openDemocracy Russia recently published the harrowing tale of a Russian drug-dependent woman Irina Teplinskaya, and her campaign to make medication available to HIV positive people. Here she describes the protest actions organised in support of the campaign.
oDR is proud to publish Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s final speech at his trial, which belongs in the tradition of great statements. It is a fine and eloquent summary of the larger problem Russia faces of being unable to modernize because of its governance. The court is expected to start pronouncing the
On Sunday, Belarus goes to the polls, ending an election cycle that saw all the usual assumptions turned on their heads. In this, the second of a two part analysis, David R. Marples and Uladzimir Padhol look at the candidates and ask if a Lukashenka victory is anything other than a foregone conclu
Journalist Oleg Kashin was recently brutally beaten up. To ram the message home, the fingers on his writing hand were broken, as well as his jaw and shins. He had been active in protesting the building of a highway through the Khimki forest nature reserve. Now he reflects on the authorities’ handl
Russian human rights activists routinely put themselves in danger’s way, but are largely unappreciated and mistrusted by their compatriots. In times of despair, Anna Sevortian is brought back to one thing: idealism.
The second week of December promises to be highly symbolic for all those interested in human rights in Russia. Today is Human Rights Day, and in five days time the verdict in the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be handed down. Simon Cosgrove looks forward, reflects back and salutes the c
The presidential election in December is unlikely to usher in a new president, young people feel no link to their Soviet past, and the wolf Lukashenka isn’t about to turn vegetarian. European Poet of Freedom Uladzimier Arlou is a towering figure in Belarus; here he talks to Ingo Petz.
Russia is deep in reflection about a mass murder that left twelve dead. For Andrei Konchalovsky, the most shocking thing about the Kuschevskaya killings was neither crime nor bungled cover-up, but the sobering thought that Russians are not really citizens. He implores his fellow countrymen to find
When a professor and police colonel were arrested and charged for printing a book in memory of the victims of Stalinist Terror, many believed officials would soon recognize the absurdity of the case. A year later, however, the Archangelsk affair shows no signs of being dropped. Is it a case of loc
Kazakhstan’s 2010 chairmanship of the OSCE has not passed without controversy. Reforms promised at the beginning of the year never happened, press harassment continues and things could get worse when Kazakhstan is no longer in the glare of international scrutiny, laments Ryan Gallagher
Is the December presidential election going to be more of the same? Lukashenka has been president for 16 years, but this time he is playing at democracy. Could his game get the better of him? Olga Birukova fears probably not, but a recent survey might be cause for hope.
On Thursday evening, prominent TV journalist Leonid Parfyonov broke with the etiquette of live award ceremonies, and made an unannounced and sensational attack on the state of Russian journalism. Russian TV bosses have become slaves to government bureaucrats, he said, and in so doing are complicit
