Daily Archives: June 1, 2006

It’s been almost a month since I’ve posted to this blog. Work and burnout were to blame. I think I needed a bit of time off from Russia in the present (though the Russia of the past never strays to far from my mind) to recharge my batteries. The quarter is ending in a few weeks which means that time will become less of a luxury. Below I present my reflection of Kim Murphy’s article on the continued Russian practice of condemning dissidents to insane asylums. I try to approach the subject from a perspective that I hope will generate a discussion on issues that go beyond the particularity of this practice in Russia. I still hope to write an article on Amnesty International’s report on race and racism in Russia. There are some ideas about how race is discussed in and in ..read more

I’m quite a fan of Kim Murphy’s reporting on Russia in the Los Angeles Times. She always handles an interesting, and often human side of Russia that I don’t see in many English language publications. Sometimes the stories she tells border on the bizarre. Other times they verge on the chilling. Her recent story published in the May 30 edition of the Times qualifies as both. Yet I think that the astonishment that this article conjures should not serve as yet another platform to further concretize the “abnormality” Russian Other vis-?-vis our “normality”. Rather, I would suggest that Murphy’s article identifies universal methods of designating Others through means of categorization that rely on legal, scientific, cultural and governmental discourses.

In “Speak Out? Are You Crazy?”, Murphy reports that the Soviet practice of condemning the political dissident to mental asylums continues in the cities like Moscow ..read more