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Winter in Russia: cold indoors as well as out
Most radiators in urban Russian homes are fed by hot water transported from heating plants miles away. Ageing pipes frequently burst, causing hardship and even fatalities. Could a return to an older...
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Russia-China relations: fantasies and reality
Is Russia in control of its relationship with the world's emerging superpower? Ben Judah introduces a new series on openDemocracy Russia. China is Russia’s indispensable nightmare. Indispensable...
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The fable of the eagle, the dragon and the bear
How will Russia react to China’s rapid ascent as a global power? Will it develop its eastern links to spite the West, or join a USA led attempt to freeze Beijing out? Pavel Salin argues that this is a...
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Russia and China: aligned after all?
Are China and Russia destined to form an alliance against the West? Unlikely, thinks Thomas Koenig: any future relationship will be based on economics, rather than politics.Towards the end of last...
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Will Russia pivot East or West?
Russia-watchers have long been interested in her place on the international arena. Now, with China at the centre of the growing power game, the question is how Russia will seek to position herself in...
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Why Russia is not losing Siberia
The Yellow Peril was a feature of life in Soviet times and the demographics on either side of the Russia-China border do little to convince the fearful that Siberia will not be colonised by the...
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Ukraine: Yanukovych's 'Family' spreads its tentacles
Last October, Ukraine’s ruling Party of the Regions won only a slim election victory, but President Viktor Yanukovych has taken the opportunity to pack his new government with members of his ‘Family’ –...
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God is your refuge
A monastery near Moscow has opened its doors to the city’s homeless — in exchange for food and shelter, the men help out on the farm. Marina Akhmedova spent some time among the labourers, discovering...
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Is Putin afraid of the Caucasus?
Russian lawmakers have given preliminary approval to a law to allow governors to be appointed in the country’s 83 regions, reversing last year’s move to restore direct elections. As Daniil Kotsyubinsky...
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Would democratic change in Russia transform its foreign policy?
The incompatibility of an anachronistic and arbitrary regime with the modern world is leading many to consider that democratic change is possible — likely even — in Russia. But those expecting that a...
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The future of Russia's i-curtain
Hot on the heels of a new law establishing a register of forbidden sites, Russian authorities are now promoting a system of 'virtual' borders and international supervision. Their proposal has so far...
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Best of Russia: going the right way?
The annual Best of Russia photography exhibition has opened in Moscow’s Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art. Reviewing the past five years of images, Jeremy Noble was struck by how explicitly the...
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Why domestic philanthropy isn’t enough for Russian NGOs
Writing on oDRussia yesterday, Almut Rochowanski argued that Kremlin’s repression of NGOs could work in their favour by encouraging domestic giving. Her mistake was assuming Russian NGOs are able and...
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Arrest and custody, Russian-style
Police custody, violence, trials and imprisonment have been all to common features on the Russian protest landscape since December 2011. A grassroots monitoring project called OVD-info has kept...
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China’s quiet splash in the post-Soviet space
China’s steadily growing economic expansion throughout the world is a cause of concern for many governments. Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia are no longer so dependent on Moscow and China is quietly...
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The Alexei German I knew
Last week, Russians bid farewell to a man many considered to be the country’s greatest living filmmaker. Largely under-appreciated in the West, Alexei German’s films delighted in their complexity,...
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Apocalypse now
The forced resignation of Duma deputies accused of owning property they had not declared shows Vladimir Putin trying, in the same way as his illustrious forebear Josef Stalin, to purge the ranks. But...
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Holocaust – is that wallpaper paste?
Last year two student sisters appearing on a Russian TV quiz show gained instant notoriety when asked to define the word ‘Holocaust’. A trip to Auschwitz with journalist Mumin Shakirov dispelled their...
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Stalin: still a dividing legacy among Russians
On the 60th anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s death, with Russian and international TV news bulletins showing old footage of his life and his funeral, Alexei Levinson looks at how his legacy still divides...
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Knock, knock: the return of the propiska?
Reports from Moscow of door-to-door passport checks and a proposed new bill criminalising registration infringements are rekindling uncomfortable memories of the Soviet past. Mikhail Loginov reflects...
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