Staunton, January 22 — “Post-Soviet Russian nationalism has been fatally flawed from the outset because it arose not from the word ‘nation’ but from the word ‘nationality,’” a reflection of the fact that a Russian “nation” in the normal of sense that term does not yet exist in Russia, according to Vadim Shtepa. In a […]
Staunton, December 14 – A country or group of countries which declares itself to be a federation but does not give that term real content is at risk of falling apart, while one that does not only will retain all its parts but become an attractive model for people around the world, according to Vadim […]
Staunton, November 30 – Seventy-five years ago, Moscow launched what became known as the Winter War against Finland. It used much the same propaganda and tactics it is using against Ukraine now. It faced far greater resistance than its vast disproportion of forces had led it to believe. And thanks to that resistance, it achieved […]
Staunton, November 25 – The unwillingness of Russians to make a sharp break with the Soviet past and accept that Russia today is “a new independent state” and the efforts of Vladimir Putin and his regime to present Russia as a country with a single unbroken history has left Russia without a present or a […]
Staunton, November 6 – Ukrainians and Russians differ in many ways, Vadim Shtepa says, but perhaps the most important is that Ukrainians “feel themselves masters of their own country” but Russians “do not feel” the same way. Instead, among residents of the Russian Federation, there is a sense that the powers control everything and the […]
Staunton, September 23 – In an article bearing the title “There Was No March But the Traitors Were Found,” Anatoly Tsygankov, “the chief political observer of Karelia,” according to Politika-Karelia.ru, provided a classical example of tendentious disinformation about the protest against Moscow’s war in Ukraine that took place in Petrozavodsk on Sunday. Such articles often […]
Staunton, September 9 – In his latest update on Stalinism as “effective management,” Vladimir Putin has disbanded Russia’s Regional Affairs Ministry, yet another sign of his drive to further centralize the country, eliminate any serious discussion of Russia’s regions and their problems, and thus undermine any chance that Moscow will have an effective nationality policy. […]
Staunton, August 30 – Vladimir Putin is often accused of wanting to restore the Soviet system or at least its core values, but in fact, the Kremlin leader is interested in promoting the its “imperial-militarist” element and not its “revolutionary” component, a pattern that has the effect of limiting Russia’s ability to deal with the […]
Staunton, August 4 – Moscow’s adoption of ‘imperial federalism’ as a strategy to extend its power over neighboring countries is sparking a variety of demands within the Russian Federation for moves toward making that country a genuine and not only a nominal federal system, according to Vadim Shtepa. In an article on Rufabula.com, Shtepa, one […]
