Month: July 2007

July 31, 2007

Exchanging Gangsters for Siloviki

From Quentin Peel in the Financial Times: The worry is that Russia may have just exchanged one set of gangsters for another – the siloviki surrounding Mr Putin. “If some of them take money, tomorrow they will think how to protect the money they ha...
July 31, 2007

The KGB Reality

I highly recommend that readers check out this memoir excerpt from David Satter, a correspondent for the FT in Russia from 1976 to 1982, posted on the Weekly Standard. Satter relates an amusing story of a bait-and-switch interview he conducted wit...
July 31, 2007

Russia’s Preemptive Denial of Electoral Fraud

As the Kremlin is apparently already expecting to receive complaints of irregularity in the upcoming parliamentary elections, it is acting preemptively to lay the groundwork to deny the legitimacy of any such claims. State Duma International Affai...
July 31, 2007

The Nashi’s Letters to America

A very interesting article has been posted up by the DC think tank American Enterprise Institute, which is one of many organizations to have recently been inundated by a letter writing campaign from the Kremlin-sponsored Nashi youth group. The ard...
July 30, 2007

Another Presidency for Putin in 2012?

Sergei Mironov, who seems to have the official job as the third-term cheerleader, has once again come forward to announce that the party will nominate Vladimir Putin to run for president once again in 2012. Mironov also said he was sure that after...
July 30, 2007

Gazprom vs. Liberalization in Russia

The announcement this weekend that Gazprom will be taking over majority stakes in two critical power generation entities of UES as part of an asset swap marks a disturbing setback in the reform plans to liberalize the sector. Following these acqui...
July 30, 2007

The “Operative Fantasy” of Russian Philosophy

In this weekend’s New York Times, the academic and journalist Mark Lilla reviews Lesley Chamberlain’s “Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia.” From NYT: In the 19th century, Pilate’s question “What is truth?” was transformed in...