Did you know that former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzkhov was a founding member of United Russia back in 1999?  I didn’t either – but he’s not exactly their biggest fan now.  Marking the one-year anniversary of Sergei Sobyanin’s role as his successor, Luzkhov speaks to RFE/RL about his dismissal, exorcising a few ghosts in the process.

Like him or loathe him (he has been the subject of much criticism due to various accusations, see his failure to return from holiday last summer when Moscow filled with smoke from peat bog fires burning on the city’s outskirts, and suspicions about his professional ties to his wife’s company), among a few choice insults for United Russia, he makes a particularly interesting point about the cultural memory of fear: