INTERNATIONAL INSIGHT

A Window on Russia

“A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” – so Winston Churchill once described Russia. Subsequent efforts at understanding that huge and complex country have not made it much more transparent. But Project Syndicate’s special monthly column on Russian affairs offers readers a clear-eyed view.

Project Syndicate's monthly commentaries on Russian affairs and Russian life, edited by the historian and political commentator, Nina Khrushcheva, make the politics, culture, and economy of this often murky country explicable to an outside audience. Written primarily by eminent Russians, they present Russian society "from the inside," delivering to readers the people and ideas that will shape Russia in the months and years ahead.

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Development’s New Donors

Alexi Kudrin and Robert B. Zoellick Series: A Window on Russia

2010-02-12

The rise of new development partners – emerging markets that are channeling billions of dollars to developing countries – opens possibilities for fresh ideas and resources to help overcome poverty, sustain inclusive economic growth, and address global issues such as food security and climate change. An upcoming conference in Moscow promises to help realize these opportunities.... read

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Is Russia’s Economic Crisis Over?

Irina Yasina Series: A Window on Russia

2010-01-29

It is not yet certain whether the engine of the global economy will be able to run without additional liquidity, possibly undermining fiscal stability worldwide. Elsewhere, that will become clear in the first half of 2010; in Russia, signs of recovery, if they appear at all, will lag well behind the rest of the world.... read

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The Kremlin Two Step

Dmitri Trenin Series: A Window on Russia

2009-12-30

To dismiss Dmitri Medvedev as a mere puppet of Vladimir Putin, or, on the contrary, to focus on minor differences between them as signs of a looming split, is misleading and wrong. The two men need each other, and the real question is whether there is light for Russia at the end of the tandem.... read

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Russia’s Renegade Puppet

Dmitry Shlapentokh Series: A Window on Russia

2009-11-30

When the Kremlin installed Ramzan Kadyrov as president of Chechnya, he seemed an effective antidote to the jihadist threat. But the logical conclusion of the Kremlin’s policy appears to be precisely what it sought to prevent – Chechen independence – when it engaged in the first Chechen war almost a generation ago.... read

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Is Russia Weak?

Gleb Pavlovsky Series: A Window on Russia

2009-10-29

Russia has put down uprisings and insurgencies within its own borders and in the post-Soviet space as far away as Tajikistan, and it can influence US security strategy worldwide. So why do so many Westerners persist in calling Russia "weak"?... read

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Putin’s History Lessons

Alexander Etkind Series: A Window on Russia

2009-09-15

Whereas Soviet ideology was always oriented toward the future, today’s official Russian ideology is focused squarely - and almost obsessively - on the past. Vladimir Putin typifies this ideology, which reflects the deep, unresolved problems of his own era.... read

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The Tails Wagging the Kremlin Dog?

Alexander Golts Series: A Window on Russia

2009-08-28

In order to compensate for its growing inferiority complex, Russia has cobbled together the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which, by its title and constitutional principles, is a parody of NATO. And, true to parodic form, it is Russia's partners - the former Soviet Republics - that clearly have the upper hand.... read

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An Old Problem on China’s New Frontier

Konstanty Gebert Series: A Window on Russia

2009-07-23

In the short and medium term, China’s rule in Xinjiang (and Tibet) seems secure: the international community will not challenge a Security Council member state. In the longer term, however, the Chinese authorities have every reason to be worried, because political maps are never carved in stone.... read

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What Reset Button?

Masha Lipman Series: A Window on Russia

2009-07-01

The emergence of a Kremlin leader without a KGB background, combined with the uncertainty generated by the economic crisis, has inspired talk that when Barack Obama visits Moscow, will be coming to a country on the verge of a political thaw, or revived perestroika. But pushing the “re-set button” on US-Russia relations may be harder than Obama and his team ever imagined.... read

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The Return of the Siloviki	Anders Åslund
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently announced that Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan have abandoned their separate talks to join the WTO. This amounts to a major reversal of Russian policy, and one that shows who is really in charge in Russia - Putin and his authoritarian, isolationist cronies from the security apparatus, not President Dmitry Medvedev.... read

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The Right Way to Rebuild Georgia

