Aug
31
The House of Cards Trembles
August 31, 2007 | 5 Comments
It’s already falling like a house of cards. Two more suspects in the Politikovskaya murder were taken off the list today. Prosecutors announced that Oleg Alimov, one of the former Moscow police officers, has been freed from custody. Alimov and his three colleagues were suspected of working with former FSB officer Pavel Riaguzov, police Major [...]
Aug
30
Lugovoi the Liar
August 30, 2007 | 27 Comments
With all the hoopla around the Anna Politkovskaya murder case, we’ve forgotten to check in with good ol’Andrei Lugovoi to see how he’s doing. Whether valid or not the Politikovskaya murder is often linked with the Litvinenko murder with the following terms–dissident, “fierce Kremlin critic,” Berezovsky, Chechnya, KGB/FSB, and, of course, Putin.
Unlike the Politkovskaya [...]
Aug
30
And Then There Were Nine . . .
August 30, 2007 | 4 Comments
Scratch two off the list of suspects in the Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. Yesterday, authorities released Alexei Berkin from police custody for lack of evidence. Prosecutors initially believed that Berkin was in league with the Chechen based Lasagna criminal gang (no really that’s what the article says ‘lasagna” Man, these guys really need to lay off [...]
Aug
30
The Hubris of the Populist Race Card
August 30, 2007 | 2 Comments
Alexander Zaitchik and Mark Ames tackle the rise of skinhead violence in Russia in the latest issue of the Nation. As they point out, what was a trademark of Islamists–i.e. the beheading video–has now been adopted by Russian skins. In addition to the video, they note other signs of an escalation in skinhead [...]
Aug
29
From the Komsomol Archive
August 29, 2007 | 19 Comments
I’m currently writing a chapter about expulsions in the Komsomol. The section I’m writing at the moment concerns denunciations. I thought I would share the following denunciation letter from 37 Komsomols from a cell in Chernishevsky school in Nizhny Novgorod in 1926.
To the Komsomol Bureau.
From the Nizhny Novhorod cell from the Chernishevsky School
[...]
