Stories about Russia from December, 2006
Russia, Belarus: “Gazilla”
There's a distinct sense of deja vu this New Year's Eve: Gazprom, Russia's largest (and state-controlled) company and the world's biggest extractor of natural gas, is in the spotlight again, both locally (due to an ambitious and controversial construction project in St. Petersburg) and internationally (due to a dispute over...
Russia: A Typical New Year's
Snowsquare guides the readers through a typical New Year's celebration in Russia (a ten-day affair, by the way!) Happy New Year, everyone!
Russia: More On Litvinenko's Death
Aleksandr Litvinenko's case is probably off everyone's radars by now, but Sean's Russia Blog offers a latest news roundup.
Russia: Kalmyk Deportation
Yet another sad anniversary from J. Otto Pohl: “Sixty-three years ago the Stalin regime deported the vast majority of the Kalmyk population from their historic homeland to Siberia.”
Russia: Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Economic Boom
White Sun of the Desert writes about the economic boom in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Russia: Nazism and Anti-Fascism
Daut is guest-blogging at Sean's Russia Blog about Nazism and anti-fascism in Russia and the Russian blogosphere.
Russia: Moscow Half a Century Ago
LJ user fool_4_lifetime found a rare photo album in a Moscow dump – Im Flug nach Moskau, by Erich Einhorn, ARTIA, 1959 – and scanned and posted 60 spreads of Moscow photos from it in the moya_moskva (My Moscow) LJ community. (Warning: bandwidth intensive!) Here is one of the photos:...
Russia: New Year's Celebration
White Sun of the Desert writes about New Year celebrations in Russia.
Belarus, Russia: Gas Problems
TOL's Belarus Blog writes that the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom “is not going to tolerate Lukashenka’s bluff and proceeds from warnings to direct actions.”
Russia: “No Bears, Only Beauties” in St. Pete
Russian Marketing Blog writes about a St. Petersburg promotion campaign: “It would cost the City Council about 1 million Euros to place 300 billboards in London, Amsterdam and Paris till the middle of December.”
Russia: A Blogger's Short Stories
Copydude is posting short stories – one, two, three, four – he wrote while in Tatarstan: “They come under the category of ‘True Lies’ – or what writers prefer to call ’semi-documentary’. I wrote them about real people – but sourced largely from local gossip.”
Russia: Litvinovich on Beslan Report
David McDuff of A Step At A Time translates a piece by Marina Litvinovich, an activist and founder of the Truth of Beslan portal; she writes: “Another of the report’s conclusions is that 32 people took part in the school seizure, of whom 31 were killed and one has been...
Russia: Arkhangelsk Mayor For President
Russia From The Inside tells of the “strange things” that began to happen to the mayor of Arkhangelsk after he decided to run for president of Russia in 2008.
Russia: Abramovich Leaves Chukotka
Billionaire and FC Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has resigned as governor of Chukotka, reports Russia Blog.
Estonia: Lavrov's (Lack of) Logic
Itching for Eestimaa doesn't understand the logic of Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “Because I just can't grasp how outlawing the symbol of fascism makes one part of a fascist revival.”
Ukraine: Brezhnev's 100th Birthday
Carpetblogger marks Leonid Brezhnev's 100th birthday with a Brezhnev joke: “Stalin, Krushchev and Brezhnev were riding on a train. The train comes to a halt in the middle of nowhere. Stalin yells out: ‘kill the engineer!’ Khrushchev calls out: ‘rehabilitate the engineer!’ Brezhnev says: ‘pull down the window shades and...
Russia: “Chess Revolution”
Very Russian writes about what could have been Russia's “Chess Revolution”: “This is beginning, just slightly, to look like what’s been the Kremlin’s worst nightmare since the Orange Revolution.” Sean's Russia Blog has more on this weekend's protest – here and here.
Russia: Marching Towards Christmas
The Turkish Invasion posts a few Soviet New Year's greeting cards and writes about and posts pictures of a weird rally that took place in Moscow: “Now here is how the Moscowites rehearse their record breaking attempt by converging the most amount of Santa Clauses in a a single city...
Russia: Ivan the Terrible
Russia Blog – on Ivan the Terrible: “the Stalin of the 16th century.”
Russia: Oleg Gazmanov's “Born in the USSR”
La Russophobe posts “a multi-media presentation with some insights regarding pop music” – featuring Oleg Gazmanov's song “Made in the USSR”: “[…] The Ryuriks, the Romanovs, Lenin and Stalin/They are my country/Pushkin, Yesinin, Vystotsky, Gagarin/They are my country […]”
Lithuania, Russia: Book on Vilnius Ghetto; Chekhov's Stories
Music and Life – Everywhere! is reading Anton Chekhov's short stories, and also posts a comment on a book about the Vilnius Ghetto.
