(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, November 27, 2019) When the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR fell apart, it was widely assumed and even stated by Francis Fukuyama that there was “no alternative” to liberal democracy; but the last 30 years have shown that one has emerged, “Feudalism 2.0,” and in Russia first of all, Yevgeny Gontmakher […]
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(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Boris Grozovski- November 21, 2019) Boris Grozovski is a prominent Russian journalist writing about the country’s economy and development. His work has appeared in Forbes Russia, InLiberty, the Moscow Times, the New Times, Vedomosti Daily, penRussia and others. The year 2019 saw numerous signs of Russian society awakening from its post-annexation-of-Crimea slumber. Young people were […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 29 (Interfax) – The names of the victims of repressions during the Great Terror under Stalin have begun to be read as part of the Returning the Names event in front of the Solovetsky Stone in Moscow. “Today, we have gathered in front of the Solovetsky Stone as a symbol of sorrow, memory, and repentance for the 13th […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 30, 2019) On Oct. 30, 1974 a group of dissidents imprisoned in Soviet labor camps in Mordovia and Perm declared the date the Day of the Political Prisoners in the U.S.S.R. Led by Kronid Lyubarsky, the prisoners put forward a list of demands, which included recognition of political prisoner status; separation of political prisoners […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, October 21, 2019) Left-wing sociologist Boris Kagarslitsky says he is surprised by VTsIOM’s finding that only 25 percent of Russians consider themselves “victims of perestroika,” with the number ranging from 37 percent among those 60 and over down to eight percent among those aged 18 to 24. In his view, Kagarlitsky says, […]
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The European Parliament’s conflation of Soviet Communism and Nazi-Fascism, says more about the present paranoia surrounding populism than it does about the past. This distortion of history should be of grave concern for democrats across the political spectrum. (Opendemocracy.net – Jamie Mackay – October 3, 2019) Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) is a writer and journalist based in the UK and Italy. […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Paul Saunders – Oct. 1, 2019) Paul Saunders is the chairman and president of the Energy Innovation Reform Project and a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Center for the National Interest. Book Review “The Russia Anxiety and How History Can Resolve It” By Mark B. Smith Oxford University Press, October 2019 [Amazon: […]
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“Russia is historically prone to internal collapse … shown by numerous examples from both the imperial and Soviet periods. … usually tak[ing] place as Russia rests on the laurels of recent military victories while internal economic and social troubles grow. … the best way to deal with Russia is to keep intervention to a minimum and wait for its internal […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Tony Wesolowsky, Matthew Luxmoore – August 22, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/molotov-ribbentrop-what-do-russians-know-of-key-wwii-pact/30123950.html) It’s an anniversary few in the Kremlin, or elsewhere in Russia for that matter, are keen to talk about — let alone remember in some way. Eighty years ago, on August 23, 1939, […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 10, 2019) “Societies which experience historical traumas, need anesthesia an psychotherapy, sociologist Roman Abramov says. That often takes the form of nostalgia for “‘the good old times,’” which in the Russian case for many but far from all was the period of Brezhnev’s rule (https://iq.hse.ru/news/301388060.html). “Waves of nostalgia became a frequent […]
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“… Putin has moved to annex former Soviet territories, orchestrated cyberattacks on foreign infrastructure and rolled back domestic democratic protections …. [I]n reality, Russia today is much weaker than either the Romanov Empire, which lasted from 1613 to 1917, or the Soviet Union. Russia’s biggest problem is internal: … fail[ing] to produce a national identity … encompass[ing] its entire population. […]
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“Russians cannot tell good from evil. Many people were shocked when a large majority of Russians named Stalin ‘the greatest Russian.’ In 1988, 8% of the citizens of the Soviet Union deemed Stalin acceptable. In 2016 the dictator’s approval rating among Russians was 54%, and in 2018 his support had increased to 70%. … researcher … Andrey Kolesnikov, explains … […]
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“The Kremlin raised the possibility of changing Russia’s Constitution after a top lawmaker proposed bolstering parliament’s powers, in a move that could help to extend … Putin’s rule. … constitutional amendments, including allowing parliament a say in forming the government, received ‘a widespread response’ and are ‘a matter for discussion,’ Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters …. Putin in 2024 […]
