Sean's Russia Blog

Russia Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

This blog is one of the best russia blogs out there. Add this blog to My Feeds.

Medvedev Creating Own Party?

Mar 10, 2010 9:21pm

Time for everyone to put on their Kremlinologist thinking cap again! Get ready to roll those chicken bones and peer deeply into the tea leaves. The boys in the Kremlin are up to their tricks again. According to Trud, Medvedev is creating a new political party. The move...

Consuming Russian Feminism

Mar 9, 2010 5:06am

The theme of my last post on how International Women's Day has been transformed from a public to a private holiday reminded of the enormous advertisement for Elle Magazine at Lubyanka Square covering Detskii Mir. The ad is a blend of revolution, feminism, and consumerism with its depiction of...

Domesticating March 8th

Mar 8, 2010 1:12pm

One hundred years ago today, the First International Women's Congress adopted International Women's Day as a day of struggle for women's rights. But in Russia, where the holiday, what was once a day calling for a "struggle against patriarchy," has in many ways become patriarchy's reinforcement....

Their Modernization and Ours

Feb 28, 2010 2:45am

In Russia, the time of great campaigns has returned. In Soviet times, we broke new ground and planted corn. Then we fought against drunkenness and concerned ourselves with economic acceleration. We were not always successful, but certainly in the real world. Today's Russia proclaims the slogan of modernization. But so...

“We Await You, Merry Gnome!”

Feb 18, 2010 11:53pm

Russian chinovniki are known for a lot of things--graft, ineptitude, oblomovism, and when necessary, zealous obsequiousness. Sometimes, the latter leads the chinovnik to take preemptive action in hopes to satisfy the leader even if the latter is not looking to be satisfied. Take for example, the recent hilarious incident in...

Prono Billboard Bandit Busted

Feb 16, 2010 10:53pm

It just goes to show that the sleuths in Russia can work fast when the want to. Witness how it took them a mere month to catch the internationally infamous hacker who placed porno on a Moscow billboard. And get this, they caught him not in Moscow, but...

Yulia Antoinette

Feb 9, 2010 11:59pm

I wish I would have seen Yulia Latynina's Moscow Times editorial earlier. I would have found someway to incorporate it into my post on the Ukrainian election. No matter, the op-ed stands on its own. The beauty of Latynina's rant, Letting Poor People Vote is Dangerous, is...

Ukrainians Choose to Lose, but History still Wins

Feb 9, 2010 10:28pm

Reading Western press reactions to the election of Viktor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine are lessons in how democracy is measured in our era. Whereas Marx called the coup of Napoleon III a farce to the tragedy of his uncle's reign, press opinion of Yanukovich's victory is better viewed...

Black PR vs. Black PR?

Feb 7, 2010 11:03pm

As the Power Vertical's Robert Coalson explains, this is the way the game is played. Anyone familiar with Russian politics over the last 20 years, if not the last century, will not be surprised by the revelation a United Russia hatchet-men hired "spin doctors" to spread black PR to...

RT’s Agitprop

Jan 27, 2010 1:06am

When I first saw the ads Russia Today is using in its American and UK ad campaign, I immediately had the reaction that most Americans and British probably had. Comparing Obama to Ahmadinejad? That's like comparing Christ with the devil! Is RT crazy or just stupid!? ...