A Plague on all your Houses!

It's a very serious stage in one's life (particularly that of a political activist) when one feels it necessary to advise friends to have nothing to do with politicians and political parties. What is the alternative? A life of quietism and religious commitment?
I am indebted to my friend Ivan Daraktchiev for the short story ‘Tale of The Staircase’ by Hristo Smirnenski (1898-1923) which has apparently been much quoted in the Bulgarian Parliament over the past 2 decades. A man of the people who goes to represent his people to the king is stopped at a staircase by a devil At each step the devil asks him for a gift to move ahead. The devil asks first for his ears; then for his eyes; and finally for his heart and memory. So in the end when he meets the King he speaks the language of the King as he cannot hear the cry of his people, cannot see the naked bleeding bodies of his people and also has no memory about their suffering. Thus the man of the people becomes the man of the state. 

The key part of the story goes as follows -

"I have no gold. I have nothing with which to bribe you... I am poor, a youth in rags... But I am willing to give up my life..."The Devil smiled: "O no, I do not ask as much as that. Just give me your hearing.""My hearing? Gladly... May I never hear anything any more, may I...""You still shall hear," the Devil assured him, and made way for him. "Pass!" 

The young man set off at a run and had taken three steps in one stride when the hairy hand of the Devil caught him. "That's enough! Now pause and listen to your brothers groaning below."The young man paused and listened - "How strange! Why have they suddenly begun to sing happy songs and to laugh light-heartedly?..."

Again he sets off at a run.Again the Devil stopped him. "For you to go three more steps I must have your eyes."The young man made a gesture of despair. "But then I shall be unable to see my brothers or those I go to punish.""You still shall see them..." The Devil said. "I will give you different, much better eyes." 

The young man rose three more steps and looked back."See your brothers' naked bleeding bodies," the Devil prompted him."My God, how very strange! When did they manage to don such beautiful clothes? And not bleeding wounds but splendid red roses deck their bodies..." The young man proceeded, willingly giving everything he had in order to reach his goal and to punish the well-fed nobles and princes.

Now one step, just one last step remained and he would be at the top. Then indeed he would avenge his brothers."Young man, one last step still remains. Just one more step and you shall have your revenge. But for this last step I always exact a double toll: give me your heart and give me your memory."

The young man protested. "My heart? No, that is too cruel!"The Devil gave a deep and masterful laugh: "I am not so cruel as you imagine. In exchange I will give you a heart of gold and a brand-new memory. But if you refuse me, then you shall never avenge your brothers whose faces are the colour of sand and who groan more bitterly than December blizzards." The young man saw irony in the Devil's green eyes."But there will be nobody then more wretched than I. You are taking away all my human nature.""On the contrary, nobody shall be happier than you. Well, do you agree: just your heart and memory?"The young man pondered, his face clouded over, beads of sweat ran from the furrowed brow, in anger he tightened his fists and through clenched teeth said: "Very well, then. Take them!" ...

And like a swift summer storm of rage and wrath, his dark locks flying in the wind, he crossed the final step. He was now at the very top. And a broad a smile suddenly in his face, his eyes now shone with tranquil joy and his fists relaxed. He looked at the nobles revelling there and looked down to the roaring, cursing, grey ragged crowds below. He gazed, but not a muscle of his face quivered: his face was radiant, happy and content. The crowds he saw below were in holiday attire and their groans were now hymns.

Only the Greens (and particularly the Germans) have properly recognised and tried to deal with the problem of the corruption of leadership (the iron law of oligarchy)

The pessimism I feel about the performance capacity of governments relates to my experience and understanding of (a) the UK system since 1968 and (b) the so-called transition countries of Europe, Caucusus and Central Asia in which I have worked and lived for the past 20 years. I have a more open mind about the situation of the Scandinavian countries (in one of which I have briefly worked and lived); of Federal Germany and of the consensual Netherlands (although consensual Belgium and Austria have been disasters). But the UK system has become ever more centralised and adversarial in my lifetime - and these two characteristics seem to me to affect the chances of policy success in that country –

