Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
This paperback, Xǐnǎo Means Brainwashing, was published in the Soviet Union in 1977. The name of the author, “M. G. Stepanov,” sounds pseudonymic. The book is a highly critical review of Maoist ideology, propaganda and repression in China in the…
The Cultural Revolution began fifty years and six months ago, in May 1966. Paul Berman writes of Mao’s admirers in France and America: The flower of French intellectual life—Sartre, Foucault, and many others—aligned themselves with the Maoist cause in the…
One of the field launches I mentioned in the final paragraphs of this post: President Vladimir Putin will watch the launch of the Vostochno-Messoyakha field, jointly developed by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, via a video link… Russia’s oil output is…
More notes on last Sunday’s Duma election in Russia. The elephant in the room. Alexei Navalny – the de-facto opposition leader in my view, although not in everyone else’s – was barred from running, as was his party. The silence…
The Moscow Times on yesterday’s Duma election: Half of the 450-seat State Duma is elected through party lists. United Russia has so far claimed 52 [54 with 90% of precincts counted] percent of that contest. Another 225 seats in the Duma…
Sarah Kendzior on the passing of the man who ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years: Karimov died as he lived, shrouded in secrets, discussed by his countrymen through the mish-mish — gossip — that forms the primary source of communication in his insular, authoritarian state. Of…
The Moscow Times reports: Russia’s Justice Ministry has declared the independent pollster the Levada Center to be a “foreign agent,” saying the decision to blacklist the center followed an unscheduled inspection of Levada’s documents […T]he organization will likely be forced to…
At The Russian Reader, a series of translations from the Russian press on the recent “tractor convoy” protests by Krasnodar farmers. Without agreeing with the translator’s (or translators’) politics, I recommend The Russian Reader as a great source on Russian events…
For whatever reasons – ideological or scholarly or both – Noam Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar was not accepted into the mainstream of Soviet linguistics. On the other hand, the professor’s criticisms of US policies were a welcome addition to the…
A few quick footnotes to Ed Caesar’s piece on Deutsche Bank’s Russian adventures in The New Yorker. A sensible article, unexpectedly since it deals with finance and modern Russia, both difficult subjects for a literary magazine. Still it doesn’t mention the…
The so-called Media and Communications Union, an association of Russia’s mobile and fixed telecom operators, has drafted a bill that would force all providers of “electronic messaging” services to require that users identify themselves and to block messages or posts with…
After days of confusing media reports from the ground, official statements were made today in Moscow and Kiev: The FSB agency said one of its officers had been killed during a shootout with a “group of diversionaries” on Saturday night,…