Paul Goble
Staunton, August 20 – Tuva, a republic in "the center of Asia” which once produced remarkable diamond-shaped stamps and attracted the attention of the American physicist Richard Feynman, is now attracting attention for another reason: the balance between the government and opposition is such that upcoming elections could lead to an Orange-style revolution there.
In a two-part, 5,000-word article in "Komsomolskaya Pravda” this week, Vladimir Vorsobin describes the striking complexity of Tuva, a place where the politics of Russia in the 1990s continues despite Putin’s erection of a power vertical and one where shamans have an important political role (kp.ru/daily/24541/720147/ and kp.ru/daily/24542/720698/).
Taking as his title the observation of a Tuvan opposition leader that "Soon All of Russia will Be Talking about Tuva,” Vorsobin suggests that his Russian readers should "imagine a 300,000-resident oblast isolated from the metropolis where time stopped sometime at the end of the 1990s.”
Tuva is gaining ever ...