How do you write an absorbing novel about unspeakable things? It's always a tricky business, and an editor I know once described the dilemma this way: "A reader needs to want to go there." What "there" means is the self-contained world of the book. And what would make a reader want to go deeply into a world of hopelessness and seemingly perpetual war, a world of torture and intimidation and exploding land mines? There are many answers. One of the most obvious, of course, is the language. If it's powerful enough, it can make you want to "go there." But if it's all about churning violence and inhumanity, will you really be compelled to stay there, fully present and not looking away, until the last page?

I was thinking about all of this as I read — and stayed in — Anthony Marra's amazing first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. The story, which takes place in Chechnya, moving back and forth in time over recent history, includes some tough scenes, such as descriptions of torture and amputation. There's a terrifying, Wild West lawlessness at work. But it's exactly that — and the brilliant writing — that kept me committed to that world and the people in it. In fact, the people also kept me there. The main characters are vivid and real and stuck, and I guess I wanted to be stuck along with them.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Friday morning, four Pakistani-American doctors dressed in business suits and medical scrubs sat in one of this city’s most popular breakfast spots and fretted. At an adjacent table, a middle-aged woman grew visibly nervous when their native land was mentioned. One of the doctors, a 47-year-old cardiologist, was despondent.

“We were all praying this wouldn’t happen,” he told me. “No matter what you do in your community, that’s the label that is attached.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

For five years we have heard, principally from those who wield executive power, of a claimed need to make fundamental changes in this country, to change the world's—particularly the Muslim world's—perception of us, to press "reset" buttons. We have heard not a word from those sources suggesting any need to understand and confront a totalitarian ideology that has existed since at least the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s.

The ideology has regarded the United States as its principal adversary since the late 1940s, when a Brotherhood principal, Sayid Qutb, visited this country and was aghast at what he saw as its decadence. The first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, al Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, and those in the dozen years since—all were fueled by Islamist hatred for the U.S. and its values.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

A close examination of the Tsarnaev family shows that, over the past five years or so, the personal lives of the family members slipped into turmoil, according to interviews with the parents, relatives and friends. The upheaval in the household was driven, at least in part, by a growing interest in religion by both Tamerlan and his mother.

Once known as a quiet teenager who aspired to be a boxer, Tamerlan Tsarnaev delved deeply into religion in recent years at the urging of his mother, who feared he was slipping into a life of marijuana, girls and alcohol. Tamerlan quit drinking and smoking, gave up boxing because he thought it was in opposition to his religion, and began pushing the rest of his family to pursue stricter ways, his mother recalled.

"You know how Islam has changed me," his mother, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Makhachkala, Dagestan, says he told her.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Profiled in the Lowell Sun in 2004, Tamerlan [Tsarnaev] said he liked the USA.

“America has a lot of jobs. That’s something Russia doesn’t have,” he told the newspaper. “You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work.”

He later said, in a photo essay about his boxing exploits, that he hoped to be selected for the US Olympic team, and that he dreamed of becoming a naturalized citizen. But he also lamented his alienation, saying, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.’’

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Whatever struck you, provoked you, moved you; whatever part of it which you believe is most significant or worthy of further consideration. Remember the more specific you are, the more other blog reads can participate in what you say--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • History • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • City Government • State Government • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Although terrorists from the Caucasus have struck in Moscow and other parts of Russia, the conflict in the region has never led to attacks in other countries. One possible explanation for the Boston bombings, said Aslan Doukaev, an expert on the Caucasus who works for Radio Liberty in Prague, is that the brothers were motivated by radical jihadism, not Chechen separatism.

As the war in Chechnya wound down after Russian forces withdrew — they left formally in 2009 — violence has spilled into neighboring republics such as Dagestan, where the Tsarnaev family once found shelter and where the brothers’ parents now live. That conflict is increasingly marked by radical Islamic terrorism in an often vicious cycle of attack and reprisal between insurgents and Russian security forces. Tamerlan visited Dagestan last year, according to an official with knowledge of his travels.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed suspected marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government, but didn't find evidence of suspicious activity and closed the case, an FBI official said Friday.

The fact that the FBI spoke with Mr. Tsarnaev, who was killed Friday morning in a firefight with authorities, is likely to become a focal point of the post mortem into how the attack was able to be carried out at the Boston Marathon. It also speaks to the challenge faced by authorities as terrorism morphs to some extent from the complex international plots of a decade ago to small-scale attacks carried out by individuals located within U.S.

