TIME: Medvedev's Grim Prognosis On Russian Economy
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posted by eagle on May, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Medvedev's Grim Prognosis on Russian EconomyBy JOHN WENDLE / MOSCOW51 mins ago Months of infighting between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev over Russia's budget ended on Monday - with Medvedev on top. At a meeting with senior government officials, the President announced a strikingly pessimistic set of spending priorities until 2012, based on conservative estimates suggesting that Russia will remain hampered by the economic crisis into next year and beyond. Putin's more optimistic forecasts, which some saw as an attempt to fend off political instability, "suffered a radical readjustment," wrote the daily Nezavisamaya Gazeta. "We all understand what a difficult situation our country, our economy, is in," Medvedev said as he announced that budget expenditures would exceed revenues for the first time in 10 years. He said the government would move "to a strict regime of saving budget resources" along the lines championed by bearishFinance Minister Alexei Kudrin. (See pictures of Putin.) Although Medvedev did not give a new estimate for the GDP decline in 2009, he said this year's budget deficit will be at least 7% of ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Renaming In Russia Not Only About Rejection Of Soviet Past
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, May
22 – Most discussions on replacing Soviet-era names of cities and
streets with pre-revolutionary ones have focused on the ideological
acceptability of Communist names in post-Soviet Russia, on the costs
involved of making such changes, and on the confusion it introduces in
the minds of some Russians.
But a new discussion now taking place
in Irkutsk on the border of Siberia and the Russian Far East suggests
that the process of renaming may point to some deeper tectonic shifts,
changes that will redefine how people in various parts of the Russian
Federation view their country and their relationship to it.
In
Irkutsk, the authorities are planning to rename 16 streets and two city
squares, replacing Soviet-era names with pre-revolutionary ones and
setting up “information stands” in each case to provide information
about the names being dropped and the ... >> full
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The Other Russia: Russian Industrial Output Continues On A Steep Decline
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
May 19th, 2009 
New figures from Rosstat, Russia’s statistical agency, indicate that there are little signs of improvement in the real Russian economy. Thelatest numbers, published on May 18th, show that manufacturing output fell 14.9 percent in the first quarter of 2009. Similarly, a report on the state of the economy published on May 15th showed that GDP had fallen 9.5 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. The International Monetary Fund predicted last month that Russian GDP would fall 6 percent in 2009. Rosstat bases its manufacturing output index on data from the resource extraction (mining) and manufacturing sectors, and includes the production and distribution of electricity, gas and water. The metric showed that the first quarter of 2009 stood at 85.1 percent over the previous year. Output in April 2009 was 83.1 percent from April 2008, and was down from March 2009 by 8.1 percent. The data seems to indicate that the economy was not yet on a rebound, as some optimistic analysts ...
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Window On Eurasia: Fall Of ‘Southern Berlin Wall’ Opened The Way For Rise Of Russia’s Muslims
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Baku, May 18 – Most specialists on Russian affairs have focused on the impact of the opening of the western border of the Soviet bloc, but a Moscow scholar argues that “the fall of the Southern Berlin wall” between the USSR and the Islamic world may prove as fateful because of the role that event played in the development of Russia’s Muslim community.
In an essay published in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” at the end of last week, Aleksey Malashenko, a specialist on Islam at the Moscow Carnegie Center, suggests that a major shortcoming in the study of Islam in Russia is that there is a plethora of works devoted to aspects of that issue but few providing an overview (http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2009-05-15/8_islam.html).
To help begin to correct that problem, he offers a number of “theses about Islam in Russia.” First of all, he argues that Islam, although it had never “died” ...
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The Other Russia: What Does The Kremlin Fear?
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
May 16th, 2009 On May 12th, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed off of a new National security strategy document, which lays out a plan for Russia’s defense and foreign policy until 2020. Writing for the Grani.ru online newspaper, journalist Vitaly Portnikov comments on the document, what it’s missing, and what it shows about the Russian leadership. 
A Strategy With No Dangers
Vitaly Portnikov
May 15, 2009
Grani.ru Having signed the National security strategy for Russia until 2020, President Dmitri Medvedev gave the chance for Western – you almost want to say “Sovietologists” - to talk once more about Russian foreign policy. Perhaps this is a signal for Barack Obama, the new American president? Perhaps the new Russian president in such a way demonstrates confidence in his own strengths and a continuity of policy? Since it is absolutely indispensable for the American President, who plans to come to Moscow, to understand that the Russian leadership will continue to regard siting elements of US missile defense in Europe as all but the most important ...
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