The Shoe award

by Andy on March 18, 2007

Shoe AwardAwards season must be upon us yet again. The Shoe Award, named in honour of the charming Nikita Khrushchev, aims to:

identify and decorate those who best exemplify either an irrational love of Mother Russia or a fanatical fear of the Bear or just an irrational fanaticism on a Russian scale.

Nominations to Russia Blog, please.

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{ 5 comments }

Michael Averko 03.18.07 at 1:00 pm

I submitted to the following comment to the referenced Russia Blog post:

Sorry Nick, but you’re a bit wrong.

First of all, Khrushchev was a Soviet as opposed to a Russian leader.

Unless of course you recognize all Soviet territory as being part of the same country (Russia)?

Moreover, I’m a real person analyst unlike the person you link me with. A seeming attempt on your part to belittle my earnest efforts which receive high praise from those eatrnest individuals in the know.

Ask David Johnson why he shamefully promotes LR while politically censoring http://www.rusjournal.com and http://tiraspoltimes.com as well as yours truly.

Why don’t you incorporate a neo-Stalinist award for people who play Machiavellian games with the media coverage of Russia? Specifically, promoting some over others in a way that’s not always based on quality input.

Heribert Schindler 03.18.07 at 2:12 pm

Who will possibly be awarded an ugly shoe if a much nicer award can be obtained here ?

Michael Averko 03.18.07 at 2:32 pm

I’ll take a St. George’s Cross over the Order of Lenin any day.

Lyndon 03.18.07 at 4:26 pm

As for awards, for ironic value I prefer the “Participant in the Peacekeeping Mission in Abkhazia” medal that I picked up in the Tbilisi market last summer for something like $2, with a big Russian double-headed eagle in the middle. I’m not usually a big fan of the idea of buying/selling military awards, but on this occasion I rationalized it since there’s an element of farce nowadays in calling the Russian troops in Abkhazia a “peacekeeping mission,” UN approval notwithstanding.

Mike, not to go too far off topic here, but since you raise the issue in your comment (and have raised it many times before), I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that JRL ran a Tiraspol Times piece today - something about the intriguingly named “Commonwealth for Democracy and Rights of Nations,” formed by the leaders of Abkhazia, Transnistria, and South Ossetia.

I think the vehemence of your JRL-bashing is unjustified and in any event out of proportion to JRL’s influence. “Neo-Stalinist”? Isn’t that a bit extreme? Incidentally, I second (or third?) the assessments of Sean and Andy elsewhere that JRL doesn’t seem to drive a huge amount of traffic to blogs which appear in it.

Michael Averko 03.19.07 at 7:17 am

Lyndon:

My activism played a role in that.

Up to that point, it was an absolute disgrace for JRL to post LR and not TTT or the AJRSS. I openly highlighted that farce. Maybe you’re unaware of this since you aren’t on the QT and other lists.

I also noted how after eXile was reposted at JRL (after having been banned by JRL), it wasn’t running Kirill Pankaratov’s Russocentric commentary, while running Jake Rudnitsky’s not so Russocentric commentary. I openly highlighted that and shortly thereafter, things changed.

On the other matter, I’ll take Andy’s, Sean’s and your own word about JRL not attracting additional traffic to blogs. However, JRL has other clout. It got Dietwald Claus a job at The Moscow News by running his commentary which wasn’t appearing anywhere else.

As for your stated “unjustified”, how David Johnson carries on is more in that category.

In closing, Russian peacekeepers are no more/no less of a joke than American ones, vis-a-vis the not so neutral standing of the US government on issues like Bosnia and Kosovo.

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