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 Bolivia to Russia have reasserted…
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Since the height of its popularity in the mid-1990s, the Moscow nightclub “Golodnaya Utka,” or “The Hungry Duck,” has been dubbed “Moscow’s first rape camp.”[1] The club exploded on the…
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The downward spiral of the Russian military that began with Afghanistan is often compared to the U.S. army’s experience in Vietnam. However, unlike the American experience, the conflict did not…
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It has taken energy (namely coal and oil) to produce the industrialized and economically prosperous nations of today. That is certain to change in the future, as fossil fuels are…
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Today, over 100 identified ethnic groups exist in Russia, 41 of which are legally recognized as “indigenous small numbered peoples.” While these groups make up only 0.2% of the Russian…
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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). Although the statistics for major…
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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 process of “Russification” imposed the…
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Within the realm of history, several old controversies persist, taking on new meanings within the context of today’s political and cultural imperatives. One of these, often called the “Norman problem,”…
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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] In both Tsarist Russia and…
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When Sergei Magnitsky passed away in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009, human rights activists worldwide cried foul. Magnitsky was a prominent lawyer who uncovered and investigated a massive banking fraud…
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Alexei Navalny Modern Liberal Nationalism See also: Alexei Navalny: Mayoral Platform for 2013 (in English) Alexei Anatolievich Navalny is a lawyer, activist, and politician. He is generally considered the strongest…
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I. Almaty – The Old Capital Almaty’s Central Mosque, pictured with the city and surrounding mountains. Almaty is a beautiful city perched among the mountains in Southern Kazakhstan. Its name…
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Aerial shot of the 2014 Olympic construction site on the Sochi coast in August, 2013. Note the proximity of the mountains beyond. These facilities were built, in part, on artificially…
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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 culture. The Kyrgyz Republic is…
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Chukotka Okrug of Russia Writers call Russia’s Chukotka Region “the shore of two oceans.” Indeed, Chukotka stretches from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Pacific Oñean in the…
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Primorsky Krai, where Vladivostok is located (near the southern tip). The construction of Vladivostok was the culmination of Russia’s long drive to establish a major naval presence in the Pacific…
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Russian Far East Territory (political borders) Constituting over one-third of Russia’s territory, home to major natural resource deposits, and essential to maintaining increasingly valuable Asian trade routes, the Far East…
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Often called the Pearl of Siberia, Lake Baikal is a natural wonder that almost defies description. Its 1600 meter (almost 1 mile) depth holds 20% of all the freshwater on…
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If Eastern Siberia declared independence, it would be the world’s seventh largest country – just below Australia. Yet, it would be only half as populous as Mozambique, which is the…
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A solemn but reverent air of respect hangs over Volgograd. Long a small military garrison, then a rapidly growing center of commerce and transport, Volgograd is best known to Russians…
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