Some Western journalists are calling Joaquim Crima, an African guy running for minor political office in a small Russian town, "Russia's Obama". Are they really that ignorant, or just plain lazy? It would make much more sense (especially to Russians) to call him a XXI century Gannibal. You know, Alexander Pushkin's great-grandfather, who had one hell of an interesting life.

Pushkin was the great-grandson of an Ethiopian (or perhaps Cameroonian or Chadian -- it's all kind of murky) slave renamed Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who became, apparently, a godson of Peter the Great, then a general in the Czarist army, a military engineer, and the governor of a Russian province. (It's a wild story. Somebody ought to make a movie about this guy's life!) Voltaire supposedly called Gannibal "the dark star of the Enlightenment," although it's hard to nail down the facts about him. What we do know is that Pushkin identified closely with his African ancestor, and began a book about him called "The Blackamoor of Petersburg." Pushkin often played up his African ancestry, which just made him even more exotic and charismatic to Russians.

Russia has long been an empire ruling a great variety of ethnicities and the Russians are very open-minded about such matters. At the apex of Russian power, the empire was ruled by the steel fist of a Georgian. It's not realistic for a black man born in Africa to become Russia's prime minister, but Russians are obviously not racist enough to make local office unobtainable.

Crima's campaign manager, Vladimir Kritsky, acknowledged that a victory for his client was close to impossible, but said the Kremlin has promised Crima a seat on the district council in 2011.

"He will be able to do a lot of good for the region," said Kritsky, a 33-year-old former special operations commander. "He's a very smart guy, he speaks five languages ... this is an experiment that the Kremlin will be interested in supporting."