Category: Russia
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Putin Uses Victory Day Speech To Laud “Participants” in the Ukraine SMO, 9 May 2023
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, on May 9, 2023, spoke at the military parade in Moscow on Red Square to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany on that day in 1945. Using the May 9 celebration as a springboard, Putin in his 10-minute speech brought to the fore the “Special…
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“We Have Faith, They Have Religion”
Thus Russtrat director, Elena Panina, begins her May 5, 2023 opinion piece in which she reasons that Russia will prevail in Ukraine because the former is united under the rubric of ‘faith,’ i.e., that ‘God is on our side’ because of the justness of the cause under the banner of which the SMO [Special Military…
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“Street People” – A Graphic Reporting Initiative Depicting the Plight of the Homeless in Russia, late April 2023
The Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta (New Gazette), on its 25 April 2023 internet site edition featured an article in which free-lance journalist, Irina Kravtsova, explained how she came to create the graphic reporting endeavor Street People. As an example of her work, Novaya Gazeta included a snippet from the Street People project. [Kravtsova’s article as…
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The Arrest of WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Reaction to It. Chronology
Voice of America’s Russian language service correspondent Masha Morton has filed a detailed report documenting the chronology of the arrest of The Wall Street Journal reporter in Russia, Evan Gershkovich. Morton’s April 3 account will probably be the most factually-based version of the incident that Russian-only speakers will receive, given the anti-free speech climate in…
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The Nechayev Affair: The Murder of the Student Ivanov in November 1869
This post is supplemental to my post, Dostoevsky and the [Russian Orthodox] Church, in order to add context and a partial raison d’etre for Dostoevsky’s writing the novel Demons. It is a translation of an article published by A.I. Rakitin in 2014 at ©”Загадочные преступления прошлого” (Mysterious Crimes of the Past). The translation by LOC…
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Dostoevsky and the [Russian Orthodox] Church
This is a translation, from the Russian, of a 3-part article by Vladimir Malyagin, an author and dramatist who serves on the publishing council of the Russian Orthodox Church. The reader is invited to engage in a critical review of the author’s commentary, remembering that it is the viewpoint of an apologist of Russian Orthodoxy,…
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Book Review: Russia in Search of Itself by James Billington
An American scholar with a deep interest in Russian culture, particularly as it relates to the country’s Christian heritage as expressed through Russian Orthodoxy, James Billington was perhaps the foremost chronicler of Russia and its history for over 40 years. Billington first appeared on my radar in the mid-1970s while I was studying Russian Language…
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Book Review: Autopsy of an Empire – The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Jack Matlock, Jr.
Jack Matlock served as U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the final years of the Reagan administration and the first year of the Bush I administration, from 1987 to 1991. During that time, according to his account, despite the many duties falling to him to perform in Moscow, he managed to visit each of the union…
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Russian President Putin Delivers New Year’s Eve War-Time Footing Message to Country, December 31, 2022
Couched in a message that at times teetered on the edge of extreme sentamentality and at other times wreaked of Soviet-era communist jargon and its rationalizing propagandistic worldview, Putin was profuse in expressing his gratitude to all those who have been ‘participants’ in fighting [to reclaim] Russia’s historic lands, while protecting the lives of their…
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Israel Sends Highly Credentialed Diplomat To Germany as Ambassador, late December 2022
The German daily newspaper, Tagesspiegel, on December 21, 2022, posted to its internet site an interview it had conducted with Israel’s new ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor. The interview addresses Israel’s relations not only with Germany but rather, by his replies to the questions, Prosor, as one of the country’s most experienced diplomats, provides a…
The Dragon is Slain 