U.S. counterterrorism policy has since 2001 focused largely on killing terrorists overseas or preventing them from getting into the U.S. But the Boston bombings show how the diffusion of terrorist tactics easily transcends borders. Countering small groups of individuals inside the U.S. can be a bedeviling assignment.

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Late in 2011, Michiko Kakutani opened her New York Times review of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens with “a remarkable account” she had found in its pages. In London for a few days in 1862, Fyodor Dostoevsky had dropped in on Dickens’s editorial offices and found the writer in an expansive mood....

I have been teaching courses on Dostoevsky for over two decades, but I had never come across any mention of this encounter. Although Dostoevsky is known to have visited London for a week in 1862, neither his published letters nor any of the numerous biographies contain any hint of such a meeting. Dostoevsky would have been a virtual unknown to Dickens. It isn’t clear why Dickens would have opened up to his Russian colleague in this manner, and even if he had wanted to, in what language would the two men have conversed? (It could only have been French, which should lead one to wonder about the eloquence of a remembered remark filtered through two foreign tongues.) Moreover, Dostoevsky was a prickly, often rude interlocutor. He and Turgenev hated each other. He never even met Tolstoy. Would he have sought Dickens out? Would he then have been silent about the encounter for so many years, when it would have provided such wonderful fodder for his polemical journalism?

Several American professors of Russian literature wrote to the New York Times in protest, and eventually a half-hearted online retraction was made, informing readers that the authenticity of the encounter had been called into question, but in the meantime a second review of Tomalin’s biography had appeared in the Times, citing the same passage....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Education • History • Media • Poetry & Literature • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe • Russia • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

These days many Anglicans and Episcopalians are asking themselves this question. With the separation of the Diocese of South Carolina from The Episcopal Church we link arms with a long tradition of believing Christians who for one reason or another have felt the need to separate from other professing Christians. Opinions as to the wisdom of this vary, as they doubtless always will. But over the centuries it has not been unusual for one Christian group to find the views, beliefs and practices of another group incompatible with their understanding of the Truth.

A fascinating example of this recently came to my attention. Since my summer trip in 2012 to Russia, I have become more aware of things in that mysterious country than before. So this story really caught my attention.

Back in 1934...the Bolsheviks tightened their noose around the whole of Russian society....

Read it all from Peter Moore.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday the Orthodox Church should be given more say over family life, education and the armed forces in Russia, as he celebrated the leadership of its head Patriarch Kirill.

Faith runs deep in Russia after the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union and Putin has looked to the largest religion in Russia for support since he began his third term as president after a wave of protests against his rule.

He has also tried to mix spirituality with his own brand of patriotism in order to unify the officially secular country where ethnic and political fault lines are beginning to show.

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Russia has expressed concern at an alleged Israeli attack on Syria, saying such a strike would be an unacceptable violation of the UN Charter.

Syria's army said Israeli jets had targeted a military research centre north-west of Damascus on Wednesday.

It denied reports that lorries carrying weapons bound for Lebanon were hit.

Russia has steadfastly refused to denounce Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the 22-month conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Israel • Syria

For many couples, the moment comes in a hospital when a newborn emerges red and wrinkly and, hopefully, screaming with gusto into the world.

For the Dickinsons of West Ashley, the moment came in a small room at a Russian orphanage when a caregiver delivered 7-month-old Mae into Jenny Dickinson’s eager arms.

The moment came again at another Russian orphanage when 3-year-old Ellen peeked through the sliver of an open door to see the American couple who traveled so far to meet her. Slowly, nerves of expectation palpable, Ellen stepped through the doorway....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * South Carolina

In an essay in The Times’ Sunday Book Review this week the writer Paul Elie asks the intriguing question: Has fiction lost its faith? As we are gathered here today, let us consider one of the most oddly faithful of all fiction writers, Fyodor Dostoevsky. More specifically, I’d like focus pretty intensely on what some consider to be the key moment in his greatest novel — arguably one of the greatest of all time — “The Brothers Karamazov.” (Elie himself notes the 1880 masterpiece as an example of the truly faith-engaged fiction of yore.) I speak in particular of the “Grand Inquisitor” scene, a sort of fiction within a fiction that draws on something powerful from the New Testament — Jesus’s refusal of Satan’s three temptations — and in doing so digs at the meaning of faith, freedom, happiness and the diabolic satisfaction of our desires.

