By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia The Russian world has been defined and approached from many different directions, with some arguing that it includes all those who speak Russian and thus share in a common culture and others that it is a modified version of Sovietism with a set of quite specific ideological features. But almost all of these approaches treat it as a political phenomenon, one that can be…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia “In the struggle with Russian disinformation, the so-called ‘BBC standards’ of journalism not only do not work but on the contrary are exceptionally destructive,” regularly giving Moscow victories it does not deserve and must not gain, according to Evhen Tsybulenko. The professor at Tallinn Technical University and co-editor of the important new book, The Use of Force Against Ukraine and International Law (The Hague,…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia Moscow’s promotion of the Great Victory in World War II, the basis of the current regime’s legitimacy, has contributed to an increasingly positive image of Stalin; and that in turn, experts on the North Caucasus say, has led to a serious reduction of attention to the mass deportations and the whitewashing of this crime against humanity. On the one hand, they say, this shift…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia Most people in the West continue to make two “fatal” mistakes about the media in Putin’s Russia, Igor Yakovenko says. They assume that Russians who call themselves journalists are in fact journalists and that Russian propaganda is propaganda in the normal sense. “Few in the West understand,” the Russian commentator writes, “what the world is dealing with in the form of the Putin regime…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia Given that 90 percent of Russian society is “apolitical,” Moscow commentator Boris Kagarlitsky says, “it is impossible” to say how much support Vladimir Putin or anyone else has. Indeed, asking that question under Russian conditions now is completely inappropriate. This comment from the director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements came in response to a question posed by Kazan’s Business Gazeta to a number…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia At the everyday level, Vladimir Pastukhov says, it is unlikely that Russians lie more than people in other countries do; but in the public sphere, the lie is not criticized but rather encouraged,” making it “almost the norm of public politics not only in the eyes of the authorities but in those of the population as well. There are many reasons for the official…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia The Kremlin’s effort to affect the outcome of the 2016 US presidential elections has provoked one consequence Moscow has long wanted – the demoralization of the American elite – but it is having other less welcome ones on both that elite and the Russian one, something only becoming clear, Liliya Shevtsova says. The American investigation into Russia’s involvement is rapidly spreading from a focus…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia In Russia today, monuments more than memoranda have become the most favored way of expressing political views at least in part because, however controversial many of them inevitably become, statues allow for multiple interpretations or alternatively for none at all. This weekend brought two examples. In the first, Vladimir Putin dedicated a statue in Russian-occupied Crimea to Emperor Aleksandr III, the embodiment for many…
Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia A major reason that Moscow has to struggle to find symmetrical responses to anything other countries do is because it lacks many of the institutions that they have but that Russia does not, ranging from media environments open to almost anyone to schools in the languages of many minorities. Consequently, the Kremlin is forced to identify “asymmetrical” replies that often put it even more at…
By Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia The failure of Vladimir Putin to get a sit down with Donald Trump represents “the agony of [the Kremlin’s] ‘Putin is Ours’ special operation” and is leading some in Putin’s entourage to think about some kind of “hybrid capitulation” that both the US and the Russian people will accept, according to Andrey Piontkovsky. Ever more people in the Russian capital, the commentator says, recognize…
