May

28

Blackening the White Paper

May 28, 2008 | 51 Comments

My new eXile article, Nemtsov’s White Paper: Bombshell or Dud?, is now online. Here is an excerpt:
Lilia Shevtsova, a fellow at Moscow’s Carnegie Center, called it a “bomb, which anywhere but in Russia would cause the country to collapse.” Writing in the New York Review of Books, Amy Knight called it “a devastating picture […]

Popularity: 4% [?]

May

26

Moscow’s Not So Far

May 26, 2008 | 26 Comments

Dima Bilan’s victory at Eurovision is bound to bring more interest in Russian music. But where is a English speaker to go? I recommend directing your browser to Far from Moscow, a new blog by UCLA Slavic Professor David MacFadyen. MacFadyen has written several books on Russian popular television, music, film and culture. […]

Popularity: 3% [?]

May

25

Commie Sect Denounces Dr. Jones

May 25, 2008 | 41 Comments

Russian Communists don’t like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, reports the Associated Press. But the communists in question are not the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), as the report implies. There are several communist parties in Russia and the one that has began a campaign against Indy is […]

Popularity: 4% [?]

May

24

Peace “Very Low” in Russia

May 24, 2008 | 1 Comment

Russia just can’t catch a break when it comes to global indexes. Whether its corruption, living standards, media freedom, and or just plain freedom, Russia always lands on the wrong side of fence. Russia’s new failed grade is in “peace.” According to Global Peace Index, a survey conducted by Vision of Humanity, Russia […]

Popularity: 3% [?]

May

20

Russia’s Commanding Heights

May 20, 2008 | 5 Comments

I found a great PBS documentary called Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy while searching for video for a lecture on the Yeltsin years. PBS has put all the film’s chapters online, and I wanted to let readers know about the segments on Russia:
Communism on the Heights, 6:16

The Ghosts of Norilsk, 4:27

Behind the […]

Popularity: 3% [?]

May

20

New Film: Letter to Anna

May 20, 2008 | 5 Comments

The Moscow Times has a review of Letter to Anna, a new documentary by Swiss director Eric Bergkraut on the life, work, and death of Anna Politkovskaya. Bergkraut met Politkovskaya while making his award winning film Coca: The Dove From Chechnya, which chronicled the efforts of Zainap Gashaeva and other Chechen women to […]

Popularity: 3% [?]

May

13

Petrostate

May 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Bloomberg.com’s audio program On the Economy talks with Marshall Goldman about Gazprom, Putin, Medvedev, oil and gas, and the “Dutch disease.” Goldman’s new book Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia just came out on Oxford University Press. You can download the interview here.
Popularity: 4% [?]

Popularity: 4% [?]

May

13

Meet the New (Old) Ministers

May 13, 2008 | 13 Comments

(Top down, left to right: Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister; Viktor Zubkov, First Vice-Prime Minister; Igor Shubalov, First Vice-Prime Minister; Igor Sechin, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Sobyanin, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Ivanov, Vice-Prime Minister; Aleksei Kurdrin, Vice-Prime Minister; Aleksandr Zhukov, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister; Rashid Nuraliev, Minister of Internal Affairs; Aleksei Kudrin, MInister of Finance; Sergei […]

Popularity: 4% [?]

May

13

“Natural-Resource Curse”?

May 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Is oil a boon or a blessing? When it comes to Russia, more and more analysis are seeing it as the former. As Konstantin Sonin argues, the “natural-resource curse” is now a favorite among those who seek to explain Russia’s skewed trajectory toward democracy. For Sonin, the oil curse is now displacing other […]

Popularity: 3% [?]

May

10

Geopolitical Imbalances

May 10, 2008 | 268 Comments

A state’s great power status resides in the flow of cheap oil, argues Michael Klare, author of the newly published Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. With oil prices hitting another high of $123 this week, and predictions of it hitting $200 over the next two years, the overall impact on […]

Popularity: 7% [?]

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