In his memoirs, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” The Russian variant would be just a bit different: ???????If you are lucky enough to have survived living in Moscow as a young woman, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Moscow is a moveable famine.???????

In Russia, at least two dozen women are murdered by their husbands every single day. Women don????????t give birth to enough children to sustain the population even if it had a normal mortality rate, but Russia????????s rate far exceeds the norm due to a seemingly endless litany of social maladies from AIDS to nuclear contamination (by the middle of this century, the island nation of Japan will have a larger population than Russia, and by the end of the century Russia will be a Muslim state). If we then drop a name like Anna Politkovskaya or Galina Starovoitova, the plight of women in Russia begins to seem quite hopeless indeed, and as Publius Pundit has previously reported, the list of future female martyrs is long indeed.

But we can go further: Many people have at least heard those two famous women????????s names, but how about the name Malika Umazheva? Four years ago this Wednesday Ms. Umazheva, then head of administration of Alkhan-Kala, was abducted from her home in the middle of the night by armed gunmen, taken out into the night and shot. The government blamed the killing on ???????bandits??????? (just the way Russians blamed the World War II murder of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn on the Germans), but Ms. Umazheva was a persistent critic of human rights abuses by Russian forces in her village and the cause of her demise was obvious to all who knew her.

Anna Politikovskaya wrote of her:

Malika was a true heroine, a unique and marvelous one. She became the head of administration of one of the most complex Chechen villages–Alkhan-Kala (a ‘Baraev’ village, the subject of endless ‘cleansing operations,’ executions and disfigured corpses) after the former head had been murdered. Reason would have told her: ‘Sit quietly. Be careful.’ But she did the exact opposite–she became the boldest and most committed village head in that murderous zone of military anarchy which today is Chechnya. By herself, unarmed, she went out to meet the ÄRussianÅ tanks that were crawling into the village. Alone, she shouted to the generals who had deceived her and, on the sly, were murdering the residents of the village: ‘You scoundrels!’ She relentlessly fought for a better fate for Alkhan-Kala. No one else permitted himself to do that in present-day Chechnya. Not a single male.

If you want to gain a true appreciation for the darkness of the malignant shadow that is closing all about Russia these days, and the failure of the West to seek to illuminate its recesses, try to search out a simple photograph of Ms. Umazheva on the Mighty Internet. Then, on Wednesday, see how much effort the West takes to remember her and try to find out what it has done to continue her work.

Given the wretched position of Russian women despite their heroic struggles, it????????s somber beyond words to realize that Russian men actually have it even worse. Unlike the average Russian woman, the average Russian man can????????t expect to reach the age of 60, and then there????????s Alexander Litvinenko, who only made it to age 44, succumbing on November 23 (last Thursday) to a fatal poisoning undoubtedly instigated by the Russian secret police.

Litvinenko, a KGB defector in 2000 who revealed the Kremlin????????s plans to assassinate dissident oligarch Boris Berezovksy and who was just beginning an investigation into the killing of famed journalist Anna Politkovskaya, becomes only the most recent in string of attacks on those who dare to challenge the Kremlin????????s worldview and dates back perhaps to 1837 and the duel which killed the poet Alexander Pushkin, likely rigged by his enemies in the Tsar????????s court as he became ever more sympathetic to the cause of freedom and equality.

Saddest of all, perhaps those killed outright, even the ones who perish slowly like Litvinenko, are the lucky ones, as those sent to concentration camps such as Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn can attest — even moreso those consigned to the torture halls of Lubianka under Stalin (it????????s one of the most poorly understood facts in the modern history of our planet that Stalin????????s concentration camps killed more people than Hitler????????s).

Through it all, a woeful, a cowardly silence has echoed across the great Russian land. The Russian people have never stood one single time to protect their great patriots from the malignant machinations of the state, and hence Russia has degenerated into what Atlantic magazine aptly labled ???????Zaire with permafrost.???????

