Staunton, June 22 – Seventy-four years ago today, Hitler turned on his ally Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, an action that continues to echo in the post-Soviet states with Moscow now routinely but falsely accusing Ukraine of having become fascist while Vladimir Putin’s Russia is rapidly on its way to becoming exactly that, according […]
Staunton, June 22 – Because Moscow has so centralized revenues and decision making and radically lowered the quality of those who head the federal subjects, the Russian Federation faces something worse than disintegration along their borders: it faces radical destabilization as Moscow cannot pay and regional officials cannot hold the line, according to Vladimir Golyshev. […]
Staunton, June 23 – Anti-Americanism has become part of the discourse of ordinary Russians over the last year, but senior government officials have generally been restrained in their use of such phobias. But that has now changed, Nezavisimaya gazeta says, and “anti-American phobias have acquired the status of the official picture of the world in […]
Staunton, June 22 – As he does each week, Dmitry Bukovsky of Kyiv’s Delovaya Stolitsa compiles a list of “the top five propaganda myths, fakes, and stupidities” for the previous week out of the mass flow of such misinformation and disinformation coming out of Moscow about Ukraine and Russia. This week’s harvest contains the following […]
Staunton, June 15 – The potential for ethnic conflicts in Tuva is relatively low, according to Vladimir Datsyshen, but if economic problems, Russian flight, and increasing localism among Tuvan intellectuals continue, Russia’s control of that republic on the Mongolian border could be threatened by the rise of militant Buddhism and shamanism. In a new article […]
Staunton, June 19 – A few days ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that he was completely certain that those Russian opposition figures who are promising to return Crimea to Ukraine if they come to power will “not receive a mandate” to do so from Russian society, a declaration that has angered many Ukrainians and other Russian […]
Staunton, June 20 – Drawing on Richard Pipes’ argument that the 1863 Polish revolt was viewed by many Russians as an illegitimate European attack on Russia and led them to conclude that “only the autocracy could preserve the integrity of the country,” Irina Glebova argues that the Ukrainian revolution of 2013-2014 has had “approximately the […]
Staunton, June 20 – Many people continue to carry with them an image of the iron curtain as consisting of barbed wire, concrete blocks, raked earth, and KGB guards. That was certainly part of the institution of isolation that the Soviet government imposed on its own people and its empire in Eastern Europe. But it […]
Staunton, June 19 – Not having found any evidence that the Young Karelia (“Nuori Karjala”) movement has taken money from Finland as anonymous sources had claimed, justice ministry officials in Petrozavodsk nonetheless argue that it should be declared “a foreign agent” because it had received a grant from the UN and hosted visitors from abroad. […]
Staunton, June 15 – Every nation chooses for itself its own epithet, an American poet wrote just after the end of World War II. England, he said, was “merry old.” France was “la belle France.” “And Russia was once called holy.” Now, ever more Russians again are referring to their country in that way – […]
