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Let's begin with two foreign policy tirades that appeared independently of each other on the same day in two respectable Moscow newspapers.

"Recent world events show that the Russian Federation is continuing to strengthen its position on the international stage. The gloating American vision of a unipolar world is coming apart at the seams. Russia's foreign policy successes and increasing authority on the world scene arouse undisguised irritation over the ocean. Washington is trampling on all international norms in demanding that Russia renounce its cooperation with Iran. American strategists are trying to make out that the strengthening friendship between the Russian and Iranian peoples is a threat to international security. But we will not let anyone teach us how to defend our security and with whom to blister pearl make friends."

And the second text:
"Russia has been showing itself an ever-more active player on the world stage of late. It's not by chance that Russia's more active diplomatic efforts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia are increasingly irritating U.S. foreign-policy makers. Moscow's decision to renew full-scale cooperation with Iran after behind-the-scenes agreements between [then Vice President Al] Gore and [then Prime Minister Viktor] Chernomyrdin were divulged has dealt a serious blow to American diplomacy. And that could be just the beginning."

The first of these articles appeared on the Kommersant daily newspaper's retro-parody page under the headline "The world says ‘No' to American globalization." The second appeared in Nezavisimaya Gazeta's entirely serious Dipkurier diplomatic news section. They could easily be swapped one for the other, were it not for the second text's cheekily foolish "And that could be just the beginning," which in its contrast with the High Stalinist Style of the rest of the article, gave away the fact it was written by a modern political thinker.

That reality and parody have become virtually indistinguishable in international-affairs journalism, and in our foreign-policy thinking, is both good and bad news.

It's bad news because it shows just how fast malignant symptoms are overtaking the Russian patient, who has finally received from the caring hands of the makers of cult-film "Brat-2" an ideal national hero, complete with national idea – a charming hit man with the rallying slogan "Fuck you, America."

What's good news is that pearl strand people are writing parodies. So long as "contemptuous twits sully with their parodies" of the national obsessive idea, there is still hope for the patient.

Perhaps, one day the patient will even realize that the aim of Russian foreign policy should be to defend the country's interests rather than try to cause maximum harm to the United States. Strange as it may seem, these two things are not always one and the same.

For almost 50 years, we dealt "serious blows to American diplomacy" and put "hedgehogs down their trousers" all around the world. That is, until we ended up with no trousers ourselves.

Incidentally, this doesn't apply to the unsinkable political elite that ruled and continues to rule us.

This elite emerged from its Cold War defeat more materially prosperous than ever before.

It's said that humanity bids farewell to leisure chairs its past with laughter. This is perhaps true for a more prosperous humanity. But here in Russia, it's as if we literally go around in circles in the endless snowbound plains of our history, always stumbling back upon our past. All we can do then is bid farewell to our future with laughter.

The European Union summit last year symbolized, it seemed, not just the EU’s triumphant expansion, but also a big step forward towards the emergence of a new superpower – a unified greater Europe with a common foreign and defense policy.

But this superpower Europe project remains a dream, and there’s no better illustration of its failure to get off the ground than the recent unexpected extravaganza celebrating Franco-German friendship. In the same way, the long-running Russia-Belarus Union saga and the emergence of parallel groups formed by certain of the former Soviet republics serve to illustrate the failure of the C.I.S. project.

The Franco-German reconciliation process that began in the 1950s-’60s after 200 years of bloody wars was crucial in laying the foundations of a peaceful and prosperous Western Europe that is now expanding this zone of stability eastward. Much of the merit for this reconciliation goes to round pearl the great French and German politicians of the time – Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhardt.

Relations between France and Germany have long since become as normal and friendly as between most of the other EU countries. So why, then, was it necessary to put on such a splashy Soviet-style show of Franco-German friendship, complete with leaders embracing each other, sports contests and performances by various amateur artistic ensembles – all serving only to oppose the Paris-Berlin axis to the rest of the EU?

The EU’s unity fell apart over relations with the United States. What came as a shock to ambitious European elites – above all those of France and Germany – was not the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but what followed in November and December of that year. The U.S. operation in Afghanistan effectively demonstrated just to what extent the United States’ economic, technological and political potential outweighs the resources of its European allies.

Having resorted to Article Five of its charter for the first time in its history, NATO found itself on the sidelines in the anti-terrorist operation. (Britain took part in the operation more as a special U.S. ally than as a NATO member.)

