Posted by Sean on November 21, 2007
There is a specter haunting Russia–the specter of colored revolution. Or so says Vladimir Putin. Clearly having no qualms about beating a dead horse, Putin told a Moscow campaign rally that shadowy Westerners are supporting oppositionists with hopes of returning Russia to the dark days of the 1990s. Here some quotes the Guardian has supplied:
“Unfortunately there are those people in our country who still slink through foreign embassies … who count on the support of foreign funds and governments but not the support of their own people.”
“There are those confronting us, who do not want us to carry out our plans because they have … a different view of Russia. They need a weak and feeble state. They need a disorganized and disorientated society … so that they can carry out their dirty tricks behind its back.”
“They are going to take to the streets. They have ..read more
Posted by Sean on November 21, 2007
I attended the AAASS National Convention this past weekend in New Orleans. I participated on two panels. A roundtable titled “Youth’s ‘Janus-Face Nature’: Youth and History in Russia/Soviet/Russia” and a panel called “Looking into the Past, Preparing for the Future: Civil War, Generations, and the Militarization of Soviet Youth, 1918-1941.” (The convention’s full program can be found here.) I co-organized both with Matthias Neumann, a young scholar who works on the Komsomol from University of East Anglia in Britain. Both panels were well received, though not well attended. This is expected since each of the conference’s twelve sessions, which spanned from Thursday afternoon to Sunday noon, had so many panels, that low attendance is a given unless you are a big name or work on some ultra-trendy topic. There was a visible increase in panels on media–film, television, and radio. Panels on Imperial ..read more
