Category Russia

What the future has in store

There seems to be a pattern in this procession of clouds over the Baltic Sea. They resemble birds moving to a better place for the coming chilly season, a mixed flock of large and small birds in a not very…

Electoral epistemology 2

Judging by reports from electoral precincts, Russia’s Communist party received more votes than the Kremlin’s own United Russia in the party-list election yesterday. Also, the Kremlin’s candidates appear to have lost in most of the first past the post (FPP)…

Electoral epistemology

From CNBC’s recent Russia dispatch: Adeline Van Houtte, Europe analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, noted Wednesday that the vote will be an important test for United Russia… “United Russia is now polling at around 30%, substantially lower than in 2016. Despite…

The Treaty of Kars: some background

A sequel to the post on the Treaty of Kars centenary (1921-2021). In much of the XIX century, Britain and France propped up the weak Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against Russian expansion. With the rise of the Entente Cordiale,…

The Treaty of Kars, 1921-2021

The first centenary of the Kars Treaty between three Soviet Republics and Turkey is coming up in October. Its predecessor, the Treaty of Moscow between Russia and Turkey, turned 100 in March 2021. It’s probably worth repeating that 2015 marked…

Presentiment

Of nothing in particular. Ruins of Ivan Zholtovsky’s puzzling pavilion, grainy rain clouds above, a pop-artsy fence, and tired, lifeless grass in the foreground: Dusk in Gorky Park. By way of explanation, a quote by Alexandra Selivanova pasted from this…

Pines in wet climates

The pine forest on the left grows in the Pskov region of European Russia, not far from Pushkin’s ancestral estate. The climate there is moderately cold and rather wet, with more than 700 mm of precipitation per year.  Winters are…

Age is a cunning beast

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign made a big deal of Joe Biden’s advanced age, claiming he was too senile to be president. The Kremlin’s propagandists in the media, both traditional and social, rushed to ridicule Biden as well, along the lines…

Blok in the dialect of Brescia

At Language Hat‘s, a link to and discussion of Alexander Blok in Dialèt Bresà, a translation or “transplantation” of Alexander Blok’s famous poem, Night, Street, Lamp, Drugstore, into a Gallo-Italic language, by Valentina Gosetti. The language is her native dialect,…