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“… In these 11 stories … Dr. Osipov, a Russian cardiologist, fiction writer and playwright, regards the field of medicine as though it were a hapless production of a surrealist play. … [T]he borders between hope, delusion and dishonesty are hazy and heavily trafficked. … Dr. Osipov is a master of dramatic irony, wringing bittersweet humor from what the reader […]
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“… Anders Aslund … in ‘Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy‘ … [casts Putin] as a patriarchal overlord … handsomely reward[ing] those loyal …. creat[ing] a new elite of friends, former co-workers and relatives. What’s less clear is what, if anything [can be done about it]. … [A]naly[zing] the last 15 or so years of Putin’s […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – June 24, 2019) A majority of Russians believe that the Soviet system took care of the common man and woman, according to a recent poll by the independent Levada Center pollster. Russia has seen an upward trend in positive opinions about the Soviet Union in recent years, with nostalgia toward it hitting a 14-year high […]
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“… At nearly 1,000 pages Stalingrad is slightly longer than its sequel. … Grossman places an earlier focus on the Shaposhnikov family and friends … their lives … thrown into disarray by the impending Battle of Stalingrad. Hitler’s huge offensive on the Eastern Front has driven Soviet forces into a prolonged retreat. Stalingrad … on a clifftop by the Volga […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – May 31, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/landing-at-pushkin-putin-decree-assigns-russian-airports-the-names-of-cultural-figures/29974519.html) It’s already pretty hard to travel to Russia without hearing the name of the beloved 19th-century poet Aleksandr Pushkin. Now it may be impossible, if you fly into Moscow. President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree attaching the […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, May 27, 2019) A major political crisis in Russia is “inevitable,” Valery Solovey says, not because of the economic crisis but because of “a qualitative change in the mass consciousness” of Russians who once again have come to believe that radical changes are no longer precluded and that if they are so […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Matthew Luxmoore – MOSCOW, May 25, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/flouting-law-in-nostalgia-s-name-russia-s-growing-movement-of-soviet-citizens-/29962523.html) Konstantin Vyatkin has never acknowledged the Soviet collapse. “For the past 28 years I’ve tried to live in this country called Russia,” he says. “But in my heart I still live there, in the […]
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“Q: Most narratives of post-Soviet Russia emphasize a break between Yeltsin and Putin. …. But your book[, “Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War,”] stresses that there are continuities …. [A.] I see these two periods as successive phases in the evolution of a single system. … the core differences are really matters of […]
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“… Victory Day is undoubtedly Russia’s most important, most grandly celebrated, and most political holiday. … not observed … immediately following the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated twenty-seven million people; it became a holiday a generation later … gain[ing] in prominence as the U.S.S.R. unleashed less righteous battles abroad …. After the Soviet Union […]
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“… the Soviet Union was … a complex actor, in spite of being an ally. The fact that it was at the time ruled by a mass murderer, Joseph Stalin, doesn’t help. … Americans … don’t know what to think about the USSR’s role in the worst conflict in human history … Russia’s revanchism on the world stage today doesn’t […]
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(PONARS Eurasia – Gulnaz Sharafutdinova – May 7, 2019) Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is Reader at King’s Russia Institute, School of Politics & Economics, King’s College London. (PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) The days of political promise the Russian liberal opposition enjoyed during 2011-12 when the “angry urbanites” protested against the regime, are long over. The Russian “progressive era” failed without even starting. […]
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(Kremlin.ru – May 9, 2019 – en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60490) Thirty-five marching military bands and over 130 units of modern military equipment took part in the parade. Overall, more than 13,000 service personnel were engaged. Watching the parade on the stand together with the President of Russia were Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and a guest of honour, first President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, May 7, 2019) Sometimes to ask a question is to answer it even if the answer is different than one intends. That appears to be the case with a Russian nationalist who asks, “Does Russia really need a Victory Parade every year?” His answer is an unabashed affirmative, but others clearly don’t […]
