility for censoring a French documentary that is very criticial of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his regime.

The documentary Le Systéme Poutine (Putin’s System) is produced by Jean-Michel Carre, it was shot in Russia, the US and Europe and covers the life and career of Putin. It contains interviews with Putin’s supporters and his critics. The documentary has been shown on Canadian Public TV and France 2.

Putin’s System was scheduled to air on Latvian Public TV December 1, the day before national elections to a new parliament in Russia. International observers later said that the elections weren’t fair because Putin and his party Unified Russia were dominating the airwaves at the expense of the opposition.

Obviously the Kremlin also wanted to dominate the airwaves of the small Baltic republic of Latvia that was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991, when the country restored independence. Latvia has since then joined NATO and the European Union. According to Latvian media the Russian embassy in Latvia protested the showing of the documentary shortly before Russia’s elections. Moscow denounced the documentary as rude propaganda against Putin. The Latvian ministry of Foreign Affairs passed on the protest to the chairman of the National Radio and Television Council Abram Kleckins, and Kleckins put pressure on the general director of Latvian TV Janis Holsteins who decided to pull the documentary just a few hours before it was supposed to air.

The official excuse at the time was the need for double-checking the translation and technical problems with a broken casette. Later Mr. Kleckins told the parliamentary committee on education, culture and science that is was a mistake to schedule the documentary for airing, since Moscow might see is as an unfriendly act shortly before the two countries are going to sign a border agreement that Russian has been unwilling to join for the last 15 years. Mr. Kleckins added that the French documentary would brainwash Russian citizens of Latvia the day before they were to vote in Russia’s election. These comments caused an outcry.

Of Latvia’s population of 2,25 mio. an estimated 700.000 are ethnic Russians, of whom less than 3 pct. are citizens of Russia with a right to vote in the national elections.

Fortunately the Latvian media called foul, and the Latvian president Valdis Zatlers and Prime minister Aigars Kalvitis made it clear that the decision to pull the show was outright censorship, and the director of Latvian Public Television Janis Holsteins resigned on December 5th calling his own decision ”a stupid mistake”.

The documentary was broadcasted on Latvian TV December 4th.

Is satire promoting integration of immigrants or is it discriminating and marginalizing minorities struggling to become part of the receiving society?

That’s the question that has divided public opinion in Denmark since December 1. Denmark’s Public TV is broadcasting an advent calendar show – 10 minutes every day – dealing with young second generation immigrants in the suburbs dreaming about a career as gangsters. One of them is even an islamic radical being up to mischief. The title is Yallahrup Ferry Port, a reference to a Christmas show for children that was broadcasted 33 year ago. This one, though, is for grown-ups, and it is focusing on integration, democracy and crime.

Some critical voices have denounced the show as racist. Others have defended the satirical take on some of the hottest issues confronting European countries. Yesterday the daily Berlingske Tidende ran an editorial commenting on the show.

”The show offends the political correct, and there is nothing strange about that. Political correctness is on a collision cource with satire and humor. The essence of satire is that nothing is sacred, nothing is too serious to be free from liberating ridicule and laughter. We insist that laughter is liberating because humor and satire can take off the pressure. It can do away with gravity and self-importance and vent concern, tension and conflict.”

It continues:

”Humor is anti-authoritarian. Critics will say that in Yallahrup Ferry Port it is the stronger who laughs at the weak, the majority of Danes is laughing at the exposed, vulnurable minority. This criticism needs to be rejected by insisting that making good-natured fun of people is a way to take down barriers and include people in the community.”

And the editorial concludes:

”If immigrants and theirs descendants are being defined as a group having the right to demand special treatment, it will only encourage division and separation in Danish society. It preserves a situation of not knowing other groups in our society and will only promote annoyance and mistrust of one another. Self-respect and respect from others are closely connected, and citizens will get neither if they are turned into victims.

In the final analysis political correctness is a form of racism, even if it sees itself as the opposite of racism. It implies that specific ethnic and cultural groups don’t have the same access to the community and identity creating traditions as native Danes. Yallahrup Ferry Port is a vigorous rejection of this sacredness detached from reality.”

Well said. The cartoons of Mohammed wasn’t published in vain.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Denmark’s Prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen (AFR) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA) who was invited to Denmark by Jyllands-Posten. Among other things, we spoke about free speech in Europe being under pressure and the outcome of the cartoon crisis. Here are some excerpts. The conversation took place in the Prime minister’s office in Copenhagen.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you have said that free speech is threatened in Europe. What do you mean by that?

AHA: ”When I came to the Netherlands in the nineties Prime minister Wim Kok and his ministers were driving their bicycle to work and to meetings. Today they are driving in armored cars. In Europe it isn’t obvious anymore that a polician can express his opinions and then go home by bike.

The Dutch movie-maker Theo van Gogh was killed because he made a movie somebody didn’t like. A French school teacher (Robert Redeker) has been forced into hiding after having published an op-ed critical of Islam. We have seen similar cases in Germany, Denmark and Sweden, where cartoonists have been threatened because they made cartoons of Mohammed. In all these cases people have been put under police protection by just because they have exercised their right to speak.

And this is only the most prominent cases that have caught the attention of the media, but a lot of incidents never reach the media. In the Netherlands teachers are dropping certain subjects due to fear for their own safety.

Finally you have my own case. I have expressed certain opinions with which one can agree or disagree, but because of these opinions my life is danger.

This means that Europe is confronted with a new challenge when it comes to secure the right to free speech, the core of the European rights to liberty. We need a brain storm. Do we have to change excisting laws or pass news laws? The most important task of the liberal state is to protect the security of its citizens, but the welfare state instead asks them: Are you happy?

Today it is perceived as right wing to be in favor of law and order, but it ought to be political neutral. We have the necessary laws on the books, but the authorities are not always willing to enforce them. They prefer to send criminals to therapy instead of prison. Enforcing the law, going after criminals and punishing them will improve the situation of free speech.”

AFR:
”I agree that free speech is under pressure. We had the Rushdie-affair, we have seen so called cartoon crises in Denmark and Sweden. We have witnessed a whole lot of cases, among others the examples given by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and they show that free speech is under pressure. In March 2007 a number of Islamic countries tabled a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council aiming at limiting free speech in order to protect religion. Unfortunately it was adopted. Fortunately, it is not legally binding and we will certainly not abide, but this resolution demonstrates how the cartoon crisis and other cases are being used as an excuse to limit free speech.

This is the reason why the government of Denmark is putting special focus on defending the right to free speech. At the European level and in the UN we will strengthen our efforts to protect human rights and among them the right to free speech. We plan to introduce a new grant, a freedom price, to courageous fighters for free speech and we have a program granting a safe haven in Denmark to writers who are being persecuted in their countries. By doing this we intend to focus on the most precious of rights we enjoy, the right to free speech, because it is under pressure, and we learned from the cartoon crisis that we cannot take it for granted anymore.

A few years back I would not devote so much time and space to the issue of free speech as I am doing now, and I do it for a reason. The freedom to question everything is a precondition for a true democracy, the right to challenge religious or political power, question established truths and dogmas. That’s the recipe for progress, innovation and development.”

Two years have passed since the cartoon crisis. What are the lessons, was it good or bad?

AFR:
”I see the cartoon crisis as a very positive and important event that has a domestic and international dimension. Here in Denmark the crisis resulted in a growing awareness about fundamental principles in a liberal democracy, free speech not the least, and we learned that we can’t take it for granted. It is under pressure.

Secondly, it was very encouraging to see a great majority of Danes with Muslim background supporting fundamental democratic principles, and they founded an organization of Democratic Muslims to stress the point that they don’t see any contradiction between being a Dane, democrat and Muslim.

I also hold the view that the cartoon crisis was an important step towards a better value-based integration. Integration is not just about jobs and education. It is also about newcomers accepting fundamental principles of our democracy. Equality between man and woman, free speech, separation of church and state – just to name a few. In all these areas we learned a lot from the cartoon crisis, and it turned out to be a valuable contribution to better integration in Denmark.

Internationally we experienced some problems in the Muslim world in the short term, but they have been solved, and what is left: not long ago the World Bank named Denmark World Champion of democracy referring to our fight for free speech and defense of a free press, so all together I think we have gained a lot. In the free world the reputation of Denmark has grown significantly due to the so called cartoon crisis.”

God may not be great, but, obviously, some gods are greater than others.

The Danish cartoons were published more than two years ago as a reaction to widening self censorship in the West when dealing with Islam. Back then critics insisted that I and Jyllands-Posten exaggerated the problem.

