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FT: Out of the Shadows

Details: Nation

FT: Out of the Shadows

Details: 30 September 2011

In a recent article in the Financial Times Charles Clover, the publication’s Moscow bureau chief, writes that Vladimir Putin’s plan to return as president “unleashes open rebellion within the Kremlin.” As he explains, a series of political scandals in September might indeed be a sign of tectonic shifts in the mood of the Russian elite.

Igor Yurgens: Russian Political System is in the Dead End

Details: Nation

Igor Yurgens: Russian Political System is in the Dead End

Details: 29 September 2011

In his recent online interview to Kommersant newspaper Igor Yurgens, head of INSOR, speaks about modernization of the political regime in Russia. If it doesn’t happen, there will be catastrophe, he says.

Liliya Shevtsova: Russia:The Logic of Decline

Details: Nation

Liliya Shevtsova: Russia:The Logic of Decline

Details: 22 September 2011

Last week Novaya Gazeta published a remarkable article by Liliya Shevtsova, a fellow of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. Shevtsova analyzes the nature of the Russian political regime and makes a disappointing prognosis: the regime’s failure is unavoidable.

INSOR and its Critics

Details: Nation

INSOR and its Critics

Details: 22 September 2011; Alexander Yanov

For a person of liberal convictions — if he is not a competitor like Gleb Pavlovsky (Foundation for Effective Politics), or a moderate nationalist like Alexander Privalov (Expert magazine), or a historian like myself — there really is nothing with which to compete in the works of INSOR (Russia’s Institute of Contemporary Development) — whether it be “The Image of the Desired Tomorrow” or “Attaining the Future.” (Of course, the democratic opposition also has no small number of caustic words addressed to the Insorian faith in Medvedev — without the Putinite “noose around the neck” — but for now it cannot offer an even remotely real alternative to this faith. A very precise notion about this is given by Semyon Novoprudsky’s essay “Jesters of the Republic”: “As sad as this may be, for now the only strategy for Russia is seen as a relatively painless, yet fundamental demolition of the current system.” But the author himself does not communicate just how this “painless, yet fundamental demolition” might look. Nor, alas, do his colleagues from the democratic camp.)

The New York Times: President Medvedev Doesn’t Seize the Moment

Details: Nation

The New York Times: President Medvedev Doesn’t Seize the Moment

Details: 13 September 2011

Last weekend in Russia was marred by a horrible tragedy. An airplane crash killed a hockey team from Yaroslavl. By coincidence, it was Yaroslavl, where a political forum hosted by the Russian president, was taking place.

Details: Nation

Ariel Cohen: Russia Squanders Its Chance at Democracy

Details: 08 September 2011

In his recent article in National Interest, Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the opportunities that went by the wayside of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s road to democracy.

Siege without a Victor: Seven Years after the Tragedy at Beslan

Details: Nation

Siege without a Victor: Seven Years after the Tragedy at Beslan

Details: 07 September 2011

On Sept. 1, 2004, a primary school in the North Ossetian locality of Beslan was taken by a terrorists group demanding that Russia stop the war in Chechnya and immediately withdraw its troops. After three days of siege, Russian forces took the school by storm. As a result, more than 300 people, most of them children, were killed. Today, seven years later, the Beslan siege is still remembered as one of the cruelest terrorist attacks leading to one of the most controversial government actions in modern Russian history.

The Second Fork in the Road: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

Details: Nation

The Second Fork in the Road: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

Details: 27 August 2011

Only three generations after the first fork in the road in 1914-1917, Russia once again found itself at a crossroads. It was no wonder, however, that Russia, “having torn itself away from the European track,” would once again set itself against the world, as it did in the seventeenth century. But the “model of community living” proposed by the Bolsheviks (totalitarian ideology plus total control of the special services [editor’s note: secret police] plus the State Plan — that is, total state control of the economy) proved itself to be a dead end. By virtue of the richness of Russia’s natural and human resources, this model was able to be sustained for several decades, but it had no future.

The First Fork in the Road: World War and Inferiority Complex

Details: Nation

The First Fork in the Road: World War and Inferiority Complex

Details: 03 August 2011

I know of no serious historian, whether Russian or Western, who would doubt that Russia’s fate would have been utterly different if Russia had not entered the world war in August 1914. This rare instance of consensus among historians is, however, easily explained. Imagine twentieth-century Russia without all that this fateful war brought to it: Russia without the Bolshevik Revolution, without the civil war, without the Stalinist terror — quite possibly a Russia without the devastating German invasion. (Hitler’s triumphal seizure of power in Berlin was provoked, to a crucial degree, by the Bolshevik Revolution). Imagine all this, and there’s nothing left to debate.

The Lost Lessons

Details: Nation

The Lost Lessons

Details: 29 June 2011

The apprehension of true history as well as the correction of false contributes to public policy because an economist whose memory is limited to the recent past has a narrow conception of the possible.~Deirdre N. McCloskey

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