Archive for January, 2009
Wither Nashi?
By Sean at 31 January, 2009, 11:02 am
For those interested in Nashi, I recommend listening to this interview with Dr. Regina Heller from the University of Hamburg Institute for Peace and Research (a recent article of hers on Nashi can be found here). I think Heller’s discussion serves as as good primer for understanding the many aspects to the pro-Kremlin group. I [...]
Read More >>Nashi to Monitor Iraqi Elections
By Sean at 30 January, 2009, 12:13 am
I don’t even know what to make of this. Nashi announced on its website that the Iraqi Electoral Commission has recognized it as election monitor. That’s right Nashi. As the “only Russian organization” granted such a role, Nashists will join the 800 international observers there to oversee Saturday’s vote. Nashi’s self-designated task will be to [...]
Read More >>Medvedev Meets Novaya’s Muratov, Gorbachev
By Sean at 29 January, 2009, 4:30 pm
There has been alot of criticism of President Medvedev’s and Prime Minister Putin’s silence in regard to the murder of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. Dimitri Medvedev has finally responded. But not in a overtly public manner but via a meeting with Novaya gazeta Editor-in-Chief Dmitri Muratov and former Soviet President and Novaya shareholder Mikhail [...]
Read More >>Ukraine Throws KGB Archive Doors Open
By Sean at 29 January, 2009, 10:02 am
Here’s something that should wet the palates of scholars and induce wet dreams among the necrophiliacs of Soviet history. Ukraine announced that it plans declassify the entire KGB archive dating 1917-1991. The number of documents stamped “secret” and “top secret” is estimated at 800,000. The announcement comes after the law “On the declassification, promulgation, and [...]
Read More >>Moscow Police Seek Expulsion of “Politically Unreliable” Students
By Sean at 28 January, 2009, 11:16 pm
Yaroslav Kuzminov, the head of the Higher School of Economics (VShE) in Moscow received a disturbing letter from the Main Department of Internal Affairs (GUVD). The letter strongly recommended that the dean expel “politically unreliable” students, reports Nezavisimaya gazeta. “Politically unreliable” in the police’s opinion, are those youth who participated in last December’s Dissenters March [...]
Read More >>Barak Turns to Putin’s Playbook
By Sean at 28 January, 2009, 9:06 am
With Labor set to go down in flames in next month’s parliamentary elections in Israel, what is a beleaguered Ehud Brarak to do to pump up his tough image among crucial Russian voters? Why, “Putinize” himself, of course. As Lily Galili reports in Haaretz:
In a bid to gain the vote of the Russian immigrants in [...]
