Twenty-eight years ago today, Moscow sent troops to Lithuania and killed 13 people in the vain hope of blocking that Baltic country from recovering its independence. The Soviet government even timed this operation while the West was...
Twenty-seven years ago on December 8, 1991, the presidents of the RSFSR, the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR signed the Belavezha Accords that annulled the 1922 Soviet union treaty and thus put a de jure end to the de facto...
There are some things no one in Russia must say or even think. Perhaps the most important of these is the idea that the Russian Federation will disintegrate just as the Soviet Union and all other empires have. But the Kremlin hasn’t...
There are three reasons why the Russian Federation is unlikely to fall apart in the near future, Ukrainian political analyst Vitaly Portnikov says. First among them is that while Russia hasn’t been able to establish a contemporary...
The five most common stereotypical notions about how the Russian Federation might fall apart do not reflect realities on the ground but instead are put forward by those who want either to prevent that from happening or to promote it,...
This week, three activists from the Middle Volga announced the formation of the Free Idel-Ural Movement to achieve real sovereignty for Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mari El and Mordvinia by encouraging cooperative actions...
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...
The three-month campaign leading up to the spring presidential elections officially started on 31 December 2018. According to current polls, no single candidate stands out. Among leading candidates, however, most can be classified as...
