Right Cause Searches for Right Path: Part I
Established in November of 2008, Right Cause (Правое Дело) is one of Russia’s youngest political parties. Right Cause formed from a merger of three smaller…
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Russians on Ice: A Brief Overview of Soviet and Russian Hockey
While Russia’s political history has been tumultuous and unpredictable, one thing has remained an unfaltering constant: Russians are good at hockey. While Brezhnev dealt with…
Russia in Space
Humanity’s space age had its beginnings in the Cold War rivalries between the US and the USSR. Both countries attempted to advance their own sciences…
President Obama’s NES Speech in Russian Translation
Simultaneous interpretation and written translation are two very different arts. A translator working on a text-to-text translation might take several days to complete and polish…
Russian MiniLessons: Ссориться по-русски – Fighting in Russian
The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal…
Chernobyl: A Short History of the Human Impact on Ukraine and its Neighbors
On April 26, 1986 the worst nuclear accident in history took place in Chernobyl, Ukraine as a result of an unnecessary safety test. Workers at…
Russian MiniLessons: Южная Осетия – South Ossetia
The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal…
Russian MiniLessons: Органы = Security Forces (FSB and Spies)
The following bilingual Russian MiniLesson is meant to build your vocabulary by providing Russian phrases within English text. Hover over the bold Russian to reveal…
Fantasy Islands: New Lands Built for St. Petersburg
On the tenth of September, a massive Italian ocean liner, the Costa Mediterranea, with seventeen decks, three hundred meters in length, and sixty meters high…
US Elections Come to Moscow
The 2008 US elections promise to bring historic results. Not only will the next president be the first sitting senator elected since John F. Kennedy…
Politics in the Former Soviet Union: A Personal View from an American born of Russian Immigrants
On December 3, 2007 I awoke with a hangover, even though I had not imbibed the night before. The evening of December 2 was my…
The Medvedev Economy
The Russian economy is due for a major shift. Much of the rapid growth from the past eight years has come from something called “unused…
Catholic and Protestant: Two Religious Periodicals and US-Soviet Relations, 1930-1950
From the time of the October Revolution in 1917, the United States had a tense relationship with the Soviet Union. The United States was, after…
From the Silk Road to Chevron: The Geopolitics of Oil Pipelines in Central Asia
Kazakhstan has received much press recently as a result of the success of the comic film Borat. However, that movie got everything wrong in its depiction…
Why This Cold Peace?
After almost a decade of living and working in Russian villages, there are three questions that haunt us. First, how was the enormity of good…
Putin and the “Problem of 2008”
An Annotated Overview of Quotes about Putin’s Decision to Head United Russia’s Party List in the Coming Elections As political analysts endlessly mulled the “Problem…
Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: Book Review, Overview of Scientists and Discoveries
One has only to look at the current debate over stem cell research in the USA to understand how science, even today, is shaped by…
Kyrgyzstan’s Energy Alternatives: Between Scylla and Charybdis
Russia has often been accused recently of “energy blackmail,” using its large hydrocarbon reserves to gain political influence in countries which are dependent on energy…
Russia’s Shrunken Air Defense Perimeter
In recent months political disputes between Russia and the United States have grown to include sharp differences over Washington’s expanding plans for ballistic missile defense…
The Rediscovery of the “Russian World”
During the last few weeks, the term “russkiy mir,” which can roughly be translated as “Russian world,” suddenly gained increasing prominence. It became the center…
