Russian history 
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1/22/2023
What's Hiding in Putin's Family History?
by Chris Monday
The details of Vladimir Putin's personal and family life are surprisingly (and by design) difficult to pin down. A historian suggests that his grandfather was more powerful, and more influential on the future Russian leader's fortunes, than Putin's common man mythology suggests.
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1/15/2023
Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth
by Sam Ben-Meir
The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power.
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1/8/2023
My First Trip to Russia 30 Years Ago Is a Cautionary Tale Now
by Steven Knipp
The decades since the fall of Communism have borne out a Russian saying: "The horses of hope gallop. But the donkeys of experience go slowly.”
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SOURCE: Washington Post
11/25/2022
"Nutcracker" Rooted in Dark Parts of Russian History
The ballet's roots in the celebration of czarist absolutism and imperial expansion doesn't jibe with its modern status as an anodyne holiday classic.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/21/2022
What Will Russia Look Like Without Putin?
by Joy Neumayer
A transformation of Russia after the end of Putin's leadership will require unwinding the countless institutions that have been molded and warped around his power for decades, so that another authoritarian can't step right in to use them.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/7/2022
Putin's Nuclear Threats are Warping the West's Ukraine Strategy
by Anne Applebaum
Nuclear bluster is a purposeful strategy to leverage fear to make NATO nations less willing to defend Ukraine and other nations neighboring Russia. How can they have a better response?
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/1/2022
Putin, Contending Ukraine Doesn't Exist, Seeks its Destruction
by Olesya Khromeychuk
Unfortunately for the Russian leader, despite widespread global ignorance of the substance of Ukrainian nationhood, repeated attempts to destroy it testify to its reality.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/29/2022
Russia's Memorial Forced to Downsize its Tribute to Stalinist Victims
“The point in returning the names is that we’re naming the victims,” said Yan Rachinsky, the chairman of Memorial’s board. “But the question inevitably arises: If there are victims of crime, then there are criminals, and there are reasons for the crime. These are no longer things that our authorities are ready to discuss.”
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/7/2022
Honored by Nobel Peace Prize, Memorial Preserves Knowledge of Soviet Atrocities and Warns of Present Imperialism
The Nobel committee gave an implicit rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin in honoring the organization, which was shut down as a "terrorist" group last year, forcing some leaders into exile.
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SOURCE: NPR
9/21/2022
Sergey Radchenko on Putin's Mobilization Speech
Putin's cautious declaration of a partial mobilization reflects his increasingly desperate military situation and the growing unpopularity of the Ukraine war in Russia.
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9/11/2022
Russians' Disapproval of Gorbachev Shouldn't Dominate How He is Remembered
by Walter G. Moss
The combination of post-Soviet hardship, resurgent nationalism, and the destructiveness of the Ukraine war have led many Americans to embrace Russians' dim view of Mikhail Gorbachev. A historian of Russia says the leader had his faults, but his furtherance of humane values has been underrated.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
8/31/2022
The Contradictory Legacy of Gorbachev and "Revolution From Above"
by Ronald Suny
"A great emancipator, Gorbachev left a mixed legacy. He expanded freedom for millions but at the same time unleashed roiling waves of nationalism and left the upturned soil for renewed authoritarianism."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
8/31/2022
Gorbachev Never Understood What He Set in Motion
by Anne Applebaum
Sometimes seen as a visionary reformer, Gorbachev may have started the USSR's economic death spiral by restricting the sale of vodka to increase worker productivity.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
8/31/2022
Gorbachev's Greatness Was in His Failure
by Tom Nichols
Gorbachev's personal decency made him the wrong man for his chosen task of saving Soviet Communism from collapse; today his reputation is far higher in the west than in the former USSR.
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
8/31/2022
Gorbachev's Vacuum: His Legacy and Russia's Wars
by Michael Kimmage
The last Soviet leader failed to intuit the ultimate consequences of the changes he unleashed, from the collapse of the USSR to the revival of Russian imperialsm.
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8/7/2022
On Putin's Vacant Moral Imagination
by Walter G. Moss
Russia's stances toward Ukraine and the west in general reflect its leaders' inability, perhaps nurtured by the Soviet system, to view world affairs through another's perspective.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
6/14/2022
Where Witches Were Men: Magic in Early Modern Russia
by Valerie Kivelson
In Orthodox Russia, unlike Catholic and Protestant western Europe, the nature of hierarchy and power meant that the majority of people accused of witchcraft were men, and the popular image of a witch was male.
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6/5/2022
The Environmental and Humanistic Sensibility of Pasternak and Lessons from Dr. Zhivago for Today
by Walter G. Moss
Boris Pasternak's masterwork exhibited a profound awareness of the onenness of creation – human and natural alike – that should guide the projects of peace and environmental protection.
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SOURCE: NPR
5/27/2022
Sergey Radchenko on the State of Russia's Economy Under Sanctions
NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Russian history professor Sergey Radchenko of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, about the state of the Russian economy after three months of war.
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5/29/2022
Putin's Ukrainian War and Ecocide
by Walter G. Moss
The Russian invasion of Ukraine shows us how gravely the environment is harmed by war and militarism.
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