Grigory Pasko: Will the West Help?

By Grigory Pasko | Published: January 19, 2011

The book and film starring Ostap Bender, the fictional adventurer of the 1920s conceived by the writers Ilf and Petrov, remains popular in Russia to this day. In one of the chapters of the book, Bender exclaims “The West will help us!” That phrase, like many from this book, has become a part of the […]

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Grigory Pasko: All Is Quiet in Baghdad

By Grigory Pasko | Published: January 3, 2011

In some old Soviet film-fairytale, I think it may have been Ali-Baba, there was a memorable character who played the role of a midnight town crier. Something like a watchman, but one who brought the reassuring news. He walked at night through the city, which was crawling with thieves and bandits, beat a special mallet […]

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Grigory Pasko: So Who is Mr. Путин?

By Grigory Pasko | Published: December 31, 2010

We all remember that once upon a time Bush-the-younger gazed into the Vladimir Putin’s soul and saw a democrat. Joe Biden, on the contrary, saw three letters in Putin’s eyes – KGB. Schroeder, being chancellor of Germany, called Putin a «dyed-in-the-wool democrat». Just a few years ago, the inhabitants of Vladivostok came out to demonstrate […]

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Grigory Pasko: When the Deaf Sing

By Grigory Pasko | Published: December 30, 2010

On 21 December, the case of a certain S.Antonov was being examined in the court of the Central district of Minsk. According to the police report, he had participated in an unsanctioned action and had been shouting out anti-state slogans. Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. To the questions […]

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Grigory Pasko: After the Verdict

By Grigory Pasko | Published: December 27, 2010

Today a court in Moscow began reading out the guilty verdict for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, arduously plodding through the paperwork that somehow legalizes the state’s crime against the individual, while making the fantastical charges somehow possible. I know from my own experience that you can tell a guilty verdict from its first few […]

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Grigory Pasko: Russia Takes Flight, Toward the Past

By Grigory Pasko | Published: December 20, 2010

Editor’s note: Readers who have ever had the pleasure of flying in Russia or the Near Abroad have likely experienced the phenomenon of the rolling two-hour rescheduling of flights. Soviet aviation rules, which have remained unchanged for decades, require an airline to provide passengers with a meal if a flight is delayed for more than […]

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Grigory Pasko: Shadows Hanging over Khodorkovsky’s Judge

By Grigory Pasko | Published: December 13, 2010

Barring a likely delay or rescheduling, Judge Viktor Danilkin is due to begin reading the verdict in the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev on December 15. It’s no use waiting for an acquittal or even a very mild verdict from Judge Danilkin: he’s not the one writing the most important part of […]

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Grigory Pasko: Secrecy – the Wisdom of Idiots

By Grigory Pasko | Published: December 9, 2010

Recently they showed on the Russian television how head of the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring (Rosfinmonitoring) Yuri Chikhanchin was accounting before the prime minister of Russia for work done. He, in particular, reported that in the course of joint work with law-enforcement organs the service had identified “systemic problems” in the activities of the […]

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Grigory Pasko: Power over the Purse Strings

By Grigory Pasko | Published: November 30, 2010

During an international investment forum held last month in Moscow, Premier Putin boldly declared: “We are going to economize every ruble of the budget in the strictest possible way!” He also said a whole bunch of other things there – with emphasis on the words, with repetitions sounding like mantras. In a press release distributed […]

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Grigory Pasko: A Complicated Award for a Russian Journalist

By Grigory Pasko | Published: November 22, 2010

On Nov. 17, the Russian journalist and television producer Manana Aslamazyan was awarded the TEFI Prize «For personal contribution to the development of Russian television». The ceremony took place in Moscow on the exhibition grounds of the the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VVC) during the intermission period (!) of another event dedicated to the 15th anniversary […]

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