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…
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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…
Pride 2007: The State of Moscow’s Gay Movement
When I first arrived at Tverskaya Square just after noon on May 27th, all I could see were police uniforms. The police and OMON, the…
A Comparative Look at Hate Crime in Russia and the U.S.
In recent years, as an important issue in foreign relations between the United States and Russia, the United States has focused on bringing attention to…
The Rise of Economic Nationalism under Globalization and the Case of Post-Communist Russia
Across the globe, trends of nationalization and economic nationalism have crept into the policies of nation-states recently. Fueled by popular nationalist sentiment, state elites from…
Rejecting Professional Medicine in Contemporary Russia
The rejection of professional medical care (except for acute cases demanding urgent or specific treatment) has become common in contemporary Russia (Maximova 2002, Rose 2000)….
Layers of Identity: Self-identity in U.S. child immigrants from the former Soviet Union
Geography and history have made Russian identity hard to define. Russia spans both Europe and Asia and is split between East and West. The Soviet-era…
Empire, Nationalities, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Michael Doyle defines empires as follows: “Empires are relationships of political control imposed by some political societies over the effective sovereignty of other political societies.”[1]…
Security Forces Sweep Bishkek Clean
Bishkek entered its ninth straight day of protests on April 19 with the promise by opposition leaders to dramatically increase the number of demonstrators in…
Blind in Siberia
“Relax every muscle right now, or you’ll break some bones!” The voice inmy head bounced through my body as I started sliding down the two…
Languages in Conflict: The Case of Russia and Estonia
On a park bench in Moscow, I befriended a lively group of young actors from Tallinn, Estonia. They had come to Russia three years earlier…