Graciana del Castillo and Edmund S. Phelps Series: A Window on Russia

2008-11-07

At the October 22 donors’ meeting on Georgia, aid pledges rolled in, totaling $4.5 billion. But the process was deeply flawed, and it overlooked the need for inclusive and dynamic growth, without which sustainable peace will remain elusive, leaving donors hard pressed to justify actually committing the large financial aid package that they have pledged.... read

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Russia’s Population Implosion

Sergei Kapitsa Series: A Window on Russia

2005-06-29

Years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn coined the phrase “preservation of the people,” by which he meant Russia’s cultural survival. Today, it applies to Russia in a far more literal way.... read

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Stalin Lives

Roy Medvedev Series: A Window on Russia

2005-03-29

The legacy of dead dictators from vanquished totalitarian regimes should no longer be ambivalent. Only Germany’s lunatic fringe dares to commemorate Hitler. Not even the pathetic remnant of the Khmer Rouge celebrates Pol Pot’s memory. Yet, as Russia approaches the 60th anniversary of its victory over Nazi Germany, marking Stalin’s role in that victory is proving to be damnably awkward.... read

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Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and End of Communism

Roy Medvedev Series: A Window on Russia

2006-02-20

In history, some events at first appear insignificant, or their significance is hidden, but they turn out to be earthshaking. Such a moment occurred 50 years ago, with Nikita Khrushchev’s so-called “Secret Speech” to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It ranks, I believe, just below the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the start of Hitler’s War in 1939 as the most critical moment of the twentieth century. ... read

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Russia’s “Oil-for-Knowledge” Scheme

Alexander Etkind Series: A Window on Russia

2006-01-09

Whenever you fill up your European compact car’s gas tank, or that of your American SUV, you pay as much as a Russian schoolteacher earns in a month. And every time you pay, you subsidize a regime that relies on energy, not information, as its main product. You finance the pre-modern and the inefficient, and perhaps worse: every time you pay, you may be collaborating with political evil.... read

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The Oligarch Wars

Boris Berezovsky Series: A Window on Russia

2005-12-29

I am in no position to be dispassionate about President Vladimir Putin’s war against Russia’s “oligarchs,” the class of men and women (yes, there are some, the wife of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzkov being the most prominent) who control the country’s most lucrative companies and natural-resource assets. How can I be neutral, as I am usually counted among them? But an insiders’ perspective is valuable nonetheless, for only an insider knows what is really being done behind the scenes.... read

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New World, Less Order

Mikhail Gorbachev Series: A Window on Russia

2004-11-05

Looking back to the revolutions that shook Europe and the world 15 years ago this month, we should rejoice in what has been gained - freedom, democracy, and transcendence of Europe's 40-year division. But we should also take stock of missed opportunities in the wake of the Cold War's peaceful end.... read

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From Rome to Moscow

Alexey Bukalov Series: A Window on Russia

2005-08-11

One of the late Pope John Paul II’s unfulfilled dreams was to visit Moscow and forge a rapprochement with the Orthodox Church. But, although he was invited to Moscow by Russia’s three most recent presidents – Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Gorbachev – opposition to the visit by Orthodox Patriarch Alexi prevented the Pope from making the journey before he died. Will Pope Benedict XVI achieve the breakthrough that his friend and predecessor failed to realize?... read

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Putin’s Ark

Konstantin Akinsha Series: A Window on Russia

2004-12-07

Recently I visited Moscow after five years away. The city, which looked different and strange, impressed me by its ability to change. My days back in Russia were divided between official meetings, hours wasted in traffic jams, and nights spent with old friends who tried to show me the best of Moscow nightlife. ... read

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The Color of Putin

Vyacheslav Nikonov Series: A Window on Russia

2005-09-29

Public consciousness always uses stereotypes. But it is always far worse when stereotypes take over the consciousness of a society’s elites. Such is the case regarding Russia nowadays.... read

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The Lessons of Perestroika, 20 Years After	Gavril Popov
Twenty years after Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika, many people have come to lament the slow pace of reform in Russia under President Vladimir Putin. But could it have been otherwise? This should not be a surprise, because the tumultuous Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras left the country exhausted. So who can blame Russians for suffering from the reform fatigue? ... read
Ukraine’s Watershed Election	Yuliya Tymoshenko
Ukraine’s politics are not those of the steppe. Our voters cannot stroll in one direction during one poll, and in the opposite direction the next time they vote, without worrying about falling over the edge. Ukrainians are people of the watershed: we live on either one side or the other of a great divide.... read

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