• Policies are imposed – rather than negotiated or thought through
• They are often very poorly designed (eg the poll-tax; rail privatisation; the whole Stalinist target system – with all the counter-productivities that involves)
• Ministers have a high turnover rate (Ministers of Finance excepted)
• Implementation is very poor (see agency theory)
• Morale of public servants is low (political hostility; targets; frequency and number of new initiatives; crude management)
• Changes in government lead to cancellation of programmes

Such governance arrangements as a whole do not excite much interest in Britain – but issues relating to the operation of the political system (and of what is felt to be the disenfranchisement of the citizen) do. Concerns about the British political system were so great that a completely independent inquiry was established in 2004 (funded by the Rowntree Trust) reporting in 2006 and leading to the establishment of a campaign in late 2009 to try to extract commitments from parties and candidates to electoral reform and greater citizen influence in government. Here is one important comment and discussion thread about the process – which has disappeared without a trace

A highly ironic report on the operation of the British system was published by Stuart Weir and Democratic Audit to coincide with the launch of the campaign 

The three questions

Who were the organisations and people whose stance on things I admired – and how could someone like myself help them achieve more? That is the basic question I have tried to address on various occasions over the past decade. In my various musings I’ve referred to a lot of books – but have not yet really tried to give a definitive answer to this question of whose voices and messages we should be listening to.

I’m reminded of one of Tolstoy’s fables – the Three Questions about a king who wants to know the best moment for taking a decision; the best people whose advice to listen to; and “how he might know what was the most important thing to do.”

His courtiers give him conflicting views about these 3 questions as a result of which he decides to seek the advice of a wise hermit. He disguises himself in simple clothes and dismisses his bodyguards and finds the hermit, frail and weak, digging his garden with some difficulty. He states his reason for coming but then takes pity on the old man and takes over the digging. He repeats his questions but gets no answer. He’s about to leave when a wounded man staggers to the hermit’s. The man falls unconscious and the king dresses his wounds but then, tired by his exertions, falls asleep. When he awakes, the stranger is standing over him – and asks the king to forgive him. It turns out that the stranger, apparently, wronged by the king, had been planning to kill him but had been surprised and wounded by the king’s bodyguard. Now, he is so touched by the king’s kindness that he wants instead to serve him. The story continues -

The King approached the hermit, and said, "For the last time, I pray you to answer my questions, wise man.""You have already been answered!" said the hermit still crouching on his thin legs, and looking up at the King, who stood before him.
"How answered? What do you mean?" asked the King.
"Do you not see," replied the hermit. "If you had not pitied my weakness yesterday, and had not dug these beds for me, but had gone your way, that man would have attacked you, and you would have repented of not having stayed with me. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important man; and to do me good was your most important business. Afterwards, when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business.

Remember then: there is only one time that is important -- and that is now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.
The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else.
And the most important thing to do is, to do good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!"

I’m not sure if I really accept the second of the answers – about the most important person being the one in whose company we presently find ourselves – not least because we can and do exercise some choice about the company we keep. But I have been dithering long enough in my quest – and do agree with Tolstoy that “doing good” should be a key factor in our approach to life. Of course, in this cynical age, it is easy to deride this as facile – “give me a definition!” is the cry. But I think we all know how much time we spend on trivial or reprehensible activities with base motives.

I hope to spend some of the next few days looking at the questions – trying to identify the sane voices.

It’s obvious that systems no longer work. Perhaps, however, the original question needs first to be rephrased, for example, thus - 

• How can we restore faith in institutions - in people?
• How do we select the most appropriate and effective social intervention?
• How can we develop a consensus about that?

All at Sea?

This post is perhaps one of the most important I have done in the past four years.
How should one spend the time and whatever other resources one has in the last part of one’s life to best public advantage is the simple question I started to pose more than a decade ago. Rich Americans have a tradition of establishing Foundations (Ford; Rockefeller; Mellon; Soros; Gates) or University Chairs which honour their names. 
Those who are merely “comfortably-off” go on world tours or establish Annual Awards.

Frankly the results don’t seem to offer much inspiration…or original thought

My 2001 note (see last post) was structured around 5 questions which of course were rather ego- and indeed ethno-centric. They limited the search for answers to those within my ‘ken and that of the Anglo-Saxon world. But we are in a globalised world which seems to have become even closer in our (essentially negative) political assessments as a result of the global financial crisis.

