The current and continuing demonstrations in Armenia over price hikes by the state electricity company contain many lessons for us and Russia. First, they highlight the continuing economic and political pathologies of the neo-Soviet or Putinist experiment where the state retains the controlling interest in the economy. Under these autocratic conditions state ownership remains a […]
Staunton, August 23 – Both Russian and Asian analysts say that Moscow’s focus on Ukraine is allowing Beijing to accelerate the process of transforming both Russia east of the Urals and Central Asia into its “near abroad,” thus undercutting in the east the very policy goals Vladimir Putin has proclaimed in the west. In Nezavisimaya […]
Staunton, 2 June – Two new studies, one a biography of the late ethnic theorist Lev Gumilyev and another an investigation of the Eurasianists of the 1920s, throw new light on how classical Eurasianism was transmitted to its recent advocates and how they transformed it into something quite different than the original. The first of […]
Staunton, May 26 – Vladimir Putin “has lost the shortest cold war in history,” Yevgeny Ikhlov says. After having seized Crimea for Russia 12 weeks ago and effectively challenged the West to a contest, the Kremlin leader has backed away from his larger plan to counterpose a “Russian world” to everyone else. In a commentary […]
Staunton, May 17 – Many arguments about Ukraine have become a battle of analogies where advocates of various outcomes do so less by talking about what conditions are actually like in that country than by suggesting analogies with countries which also have significant regional tensions. One such case is an exchange between two commentators who […]
Staunton, March 26 – Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea has not only opened a new divide between Moscow and the West. It has re-ordered relations among the former Soviet republics and that in turn has raised questions about the way such changes will affect the future of many unresolved conflicts there. In an article for Vestnik […]
