Monthly Archives: November 2005

Let me see if I get this straight. Prominent Kazakh opposition member, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, is found dead with two gunshots to the chest and one to the head and it’s ruled a suicide!? I mean forget the fact that shooting oneself in the chest not once but twice and then turning the gun to your own dome seems utterly impossible, this is what an investigation into his death has concluded. Opposition leaders are correctly calling his death a “political assassination.” And this all important caveat supports such a claim: Nurkadilov was about to make a “bombshell” announcement about sitting President and election frontrunner Nursultan Nazarbayev’s involvement in corruption. Sounds like the Kazakh Presidential elections, which are next week, are getting off to a rather predictable start.

You haven’t seen Moscow until you’ve taken the metro. Despite its need for modernization, the system is flawless. You can be almost anywhere in the city in 45 minutes. The stations are palaces. The metro is such a part of Moscow culture and aesthetics it is hard to imagine going there and not take it. Not so, however, for many government officials and Novye russkye who have taken to car culture to avoid the swarthy hordes that dwell underground.

Moscow Times editor Mark Teeter tells us that the descent into Moscow’s underworld can cause surprise even shock to these officials and New Russians. Take the chairman of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov for example, who one day decided to ditch his limo for a ride on the wild side of Moscow life. According to the Izvestia article Teeter cites, Mironov was “shocked ..read more

I haven’t done a news roundup in a few weeks. It’s time to get back on schedule.

—Newsru.com is reporting that an anti-fascist rally in front of the Moscow city hall was broken up by OMON on Sunday. About two hundred protesters gathered in response to the rise in nationalism and racism. Shortly after they gathered, buses carrying OMON officers arrived. The officers charged the crowd arresting participants. One woman was taken to the hospital with injuries after an officer hit her over the head. Sunday’s protest was in response to the nationalist rallies held on the first celebration of “Unity Day” on November 4. The holiday, which celebrates the liberation of Moscow from Poland in the 16th century, was commemorated by the ultranationalist Eurasian Youth League with a rally 1000 strong to denounce the influx of immigrants into Russia.

—The Moscow Times reports that the office ..read more

I haven’t done a news roundup in a few weeks. It’s time to get back on schedule.

—Newsru.com is reporting that an anti-fascist rally in front of the Moscow city hall was broken up by OMON on Sunday. About two hundred protesters gathered in response to the rise in nationalism and racism. Shortly after they gathered, buses carrying OMON officers arrived. The officers charged the crowd arresting participants. One woman was taken to the hospital with injuries after an officer hit her over the head. Sunday’s protest was in response to the nationalist rallies held on the first celebration of “Unity Day” on November 4. The holiday, which celebrates the liberation of Moscow from Poland in the 16th century, was commemorated by the ultranationalist Eurasian Youth League with a rally 1000 strong to denounce the influx of immigrants into Russia.

—The Moscow Times reports that the office ..read more

Opposition parties are struggling to keep momentum going in Azerbaijan. The results of the recent Azeri parliamentary elections left the 125 seat legislature in control of the ruling Yeni Party. The Opposition received only 10 seats and claim that the elections were rife with fraud, a claim that has been supported by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, among others. There is no doubt that this is true, but it seems that the Opposition’s hopes of staging its own “Orange Revolution” are fading. Despite yesterday’s presence of 15,000 supporters in a protest against the elections, the crowd was thinner than the initial protests a week ago.

One problem it seems is that the Opposition does not have the will to risk a government crackdown on demonstrators. This lack of will has the ..read more

In a reversal of its own decision, the Russian Supreme Court upheld the Moscow Regional court’s ban of the National Bolshevik Party. The Supreme Court’s ruling further reveals the farce of Russian democracy. Forget about what you think about the NBP, the fact that the Supreme Court contradicted itself so quickly, shows that either larger forces were at work behind the scenes or that the Court itself wields arbitrary power. In a statement to reporters after the verdict, NBP leader Eduard Limonov had this to say: “This was a historic humiliation for the Supreme Court. Big players such as the Prosecutor General’s Office intervened and pressed the judges to discard their previous verdict.” Could this be any closer to the truth? Hardly.

The ban is in response to the fact that the NBP uses the word “party” in its name even though it’s ..read more