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“Werner Herzog says there’s a ‘subversive message’ to his new documentary ‘Meeting Gorbachev’: Talk to your geopolitical enemies. Herzog interviewed former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev three times in a six-month span to make the new film. He highlights … the reunification of Herzog’s native Germany as well as the groundbreaking 1986 arms control summit with U.S. President Ronald Reagan. […]
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Subject: Russiagate, There are No Winners Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 From: Sarah Lindemann-Komarova <echosiberia@gmail.com> Russiagate, There are No Winners Sarah Lindemann-Komarova [Sarah Lindemann-Komarova has been a community development activist in Siberia since 1992. Currently she is focusing on research and writing about civil society in Russia.] medium.com/@ECHOSiberia/russiagate-there-are-no-winners-4de2dd97acbc Baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, we are now into the […]
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“In a city graced with remarkable architecture, the [C]athedral of Notre Dame may be Paris’ most striking edifice. … when it was engulfed by a fire that toppled its spire, it seemed as if more than a building had been scorched; the nation had lost a piece of its soul. … I couldn’t help but think of a similar tragedy […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 5, 2019) Yezhednevny zhurnal offers another chapter from Vladislav Inozemtsev’s new book, An Uncontemporary Country, a chapter that demonstrates that whenever Russia has turned outward and involved itself with the rest of the world, it has made progress but that when it has turned in on itself, it has not only […]
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Subject: Some information on solzhenitsyncenter.org Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2019 From: Yermolai Solzhenitsyn <yermolai_solzhenitsyn@mckinsey.com> To: davidjohnson@starpower.net Dear David, We saw recently a piece on JRL Russia Insider, russia-insider.com, March 18, 2019 Great Russian Documentary on Life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Video) [https://russia-insider.com/en/great-russian-documentary-life-alexander-solzhenitsyn-video/ri26536], where the authors were wondering whether there were English language copies of all the three films in question. We […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, March 9, 2019) Two out of three Russians now believe that their country will be involved in a major war (a-nalgin.livejournal.com/1661358.html), the result of a concerted effort by Vladimir Putin and his regime to convince them of that, an effort that in many ways resembles the one Stalin engaged in during the […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Nini Arshakuni, Angelina Flood, Natasha Yefimova-Trilling – December 8, 2019 – russiamatters.org/analysis/why-reset-didnt-last) Ten years ago this week, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up on Vice President Joe Biden’s proposed “reset” in relations with Moscow by giving her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, a symbolic red button marked “RESET.” While the English version of the […]
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“Seweryn Bialer, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Columbia University, MacArthur Fellow, and survivor of Auschwitz, died on February 8, 2019, at his home in Manhattan. …”
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(Reconsidering Russia Podcast #17: Pietro A. Shakarian interview of Stephen F. Cohen – February 1, 2019 – embedded audio should load below, or click here: mixcloud.com/reconsidering-russia/reconsidering-russia-podcast-17-stephen-cohen/) “Guest: Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian History at New York University and Princeton University. … author of numerous books on Russia and the former Soviet region, including the influential “Bukharin and the […]
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(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Nikolay Epplee – Feb. 1, 2019) Nikolay Epplee is an independent researcher working on international memorial culture and on memory of Soviet state terror. He published extensively on memory issues in Vedomosti, InLiberty, Colta, and other Russian media. [wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/inventorying-the-past-russia-refreshes-its-historical-memory] The New Year’s holidays are one of the few times in the year that different generations […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, January 17, 2019) [Text with links windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/growth-of-public-history-in-russia.html] Public history, the trend within the history discipline in many places around the world that seeks to rely on the digitalization of personal memoirs, diaries, and photographs of ordinary people to present the past from below, has come to Russia and is “democratizing memory” in […]
