Monthly Archives: May 2009

Kremlin Dreams Sometimes Come True

By AK | Published: May 31, 2009
This April, Michael Bohm, editor at the Moscow Times, published the article New Kremlin Dreamers, which questioned Russia’s stated intention of becoming an advanced industrial nation by 2020. I wasn’t much impressed by its pessimistic assertions – for instance, regarding Russia’s hopes of becoming the world’s fifth largest economy by 2020, he falls into the [...]
Posted in Da Russophile, Sublime Oblivion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Translation: The Case of the “Stalinist” Textbook

By AK | Published: May 28, 2009
NOTE: This article TRANSLATION: A. Filippov on ‘Debates about Stalin’s  Role’ in A New History of Russia 1945-­2006 is available in pdf format. Ever since the publication of Filippov’s (in)famous textbook A History of Russia 1945-2006 in 2007, the state of Russian history teaching drew a fair degree of negative commentary in the West, some of [...]
Posted in Da Russophile, Translations | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

Putvedev is Russia’s White Rider

By AK | Published: May 24, 2009
In this Core Article I look at Russia’s future development through the prism of historical cycles, Kremlin ideology, development theory, value shifts, elite corruption and Camus. In April 2007 Peter Zeihan of Stratfor wrote a thought-provoking article The Coming Era of Russia’s Dark Rider, which tries to pin down the metahistory of Russia’s socio-political evolution and [...]
Posted in Da Russophile, Sublime Oblivion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Russia’s Demographic Resilience

By AK | Published: May 22, 2009
In this post I look at the (surprisingly good) Russian demographic data for Jan-Mar 2009 and argue in more depth that the economic crisis is unlikely to have a very major negative impact on short-term fertility, or any but a very minor impact on long-term demographic trends. I make some falsifiable predictions, estimating a birth [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Tagged , , | 19 Comments

Best Designed Russia Blogs

By AK | Published: May 18, 2009
Here is a 100% subjective list of the best (and worst) designed blogs in the Russia-watching blogosphere. My main criteria for a well-designed blog include: ergonomics (fast load, little clutter, efficient search and archives); utility (easy navigation, explanatory information, contact, social network integration) and aesthetics. I will do my best to discount ideological bias. This is a [...]
Posted in Da Russophile, Life in General | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Victory Day Special: The Poisonous Myths of the Eastern Front

By AK | Published: May 9, 2009
За нас за вас и за десант и за спецназ! The Red Army was the single greatest contributor to the defeat of Nazi Germany sixty-four years ago, a truly evil empire based on slavery and oppression, and responsible for the genocide of millions of Slav civilians, Jews, Soviet POW’s and Roma by gas, bullets and [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Tagged , , , , , , , | 42 Comments