Monthly Archives: October 2007

So there you have it. Sounds like Andrei Lugovoi was right after all. The London Daily Mail revealed today that Alexandr Litvinenko was indeed a paid MI6 agent. Says the Mail:

Alexander Litvinenko was receiving a retainer of around £2,000 a month from the British security services at the time he was murdered.

The disclosure, by diplomatic and intelligence sources, is the latest twist in the Litvinenko affair, which has plunged relations between London and Moscow to their lowest point since the Cold War.

Sources also say that Litvinenko was recruited by Sir John Scarlett. Scarlett now heads the Crown’s secret service. Before that he was stationed in Moscow. It’s also said that Litvinenko was working for MI6 at the time of his murder.

Litvinenko’s wife Marina denies that her husband ever worked for MI6. But why would she know? I’ve seen enough Hollywood spy ..read more

Is there a link between dictators’ brutality and facial hair?  This is the question Rich Cohen explores in his article “Becoming Adolf” in this month’s Vanity Fair.   And come to find out, the “Hitler mustache” as we now know and love it was not always the property of the world’s most renowned murderer.  Nor was it some strange style Hitler dreamed up in a Bavarian beer hall.  The toothbrush mustache as it was called at the end of the 19th century was a fad that swept Germany via the United States.  And people wonder why anti-Americanism is so widespread.

There has been much specutlation as to why a young Hitler decided to don the toothbrush one day in 1919.  Some speculate it was Charlie Chaplain’s fault, who, Cohen tells us, began wearing it in 1915 when he did his Mack Sennett comedies.  Maybe the real imputeous was to emulate Hans Koeppen, ..read more

I was going through Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855-1881 the other day looking for information on Alexander II’s judicial reforms of 1864. I was particularly interested in the creation of jury trials in local courts. The book is a wonderful collection of articles in its own right. Sadly, its one of the few that has been published in English since 1991 that has tried to rethink what the reforms meant or didn’t mean for Tsarist Russia.

While going through the book, I had a chance to reaquaint myself with Alfred Rieber’s fascinating essay “Interest-Group Politics in the Era of the Great Reforms”. Rieber is a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. I saw him give a paper in London last year that was just delightful. He flayed his arms about as he spoke, sometimes grabbing the podium to thrust his body back and forth. The ..read more

If you want to understand what is happening among the political elite in Russia and why Putin making the moves he’s making, read Mark Ames’ “The Kremlin’s Clan Warfare: The Putin Era Ends“. Here is an excerpt:

What is happening?

I’ll repeat: It’s the End of the Putin Era as we know it. The struggle is on.

Here is how I see the current situation, from reading the various Russian reports and talking to people.

Putin had hoped or lulled himself into believing that he’d really set up the stable regime everyone thought Russia had become. The alleged stability had a kind of narcotic effect, convincing Putin’s supporters that he’d done good, and his detractors that he’d gone Fascist or neo-Soviet. In fact, these two filters have led all of us to completely misunderstand what is really happening in Russia, and how potentially ..read more

I haven’t had the time to write anything substantial about Russia thanks to my chapter deadline (which is tomorrow). In a moment of boredom, I decided to add the “Top Commentators” widget to the site. The widget displays the top ten commentators since I started the site in October 2004.

And the winner is (drum roll please) . . . Mike Averko! Of course it is.  Mike never rests when there are not so Russia friendlies to expose as, well, not so Russia friendlies.  As of this post, Mike has a whopping 1885 comments. Second is Mike’s arch enemy, Chrisius Maximus with 1018. Even if we add his pre-Roman transformation quips, which stand at 330, he still doesn’t come close to Averko. Following Chrisius is Tim, the Irishman, Lyndon, ivanov, Shedd, me, and mab.

Now none of you should take this as ..read more

Last week, the New York Times wrote:

Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, proposed a new way to help resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program during an extraordinary meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the country’s chief nuclear negotiator on Wednesday.

The negotiator, Ali Larijani, told reporters that Mr. Putin, who was granted an audience with Ayatollah Khamenei on Tuesday evening, “offered a special proposal.” Neither the Iranians nor the Russians would disclose any details, but Mr. Larijani said the Iranian side was studying it.

“One of the issues he brought up was his view on the nuclear issue,” Mr. Larijani said, according to the ISNA news agency. “We are reviewing it now.”

Like the above says, neither said gave details as to what Putin proposed. And Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied that Putin made any such proposal despite its announcement by Larijani and its reporting on IRNA, Iran’s official ..read more