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)….
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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]…
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…
Military Learning Between the Chechen Wars
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…
US-Russian Energy Security in the Caucasus: The Prospects for Conflict in the National Interest
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…
From Vixen to Victim: The Sensationalization and Normalization of Prostitution in Post-Soviet Russia
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]…
Russian Political Culture Since 1985
The traditional view of Russian political culture has been that, due to historical experience, Russians have favored strong autocratic rule. After nearly seventy years of…
Personal Reflections on Russian Offshore Outsourcing
Three of my four grandparents emigrated from Minsk to New York City more than 100 years ago. So I guess that I was destined to…
Life with Aids in Rural Russia: A Photo Essay
On 1 December 2005, life took a dramatic turn for 25-year-old, HIV-positive Svetlana Izambaeva. Svetlana, who lives in the small Russian city of Cheboksari, was…
Russia Day Evolves
Russia Day is one of the country’s newest holidays and many are still at a loss as to how it should be celebrated. However, the…
The Growth of Russia’s IT Outsourcing Industry: The Beginning of Russian Economic Diversification?
Summary of a speech given by Daniel Satinsky, B.E.A Associates The information technology (IT) outsourcing industry in Russia is one of the few non-natural resource…
Deconstructing the Millennium Manifesto: The Yeltsin-Putin Transition and the Rebirth of Ideology
1. Introduction: The Dearth of Ideology On the 12th July 1996, following a closely fought election victory, Boris Yeltsin called his advisors to him. ‘In…
The Bear and the Dragon
The relationship that has existed between Russia and China has historically been one of mistrust spotted with anger, fear and resentment. Despite their communist ties…
Snapshot of the Russian Economy
The Soviet economy developed under Communist ideals for some seventy-five years. These ideals kept that development focused on what had been the centerpieces of 19th…
The Greening of Moscow
Once upon a time, T&B would fly to Paris or London for a breath of air, and our friends would take turns inviting us to…
Russian Bill on NGOs to Become Law
Moscow – President Vladimir Putin, responding to the international public outcry surrounding Russia’s proposed law on NGOs, issued an executive opinion on the bill that,…
Mandate of the Fatherland: Denis Fonvizin’s Translation of Neo-Confucianism into the Politics of Enlightened Absolutism under Catherine the Great
Born in 1745, Denis Fonvizin was one of eighteenth-century Russia’s premier playwrights, and among the reform-minded intellectuals and future statesmen educated at the University of…
Disillusionment on the Grandest of Scales: Finnish-Americans in the Soviet Union, 1917-1939
From the time of the Russian Revolution onward, the Bolsheviks were often portrayed in mainstream American media as the “enemy.”[1] Many Americans, however, chose to…