The following is an excerpt from Paula Chertok’s East-West Blog: Historian Andrei Zubov presents a powerful lecture on the roots of the Soviet mentality and the resurgence of Stalin so jarringly visible in Russia today. He reviews the history of Russia’s destructive leadership from the 20th century to the present, a leadership that has left […]
Staunton, November 6 – The Kremlin has taken control not only of public discussions about memory of the repressed and not only about any criticism of Stalin but also “criticism of the contemporary exaltation of Stalin,” lest that lead Russians to draw the obvious parallels between the late dictator and Vladimir Putin, according to Irina […]
Staunton, July 6 NB: As longtime readers of Windows on Eurasia know, there is no commentator on Russian politics for which I have greater respect than historian Irina Pavlova. Her 70 essays written between 2006 and 2014 and which appeared on Grani.ru and Rufabula.com are among the most insightful commentaries we have on the nature […]
Staunton, June 3 – Centuries do not always correspond to the period between years ending in 00. Most historians argue that the nineteenth century, for example, lasted from 1815 with the defeat of Napoleon until 1914 when World War I broke out. And now a Moscow historian is arguing that “in Russia, the 20th century […]
Staunton, March 11 – As in Stalin’s time, Russians are now denouncing other Russians simply in order to get their apartments, their jobs or other benefits, a trend that reflects the current moral degradation of Russian society and one that can lead to a situation in which denunciations and purges get out of hand, according […]
Staunton, January 30 – The old left-right continuum in Russian politics with its differences between conservatives and reformers ceased to be relevant as the basis for analysis and understanding with Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea and the formation of a populist left-right alliance of support, according to Aleksandr Morozov. In a commentary in New Times, he […]
Staunton, October 19 – Russia’s 25-year-long era of freedom, which began in 1989 with the Congress of Peoples Deputies, has come to an end and the prospects for the future are extremely bleak, according to Academician Yury Pivovarov. If Russians do not transform themselves, their country risks becoming part of the third world. In an […]
Staunton, August 13 – The Soviet government benefited from the fact that many African, Asian and Latin American leaders received educations in the USSR, and the Putin regime hopes to build on that past not only by attracting more students from these countries but by opening Russian-run universities and cultural centers in these countries. Like […]
Staunton, June 10 – Apparently not satisfied simply with sending Yevgeny Vitishko to a prison camp for three years for his exposes of environmental depredation by the authorities in advance of the Sochi Olympics, the commanders of the facility where he is serving his sentence are seeking to set other prisoners against him and thus […]
