[W]e found that despite Russia’s high levels of corruption, Russian university students with a propensity to act dishonestly or corruptly self-select out of public sector employment and into the private sector …. These findings present something of a puzzle […]
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(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Kennan Cable No. 73 – Thomas Eric Rotnem – Nov. 2021) Professor of Political Science and Associate Director, School of Government and International Affairs, Kennesaw State University In 2007, Russia signaled its commitment to pursue territorial claims in the Arctic by planting a titanium Russian flag on the polar seabed. Now, Russia is moving well […]
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“… many Russian democrats, desperate to get Yeltsin’s successor [Putin] out of the Kremlin, find themselves voting for the Communists. … aware of the irony. … With nearly all forms of politics banned and [] Navalny behind bars, the Communist Party … [has benefited the most from Navalny’s] ‘smart voting’ strategy. … Had … votes been counted honestly in parliamentary […]
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Subject: Link to recording: Russia’s National Idea (S. Weil Center) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2021 From: Paul Grenier <psgrenier@gmail.com> In case you missed it, here are links to the recording of today’s seminar on the Russian National Idea: SimoneWeilCenter.org: simoneweilcenter.org/conferences On YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=b_yMM7606XI Thursday, Oct. 28 What is Russia’s National Idea? A discussion with Marlene Laruelle, author of Is Russia […]
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А former Russian inmate who leaked a massive cache of videos showing evidence of rampant torture in Russian prisons said he believes prison guards were prone to using sexual assault against their victims “because it is the cruelest” […]
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“‘… you have to remember how every single ruble ended up in your account.’ If a report is deemed erroneous, a designated “foreign agent” could face a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($4,250) or a prison term from two to five years […]
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Dobrenko, a professor at the U.K.’s Sheffield University … argues [that] Stalin’s twilight years — which see the rise of cultural puritanism, state-sanctioned anti-Semitism and the nascent Cold War — set the cultural frames of reference on which the Soviet Union, and eventually Russia, continue to operate […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Emily Couch – Oct. 17, 2021) The path taken by Catherine Belton’s “Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West” is a well-trodden one. For those who have read Masha Gessen’s “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” Ben Judah’s “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell […]
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A new opinion poll indicates that Russians’ trust in President Vladimir Putin has dropped to its lowest level in nearly a decade [. ..]
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Former Duma candidates Marina Litvinovich, Alyona Popova and Oksana Pushkina are launching a project to help women get elected to positions of power […]
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A prominent NGO that tracks abuses in Russia’s prison system says it has received “thousands” of leaked video clips showing inmates being beaten and tortured […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Sept. 24, 2021) The Russian elite does not have an explicit ideology but it does have a shared set of beliefs that guide its actions, an ideology that has “grown out of political practice rather than from any philosophy,” Pavel Luzin says. But that does not make it any less influential. Indeed, […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 28 (Interfax) – The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case against opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who is serving time in a penitentiary in Russia, and his close associates on counts of establishing and participating in the activity of an extremist network. “The Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case under Part […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Sept. 24, 2021) The ruling United Russia party retained a two-thirds majority in the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, following elections that have been criticized as neither free nor fair by Russia’s opposition and the West. United Russia came away with 50% of the vote that took place Sept. 17-19, winning 324 […]
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Russia’s government has approved measures aimed at halving the number of abortions carried out in the country before 2025, according to a document published on its website […]
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Russia held controversial parliamentary elections last weekend that were marred by claims of mass fraud […]
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In a separate development, tens of thousands of pro-government bloggers participated in a coordinated campaign to spread positive reports about the course of the parliamentary elections […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Sept. 20, 2021) “If present trends continue,” Edvard Chesnokov says, “the next generation of Russian rulers will be even more anti-Western than the present one,” the result of the West’s double standards when it comes to Russia and recognition by Russia’s rulers that they must stand up to such pressure. The Komsomolskaya […]
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Nationwide statisticians have estimated that half of the official votes received by United Russia in the election could have been falsified [. ..]
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Independent data scientists and analysts said that half of all the votes attributed to United Russia in the official results were probably fake — a level of falsification previously unseen in Russian parliamentary elections [. ..]
