Feb
28
Personality Cash Cow
February 28, 2008 | 8 Comments
T-minus three days and counting. Russians will go to the polls on Sunday to cast their votes for a new President. But one shouldn’t get to carried away with the casting votes part. Yes, Russians will vote, but no one has any doubt who the victor will be. Dmitri Medvedev will be the third President [...]
Feb
28
Monetary Middle Class
February 28, 2008 | 7 Comments
The Russian “middle class” remains an elusive and rather unclear category. It’s an entity that is recognized, but what exactly are its contours is rarely clearly defined. Kommersant has fitted one piece into the Russian middle class puzzle. The Russian middle class, at least as defined by Kommersant, is purely monetary. I’ve [...]
Feb
24
Two Reviews of Four Books
February 24, 2008 | 46 Comments
The 3 March issue of the Nation has two reviews of four recent books on Soviet history. The first review, “The Ice Forge,” written by Jochen Hellbeck, examines Lynne Viola’s Unknown Gulag and Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers. Viola’s book chronicles the deportation of Soviet “kulaks” during collectivization. About it Hellbeck writes, “The [...]
Feb
23
“The President is the symbol of power, and the Prime Minister is only a manager.”
February 23, 2008 | 101 Comments
Kommersant has an interview with Elena Shestopal, the deputy chair of the Political Psychology Department at MGU, on how Russian society views the inevitable election of Dmitri Medvedev. I think the title of the interview, “Thus far Medvedev’s character remains unclear in the consciousness of the masses” says it all. Here is an [...]
Feb
21
“A war is going on now and we all must participate in it”
February 21, 2008 | 11 Comments
Those Nashi kids really, really want to go to Estonia. So bad that they’re protests are beginning to sound more and more deranged. Leave it Nashi to push a campaign to the brink of absurdity. Is Estonia bashing all they have left? I guess they “10=5″ campaign just doesn’t provide that populist umph. If this [...]
