· June, 2009

Stories about Eastern & Central Europe from June, 2009

Russia: Another journalist death

  30 June 2009

Eternal Remont reports that the editor of a Rostov-on-Don newspaper has died from injuries of a beating last month, supposedly provoked by his paper's reporting.

Serbia: History and architecture

  30 June 2009

Nothing against Serbia discusses Belgrade architecture and its influence by both Byzantine and nationalist heritage, illustrating his point with pictures and plans of the city's former main telephone exchange building.

Russia: Lingering high mortality rates

  30 June 2009

Streetwise Professor writes about the prevalent high mortality rates among the Russian population, based on figures from the Lancet published by Reuters, with interesting comments by Sublime Oblivion.

Russia: Paradoxes of population growth

  30 June 2009

LJ user about:blank comments on [RUS] recent research comparing Russian population growth with average income in various regions and cities 1990-2009, coming up with the interesting result that the country's second and third cities, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novogorod, are making moderate progress in comparison to many other less developed...

Serbia-Belarus: Mobile phones in civil resistance

  30 June 2009

Information Policy summarises a recent survey on the use of mobile devices as a tool of civil resistance in Serbia and Belarus, concluding that state surveillance of communication is making them increasingly difficult to use.

Russia: Stalin visits Voronezh

  29 June 2009

LJ user Vaziani tells about [RUS] how the local Voronezh communists have wallpapered the city with huge pictures of Joseph Stalin in commemoration of the 22 June 1941 attack on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.

Russia: “Ingushetia, boom”

  28 June 2009

A Fistful of Euros writes about the assassination attempt on Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and the situation in Ingushetia and other North Caucasus regions.

ISS: Photos and a Poem from Koichi Wakata

  28 June 2009

Astronaut Koichi Wakata on the International Space Station posted some photographs, including one of Sarychev Volcano while it was erupting (Also part of NASA's Image of the Day Gallery), and a tanka poem: “My home planet enwrapped / The blue light of the atmosphere shines”.

Russia: Report on Internet Use

  26 June 2009

Window on Eurasia sums up “a 144-page report [on Internet use in Russia,] released this week […] by the Public Opinion Foundation on the basis of interviews with 34,000 people in 1920 cities and towns of the Russian Federation.”

Russia, Nigeria: Nigaz

  26 June 2009

Eternal Remont writes that “Gazprom has created a joint venture with Nigeria's state-owned NNPC gas company” and that the new company's name is Nigaz. License Plate Poetry has a poem on this – “But no, my dear, Russia is not racist” (via @jilliancyork).

About our Eastern & Central Europe coverage

Filip Stojanovski
Filip Stojanovski is the Central Europe editor. Email him story ideas or volunteer to write.

Daria Dergacheva
Daria Dergacheva is the Eastern Europe editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.