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Russia’s opposition has claimed the vote was the country’s most fraudulent in recent history […]
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Controversial online voting cut the early leads of candidates supported by jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Russia’s opposition called for protests on Monday after accusing the authorities of rigging highly anticipated elections to the country’s parliament […]
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Here’s the first thing you need to know about the now-concluded election campaign for Russia’s State Duma: It’s been carefully managed from the start, with the opposition largely barred from running and a crackdown on government opponents that shows no sign of abating […]
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“… Putin has sidelined the last of his independent political opponents, jailing some and driving others into exile, as his ruling party seeks to extend … control in parliamentary elections despite simmering discontent. … United Russia … recorded some of the lowest ratings in nearly a decade earlier this year, scorned by voters angry over stagnant living standards and unpopular […]
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Smart Voting, an idea that Navalny came up with in 2018, is an online strategy designed to promote candidates that have the best chance to defeat those from United Russia, the Kremlin-linked ruling party […]
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“… Putin … said he is isolating because several members of his inner circle tested positive …. that one of the people who tested positive was a vaccinated staff member with whom he had recently interacted ‘very closely in the course of the whole day.’ … Putin has said he was vaccinated with the two-dose regimen of Russia’s Sputnik V […]
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Anastasia Bryukhanova thinks Russia’s political institutions, and its leader, are showing their age […]
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… [M]any wonder who will succeed [Putin], and when. … [T]he Kremlin scrupulously weeds out all charismatic critics. … [P]otential successors from the halls of power have been demoted to irrelevant sinecures. … Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu[] [is] Russia’s longest-serving cabinet member and its second-most popular politician …. [H]e hails from Tuva, an impoverished province of Turkic-speaking Buddhists that borders […]
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During the 2018 presidential election, cameras captured scenes of people stuffing ballot boxes, carousel voting, voters using others’ documents, and the manipulation of voter lists […]
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Russia’s parliamentary elections next week are set to be some of the least competitive in years after a number of independent and opposition candidates were barred from running [….]
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… It’s a dilemma common to many members of Russia’s “systemic opposition” — the patchwork of tame parties allowed to compete on the country’s uneven electoral playing field who are nevertheless coming under increasing pressure […]
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Critics have warned that the system’s lack of transparency and voter-verification safeguards could open the way for vote manipulation […]
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The Vote Abroad initiative is a decentralized, grassroots movement organized online across more than 40 countries. (Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Brawley Benson – WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 9, 2021) Polina Sidelnikova has voted in every Russian election since she was 18. This year is no different, even though she now lives in the United States. The forty-year-old human rights lawyer […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Sept. 8, 2021) Vladislav Inozemtsev, who has long argued that the Putin system is likely to remain stable for at least another decade, now says that the Kremlin is acting in ways that point to an attempt to fundamentally restructure the Russian political system before the 2024 presidential vote. And such a […]
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The “There Are No Foreign Agents, There Are Journalists” campaign comes as Russian authorities target a growing number of media outlets and individual journalists […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 8 (Interfax) – Russia’s Economic Development Ministry expects the country’s GDP to grow at least 4.2% in 2021 – these figures have been included in the new macroeconomic forecast, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said during a session at the Moscow Financial Forum. “The economy – 4.2% this year is the minimum growth estimate. This is what we […]
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Saransk’s entrepreneurs are divided over whether the government is on their side, but discontent is unlikely to be reflected in the upcoming Duma vote. (Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Jake Cordell – SARANSK, MORDOVIA – Sept. 7, 2021 For barbershop owner Oleg Kechin, the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic were a breeze. After shutting for just four weeks […]
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On Sept. 19, Russians will vote in important elections to the country’s State Duma national parliament, the first major test of public opinion since a major crackdown […]
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“There’s an election coming.” “… But going after politicians and the media, and arresting students and activists, is no longer sufficient. The Kremlin is now trying to get a grip over schools and universities in a more systematic way. In the past nine months some 20 universities and institutes across Russia have had their deans replaced. … Russian students and […]
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Thirty years after the failed August 1991 coup in the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the country four months later, it is hard to avoid asking: What led to the demise of that superpower and are the same factors relevant for its successor, today’s Russia?
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Many government critics across Russia have been excluded from participating in the upcoming vote […]
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Russian news journals and websites have joined … to protest against … targeting by authorities of a growing number of independent media outlets and journalists under Russia’s controversial “foreign agent” law […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Aug. 28, 2021) Many think that Russians long for the Soviet system as a whole, Vladimir Khotinenko says; but in fact, they are longing for a normal life, one in which human beings rather than money and machines are in control, as all too many of them are convinced is the case […]
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… the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin accelerates its campaign against independent journalism […]
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… Created in 2000, Golos had notably denounced election rigging in the 2011 parliamentary election and the 2012 presidential vote which saw Putin return to the Kremlin […]
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Thirty years on, The Moscow Times spoke to surviving participants in the events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of a new Russia. (Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Felix Light – Aug. 18, 2021) In the center of Moscow, hidden behind two lanes of heaving traffic on the New Arbat commercial thoroughfare, stands a […]
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MOSCOW. Aug 18 (Interfax) – Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev blames the organizers of the coup attempt of August 1991 and the signatories to the Belavezha agreements for the collapse of the Soviet Union, calls for defending the principles of democracy, and believes that Russia can develop and solve any problems only on a democratic path. “I believe that the […]
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For the third time in recent days, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu has spoken out about issues beyond those normally viewed as the province of an official in his position. … [I]s he positioning himself to become president, likely with the current Kremlin leader’s blessing? […]
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“On April 12th, the Jordan Center and the Harriman Institute co-hosted a panel on the private sector in Russia as part of the NYC-Russia Public Policy Series. Panelists included Simeon Djankov, Director of Development Economics at the World Bank; Dinissa Duvanova, Associate Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University; Alena Ledeneva, Professor of Politics and Society at University College London; […]
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Putin … said the scale of natural disasters that have hit Russia this year is “absolutely unprecedented” as local officials ask for Moscow’s help to tackle fires and floods […]
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