Monthly Archives: March 2009

When the St. Petersburg office of Memorial was raided in December last year, the international media was aghast.  Article after article saw the confiscation of Memorial’s database of archival materials and interviews of life under Stalin as proof that Stalinism was back in full force.  Why else would police bother to raid the human rights organization, they reasoned, if not to silence their voices of anti-Stalinism?

The exact reasons why Memorial was put through this ordeal remain murky.  The official explanation is that the organization was somehow affiliated with Novyi Peterburg, which was under investigation for extremism.  Others opined that the raid was connected to Memorial’s screening of Rebellion: the Livinenko Case. Still others maintain that the raid was part of a larger battle over Russia’s past, in particular the memory of the Stalin period.

While much ink was spilled on speculating why Memorial was raided, and its implications in regard to ..read more

I’ve been wanting to draw attention to Paul Kennedy’s article, “Read the big four to know capital’s fate,” from the Financial Times but it slipped my mind until now.  And who are the big four Kennedy suggests who’s economic insight will shed light on capital’s latest crash and burn?  Why it’s Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Joesph Schumpeter, and John Maynard Keynes.  Kennedy explains:

Perhaps the supremely gifted playwright Tom Stoppard could put those four savants on stage and offer an imaginary weekend-long quadrilateral discourse among them about the future of capitalism. Failing such a creative work, what might we imagine the four great political economists would say about our present economic crisis?

Smith, one imagines, would claim that he had never advocated total laissez faire, was appalled at how sub-prime loans to fiscally insecure people contradicted his devotion to moral economy, and was concerned at the deficit spending proposed ..read more

If Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin’s warning last week that Russia’s recent economic bump will most likely be short lived got you down, don’t fret there are some economic spheres besides McDonald’s that are going strong.  As Time reports, leech farming  is a “flourishing industry” and  “a bright spot in a Russian economy.”  That’s right, leeches.  Not the oligarch kind that sucks wealth like a like a crack addict hits the pipe.  The slimy, waterborne, blood sucking kind, or as known by its Latin moniker, Hirudo medicinalis.

Russia is leech producing central, churning out 10 times more blood suckers that any other country.  The base of operations is the International Medical Leech Center at Udelnaya, southeast of Moscow. The Institute has a long history.  Beginning in 1937, Udelnaya was the center of Soviet leech production.  It’s unknown what their production quota was in Stalin’s Third Five Year Plan (1938-1941), but the ..read more

The election circus in Sochi has some new developments.

The alleged polonium murderer Andrei Lugovoi won’t be running.  The LDPR announced that it will go with a different candidate.  According to the NY Times, the reason for the move is because Lugovoi “would have been at a disadvantage because he was not from the Sochi region, though it also seemed that his candidacy would have been awkward for the government.”  I guess that awkwardness doesn’t extend to having him in the Duma. Oh well . . .

But the big news concerns this week’s piss ammonia chloride attack on “Kremlin critic” Boris Nemtsov.  As I said in a post on the incident, Nemtsov immediately charged Nashi with the assault.  Nashi has not only emphatically denied the charge, they have also decided sue Nemtsov for court for the “slander.”  “The “Nashi” Movement is scandalized by the accusation,” reads a Nashi press release, “and ..read more

Citizens of the Russian Federation comprise of the third highest number of asylum seekers according to statistics complied by the UN Refugee Agency.

The top country of origin of asylum applicants in 2008 was Iraq (40,500, down 10 percent from 45,100 in 2007), followed by Somalia (21,800), the Russian Federation (20,500), Afghanistan (18,500) and China (17,400). Of the 10 main nationalities claiming asylum last year, some remained stable while others registered significant increases.

Countries of origin recording a significant rise in applications included Afghanistan (up 85 percent), Zimbabwe (up 82 percent), Somalia (up 77 percent), Nigeria (up 71 percent) and Sri Lanka (up 24 percent). All of these countries experienced unrest or conflicts in 2008.

And where are Russian citizens going?  Poland, of all places.  According to the report, “As in 2007, Poland remained the prime destination for asylum-seekers from the Russian Federation in 2008, with a total of 6,600 new claims.” Poland ..read more

A suspected murderer, an ex-KGB turned oligarch, and a “dissident” liberal are all part of what will prove to be a mayoral election of the year.  The three aren’t the only candidates.  Of course, every official Russian political party has thrown their hat into the race.  The aforementioned Lugovoi will run on the LDPR ticket, Anatoly Pakhomov represents United Russia, Yuri Dzaganiya for the KPRF, and recently announced Just Russia candidate Viktor Kurpitko.  Other possible candidates include a possible run by former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova and the head of Sochi’s arm wrestling federation Stanislav Koretsky (whether the latter will take in repeated viewings of Sly Stallone’s Over the Top for inspiration is unknown). The prize is Sochi the Black Sea coastal resort town that will host the 2014 Winter Games. Or rather the real prize is the $12.5 billion in allocated government funds to make Sochi an Olympic Winter ..read more