...ppression.” Yet despite the reforms, the battle for Georgia’s future continues to rage. The conflict can be traced to a deceptively simple question: Is Georgia a European state or an Asian one? Geographically situated between Russia and Turkey, it may appear irrefutably Asian. But this question will be resolved not by cartographers but rather by an array of perilous diplomatic maneuvers and drastic economic reforms. Georgia’s central government y...
The pose is almost menacing. Two penetrating, steel-blue eyes gaze downward at the viewer, the mouth calm but clenched. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Time’s 2007 Person of the Year, projects a threatening image in the magazine’s cover shot. The same could be said about Russia’s current image in the West. Western observers have decried Moscow’s silencing of opposition leaders and state control of the press, as well as Russia’s use of its natu...
...trend shared by all advanced economies, as many strive to build or sustain strong carbon-based post-industrial economies backed by a projectable defensive and offensive military power. In particular, the countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, see international environmental legislation as development-limiters; the Kyoto and Copenhagen summits’ limited successes prove this. Be that as it may, almost all developed nations are built o...
Illustrations by Stephanie Mannheim In Russia’s parliamentary elections on December 4, 2011, United Russia – the party of President-turned-Prime Minister-turned-current-President Vladimir Putin – won the majority of seats in the Duma, the Russian Parliament, amid cries (and video evidence) of widespread election fraud. On December 5, Russians took to the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Over the course of the next three months, tens of tho...
...scow became, in the eyes of the Muscovite elite, the “third Rome” – the one and only recipient of the Roman Empire’s heritage. From then on, the Rurik and Romanov dynasties, leaders of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and Tsardom of Russia, had a clear strategic imperative: to “release the potential of the third Rome,” as Catherine the Great put it. At the time, since the far north was already a de facto part of the Tsardom (albeit unnavigable), Russian...
Thursday evening, Professor Mitchell Orenstein of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies presented his paper, “Post-Soviet Authoritarianism: The Influence of Russia in Its Near Abroad” as the last lecture in an eighteen-month series by the Harriman Institute. The paper is co-authored by Professor David R. Cameron of Yale University. Professor Orenstein’s research ranges from international economic policy to pension ref...
Post-Cold War Russia has never been considered a paragon of democracy or political freedom. From bloody suppression in Chechnya to the ultra-rich oligarchs that make the economy spin, aspects of Russia and its government have always raised eyebrows in the international community. Yet even so, the Russian government – up to this point — has made a decent effort in feigning that it was a functioning democracy. Last week, any semblanc...
...s, who demanded either unification with their mother country or independence. War erupted in 1988 and, in the ensuing six years, an estimated thirty thousand were killed and over one million were forced to flee their homes. A Russian brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994, though the conflict was never formally ended and remains “frozen.” The international community still considers N-K to be a part of Azerbaijan, though the country exercises almos...
As predicted, Vladimir Putin won the March 4 Russian presidential elections with over 60 percent of the vote. What followed were the expected accusations of illegitimacy from members of the opposition. Fraud possibly occurred in the election, especially in southern provinces such as Chechnya, where over 93 percent of the vote went to Putin, a puzzling result that has become a tradition in recent Chechen elections. However, this level of fraud d...
...to listen to speakers demanding electoral reform, often lambasting Prime Minister Vladmir Putin and his pliant complotter, Dmitry Medvedev. These gatherings reached their zenith at the end of December and have now caused some Russian officials to call for electoral reform and increased transparency, though it seems that these half-baked concessions have spurred rather than mollified the protestors. Globally, this seems to be the time of revolutio...
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