Launched in 1998, this Moscow-based website publishes political news and commentary daily, as well as keeping close to the pulse of Russia’s intellectual life. Through its public lectures and seminars in Moscow and Kiev it offers a regular platform for debate on contemporary issues. Polit.ru, whose articles are outstanding among Russian internet sites for their quality, hosts Russian social thinkers, historians, philosophers, NGO activists, journalists, and economists.

Russia back in the dock over 'Forbidden Art'

Andrei Zorin 8 July 2010
Three years ago an exhibition at Moscow’s Sakharov Centre of previously banned work entitled Forbidden Art led to the trial of its curator Andrei Erofeev and the director of the Centre, Yuri Samodurov. The prosecutors want them sentenced to three years in prison for ‘debasing the religious beliefs of citizens and inciting religious hatred’. The verdict is due on 12 July. If they are found guilty, it will not only change the political climate in Russia, argues Prof.Andrei Zorin. It will destroy the country’s reputation. Sign the petition..

The Black Widows of Dagestan: Media Hype and Genuine Harm

Tanya Lokshina 17 June 2010
On April 9 2010, after explosions in the Moscow metro killed 39 people, rumours were circulated of 1,000 ‘black widows’ who had been recruited by the militants. When the press published the names of 22, Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch found that she knew some of these dangerous women : a seamstress whose real crime was being a human rights worker, a pious young mother whose husband had been tortured in the ‘6th Department’...

Does Russia need a memory law?

Nikolai Koposov 16 June 2010
Russia’s Duma has been trying to draft a ‘memory law’, in order to protect the Soviet version of the events of World War II from revisionist interpretations. The historian Nikolai Koposov deconstructs the attempts so far. His view is that the proposed law is not only misconceived, but would be unworkable. He also points out that the unspoken agenda behind it is the defence of Stalin and Stalinism. In the end, the law is never going to be the right vehicle for defending historical truths, he concludes.

President Medvedev summons Russia’s human rights workers

Tanya Lokshina 3 June 2010
On 19 May, at a meeting with the main human rights organizations working in the republics of the North Caucasus, President Medvedev enjoined the local authorities to work with the NGOs to enforce the rule of law and tackle abuses of power by the security forces. Tanya Lokshina, of Human Rights Watch’s Russia Office, who was there, intends to hold the president to his words

Children in care: the Russian orphan industry

Boris Altshuler 31 May 2010
For those in Russia with an interest in preserving the status quo, youth justice is a Western invention with no place in their country. Others disagree. But the two positions share some features, so Boris Altshuler appeals to them to put their differences aside and make common cause for the sake of the children.

Kyrgyzstan: what will happen to the tulips?

Boris Dolgin 8 April 2010
As another “colour revolution” is overthrown in Kyrgyzstan, Boris Dolgin reflects that it changed nothing. Will the country be able to sort out a more nuanced relationship with the USA, Russia and China?

Moscow protests: Groundhog Day in Triumfalnaya Square

Tanya Lokshina 11 February 2010
Tanya Lokshina, Russia researcher for Human Rights Watch, attended a recent demonstration in her professional capacity and was detained by the police three times in thirty minutes. She gives a graphic description of the evening’s events.

Russia's elite will grow up! (2)

Dmitry Trenin and Boris Dolgin 21 January 2010
In the second part of this important interview with polit.ru’s Boris Dolgin, veteran foreign affairs analyst Dmitry Trenin outlines an optimistic vision of Russia’s future. The country’s foreign policy will change as Russia’s elite matures, he predicts. In time, that elite will need the rule of law and democratic values, he believes. And in order to modernise, it will look to Europe

Post-Soviet integration: CST, CSTO, CRRF etc (2)

Sergei Markedonov 20 January 2010
There have been many attempts at building new structures to replace the Soviet Union, since it fell 10 years ago. These have left the political landscape littered with acronyms: CST, CSTO, CRRF, SCO, EEC, SES, GUAM and GUUAM. In the second part of his article Sergei Markedonov reviews their success, failures and attendant complications.

Russia’s foreign policy: modernise or marginalise (1)

Dmitry Trenin and Boris Dolgin 15 January 2010
Russia’s foreign policy is outdated, according to the distinguished foreign affairs analyst Dmitry Trenin. In the first part of this interview with polit.ru’s Boris Dolgin he argues that rather than focus on preserving Russia’s status as a great power, its aim should be modernisation. Otherwise, great power or no, the country is doomed

Post-Soviet integration: does the CIS work?

Sergei Markedonov 13 January 2010
2010 sees the 19th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR. In the first of this two-part review of the structures set up to replace it, Sergei Markedonov assesses the performance of the Commonwealth of Independent States ( CIS). He concludes that a complicating factor has been the lack of clarity surrounding the role of its dominant partner, Russia.

How Russia’s human rights movement began

Lyubov Borusyak talks to Ludmila Alexeyeva 16 December 2009
Today, as Memorial receives the 2009 Sakharov Prize, Lyubov Borusyak talks to Ludmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, about the birth of Russia’s human rights movement. In 1956, after Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, Russia’s people started talking once more, and circulating ‘samizdat’.

The psychiatrist as expert witness - between a rock and a hard place

Emmanuil Gushansky 13 December 2009
The independence, or lack of it, of the Russian judiciary has been much discussed, but Emmanuil Gushansky makes an impassioned plea for the role of mental health experts to be more clearly defined and strengthened

The ones that lost: Russian cases rejected at the European Court

Grigory Dikov 7 December 2009
Landmark victories in defiance of the Russian government have made the European Court of Human Rights the most popular legal institution in the country. Many cases fail at the initial committee stage. Grigory Dikov finds a huge disconnect between the capabilities of the Court and the hopes of the many thousands who now apply to it.

Stalin – a hero for our time

Tatiana Shcherbina 13 November 2009
The myth of Russia’s beautiful past has gripped the popular imagination, thanks to state propaganda, the poet Tatiana Shcherbina laments. Stalin is the nation’s hero, heir to the Tsars. Russia is once again ‘encircled by enemies’ and the people’s list of those who ought to be shot grows longer daily.

The Russian media

More

Russia-China

More

The new year in Russia

More

Russia's new economy

More

Russian rights at the crossroads

More

Beyond the gastarbeiter: post-Soviet migration

Madeleine Reeves (Manchester University, UK) presents the other side of post-Soviet migration.

More

Regions

More

Russia's year of elections

More

Women, tradition and power in the North Caucasus

More

Project_ID

More

More

Privatizatsiya, twenty years on

Russian economy: trying to please people doesn’t help, Dmitry Travin

Privatisation, but no private property, Andrei Zaostrovtsev

Is corruption in Russia's DNA?, Pyotr Filippov

The Russian banking system: between the market and the state, Pavel Usanov

Russia’s crony capitalism: the swing of the pendulum, Vladimir Gelman

Russian reforms, twenty years on. Introduction to the series, Dmitry Travin

Syndicate content