Nina L. Khrushcheva
Nina Khrushcheva, author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics, teaches international affairs at The New School and is senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York.
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2010-02-02
| Because Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 turned out to be a seeming unending series of disappointments, most Western leaders are acting as if it makes no difference whether Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko or her rival, Viktor Yanukovich, wins on February 7. They are wrong: a victory for Yanukovich now may be the last free vote Ukraine sees for a long time.... read |
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2009-12-07
| Vladimir Putin’s political genius is that he understands that, for Russians, being perceived as powerful is even more important than actually being powerful. That is why neither he nor his presidential factotum, Dmitri Medvedev, will have to make good in 2010 on promises to modernize Russia decrepit economy and backward society.... read |
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2009-11-16
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Today, the contemporary version of the KGB, the Federal Security Bureau, runs Russia’s energy businesses in much the same top-down way that the KGB once ran the Soviet Union, with business always subordinate to the regime’s political needs. The result has been not only widespread corruption and under-investment, but also an inability to modernize and diversify the economy.... read |
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2009-07-29
| The recent deaths of Béla Király, who commanded Hungary's freedom fighters in 1956, and of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, whose break with Stalinism inspired many intellectuals to abandon communism, recalls their legacy for today's Europe. They, together with Nikita Krushchev, paved the way for the Continent's freedom and unification.... read |
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2008-12-01
| In the first half of 2008, Russia was on top of the world, as record-high oil prices boosted revenues and the country racked up one international success after another - in hockey, soccer, the Eurovision Song Contest, and the battle to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Unfortunately for Russia, 2008 had two halves.... read |
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2008-08-06
| Even in death, Alexander Solzhenitsyn will remain a force to be reckoned with. Having been used by Nikita Khrushchev to undermine the Stalin era's moral pretenses, and by Vladimir Putin to uphold the ideals of Russian nationalism, perhaps one day his work will be restored to its rightful place as a monument to individual freedom.... read |
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2008-08-01
| China's rulers may have been politically tone-deaf in choosing Albert Speer Jr., the son of Hitler’s favorite architect and the designer of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as the overall designer of the Beijing Games. But they wanted, above all, an Olympics that reflected their image of themselves in a bombastic architecture of power, and Speer Jr. delivered the goods.... read |
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2008-02-29
| The election of Vladimir Putin’s longtime acolyte and handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, as Russia’s president means that Putin has completed a transfer of office while retaining power. But what if the supposed puppet starts to pull the strings?... read |
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2007-10-03
| VIENNA -- For those who still wondered who Vladimir Putin is, the mystery is over. His actions this week show that he is Russia’s new autocrat. He is a Czar pure and simple.... read |
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2005-06-30
| Russia’s split personality – symbolized by its Tsarist coat of arms, a two-headed eagle – has been on open display recently. One minute, President Vladimir Putin’s regime is on a charm offensive, desiring a settlement to its six-decade-old territorial dispute with Japan over the Kurile Islands and reassuring investors following the conviction of oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The next moment Putin balks at removing Russia’s military garrison from Moldova’s secessionist Transdniester region while prosecutors talk ominously of putting more oligarchs in the dock.... read |
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2006-10-09
| It is time to end the fiction that Vladimir Putin’s “dictatorship of law” has made postcommunist Russia any less lawless. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s bravest and best journalists, a woman who dared to expose the brutal murders committed by Russian troops in Chechnya, is final proof that President Putin has delivered nothing more than a run of the mill dictatorship with the usual contempt for law. ... read |
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2006-08-17
| It is now 15 years since the failed coup of August 1991 against Mikhail Gorbachev. At the time, Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost were seen by Soviet hardliners as a sell-out of communist Russia to the capitalist West. But it is now clear that the KGB and the military who launched the coup were not defending the idea of communism. Instead, they were protecting their idea of Russia’s imperial mission, a notion that had given the Kremlin commissars greater control of the vast Russian empire, and of Russia’s neighbors, than any of the Tsars had ever enjoyed.... read |
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2004-07-30
| Once again, everyone wants to know, where is Russia heading? The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the possible bankruptcy of his company Yukos, Russia's biggest company, have incited cries that President Putin is returning the country to the bad old days of dictatorship. But in assessing where Russia is heading, political and economic analysis are of little help. It is Russia's social culture that is determining the country's fate.... read |
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2007-01-16
| The death watch for Fidel Castro is something that only Gabriel Garcia Marquez could get right. His novel Autumn of the Patriarch captures perfectly the moral squalor, political paralysis, and savage ennui that enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long-term dictator. ... read |
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2004-03-08
| Two practical questions can be asked of any political system: First, what distinguishes the political parties? Second, who is in charge? ... read |
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2003-02-03
| Perhaps it takes an ex-KGB spy for a Kremlin ruler to play diplomatic poker with skill. Indeed, President Vladimir Putin shows as much mastery at international diplomacy as he does in handling Russian domestic affairs. Not since Gustav Stresemann, Weimar Germany's foreign minister, played the Soviet Union and the West off against each other, has a leader with so weak a hand played his cards so effectively. Putin's latest moves in North Korea, and his careful tap-dance over Iraq, are just the latest examples. ... read |
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2007-09-13
| It’s that time again – Russia’s pre-election season when prime ministers are changed as in a game of musical chairs. The last one seated, it is supposed, will become Russia’s next president.... read |
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2007-10-03
| VIENNA -- For those who still wondered who Vladimir Putin is, the mystery is over. His actions this week show that he is Russia’s new autocrat. He is a Czar pure and simple.... read |
