In an attempt to get 2011 off to a good start with more active personal blogging, I thought I would share a few links of articles that I’m reading today.  If you happen to be one of the handful of people out there still looking for Russia-related news while the rest of the country is on a holiday (apparently no news happens when there is no journalist on the ground to report it), this is what I’ve got.

Opinions on the Khodorkovsky verdict and harsh sentence continue to proliferate – which makes me wonder what would be happening if the Kremlin had had the naglost to actually allow the decision to happen before the holidays instead of delaying it to land around New Year’s Eve.  Times business columnist Joe Nocera has an excellent piece which sees a government effort to “create the illusion of fairness” in the trial, but “no one was fooled.”  My friend David Satter has a good article in The Daily Beast, which takes a look specifically at the issue of the funding of political parties.  When prominent opposition leaders including Boris Nemtsov staged a protest related to the trial, they were jailed for a 15-day term to miss the holidays.  It’s funny that in the court hearing for a guy who was arrested for protesting a show trial, the judge spends four hours discussing Nemtsov’s alleged offense of “disobedience toward police” when he was leaving the rally with his family on his way to a New Year’s party.  Way to prove a point.