抵制索契冬奥会有些不近情理

Western critics of Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics have picked up too much speed and risk skidding off piste. A justifiable attempt to scrutinise the government of President Vladimir Putin has degenerated into an exercise in schadenfreude and ill will. Politicians who have decided to attend the games (including China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan) have been level-headed. Those who have ostentatiously stayed away – the UK’s David Cameron, Barack Obama of the US and France’s François Hollande – are following what the critic Harold Rosenberg once called “the herd of independent minds”.

俄罗斯索契冬奥会的西方批评者有点过火，有超出合理程度的危险。审视弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)政府行为的正当努力，已沦为幸灾乐祸和不怀好意的举动。决定出席开幕式的政治人物（包括中国的习近平、日本的安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)，以及土耳其的雷杰普•塔伊普•埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)）是头脑冷静的人，而那些故意缺席的领导人——英国的戴维•卡梅伦(David Cameron)、美国的巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)和法国的弗朗索瓦•奥朗德(François Hollande)——则是在追随评论家哈罗德•罗森堡(Harold Rosenberg)所说的“独立思想的羊群”。

Media interest in the alleged corruption around Olympic construction has been obsessive. The Washington Post describes the various projects as “Stalinist excess”. At a January press conference, Mr Putin set the cost of the games at Rbs214bn ($6.2bn) and said related infrastructure ran far higher. Western sources estimate the whole project at $51bn, with some claiming a third of it was improperly diverted. That is a lot. But it is a local story: a Moody’s report this week described the credit impact on Russia’s companies as “mixed” and on its sovereign debt as “neutral”. Nor is Sochi a unique moral blot. The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002 were marred by a major corruption scandal and the Beijing summer games of 2008 were a more appropriate venue for protests about human rights.

媒体对奥运建设中据称存在的腐败问题念念不忘。《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)形容相关项目是“斯大林式的铺张浪费”。在1月的新闻发布会上，普京称本次冬奥会的成本为2140亿卢布（合62亿美元），并表示相关基础设施的建设成本远远高于这个数字。西方消息人士估计，整个项目的成本达到510亿美元，一些人称其中的三分之一被不当挪用。这笔数目确实不小。但这是一件局部的事情：穆迪(Moody’s)最近一份报告将俄罗斯公司所受的信用影响评定为“有好有坏”，将俄罗斯主权债务所受的影响评定为“中性”。况且有道德污点的并非只有索契冬奥会。2002年美国盐湖城冬奥会也被一桩重大的腐败丑闻蒙上阴影，而2008年北京夏季奥运会是人权抗议活动的更合适场合。

Certainly Mr Putin’s respect for the democratic process has been fitful at best. Political opponents have been arrested and jailed throughout his time in office, even if several were released in December. He cracked down on a peaceful demonstration in May 2012, and eight of those arrested are still facing trial. Such conduct merits scrutiny, even

当然，普京对民主进程的尊重，即使往好里说，也是断断续续的。在他掌权期间，政治对手被逮捕和监禁，尽管其中数人已于去年12月被释放。他镇压了2012年5月的一场和平示威，其中8名被捕的示威者仍然面临审判。对这些行为可以密切关注，可奥运会不是最好的场合。亚历山大•索尔仁尼琴(Alexander Solzhenitsyn)在2000年（此前俄罗斯用了10年时间遵循西方的建议）写道：“叶利钦时代的结果是，我们的政治、经济、文化和道德生活等所有基础领域都被摧毁或洗劫……我们还要继续洗劫和摧毁俄罗斯，直到一切荡然无存吗？”那一年，普京赢得大选，那是俄罗斯在说“不”。

if an Olympics is not the best forum. Of course, Mr Putin did not come out of nowhere. “As a result of the Yeltsin era, all the fundamental sectors of our political, economic, cultural and moral life have been destroyed or looted,” wrote Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 2000, after Russia spent a decade following western advice. “Will we continue looting and destroying Russia until nothing is left?” Mr Putin, who won an election that year, was Russia’s way of answering no.

