In the course of his current debate with economist Andrey Illarionov, social commentator Igor Klyamkin makes an important point that is all too often overlooked in Russia and elsewhere: authoritarian modernization is an increasingly...
Vladimir Putin may not have been able to use the 2018 FIFA World Cup to distract Russians sufficiently to prevent them from protesting rising gas prices and plans to increase taxes and the retirement age; but he has achieved one thing:...
The independent Moscow newspaper Novyye izvestiya points out that the average pay in Estonia is now “about 1800 euros” while in Russia, despite all its natural resources, it stands at “about 500 euros” – and points out that if...
One of the many debates that riled Western studies of the Soviet Union concerned whether that system could ever be reformed or would have to be destroyed and then replaced with something else. Some political analysts insisted that of...
Yesterday, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov became the most senior Moscow official to say what many independent analysts have said before: large increases in defense spending and falling oil prices led to the disintegration of the...
According to official statistics, approximately every fourth subject of the Russian Federation has a GDP per capita that puts in on par with third world countries like Sudan, Nigeria, and Guatemala, and all of them are suffering as a...
The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in...
“There are achievements which it would be better not to have,” opposition Russian politician Gennady Gudkov says, and over the last two decades of Vladimir Putin, Russia has “achieved” ever more of these, something Russians should...
The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in...
Moscow won’t be able to use “the Russian speaking diaspora” in Estonia and other Baltic countries as it did in the Donbas, however much propaganda it deploys against such people because they know that they earn more, have more...
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...