The update a couple of years back of the original 2001 paper referenced a lot of books – both political and economic and, as a result, I suspect rather lost focus. There are simply too many different diagnoses and prescriptions. Too many prophets and peacocks preening themselves….allocating blame….and announcing favourite recipes….all within a power structure which never really seems to change…..

This is where, perhaps, things have now changed dramatically. 

In the first part of the 20^th century educated people had religion, movements and ideologies to put their faith in.

In the second part of the century we had things like managerialism and privatisation (in the US still religion) to give us continued faith that things could and would get better.

But the tectonic plates seem to have moved in the past decade –

• we have become aware that the “Western world” is only a small (and declining) part of the world
• we no longer trust the institutions of democracy and the market (let alone faiths) which were the core of our being.
• Corporate and bureaucratic power is evil and the very notion of political power laughable. All that seems left are disaggregated, atomistic and alienated individuals
• with most people no longer believing that the future has anything better to offer
• We cannot therefore agree any more on diagnoses - let alone on prescriptions.
• We are completely at sea…have no engines …nor bearings….

I wonder whether my readers would accept these assertions? 

I am now struggling to pose some questions which might be more helpful than the five with which I started my original paper.............

The painting is an Alexander Moutafov - born in Shumen and educated in Varna, he studied art in Turin between 1899 and 1902; then Munich 1902/03. He was also a war artist

It was the Munich experience which aroused his interest in Jugendstil. From 1921-33, he was professor of Painting in Sofia’s Art Academy. First Bulgarian seascape painter, he laid the basis for this specialism for subsequent Bulgarian painters. There is, I understand, a museum in his Sozopol house

Draft Guide for the Perplexed

Some 12-13 years ago I drafted a paper with the rather odd title “Living for Posterity” which was -

"one man’s attempt to explore how he might “make a difference”; or at least feel that what he is doing is improving the human condition rather than compounding its problems. For I was at the enviable point in my life where I didn’t need to work full-time and could choose what I did with my time and life.
The first half of the paper still has the form and content it had when it was originally written (in Tashkent) in 2001 some 10 years after I had left political life in Scotland and started the nomadic life of a consultant in countries which were assumed to be in some sort of transition from a form of communism to capitalism".

How – was my question – should I use my energies and resources (time, skills, knowledge and money) in the future to best public (rather than private) advantage?

My 2001 note was structured around 5 questions -

• why I was pessimistic about the future and so unhappy with the activities of the programmes and organisations with whom I dealt – and with what the French have called La Pensee Unique, the post 1989 “Washington consensus”

• who were the organisations and people I admired

• what they were achieving - and what not

• how these gaps could be reduced

• how with my resources I could help that process

One friend responded and I returned to the questions 10 years later and tried to update my thoughts.

On Sunday I had a stimulating chat – over a white wine - with a new acquaintance about the issues and have been encouraged to do a minor update which you can find on my website with the title - Draft Guide for the Perplexed

I’ve been very lucky in my life – having a position of considerable political influence in the West of Scotland for 22 years from the age of 28 – and then having responsibility for a variety of capacity-building projects in central European and Central Asian governments for another 20 odd years.

From these very different vantage points (and my constant reading) I have developed some views about what we might call social/political interventions…..Unfortunately I find that my attempt to communicate these gets perverted by language – not just my own imperfections but, I suspect, the verbal infrastructure itself. Hence the pleasure I got from drafting a “Devil’s Dictionary” to warn people about language – entitled Just Words

I readily confess to being one of these annoying people who “takes stock” every few years of what has been going on in a place for which I felt some affinity and offers some uninvited (and generally unpalatable) comment. I started the habit in the mid- 1970s and was allowed to indulge the habit by my various positions. I might say that it made few friends!

Although I continue to write a blog I now use it mainly to pass on what I consider to be useful perspectives of others who are better skilled than  -, whether by virtue of their more felicitous language, their experience, reading or understanding. 

The last bastion of Social democracy....???

