Tag: Russians

Russia ‘De-Ukrainizing’ Population Of Crimea, Occupation Census Shows

April 17, 2015

Staunton, April 16 — The number of people in Crimea identifying as ethnic Ukrainians has fallen by 232,000 between the 2001 census conducted by the Ukrainian government and the 2014 census conducted by the Russian occupation authorities, a decline that has reduced the percentage of ethnic Ukrainians on the peninsula from 24.0 to 15.1 percent. […]

Russians In Deep Denial About Their Country And the World

March 31, 2015

Staunton, March 30 — “The longing for ‘former greatness’” that many Russians feel is “playing a bad joke” on them, Olga Idrisova writes in Moskovsky Komsomolets today, because it has led them to don “thick rose-colored glasses” and engage in deep denial about reality, “subconsciously blocking out” anything which doesn’t fit with their preferred imagery. […]

Russians’ Hatred Easy To Unleash But Difficult To Limit, Reverse or Overcome

March 30, 2015

Staunton, March 30 — Many are taking comfort in the notion that just as Russians appear to have reduced their hatred of immigrants when encouraged by the Kremlin to hate Ukrainians instead so too their hatred against the latter could be ended relatively easily if Moscow changed course — and in any case won’t expand […]

Russians Repress Ukrainians In Far East And Threaten To Deport Crimean Tatars There

March 27, 2015

Staunton, March 26 — Ethnic Ukrainians in the Russian Far East, the descendants of Ukrainians who moved there voluntarily in late tsarist times and forcibly in Soviet ones, are being harassed by Russians there for their support of Ukraine, even as Russians in Crimea are threatening the Crimean Tatars with deportation to that faraway region. […]

New Russian Study Challenges Notion That Stalin Was Necessary

March 12, 2015

Staunton, March 12 — It is an article of faith for Vladimir Putin and many Russians as well that, despite what he and they are sometimes willing to concede were Joseph Stalin’s excesses, the Soviet dictator was absolutely necessary in building up a strong Soviet Union that was then capable of defeating Nazi Germany. But […]

Peoples Assimilated By Russians Now Recovering Their Earlier Identities

March 6, 2015

Staunton, March 6 – The disappearance of non-Russian cultures as a result of Moscow’s assimilationist policies continue to attract attention, but there is another trend which may prove to be equally or even more important: the revival of groups Russians had only incompletely assimilated and their reconstitution as separate peoples. One of these, says Neyola […]

Five Notable Developments In a Country Disappearing From Russian News Broadcasts

February 27, 2015

Staunton, February 24 – Valery Panyushkin today points to a development that, like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story which didn’t bark, not everyone has noticed because it is about the absence of something rather than its presence – and that is the increasing lack of stories on Russian television about Russia. It has […]

Moscow Didn’t Win Latvian Vote But Can Learn Some Lessons from It, Russian Commentator Says

October 9, 2014

Staunton, October 5 – Despite upbeat comments by a number of Russian media outlets yesterday and today that “ours” (having in mind Soglasiye), won the [Latvian parliamentary] elections,” Igor Pavlovsky says, “the facts are that [the members of that party] are not ‘ours’ and they did not win.” According to the Regnum news agency commentator, […]

Estonians Believe in Higher Powers but Not in God, Lauristin Says

September 12, 2014

Staunton, September 10 – Even as Russians are being offered the notion that Putin is God and some are telling jokes with the punchline that the difference between Putin and God is that God doesn’t think he’s Putin, a new study by Marju Lauristin provides an important glimpse into the nature of the understanding of […]

Meanwhile in Russia, Spontaneous Worker Unrest is Spreading

September 8, 2014

Staunton, September 8 – Anyone watching Moscow television would conclude that “there is no more important news than the situation in Ukraine and the intrigues of NATO,” Olga Filina says in today’s Ogonyok, but those who follow Russia’s labor market say that “the most important news” involves the spread of protests by workers who haven’t […]