Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

Zygmunt Dzieciolowski is a Polish journalist who has covered Russia and other post Soviet republics for European media since 1989. He is founding editor of openDemocracy/Russia.

Abkhazia: wedded to independence

st1\:* { BEHAVIOR: url(#ieooui) } The Abkhaz capital Sukhumi never was just a Black Sea holiday resort, unlike the towns of Pitsunda and Gagra. It was always an administrative centre, capital

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 21 Aug 2008

Georgia's President Saakashvili, on the eve of war

TBILISI, Georgia -- For the Russians he is a scary figure. A cunning eastern despot whose main purpose is to humiliate and to outsmart them. They have disliked Mikheil Saakashvili,

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 11 Aug 2008

The future’s ours: Russia’s youth activists

Two years ago Alissa Askalina was invited by a girlfriend to a Nashi meeting. She enjoyed this first encounter with members of the Russian youth movement: everybody there was young,

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 19 Jan 2008

Russia's festive days: tides of history

For more than seventy years, the anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution on 7 November 1917 was celebrated in Moscow and across the vast territory of Russia and the

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 2 Nov 2007

Vladimir Putin forever

Russia's political analysts have for months been speculating about the identity of President Vladimir Putin's successor after his second term comes to an end with the

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 2 Oct 2007

Tatyana Zaslavskaya’s moment

The speeches that change the course of history are not delivered only from the podiums of political leaders. This is certainly true of the lecture made in August 1983 by

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 7 Sep 2007

The Polish dictionary

Once upon a time, the twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski convinced Polish voters their country needed thorough reform. They promised Poles a new life free of corruption and a government

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 22 Aug 2007

Russia’s immigration challenge

For the last three years Mansur Mirzayev, a 22-year-old Uzbek, has been living in Moscow. He came to the Russian capital from the poverty-stricken province of Andijan - which was,

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 15 Jun 2007

Russia's unequal struggle

I met Marina Litvinovich for the first time when she was in her early 20s, in 1999. Times were difficult. Boris Yeltsin's era was about to end, and

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 17 May 2007

Boris Yeltsin, history man

When I first learned about Boris Yeltsin's death on 23 April 2007, I immediately called some Russian friends. Having worked in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s I

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 23 Apr 2007

New Russia, old Russia

The temperature was -35 degrees centigrade when our decrepit TU-154 airliner landed in the middle of the night in western Siberia after a three-hour flight from Moscow. Khanty-Mansiysk airport is

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 4 Apr 2007

How Russia is ruled

In the 1980s, when the communist rulers in Poland still believed the old system could be saved, somebody came up with an idea for how to solve the problem of

By Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

/ 14 Mar 2007