Staunton, November 2 – In his classic novel, “A Day Longer than an Age,” the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov offered the powerful image of “mankurts,” people deprived of their identities and thus transformed into more pliant and subservient slaves of others. And this image was applied by many to the peoples of Central Asia in […]
Staunton, September 11 – Vladimir Putin wants to impose a North Korean-type of control over the Internet, according to Russian blogger Anton Nosik; but the costs such closure will impose on the Russian economy, the ability of Russian surfers to work around his actions, and, last but not least, the linguistic diversity of the country […]
Staunton, August 29 – For many peoples, the death of their languages marks the beginning of the end of their national existences. But for others, the death of the one does not affect the life of the other. Indeed, some nations become more vital and nationalistic only after they stop speaking what some of their […]
Staunton, April 6 – “Russianness” is a “synthetic category,” one in which the father of a family can be Mordvin, the mother a German, and the children ethnic Russians, a reflection of the floating quality of identity in that country, government policies, and personal choices, according to a leading Moscow ethnographer. In an interview with […]
