Among the notable deaths of 2017, one went virtually unnoticed: that of Russian émigré writer and maverick intellectual Lev Navrozov, who passed away exactly a year ago, at the age of 88. Yet Navrozov, with whom I had a somewhat tumultuous personal acquaintance, was once a figure of some prominence…
Nearly half a century ago, when I was a preschooler in Soviet-era Moscow, two thick magazines appeared in our home. They had plain, pale-tan covers, but I could tell they were quite special to my parents. In those magazines’ pages was a riveting story—what I could understand from my precocious…
Today, after years of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, it is difficult to imagine that two decades ago one of Russia’s major television channels could regularly lampoon the country’s leaders in a puppet show (titled Puppets, or Kukly in Russian). In late November, that show’s head…
The Russian Revolution, the centennial of which has just passed, changed the world in more ways than one can count. But one little-noticed way in which it affected American intellectual life was by giving us Ayn Rand.
An America thoroughly fed up with both politics and political correctness slogs through a surreally dirty, bizarre, and finally insane election season—and, when the dust settles, finds itself in the grip of Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin.
An America thoroughly fed up with both politics and political correctness slogs through a surreally dirty, bizarre, and finally insane election season—and, when the dust settles, finds itself in the grip of Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin.
Even as the media, and all of Washington, buzzed with scandalous uncorroborated claims about President-elect Donald Trump's ties to the Kremlin, a lesser-noticed moment neatly illustrated another side of Trump's—or Trump-era conservatism's—Russia problem. After Marco Rubio grilled Rex Tillerson at…
Even as the media, and all of Washington, buzzed with scandalous uncorroborated claims about President-elect Donald Trump’s ties to the Kremlin, a lesser-noticed moment neatly illustrated another side of Trump's—or Trump-era conservatism's—Russia problem. After Marco Rubio grilled Rex Tillerson at…
Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 novel of sexual intrigue by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, has become one of the most adapted literary classics in the two decades since it was reincarnated as a hit play by the British dramatist Christopher Hampton. The 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons, a…
Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 novel of sexual intrigue by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, has become one of the most adapted literary classics in the two decades since it was reincarnated as a hit play by the British dramatist Christopher Hampton. The 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons, a…
A panel on “Grappling with Campus Rape" was part of the "Hot Topic" program at the American Association of Law Schools annual meeting, held January 6-10 in midtown Manhattan. Indeed, that issue has been the focus of particularly intense polemics in academia. A number of law professors, even some…
A middle-aged company man on a business trip in 1970s England gets lost miles from the nearest town and, running out of gas near nightfall, takes refuge at a hostel, where things go from weird to worse.
A month and a half has passed since Boris Nemtsov, the Russian political activist who rose to prominence as a dynamic young reformer in the 1990s and later became one of the fiercest critics of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule, was shot dead a few blocks from the Kremlin. The shocking murder,…
If Boris Nemtsov, the Russian statesman and activist killed in Moscow last week, had been a character in a political thriller—and he certainly had the looks and charisma for the part—the script might have been criticized as lacking subtlety. There is the opposition leader gunned down on the eve of…
A year ago, Ukraine’s “Euro-maidan” protests, spurred by then-president Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a promised trade agreement with the European Union and rush into the well-paid embrace of Vladimir Putin, began to escalate in Kiev, turning to violent clashes with government forces. A…
The conflict in Ukraine took some dramatic turns this month that led many observers to conclude that the Kremlin was succeeding in its effort to keep Ukraine under Russia’s thumb, with the collusion of a spineless West. Actually, while Russia has wrested some concessions, the handwringing is…
"Maybe it’s all a matrix and we’re all like programs written by somebody else. . . . And none of us really exists, just the matrix. The program works, you live your life and think everything’s fine. Here you are drinking coffee right now. But there is no coffee—it doesn’t exist.” So mused Fyodor…
New York
Throughout the Ukraine crisis, Moscow has insisted that the Euromaidan protests against the pro-Russian regime of Viktor Yanukovych were driven by far-right groups, fascists, or even “neo-Nazis” and that Yanukovych’s downfall has brought these dark forces into the corridors of power. These claims…