On Saturday, the Litvinenko killing turned into a national nightmare in Britain. As the Globe & Mail reported:

The mysterious death of a former Russian spy living in exile in London turned into an unprecedented public health scare on Friday when it emerged that he had been deliberately poisoned by a major dose of radioactive material. Further traces of the substance were found at a sushi restaurant and at a central London hotel where Alexander Litvinenko had met a number of people before falling ill, and at his home in the city. He was killed by polonium 210, a rare radioactive isotope that is so toxic that there may never be a post-mortem examination of Litvinenko’s body, for fear of causing further deaths. Police and security sources said they had never encountered such an extraordinary death. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” said one Whitehall source. “It is unprecedented; we are in uncharted territory.” One priority on Friday night was to establish who has access to polonium 210 anywhere in the world.

Government ministers, meanwhile, are said to be “dreading” the possible repercussions of a public inquest into Litvinenko’s death, at which they expect his associates to make damning accusations against the Russian government.

Traces in the restaurant this time. How much collateral damage next time? Britons are justifiably concerned about the potential side effects even on this occasion. The New York Times reported:

???????If substantial amounts of polonium 210 were used to poison Alexander V. Litvinenko, whoever did it presumably had access to a high-level nuclear laboratory and put himself at some risk carrying out the assassination, experts said yesterday.???????

It continued:

Polonium 210 is highly radioactive and very toxic. By weight, it is about 250 million times as toxic as cyanide, so a particle smaller than a dust mote could be fatal. It would also, presumably, be too small to taste. There is no antidote, and handling it in a laboratory requires special equipment. But to be fatal it must be swallowed, breathed in or injected; the alpha particles it produces cannot penetrate the skin. So it could theoretically be carried safely in a glass vial or paper envelope and sprinkled into food or drink by a killer willing to take the chance that he did not accidentally breathe it in or swallow it.

???????This is wild,??????? said Dr. F. Lee Cantrell, a toxicologist and director of the San Diego division of the California Poison Control System. ???????To my knowledge, it????????s never been employed as a poison before. And it????????s such an obscure thing. It????????s not easy to get. That????????s going to be something like the K.G.B. would have in some secret facility or something.???????

In other words, it is as if the Kremlin is formally announcing the onset of the second Cold War, proudly and defiantly, even though Russia has less than half the population of the USSR that failed to carry the day in the first confronation. It is as if the Kremlin has literally become intoxicated on the fumes of its oil revenues, or perhaps simply become insane.

On the other hand, did we really think that Russians would simply abandon their ideology of contempt for the West simply because they lost the Cold War? Would we have rejected democracy if the shoe had been on the other foot? Perhaps we too were sniffing glue. Time to sober up.

Given that it was Winston Churchill who warned the West about the first ???????Iron Curtain descending across the continent,??????? there????????s some poetry to be found in the Litvinenko attack falling in London and the clarion call being sounded there.

Britain????????s crack squad of anti-terrorism police are the same ones who recently foiled an attack on an American airliner by Muslim extremists. Indeed, in our panic over Osama bin Laden, we seem to have forgotten the horror of a giant state like Russia, armed with nuclear weapons, being bent on our destruction. Litvinenko is our wakeup call. Because of his capacity and his level of resources, Vladimir Putin is a far greater threat to Western democracy than bin Laden can ever dream of being.

At midweek the nightmare got worse, as it was reported that Yegor Gaidar had fallen ill in Moscow with a “mysterious illness” that doctors cannot diagnose after a vist to Ireland. Gaidar was the driving force behind the “shock therapy” move towards democracy under Boris Yeltsin, believing that Russia was fully capable of backsliding into a neo-Soviet state and therefore needed to rapidly disperse assets away from the center. As such, Gaidar is obviously a major target of Kremlin ire, and his sickness, coming in such close proximity to the demise of Litvinenko, is horrifying indeed, and even more so in close proximity to the actions of his daughter, previously documented on La Russophobe, in hanging a public banner calling the Kremlin thugs “bastards” for altering the elections law. Even if the illness is purely natural, it’s a reminder of the nature of the problem we face.

