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...
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...
...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...
This month, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev sent a bill to the Duma calling for the reinstatement of direct gubernatorial elections by the people of Russia’s provinces. The governors of Russia’s provinces currently are appointed by the Kremlin, which, through its dominating majorities in the Duma, did away with direct elections in 2004. The Kremlin can also fire governors essentially at will, resulting in governors who are more interested in s...
...e dipping their noses in Israeli politics was quickly forgotten. As James Harding put it, “Israel’s arms race in American advisers was under way.” Furthermore, political consultants – almost exclusively American, European, or Russian – can serve shadier purposes than the purely lucrative. Consultants have often been accused of acting in a post-Cold War imperialist effort to influence elections abroad. As mentioned by Professor Taylor Boas, politi...
...s well as global warming, which allows ice-breaker tankers to reach Antarctica more easily than ever – has contributed to dropping the estimated cost per barrel of Ross Sea crude oil by some 50 percent. American, Chinese, and Russian experts now estimate the marginal profitable price to be around $100-$120. The crude barrel peaked at $145 in June of 2008, and now fluctuates between $90 and $110. Goldman Sachs, Gazprom (Russia), and Aramco (Saudi...
...ardom 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 tsars then had one priority: conquer new territories to the south and east. Ivan the Terrible conquered Siberia as a whole in the few decades following his grandfather’s death, but since Russia’s maritime power was b...
On Sunday, Russians from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok will vote to decide who will be president for the next six years. If the favored Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, running in place of incumbent president and United Russia party mate Dmitri Medvedev, wins more than 50 percent of the country’s vote on Sunday, he will become president again and be able to extend his tenure at the apex of Russian political power until 2018. At that point in time,...
...relations with the West have the potential to address the issue of FDI and, albeit indirectly, that of the breakaway provinces. Saakashvili has been particularly successful at finding investors. Stephen Jones, a professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at Mount Holyoke College, points to the recent announcement of Georgia’s inclusion in the Millennium Challenge Account, a $1 billion fund provided by the US from which eligible countries can draw...
...milar to “U-S-A.”) However, although Russia has large immigrant populations of Caucasians and Central Asians, minority players are conspicuously absent from the squad. Alan Dzagoev, a young Ossetian striker, is not ethnically Russian but there is limited tension between ethnic Russians and the Orthodox Ossetians. Second 45 Minutes Unlike with the Ossetians, there is high tension between ethnic Russians and Muslim migrants from the south. Since th...
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