Window On Eurasia: 2010 Census Will Now Take Place On Time But Won’t Be As Comprehensive As Planned
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posted by eagle on October, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 31 –Vladimir Putin said yesterday that his government has come up with the funds needed to hold the next census, thus allowing it to proceed on schedule in 2010 rather than be delayed to 2013. But the reduced level of funding he announced and changes at Rosstat mean the count will be less comprehensive and less accurate than many had hoped.
Konstantin Laykam, acting director of the federal statistics agency Rosstat, said that Putin had come up with 10.5 billion rubles (300 million US dollars) for the 2010 census and that the count would not have to be delayed to 2013 as Russian officials had announced earlier. As a result, Rosstat is resuming its preparations (grani.ru/Society/p.161440.html).
But if this rescheduling is welcome, it has two troubling aspects that may make this count, just like the 2002 enumeration, less valuable than it otherwise might have ...
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Window On Eurasia: Russian Academy Of Sciences Losing Staff To Foreign Institutions, Commercial Structures
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 31 – The Russian Academy of Sciences, long the intellectual center of the country, has been rapidly losing researchers to institutions abroad and to commercial structures in Russia itself that are in a position to pay far higher salaries than the academy and that do not involve some of the restrictions the government is now imposing.
Earlier this month, a group of Russian scholars who went abroad to pursue their careers wrote to the Russian leadership decrying what they described as “the impoverished position of fundamental science” in Russia. Now, 407 scholars at the institutions of the Russian Academy have added their voices to this lament (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/121/12.html).
If anything, those working in Russia are even gloomier about the future of basic science in that country than are those abroad. They warn that if the government does not increase funding over the next five to seven years, the best ...
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Window On Eurasia: Medvedev Urged To Create ‘Parallel Power Vertical’ To Modernize Russia
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, October 30 – “Nezavisimaya gazeta” reports today that the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Development, whose advisory board is headed by Dmitry Medvedev, has recommended to the Russian president that he create his own competing “power vertical” to promote the modernization of Russia.
According to the paper, the proposed “Medvedev vertical,” which would consist of those committed to a new and modernized Russia would initially co-exist with the one established and run by Vladimir Putin but over time would gradually “drive out” the old from various spheres of Russian life (www.ng.ru/politics/2009-10-30/1_modernize.html?mthree=2).
The proposal, which bears the title “The Modernization of Russia as the Construction of a New State,” was prepared by various experts and officials under the direction of the Institute’s director Igor Yurgens in the form of a proposal for Medvedev’s upcoming annual message to the Federal Assembly.
Its authors, “Nezavisimaya” says, are “certain that it is impossible to realize the ...
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RFE/RL: Moving Beyond Russia's Embrace
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
October 29, 2009Moving Beyond Russia's Embraceby Irina Severin
Russia enjoys dabbling in the domestic politics of its neighboring countries, publicly supporting its favorite politicians and demonstrating its contempt for those whom it dislikes. But it rarely -- at least among its European neighbors -- gets the result it is seeking. The most recent example is Moldova.
The Kremlin spared no effort to support the Communist Party during the parliamentary elections in April and again in July. But the result is that the party lost power. Worse, although it retains 48 seats in the 101-seat legislature (the largest single faction), no other faction was willing to enter into a coalition with the darlings of the Kremlin.
Now, apparently, the Kremlin is looking toward parliament speaker Marian Lupu, who defected from the Communists this summer to head the Democratic Party in the July elections and is now the ruling coalition's favored candidate for president.
When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was in Chisinau recently for a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States ... >> full
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RFE/RL: Working With Russia To Prevent Eurasian Collapse
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
October 29, 2009Working With Russia To Prevent Eurasian Collapseby Andrei Tsygankov
The Eurasian region continues to disintegrate, and neither Russia nor the West has been able to arrest the destabilizing dynamics.
Evidence of rising instability throughout the region include the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, renewed terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus, the persistent failure of Western forces to stabilize Afghanistan, the inability of Central Asian rulers to reign in local clans and drug lords, and the paralysis of legitimately elected bodies of power in Ukraine and Moldova.
Violence is gradually spreading, waiting for an opportunity to erupt into a large-scale conflict. Transregional transportation routes may soon be choked due to Russia's conflicts with Ukraine, Georgia, and Turkmenistan.
The West's attempts to secure and stabilize Eurasia after the end of the Cold War must be recognized as a failure. In the mid-1990s, U.S. geostrategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski recommended that the United States pursue a policy of replacing Russia as the referee and protector of the newly established non-Russian states in ... >> full
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