(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – May 28, 2013) Authorities have backed a plan to return a commemorative plaque to the Moscow apartment building where Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev spent the last 30 years of his life. A Moscow City Hall committee has approved the initiative, submitted by a group of State Duma deputies. Supporters had hoped to have […]
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(Interfax – May 27, 2013) About 167 million people and nearly 27 million vehicles crossed the Russian state border last year, which was 22 percent more than in 2011. “The trend persists in 2013. Back in the Soviet period, the number of persons allowed to cross the state border was roughly 2-2.5 million per year. The number grew to 167 […]
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(Kennan Institute Meeting Report – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Mackensie Knorr – April 29, 2013) “Why did the Russians, despite all that one would expect from them given the histories of the downfalls of empires, decide not to fight and to let the empire fall?” asked Serhii Plokhii, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, at a 29 April 2013 […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, May 22, 2013) Russians view Leonid Brezhnev as the most positive of all Soviet and Russian leaders in the 20th century, but Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were close behind in an opinion poll released on Wednesday. Brezhnev, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1964-1982, was viewed positively by 56 percent of respondents in the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – May 17, 2013) Editor’s note: This is part of an occasional series on state initiatives to promote patriotism. The State Duma has ordered an evaluation of a comment made by opposition politician Leonid Gozman in which he compared a Soviet intelligence agency to Adolf Hitler’s SS on the grounds that the comment […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 16, 2013) A leading Russian human rights group has called for a judicial inquiry into the activities of Stalin-era security services after a high-profile public figure accused a Soviet counterintelligence service that existed during World War II of methods similar to those of Nazi Germany’s security agencies. Leonid Gozman, head of humanitarian projects at state corporation […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – May 13, 2013) Anna Arutunyan is a correspondent and editor at themoscownews.com The tanks and the Topol-M missile had all passed, the booming, Soviet-era voice of the announcer was quiet, the 11,000 uniformed servicemen were at ease, and the little boy standing on the curb of the Red Square suddenly spoke up. […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alena Tveritina, RBTH – May 10, 2013) Many Soviet writers experienced the brutal front as Red Army soldiers and as war correspondents; others collected the accounts of everyday citizens. World War II is among the most tragic chapters in the hard book of the 20th century. Many Soviet writers fought with the Red […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Simon Speakman Cordall special to The Moscow News – April 29, 2013) Overshadowed by dramatic Victory Day celebrations, the May 1 holiday has yet to be redefined in the post-Soviet landscape There were four pivotal dates on the Soviet calendar; January 1, May 1, May 9 and, the anniversary of the revolution, November 7. Times, […]
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(Interfax – April 25, 2013) The Russian Union of Afghan War Veterans that unites many generals and officers who took part in the pullout of the Soviet limited contingent from Afghanistan are ready to respond to requests from NATO colleagues and share their materials, Union leader Frants Klintsevich told Interfax-AVN on Thursday. “I have learned about the NATO request from […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – April 25, 2013) President Vladimir Putin said his methods don’t have anything in common with those of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and that the trials of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the members of the Pussy Riot feminist punk group were not politically motivated. Putin made the remarks in response to a […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 21, 2013) Russians have become more reserved in their attitudes to Vladimir Lenin and they do not support the idea of returning the name of Leningrad to St. Petersburg, according to a poll taken ahead of the birth anniversary of the Russian revolutionary (April 22). Sociologists from Levada Center told Interfax that almost every third Russian […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 17, 2013 – windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-putin-isnt-restoring.html) Several recent actions by the Kremlin restoring Soviet-era symbols have led to speculation that Vladimir Putin is returning Russia to the political-economic model of the USSR, but such speculation distracts attention from what the Russian president is really trying to do: generate support for himself among the […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Nathan Gray – April 15, 2013) One of the most famous and secretive features of the Soviet Union, closed cities – known today in Russian as ZATOs – still dot the country, though in far fewer numbers than during the Cold War. The cities, which numbered upward of 100 throughout the different republics in the […]
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YAKUTSK, April 2 (RIA Novosti) Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned his ruling United Russia party on Tuesday not to repeat the mistakes made by the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. “We do not aspire to be the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, particularly as it did not turn out very well,” Medvedev said at a meeting in Russia’s Sakha […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Joy Neumeyer – April 1, 2013) In 1934, Ivan Nosov appeared in a photo in Pravda, gazing rapt as his friend Joseph Stalin addressed the 17th Party Congress. In 1937, Stalin scribbled “za” (“I approve”) on a list condemning Nosov to death. Nosov is one of 44,500 names that appear in “Stalin’s Shooting Lists,” a […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – April 1, 2013) The NGO raids in Russia are the big story right now – and yet this story is one that threatens to overshadow some of the important work being done by one particular NGO. I’m talking about “Stalin’s Shooting Lists,” an updated and corrected disk recently reissued by Memorial scans […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Jonathan Earle – April 1, 2013) President Vladimir Putin described the Soviet Union as a land of opportunity and called for two Soviet relics, mandatory school uniforms and the “Hero of Labor” award, to be dusted off in the name of social justice, during an informal meeting with supporters in Rostov-on-Don on Friday. The Soviet […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Markedonov, special to RBTH – March 18, 2013) Sergey Markedonov is a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. The 60th anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin (March 5, 1953) has galvanized the debate about his role in both Russian and world history. The desire […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexandra Guzeva, RBTH – March 16, 2013) The first children’s book about Stalin, “Breaking Stalin’s Nose,” has been released, almost sixty years to the day since the dictator’s death. Are Russians ready to discuss this period of their country’s past with their children? Russian émigré author Eugene Yelchin’s “Breaking Stalin’s Nose” has appeared […]
