Monthly Archives: August 2005

“The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century.” Such is the opening line of Yuri Slezkine’s intriguing and controversial book, the Jewish Century. Slezkine charts modernity through the journey of one, albeit significant, ethnic/religious group: Russia’s Jews. It’s a story about shedding and becoming, triumph and tragedy; about how Russian Jews became more Soviet than Jew, and how in the end they were too Jewish to be Russian. The Jewish Century is also a narrative of how the twentieth century is about how all of us, in a sense, have become Jewish.

Slezkine’s argument is complex and its implications profound. If modernity is about becoming urban, mobile, and literate; if it is about being ripped from the land and thrust into the abyss of free labor; if it is about the dissolution of national ..read more

It seems that many of Russia‘s opposition parties can now breath a sigh of relief. Today, the Russian Supreme Court overturned the Moscow Regional Court‘s banning of the National Bolshevik Party. If you remember, the Natsbols were outlawed in June for violating Russia‘s political party law. The Natsbols originally filed as a political party, but was ruled to be a social organization. They offered to drop “Party” from their name to no avail. The overturning of the ban is already being hailed as some sort of victory for Russian democracy. As a editorial on Gazeta.ru stated, “By reversing the ruling of a lower court to ban the National Bolshevik Party, the Supreme Court restored the rights not only of Eduard Limonov’s supporters, but of contemporary Russian politics as a whole.”

While I support the overturning of the ban, I am continually fascinated by all the attention the ..read more

For Rodrick.

Two weeks ago readers of the Moscow Times were met with a rather chilling article on the front page. The headline: “Growing Number of Army Draftees Have HIV”. According to Major General Valery Kulikov the number of draftees rejected by the Russian army with HIV “skyrocketed by 27 percent over the past five years.” Last fall, 9000 were rejected for having HIV. Before 2000, only 300 were rejected. The military admits that this new figure is difficult to quantify because there aren’t reliable numbers of HIV/AIDS of the population as a whole to compare to, the extreme reluctance of the Russian armed forces to discuss the matter, the lack of equipment for reliable testing, plus recruits are not systematically tested. In many ways the military is a microcosm of the overall problem of HIV/AIDS in Russia.

The prognosis for Russian is ..read more

For the past few days Russian news outlets have been filled with stories and condemnations. The issue: the Nighline’s broadcast of an interview by Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky with Shamil Basayev, the most notorious and wanted man in Russia. Basayev is a terrorist and he admits it. A proclaimed Chechen nationalist and Muslim, he’s been fighting for Chechen impendence for the better part of a decade. In the last few years Basayev has been the mastermind of some of the largest terrorist attacks in Russia. In October 2002, his fighters took the Odintsovo Theater in Moscow hostage. The attempt by Russian security forces to gas the theater led to the deaths of 129 people. In September 2004, Chechen rebels took the school of Beslan hostage. The incident left 330 adults and children dead and 700 wounded. A few days later, ..read more