Window On Eurasia: Russia Among Ten Least ‘Peaceful’ Countries On Earth, Australian Analytic Group Says
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posted by eagle on March, 2010 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 11 – Russia ranks 136th out of 144 countries in teams of "peacefulness” according to Australia’s Global Peace Index, not only leaving it bracketed by Zimbabwe and Pakistan but also putting it far down the list compared to other former Soviet republics and the three Baltic countries included in this assessment.
In a commentary yesterday on the site of the Finnish-Russian Civic Forum which "strives to promote cooperation between the peoples of Finland and Russia by supporting civic initiatives for democracy, human rights and freedom of speech, Kerkko Paananen call attention to this sad state of affairs (finRosforum.fi, March 10).
The Australian Institute for Economics and Peace released the report earlier this week, ranking what it calls "the relative tranquility” of 144 countries on the basis of 23 different indicators, including among other things, gun sales, homicides, size of the military, terrorism, and the number of people ...
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Window On Eurasia: Moscow Again In A Situation Like At The Start Of Perestroika, Russian Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 12 – Twenty-five years ago today, Mikhail Gorbachev became CPSU general secretary and, in response to the problems that the Soviet Union then faced, launched the policies that collectively came to be known as "Perestroika” and ended with the demise of the communist system and the Soviet Union as a state.
Now, on this anniversary, a Russian analyst argues, the Russian government finds itself in a bind that recalls the one Gorbachev felt himself and the Soviet system to be caught in, simultaneously wanting to maintain an authoritarian government and to launch the kind of economic reforms that could allow for economic progress.
But given that the Russian powers that be and the Russian people both have the experience of Gorbachev’s time and have a new and more powerful kind of glasnost, both are fearful that any radical change in course now could easily have ...
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Window On Eurasia: Russia Has Gone From Being ‘Locomotive’ Of The CIS To Being Its ‘Caboose,’ Moscow’s Sberbank Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 12 – Russia, despite "all its imperial ambitions and pretensions,” is no longer "the locomotive” for the economies of the Commonwealth of Independent States but instead, as the current economic crisis has shown, is now "the caboose,” according to a study prepared by Moscow’s Sberbank.
In a report released this week, that bank’s Center for Macro-Economic Research compares the vectors of economic growth in the former Soviet republics and draws from that two conclusions, neither of which will be welcome to the powers that be in the Russian Federation (newsru.com/columnists/11mar2010/blant.html).
On the one hand, the bank’s experts found, the other petroleum-exporting countries have performed far better than Russia, thus showing the regular claims by the powers that be in the Russian capital that the situation in the Russian economy now is largely the result of falling energy prices on the world market.
Such claims, ...
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Window On Eurasia: Russians Increasingly Angry At Flouting Of The Law By Powers That Be
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 5 – While Russians remain more deferential or even indifferent to the actions of the powers that be than many nations, they are increasingly agitated by two high profile cases in which members of the post-Soviet Russian elite have signaled their contempt not only for laws that other Russians must obey but also for those who are not in the elite.
And that anger has been fueled over the past week not only by numerous stories in the Moscow media that Stalin, for all his crimes, insisted that his son fight in the Red Army alongside other Soviet soldiers but also by an interview with the current Estonian president in a Moscow paper today in which he talks about his son’s service in that country’s military.
The contrast between the behavior of many members of the post-Soviet elites and that of others, both Soviet and non-Soviet, is ...
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Circassian Center: Sochi Olympics and the Circassian Neo-Conservatism
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posted by circassiankama on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Sochi Olympics and the Circassian Neo-Conservatism, by Sinar Sami Dishack
Circassian Center, February 25, 2010
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After decades of misfortunes and
absence from the world’s cultural and political arena, once again, the
old Circassian conservative politics threatens to undermine the
contemporary viable opportunities in advancing Circassian national
objectives in addition to the economic opportunities in the North
Caucasus. The Sochi Olympics in 2014, when it was announced, thought to
be embraced and celebrated among Circassians as a step stone towards
achieving greater national objectives. Yet, quite astonishingly, the
event was met with a fierce opposition by a vocal numbers of
Circassians whether in the motherland or the Diaspora. The majority ... | >> full
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