Category Archives: History

I haven’t done an update on Kyrgyzstan in several days.  While things seemed to have calmed in the southern part of the country, tensions are high, the humanitarian crisis is deep, and the political outcomes are uncertain.

Two questions have been occupying most commentators:  Why the violence, or, specifically why didn’t we see it coming? and What are the international ramifications, particularly for the US and Russia?  I’m personally less interested in the second question, and for the most part discussion on this has ranged from the ludicrous (for how ludicrous see Michael Hancock’s undressing on Registan), the paranoiac and uninformed, the all too typical, to the regurgitated.  Basically, I’ll leave it to the foreign policy wоnks to untangle this mess.  I just hope to hear something new as they do.

The “why” question, however, is the thing that seems ..read more

Contrary to what most people think, I see few signs of the neo-Sovietization of Russia.  What I have observed, however, is a return to Russian traditionalism, even a kind of re-embrace of Tsarist symbolism.  I’ve noticed this in several areas of Russian daily life: Christmas cards with the recently canonized last Romanov family, icons of the last Tsar sold in kiosks, large portraits of Petr Stolypin and Sergei Witte at the entrance of the International University, and book after book reevaluating the late Tsarist period, newly published volumes of Stolypin’s collected works, and the memoirs of not only Witte, but the diaries and biographies of princes and princesses in bookstores.

Let us also not forget the growing assertiveness of the Orthodox Church in cultural and political life, or the fact that Dmitri Medvedev’s inauguration looked like a Tsarist ..read more

I know it’s quite out of date at this point. I had planned to share some impressions and photos from Victory Day a few weeks ago but my self-imposed hiatus got in the way.  I had pretty much abandoned the idea, but then a colleague of mine posted her thoughts and I said to myself, why the hell not.  Otherwise, my impressions would have just remained in my head and the pictures exiled to the abyss that is my hard drive.

Basically, my impressions can be summed up as follows:

1.  Security nightmare.

This picture from Chekhovskya station is indicative of the security hell that the Moscow authorities concocted on Victory Day.  I understand that heavy security was necessary.  There were rumors, theories, and expectations that  another terrorist attack would occur on Victory Day.   Nevertheless, I couldn’t help note the irony that what was done to provide security only ..read more

Two things hit me as I emerged from the Oktyabrskaya metro station on Saturday morning to check out the KPRF May Day march.  First was that God himself must have been smiling down on the KPRFers.  After several days of on and off rain, his holiness decided to part the clouds, let the sun shine through, and let Russian commies do their thing without the hindrance of rainfall.  The second thing that hit me was that unlike most, or should I say every political rally I’ve been to, the Communists began marching on time.  Who would have ever guessed Communists to be prompt.  And they say Leninist discipline is dead.  As soon as I pushed through the heavy glass metro doors, I had to quicken my step to catch up with the dancing red flags on the move.

Luckily, ..read more

I don’t usually comment on American politics.  I rarely devote my time to reading about the place.  The level of hyperbole and rhetorical inanity makes me want to vomit.  Also, since I’ve been in Moscow, the US looks even crazier than it does when I’m there (the strange effect of this is that Russian politics looks downright normal).  I’ve also totally shied away from US-Russia foreign policy issues.  I used to.  Not anymore. There are people out there who do it better, and frankly, the debate is so locked in Cold War binaries, I can’t help to find it all a bit boring, repetitive, and quite nauseating.  So if you’re here looking for a treatise on START, ruminations on the Great Game, or how America is encircling Russia or how Russia is an empire “resurgent,” I suggest you point your mouse elsewhere.

BUT . . . ..read more

Russian chinovniki are known for a lot of things–graft, ineptitude, oblomovism, and when necessary, zealous obsequiousness.  The latter is usually the only thing that seems to spur him off his perch, which is usually behind a desk, into some kind of action.  As any student of Russian history knows, the dynamic between the chinovnik and his superiors is usually one where the latter reigns down on the head of the former, often with a measure of force since this is really the only way to pull the bureaucrat out of lethargy.  Sadly, for the chinovnik this dynamic also entails that when he follows the often inept orders of his bosses, he, not the leader, gets blamed when everything goes to hell.

Being a Russian bureaucrat can be a precarious as much as it is a rewarding position.

Sometimes, the chinovnik takes preemptive action ..read more