Staunton, June 14 – “Reconciliation is a good thing, and hostility is bad,” Igor Klyamkin says. “But there are reconciliations and reconciliations,” some of which open a path to a better future and others of which point to the return of the evils of the past. Unfortunately, the one on offer in Russia today is […]
Staunton, February 18 – As Vladimir Putin’s rule has taken on ever more features of fascism, analysts have focused on those fascist and proto-fascist writers he has cited in his speeches. But there may be a more immediate model: Admiral Kolchak who has been called Russia’s “first fascist ruler” by both his supporters and his […]
Staunton, January 25 – Ninety-six years ago, the Soviet government launched what became a decade-long campaign to “de-Cossackize” Russia, a campaign that Cossacks remember as “yet another genocide” in the Caucasus and a reminder that relations between the Cossacks and the state are more complicated and conflicted than most assume. As portrayed in Hollywood movies […]
Staunton, July 27 – Residents of the Russian Federation are increasingly identifying not as Russians but as Siberians not only because they feel themselves different than ethnic Russians in terms of mentality but also because Moscow treats them like a colony and because they have closer ties to China and the Pacific Rim countries than […]
Staunton, July 17 – Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Ukraine appears to have united most Russians, but it has introduced or at least highlighted a deep split among Russian nationalists, some of whom support his actions and others very much oppose, to the point that people calling themselves “Russian nationalists” are now on both sides of […]
Staunton, June 28 – No more than one in 20 of the graves of Russian soldiers who died in World War I remains undisturbed to this day, the result of a Soviet policy intended to downplay Russia’s role in that conflict and shift losses from it to the deaths arising from the Russian civil war, […]
Staunton, 3 June – The Ukrainian crisis and Moscow’s insistence on the federalization of that country have “awakened the interest of Russian society in federalism,” with some predominantly ethnic Russian regions and territories now as committed to achieving real federalism in Russia as any of the non-Russian republics. And if Moscow does not agree to […]
