(Paul Goble – Staunton, September 17, 2015) When Vladimir Putin first appeared on the Russian political Olympus, people asked “Who is Mr. Putin?” In the years since that time, they have continued to ask because the Kremlin leader has changed fundamentally at least three times, a reflection of the situation he has found himself in and his own agendas. Now, […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – BOOK REVIEW: Chris Weafer in Moscow – September 10, 2015) Chris Weafer is a founding partner of Macro-Advisory, which helps investors cut though the noise & focus on underlying trends, real political risks, & opportunities in Russia/CIS, Eurasia Union, & Mongolia. Follow him on @ChrisWeafer A great many books about Russia are published each […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – MOSCOW BLOG: Anna Kravchenko in Moscow – September 4, 2015) [Photos here bne.eu/content/story/moscow-blog-what-crisis-moscow-marks-868th-birthday-glam-metal-and-plenty-make] There is an old Moscow joke about continuous road repair in the city: When leaving his post in 2010, former mayor Yury Luzhkov said he buried treasure under one of the pavements, hence all the digging. This summer the joke is […]
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(Paul Goble – Windows on Eurasia – Staunton, August 24, 2015) Today is Ukraine’s Independence Day, and compared to the years before Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea and the Russian invasion of the Donbas, Ukrainians are now far more united by patriotism and by their hopes for the future, according to Irina Bekeshkina, a sociologist at the Kyiv Institute of […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 24, 2015) In his poem, “The Fall of Rome,” W.H. Auden wrote that it could be signaled not by some dramatic event but rather by “a bored official” scribbling a note and leaving his office to go home, a reminder that enormous tectonic shifts often begin with small things that most […]
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Lieven, a senior research fellow at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, who taught Russian studies at the London School of Economics for a third of a century, has produced what is basically a Russian history of the origins of World War I, though with ample and appropriate recognition of the role of Western Europe in the fighting.
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daria Litvinova – August 12, 2015) Fifteen years after one of the worst disasters in Russian naval history – the sinking of the Kursk submarine in the Barents Sea in which all 118 crew members died – the number of Russians who blame the authorities for not doing enough to rescue the sailors has dropped. […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Chris Weafer in Moscow – August 11, 2015) “Boris Yeltsin was able to have a constitution adopted in a referendum that guaranteed him broad powers and an almost complete lack of checks and balances – the first major step toward the poisoning of Russia’s political institutions and guaranteeing the transition to Vladimir Putin”. That […]
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Volunteers from all over Russia are working in the Vologda Region to save a unique monument of 18th-century architecture – the Church of the Nativity in the village of Krokhino – from destruction. For 50 years, it has been surrounded by water after the village was flooded during the construction of the Volga-Baltic Canal in 1964. (Russia Beyond the Headlines […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Michele A. Berdy – August 10, 2015) How can you convince men to go to off and fight a war in another country? What arguments will be most persuasive? What tricks of rhetoric will get them to sign up? If these questions sound very modern, think again. These were some of the problems facing a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – July 29, 2015) Tuesday marked the passage of a millennium since the death of Vladimir the Great. As both Kiev and Moscow honored the occasion with high-profile celebrations, leaders of each took advantage of the opportunity to emphasize the strength of their own countries’ ties to the medieval ruler. Prince Vladimir is […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 29, 2015) On Monday evening, Rustam Rakhmatullin, the coordinator of the social movement Archnadzor, brought together eminent architects and architecture experts to discuss the proposals to erect a 24-meter monument to Vladimir the Great in the capital. Also present was Yury Nikiforov, a representative of the Russian Society of War History, which has started […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 29, 2105) Many commentators suggest that the way to move beyond the Putin regime involves economic growth, de-militarization, and re-entering the international community, but “these are all second-order tasks” that pale in comparison with what is the most important one, according to Andrey Sklyarov. The historian says that the central task […]
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The Christian Science Monitor covers some of the interplay in Kaliningrad between Germanic cultural history and more recent Russian control, amidst Russia’s tensions with the West over Ukraine. … a growing movement of mainly younger Kaliningraders – supported by local government – … are working to roll back the Soviet-imposed amnesia that convinced generations of people who grew up on this ancient territory […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Nick Allen in Berlin – July 23, 2015) With President Vladimir Putin’s executive fist dominating the ‘vertical of power’, while parliament toes the Kremlin line, it’s easy to forget Russia’s heyday of real rough-and-tumble oppositional party politics in the first years after the Soviet collapse. So defiant from the outset was the legislature, still […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Maria Naum – July 17, 2015) On Aug. 22, 1991 at the peak of euphoria over the failure of the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, was pulled from its pedestal on Lubyanka Square. Since then, the square has remained empty as the public and authorities […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Chris Weafer of Macro-Advisory – July 10, 2015) As we all know only too well, winters are long and cold in Russia while summers are relatively short but quite pleasant. Once Easter has passed, people start marking the calendar until they can throw off their winter armour and re-open their dachas. August is the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ilaria Parogni – July 7, 2015) Hollywood actress, film director and producer Angelina Jolie has purchased the film rights to Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book about the love affair between Catherine the Great of Russia and Prince Grigory Potemkin, the British author’s literary agency said Monday. Jolie’s production company, Jolie Pas, has bought the option to […]
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“Having unleashed the imperial self-consciousness of the population, Yakovenko continues, ‘Putin not only does not want but cannot stop this insanity. He already lacks the powers to stop the war he began in Ukraine, even if he wanted to. He lacks the power to stop the hysteria of hatred in the media.’