European politicians now face serious questions. Just what is the point of the EU’s defense policy? What kind of wars should Europe’s armed forces be prepared for? How big should the EU defense budget be if the military-technological gap between Europe and the United States is just going to wheat pearl increase regardless?

Going even further, to what extent is the European-Atlantic alliance psychologically and politically able to cope with having a very big brother in its ranks? This issue also has implications for Russia, which, on many issues is increasingly positioning itself as an ally of the European-Atlantic alliance.

The European elite seems not to have found a rational answer to this question yet. What we have been seeing since autumn 2001 is more of a purely emotional reaction that manifests itself as an unprecedented and ever-rising wave of anti-American outbursts and sentiments, especially in the French and German media.

The United States’ European friends and rivals make many specific reproaches and accusations against it, and sometimes they are fair and reasonable, but it is still hard to get away from the impression that what most riles part of the European elite is the very existence of the United States as a nation with so much more power and influence than its partners.

Much of the Russian elite understandably shares this irritation. But before Russians and Europeans band together in the embrace of this noble emotion, it’s worth first conducting a little imaginary experiment. Just picture the political map of the world exactly how it is today, but with one difference – there is no United States. Would Russia and Europe have more or less security in this brave new world? Everyone can find his or her own answer to wholesale pearl jewelry this question. Eight of France’s and Germany’s European partners already gave their answers when their leaders signed a joint letter of solidarity with the United States at the end of January.

Russian ruling circles have so far reacted quite reasonably to the situation surrounding Iraq. While Moscow hasn’t expressed any great enthusiasm for the U.S. plans, it has avoided the hysteria that has taken hold of some of the United States’ traditional allies. Russia is building complex and pragmatic relations with the world’s only superpower. Thanks to these relations, it has already been possible to liquidate the Islamic fundamentalist threat on the C.I.S.’ southern borders, and it is not worth sacrificing these relations to satisfy the ambitions and complexes of certain European politicians.

As economic partners, Japan and Russia are made for each other because each has what the other lacks. Russia's natural wealth could compensate for Japan's lack of mineral resources, and Japanese investment could assist cash-starved Russia.

But the territorial dispute over the Kurile Islands blocks potential opportunities. For 40 years, the Soviet Union didn't even recognize that there was a dispute. Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the issue existed; Boris Yeltsin hinted that a solution could eventually be found. The Japanese were expecting Vladimir Putin to take the next step, but his visit to Japan dashed these hopes.

The Japanese know everything there is to akoya pearl know about the Kuriles, which they call the Northern Territories. From the coast of Hokkaido, you can see the Habomai cliffs and Kunashir volcanoes.

But most Russians have only vague knowledge of the islands. Some even think they are just a useless collection of rocks, though the largest island, Iturup, is more than 200 km in length. Others say that the fish and mineral resources of the South Kuriles and their waters are worth $300 billion, though it's not clear why Russians are still so poor if they have such wealth.

Russian sailors were indeed the first to discover the Kuriles – the first Europeans, that is. The Japanese knew of the neighboring islands long before. As for legal arguments, the first bilateral treaty, the 1855 Simodsky agreement, drew the border between the islands of Iturup and Urup; that is, Russia recognized that the South Kurile Islands belonged to Japan.

Subsequent treaties saw the Kuriles and Sakhalin change hands repeatedly, but at no point were the South Kuriles – Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai archipelago – ever in Russia's possession.

It was the 1945 Yalta conference that decided to hand Russia possession of all of Sakhalin and the Kuriles. Japan, of course, was not present at that conference. Recognition of the Yalta conference agreements was one of the conditions of the San Francisco peace treaty signed by Japan in 1951. But a fatal mistake on Stalin's part meant the Soviet Union didn't sign the treaty, making it look like both sides renounced the Kuriles. Japan's argument is that the four islands it claims are not part of the Kuriles group. This is why Japan always refers to wholesale pearl jewelry them as the Northern Territories.

But this has done nothing to help return the islands, occupied by the Soviet Union after the war against Japan had ended. For three years, they were seen as temporarily occupied territories, and only in 1948 did the Soviet Union annex them and deport the local Japanese population.

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev approved a declaration returning Shikotan and Habomai to Japan, and promising further negotiations on Iturup and Kunashir. But as the Cold War was intensifying in 1960, the Soviet government backed out of its promises.

Then, during preparation for Yeltsin's 1992 visit to Japan, the Kremlin planned to return to the 1956 declaration, but the ongoing battle with parliament made this impossible.