Read it all. Be warned--this is not short and it is not light bed-time reading; it is, however, well worth the time--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Philosophy • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Theology • Anthropology • Christology • Soteriology • Theodicy

About 50 people gathered for a traditional Christmas carol service held by the Anglican Chaplaincy of St. Petersburg in the Anglican church on 56 Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya last Tuesday night.

It was the first time an Anglican Christmas service had taken place in the building for nearly 100 years.

The congregation included British people who live and work in St. Petersburg, including British Consul General in St. Petersburg Gareth Ward, as well as many Russians.

"It was very important to hold this service exactly in this church that once used to be the center of the British community for more than 200 years," Ward said. "And it is very important for the British community to have access to this church again," he added.

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/church-holds-service-after-century-of-silence/473578.html#ixzz2Fzqfqpqu
The Moscow Times


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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

In November 1962, one story shook the Soviet Union.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn described a day in the life of a prison camp inmate, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

The character was fictional. But there were millions like him - innocent citizens who, like Solzhenitsyn himself, had been sent to the Gulag in Joseph Stalin's wave of terror.

Censorship and fear had prevented the truth about the camps from being published, but this story made it into print. The USSR would never be the same again....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • History • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

At school No. 20 in Russia's troubled region of Chechnya, boys sit on one side of the classroom and girls in headscarves on the other. All are silent as the new teacher rises to speak.

"Do you say your morning prayers?" Islam Dzhabrailov, 21, asks, wearing a green prayer cap and a plain tunic, religious dress that is increasingly popular in the mountainous province in southern Russia's mostly Muslim Caucasus region.

"It's just as important as doing your homework," he tells the students aged 14-15.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Some Orthodox Christians in Russia have taken issue with Apple’s logo recently, seeing an anti-Christian symbol for humanity’s original sin in the image of a bitten fruit....

...[We now, however, that many] people have offered many explanations for what they see as the obvious significance of Apple’s logo. This is to be expected, since any symbol—or “signifier” for you semantics aficionados—has a fluid link to the meaning signified. But if these interpretations are all up for debate, then why bother discussing such niche exegeses as the one put forward by conservative Russian Orthodox?

Because their interpretation is scheduled to collide with public policy....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

The young American was agitated, increasingly emotional, and had laid a loaded gun on the table. The Soviet Union must grant him a visa as soon as possible, he pleaded. His life was being made intolerable by FBI surveillance and he, a dedicated communist, wished to return to the arms of Mother Russia.

One of the three Soviet diplomats present took the gun and unloaded it before returning it to its owner. There would be no visa in the near future, he explained calmly. Dejected, the American gathered up his documents and departed the Soviet consulate, bound not for his previous home in New Orleans, but Dallas. It was Mexico City, Saturday, September 28 1963, and the man wanting the visa was Lee Harvey Oswald. Fifty-five days later, he would assassinate John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Books • History • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

In this 1955 essay, [Vladimir] Lossky builds all of that around a very complex and very sophisticated analysis of how Christians, especially in the early centuries, talked about God as trinity and talked about the divine and the human in Jesus. If I had another three hours or so I would try to spell that out a bit further, but it might emerge a little later when we have some questions. The point I want to focus on here is that he is arguing for an essential mysteriousness about the notion of the person in the human world, an essential mysteriousness that one can’t simply deal with by listing it in a number of things that are true about us so that I am intelligent, loving, free and mysterious; which is something about the place I occupy in terms (as I said earlier) of being the point where the lines of relationship intersect. It’s because a person is that kind of reality, the point at which relationships intersect, where a difference may be made and new relations created. It’s in virtue of that that we are able as believers to look at any and every human individual and say that the same kind of mystery is true of all of them and therefore the same kind of reverence or attention is due to all of them. We can never say for example that such and such a person has the full set of required characteristics for being a human person and therefore deserves our respect, and that such and such another individual doesn’t have the full set and therefore doesn’t deserve our respect.

That of course is why - historically and at the present day - Christians worry about those kinds of human beings who may not tick all the boxes but whom we still believe to be worthy of respect, whether it’s those not yet born, those severely disabled, those dying, those in various ways marginal and forgotten. It’s why Christians conclude that attention is due to all of them. What that means, we may still argue a lot about. But the underlying point is quite simply that there is no way of, (as it were), presenting a human individual with an examination paper and according them the reward of our attention or respect only if they get above a certain percentage of marks. Any physical, tangible member of the human race deserves that respect, never mind how many boxes are ticked.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church • * Theology • Anthropology

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich: Deliver us, we pray thee, from an inordinate love of this world, that inspired by the devotion of thy servant Sergius of Moscow, we may serve thee with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has called President Vladimir Putin's rule a "miracle of God", defended its close ties with the state on Friday against criticism fuelled by the trial of three members of the ##### Riot punk band.

