On 10th July a Moscow court extended the pre-trial detention of three members of feminist punk rock band Pussy Riot, charged with hooliganism after they performed a ‘blasphemous’ and anti-Putin song in the city’s main cathedral in February. Vladimir Pastukhov believes there is much the case tells
Georgia’s capital is undergoing a massive rebuilding programme, with shabby historical buildings being replaced with facsimiles, complete with plastic ornamentation. But, as documentary filmmaker Salomé Jashi writes, an iconic square in old Tbilisi is being threatened with an even more radical rem
Traditionally Russia’s agricultural land was subdivided into a patchwork of villages and fields, interspersed by forest and marsh. Now the villages are deserted and crumbling: the state closes them down, often on a whim, and young people leave to find work elsewhere. Matilda Moreton tells the trag
August will mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the Russo-Georgian war, sparked off by conflict over the disputed area of South Ossetia. Georgian-Ossetian problems go back at least 20 years and there is no solution in sight. This is because the status quo, so painful for South Ossetia, sui
Against the backdrop of Soviet disintegration, a grassroots campaign was launched from Britain to send hundreds of thousands of books to libraries across Russia and its ex-colonies. As Bookaid celebrates its twentieth anniversary, two of its organisers, Susan Richards and Ekaterina Genieva, consid
Ukrainian, Russian…and 18 others? The debate over Ukraine’s official languages enters a new chapter – but who are the real beneficiaries of a proposed new law?
As Putin’s new government beds in and shows its teeth against the protesters, Dmitry Travin takes a look at the generational differences among the opposition. Life experience makes many of the older generation more weary of street protest, yet on other fronts people are beginning to speak with one
One of the iconic sights of Leningrad, and now St Petersburg, has been the cruiser Aurora, permanently moored in the centre of the city. A symbol of the Bolshevik revolution, she has survived several wars, mass tourism and drunken bankers. But will she survive a handover to the civilian authoritie
Over its two decades of independence Kazakhstan has made enormous progress. Economic reforms, energy exploitation and interethnic harmony are major gains. Democratic reforms, however, lag behind. William Courtney writes about the “democracy gap” that is putting the country’s future at risk.
Revolution may be a dirty word in Russia, but journalist Maхim Trudolyubov argues that conditions for revolution are ripening, and that those responsible are not opposition forces outside the Kremlin, but those working within its walls.
After previous repressive measures by the Kremlin, the ‘March of Millions’ in Moscow on 12th June was expected to turn ugly. Raids on leading oppositionists had many talking about another 1937 (the year of Stalin’s Great Purge), yet the expected provocation and police brutality did not happen. Jul
