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 [...]
11 Jan 2011
I recently read a very interesting interview with the always-provocative Maskim Kononenko, an insanely active Russian LJ blogger, journalist, and creator of the wildly funny vladimir.vladimirovich.ru short stories saga. The original text of this “Russkii Zhurnal” interview can be found here, and my translation appears below. One thing I’ll note about Kononenko’s comments is that [...]
11 Sep 2010
For those who aren’t already following it, I direct your attention to the recent and ongoing feud between the youth group “Nashi” and Moscow Northern District Prefect Oleg Mitvol’. Now, Mitvol’ and “Nashi” have a little history that’s worth noting at the outset: exactly a year ago in September 2009, he came to their aid [...]
29 Apr 2010
Yesterday in Foreign Policy, Julia Ioffe published the most in-depth English-language article to-date on the hidden-camera scandals in Russia. She interviews Solidarnost’s Ilya Yashin, Nashi’s Robert Schlegel, and the center of the fiasco himself: Viktor Shenderovich. It is a weird article. Yashin compares infidelity and mattress-humping to defecation; Shenderovich says that his wife “reacted completely [...]
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