· June, 2009

Stories about Russia from June, 2009

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...

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).

Ukraine: “Lady Ethnographer”

  25 June 2009

Maria Sonevytsky of My Simferopol Home writes on being a “lady ethnographer” in Ukraine and on xenophobia in Crimea: “Ukraine today is caught between two warring accounts of history, as it is caught between two different attitudes towards otherness, be it gendered, ethnic or raced otherness.”

Russia-Poland: History revisionism at large again

  24 June 2009

The Beatroot comments on a current dispute between Russia and Poland about a Russian state TV-documentary, claiming that Nazi Germany, Poland, and Japan were preparing to invade the Soviet Union during the early stages of World War II.

Russia: Views on Events in Iran

“As hundreds of thousands protesters fill the streets of Tehran and other provincial centers, one can’t help think that we’ve seen this all before,” writes Sean Guillory of Sean's Russia Blog, comparing the events in Iran to “the ‘colored revolutions’ in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, (the failed attempts in) Moldova and...

Ukraine: Blogging Priest Scandal

  23 June 2009

Profy writes about a scandal involving a Ukraine-based Russian Orthodox priest – LJ user abbatus-mozdok – whose blogging manners were deemed inappropriate by the church officials.