RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List table of contents :: JRL 2017-153 :: Tuesday, 8 August 2017

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2017-#153
Tuesday, 8 August 2017

A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs
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1. Christian Science Monitor: Fred Weir, Civil activism: Are Russians exiting the Soviet eclipse? The Russian public largely believes that it is up to the state to organize everything – a notion the Kremlin is happy to encourage in the political sphere. But in the nonpolitical realm, grassroots projects are shooting up in ways they never have before.
2. Intellinews.com: Most Russians still get their news from TV.
3. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Why foreigners can still line their pockets in Russia. Every cloud has a silver lining, and it’s no different in Russia – especially if you’re a foreign investor. The crisis, embargos, tense relations with the West…get canny and you can use these negatives to your advantage.
4. Interfax: Pussy Riot members en route to Moscow from Yakutsk where they were supposed to face trial after detention.
5. Moscow Times: Navalny Was ‘Joking’ When he Said the Kremlin Could Murder Him.
6. Financial Times: Kathrin Hille, Alexei Navalny: a genuine alternative to Vladimir Putin?
7. www.opendemocracy.net: In Russia, sociology isn’t just about figures. Is solidarity possible in Russia? How has the relationship between Russia’s government and its citizens panned out in the last few years? An interview with one Russia’s leading sociologists, Lev Gudkov.
8. Valdai Discussion Club: Maxim Suchkov, BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE US, A FRAGILE “TARGETED COOPERATION”
9. www.rt.com: Europe not an independent player in relations with Moscow – Russian Deputy FM.
10. Gazeta.ru: Russian website looks at possible responses to US sanctions.
11. RFE/RL: Russia Steps Up Efforts To Cut Reliance On U.S. Dollar, Payments System.
12. Bloomberg: Russia Braces for Permanent Sanctions From the U.S.
13. The Federalist: Nikolas Gvosdev, The 1980s Called, And They Want Their Russia Sanctions Back. The expanded Russia sanctions have come at a low point in U.S. relations with its allies and an increased lack of trust in American leadership, calling into question how effective they will be.
14. Washington Post: Charles Kupchan, Why giving Ukraine lethal weapons would be a massive mistake.
15. Moskovsky Komsomolets: Daily says Moscow may arm Donbass if US arms Ukraine. (including comment by experts Boris Rozhin and Fyodor Lukyanov)
16. The National Interest: Dmitry Gorenburg, Everything You Need to Know: Russia’s Massive Zapad Military Exercise. For one week in September, the media will breathlessly tout the might of the Russian military-only to disregard analysis of the exercise soon after.
17. Russia Insider/Russian Defense Policy: Mass Brawl on Military Base Highlights a New Problem in the Russian Army. A mass brawl between a group of ethnic Tuvan recruits and Russian contract soldiers highlights the problem of “zemlyachestvo” in the Russian army – ethnic minorities grouping themselves together on military bases.
18. RFE/RL: Samuel Ramani, CSTO Rift Grows Between Moscow And Astana.
19. National Public Radio (NPR): Cover Lifted, A CIA Spy Offers His Take On Trump And Russia. (Daniel Hoffman)
20. The Nation: James Carden, Our Russia Fixation Is Devolving Into an Assault on Political Discourse. A new project by the German Marshall Fund claims to track the influence of foreign propaganda-but warps reality to accommodate an alarming new Russophobia.
21. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Everything you ever wanted to know about Putin’s work in East Germany. Long before he became the president of Russia, a KGB agent named Vladimir Putin spent five years in Dresden, East Germany. Here is what we know about this phase of Putin’s career.
22. The National Interest: Samuel Bennett, Could the Soviet Union Have Survived into the 21st Century? The “what if” discussions about the end of the Soviet Union are still reverberating across Russia.
23. Sean’s Russia Blog Podcast: Sean Guillory, Retrospective on Stalinism. (with Sheila Fitzpatrick)
24. NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia: Nancy Condee, 3 Questions: Russian intellectual history as a practice and project (Historia Nova Interviews)
25. Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies: Douglas Smith, THE LOST ARCHIVE OF MAJOR MARTIN MANHOFF.
26. Wall Street Journal: Books. Five Best: Catherine Merridale on travels in the former Soviet Bloc.

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