The 11th annual NYC Russian Film Week took place in Manhattan from October 28 to November 3, 2011. Caterina Innocente discussed the new Russian cinema, the kind you watch without pop-corn.
Speaking at a conference hosted last week by The Heritage Foundation, Russian opposition leader and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov delivered a withering critique of the Obama administration’s policies toward Russia. Seduced by the illusion of liberal reform during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, Kasparov said, Washington placed its bets on an impossible scenario, as Vladimir Putin never actually left the seat of power. James Kimer reports from Washington, DC.
Privatization seems to be back on the front burner in Russia, since President Dimity Medvedev’s approval this past August of a new plan requiring the government to sell off many of its ownership stakes in Russian businesses by 2017. (According to the latest figures from Standard & Poor’s, state ownership of shares in Russian companies accounts for 53% of market capitalization in Russia.) However, firebrand Moscow attorney, investors’-rights activist and political blogger Alexey Navalny criticizes the increasingly popular idea that privatization could be a “magic pill” for curing the corruption that plagues Russia's still-developing economy.
According to Andrey Piontkovsky, Senior Fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Systems Analysis, Vladimir Putin's one man dictatorship has been effectively put into place as of September 2011. Piontkovsky spoke with IMR’s Olga Khvostunova about the catastrophic consequences of this regime and about the essential role that the political elite plays in this process.
A couple of decades ago, one would have written something along the lines of, “On October 24, 2011 all progressive people will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the establishment of judicial reform in Russia, a fundamental document symbolizing the start of considerable modifications in the judiciary, especially targeting the transformation of Soviet courts into an independent branch of power.” Yes, the Soviet courts precisely, as the reform was initiated during Soviet rule, when the courts were Soviet both de facto and de jure.
Alexander Yanov explains why is it that INSOR ideologues found themselves unexpectedly alligned with Dugin, and what was the “great turning point” in the ideology of the imperial revanchists.
The new intercontinental class of "Global Russians" and TV's sexy "Russian Dolls" are the faces of a culture on the rise across America. But to some who speak it here, keeping Russian alive matters more than any clash of cultures, writes W.P. Norton.
In a recent article, Kathy Lally, Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, gave a detailed account of U.S. [Department of State] officials visiting Russia. During this trip, it was revealed that the next stage of the “reset” policy would focus on human rights.
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