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 28, 2015) Many Western obituaries and appreciations of the late Yevgeny Primakov portray him as an alternative to Vladimir Putin and someone who would have led Russia in an entirely different direction than the current Kremlin leader. But two Russian analysts argue that in fact Primakov laid much of the groundwork […]
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Deseret News marks the anniversary of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia. On June 24, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte made perhaps his greatest blunder by invading Russia. Though he recognized the dangers of invading such a huge country, political factors demanded that he move against Russia or risk losing French domination of Europe. * * * After the Battle of Borodino in […]
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(PONARS Eurasia – ponarseurasia.org – Ivan Kurilla, Professor of History Volgograd State University – June 5, 2015) In a recent Financial Times op-ed (“Europe’s Problem is with Russia, not Putin”) Thomas Graham, a managing director at Kissinger Associates and former senior director for Russia on the US National Security Council, makes far-reaching conclusions about contemporary Russia and international security by drawing on the position Russia […]
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(Interfax – June 2, 2015) The all-Russia state television and radio broadcasting company VGTRK said the film, titled “Warsaw Treaty, the Declassified Pages” accumulates accounts by witnesses and participants in events dating back to 1968, without passing any judgments. “The film conveys opinions by historians, witnesses and participants in those events. Nothing is said in the voice-over narration that this […]
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(Interfax – June 2, 2015) A book, titled ‘Moscow Kremlin. Monuments and Shrines’ was presented in Moscow on June 2. The author, spokesman for the Federal Security Guard Service Sergei Devyatov, said that he had worked on the book for about six years. The book has been released with a print run of 1,350 copies. It has more than 2,000 […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Gleb Morev, Gleb Pavlovsky – May 29, 2015) Gleb Morev is a Russian journalist and literary critic based in Moscow. He edits the Culture section of Colta.ru. One of the grey cardinals of modern Russian politics, Gleb Pavlovsky talks dissent, history and politics in the late-Soviet era. Born in Odessa in 1951, Gleb Pavlovsky is famed for being […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, May 25, 2015) “The Ukrainian-Russian conflict is to a significant degree a conflict between the heirs of Kievan Rus [Ukraine] and the heirs of the Golden Horde” [Moscow], according to Andrey Piontkovsky, and one of its key results will be “an intensification of the swallowing of Russia by China.” In the course […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – May 19, 2015) It’s goodbye Lenin, hello Nazi collaborators in Ukraine these days. Laws signed into effect by President Petro Poroshenko require the renaming of dozens of towns and hundreds of streets throughout the country to eliminate Soviet-era names. At the same time, Ukraine will begin to honor groups that helped Hitler exterminate […]
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The leaders of the Allied powers met three times during World War II, at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. The last conference stretched over 17 days in July and August 1945, longer than the first two put together. Harry Truman had replaced Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Chur
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Maksym Savchuk, Daisy Sindelar – May 13, 2015) KYIV — An investigation by RFE/RL shows that Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko may have used his presidential influence to shut down investigations into a land deal aimed at building a private mansion on a historic site in the Ukrainian capital. Two reports broadcast on RFE/RL’s Ukrainian-language television program, […]
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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is deeply concerned about a series of legislative initiatives that the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament, adopted on April 9, 2015.
