Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing and Siberia has generated widespread attention to what Moscow may do to try to boost the economy and build up the population of Russia east of the Urals, something that comes at a time when Russian...
Arguing that “there is no truer path to the collapse of a system than the hyper-centralization of authority,” Moscow blogger Elena Galkina says that the Kremlin has now taken a step that shows its denizens think that “if they tighten...
On March 1, 1953, Radio Liberty began broadcasting to the Soviet Union in Russian. Its Russian employees wanted its signature sound to be a ticking clock with a voiceover declaring “The Stalin era is coming to an end.” American...
Even people who accept that the North Caucasus is a Russian colony often argue that the republics of that region would be incapable of living on their own. But Avraam Shmulyevich says that history shows they could and that both they and...
Vladimir Putin’s plans to spend more money on rearmament is “a squandering of valuable natural and labor resources, Mikhail Bobryshev says. But more than it, “an arms race led to the collapse of the USSR and the same thing will...
Three specific and even unique characteristics of the Russian Empire in the past have not disappeared in the Russian Federation of today but instead continue to drive both the foreign and domestic policies of the Kremlin, according to...
A century ago, Nicholas II looked all powerful and yet he was overthrown and his country disintegrated, Yevgeny Gontmakher says; and today, Vladimir Putin looks even more powerful and with far greater popular support but because of the...
Many analysts in Russia and the West are now openly talking about how the regime of Vladimir Putin could come to an end, making predictions that in many cases appear to be more an expression of their preferences than of the actual...
Many commentators have discussed whether Vladimir Putin is a fascist in any serious sense, but most have failed to consider one area where fascism has clearly arisen in his Russia: in the aesthetics that increasingly inform Moscow’s...
In yet another manifestation of what Guillermo O’Donnell described as “the powerlessness of the all-powerful,” Lilia Shevtsova argues, Vladimir Putin and his entourage are making a repetition of the events of 1991 ever more likely...
On 28 September 2017, Ukraine’s new law on education entered into force. Called to advance Ukraine’s badly needed education reform, it has been praised for introducing the concept of competence-orientation and giving schools...