In remarks published a day before a court issues its verdict in the trial over the band's protest against the Church's political role on a cathedral altar, Patriarch Kirill said the Church and state were merely bound by a "common agenda".

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The Syria conflict fell deeper into crisis Tuesday as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly accused Russia of supplying attack helicopters to the Syrian government.

Her accusation came as international cease-fire monitors in Syria aborted a fact-finding trip after they came under assault by an angry mob and gunfire, and the top United Nations peacekeeping official said Syria was already in a state of civil war.

Those developments — coupled with a newly released United Nations report that accused the Syrian military of using Syrians as young as 8 as human shields for troops — overshadowed fresh diplomatic efforts by Kofi Annan, the special envoy to Syria, to advance a peace plan that has basically been ignored since it was put into effect two months ago.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

Russia is "categorically against" foreign intervention in Syria and believes any new steps by the UN Security Council would be "premature", its deputy foreign minister has said.

Gennady Gatilov's remarks to Interfax news agency come amid international outrage over a massacre on Friday.

Women and children made up the majority of the 108 victims in Houla.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

The skinny dissident is thrown headfirst into a police van by camouflage-clad officers. Nearby, a dozen bearded men bearing Russian Orthodox crosses and wearing skull-and-crossbones T-shirts cheer on the cops.

It's the latest flare-up in a growing feud pitting supporters of the influential church, which sees itself as the nation's spiritual guide, against opponents who say the church has sold out to Vladimir Putin — becoming an arm of his regime more interested in gold than souls.

Roman Dobrokhotov was on his way to Christ the Savior Cathedral, Russia's biggest church, to protest against the arrest of members of female punk rock band ##### Riot. They were jailed in early March for belting out an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in front of the church's gilded altar wearing garishly colored balaclavas.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

Overheard next to me last week while getting a facial on West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side:

Woman in her 80s reclining next to me with green cream on her visage asking her facialist: “So, do you Russians have brisket for Passover?”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

'That was the most bitter and painful experience of my life," observes Tom McMillen. "What happened in Munich was the most controversial and tragic sports competition in modern times."

Mr. McMillen is a former college and NBA basketball star, Rhodes scholar, three-term Democratic member of Congress, and now successful businessman. We're in his Northern Virginia office reminiscing about the continuing impact of the 1972 Olympic Games, held 40 years ago this summer. Overshadowing it all is the tragedy of what TV announcer Jim McKay called "the worst day in the history of sports."

That was the hostage crisis in the Olympic Village, which culminated in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by Palestinian terrorists (linked to the Fatah group that we now know enjoyed Soviet funding and training for many years). Four days later was the disputed basketball game between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, in which Mr. McMillen played a pivotal role.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Sports • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Germany • Russia

Vladimir Putin was poised to win a third term as Russian president but the opposition vowed to continue protests on Monday amid claims that the election was marred by widespread violations.

Two exit polls released after Russia’s 95,000 polling stations closed showed that the former spy who has dominated politics for the past dozen years gaining about 59 per cent of the vote. If confirmed by the final results, that would represent a comfortable victory for Mr Putin with no need to go into a second round of voting.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Fear and a lack of choice may carry the election for Mr Putin, but they cannot disguise the growing discontent across different classes, ages and regions. For those who have done less well than Ms Guseva over the past 12 years but still remember Soviet times, the 1990s are becoming less relevant. Polls show that the fastest decline in Mr Putin’s support is among poorer people over 55 years of age; they feel Mr Putin has not honoured his promises, and are tired of waiting. The conspicuous display of riches by corrupt bureaucrats heightens their sense of injustice. The number of people who no longer trust Mr Putin has risen to 40%, and people tell pollsters that the country is stagnating. “The regime is losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the population,” says Lev Gudkov of the Levada Centre, a social-research outfit. Mr Putin’s victory will only make things worse.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Western commentators typically attribute such behavior to Putin's personal paranoia or to attempts to rekindle the nation's wounded pride and assert Russia's superpower status. Look a little closer, however, and Russia's actions seem motivated more by calculated -- albeit sometimes miscalculated -- realpolitik than by psychological impulses.

