For those in Russia with an interest in preserving the status quo, youth justice is a Western invention with no place in their country. Others disagree. But the two positions share some features, so Boris Altshuler appeals to them to put their differences aside and make common cause for the sake o
As another “colour revolution” is overthrown in Kyrgyzstan, Boris Dolgin reflects that it changed nothing. Will the country be able to sort out a more nuanced relationship with the USA, Russia and China?
Tanya Lokshina, Russia researcher for Human Rights Watch, attended a recent demonstration in her professional capacity and was detained by the police three times in thirty minutes. She gives a graphic description of the evening’s events.
In the second part of this important interview with polit.ru’s Boris Dolgin, veteran foreign affairs analyst Dmitry Trenin outlines an optimistic vision of Russia’s future. The country’s foreign policy will change as Russia’s elite matures, he predicts. In time, that elite will need the rule of la
There have been many attempts at building new structures to replace the Soviet Union, since it fell 10 years ago. These have left the political landscape littered with acronyms: CST, CSTO, CRRF, SCO, EEC, SES, GUAM and GUUAM. In the second part of his article Sergei Markedonov reviews their succes
Russia’s foreign policy is outdated, according to the distinguished foreign affairs analyst Dmitry Trenin. In the first part of this interview with polit.ru’s Boris Dolgin he argues that rather than focus on preserving Russia’s status as a great power, its aim should be modernisation. Otherwise, g
2010 sees the 19th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR. In the first of this two-part review of the structures set up to replace it, Sergei Markedonov assesses the performance of the Commonwealth of Independent States ( CIS). He concludes that a complicating factor has been the lack of clarity
Today, as Memorial receives the 2009 Sakharov Prize, Lyubov Borusyak talks to Ludmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, about the birth of Russia’s human rights movement. In 1956, after Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, Russia’s people started talking once more, and circulating ‘samizdat’.
The independence, or lack of it, of the Russian judiciary has been much discussed, but Emmanuil Gushansky makes an impassioned plea for the role of mental health experts to be more clearly defined and strengthened
Landmark victories in defiance of the Russian government have made the European Court of Human Rights the most popular legal institution in the country. Many cases fail at the initial committee stage. Grigory Dikov finds a huge disconnect between the capabilities of the Court and the hopes of the
The myth of Russia’s beautiful past has gripped the popular imagination, thanks to state propaganda, the poet Tatiana Shcherbina laments. Stalin is the nation’s hero, heir to the Tsars. Russia is once again ‘encircled by enemies’ and the people’s list of those who ought to be shot grows longer dai
Ukraine has proved exceptionally vulnerable to the economic crisis, says Grigory Gritsenko. Dependent on its exports, it is hampered both by its dependence on its Russian neighbour for gas and the poverty of its internal market.
