Vor achtzig Jahren errichtete die Sowjetunion in Solowetzky den ersten Gulag. Millionen Menschen wurden in Lager deportiert, wo sie elend starben. Fast jede russische Familie ist betroffen. Dennoch will heute in Russland niemand etwas davon wissen.
You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Vladimir Ryzhkov is one of the great hopes for democracy in Russia. With the air of a slightly shaggy, overgrown student, Ryzhkov isn’t your classic baby-kissing politician. For Russia he is young (he served as deputy speaker of the Russian parliament at the tender age of …
As I write this, thousands of ardent young people are boarding trains and buses, heading towards Spain, towards Sweden, towards just about every place that President George W. Bush might possibly appear in public on his first state visit to Europe.
Over the past few days and weeks, much has been made of the “mystery” of Vladimir Putin, the man who now runs Russia. Yet in some ways, we know far more about him than we ever knew about the very private Boris Yeltsin.
He lives in a neat, narrow house with a small, well-kept garden. Inside his sitting room there are shelves of old books, a Biedermeier secretaire, a polished parquet floor. Black and white photographs of old friends stand in rows on the piano; prints and framed mementoes hang from the white walls. At first glance, everything …
At private dinners or public meetings throughout post-communist Europe, when talk turns to the crucial issue of economic policy, the debate is seldom about how much should be changed but about how much should be left the same.
Arkhangelsk, Russia — The Germans called it humanitarian aid. The International Monetary Fund spoke of structural development, the World Bank of business development.
The scene is a London cocktail party, not long after the funeral of Princess Diana. On the surface, all is as it should be: There are canapes, crudites and champagne, men in suits, a speech from the man whose birthday it is.
To the purist, the Christmases of my childhood would no doubt seem anathema. We didn’t go to midnight Mass, and we didn’t pray. We didn’t have a creche, we didn’t have an Advent calendar, and we didn’t think much about the birth of Christ either.
