Staunton, January 23 – The recent statement by Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peshkov, that “there are things more important than laws” is the latest sign of a fundamental shift in Russian governance from the dictatorship of laws that Putin promised when he came to office to a dictatorship of morality resembling the situation in […]
Staunton, January 22 — “Post-Soviet Russian nationalism has been fatally flawed from the outset because it arose not from the word ‘nation’ but from the word ‘nationality,’” a reflection of the fact that a Russian “nation” in the normal of sense that term does not yet exist in Russia, according to Vadim Shtepa. In a […]
Staunton, January 22 – Fearful that Armenian anger could lead to a break with Moscow or even spark an orange-style revolution in Yerevan, Moscow has agreed that the Russian soldier who has now confessed to killing an Armenian family in Gyurmri will be tried in Armenia but in a Russian court with Russian laws. Whether […]
Staunton, January 23 – The first impulse of Western leaders whenever there is a crisis is to seek negotiations on the principle that it is better to talk than to fight, but sometimes in their rush to find common ground, these leaders make the problem worse because their willingness to talk about a conflict has […]
Staunton, January 23 – Putin’s Russia has crossed a Rubicon: it now has sanctioned the Anti-Maidan Movement, a domestic version of Hitler’s storm troopers, and thus created a monster that almost certainly will engage in pogroms against one group or another in the future, according to Moscow commentator Matvey Ganapolsky. Despite Putin’s ratings in the […]
Staunton, January 22 – Russia’s “thick” journals, the pride of its intellectual life for more than a century are dying, the result of changes in the media marketplace. But despite 2015 having been declared “The Year of Literature” in Russia, the Russian government is unwilling to do anything to save them. Indeed, it says, it […]
Staunton, January 20 – “Import substitution” may be the most important new term to enter Russian discourse over the last year, but it isn’t going to happen in the next year, experts say, and the reasons for that are to be found in the actions and inactions of the central Russian government in Moscow. Dmitry […]
Staunton, January 21 – Every leader carries around in his or her head a mental map of the world, one that is the basis for action regardless of whether it corresponds to the actual map or not. Vladimir Putin is no exception, Peter Oleshchuk says, but his map is especially inadequate because he views the […]
Staunton, January 21 – After declaring in December that they felt diminished by the fact that Belarusian believers felt insulted by the fact that the Orthodox Church in their country did not have self-administering status, the leadership of the Belarusian exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church has shelved the issue for the next 25 to […]
Staunton, January 21 – For many, the face of poverty in Russia is to be found in the country’s dying countryside, but a new survey finds that more than half of the population of its largest cities is now poor, and predicts that ever more urban Russians are becoming poor, a development with potentially ominous […]