Surveys showed that three-quarters of Russians were opposed to returning "Russian land in the East" to Japan. This was the natural reaction of a public still reeling from the collapse of their empire and loss of European allies. No one wanted to hear of concessions. In the end, Yeltsin's visit was cancelled the day before he was due to leave.

Today, it is on mainland Russia, where little is known about the Kuriles, that there is still opposition to returning them. Islanders themselves are not averse to button pearl the idea of becoming Japanese and have even tried to organize referendums on handing over the territory.

This change in mood came after a 1993 earthquake that convinced islanders that Moscow was in no position to help them, while Japan could. Another factor was visa-free travel in the border region, which gave the Kurile residents a chance to see how much better people lived in northern Hokkaido – one of the poorest parts of Japan.

Economists know that the talk of the region's natural resources is not a real argument for hanging on to the islands. And is it right to talk about the natural wealth when the legal issues still remain? If the islands are not ours by right, then no matter what their resources, we have to give them back.

No amount of natural resources on the Kuriles could replace the potential wealth Russia would gain if Japanese investment were to start flowing in. But what dominates the issue at the moment is neither a sober calculation of Russia's real interests, nor a legal approach. What dominates are imperial emotions and political intrigue, playing on the wounded national feelings of a country going through a strategic crisis.

It's August, and with no holiday time on the horizon, I decided to switch gears this week and visit a term which we hear all the time, though never sure of its meaning. That term is ‘civil society'. Is the term merely another catch-all for modernity or globalization? It should not be. Russian civil society in the making may not be what we all hope for.

What is civil society and how is the term applied? There is an assumption that civil society implies some kind of liberal agenda that supports something like the following: tolerance, openness to different opinions and lifestyles, and an affinity with the majority's mindset on what broadly can be defined as politics, though divorced from the state. This means ‘good ideas' for the individual or group the individual feels comfortable with. These ideas are very familiar and very much part of what civil society means in the West – more or less. More or less because there is no real theory of civil society – there are only practices. History tells us that these practices can go dangerously wrong if not thought about in a broader framework.

Beyond common usage, the concept of civil society originally comes from two sources. The first is 18th century social contract doctrine, and the second is Hegel. Social contract doctrine denotes the state of society in which patterns of association are accepted and endorsed by the members. Hegel claimed that civil society is not formed by contract but in the sphere of contract. Freedom of association is a good example. Hegel also believed that civil society had to include forms of gemstone necklace  association that are spontaneous, customary, and in general not dependent on the law.

As such, there is no template for Russia to follow. But some practices could be introduced. I worry that something like civil society is coming into being in Russia. I worry not because I am opposed to it, but because Russia's definition of civil society might only vaguely resemble it in form, and be abhorrent in content. Fine ideas are not always destined to benefit the social good.

I am not so concerned with the rise of nationalist, anti-democratic parties as I am about the discourse of nationalistic anti-democratic leanings that is becoming prevalent in most parties. This includes the Communist Party and United Russia. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's people already demonstrate a propensity for an idea of civil society embedded with ideas that are clearly anti-democratic and demagogic. The activities of the copious and studious Eurasianist intellectual Alexander Dugin are making progress. It is known that he has close relations with the Academy of the General Staff and headed an advisory group in the office of Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev.

Political parties are not the problem because they remain irrelevant. All claim to represent Russians and none do. Once a Russian-defined civil society matures, political parties in a normative sense may also come into being. In the meantime, we see more organized attacks on foreigners, football hooligans allowed to run amok and youth groups radicalized under the rubric of race and nationality. Literary groups are burning political satire they deem pornography while crassly persecuting the author in the courts. The Orthodox Church's truly bizarre Kulturkampf campaign should send shivers down everyone's spine. Are they really most interested in property and other physical assets? These people are getting organized around the principle of freedom of association, so familiar to gemstone necklace many of us. These groups most probably look to infiltrate their ideas into the political mainstream.

On the other side of the civil society paradigm is the state or the Kremlin, which does not appear to be interested in the ideology of Russia's political parties. Its interests appear to be elsewhere.

The Kremlin remains focused on institutional power in the hand of the obstinate and rent-seeking bureaucracy. Its interest in helping to create anything resembling civil society in a Western country could not be more far-fetched. Politics in any meaningful sense is an anathema to this antiquated class, officially long forgotten but painfully experienced on a daily basis.