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(RFE/RL -– rferl.org – Robert Coalson – March 1, 2013) Eighty-one-year-old Nikolai Khasig was born in Sukhumi in 1932. It was just one year after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin stripped Abkhazia of its short-lived status as a full-fledged republic of the USSR and made it a region of Soviet Georgia. At the end of 1936, Lavrenty Beria — at that […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – February 27, 2013) Gennady Zyuganov, re-elected Saturday as leader of the Communist Party, a position he’s held for 17 years, said Tuesday that public calls to remove Stalin’s and Brezhnev’s graves from the Kremlin Wall Necropolis came from “provocateurs” and “SS loyalists.” He vowed that his party would continue to fight proposals […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, February 21, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-russia-faces-same.html) The Russian economy today despite some very positive numbers over the last year suffers from four macro-economic problems that not only will be difficult to correct but also resemble those the Soviet leadership faced in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the rector of the Presidential Academy […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Aleksandras Budrys – February 20, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country should not return cultural property confiscated by Bolshevik and Soviet authorities after the 1917 revolution to its previous owners. “If we now agree that such property of the Russian state will be transferred to someone, we will open a Pandora’s box. […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – www.rbth.ru – Yulia Ponomareva, Combined report – February 7, 2013) Disputes about Stalin’s role in history have flared up again, as the legislature of the city of Volgograd rules that the city shall be called Stalingrad on dates commemorating key anniversaries of World War II. Volgograd, one of 15 Russian cities with a population of […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Bratersky – January 28, 2013) In a grim Soviet reality, he lived the lifestyle of a playboy. While not being a dissident, he sang satirical songs. While not writing a single song that would praise the authorities, he wrote ballads about World War II and was a symbol of patriotism for many Russians. Vladimir […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 19 (Interfax) – Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov thinks that the phrase of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about re-Sovietizing CIS countries is an indication of her incompetence about the processes taking place in the region. “To associate the natural processes that are maturing throughout the former Soviet Union with Sovietization is not to understand practically […]
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MOSCOW, December 7 (RIA Novosti) Russian NATO envoy Alexander Grushko refuted on Friday claims by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Russia is aiming to “re-Sovietize” Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “Sovietization is a cliché which, in my opinion, is absolutely incongruous with the actual processes that are taking place throughout the former USSR,” Grushko said during a […]
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TBILISI. Nov 19 (Interfax) – The Georgian Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection does not intend to revise the status or name of the Soviet Occupation Museum functioning in Tbilisi, a ministry statement says. With the change of government in Georgia activist groups have stepped up efforts in the past few weeks demanding that the museum be closed or renamed. […]
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Ekaterina Loushnikova – www.opendemocracy.net – November 9, 2012 – Ekaterina Loushnikova is radio and print journalist based in the city of Kirov Many of the Soviet Gulag camps are now deserted, but Vyatlag is still in operation, though now most of the prisoners are there for criminal rather than political offences. But as Ekaterina Loushnikova has found, memories of the […]
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WASHINGTON November 14 (By Suleiman Wali for RIA Novosti) – A controversial new law that expands the definition of treason in Russia is being decried by critics in the United States as the Kremlin’s continuing effort to return the country to a “darker criminal code.” “Over the past six months, a series of laws have been passed in Russia that […]
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(RFE/RL – Brian Whitmore – November 8, 2012) In many ways, the current battle for Russia’s future began 30 years ago this week. On November 10, 1982, Leonid Brezhnev died, sparking a generational change in the Soviet leadership and setting in motion an ongoing cycle of reform and reaction in Russia that remains incomplete and inconclusive to this day. The […]
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(Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 9, Issue 207 – Pavel K. Baev – November 12, 2012) The Russian political class had hardly any time last week to contemplate the consequences of US President Barack Obama’s re-election for a second term or to follow the tense atmosphere at the 18th Communist Party Congress in Beijingit was the […]
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(Kremlin Can’t Decide Whether Russia is Heir to the Soviet Union or to Imperial Russia, Inozemtsev Says Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, November 7 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/11/window-on-eurasia-kremlin-cant-decide.html) Paul Goble, in Window on Eurasia, examines an argument by Vladislav Inozemtsev, head of the Civic Force Party, that the Kremlin is wrestling with how to regard Russia’s heritage in terms […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 7 (Interfax) – The Revolution of 1917 had more pros than cons, respondents told the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM). The center polled 1,600 adults in 46 regions on October 27-28. Some 27% believe the revolution spurred on social development of Russia (the indicator stood at 34% in 2002), and 21% believe it opened up a new […]
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MOSCOW, November 6 (RIA Novosti) – Almost one-third of Russians believe the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 jumpstarted the country’s development and opened a new page in its history, according to a poll published on Tuesday. However, the share of respondents with a positive view of the revolution has declined over the past decade, from 34 to 27 percent, the All-Russia […]
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Commemorating the Cuban Missile Crisis: Eugene Ivanov writes a personal reflection on how he learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis as a child and how his son studied it in an American high school – Russia Beyond the Headlines – Eugene Ivanov – Eugene Ivanov is a Massachusetts-based political commentator who blogs at The Ivanov Report – October 12, 2012 […]
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