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“Russia faces a looming question: What follows Putin’s current, likely final presidential term? An answer is beginning to take shape – and may involve a new position for Putin and a reshaped political landscape” “For many years, the main slogan of anti-Kremlin opposition activists – often shouted as they were being dragged into police vans at street protests – has […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, January 15, 2019) Ever more Russians are drawing analogies between their country today and its situation in 1917 and between Vladimir Putin and the last tsar Nicholas II, sociologist and commentator Boris Kagarlitsky says; and this is quite “logical” given the tone deaf reaction of the powers that be in both cases […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, January 7, 2019) Russian commentator Vladimir Pozner argument that Russia will change only when the last member of the Russian elite educated in Soviet times passes away (echo.msk.ru/blog/pozner/2346625-echo/) is fundamentally wrong, Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev says (echo.msk.ru/blog/v_inozemcev/2347259). Not only is Pozner’s analysis mistaken in serious ways, despite being shared by many, the […]
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(Article ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Matthew Luxmoore – Jan. 8, 2019 – article also appeared at rferl.org/a/more-in-the-tank-russian-film-extends-trend-of-patriotic-world-war-ii-epics/29697503.html) Yet another patriotic war movie has taken Russia by storm. T-34, a high-octane tribute to the Soviet tank that played a key role on the Eastern Front of World War II, is the latest in a series […]
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The rise of diversity and individualism in Russian society is undisputed. However, these new trends are observed, first and foremost, in the private sphere, in consumption, and in everyday practices, while the political realm remains “frozen.” (PONARS Eurasia – Maria Lipman, Maria Volkenstein – December 17, 2018) Maria Volkenstein is the President, CEO, and Founder of the VALIDATA Market Research […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Dec. 19, 2018 – article also appeared at rferl.org/a/russian-regret-at-soviet-collapse-stands-at-14-year-high-poll-shows/29664759.html) More Russians regret the breakup of the Soviet Union than at any other time since 2004, an opinion poll shows. In a survey whose results were published on December 19, two-thirds — or 66 percent — of respondents answered “yes” […]
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“… An ailing Yeltsin is believed to have chosen Putin, a former KGB officer, as his successor, because he had a reputation for loyalty. He knew he could count on Putin to protect him and his family. … [H]e made Putin promise to ‘look after Russia.’ In the eyes of Putin’s supporters, he has … [brought] relative prosperity … making […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – MOSCOW – Dec. 11, 2018 – also appeared at rferl.org/a/putin-solzhenitsyn-true-patriot-centenary-birth/29650018.html) President Vladimir Putin has praised late Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as a “true and real patriot” after unveiling a statue honoring the Nobel Prize-winning author in central Moscow. Speaking at the unveiling ceremony marking the centenary of Solzhenitsyn’s birth, Putin […]
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(Kremlin.ru – December 11, 2018) The President attended the unveiling ceremony for a monument to Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Moscow’s Tagansky District on the 100th anniversary of the writer’s birth. The bronze monument sitting on a granite pedestal was designed by National Artist of Russia Andrei Kovalchuk. His project won the architecture and sculpture tender held in 2017 by the Union […]
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“His frail hand covering his heart, Mykhailo Matvienko, 92, peered at the yellow flame of a candle on his kitchen table on Saturday and recounted his childhood during the Great Famine. A searing event seen as one of the great atrocities of 20th-century Europe, the Ukrainian famine of 1933 killed more than three million people, by most estimates, and has […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, November 21, 2018) The Russian commentariat ever more frequently features apocalyptic predictions about the rapidly approaching end of Russia, with some like MGIMO professor Valery Solovey suggesting that the situation in Russia today is very much like that in the Soviet Union in 1990-1991 and that the results will be similar. But […]
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“… Laqueur’s curiosity, interest in the future and anxiety remained into his nineties …. As always he was interested in the attacks societies faced, and how internal weaknesses made them vulnerable. … He spoke sometimes of hope, but the searing experience of seeing the society he was born into collapsing into barbarism had never left him. Walter Laqueur, historian, was […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Jon B. Wolfsthal – November 8, 2018 – russiamatters.org/analysis/russia-and-us-nuclear-risks-never-go-out-vogue) Jon B. Wolfsthal is the director of the Nuclear Crisis Group and a former senior director on the National Security Council. This week marks an important nuclear milestone of the Cold War: Thirty-five years ago, the United States almost accidentally provoked the Soviet Union into starting […]
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