This is a syndicated column originally published by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore. One is a republic inside Russia that is formally ruled by Moscow. One is an independent country on Russia’s western frontier that has long been Moscow’s client state. Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is accustomed to getting its way with both of them — until recently, […]
Staunton, November 3 – In the final decades of the Soviet Union, many in the non-Russian union republics began to ask why some of them were headed by members of their titular nationalities and others by Russians and increasingly demanded that members of the titular nation occupy key posts. Over time, Moscow backed down, first […]
Staunton, July 3 – Two United Russia Duma deputies have introduced legislation that would require all schools in the Russian Federation to use a single set of textbooks for basic courses, a step they say is necessary to ensure the defense of “a common educational space” in the country. But officials of the State Council […]
Staunton, April 2 — Moscow now runs the federal subjects in much the same hyper-centralized way the Soviet Politburo did before Gorbachev’s perestroika, despite the name of the country now being the Russian Federation and Moscow routinely insisting that Ukraine which is less centralized than Russia, must “federalize,” according to Vadim Shtepa. After the USSR […]
Staunton, February 14 — Concerned that regional TV channels in Russia might broadcast something at variance to Moscow ones, especially in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections, Vladimir Putin is moving quietly but quickly to take total control of those channels based outside of Moscow and in some cases still relatively independent of it. […]
Staunton, January 15 – Many in Russia and the West are celebrating Yevgeny Primakov’s argument presented at the Mercury Club this week that hyper-centralization, a policy associated with Vladimir Putin, is a threat to the Russian Federation and its economic recovery and his call for devolving more powers to the regions of the country. But […]
Staunton, December 20 – In the minds of some, Vladimir Putin used his press conference December 18 to demonstrate his conviction that he will remain president of Russia forever, ever more Russian commentators are asking “What will be the situation after Putin?” Among those doing so is Daniil Kotsyubinsky, a historian and journalist, who gave […]
Staunton, December 15 – Russia’s economic problems combined with Moscow’s insistence on extracting just as much money from the regions as it did before is exacerbating relations between the center and the republics and prompting the latter to reconsider their attitude toward Russia as a whole, according to a Tatar analyst. A Kazan analyst who […]
Staunton, December 15 – Russia’s economic problems combined with Moscow’s insistence on extracting just as much money from the regions as it did before is exacerbating relations between the center and the republics and prompting the latter to reconsider their attitude toward Russia as a whole, according to a Tatar analyst. A Kazan analyst who […]
Staunton, November 21 – Vladimir Putin rarely has been willing to retreat from any of his decisions even when they have clearly been shown to be wrong, but he has done so in the case of the office of the presidency in Tatarstan, an indication of just how important the Volga Tatars have become for […]
