For his latest column, Gideon Rachman of the FT talked with Mikhail Kasyanov about why the Russian government is cracking down with such exceptional brutality before an election they seem guaranteed to win. Yesterday Bob commented on a couple of t...
After successful and award-winning stagings in London and New York, Sir Tom Stoppard’s epically sprawling nine-hour triology “The Coast of Utopia” has finally opened in Moscow, where the writer was surprised by the reactions of R...
Today the New York Times writes about fashion designer Denis Simachev, whose main gimmick is the incorporation of Soviet era symbols, cues and kitsch into apparel items that can cost upwards of $2,000. There are some priceless quotes in the story,...
There’s a very interesting piece by Paul Betts in the FT today about Kazakhstan’s skillfully shrewd strategies as a regional energy player: Given the experiences in Russia, the Kazakhs have woken up to the opportunities for renegotiati...
New Yorker editor David Remnick, who once worked at the Washington Post bureau in Moscow and has written a book and many articles on the country, made a special appearance on NBC Nightly News, with even more content made available online. Blogging...
Comments made by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the World Political Forum about the security imperative for the EU to bridge the gap with Russia in order to once again have influence on the global stage are making some news. Here’...
President Vladimir Putin, seen here in St Petersburg, accused the United States of trying to “discredit” Russia’s parliamentary elections by pressuring foreign observers to abandon their monitoring mission. (AFP/Natalia Kolesniko...
This one is over at Slate.com: The New Dissidents Why does Putin bother to arrest the “Other Russia” protesters? Because he can. By Anne Applebaum In the photographs of his arrest, Garry Kasparov—former world chess champion, current Ru...
Were it not such a serious situation, the jailing of opposition leader and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov by the Putin regime would be richly ironic. For in what other nation are dissidents forced to go on hunger strikes while the price of bread...
Sally Feldman of the New Humanist writes about a peculiar project in far-flung Republic of Kalymykia: “the carnival atmosphere in Kufa was a celebration of chess as a joyous assertion of freedom, it can also be a tool of oppression. In the t...
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