In Maxim Kantor’s opinion, the 39 deaths in the Moscow metro bombings on 29 March are victims of that fight between bulldogs under the carpet, as Churchill described Russian politics. The victims are always the poor, never the bulldogs. And guess who gains by the tragedy?
Henry Marsh, an English neurosurgeon, tells the story of his twenty-year friendship with Igor Kurilets, a young Ukrainian who resolved to drag Soviet neurosurgery into the 21st century
In conversation with oDRussia’s Deputy Editor, a former British Army officer reflects on Tolya’s experience as a conscript in the Russian army. To what extent will the proposed military reforms help with dedovshchina, or institutionalised bullying?
Russia has lost a great dissident campaigner for Moscow’s built heritage with the death of David Sarkisyan, museum director, film impresario, scientist and aesthete
A spirited protest in central Kyiv embodies the ethos of a new, civic Ukraine whose people - despite their politicians - have internalised the values of the “orange revolution”. Alexander J Motyl reports for openDemocracy
Does a personal vendetta lie behind the imprisonment of Russia’s once-richest oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky? Was the Kremlin the real power behind the murder of the mayor of Nefteyugansk, for which Khodorkovsky is being punished? Jeremy Putley reviews a well-researched new book by Martin Sixsmith
You can’t reason with the absurd, as IKEA found when it tried to build a model business in Russia. Institutional corruption is out of control. Kafka’s Castle is finally collapsing. This is good news, as Russians, ordinary Russians are losing their fear. Now they’re just angry, says Andrei Loshak.
Arthur Koestler, whose turbulent life charts the intellectual history of the 20thc in the West, has finally found a worthy biographer in Michael Scammell. A youthful communist and survivor of Franco’s prisons, Koestler developed into one of the West’s most persuasive crusaders against communism.
In this interview for oDRussia, Prof.Alena Ledeneva talks to Oliver Carroll about the prospects for judicial reform in Russia. Medvedev’s efforts amount to far more than rhetoric, argues Ledeneva. Her ongoing research into the subject suggests that they strike at the heart of Russia’s informal sys
Olga Kudeshkina made headlines in 2004 as the first Russian judge to flag up political interference in the judicial system. Dismissed for her resistance, she took her case to the European Court of Human Rights and won. Kudeshkina outlines the continued political pressure felt by the judiciary and
Downtown Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, is ablaze with lights and full of chic shops now. But the paralysing fear remains. Human Rights Watch’s Tanya Lokshina and her Memorial colleagues tell a rare visitor from the West about the kidnappings, about the relatives too fearful to complain...