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Ukraine has a new holiday – 8 May, Day of Remembrance – and a new symbol, the poppy. But 9 May remains, as a reminder of the fact that war is ‘never a pretty story.’ (opendemocracy.net – Natalia Antonova – May 11, 2015) Natalia Antonova was born in Kyiv and grew up in North Carolina. She works as a journalist […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – MOSCOW BLOG: Ben Aris in Moscow – May 8, 2015) The crowds in Moscow will be out in force on May 9 to watch what is expected to be the largest ever Victory Day celebration, with the traditional parade of military hardware through Moscow’s Red Square. But in terms of geopolitics the real event […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – May 7, 2015) Victory Day hits a raw nerve among Russians, likely owing to the fact that the vast majority of Russian families have been acutely impacted by World War II. President Vladimir Putin recently tapped into this widespread sentimentality with a rare act: he penned a family history, published in this […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Gladkova – May 6, 2015) Victory Day is coming and the capital is scrambling to prepare for Saturday’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. The day will be bursting with activity, from a massive military parade replete with shiny new tanks and military vehicles of yore in the […]
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Mr. Putin’s remarks reflect a deep-seated paranoia. It would be easy to dismiss this kind of rhetoric as intended for domestic consumption, an attempt to whip up support for his war adventure in Ukraine. In part, it is that. But Mr. Putin’s assertion that the West has been acting out of a desire to sunder Russia’s power and influence is a […]
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(Interfax – April 27, 2015) A new electronic archive has been launched, making it possible to trace the social and economic development of Russia’s regions over the past three centuries. The Electronic Repository for Russian Historical Statistics [https://ristat.org/] was proposed and created by Gijs Kessler from the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and Andrei Markevich from the New […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – COMMENT: Ousmène Mandeng in London – April 27, 2015) The alienation felt between the EU and Russia has seemingly deepened to a post-Soviet Union low. This may in large part be due to the fact that Europe has never fully engaged with Russia economically in the first place. At the third “East Forum Berlin” held on April […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Nicholas Watson in Prague – April 22, 2015) “Russia’s Wars in Chechnya 1994-2009”. By Mark Galeotti, Osprey Publishing (2014). As Russia begins a new period of military adventurism, it’s an opportune time to review what happened when the country previously waged war in its backyard, so Mark Galeotti’s “Russia’s Wars in Chechnya 1994-2009” is […]
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(Paul Goble – Staunton, April 22, 2015) Four years ago, liberal Russians began to refer to the hurrah-patriots who opposed them as “vatniks,” a reference to the padded jackets such people often wore but used to designate their slavish support of the Kremlin and their hostility to the West and civilization. But now, Pavel Shekhtman suggests, that term should be […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Graham Stack – April 14, 2015) Fifteen years after the then unknown Vladimir Putin took over the Russian presidency, analysts still puzzle over how he arrived in the position. Newly declassified documents from President Bill Clinton’s administration, released to bne IntelliNews, show how Putin’s candidacy was a compromise after a fierce battle for power […]
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On April 9 Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada adopted four laws pertaining to Ukraine’s recent history, two of which at least are highly contentious, with the manner in which they were presented to parliament and voted on also grounds for concern. At a time when Russia is waging undeclared war against Ukraine, the need for unity is paramount. Instead, a majority in […]
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… Since the start of his third presidential term in 2012, Putin has identified patriotism and a hero cult as the necessary glue for his disoriented nation. ‘There is a great work under way now for the patriotic education of the youth,’ says Nadezhda Malinina, granddaughter of General Mikhail Malinin, Marshall Zhukov’s chief of staff …. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/505bfd22-de2e-11e4-8d14-00144feab7de.html#slide0
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, March 28, 2015) Speaking in Kyiv yesterday, Russian opposition leader Garri Kasparov said that the collapse of Vladimir Putin’s regime could spark the disintegration of the Russian Federation and that that in turn would likely be far more dangerous and explosive than was the end of the USSR. It could occur suddenly […]
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This year marks the 25th anniversary of Baltic independence and more than a decade of full membership in the European Union and NATO. If the assumption was that those developments would cure Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian society from the scourges of fascism, racism, and anti-Semitism, the events of the past month clearly show that these plagues have not been eradicated. […]
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(©2015 Ukrainian Magazine (Chicago) – ukrainianchi.com – Rev. Myron Panchuk, M.A. – March 24, 2015 – article also appeared at ukrainianchi.com/vladimir-putin-reincarnation-dracula/ – reprinted with permission) In August of 1991 a miracle occurred: Ukraine declared its independence. I remember the joy, the euphoria felt in our Ukrainian-American community in Chicago. People greeted each other in the streets as if it was Easter Day, and on […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Timothy Ash, Head of EM Research, ICBC-Standard Bank, London – March 23, 2015) “Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin”, new and expanded, by Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Brookings Institute Press, Washington, 2015. This book is sold as a biography, but if you want a standard chronological recap of the life of Vladimir Putin […]
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Subject: A Conservative Russia? This Means War! (The Tragedy of American Ideology) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 From: Paul Grenier <psgrenier@gmail.com> A Conservative Russia? This Means War! (The Tragedy of American Ideology) By Paul R. Grenier Paul Grenier is an essayist and translator who writes regularly on political-philosophical issues. After advanced study in Russian affairs, international relations and geography at […]
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