Siloviki
Will the Russian Economic Crisis Create a Political One?
By Sean at 22 September, 2008, 7:48 am
Moscow’s stock market soared almost 30 percent on Friday thanks to the Russian government announcement it would dump about $130 billion into the sagging market. Today, it injected more credit into the market just to make sure. About $24 billion worth at 8.75 percent interest. The move was to disperse more capital among banks pushed [...]
Read More >>Clan Illogic
By Sean at 16 June, 2008, 12:49 am
Jeffrey Tayler takes up clanology in his article “The Master and Medvedev” in hopes to map the innards of Kremlin Inc (hat tip to James at Robert Amsterdam for pointing to it). Tayler argues that Putin’s anointing of Medvedev as President, who in turn returned the favor by making his patron PM, was a [...]
Read More >>A Conspiracy Behind the Rumor?
By Sean at 1 May, 2008, 10:30 am
The political fallout from Moskovskii Korrespondent’s rumor about Putin dumping his wife Liudmila for contortionist extraordinaire and Olympic medalist Alina Kabaeva is taking political shape. Last Friday, the Duma passed an amendment to the mass media law that adds slander to the list of unmentionables such as revealing state secrets, supporting terrorism, advocating pornography, and [...]
Read More >>The Rise of the “Civiliki” and Provincial Elite Warfare
By Sean at 8 March, 2008, 1:26 pm
Western leaders have been hoping and praying that Dmitri Medvedev will be more “liberal” in foreign and domestic policy. According to a LexisNexis search the new President elect’s name is often followed with words like “liberal,” “liberal instincts,” “liberal inclinations,” and the like. It’s not that Medvedev hasn’t given Westerners any reason to hope. Take [...]
Read More >>“Tolya, my colleagues. Didn’t I make myself clear?”
By Sean at 12 February, 2008, 2:10 pm
Winston Churchill was never without an insightful quip about Russia. In 1939, he made his famous Russia is “a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.” Just when you think he couldn’t top that, at some point he made this apt observation: “Watching clans in Russia is like watching dogs fighting under a carpet.” If [...]
Read More >>The Myth of the Democratic Model
By Sean at 11 February, 2008, 3:03 pm
My latest piece for The eXile is now online. Here is an excerpt of “The Myth of the Democratic Model“:
Stanford poli-sci prof and Commissar of Transitionology, Michael McFaul, is quiet no more. After a few years of relative reticence, McFaul, once known as the most gregarious cheerleader for the Yeltsin regime, was smoked [...]
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