Staunton, July 10 – With all the other problems Russia faces from demographic collapse to the economic crisis, it may seem that the accelerating closure of libraries for children is not high on the list, but Viktor Barakov, a commentator for Russkaya Narodnaya Liniya says that it means “we are losing our youth and that […]
Staunton, July 10 – Given both Vladimir Putin’s moves to centralize almost all decisions and the sensitivity of many Russians to the possibility that the eastern portions of the Russian Federation will fall under Chinese domination, the statement of Moscow’s top official in the Russian Far East is striking. Yury Trutnyev, deputy prime minister and […]
Staunton, July 8 – “Unfortunately, Russia is different from present-day Ukraine in many ways,” Lilya Shevtsova says; and consequently, if a Maidan does occur there, it is likely to be different as well, violent rather peaceful, destructive rather than constructive, and divisive rather than unifying. In the course of an interview this week with Artyom […]
Staunton, July 8 – One of the most cynical methods the Soviet government employed to divide and rule non-Russian nations was the establishment of republics with two titular nationalities because such arrangements guaranteed that the two were more likely to view the other as a problem and threat than to see Moscow as responsible. At […]
Staunton, July 8 – Fifty-three percent of all books published in Russia last year were issued in print runs of under 1,000 copies, with the average tirage of the 112,100 books published there now standing at 4,330 copies, continuing downward trends of the last six years and isolating many of these works from their audiences […]
Staunton, July 8 – After a brief attempt to escape from its past in the 1990s, Russia under Vladimir Putin is “again returning to militarism…the model of existence in which Russia had existed for centuries” in order to prepare for war. No other such civilization exists in the world now, but Russia “cannot militarize as […]
Staunton, July 5 – Since the peoples of Altay learned that the elections staged to ratify the Kremlin’s choice of their governor showed that he failed to win in electoral districts dominated by the non-Russians, their leaders have been struggling to unite in order to put pressure on the government there in the name of […]
Staunton, July 3 – Two United Russia Duma deputies have introduced legislation that would require all schools in the Russian Federation to use a single set of textbooks for basic courses, a step they say is necessary to ensure the defense of “a common educational space” in the country. But officials of the State Council […]
Staunton, July 5 – “Putin has finally decided” to block all of the ways out from “the dead end into which he has driven himself and Russia,” Andrey Illarionov says, prompting the West to oppose him more vigorously, creating a disaster for Russia, and setting the stage for the ultimate restoration of Ukrainian control over […]
Staunton, July 1 – A call by some Duma members for the Russian government to review and declare illegal the Soviet government’s recognition of Baltic independence in September 1991 has attracted widespread attention and concern as an indication of Moscow’s intentions but ultimately ridiculed as otherwise meaningless grandstanding. But there are other straws in the […]
