Category Archives: Russian Politics

Solidarity may be band of “scrubby little opposition organizations [that] have no future,” but if things keep going the way their going, Boris Nemtsov will be wining and dining on American think tank honorariums, hobnobbing with US politicos, and testifying in front of Congress for years to come.  Wait, haven’t they done a bit of this already?

Well, let’s just say that Nemtsov’s future is looking a bit brighter thanks to his efforts to paint himself as a repressed dissident.  On Tuesday, Nemtsov reported that the cops seized another 100,000 copies of Putin. The Result. Ten Years. in Smolensk.  I’ve already noted how the cops seized 100,000 copies of the Nemtsov and Milov report last week in St. Petersburg.  The act was clearly a way to prevent activists from distributing the screed to potential investors at the St. Petersburg International ..read more

I have little love for Russian liberals.  Readers of this blog probably know that well.  Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov in particular, as one can sense from my take down of their 2008 anti-Putin screed for the now defunct and sorely missed The eXile. I even giggled when Nashi threw piss in Nemtsov’s face.

The dynamic duo is back with a new Putin obsessed treatise, elegantly entitled Putin. The Results. Ten Years.  So much for creativity.  It is sure to get more media attention than it deserves.  I have yet to read it, and probably won’t.  I’m sure my eXile piece applies just as well to this one.  According to reports in the Russian media, the text evaluates Putin’s decade long run and the tandem’s two year performance.  Vedomosti writes that Nemtsov characterized the text this way on his ..read more

As many know, talk of modernization is once again all the rage in Russia.  But what is it and to what end?  Is it merely another example of “eternal Russian question” of historical backwardness?  Is Medvedev’s overtures merely a replay of every Tsar and Commissar before him?  Or does Russia’s current backwardness have more immediate roots in the liberal capitalism of the post-Soviet era?  Can “modernization” really be achieved with a Russian Silicon Valley, fiber optic lines, nanotechnology, the political decentralization of the political system, and the increased privatization of its economy as many partisans across Russia’s liberal political spectrum advocate?  Is innovation enough, especially in a globalized economy that is predicated on increasing redundancy of labor, de-industrialization, and financial casino capitalism?

Some of these questions are posed in “ Their Modernization and Ours” by the editors of ..read more

As the Power Vertical’s Robert Coalson explains, this is the way the game is played.  Anyone familiar with Russian politics over the last 20 years, if not the last century, will not be surprised United Russia hatchet-men hired “spin doctors” to spread black PR against opponents of UR power broker and Saratov deputy Vyacheslav Volodin.  I’m impressed that their smear arsenal included such creative tactics such as hiring a student to throw animal shit at journalists and paying homeless to stage rallies in support of opposing candidates.  I’m sure if someone digs deep enough they will probably find a few Nashists on the payroll.

The revelations come from Sergei Pochechuyev and Igor Osovin, who have detailed their service as political hit-men in their soon to be published book, The Black PR Practitioners Of The White Bear (Chernye piarshchiki belogo medvedia).  ..read more

Yesterday, December 1, was 75 years since the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization, and Stalin ally.  It was on the night of December 1, 1934 that a certain Leonid Nikolaev, a disgruntled party worker, shot Kirov in the secretary’s third floor office. Nikolaev was immediately caught and interrogated under Stalin’s personal supervision.  He was executed shortly thereafter.

Rumors have been circling for years as to what Nikolaev’s motives were.  Some have suggest that Kirov was having an affair with Nikolaev’s wife.  Others have suggested that he had a personal or work beef with Kirov.  These questions remain mostly unanswered.  Partly it is because they are unanswerable. But also because the majority of historians believe that Nikolaev did not act alone.  For them, Stalin was the main culprit and wanted to get rid of Kirov because of his popularity.  Since Kirov has been held up ..read more

I think I finally understand why the Kremlin was so hell bent on securing Yuri Luzhkov’s continued domination over Moscow politics: the weather.  Yuri Mikhailovich can control the weather.  Or so he promises.  According to Time,

For just a few million dollars, the mayor’s office will hire the Russian Air Force to spray a fine chemical mist over the clouds before they reach the capital, forcing them to dump their snow outside the city. Authorities say this will be a boon for Moscow, which is typically covered with a blanket of snow from November to March. Road crews won’t need to constantly clear the streets, and traffic — and quality of life — will undoubtedly improve.

This won’t be Luzhkov’s first foray into the Promethean.  In 2002, Moscow’s Grand Prince pushed a project to reverse the flow of the Ob River to irrigate Central Asia.  Needless to say, the people of Central ..read more