When I was in Sochi the year before last, I took a pleasure cruise on the Black Sea. I remember being fascinated by the city's skyline, its cranes as striking and numerous against the snow-capped mountains as the dashes on a Fred Williams canvas.
Moscow's independent newspapers had at that time been doing some excellent work on the preparations for Vladimir Putin's pet project - the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, which begin tomorrow - and the toll those preparations were taking. The attention of foreign reporters was elsewhere: on the anti-Putin protests that were then underway amongst Moscow's urban liberals and its extreme left and right groups.
Focus on these protests and their aftermath - particularly the Pussy Riot and Bolotnaya Square cases - continued at Sochi's expense until Putin's anti-LGBT legislation was passed last June. This legislation, which states that 'propaganda of homosexualism among minors is punishable by an administrative fine,' was the first thing to really draw the West's attention to Sochi in a major way, in large part thanks to the outrage expressed by the likes of Madonna, Lady Gaga and Stephen Fry.
A series of revelations followed - Sochi is a hive of corruption! There are terrorists in them thar hills! -that have played into a nearly seven-month media narrative about the Games that amounts to the following: Vladimir Putin and his cronies are bigoted crooks, putting gay athletes in the cross-hairs of vigilantes and the rest in the cross-hairs of Islamist militants, and the event will almost certainly be remembered as a terrible mistake.
I am not denying any of these points. Indeed, several are flat-out undeniable. That these will be the most expensive Olympics ever - primarily because their preparations have been the most corrupt, embezzlement having become the unofficial sport of the country's officials - has been exhaustively documented, most exhaustively by Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist turned protest leader turned Moscow mayoral candidate. I have a deep and abiding affection for the North Caucasus, but I certainly wouldn't have pushed to stage a major international sporting event there. Forget the Volgograd bombings of last December, however concerning they may have been. The IOC should have known better: even the most cursory glance at the statistics—529 casualties across the region in 2013, 700 the year before that, etc., etc. -suggests that maybe the 2007 decision to award Sochi the Games was never an especially bright or considered one.
Nevertheless, the fact that this is an incomplete narrative - indeed, a highly selective one - seems to me as unavoidable as the criticisms that comprise it.
I recently interviewed NYU's Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security issues, who told me that he thinks Western commentators need 'to consider more clearly what Russians of different strata are looking for in their leadership' and should 'try to listen to Russian voices more.' The most constant and glaring omission from the majority of Western coverage of the country, Russian voices have been notably absent from reporting and commentary on Sochi as well. It is a rare story that touches upon the fact that Russians are in fact very excited about their Games - the first in the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union—as indeed they have every right to be. In an interview with Public Radio International's The World last week, the acting editor-in chief of The Moscow News, Natalia Antonova, who pulls few punches in her criticism of the Russian authorities, was at pains to point out that 'there's definitely lots of pride [in the Games amongst ordinary Russians]. I mean, obviously there's plenty of [criticism] of the Games, but the majority of the population is still really excited about [them].'
'It’s a prestige thing for everyone,' she said. 'Overall there's a sense that this is kind of a symbol of what Russia has become since the Soviet Union disintegrated.'
To write stories that play up this excitement without mentioning the various criticisms of the event would be to make a terrible mistake. One might as well be working for the Kremlin, the IOC or both. But to ignore the excitement outright, as many have done, is to make the same mistake a different way.
In her interview with PRI, Antonova suggested that a lot of the Games' critics are likely to bite their tongues once the event actually gets underway. 'They're going to be watching them and, you know, it's sports, it's exciting, it's beautiful," she said. "People are going to respond to it.'
This may be true of many of the Games' domestic critics. (After all, the anti-Putin opposition includes among its number a great many nationalists, including Navalny, and the Olympics are nothing if not an opportunity for the nation to shine.) But it is harder to believe the same of Putin's critics in the West.
Another Vladimir—Lenin—is often quoted as saying 'the worse, the better'. (In fact, Lenin was quoting Georgi Plekhanov, who probably borrowed the phrase from Nikolay Chernyshevsky.) No Western journalist in his or her right mind would ever say such a thing in relation to Sochi, perhaps, at least not aloud or in print. And indeed I doubt that anyone really wants to see the North Caucasus' insurgents infiltrate the city's so-called 'ring of steel' simply so Putin might find himself humiliated on the world stage. But it is not difficult to read between the lines of certain other pieces—those that mention the North Caucasus' supposed lack of snow come to mind, as do certain smarmy live-blogs—and find precisely such sentiments.
I believe that hoping for the worst in Sochi—or even somewhat less than the worst—is a mistake. The fact of the matter is that Putin wins in Sochi either way, at least domestically. If the Games go off without a hitch, he wins to a greater extent, of course. But even if such a hitch does occur, it is unlikely to hurt him or his administration as much as some might think.
For one thing, as Antonova notes, many Russians view the authorities' struggles with the North Caucasus' insurgents in a sympathetic light. 'Russia is one of the countries that have been dealing with terrorism consistently for so many years now,' she told PRI. 'Obviously there's concern [that the Games might be attacked], but there's also this notion of, you know, life needs to go on, we have to go on. If we don't go on, then these guys win.'
We should not underestimate the extent to which the other issues surrounding the Games - with the possible exception of official corruption -are similarly less damaging to Putin at home as they have been to his reputation in the West. Nearly 90 per cent of Russians supported the LGBT propaganda laws in a June 2013 poll by the government-run VTsIOM agency. Two months earlier, the independent Levada Center found that 35 per cent of Russians believe homosexuality to be a disease, while another 43 per cent believe that it's merely a bad habit. These are shocking numbers that, while obviously not justifying Putin's position in a moral sense, certainly help to explain it in a political one.
Nor should we underestimate the extent to which our own criticisms of Putin play into his hands at home. To every call for a boycott, Putin can just as easily trot out one of his favourite dog-whistles - Western hypocrisy, Russian sovereignty - that play well for him in the country's heartland. (The accusations of hypocrisy are not always unreasonable, either. As Ian Ayres and William Eskridge wrote in The Washington Post last week, 'recall that in 2002 the United States proudly, and without comment, sent its Olympic athletes to a state - Utah - that prohibits the 'advocacy of homosexuality.'') Should the event be the disaster many are hoping for - whether in terms of security, snowfall or anything else - expect it to be portrayed in precisely this way: as something longed-for by the country's enemies, internal and external alike.
For my part, I hope that Sochi is a roaring success. This has nothing do with my feelings about Putin - I don't much like him, but then I don't much like politicians in general—and everything to do with expressing solidarity with the city and its residents. After everything they have been put through since they were lumped with the Games seven years ago—the forced evictions, the environmental destruction—the least they deserve now is a peaceful and prosperous couple of weeks. They deserve an opportunity to claw back a little of what this orgy of corruption, on the one hand, and condemnation, on the other, has cost them. A disaster at the Games will not be a disaster for the president. It will simply be the latest in a long line of disasters for them.
Matthew Clayfield is a freelance foreign correspondent who covered the 2012 Russian presidential election from Moscow.
