The cap of the Monomakh, a symbol for many Russians of Muscovy’s links to Constantinople and thus fundamental to the idea of Moscow as the third Rome, did not come from the second Rome as most Russians imagine but from Khan Uzbek of the...
Russia has never had a state in the normal sense of the term and does not have one today, Aleksey Polikovsky argues; instead, it has been and remains far more like the chiefdoms that have existed in various nomadic societies, Dmitry...
Even though Russian officials and commentators have felt free to call Ukraine and Ukrainians other names, the suggestion by Ukrainian writer Larysa Nitsoi that Russia should be called Muscovy has sparked outrage among Russians – even...
Most of the peoples whom Stalin deported have been allowed to return to their home areas and have been politically at least partially rehabilitated. But one stands out because Moscow still refuses to acknowledge it was the victim of a...
Any time a dispute lasts beyond a few weeks, it is almost inevitable that some of those involved will seek to end it by accepting the position of their original opponents or by proposing what seems to be a way around the problem by...
For more than a century, Russia has been described as a country with an unpredictable past. The authorities Soviet and now post-Soviet keep changing the national narrative, and those who study the past and fail to keep up with the twists...
A core element of Vladimir Putin’s worldview is that the Russians are “a divided people,” German historian Wilfried Jilge says, a perspective that underlies his continuing aggression against Ukraine and that lays the groundwork for...
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...
Many in the West following the decision of more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats to show solidarity with the British think that Vladimir Putin has been driven into an untenable position and soon will be forced to back down in...
As the Putin regime takes more steps to hide the crimes of Stalin – it has gotten Interpol to go after the editor of the Russia as the Prison House of Nations portal, it is ever more important to call attention to those crimes. One of...
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...