I can see from the statistics that my readers are none too keen on my blogging about Scotland. Bear with me, however, since there is a point……

Neal Ascherson is one of many names I encountered in the late 1970s in the Glasgow HQ of a Regional government system (responsible then for half of Scotland’s citizens) of which (in my early 30s) I had a key leadership role – Felicity Kendall, Richard von Weizsaeker,  Melina Merkouri and Paul Scofield were some other visitors (an interesting melange - n'est-ce pas??). 

The Liberal leader of the time – Jo Grimond – with whom (despite our different political allegiances) I established a quiet relationship – actually benignly called me the “Gauleiter” of Strathclyde. Those were the days in which the political expediency of a Labour Government led by James Callaghan allowed a referendum on Scottish “devolution” which led to a nominal victory – but one which failed to meet (an impossible) legal precondition of 40% support of the official electorate. For my sins I had been active in the “No” campaign (with people such as Tony Benn) but – in the privacy of the polling both – had actually voted “yes”!!

Today being St Andrew’s Day gives Neal Ascherson the opportunity to comment on the Scottish Executive’s intentions for the future

Reading "Scotland's Future", I couldn't at first account for a faint twinge of melancholy, a recognition. Then it dawned on me. The Scotland being here described – or proposed – was the Britain so passionately hoped for by the millions who voted for Tony Blair, back in 1997.After 18 years of Thatcherism, the longing was for a return to fairness and a stronger regulating and redistributing role for the state.

What New Labour did with those hopes is another story. But Salmond's "what sort of Scotland" is also a moderate, statist social democracy that partners the private sector but is not afraid to – for example – renationalise the Royal Mail.The yes camp is wider than the official yes campaign.

Around Scotland in recent months, I keep meeting people who would never vote SNP or trust Salmond, but who are painfully admitting that they may have to vote yes. This is because they are appalled at the way the British state is heading, under Tory or Labour: the downward plunge into the barbarism of neoliberal politics, the contempt for public service, the almost monthly advance of privatisation.

Wrestling with old loyalties, they may vote for what Ian Jack called "the lifeboat option" – an independent Scotland as the only way to escape that fate.It's a lifeboat the SNP government has already launched, using devolution to keep out English "reforms" to the NHS or higher education.

Gordon Brown himself used to argue that the health service and the postwar welfare state were the supreme achievement of Great Britain's history. And yet it's only the SNP that has embarked on this astonishing attempt to preserve and grow what's left of that achievement in one part of old Ukania. It hurts to laugh at some of history's jokes, but here's one: in spite of itself, the SNP is the most truly British party in these islands.

Bulgarian Whites

Perhaps understandably, I failed to mention the annual 2 day Bulgarian wine fair I attended 2 weekends ago here in Sofia. 
It was hard work – and required a rest afterwards! For 10 euros I had a 2-day pass and more than 200 wines to taste. 
I did my best on the Saturday – the white and rose day - but found red Sunday a bit of a slog – with my pallet and tongue fairly quickly getting badly coated!

For some reason, I decided to score the wines out of 6.0 and the white wines I appreciated came out as follows -

• Lovica - Chardonnay (6 levs!) 4.5 out of 6.0
• LV - Colombard (5 levs! and 4.5 score) and Sauvignon Blanc (SB)
• Black Sea Gold - Muscat El Mar (6 levs) - find of the day! Salty Hills Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc (15 levs) - one of the best (Silver medal)
• Minkov - Rheinriesling 
• Katarzyna - SB (4.2)
• Marvin - Viognier and Chardonnay and Viognier - both 4.5s in my scoring
• Villa Yustina - Blanc Cuvee (8 levs)
• Zagreus - white Mavrud - 4.5 on my scoring
• Medi Valley - Chardonnay Incanto (4.9!!) 18 levs and Chardonnay and Viognier
• No Man's Land 600 SB  12 levs
• Kapatovo - Chardonnay and Viognier 4.5 (18 levs) 

On Sunday, the only wine which impressed me was the Ethno range of wines. They are from the Sungurlare valley near Burgas on the Black Sea and the Chardonnay I am now drinking (3 euros) got a silver medal (in the 2013 "Chardonnays of the World" somewhere). How do they do it??

