Altay Artist Who Sought Independence for Siberia’s Turkic Peoples Celebrated in His Homeland 2016-01-12 20:23:36 Staunton, VA, January 12, 2016 — Today, in Gorno-Altaysk, the capital of the Altay Republic, more than 300 people assembled to honor the memory of Grigory Choros-Gurkin, an artist who briefly headed an independent Altay Republic during the Russian civil war […]
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 3 – On June 3, the unpopular appointed governor of Karelia orchestrated a vote by the Petrozavodsk city council against that city’s popular elected mayor, the latest development in what is an ever-intensifying struggle between governors and mayors in Russia’s regions and republics over just how “power verticals” at the regional level are […]
Staunton, February 1 – Vladimir Putin has clearly learned the lesson some of his predecessors did not: when times are tough, boosting alcohol prices is a good way to trigger a social explosion. But his decision to cut the price of the cheapest vodka — which went into effect February 1 — is a recipe […]
Staunton, June 18 – The money the Kremlin is spending on Crimea and Ukraine more generally is exacerbating tensions between Moscow and hard-pressed regions, worsening the divide between well-off cities and their hinterlands, and leading some Russian nationalists to demand fiscal federalism as a first step toward creation of ethnic Russian republics. Three very different […]
Staunton, May 23 – A suggestion by Russian businessman Mikhail Prokhorov that “federal districts should not necessarily coincide with the borders of Russian regions” appears to be gaining traction in Moscow, the latest in a long line of proposals dating at least to Khrushchev’s time to weaken Russia’s oblasts, krays, and republics. According to Prokhorov, […]
Staunton, May 13 – Vladimir Putin’s decision to name an Interior Ministry general as his plenipotentiary representative to the North Caucasus came as no surprise given that that federal district is far from pacified, but his choice of an army general for that position in Siberia raises some broader questions about the Russian president’s current […]