As the winter holidays approached, the beleaguered Russian opposition had a rare occasion to celebrate: Russia’s three best-known political prisoners were unexpectedly granted their freedom. On December 20, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon whose arrest a decade ago escalated Vladimir…
After retaking Russia’s presidency last year, Vladimir Putin seemed to be headed for master-of-the-universe status. The political stage had been cleared of potential challengers to his power. The protest movement that had risen in December 2011 in response to his planned reelection had dwindled by…
After Vladimir Putin’s predictable victory in the Russian presidential election in March, the opposition—which had enjoyed a few heady months of visibility and freedom after the December parliamentary vote became a debacle for the Kremlin—seemed demoralized and disoriented. The protests were…
In the end, the outcome of the Russian presidential election was as predictable as it was depressing. Vladimir Putin won, with an official tally of nearly 64 percent of the vote—more than enough to spare him the dreaded runoff—amid charges of widespread fraud at the ballot box. The question remains…
"We went to jail in one country and came out in another,” Russia’s most famous blogger, 35-year-old anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, said on December 21 after serving two weeks’ detention for alleged disorderly conduct during demonstrations against vote-rigging in the parliamentary…
It’s an old saw to call someone’s life worthy of a novel. Yet when several obituaries used the phrase to describe the life of Lana Peters, an 85-year-old retiree who died in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in late November, the phrase rang true. Mrs. Peters, reclusive in recent years, was known in her…
Perhaps the best commentary on the news that Vladimir Putin will return as president of Russia next year, with placeholder-in-chief Dmitry Medvedev stepping aside for his longtime mentor, was offered in a caustic satirical poem in the three-times-a-week independent paper Novaya Gazeta by maverick…
We will probably never know for sure what really happened between former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the chambermaid who accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan hotel room on May 14. In the days after the French politician’s arrest, media commentary…
One of the most sought-after classical singers in Europe, Magdalena Kozena has very little of the diva about her. The 37-year-old Czech-born, Berlin-based mezzo-soprano is warm and unpretentious, whether in interviews or in conversation with backstage visitors. A mother of two sons, ages five and…
In April, Russia’s biggest political story was a sex scandal dubbed “Mumugate,” involving secretly filmed videos of several opposition activists in compromising positions with one Katya “Mumu” Gerasimova, a sometime fashion model who had approached them while posing as a journalist. (The nickname…
In the past decade, American commentary on Russia has been sharply divided between "idealists," who deplore the rise of neo-authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin and urge a tough stance toward the Kremlin, and "realists," who argue that U.S. policy should emphasize practical cooperation rather than…
A month after his speech in Cairo reaching out to the Muslim world, Barack Obama will make another historic trip: this time, to Moscow. While many Obama supporters hope that the July 6-8 visit will push the much-anticipated "reset button" in the badly strained relationship between Russia and the…
Bucharest, Romania
Move over, Michael Moore: The new rock star of the left has arrived. She is Naomi Klein, a 38-year-old Canadian writer and journalist whose 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was greeted with rave reviews and became an international bestseller. She has been hailed by…
William Faulkner once said that the past isn't dead, it isn't even past--and that's certainly proving true in post-Soviet Russia. Vladimir Lenin still lies in his grand mausoleum on Red Square. And meanwhile, Tsar Nicholas II and his family, murdered by Lenin's revolutionary government, were…
This year marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most horrific chapters in the history of the Soviet Union: the great famine the Ukrainians call Holodomor, "murder by starvation." This catastrophe, which killed an estimated 6 to 10 million people in 1932-33, was largely the product of deliberate…
As the post-Georgia chill in U.S.-Russian relations con-tinues, the Russian govern-ment has repeatedly declared its readiness to resume a friendly partnership if the United States will reciprocate and abandon its Cold War rhetoric. Yet, at the same time, Moscow has encouraged an orgy of…
As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia…
For one elderly woman in Massachusetts, events in Russia--where a brief experiment in freedom is foundering under a rising tide of authoritarianism--have both personal and political resonance. She is Elena Bonner, the 84-year-old widow of world-famous Russian nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei…