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…
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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…
Lake Baikal
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%…
Irkutsk: A Fragile Jewel of Siberia
The land of Siberia brims with mystery and silence. Nearly incomprehensible size, it brims with natural resources, diverse ecologies and a myriad of peoples. Near…
Vladivostok: A Short History of Russian Rule in the East
The construction of Vladivostok was the culmination of Russia’s long drive to establish a major naval presence in the Pacific Ocean and help solidify its…
Chukotka: A US Neighbor at the End of the Earth
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…
St. Petersburg: Russia’s Vortex of Change
A curious calm presides over the city of St. Petersburg. It is not the calm of a tired city: it’s the deceptive calm of a…
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…