Staunton, December 5, 2015 In response to Vladimir Putin’s address and the arrest of Karelian regionalist writer Vadim Shtepa, Karelian head Aleksandr Khudilaynen says that the West is seeking to use Islamic fundamentalism against Russia just as it tried to use Nazism against the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Khudilaynen said that it was “not […]
Staunton, November 9 – Most people who predict the disintegration of the Russian Federation focus on ethnicity, but in fact, as the situation in Karelia shows, ethnicity plays a much smaller role in mobilizing the population to defend itself against Moscow than do competitive elections, Vadim Shtepa says. “Real regionalism,” the Karelian activist and commentator […]
Staunton, November 6 On November 7, some will celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, and on November 9, a much smaller number will mark the anniversary of the Third Reich, a conjunction of dates that again prompts many to compare these two systems and their evils. In a Rufabula commentary November 6, Russian regionalist […]
Staunton, October 19 – One of the most memorable passages of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is when one GULAG inmate explains to another that Moscow has decided what time it is — regardless of where the sun is located in the sky — prompting the latter to speculate that the […]
Staunton, October 12 – The creation by the United States of the Trans-Pacific Partnership signals both the continuing American role as the key pole in international affairs and the declining importance of Europe, developments that “paradoxically” have more serious consequences for Russia than any other country, Vadim Shtepa says. On the one hand, it highlights […]
Staunton, June 19 – Not having found any evidence that the Young Karelia (“Nuori Karjala”) movement has taken money from Finland as anonymous sources had claimed, justice ministry officials in Petrozavodsk nonetheless argue that it should be declared “a foreign agent” because it had received a grant from the UN and hosted visitors from abroad. […]
Staunton, April 15 — Ukraine’s new legislation on de-sovietization is a necessary step toward restoring historic justice, Vadim Shtepa says. “Without the liquidation of the imposed heritage of communism…it is impossible to achieve the complete liberation of national mentality from soviet-imperial stereotypes and real Europeanization.” But the Russian regionalist writer says, “the brutal destruction of […]
Staunton, April 13 – Karelian activists say that the recent suggestion by Russian National Security Council chief Nikolay Patrushev that Finnish “revanchism” is behind the upsurge in popular anger and activism in Karelia is absurd and that the real cause lies in Moscow’s heavy-handed Russification policy as carried out by incumbent republic head Aleksandr Khudilaynen. […]
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, March 24 – Whenever people are confronted by changes that call into question existing paradigms, their first reaction typically is to deny that anything has happened or that it is significant, but their second is to seek analogies and parallels in the past as guides to understanding. In recent weeks, the murder of Boris […]
