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, [...]
6 Nov 2011
Over the weekend, in the aftermath of Unity Day and the Russkii Marsh, yours truly interviewed the author behind one of LiveJournal’s most popular anonymous blogs. According to Yandex, “Politrash_ru” ranks as the 111st most read blog on LiveJournal, just ten places lower than Ilya Yashin and 115 places above Vladimir Milov. When Navalny publicly [...]
2 Nov 2011
Last week, a slew of Aleksei Navalny’s personal emails leaked onto the Web. The emails were originally available at http://navalnymail.kz/ but that site is now dead. For those of you with moral qualms about reading over this man’s private correspondence, it’s worth noting that Navalny himself has invited the public to have a look: To read or [...]
25 Oct 2011
Over the weekend, Bolotnaia Square hosted the latest gathering of ‘Khvatit kormit’ Kavkaz!’ (Enough feeding the Caucasus!), a Russian nationalist movement that first emerged last April. Saturday’s rally was attended by none other than Aleksei Navalny, who also took the stage and delivered a short speech. Navalny was visibly disappointed with the attendance, which was [...]
18 Oct 2011
Last month, someone writing under the pseudonym Gleb Vlasov created a LiveJournal account and posted a single article with several revelations and accusations against FSB General Oleg Feoktistov. Feoktistov, First Deputy Head of the FSB’s 9th Division, the Internal Security Directorate (or ‘USB’), earned his current position (according to Vlasov) by leading the 2007-2008 investigation of Aleksandr Bul’bov, [...]
29 Sep 2011
Are Russia-watchers guilty of over-thinking or over-hoping? Sam Greene claims to have been the “last analyst left in Moscow who actually thought that Dmitri Medvedev would stay on as president of Russia,” but this is hyperbole. Analysts as talented as Stanislav Belkovsky, Igor Yurgens, and Gleb Pavlovsky (to name just a few) were also in [...]
27 Sep 2011
In light of Aleksei Kudrin’s departure from the Ministry of Finance yesterday, I’m posting this follow-up to my initial thoughts about Russia after Putin’s return. Before Medvedev spit hellfire and brimstone at Kudrin on Monday, Igor Shuvalov seemed convinced that Russia’s long-time Finance Minister would be migrating from the ‘government’ to the ‘Kremlin,’ just as [...]
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