Dear CCI Friends and Colleagues,
I have been stunned and speechless over the past few days.
This has all felt like a bad nightmare. I’ve holed up in my fourth floor condo overlooking a lake surrounded by redwoods and greenery. Not a sound other than an occasional duckling below. I deeply needed this solitude to make sense of what’s going on since returning from Russia on February 16.
Emails have come and gone, the facts have registered, egregious hatred and empathy noted, the former responses as Americans, Russians and Europeans spewed out feelings to justify their rage and concern; only a couple of whom have had personal experience with Vladimir Putin.
Strangely I remember well the day in the early 1990s when I met a diminutive man in a slender brown suit, in a small brown office in Leningrad. I remember quiet sincerity as he examined my proposal to start a new CCI program never before contemplated by Russian bureaucrats. Other such official persons in the office were “getting rich” on their seats from bribes from such proposals.
Putin’s response to my proposal was simple. After carefully examining it, he put his pen down and commented, “I’m sorry, this is a good idea, but there is no legal basis for this proposal … at present I can’t put my signature on it.” After apologizing he took us to the door. Outside in the sunlight I looked at his business card. It read V.V. Putin. “Strange name” I said to Volodya Shestakov who went with me as interpreter. ”Is it a Russian name?”
After Putin’s surprise election to the Presidency in year 2000, I was interviewing young Russian entrepreneurs coming home from CCI’s PEP program in the United States. I would ask, “Who registered your business and how much did registration cost you?” Without question they each replied, “Didn’t cost anything, we went Vladimir Putin’s desk.” As it turned out, our entrepreneurs told each other which person to go to for free registrations. The other bureaucrats were charging what they wished.
Later, I was arrested for living free in a vacated school building where Russian friends had created a lovely little apartment for me on the third floor. I found myself sitting in a small cage locked up in the local jail. Two young men in ski jackets quickly entered the jail late in the day and went upstairs. Soon the jailer unlocked my cage and took me upstairs. There I met the two men in ski jackets. Apparently they were FSB agents sent to get me out of jail. We invited them to lunch the next day. Upon being fascinated with CCI’s work in the new Russia, they seriously implored, “Call us if you ever get in trouble with the law again, they gave their telephone numbers. I did call on them at least two times in the future. They always came to my rescue.
I never met with Putin again, but was continually making unusual requests throughout the years that were fulfilled as needed. CCI never paid a ruble for these helps.
So where does this leave me today in 2022?
I’ve watched the miracle of what the new Russia has become under VV Putin’s reign. I’m stunned at the amount of progress, rebuilding, renovating that has gone on across Russia in the 22 years of his presidency. And I’m amazed at the level of law abiding in Russia today compared to the 90s and early 2000s. Russia is a highly predictable, pleasant and lovely place to live these days. I renovated an apartment there about 20 years ago when property was very cheap.
I am deeply concerned about a NATO country being on Russia’s borders in Ukraine. NATO does the military leg work for the United States. It is to U.S.’s benefit to take out Russia to get her vast subsoil resources. This obviously is not in Russia’s best interests. Vladimir Putin knows this and has spoken out in every way possible to get attention to this topic.
The world is big enough for the U.S., Russia, China and other countries to cooperate and do well. We need to forego NATO and become a multi-polar world where the major wealthy countries help bring up the smaller nations, share resources and mediate disagreements.
As for Putin’s current dilemma, I’m sorry he felt he had to intervene in Ukraine! Perhaps he thought it was the only way he could get the world’s attention. He is obviously desperate to be heard as he has publicly stated. This may have been a wild move … maybe it exceeded his intentions?
I haven’t read the latest emails since last night.
I just wanted to get in print this morning my deepest grief that the current situation is what it is … and to see if there is any possibility of sharing another point of view on this very dangerous situation. It reminds me of a parent who in their outrage at a child, goes beyond the limits of good parenting.
I’m open to any suggestions you wish to make.
Sincerely,
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives