Monthly Archives: April 2010
Bears in a Honey Trap
I have a piece out today in Foreign Policy about the honeypot the Russian opposition has got its paws in, and why Russians don’t care about sex tapes. At all. The phone call came in the middle of the night. … Continue reading
Putin, Medvedev are straight, manly, confident
Holding forth at a joint press conference with his best friend/muse/doppelganger Silvio Berlusconi, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin let us all know that he is not sleeping with President/underling/sidekick Dmitry Medvedev. Asked about the nature of their relationship Putin said, … Continue reading
Moscow, you should be ashamed of your racist, xenophobic self — but, of course, you're not
Crossing the underground transfer to the Paveletskaya stop on the circle line in the Moscow metro this morning, I found myself swallowed up by a bunch of singing, rowdy youths. Decked out in red-and-white scarves, they were on their way … Continue reading
You want an adoption scandal?
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Artyem, the 7-year-old boy whose adoptive mother took him back to customer service like some kind of irregularly knit sweater. The scandal around the boy’s unceremonious return — and let me be … Continue reading
Birthday surprise: Lenin is Tchaikovsky's long-lost relative
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, father of the world proletariat, turns 140 today. To celebrate, historians at his museum in Ulyanovsk — Lenin’s maiden name was Ulyanov and the town where he was born was renamed accordingly upon his death in 1924 … Continue reading
'Put away your bubbles!' and other neo-Nazi funnies
On Sunday, a flash mob of 500 gathered in St. Petersburg to partake in an annual tradition: blowing bubbles to celebrate the arrival of spring. This time, they were met by another mob, this one of 30 suspected neo-Nazis who … Continue reading
Jump-starting Russia's protest movement
I have a piece out in Foreign Policy today about FAR, an automotive rights group in Russia that has become a model for how civil society could work here. Traveling through early 19th-century America, French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville noted, “In … Continue reading
Now that's love
Presid– Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is an hour into his three-hour state of the nation address to the State Duma (the parliament). This was a tradition instituted, conveniently, when Putin became prime minister. Today, Putin clearly has a bad, bad … Continue reading
'Pop,' or how I saw an anti-Semitic WW II agitprop film this weekend
This weekend, I dragged a friend to see “Pop” — Russian for “priest,” with some slightly negative connotations — one of a new crop of patriotic World War II films springing up ahead of the May 9 holiday, and the … Continue reading
You've got to be kidding: Epic volcano eruption may delay Polish president's burial
Because one tangled layer of freakish, tragic absurdity is not enough, the powers that be add another. After the Polish president and half his government fell from the sky en route to commemorate the 70th anniversary of an epic national … Continue reading
