Posted by Sean on October 11, 2006
The LA Times Moscow correspondent Kim Murphy published a lengthy three part story this past weekend titled “The Vanishing Russians.” The series exposes some frightening facts and stories about the state of Russia’s demographic crisis. The explanations for this crisis bounce between a sordid legacy left by the Soviet Union and the current politics of Russia. Still, her ricocheting between past and present is left without structural logic. This is to her credit as well as to her fault. While the human toll of Russia’s demographic crisis can be touched, the very structural nature of role of capitalism as a system is left to run freely roughshod over the bones of its victims without indictment.
This point will be addressed below. First, some summary and discussion of her nevertheless excellent investigative series.
Part one of the series, “A Dying Population” introduces the problem via personal ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 11, 2006
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman devoted a segment of her Monday show to Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. You can listen to it here. The segment includes a discussion with Nation Magazine editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Richard Behar, former investigative journalist for Forbes Magazine and current director of Project Khlebnikov. Project Khlebnikov is dedicated to finding the murderer of Forbes Russia editor Paul Khlebnikov, who was murdered on July 9, 2004. His murder has yet to be solved.
In the discussion Vanden Heuvel and Behar address Politkovskaya’s work, reasons for her murder, the status of the press in Russia, and how the murder is a reflection of Putin’s rule.
Tags: Anna Politkovskaya|Russia|Putin|media|democracy
Posted by Sean on October 11, 2006
I’ve been doing a lot of book shopping here in Moscow. Most of the libraries and archives I work in have little lavki of mostly academic books. I have to say that there are some interesting things being published here.
What has caught my eye is the sheer number of translations of post-structuralist philosophy. The works of Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze are filling bookstores philosophy sections.
There are also some interesting historical works being published. I was happy to find Igor’ Navskii’s brilliant study of the Russian Civil War, Zhizn v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917-1922 (Life in Catastrophe: Everyday Life in the Urals, 1917-1920), at a ROSSPEN store for only 99 rubles as well as the second volume of Sovetskaya derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD dokumenty i materialy, 1923-1929 (The Soviet Countryside through the eyes of the Cheka, GPU and NKVD documents and materials, ..read more
