Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 29 – Andranik Migranyan,
who became infamous for his suggestion that Hitler would have been a second
Bismarck if the Nazi leader had stopped before invading Poland, is going back
to Moscow because his Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in New York,
which Vladimir Putin created in 2007, is closing down.
According to Migranyan, the
institute is closing and he is leaving because thanks to his efforts, the
situation with regard to human rights in the United States has become better (gazeta.ru/politics/2015/06/25_a_6854653.shtml).
But according to others, this is happening because Moscow has run out of money
for such things (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.242338.html).
(Natalya Narodnichkaya, who heads
the Russian office in Paris analogous to the one Migranyan led in New York,
admitted as much given that she says she is trying to “optimize” her operation
by cutting salaries and other costs in order to continue to function as she has
in the French capital.)
Despite his defense of Hitler, which
appeared in “Izvestiya” in April 2014 (izvestia.ru/news/568603),
Migranyan often appeared in public and testified before Congress. (The author
of these lines spoke at a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on
International Affairs where Migranyan appeared and was praised by that body’s
chairman.)
One curious feature of Migranyan’s
departure, Ilya Milshteyn of Grani.ru says, is that it coincides with the US
Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriages. Given Moscow’s attitudes on homosexuality,
he implies, Migranyan once in Moscow may have to defend his statement that the
situation in the US has improved (grani.ru/opinion/milshtein/m.242376.html).
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