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Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Kremlin’s Prisoner

Details: 24 October 2013; Vladimir Kara-Murza

On October 25, 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the Yukos oil company and chairman of the Open Russia Foundation, was arrested at the Novosibirsk airport. A decade later, he remains Russia’s most prominent political prisoner. IMR Senior Policy Advisor Vladimir Kara-Murza considers that day to have been the turning point in the modern history of Russia, and the Khodorkovsky case to be the most vivid symbol of the country’s authoritarian regime.

Details: Nation

Echoes of the Past: Punitive Psychiatry

Details: 21 October 2013; Alexander Podrabinek

In October, Russian activist Mikhail Kosenko, one of the accused in the "Bolotnaya Square Case," was sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment. This was the first instance of an open use of psychiatry for political purposes in post-Soviet Russia. Author and human rights campaigner Alexander Podrabinek, who was convicted in the 1970s for his book "Punitive Medicine," concludes that the Soviet practice of punitive psychiatry has returned to Russia.

Details: Nation

Accessible Environments for Russians with Disabilities

Details: 21 October 2013; Boris Bruk

Thirteen million people with disabilities currently reside in Russia—this is around 10 percent of the country’s population. Yet the conditions for their integration and normal everyday life are still highly inadequate. IMR Advisor Boris Bruk assesses the problem and the possible solutions.

Details: Politics

There Is No Such Thing as a Former “Eminence Grise”: On the Return of Vladislav Surkov

Details: 21 October 2013; Tatiana Stanovaya

In late September, former deputy Kremlin chief-of-staff Vladislav Surkov returned to the Kremlin as an assistant to President Vladimir Putin. Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya discusses why the Russian leader needed to rehabilitate the former “eminence grise.”

Details: Law

Hostile Takeover: On Putin’s “Judicial Reform”

Details: 17 October 2013; Ekaterina Mishina

In early October, Vladimir Putin introduced a bill into the State Duma that would abolish Russia’s Supreme Arbitration Court and transfer its functions to the Supreme Court. IMR Advisor Ekaterina Mishina, a prominent legal scholar, contends that the bill destroys one of the few remaining accomplishments of Russia's judicial reforms.

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