In this second letter home our new conscript Tolya is starting to settle in to his two-year stint in Russia’s army. He tells us about the food and how he has learnt to avoid being beaten up.
Russia’s foreign policy is outdated, according to the distinguished foreign affairs analyst Dmitry Trenin. In the first part of this interview with polit.ru’s Boris Dolgin he argues that rather than focus on preserving Russia’s status as a great power, its aim should be modernisation. Otherwise, g
A Belarusian novel encourages citizens to question their own role in perpetuating the regime that governs them. The authorities’ response suggests it has touched a nerve, says Natalia Leshchenko.
2010 sees the 19th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR. In the first of this two-part review of the structures set up to replace it, Sergei Markedonov assesses the performance of the Commonwealth of Independent States ( CIS). He concludes that a complicating factor has been the lack of clarity
Ukraine is about to go to the polls to elect a new president. Though the election is unlikely to provoke a violent escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, politicians and bureaucrats on both sides should start thinking how to react in case it does happen, warns Andreas Umland
Corruption has always been part of Russian life, and the Oryol region today just offers a rather extreme example, says Elena Godlevskaya. Some of the main perpetrators have been named, but the punishment being meted out to them is a joke.
A new Russian army recruit writes home about life at a parachute regiment basic training camp
International economic indicators suggest that Russia’s problems are not those of the developing world. Relatively speaking, its people are not poor. But its economy is just not free
Yegor Gaidar, architect of the radical economic reforms in Russia which followed the fall of Soviet power, died on 15 December. Dmitry Travin reflects on the achievement of a great economist and patriot who saved his country and quietly shouldered the hatred that followed.
The recent catastrophic fire at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm grabbed national headlines. Local authorities all over Russia are suddenly having to get their act together, says Elena Strelnikova
Today, as Memorial receives the 2009 Sakharov Prize, Lyubov Borusyak talks to Ludmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, about the birth of Russia’s human rights movement. In 1956, after Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, Russia’s people started talking once more, and circulating ‘samizdat’.