If we have learned anything from the Communist period, the post-Communist period, and the changes in what used to be called the Third World, it is that civil society means something very specific to different places and different times. If my memory serves me correctly, the current debate on the meaning of civil society has its origins in Poland and Hungary during the 1980s. In both countries the application of the term made sense, in trade unionism and socialist entrepreneurs. Social differentiation existed in both countries prior to communist rule and communist rule only accentuated that same differentiation.

Russia's experience could not be more different. There is no historically relevant precedent for Russians to follow. Attempting to find a precedent for Russia renders the term civil society as corporality.

It seems to me that the problem with the term civil society and how it is applied is the absence of a genuine social civility in this country. According to conventional wisdom, communist societies were atomized. This may have been true, but clearly Russia after ten years of non-communist rule is rigidly atomized under wholesale pearl jewelry its particular form of capitalism. Most people I know in Russia inform me that civility over the last decade has all but collapsed. Maybe this is a starting point for change.

What is civility? Again, beyond the common usage, it is about the virtue of the citizen. It is about good manners that enable people to accept one another as members of a common order, and so treat one another with due regard for social well-being and what is accepted as moral rights. This is where a normative social society can find its footing for the long journey ahead. How does one teach people to be polite? That is key to meaningful change in Russia. How does one keep the forces of revulsion from using this to their advantage? Ten years on, the first steps still seem to be missing.

The curious episode with a report in the Financial Times on recommendations made by the International Monetary Fund to the Paris Club captures very accurately the current atmosphere in Russia's higher economic circles.

The report said that the IMF recommended the Paris Club of creditors not to hurry to write off the part of Russia's foreign debt inherited from the Soviet Union. That is to say, the Paris Club was not to repeat the London Club decision to write off 36.5 percent of Soviet debt.

The Financial Times report was immediately repeated by the Russian news agencies. The Russian press said it was linked to the prospect of President-elect Vladimir Putin being re-elected in 2004, which would coincide with the peak period for Russian payments to rope pearl necklace the Paris Club. With no write off, this would amount to $4.5 billion to the Paris Club alone.

First Deputy Prime Minister and likely Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said that the Paris Club does not base its decisions on IMF recommendations, but on information creditors gather about the state of Russia's economy and finances.

Only after all these reports and statements, an ITAR-TASS correspondent asked the IMF press service to comment and was told that the IMF never gave any such recommendations to the Paris Club.

IMF experts regularly put together medium-term balance of payments forecasts and make them available both to the IMF directors and the Paris Club. These forecasts, as the fund's press service explained, are in no way political recommendations.

Most likely, the Financial Times journalist went in for a little subjective interpretation, spurred by the fact that the forecasts for Russia were unexpectedly favorable. This is at the same time as, following the standard economic criteria, the Paris Club writes off the debt of only the very poorest countries that really cannot pay. The only exceptions are purely political decisions, such as that to pearl jewelry write off Poland's debt. But it's not easy to prove the necessity of these kinds of decisions.

The author of the false statements in the Financial Times used far from false information about the current state of the Russian economy. On the very day the report came out, Russia made a $121 million debt payment to the IMF. Over $1 billion in debt payments was made in the first quarter of this year.

Russia's financial authorities are confident in their ability to pay in full the $3.6 billion they owe the IMF this year, thus significantly bringing down their debt to the IMF, which stood at $15.23 billion at the beginning of the year. They also believe that Russia can meet the all its foreign debt payments and interest, which this year comes to $10.5 billion, or 40 percent of the federal budget.

These successes in meeting debt payments come at a time when Russia hasn't received any external financing for several months. But the economy, even though it's having to come up with several billion dollars from internal resources, does not seem to be under pressure.

The government is refraining from Central Bank borrowing over the first half of the year, even though the budget allows it.

The inflation rate is falling. In March, inflation growth was 0.6 percent, lower than in the U.S. during the same month. This is the best result for Russia since before the August 1998 financial crisis. Budget and company wage debts, which had amounted to 88 billion in October 1998, have fallen to 31 billion and debts to pensioners have been fully paid off.

Real incomes have been on the rise for half a year now, after falling for almost three years.

There are no economic miracles – that was what seemed to be on Kasyanov's mind when he reacted to  pearl earrings the Financial Times report. Such a reaction probably wasn't merited. Over the last year, Russia's economic situation has improved so much it seems hard to believe.

These are all signs that the market is finally beginning to work in Russia, but time is needed to verify this. It's not yet clear how the economy would react to a sudden sharp drop in oil prices. Russia's total debt is 10 times higher than its debt to the IMF and has to be reduced. That is why it would not be good for misunderstandings to get in the way between the Paris Club and Mikhail Kasyanov.