Month: May 2007

May 31, 2007

Michael Alguire: The Turkish-Iranian Rivalry

[I am pleased to announce a special guest column from the political analyst and Trinity College Scholar Michael Alguire, who recently completed a Specialist Program in History at the University of Toronto. In this highly detailed and rigorously re...
May 31, 2007

Grigory Pasko: The Modern Potemkin Village

In search of a modern-day Potemkin village OR How Putin went to the countryside… By Grigory Pasko, journalist The man whom I hired to drive me around Samara turned out to be a policeman. He told me the following story. Vladimir Putin visited Samar...
May 31, 2007

Video: Death of a Nation

Below is a 45-minute documentary on Russia’s demographic crisis aired on Britain’s Channel 4 titled “Death of a Nation.” (hat tip to LR and an anonymous commenter for the links).
May 31, 2007

Immaculate, White Fluffy Partners and a Monster

From the Washington Post: Anti-American rhetoric has become a staple of Kremlin-controlled television and many Russian political speeches, a reflection according to analysts of both genuine grievances and a desire to assert Russia’s revival ...
May 31, 2007

Open Letter to G7 from Russia’s Human Rights Leaders

Lev Ponomarev has sent us the attached open letter he has signed, along with more than 20 other prestigious human rights and civil society leaders (including Elena Bonner, the widow of Andrei Sakharov), urging the leadership of the G7 to ask Russi...
May 31, 2007

The Other Espionage in Russia

For those already exhausted with the cloak-and-dagger spy-murder mystery plots currently unfolding between London and Moscow, it seems that a fresh new controversy has hit the pages of the tabloids: Russia claims to have uncovered a sinister Weste...
May 30, 2007

Is the Turkmen Window of Opportunity Opening or Closing?

Turkmenistan has been the most popular Central Asian country in the news lately, what with Russia’s continued energy imperialism in the Baltics, Gazprom’s bruising attack on BP at Kovykta, and the Kremlin’s seemingly limitless su...
May 30, 2007

Gorbachev Hosts Politkovskaya Book Launch

In a surprising gesture of support for free press, the normally pliant Mikhail Gorbachev hosted the launch of a new posthumous book of Anna Politkovskaya’s writings in Moscow to coincide with the summit of the International Federation of Jou...
May 30, 2007

Moscow Heat Wave Brings Death, Sex, and Ice Cream

In case you weren’t aware, this week Moscow has been experiencing a record heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 32.1 C (close to 90 F). These surprisingly high temperatures have sent droves of people to seek relief in city fountains, pond...
May 30, 2007

Poll: Russia’s Attitude toward Democracy Quickly Eroding

New survey data released last week from the Public Opinion Foundation shows that the majority of Russians do not believe that elections are an accurate reflection of public opinion. Only 7% of those polled believed that the upcoming Parliamentary ...