Staunton, December 5 – In 1969, Bertram Wolfe published his classic study, “Krupskaya Purges the People’s Libraries” in the London-based journal Survey, an essay in which he described the way Lenin’s wife began putting a straightjacket on intellectual life in the Soviet Union. Now, in yet another revival of the Soviet past, Vladimir Putin is […]
Staunton, June 9 – Dagestani natives don’t divide the peoples of their republic between the more numerous and the smaller but rather between those who fought to the death for Daghestan against invaders and others which didn’t and instead surrendered quickly and collaborated, according to a professor at Daghestan State University. Timur Aytberov said that […]
Staunton, May 6 – In what is simultaneously a measure of fears that the minority languages of Karelia may die out and an indication of the commitment of republic officials to prevent that, officials at Petrozavodsk State University have announced that students who take courses in Karelian and Wepsy will be paid a 3,000 ruble […]
Staunton, May 5 – Commentators have long celebrated the fact that the USSR broke up with little violence in 1991 – the conflicts in Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdniestria and Chechnya typically have been treated as exceptions that prove the rule. But now, many of the unresolved issues from 23 years ago are leading to violence […]
Staunton, May 5 – Ostensibly at the insistence of parental demands and despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration that there are three official languages on the peninsula, Russian is replacing Ukrainian as the language of instruction in schools there, according to a report in Izvestiya today. The Moscow paper says that parents in Sevastopol, Simferopol, […]
Staunton, April 12 – If Kyiv were forced to introduce Russian-style federalism in Ukraine as Moscow is demanding, the consequences would be that “the sphere of use of the Russian language would not increase” as many imagine “but contract,” according to Kirill Yankov, a member of the Yabloko Party and a researcher at the Moscow […]
Staunton, March 31 – Confronted with Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and its demands for the federalization of Ukraine, the Ukrainian foreign ministry has countered by calling for every republic within the Russian Federation to hold a referendum about their future status and possible independence. Moscow has been pushing for the federalization of Ukraine for two […]
