In some card games, the aim is to collect as many cards as possible; in others it is to get rid of cards that have been dealt. There are regimes where the point of the rules is that they should be observed and others where simply they are there to be broken. This is Russia, explains Kirill Rogov
The Narkomfin building in central Moscow is an experimental masterpiece and testament to the spirit of a young Soviet state. Yet it has been transformed from fashionable youth into ragged beggar. Clementine Cecil writes on the latest attempts to save it from ruin.
openDemocracy Russia recently published the harrowing tale of a Russian drug-dependent woman Irina Teplinskaya, and her campaign to make medication available to HIV positive people. Here she describes the protest actions organised in support of the campaign.
Russia is on the verge of election season. While simmering social tensions and a nervous elite make these interesting times, no-one really doubts United Russia will sweep a national victory. The interesting battles will be in local and city elections, writes Mikhail Loginov.
The Okhta Centre protestors have achieved the relocation of the project to another part of St Petersburg. But it will be built, as will the much protested motorway through Khimki Forest, maintains Mikhail Zakharov. Protest movements are facing the serious possibility of running out of steam.
Russian human rights activists routinely put themselves in danger’s way, but are largely unappreciated and mistrusted by their compatriots. In times of despair, Anna Sevortian is brought back to one thing: idealism.
When Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was dethroned in late September, heritage campaigners breathed a collective sigh of relief. Luzhkov’s crude architectural vision was, after all, one of the official reasons for his dismissal. Yet just a few weeks later, campaigners have a new fight on their hands.
The EU has missed a trick or two in grasping Russia's foreign policy potential, says Fabrizio Tassinari. If they returned to an approach of pragmatic tit-for-tat, the Europeans would have a far better chance of achieving their broader policy goals.
The story of scores being settled with a brutal mass murder in southern Russia has hit the Russian national press. It reveals much about the links between organised crime and power in the country today and gives the lie to the propaganda machine’s claims of increasing happiness and stability.
When a professor and police colonel were arrested and charged for printing a book in memory of the victims of Stalinist Terror, many believed officials would soon recognize the absurdity of the case. A year later, however, the Archangelsk affair shows no signs of being dropped. Is it a case of loc
President Medvedev recently sacked the longstanding Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, despite his closeness to Putin. This move, redolent of Soviet politics, won him no points and now the activities of the new mayor are threatening to affect Putin too. Regular changes of government are essential, explai
On Thursday evening, prominent TV journalist Leonid Parfyonov broke with the etiquette of live award ceremonies, and made an unannounced and sensational attack on the state of Russian journalism. Russian TV bosses have become slaves to government bureaucrats, he said, and in so doing are complicit