First, strategic interests are at stake. In Tartus, Syria hosts the sole remaining Russian naval base on the Mediterranean, currently being refurbished by 600 Russian technicians after long disuse. To have to give up this Middle Eastern beachhead would be a shame, as far as the Russians are concerned.

Second, although limited, Russia has real commercial interests in Syria.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described as a "travesty" Russia and China's veto of a UN resolution condemning Syria's crackdown against anti-government protesters.

Speaking in Bulgaria, Mrs Clinton said efforts outside the world body to help Syria's people should be redoubled.

The US, she said, would work with "friends of a democratic Syria" to support opponents of Syria's president.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

Read and listen to it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Moscow’s only Anglican church, St Andrew’s, opened its doors 127 years ago to meet the needs of the Russian capital’s growing British community.

Seeing as the Scots were the wealthiest members of the community at the time, the church was dedicated to the patron saint of Scotland.

The architect, Richard Knill Freeman, never came to Russia, sending the drawings of the building (a replica of hundreds of Victorian Anglican churches) and his recommendations by post.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of being behind protests over the results of Russia's parliamentary elections.

Mr Putin said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "set the tone for some opposition activists".

She "gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work", he said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Privately, U.S. officials have long complained that China and Russia are out to steal U.S. trade secrets, intellectual property and high technology. But in public they've been reluctant to point fingers, and instead have referred obliquely to "some nations" or "our rivals."

That changed Thursday, with the release of a new report by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive to Congress titled "Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace." The report names China as the world's leading source of economic espionage, followed by Russia.

"China and Russia, through their intelligence services and through their corporations, are attacking our research and development," said Robert Bryant, U.S. national counterintelligence executive, during an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., presenting the espionage report.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe • Russia

Military action against Iran would be a "very serious mistake fraught with unpredictable consequences", Russia's foreign minister has warned.

Sergei Lavrov said diplomacy, not missile strikes, was the only way to solve the Iranian nuclear problem.

His comments come after Israeli President Shimon Peres said an attack on Iran was becoming more likely.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Iraq • Israel

As Jews around the world gather to celebrate Simchat Torah next week—the raucous holiday marking the completion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings—I am reminded of one of the more curious practices among Soviet Jews in the final decades of the Communist regime.

Living under duress, these Jews gathered illegally in homes or even in the streets to celebrate a holiday for an object that most had never seen, let alone read from. Such celebrations persisted despite systematic anti-Jewish persecution by the Soviets, including university quotas, discouragement from certain jobs, and an all-out effort to eradicate Jewish culture and religion.

And yet 20 years after the Soviet Union's fall, this act of defiance has taken on an entirely different character....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

China and Russia have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria over its crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The European-drafted resolution had been watered down to try to avoid the vetoes, dropping a direct reference to sanctions against Damascus.

But Moscow and Beijing said the draft contained no provision against outside military intervention in Syria.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he has accepted a proposal to stand for president in March 2012.

Addressing the ruling United Russia party's annual congress, Mr Putin and current President Dmitry Medvedev backed one another to switch roles.

The announcements end speculation over which man should run for the top job.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known for over a century now by his Bolshevik nom-de-guerre, Lenin, was one of history’s greatest mass murderers. In the course of his ruthless efforts to impose communism on Russia and its neighbors through brutal force, terror, and extra-judicial homicides in the millions, he became one of the greatest persecutors of the Christian Church in two millennia. Lenin’s minions killed more Christians in a slow week than the last of the great Roman persecutors, Diocletian, did in years. All this is thoroughly documented—to the point where Russian Orthodoxy considers many of Lenin’s victims as martyrs and saints and celebrates their feasts in its liturgical calendar.

And yet today’s Russian Orthodox leadership cannot bring itself to say that this monster’s mummified corpse should cease, immediately, being an object of curiosity or veneration?

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"We were first and could not be beaten," she said. "But that was the Soviet Union." She feels her country now lags behind in science and technology, but adds she's happy her country is no longer feared by the West.

That was the theme Thursday when a new statue of Gagarin was unveiled — not in Moscow, but in London, near Buckingham Palace, right by a statue of the great British explorer James Cook.

Sergei Krikalyov, who heads Russia's Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training, was there for the unveiling. He called the setting appropriate.