相比这段历史，普京的批评者更关注西方精英所热衷的一份简短清单：欧盟、自由贸易、同性恋权利，以及米哈伊尔•霍多尔科夫斯基(Mikhail Khodorkovsky)——这位石油大亨10年前被普京投入监狱，去年12月被赦免。最近，包括萨曼•拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)在内的几百名作家在英国《卫报》发表了一封公开信，谴责俄罗斯出台的一项禁止“所谓同性恋‘宣传’”的法律（第6.21条的准确措辞是，禁止向儿童宣传“非传统的性关系”），还有一条禁止亵渎神明。公开信称：“作为作家和艺术家，我们不能沉默地坐视不管，看着同行作家和记者被禁言，或是面对公诉和往往严厉的惩处……一个健康的民主国家必须倾听所有公民的独立声音。”

Mr Putin’s detractors have paid less attention to this history than to a short list of causes beloved of western elites: the EU, free trade, gay rights and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon Mr Putin jailed a decade ago and pardoned in December. This week hundreds of writers, including Salman Rushdie, published an open letter in the UK’s Guardian newspaper deploring a Russian law against “so-called gay ‘propaganda’” (the actual text of Article 6.21 forbids promoting “non-traditional sexual relations” to children) and another against blasphemy. “As writers and artists,” the petition ran, “we cannot stand quietly by as we watch our fellow writers and journalists pressed into silence or risking prosecution and often drastic punishment  . . . A healthy democracy must hear the independent voices of all its citizens.”

然而仅在8年前，英国工党政府通过一部禁止蔑视神明的法律的时候，“沉默地坐视不管”恰恰是这些作家中许多人的作为。2006年英国的《种族和宗教仇恨法》(Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006)听从了英国伊斯兰事务行动委员会(UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs)等一些极端组织的建议；这些组织曾在1989年试图封杀拉什迪的小说《撒旦诗篇》(The Satanic Verses)。英国上议院虽然增加了一些修正条款，限制该法的适用范围，但这并没有改变审查制度的立法精神。

But “stand quietly by” is what many of these writers did when the UK’s Labour government passed a blasphemy law just eight years ago (the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006), at the behest of some of the very groups (including the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs) that tried to ban Mr Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, in 1989. That the UK

最近在美国巡回演出的俄国表演艺术家团体“暴动小猫”(Pussy Riot)曾因扰乱莫斯科一宗教场所而被捕入狱，西方评论家对此颇有微词——《纽约时报》将她们那次演唱的内容称作“反普京的歌曲”，而乐队成员称之为“一首好玩的歌”。遗憾的是，她们没有好好利用自由的氛围，而是在美国电视上表演了两年前她们站在圣坛上对着礼拜者演唱的歌曲（“大粪，大粪，上帝是大粪。”）。

House of Lords added amendments limiting the law’s reach does not change the spirit of censorship in which the bill was advanced.

在诋毁者的一片盛怒中，也许夹杂着不经意间给予普京的肯定。那些用拉什迪等人所谓“健康的民主国家”对普京说教的国家，近年却将权力从立法机构转移到行政机构，从选民转移到官僚。在欧洲，此举是通过将权力交给欧盟实现的。在美国，这种权力转移体现在对民主选举结果实行司法撤销（包括在同性恋婚姻问题上的司法裁决），以及国会（在贸易、战争、医疗保健和情报搜集等事务上）让出决定权。

Western commentators complain that performance artists Pussy Riot, touring the US this week, were arrested for disrupting a religious service in Moscow with what The New York Times calls an “anti-Putin song” and the band members call “a fun song”. Too bad they did not take advantage of the air of freedom to sing on US TV what they sang on an altar in front of worshippers two years ago. (“S**t, s**t, the Lord’s s**t.”)

普京将自己视为一名主权捍卫者，以及反美抗欧阵营的榜样。如今西方社会还是比俄罗斯更加自由和民主，但这种差别已经没有10年前那么明显了。