11 Dec 2011
The first of possibly several waves of mass demonstrations has swept Russia. Yesterday, a crowd maybe as big as one-hundred thousand people gathered in downtown Moscow to protest voter fraud in the December 4th parliamentary elections. The big question now is: where does Russia go from here? For most observers on the ground, there is [...]
6 Dec 2011
The votes are in, the violations are online, and Moscow’s oppositionists are out on the streets, gathered at dawn in Kitai Gorod, chanting at cops to release their most beloved celebrity, Aleksei Navalny. Russia’s best known activist-blogger found himself in police custody earlier tonight, when Sunday’s parliamentary election results confirmed for many that the authorities [...]
20 Nov 2011
“If an authoritarian regime can crumble under the pressure of a Facebook group, whether its members are protesting online or in the streets, it’s not much of an authoritarian regime. The real effects of digital activism would thus most likely be felt only in the long term rather than immediately.” This is what Evgeny Morozov, [...]
16 Sep 2011
In the wake of Mikhail Prokhorov’s political downfall and the likely death of Pravoe Delo’s chances at attracting enough votes to enter the next Duma, commentators are scrambling to make sense of what has happened. The amount of relevant material that’s exploded onto the Internet in the past two days is vast and beyond easy [...]
14 Aug 2011
14 Jul 2011
Last September, the rock group Leningrad released a controversial song about the much debated Khimki Forest. The music video featured a violent medley of famous cartoon characters fighting a grand battle royale. The recent skirmish in the town of Sagra was far more serious and deadly than Leningrad’s comic parody, but it too has inspired [...]
25 Jun 2011
On June 22, 2011, Russia’s Justice Ministry rejected the opposition’s latest attempt to register an official political party. The People’s Freedom Party “For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption,” otherwise known as PARNAS, was officially turned away for a small handful of reasons. The most discussed issue has been the presence of “dead souls” on PARNAS’ [...]
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