10 years ago former tennis prodigy Viktor Potemkin (not his real name) decided to come off heroin and leave the criminal world. He did this using the detox approach. Now he teaches, and trains future tennis stars. He talked to Mumin Shakirov.
Was the Crimean War really a crusade or was it motivated more by Russia’s need to have access to the Black Sea? Dominic Lieven reviews Orlando Figes’ new history of the conflict.
Charming old buildings in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, often listed, are being pulled down and the city disfigured. International organisations are pouring grants and loans into rebuilding projects, but there is little accountability and no building control, laments George Nonidze.
Tolstoy died on 20 November 1910, but official Russian celebrations of the centenary have been muted. Rosamund Bartlett asks why. Could it be that the Soviet ‘taming’ of Tolstoy still informs attitudes to him today and might the Orthodox Church have something to do with it too?
Subsidised articles and broadcasts spin the official line and the erosion of media freedom is gathering speed in Ukraine. President Yanukovych may ‘order his ministers to look into’ the situation, but they’re all hand in glove, laments Iryna Kolodiychyk
Voting at the recent local elections in Orenburg Oblast was listless and perfunctory. Voters don’t know the candidates, who in their turn make no attempt to remedy the situation, so why should people turn out to vote for them? Elena Strelnikova tries to make sense of the election process
What do you need to succeed in business?A mixture of luck and good judgement, according to Mikhail Fridman, one of Russia’s richest men and currently head of the Alfa Group.Gorbachev’s 1980s reforms made private enterprise possible – Fridman and others like him did the rest, as can be seen from th
A series of recent international conferences have pushed the Circassian question on to the international agenda. Sufian Zhemukhov considers the historical background to the relationships between Georgia and the North Caucasus and possible future developments.
Last week in Moscow the journalist Oleg Kashin was thrashed to within an inch of his life. President Medvedev has ordered a high-level investigation into the attempted murder. Who would stand to gain this attack and is there any hope of a swift resolution? asks Mikhail Zakharov.
President Medvedev may have declared his support for a museum complex outside St Petersburg in memory of Soviet political repression, but a year later the project is no further forward and there are plans to build over the site. Catriona Bass wonders how can words be turned into actions.
The Caucasus is often depicted as a region of peoples locked in enduring and invariant nationalist enmity. The reality is more complex and therefore more hopeful, says Thomas de Waal.
The Chekhov house, garden and archive in Yalta is a site of unique international cultural importance. Short of funding, neglected and hit by a hurricane, it faced a gloomy future. A group of British actors, scholars and Chekhov enthusiasts set up the Anthon Chekhov Foundation, which both provided
