Early in 2014 the Russian annexation of Crimea caused international uproar. Subsequently, things went quiet. Today, the media are paying attention again, as they reveal how local Russian authorities are targeting the Crimean Tatars, one of the peninsula’s main ethnic minority groups, through actions aimed at restricting their autonomy. In a display of hypocrisy and shortsightedness, Western leaders remain silent.
On October 16, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed several scholars to participate in a panel, entitled Russia’s Legal Trajectories: Law in Action and Question, 1830 to 2014. In her introductory remarks, Professor of History at NYU Jane Burbank stated that there are many perplexing ideas about law and Russia. Some commentators think that the rule of law is incompatible with autocratic or Communist governments; for them Russian law is an oxymoron. Yet, Burbank remarked, law has been important to government in Russia for many centuries. In addition, for the last 10 year or so many scholars have been rigorously scrutinizing the subject. This panel was meant to give its audience “a taste of new legal history” in four different presentations about law from the early 19th century, through the legal reforms of 1864, to the current day.
Foreign policy is completely related to the economy. Internationally Russia has been finding itself less and less capable, less able to exert lasting influence.
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History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as violent, self-published gay erotica.
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Why should we surprised when the facts of the Ukrainian bloodshed prove so malleable in the media?
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In the context of the current war, faith in the idea of national ‘purity’ often comes couched in rationalist terms, positing no known cure for the Soviet hangover in the Donbas, and, in any case, no time to look for one.
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If there is one topic that is all over the Russiasphere news right now, it is underpants. Ladies’ underpants.
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A healthy government can be relied on to reject conspiracy theories. An unhealthy government helps disseminate them.
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The media seemed to be surprised by one election outcome: the failure of Ukraine’s right-wing parties to secure significant votes.
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Just imagine the clash of civilizations when the two parties drink together; eventually, the rational Englishman starts seeing irrational things—all the ugly monsters, demons, and witches that contemporary CGI can conjure – only to wake up the next morning with a pounding headache and a punishing sense of guilt.
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What the rest of the world perceived as a quaint cultural mascot had additional layers of meaning for the Russian public that were overlooked in western media coverage of the Olympics.
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The flyer played upon the fears that continue to plague Jews around the world: unstable governments will ultimately turn their forces on the Jews, especially countries with long histories of anti-Semitism.
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The East-West confrontation over Ukraine, which led to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea but long predated it, is potentially the worst international crisis in more than fifty years—and the most fateful. A negotiated resolution is possible, but time may be running out.
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Lately, it has not only been the vowels that have been hard to stomach in Russia.
Continue reading...Anne Lounsbery, chair of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, is a Gogol scholar. She tells The Takeaway what Gogol’s life and writing can teach us all these years later about the lingering tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Listen for more:
American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.
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Kicking off a week of what proved to be atypically prodigious journalistic commentary on what is commonly referred to as the “plight of the Roma (or Gypsies)” or “the Roma question” in contemporary Europe, The New York Times featured an article on 19 October 2013 that bore the perplexing headline: “Are the Roma Primitive, or Just Poor?”
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