As with Ukraine and Belarus, Kazakhstan is falling under the grip of Moscow as a response to disorder and threats to align with the West.
Tag: ussr
The Russian president’s article on the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union can be read on multiple levels. But one thing is sure, his mind is fixed on the future.
Beijing seems to be abandoning the very strategy that allowed it to not only survive the collapse of the USSR, but also prosper.
Our Slovenian writer’s bygone trip through a China still not plugged into the global economy reveals some clues for how the pandemic has brought us to this point.
There’s an old joke about the apartment complexes named after Khrushchev.
Etienne Mallard has spent a lifetime venturing far and wide. A retired high-school philosophy teacher, he has always considered himself nothing more or less than an amateur photographer — with decent equipment.
MOSCOW — Compared to last century’s Cosmonaut glory, Russia’s space program is looking more like a dud these days. On May 16, a Proton-M rocket crashed in Siberia with its commercial load, a Mexican telecommunications satellite. A week earlier, a Progress spacecraft, a Russian cargo craft that was supposed to deliver more than three tons […]
After the Soviet collapse, Russia and Ukraine split what was left of the Red Army. Now an open war between the two is becoming increasingly likely in a bitter twist of history.
-OpEd- PARIS — As Germany celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday, we mark the passage of time. Historically speaking, time is a variable. Much can happen in a quarter century, or very little. Twenty-five years was how long military service used to last for peasants in Tsarist Russia. […]
Barack Obama is governing in a much different world than his predecessors. How will his foreign policy be remembered? Who does he most emulate? Hint: It’s not Jimmy Carter.
Move the shot glasses aside and make way for some stemware. One expert characterizes the Russian wine market as one of the “most promising in the modern world.”
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Soviet Disobedience
At the end of WWII, several monuments were built across Berlin to commemorate the Soviet soldiers fallen during the war. As imposing as this memorial in Treptower Park seems, I was unimpressed: I’ve always been circumspect about soldiers. So was my wife Claudine, who looks like she’s turning her back to these Soviet occupiers, who […]
PEREVALNE — While Russian flags fly in Simferopol and people celebrate the “return home” in the main square, a few miles away in the village of Perevalne a strange calm has descended. For weeks now, the Ukrainian military regiments here have been surrounded by Russian forces, and armored vehicles have patrolled the streets. Pro-Russian activists […]
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On The Good Side Of The Fence
In 1972, Germany was divided in two — between the Soviet-occupied German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the west. Being on the “good side” of the fence, we were able to drive there and see the ominous Iron Curtain with its barbed wire and threatening miradors. […]
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Flowing Volga, Still Life
Ten years had passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when we took a river cruise on the Volga … but in some places, there was no way of telling. This church, which had been abandoned under the Communist regime, remained unrepaired. The landscape of open pasture and haystacks brought back childhood memories of […]
Wealth divides and political opportunism are creating a toxic mix of economic sentiments in Putin’s Russia.
KOMMERSANT (Russia) Worldcrunch MOSCOW – There are fresh grumblings in the Russian government suggesting that Vladimir Lenin has finally overstayed his welcome in Red Square. Lenin’s body has been displayed in a specially-designed mausoleum in the central Moscow square since his death in 1924 — the kind of treatment that apparently is destined for Venezuelan’s […]
It’s more about secret oil reserves than Cold War nostalgia.
Once mercenaries for Ivan the Terrible, the Cossacks were known as great fighters before being wiped out by the Bolsheviks. Now, they are on the frontline of a nationalistic revival.