Russia's Sad Copy-Cat Act

Plagiarism is not something Russians worry about – hell, even Putin lifted his phD thesis, verbatim, out of a US textbook – while his country has occupied the US’s piracy list – home of the world’s largest copyright violators –  for twice as many years as China.

Not that there’s anything wrong with copying per se: it can make goods like movies and consumer articles affordable to average people, increase the global flow of ideas, and blow some righteous holes in an archaic, stifling and greedy copyright regime.

But if you are going to rip something off, the golden rule is: copy a winner. Unfortunately, it is one Russia, and particularly Medvedev, continues to ignore, with terrible consequences.

Yesterday, Russia adopted a colour coded terrorist warning system. Just like in America! Except, the widely ridiculed Bush-era system had just this week been phased out by Obama for being ineffective.

Or take the recent unveiling of the “Russian i-phone”, a smartphone equipped with GLONASS, Russia’s own sat-nav system to rival the American GPS. Except, it came a couple of decades too late, with a price too high (nearly $300) and an inferior interface.

In fact, Medvedev’s presidency itself has been one self-conscious attempt to superficially ape a shallow idea of Western liberalism – at the precise moment that it started to feel least self-assured.

As Mark Feygin writes in the Moscow Times, Medvedev has adopted Obama as his biggest role model.  On the surface, a shrewd move. But, in the tried and tested Russian tradition, he did this three years too late, and in all the wrong ways.

It was 2008, back when Medvedev only had eyes for Putin, that was the time to embrace Obama, when the new US prez had just become the most popular man on Earth. And if there was a time to reject him, it was in 2011, when Obama’s ratings hit an all time low and he lost the House to the Republicans: just the moment Medvedev chose to adopt him.

But embarrassingly poor timing and a try-hard attempt at being ‘revelant’ with Western liberals is not the only thing wrong with Medvedev’s adulation of post 2010 Obama. On top of it all, the Russian president seems to have insisted on copying the very traits that got Obama into his current rut: vacillation and a huge gap between rhetoric and delivery.

As former British Ambassador to Russia Andrew Wood argues, “Medvedev has for some years said things that liberal-minded people in the West and in Russia too have welcomed. But little concrete action has followed”.

Just like Obama, criticised for unfulfilled promises at home (eg. closing Guantanamo) and hypocritical hawkishness abroad (Pakistan, Libya), Medvedev has not been able to push through key, much touted reforms (eg, of the police force) but nevertheless managed to rattle sabres in the Caucasus and Japan (that belligerent Kurils trip).

While it may no longer include broadcasting discontinued old US soap operas or wearing garish, ostentatious bling, Russia’s timeless tradition of appropriating Western things as soon as they have been discarded by the West itself  unfortunately remains alive and well.