Tuesday, Jul. 07, 2009

Russian trip opens hearts and minds

By Ken Robertson, Herald Executive Editor

President Obama’s visit to Russia has pretty much played second banana in U.S. news to many folks’ renewed obsession with Michael Jackson since his death.

In Moscow, though, a skeptical Russian population appeared to be watching closely for cues that Obama understands their nation and wants to deal effectively with its leaders.

A couple rather small but significant moments serve as bookends to the visit and indicate it was carefully scripted to reach across all generations in Russia.

At the start of his visit on Monday, Obama placed a wreath on Moscow’s grave of the unknown soldier. It was, the Washington Post reported, “a politically canny show of respect for the massive World War II casualties that continue to haunt Russia.”

How canny?

When the U.S. and its other European allies in World War II last month were commemorating the D Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the ceremonies for not paying appropriate attention to the Soviet Union’s role in holding on along the Eastern Front in a grinding conflict that killed millions of soldiers and civilians.

“Not a word was spoken about the decisive role ... of the Soviet Union, which took on itself the most terrible blow of Hitler’s army and suffered the greatest human losses,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko.

U.S. and British losses in World War II were paltry, many Russians believe. And it’s hard to argue with the numbers. The total military and civilian deaths of the two nations combined are generally acknowledged as less than 900,000.

By comparison, the Associated Press story on the D Day observances reported an estimated 27 million Soviet citizens died during World War II, which was roughly 14 percent of the total population in 1939.

U.S. losses totaled about 0.3 percent of our 1939 population and Britain’s just under 1 percent.

So President Obama placing that wreath in Moscow was hugely significant. It would be hard to find any extended Soviet family that did not lose fathers, sons, uncles, mothers, daughters or aunts.

As the visit was winding down Tuesday, Obama spoke frankly to a much younger generation than the survivors of World War II — students at Moscow’s elite New Economic School.

He noted its newest graduates are “the last generation born when the world was divided,” the AP reported. And he “urged them to move beyond the political legacies of the Cold War and Russia’s imperial past.”

“He speaks in such a way that he doesn’t hide the problems behind the words,” said Mikhail Filkin, a 20-something graduate of the school. “He was very persuasive.”

The Washington Post reported Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, described Obama’s visit at its end as more successful than most in Russia had expected. Rogov said Obama “made all the right sounds in a very respectful way” and did much to reduce mistrust in Moscow.

The visit didn’t have any of the rock star power of Michael Jackson’s funeral that millions in the U.S. were obsessing over. And it won’t sell a gazillion re-issued CDs.

But it may open the way to a much less chilly relationship between two former Cold Warriors.

w Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com

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