Staunton, December 20 – Many Russians assume that they will ride out the current crisis just as they did the crises of 1998 and 2008, but that assumption is wrong, Leonid Storch argues, because the former crises were economic and the current one is political. And thus for this crisis, there is no quick or […]
Staunton, December 21 – Putin’s opposition to Europe and the US “is acquiring the aspects of a real holy war, not at the level of metaphor as in the old Soviet song but in the completely literal religious sense,” but except for its core belief in Russian imperial statehood, the new faith on which it […]
Staunton, December 21 – The collapse of oil prices and the ruble along with Western sanctions have destroyed any basis for the grand bargain that the Kremlin had made with the Russian people – economic growth in exchange for political passivity – and raised the question as to whether there can be a new one […]
Staunton, December 21 – Social and political instability is a breeding ground for sectarian religious groups, with those who feel threatened by war, falling standards of living, and uncertainty about the future often turning to radical sectarian groups because the latter “promise an easy answer to all problems,” according to Vitaly Pitanov. Pitanov, head of […]
Staunton, December 21 – In what is likely part of a broader pattern, FSB officers in several cities in the Urals have called in for questioning Russians who have taken pro-Ukrainian sentiments online and have warned such people that they risk losing their jobs in today’s bleak economic conditions if they continue to do so, […]
Staunton, December 21 – Aleksandr Zhilin, head of the Moscow Center for the Study of Applied Problems and a leading Russian military commentator, says that Vladimir Putin has now changed the country’s military doctrine in such a way that it will now allow for consideration of a pre-emptive military attack on the West in response […]
Staunton, December 19 – While some in Moscow and the West hope for a restoration of an east-west partnership, Vladimir Putin made clear in his press conference December 18 that he now views the West as an enemy rather than a partner, a vision that does not preclude specific agreements but makes any broader understanding […]
Staunton, December 18 – Russian children are now playing a video game called “The Liberation War in Novorossiya” in which to win, they are required to kill “Ukrainians, soldiers, militiamen, and the civilian population,” a disturbing message being implanted in the minds of the rising generation. But more immediately, the game may disturb the Kremlin […]
Staunton, December 18 – Mongols live in three states, Mongolia, Buryatia within the borders of the Russian Federation, and Inner Mongolia within the borders of the Peoples Republic of China. They share many things in common including their language, but they are divided by alphabets imposed by outsiders. The Buryats are currently compelled to use […]
Staunton, December 18 – The Soviet security agencies from Lenin on were infected by an often vicious Russian nationalism which led their officers to attack non-Russians far more frequently than Russians, according to a new study based on archival sources by Aleksey Teplyakov, a Novosibirsk historian. Many researchers Russian and foreign have considered the national […]