Tomorrow I will try to find some specimens of all these wines in the CaseVino chain - the Bulgarian version of Oddbins – and subject them in the next week to some tough tasting and testing. 
No rest for the conscientious!!

The photo is of the wine museum in Sungurlare village - the wine area very near Burgas

Danube Divides

The Danube may be a busy river but it has also acted as a barrier between Bulgaria and Romania who have had, over the years, a rather strained relationship – not helped by the open conflict during the two Balkan Wars a hundred years ago and the absorption by Romania in 1918 for 22 years of a significant section of Bulgarian territory on the southern banks of the Danube (the Dobrogea area of the North-East).

Although I have visited the city of Dobrich in the heart of that area - and Balcik on the Black Sea which was a famous art colony then for the Bucharest glitterati, I have not yet managed the various settlements which scatter along the eastern Danube banks particularly Silistra (this is one of the paintings in my collection of that city – by one Hristo Danev from 1910)

I was therefore delighted to come across just now a post from a Romanian blogger I admire about Tutrakan and the museum and monument there which mark the battles; the role played by such outsiders as the Germans; and the eventual liberation of the area in 1940. What I particularly appreciated about the post (apart from the photographs and history) was the recognition of the dubious nature of the encroachment in the first place – the author admitting that the visit made him appreciate that this was a bit of Romanian imperialism

Although a lot of Romanians make the journey by road to Varna in the summer, there is, it seems to me, still little love lost between the nations. I do occasionally worry about my Romanian numberplates here!!

I was looking these days at some text about the characteristics of Bulgarians and those who are their neighbours. I was told (by When Cultures Collide) that -

Bulgarians differ considerably from other Slavs in their values and communication style, probably because of their origins. In general they are cooler and more pragmatic than many Slavs, particularly when compared with Serbs. Quiet and soberness are valued; you will see little of the hotheaded discussion or noisy public disputes that are only too common in Belgrade.They do, however, share with other Slavs a widespread feeling of pessimism about national helplessness. In general, Bulgarian values tend to be rural, with homespun virtues, as one might expect from people living in a predominantly agricultural society. Basic values are disciplined/sober; pragmatic/cautious; persistent/stubborn; good organizers; industrious/determined; steady/suspicious but tolerant of foreigners; inventive; highly literate/thorough

Before giving full expression to their feelings or opinions, Bulgarians engage in a series of preliminary encounters, during which they sound out and size up (albeit in a friendly manner) their conversation partners. During this period they are decidedly less flowery or rhetorical in their speech than the Yugoslavs, Romanians or Hungarians. At this stage, it is very difficult to extract opinions oreventual attitudes from them. When this exploratory period has passed, Bulgarians open up to display a modicum of quiet charm and make their requests in a circuitous manner, avoiding confrontation whenever they can. They enjoy conversation—an art for them—but are less prone to exaggeration than South Slavs or other Mediterranean people.

And here's an interesting report which makes the case for a different sort of leadership than that which the modern (and post-modern) world has inflicted on us. 

When Money Rules

Noone documents the Kafka-esque world of contemporary Russian life better than Peter Pomerantsev -  a television producer whose life has spanned Moscow and London and whose writing I first came across earlier this year in Eurozine. His position and linguistic abilities allow him to give detailed exposes of the make-believe world of politics, judiciary, business and bureaucracy and reveal the Hobbesian world that is now apparently Russia.

His current Diary piece in the London Review of Books reveals a frightening picture -   