Gaidar’s colleague Anatoli Chubais was quoted as saying on NTV:

“Yegor Gaidar on 24 November was in the balance between life and death. Could this be simply some sort of natural illness? According to what the most professional doctors, who have first-hand knowledge of the situation, say — no. A poisoning, an attempted murder: this is precisely the version that needs to be examined. For me there is no doubt that the deathly Politkovskaya-Litvinenko-Gaidar chain, which by a miracle was not completed, would have been extremely attractive for the supporters of an unconstitutional, forceful change of power in Russia.”

He told RIA Novosti:

“This deadly design would have been extremely attractive for those supporting unconstitutional, violent means of changing power in Russia.”

Gaidar’s daughter told Kommersant:

“The doctors are leaning towards the conclusion that all the symptoms … point specifically to poisoning.” The doctors will make their final diagnosis on Friday, with ???????a poison unknown to civilian medicine??????? deemed the most likely cause of his illness, she said.

The Novye Izvestia daily quoted Maria Gaidar saying that her father had eaten a

???????simple breakfast of fruit salad and a cup of tea.??????? Shortly after, Gaidar fainted. ???????I went up to him. He was lying on the floor unconscious. There was blood coming from his nose, he was vomiting blood. This went on for more than half an hour,??????? Maria Gaidar said.

According to Novye Izvestia, Gaidar then remained unconscious for three hours in hospital and for a full day his life was considered in danger.

If nothing else, the events involving Gaidar are an urgent wakeup call. Publius Pundit has been sounding the warning call for months now, as a troll through our extensive Russia archives will make clear, and we have not been alone. But just as in Churchill????????s day, the West has been slow to answer this call, both because of our typical democratic inefficiency and our psycholgical tendency to resist accepting the presence of additional horror in our midst, one that will need all our resources (and all our luck) to remedy.

It was so much more comforting to think that the ???????Russia problem??????? had been solved, wasn????????t it?

Putin responded to fears of Kremlin complicity in Litvinenko????????s killing by saying: ???????There is no ground for speculation of this kind. A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this and send my condolences to the family.??????? No grounds? Is this man joking? Does he take us for fools? Russia has been condemned by every human rights organization under the sun for its barbaric record of torture and murder in Chechnya and the pandemic of racism and corruption that is sweeping Russia proper. More than a dozen journalists have been murdered while Putin has held the reins of power, and not one killing has been solved. The government has seized control of the television airwaves, which did not report a single word about Litvinenko????????s fall. Yet Putin still has the temerity, the hubris, to accuse us of paranoia?

As the Globe & Mail reported:

???????Some of Putin’s aides went further, hinting at an expatriate plot to discredit the Russian government. ???????I am far from being a champion of conspiracy theory,???????? said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin’s chief envoy to the European Union. ???????But it looks like we are facing a well-orchestrated campaign or a plan to consistently discredit Russia and its leader.???????????????

One is hard-pressed to decide whether it is more ominous to think Yastrzhembsky is serious or just propagandizing. Either way, we are looking at a fully realized neo-Soviet Union.

Indeed, looking at these events through the eyes of Putin, Litvinenko is simply an irresistible target no matter how much ire any act against him produces in the West. By killing him, not only is a major thorn removed from the Kremlin????????s side, but Putin can blame the West????????s reaction on ???????russophobia,??????? thus stoking the fires of xenophobia that help him retain his grip on power despite limited financial resources and undercutting those who sound the warning call in the West by playing on their own liberalism. He can send an unmistakable message of the depths to which his government is prepared to sink in order to get what it wants, terrifying many, and this is necessary for a Russia that cannot get what it wants by simply using geopolitical influence with a GDP rivaled by the tiny Netherlands. And by blaming the killing on Russia????????s ???????enemies abroad,??????? he can even justify further assaults on those ???????enemies??????? including further killings.

Who would be the orchestrator of such a ???????well-orchestrated campaign??????? in the Kremlin????????s eyes? Two names top the list, the exiled ???????oligarch??????? Boris Berezovsky (who resides on London after Britain refused to extradite him) and the jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is cooling his heels in a Siberian prison. The Kremlin can????????t simply kill either one of them outright, they are too wealthy and powerful and too well-connected in the West. In the end, a shadow of the USSR????????s former imposing power, Russia simply can????????t win that kind of confrontation, and it knows it. Yet, they remain the leading potential rivals to the Kremlin????????s control over the country.

