Staunton, April 7 — One of the most notorious practices of the Soviet system in its last decades was the incarceration of perfectly health dissidents in psychiatric prisons under the pretext that they were suffering from “sluggish schizophrenia” and treating them with mind-altering drugs in the name of “curing” them of their proclivity to dissent. […]
Staunton, April 7 — Many members of the Russian intelligentsia do not support Vladimir Putin and his repression at home and aggression abroad, but a significant and surprising number of them do, the result of a complex combination of their experiences over the last generation and Putin’s actions as well, according to Kseniya Kirillova. In […]
Staunton, April 7 — Vladimir Putin stopped using the preposition “v” or “in” Ukraine in 2004, reverting to the older form “na” or “on,” in official government documents, an indication that the Kremlin leader did not view Ukraine as a country but rather as a Russian borderland, according to Andrey Illarionov. From the time he […]
Staunton, April 6 – At a time when many commentators are seeking to explain what is going on in Ukraine by searching for analogies with other places and events, it is useful to be reminded of the limits of at least some of these comparisons as Bogdan Butkevich does in an article titled “10 Reasons […]
Staunton, April 6 — Of the slightly more 3,000 media outlets in Crimea before the Anschluss, the Russian occupation authorities have reregistered and therefore allowed to continue to operate only 232. Hardest hit have been those in Crimean Tatar, there, the Russian officials have closed 11 out of 12. Of the 232 with official permission […]
Staunton, April 6 — Between 2,500 and 5,000 residents of Novosibirsk staged a demonstration yesterday to demand that Moscow follow the principles of the Russian Constitution and allow artistic and other freedoms instead of pursuing what is an increasingly obscurantist, reactionary and authoritarian policy. The meeting sparked by the Tannhauser case called for that play […]
Staunton, April 6 — Lies are not only a moral failing but ultimately a political one as well because they typically are unmasked and the liar held responsible and because, however cleverly designed, they quite often provide an indication directly or indirectly of where the liar plans to move because even those who lie cannot […]
Staunton, April 5 — A new study by a group of Moscow activists on the state of freedom of assembly in Russia concludes that Vladimir Putin has been first limiting and then eliminating that right as well as others in his drive to prevent the citizens of his country from being able to express themselves […]
Staunton, April 5 — Thanks to the help of Finnish friends, Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, got dial-up Internet service in 1997, even before Moscow did; and the links it has provided help explain the rise of the Karelian national movement since then, including the protests this week against the Moscow-imposed governor. The Internet not […]
Staunton, April 3 — The conflict between the FSB and Ramzan Kadyrov over who is to be held responsible for the murder of Boris Nemtsov is intensifying and increasingly affects Vladimir Putin, Andrey Piontkovsky says, because “any attack on Kadyrov indirectly or directly is an attack” on the Kremlin leader. At a minimum, it calls […]
