Tag: Karelia

Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, sentenced in Russia to 20 years of strict-regimen labor coloney, does not intend to end his hunger strike, which he has held for already 93 days now.

Altay Artist Who Sought Independence for Siberia’s Turkic Peoples Celebrated in His Homeland 2016-01-12 20:23:36 Staunton, VA, January 12, 2016 —  Today, in Gorno-Altaysk, the capital of the Altay Republic, more than 300 people assembled to honor the memory of Grigory Choros-Gurkin, an artist who briefly headed an independent Altay Republic during the Russian civil war […]

Staunton, December 5, 2015 In response to Vladimir Putin’s address and the arrest of Karelian regionalist writer Vadim Shtepa, Karelian head Aleksandr Khudilaynen says that the West is seeking to use Islamic fundamentalism against Russia just as it tried to use Nazism against the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Khudilaynen said that it was “not […]

Staunton, November 9 – Most people who predict the disintegration of the Russian Federation focus on ethnicity, but in fact, as the situation in Karelia shows, ethnicity plays a much smaller role in mobilizing the population to defend itself against Moscow than do competitive elections, Vadim Shtepa says. “Real regionalism,” the Karelian activist and commentator […]

Staunton, November 3 – In the final decades of the Soviet Union, many in the non-Russian union republics began to ask why some of them were headed by members of their titular nationalities and others by Russians and increasingly demanded that members of the titular nation occupy key posts. Over time, Moscow backed down, first […]

Staunton, October 19 – One of the most memorable passages of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is when one GULAG inmate explains to another that Moscow has decided what time it is — regardless of where the sun is located in the sky — prompting the latter to speculate that the […]

Staunton, June 3 – On June 3, the unpopular appointed governor of Karelia orchestrated a vote by the Petrozavodsk city council against that city’s popular elected mayor, the latest development in what is an ever-intensifying struggle between governors and mayors in Russia’s regions and republics over just how “power verticals” at the regional level are […]

Staunton, May 26 – As it has done so often, the Russian government is increasing repression outside the capital and thus outside the field of view of Western journalists and diplomats at a rapid pace, something it may be able to do even more effectively if Moscow media outlets follow the advice of some not […]

Staunton, April 13 – Karelian activists say that the recent suggestion by Russian National Security Council chief Nikolay Patrushev that Finnish “revanchism” is behind the upsurge in popular anger and activism in Karelia is absurd and that the real cause lies in Moscow’s heavy-handed Russification policy as carried out by incumbent republic head Aleksandr Khudilaynen. […]

Staunton, April 5 — Thanks to the help of Finnish friends, Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, got dial-up Internet service in 1997, even before Moscow did; and the links it has provided help explain the rise of the Karelian national movement since then, including the protests this week against the Moscow-imposed governor. The Internet not […]