Paul Goble Vienna, April 27 – The murder of Moscow Judge Eduard Chuvashov two weeks ago is only the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger problem, a St. Petersburg scholar says, one that threatens not only the lives of judges and their families but even the possibility of justice in the Russian Federation. That is because, Denis Primakov, a researcher at the I […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 27 – A new Russian website intended to ensure no one forgets what it calls “the victims of nationalist terror in the Western regions of the USSR” unintentionally calls attention to the strength of resistance to the imposition of Soviet power in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus after World War II. The site, lists […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 27 – Ivan Demidov, a prominent TV personality with close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate, the defense ministry, and the United Russia Party, has been named the Presidential Administration’s point man for supersizing relations with religious organizations, the latest indication of the continuing Kremlin tilt toward the Russian Orthodo […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 26 – The Russian government has sent to the Duma draft legislation that will allow FSB officers to issue warnings and impose fines on anyone they suspect of extremism, a measure the powers that be are justifying as required by the need to combat that evil but one that opposition figures conclude is likely to be directed at all those […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 26 – In its fifth annual survey of electronic and print media freedom across the Russian Federation, the Glasnost Defense Foundation reports that there is not a single region in which the media are “completely free” and that the country-wide state of media freedom has deteriorated over the last five years. At a seminar in St. Petersb […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 26 – Like other post-Soviet leaders who have made political promises to Russia in exchange for immediate financial assistance, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich may have outsmarted Moscow, getting the Russians to provide gas subsidies now by agreeing to extend the Sevastopol base lease after 2017, according to a Russian commentat […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 23 – The retirement of two senior Russian officials, one who had been involved with religious affairs since Soviet times and a second who earlier had clashed with the Moscow Patriarchate, opens the way for a further tightening of relations between President Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian Orthodox Church. These latest developments co […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 23 – Senior Russian leaders continue to have access to “a nomenklatura paradise” of special schools, food and book stores, and resorts, according to a Moscow journal. But now ordinary citizens for a fee can partake of some of these facilities, an experience that is feeding popular anger about privileges the powers that be continue to […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 23 – The dying off of the numerically small peoples of the Russian north, already taking place because of economic development and climate change, is being accelerated by the mishandling of nuclear materials at power stations and military bases in that region and especially by the lack of secure storage facilities for nuclear wastes […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 22 –Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich stands to gain from “the gas for fleet” agreement under which he agreed to allow Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to remain in Sevastopol until 2042 in exchange for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s reduction of gas prices for Ukrainian customers, even if the Verhovna Rada refuses to ratify it. Tha […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 22 – Clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz, on the one hand, and minority groups, on the other, if they come to involve ethnic Uzbeks, a Moscow analyst says, would put Kyrgyzstan on the road to a “full-scale” civil war, likely lead to intervention by Tashkent, and threaten that already troubled Central Asian country’s survival. In an analysi […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 22 – Vyacheslav Tuchnin, the minister counselor at the Russian Embassy in Tallinn, has told local ethnic Russians that “the recognition by Russia of the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union is inevitable” and that they should “not interfere with this process,” a Russian activist in Estonia has complained to a sympathetic Russian […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 21 – Moscow’s excessive reliance on profits from the export of oil and gas -- the centerpiece of Vladimir Putin’s policies – has been contributing to a significant decline in the standard of living of most Russians beyond the capital’s ring road even as it has boosted the country’s GDP, according to a UN report on “Energy and Stable […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 21 – A strike by Russian air traffic controllers which has spread to more than 50 cities is “the first successfully organized mass protest since the beginning of the [economic] crisis,” an indication that Russian workers may be starting to overcome “the deficit of solidarity” which has hampered them up to now, a Moscow social critic […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 21 – Having failed to force Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to reverse his decision to allow the Baikalsk cellulose and paper plant to restart and dump chemical wastes into Lake Baikal, the leaders of the Baikal Movement have sent an appeal to chiefs of state and leaders of major businesses, asking them to bring pressure to bear on Mos […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 20 – Deteriorating conditions in Kyrgyzstan and increasing evidence that the provisional government is not in control of the situation, especially in the wake of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s observation that Bishkek must build a state anew, are leading some Russians to ask whether Kyrgyzstan as a country could cease to exist. […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 20 – The tandemocracy in Russia today, one in which there are two centers of power – one around President Dmitry Medvedev and a second around Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – could open the way to political pluralism, but it could also lead to the kind of “dual power” which destroyed Russia in 1917 and the Soviet Union in 1991. The ou […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 20 – General Aleksandr Lebed, who had he lived would have marked his 60th birthday today, sought to overcome the imperialist and hyper-centralized approach that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, a personal mission that led to his marginalization but one that with all its contradictions he should be remembered, a Russian comm […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 19 – At the end of the Soviet period, many Russians believed that theirs was an “Orthodox” people which simply lacked churches, but now, a leading Orthodox educator says, they recognize that this was an illusion and that Russian society consists of “baptized godless” people who have numerous “magical and pagan prejudices.” Still wors […]

Paul Goble Vienna, April 19 – A bombing by persons yet unknown of a slum apartment in Moscow where a group of Tajik gastarbeiters that left many of them injured and some near death was probably the work of Russian nationalist skinheads, Karomat Sharipov, the president of the All-Russian Social Movement Tajik Labor Migrants, says. But he says, such actions do […]