Well, we are now witnessing one case of self censorship after the other, and the problem is so obvious that artists are on the verge of recognizing it. Recently the British artist Grayson Perry admitted that he is going after any religion except Islam because he is afraid of having his throat cut. In Sweden artist Lars Vilks is in hiding because he insists on treating the prophet of Islam as he treats any other religious figure or symbol, and due to his insistence on equal treatment he has been censored by several art institutions in Sweden. Usually Swedish media is staying away from any controversial matter, but they have expressed outrage in their defense of Vilks.

Today the NIS News Bulletin in Holland reports that the Municipal Museum of the Hague has decided to remove a number of items by the Iranian artist Sooreh Hera. The museum were to exhibit pictures of two gay men wearing masks of the prophet Mohammed and his son Ali. In a majority of Islamic countries homosexuality is a criminal offense punished by death.

Last Friday musuem director Van Krimpen insisted that he would not submit to pressure and censor the photos.

”I am not guided by any political criteria. I will not be stopped by possible security risks. I simply find this an exceptional work,” Van Krimpen said, defending his decision to put the pictures on display.

But this week he changed his mind explaining that ”certain sections of society found them offensive”.

One of the key functions of art is to provoke, to challenge well established truths and perceptions, and therefore art quite often turn out to be offensive. I can only imagine what the history of art and literature would look like if we were to erase from our legacy pieces of art that ”some sections of society” find offensive.

The artist herself have no illusions about the motives of the museum.

”Muslims have threatened the museum. But the museum is not willing to admit that this is the reason why they do not want to exhibit the works,” Sooreh Hera said.

She feels sure that fear is the driving force behind the museum’s decision.

The Socialist Party on the city council of The Hague wants Hera’s photos on display December 15 as planned by the museum. They intend to ask the museum what kind of security concerns need to be satisfied in order to put the photos on public view. So far the Dutch parliament has kept silent, while the artist is considering the removal of all her work from the museum.

”The only conclusion I can draw is that Allah is indeed very great in the Netherlands and that fear rules.”

While we are waiting for the final results of the so called election to a new Russian parliament I have been reading Anders Aslund’s important book Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed. It may be surprising that the Russians so easily seem to be giving up their hard gained freedom in the nineties, but the fact of the matter is that President Putin is presiding over an economic boom comparable to what Germany and Japan experienced after World War II.

The Kremlin has been intimidating the media, state controlled TV is a propaganda tool for Putin and NGO’s critical of the government have been harrassed, corruption is worse than ever, so how can a President who deliberately has limited the freedom of Russians be so popular?

Of course, Putin wouldn’t get this kind of support, had the free media, NGO’s and the opposition had the opportunity to challenge him and his government in the news and parliament. But still, the growth of the economy is an important factor, though not the only one.

Aslund convincingly argues that Putin is in fact benefiting from the policies of the reformers after the fall of the Soviet Union. They were the ones who liberalized the Russian economy and instituted private ownership. Putin is strutting in borrowed plumes.

Here are some figues indicating the expansion of the economy under Putin: Since 1999 average growth has been 6.9 percent a year, and it is now the 10th biggest economy in the world. When Putin moved into the Kremlin eight years ago GDP amounted to close to 200 billion dollars, now it’s five times bigger, more than 1.000 billion, and that means that Russia’s GPD per capita is four times bigger than China’s. The number of private enterprises increases 7 percent every year, and has reached 9 million, which according to Aslund is comparable to the figures of Western Europe per capita.

In 2003 Goldman Sachs published a much-talked paper projecting that Russia’s GDP by 2028 would overtake Germany’s and become the fifth biggest economy in the world after the US, China, Japan and India. That was before the current oil boom that has boosted the Russian economy further, though it would be a mistake to think that oil is the only factor behind the Russian boom. If the oil price stay at 50 dollars per barrel (right now it’s close to 100 dollars), Russia would become the fifth biggest economy in the world before 2020.

This begs the question: How come the Russians are getting better and better off and at the same time freedom is decreasing? Usually it’s the other way round. Economic growth and well-being increases the pressure for democracy. Aslund identifies a growing tension between Putin’s authoritarian regime and the booming econnomy and concludes:

”Russia is simply too rich, too economically pluralist, too educated, and too open to be so authoritarian. This contradiction between an increasingly obsolete political system and a swiftly modernizing economy and society is likely to be untenable even in the medium term. No modern society can function without unbiased information of checks and balances. Putin cannot make decisions of high quality about everything after having abolished all feed-back and concentrated so much decision making to himself. His regime is too rigid and centralized to handle crises, which always occur in Russia. Therefore, it can hardly be very stable.”