Sergei Sobyanin
Sergei Sobyanin and the Transformation of Moscow Sergei Semyonich Sobyanin is the current Mayor of Moscow, a position he was promoted to under then-president Dimitri…
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Elvira Nabiullina
Elvira Nabiullina and Saving Russia’s Financial System Elvira Nabiullina is currently ranked the most powerful woman in Russia and has been named one of the…
Vyacheslav Volodin
Vyacheslav Volodin and the Future of the Russian Presidency Vyacheslav Viktorovich Volodin has been a stalwart member of the United Russia party since its inception…
Igor Sechin
Igor Sechin and Mixing Oil with Politics Igor Ivanovich Sechin is a Russian statesman and oil magnate. Although he is often named as one of…
Could the Baltic Crisis Lead to Wider Conflict?
Recent years have seen a hardening of relations between the United States/NATO and Russia. Russian actions in Ukraine—especially the…
Trends in Cultural Education in Kyrgyzstan
The formation of any new state is a fascinating time, let alone the creation of a modern state that possesses an ancient history and rich…
Revolution, Civil War, and the Formation of Bolshevik Anti-Free Press Discourse, 1917-1922
Scholars of the Soviet Union have written at length about the consolidation of Soviet state control over the media, the establishment of Glavlit and other…
Sufi-Salafi Institutional Competition and Conflict in the Chechen Republic
The Russian North Caucasus is one of the most politically complex and turbulent areas in the world due to its plethora of ethnic, national, and…
“Healthy Body, Healthy Mind”: the visual propaganda of personal care during the Cultural Revolution in the Stalinist State
The picture of “Comrade Lenin Sweeps the World Clean of Filth” (below) is a perfect illustration of Soviets’ axiological orientations: they felt a moral duty…
Vostochny Cosmodrome: Liability or Asset?
Is Russia’s new launch site a long term liability or a strategic asset? April 28 marked the first successful rocket launch from Russia’s new cosmodrome…
“Medicine Standing on its Head”: Snezhnevsky, Sluggish Schizophrenia and Soviet Political Abuse of Psychiatry
In this essay, I analyze political abuses of psychiatry in the Soviet Union by exploring Andrei Snezhnevsky’s diagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia—a fictional branch of schizophrenia….
Four Reformers in Russia’s Shock Therapy
In the wake of the 1990’s, the future of nascent post-Soviet Russia was in the hands of four groups of reformers, who were entrusted with…
Understanding Russia’s Interests in North Korea
The first few months of 2016 have seen important developments for the long term stability of Russia’s far eastern neighbors. North Korea is at the…
Why is Russia in Syria?
To say that Syria is in the news a lot right now would be a gross understatement. The whole world’s foreign policy seems to be…
The Allies in Siberia During the Russian Revolution
Despite its distance from the hotbed of Russian revolutionary violence, the city of Vladivostok and the Russian Far East experienced their own challenges and intrigue…
Nuclear War: How the United States and the Soviet Union Fought Over Information in Chernobyl’s Aftermath
April 26, 1986 began like any other day for the Soviet citizens of Pripyat, a little-known city of 50,000 in the Ukrainian SSR. At the…
Russia’s Volunteering Youth: The Fashionable Adolescence
The US-Russia Social Expertise Exchange program (SEE), under the auspices of the Eurasia Foundation, facilitates an exchange of knowledge, professionalism, and experience between the US…
The Evolution and Dissolution of the Soviet Kitchen
Just as the leadership, citizens, and politics of the USSR changed drastically between 1917 and 1991, so too the Soviet kitchen underwent innumerable changes from…
Cultivating Corn, Culture, and Curiosities: American Perspectives on the 1955 U.S.-Soviet Agricultural Exchange
Former New York Times correspondent Harrison E. Salisbury worked in the Soviet Union from 1949 until 1953 and covered the 1955 U.S.-Soviet Agricultural Exchange, in which twelve…
Kyrgyzstan Prepares to Join the Eurasian Economic Union, Amid Concerns and Questions about the Future
In the two decades since its independence from the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan has maintained close ties with Russia, on which it remains economically dependent, while…