A year of national service is in theory mandatory for males between 18 and 27 (with some exceptions), but anyone who can avoids it. The most common way out is a medical certificate. Some people play mad and spend a month at a psychiatric clinic. Their mothers bring them in. ‘My son is psychologically disturbed,’ they say, even though they know the doctors know they are pretending. Several weeks in a loonie bin will set you back in the region of five to ten thousand dollars. You will never be called up again – the mad are not trusted with guns – but you will have a certificate of mental illness hanging over you for the rest of your career. Other medical solutions are more short-term: a week in hospital with an injured hand or back, but this will have to be repeated every year as April and October approach because this is when the drafts take place, leaving hospitals full of pimply youths simulating back trouble. The medical route takes months of preparation and research, finding the right doctor and settling on the appropriate ailment. The ailments that can exempt you change all the time. You turn up at the military centre with the little stamped registration that your mother has spent months organising and saving for, only to be told by the local recruitment commission that this year flat feet or short sight is no longer a legal excuse – which may be the truth and may be an attempt to extract another bribe.If you’re at university you can avoid military service (or take part in tame drills at the faculty instead): there is no greater incentive for young men to explore the world of higher education. And if you’re not good enough to make it to college? Then you must bribe your way into an institution: there are dozens of new universities which have opened to service draft-avoiders. For poorer people, it’s a matter of hide and seek. During the spring and autumn drafts soldiers will grab anyone off the street who looks the right age, demand to see their documents and their letters of exemption, and if they don’t have them, march them off to the local recruitment centre. So the young devote their energy to staying clear of metro stations, or hiding behind columns and darting past when they spot a cop flirting with girls or scrounging cigarettes off passers-by. You often see teenagers sprinting through the long, dark, marble corridors of the underground with figures in blue giving chase (they could of course be looking for drugs). When soldiers come by apartment blocks potential conscripts barricade themselves behind the door, holding their breath until the visitors go away. But by now they are in trouble: every time their documents are checked by the police, they tremble; every time they go into the underground, every time they cross a main road, or meet friends near a cinema, or even leave their little yard, they will be in a state of high anxiety. As a draft-dodger, you live semi-legally until you are 27.

This is the genius of sistema: even if you manage to avoid the draft, you, your mother and your family have become part of the network of bribery, fear, simulation and dissimulation. You have learned to become an actor playing different roles in relation to the state, the great intruder you wish to avoid or outwit or simply buy off. You are already semi-legal, a transgressor, but that’s fine for sistema: as long as you only simulate, you will never do anything real, you will always look for compromise and you will feel just the right amount of discomfort. You are now part of the system. If a year in the army is the overt process that binds young Russians to the nation, a far more powerful induction comes with the rituals of avoiding military service.

Another film he was working on was about a successful young businesswoman called Yana Yakovleva, who had founded a pharmaceuticals company that imported and sold industrial cleaning agents to factories and military bases. 

One morning she woke up to find herself under arrest: the Federal Drugs Control Service had reclassified her cleaning agent, diethyl ether, as a narcotic. She was now a drug dealer behind bars, awaiting trial. She assumed it was a case of reiderstvo, the most common form of corporate takeover in Russia with hundreds of reported, and probably tens of thousands of unreported cases a year, earning an estimated four billion dollars in profit. Business rivals or bureaucrats – long since interchangeable – pay for the security services to have the head of a company arrested; while they are in prison their documents and registrations are seized, the company is re-registered under different owners, and by the time the original owners are released the company has been bought, sold and split up by new owners. The usual way out is a bribe and there is a whole industry of pay-offs. Good ‘lawyers’ are not the ones who can defend you in court – the verdicts are pre-determined – but those who have the right connections and know who to pay off in the judiciary and the relevant ministry. It’s a complex game: pay off the wrong person and you’ve just wasted your money. Soon enough an array of middlemen appear, trying to persuade you that they, and only they, know how to pay the right person off. Yakovleva knew her parents were looking for that person on the outside. They had found a ‘lawyer’ who said he could help: he suggested she admit to the charges and then he could get everything sorted. The bribe would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yakovleva smelled a rat. Her company had done nothing wrong, shouldn’t she stick to her story? And what exactly was she meant to own up to? That she’d traded what she traded? Face up to absurdity? If she started to negotiate, she told me, it would be like relinquishing a part of her sanity, letting the sistema dictate the terms – at which point everything starts to slip.

A year ago today, I posted some detail on my working methods for a good project trying to build the capacity of local government in Kyrgyzstan. One of the things I enjoyed about my decade of working in Central Asia was the freedom I was given to develop activities which seemed to suit the particular circumstances of the place and time. In Bishkek I asked a simple question which seems all too rarely to be asked - what can a small temporary project do that is distinctive and will leave a useful legacy?
One of the reasons I now turn down all projects is that such creativity is now absolutely forbidden. The logframe rules all.