Now, suppose Russia were to manufacture some evidence that one of both of these oligarchs was responsible for killing Litvinenko just so they could make the Kremlin look bad? Wouldn????????t that justify taking them out, at least enough to blunt any Western response? If so, then by killing Litvinenko the Kremlin could neatly kill two (or even three!) birds with one stone.

So the West must begin to send its own messages. As Lincoln said, these dead must not have died in vain. We must clearly say we will do all we can to protect Russia????????s remaining Litvinenkos and Politkovskayas, and we must make it clear that we will remember and be motivated by them when the were gone. We know how to do this, we did it with Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, and it made them powerful. We must create a climate that will encourage as many Russian patriots as possible to step forward as soon as possible and in a united front, making it harder for the Kremlin to pick them off one at a time, a climate that will provide them with the resources they need to maximize the value of their struggle. In America, resisting the rise of dictatorship in Russia is something that should meet with bipartisan approval, a perfect opportunity for a united country to show the world what it can do.

We must pursue the investigation of the Litvinenko killing no matter where it leads. We must stand behind the courageous Britons as they do so. Meanwhile, we must not forget what we are dealing with. A recent report by Amnesty International reveals that torture is being routinely practiced by the Russian police against ordinary Russian citizens, and not merely in the wilds of Chechnya. Given this, we must no longer view a charge of ???????russophobia??????? as anything other than a badge of honor, an epithet launched by those who would struggle destroy Russia at those who would struggle to save it.

Perhaps Martin Luther King was ???????KKK-phobic.??????? So be it. Russia now finds itself locked in a final battle with itself for its own survival. Russia, with $300-per-month salaries and a plummeting population, emerged from the first Cold War. What would emerge from the second? Nothing that would be recognizable or that could endure. It is as vital for those who love Russia as for those who fear its encroachment upon Western security to stop the process now so clearly underway at the earliest possible moment, to show we have learned something from our past mistakes.

Of course, we will make it difficult for ourselves. The killing of Litvinenko was originally blamed on Thalium, which seemed the most likely cause. When this was discounted, the russophile propagandists pounced, aided by the latent ant-Americanism that pervades many corridors of our academia. History student Sean Guillory of Sean????????s Russia Blog, for instance, proclaimed with haughty contempt:

???????Evidence doesn????????t matter when it comes to Stalin, Russia, and now, even Putin. They are all given magical powers to direct events and history at will. This line of thinking only shows how difficult it is to break the Cold War????????s cultural and ideological structures that still inform how we in the West think about Russia.???????

He referred to ???????language tricks that conjure ghosts of the Soviet past??????? and condemned seeing Russia as an ???????abnormal society??????? as if he were King lecturing to the Grand Wizard. It????????s rather easy to use the force of our liberal values against us, and Putin is a sophisticated student of judo. Guillory vilified a statement from Britain????????s Guardian newspaper that ???????poisoning dissidents cannot be part of a modern, democratic agenda??????? saying that the West is in no postion to judge Russian democracy ???????? implying we are no better. He even went so far as to repeat the KGB propaganda that Litvinenko was a small fish that they wouldn????????t trouble themselves with. Then, suddenly, it turned out things were even worse than the ???????russophobes??????? first imagined.

Is this what the study of history in America has come to? Have we forgotten that if we had been more confrontational and more suspicious about Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, not less, we could have taken more resolute action to interrupt a sequence of events that lead to the GULag Archipelago where tens of millions of Russians lost their lives (while the West lost trillions of dollars)? Have we forgotten how our failure to be more suspicous when Vladimir Putin came to power has led us to this awful day? We laughed when Boris Yeltsin told us this unknown spymaster would succeed him, laughed when we should have been weeping.

Political correctness of this kind costs lives. It is a price we ought not be prepared to pay. Josef Stalin created concentration camps that killed more people than Hitler????????s and he continued his reign over Russia unimpaired until he died of natural causes.

If that isn????????t ???????magical power,??????? what is?

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.