Category Archives: Corruption

Russia’s Far East has always been an unruly place.  Tsars and Communists alike dumped its criminals and politicals there.  In the interwar period it was a hot bed for lawlessness and banditry, where gangs and holdouts of the White Army made life difficult for the new Soviet state.  There is one historical artifact that always stands out in my mind when it comes to the Russia’s Far East.  I tend to give it to my students so they can get a flavor of the heady days of the Russian Revolution.  The document is an anonymous letter to Lenin dated 15 January 1918.  After lambasting Lenin for not keeping his promise to deliver “peace, bread, land, and liberty in three days’ time” the complainant ended with this warning: “If you’ve picked up the reins [of power] then go ahead and drive, and if you can’t, then, honey, you can take a ..read more

The Tower: A Songspiel is a new agitprop production from the fine people at Chto Delat.  The film is the final part of a trilogy that includes Perestroika Songspiel: Victory over the Coup (2008) and Partisan Songspiel: A Belgrade Story (2009).  The theme of this installment:

Filmed in April 2010, The Tower: A Songspiel is based on real documents of Russian social and political life and on an analysis of the conflict that has developed around the planned Okhta Center development in Petersburg, where the Gazprom corporation intends to house the headquarters of its locally-based subsidiaries in a 403-meter-high skyscraper designed by the UK-based architectural firm RMJM. The proposed skyscraper has provoked one of the fiercest confrontations UNESCO World Heritage Site, Gazprom has so far managed to secure all the necessary permissions and has practically ..read more

Russian faith healer, self-proclaimed messiah, and all around conman, Grigory Grabovoi was released from the slammer last Friday.  Apparently, Grabovoi, who’s antics have included promising Beslan mothers to resurrect their dead children, posing as the Second Coming, and declaring that if he became Russia’s president, he would outlaw death, kept his mouth shut in prison.  He should consider himself fortunate to only serve four years of his eight year sentence for swindling people “under the guise of resurrecting the victims’ dead relatives or curing them of serious illnesses.”  Actually, he’s lucky that one of his victims didn’t put a bullet in him.

Prison seemed to have no reformatory effect on Grabovoi because it didn’t take long for him to get back to his old ways.  Alas, the Messiah’s work is never done.

Always ready to take advantage of a community’s sorrow, Grabovoi has ..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

Moscow.  Being in Russia’s capital provides a perspective impossible to acquire through the news.  Contrary to popular belief, the Internet doesn’t bring us closer together.  Instead, via the Internet Russia exists as mystified, mediated through the ghastly stories that both the Russian and Western media are obsessed with.  It is only after being here a few days do the images of the culture industry, pounded so forcefully into an observer’s consciousness begin to disperse like a fog.  Granted, Russia still doesn’t appear in total focus–that is impossible for any one individual to achieve.  The mediations conjured in the Internet’s ether are nevertheless replaced with those recorded by one’s senses.  Having the soil under your feet, those familiar, yet uncanny smells–the dry, hot bursts of metallic air from the entrance to the Metro or the moldy scent of apartment vestibules, along with rubbing shoulders with others on the screeching ..read more

Here’s a murder you probably won’t hear about in the Western press.  Grigory Nosikov, 48, was found dead on Wednesday of stab wounds outside the gates of his house, which is located in the Naro-Fominsk district some 60 miles west of Moscow.  Nosikov was not a journalist, oppositionist, or a human rights activist.  If he was you would probably know his name and his life by heart by now.  But no.  Nosikov was a member of United Russia and deputy of the town council in Kubinka.  Nosikov was also the owner of the Zalesye transportation company, and according to police, it was this, not his politics, which most likely led to his doom.

Nosikov is one of several deputies who have been murdered over the years.  According to Argumenty i fakty, being a Russian deputy is a risky job.  Not counting those in Ingushetia and Chechnya (which would make the list ..read more