Anne Applebaum: Russian ideology is a mishmash with legs

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/03/29/anne-applebaum-russian-ideology-is-a-mishmash-with-legs/



Whether we like it or not, foreign policy choices increasingly have domestic consequences in the post-Soviet world.

Anne Applebaum: Russian ideology is a mishmash with legs
Anne Applebaum | March 29, 2014 | Last Updated: Mar 28 3:50 PM ET

Halfway through an otherwise coherent conversation with a Georgian lawyer in Tblisi — the topics included judges, the court system, the police — I was startled by a comment he made about his country’s former government, led by ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. “They were LGBT,” he said, conspiratorially.

What did that mean, I asked, surprised. Were they for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual rights? For gay marriage? Were they actually gay? He couldn’t really define it, though the conversation meandered in that direction for a few more minutes, also touching on the subject of the former president’s alleged marital infidelity, his promotion of female politicians, his lack of respect for the church.

Afterwards, I worked it out. The lawyer meant to say that Saakashvili — who drove his country hard in the direction of Europe, pulled Georgia as close to NATO as possible, used rough tactics to fight the post-Soviet mafia that dominated his country — was “too Western.” Not conservative enough. Not traditional enough. Too much of a modernizer, a reformer, a European. In the past, such a critic might have called Saakashvili a “rootless cosmopolitan.” But today, the insulting code word for that sort of person in the former Soviet space — regardless of what he or she actually thinks about homosexuals — is LGBT.

It was an eye-opening moment. Like Ukraine, Georgia is a post-Soviet republic that has tried to pull itself out of the Russian sphere of influence. Unlike Ukraine, Georgia does not have a sizable Russian-speaking population, and Georgians even have cause to fear Russia. Since their 2008 invasion, Russian troops have occupied the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, about one-fifth of the country. Russian tanks are parked a few hours’ drive from Georgia’s capital.