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Jaroslav Pelikan, an important historical theologian who became Orthodox late in life, once told me, "You evangelicals talk too much about Jesus and don't spend enough time thinking about the Holy Trinity." Can one talk too much about Jesus?

I would not want to contrast faith in Jesus with faith in the Holy Trinity. My faith in Jesus is precisely that I believe him to be not only truly human, but also to be the eternal Son of God. I cannot think of a faith in Jesus that does not also involve faith in God the Father.

How is Jesus present to us personally at this moment? How is it that he is not merely a figure from the distant past, but that he also lives in my own life? That is through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I cannot understand a faith in Jesus Christ that would not also involve faith in the Holy Spirit.

I don't think we can have too much faith in Jesus. But faith in Jesus, if it is to be truly such, is necessarily Trinitarian. If you look at the lives of the Orthodox saints, you will find a very vivid faith in Jesus. Their affirmation of the Trinity did not in any way diminish their sense of Jesus as their personal Savior.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • Orthodox Church • * Theology • The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

A Russian pro-life organization is about to launch a network of clinics offering pre- and post-natal care while excluding procedures such as abortion and in-vitro fertilization that "contradict the teachings of the Russian Orthodox, Catholic and traditional Protestant churches," said Alexey Komov, the project manager.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

Concern is growing for prominent moderate Muslims in Russia's Dagestan region after an imam was shot dead days after the killing of an academic.

Unidentified gunmen shot Ashurlav Kurbanov near his mosque in the northern village of Mikheyevka, investigators said.

Maksud Sadikov, rector of an Islamic college in the regional capital Makhachkala, was killed last week.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Here, the students witnessed the establishment of a German-Polish-Russian forum designed to encourage a rapprochement among three countries with fundamentally different historical narratives of World War II.

Any such process would ultimately mean Russia confronting its past, particularly Stalinist crimes and the gulags, and reassessing its role as victim and victor during and after World War II. It would also mean Russia embracing the European idea of dealing with memory and the past, now so much a part of the European identity.

“Being European is about being aware of what we did,” said Ivan Krastev, historian and chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • Poland • Russia

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also called for stronger regulation of commodity derivatives to dampen excessive volatility in food and energy prices, which they said posed new risks for the recovery of the world economy.

Meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, they said the recent financial crisis had exposed the inadequacies of the current monetary order, which has the dollar as its linchpin.

What was needed, they said in a statement, was "a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty" -- thinly veiled criticism of what the BRICS see as Washington's neglect of its global monetary responsibilities.

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Holy God, holy and mighty, who hast called us together into one communion and fellowship: Open our eyes, we pray thee, as you opened the eyes of thy servant Tikhon, that we may see the faithfulness of others as we strive to be steadfast in the faith delivered unto us, that the world may see and know Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be glory and praise unto ages of ages. Amen.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

In one cable from January 2010, Spanish prosecutor Jose "Pepe" Grinda Gonzales claimed that in Russia, Belarus and Chechnya "one cannot differentiate between the activities of the Government and OC (organised crime) groups".

Judge Grinda led a long investigation into Russian organised crime in Spain, leading to more than 60 arrests.

A cable from the US embassy in Madrid talks about the "unanswered question" of the extent to which Mr Putin is implicated in the mafia and whether he controls its actions.

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You may find the audio link here (15 minutes long) (please note:only available for a few more days).

Herewith the BBC blurb on the programme:

The Archbishop of Canterbury presents an essay on the life and work of Leo Tolstoy.
To mark the 100th anniversary of his death, "The Essay" this week considers the life and work of one of the giants of Russian literature - Leo Tolstoy. Famous for works like the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as Hadji Murad and The Death of Ivan Ilyich Tolstoy continues to fascinate modern audiences. In these programmes, five different presenters explain their own passion for the works of Tolstoy and the Russia he evokes. Coming from very different backgrounds, all the presenters of these essays have had their lives touched - directly and indirectly - by the Tolstoy's works, they are:
Dr Rowan Williams - Archbishop of Canterbury
Writer and newspaper columnist - A.N. Wilson
Helen Dunmore - award winning novelist
Prof Anthony Briggs - a specialist in nineteenth-century Russian literature
Bridget Kendall - BBC Radio correspondent to Moscow 1989-1995

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * Culture-Watch • Books • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich: Deliver us, we pray thee, from an inordinate love of this world, that inspired by the devotion of thy servant Sergius of Moscow, we may serve thee with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Russia says it will begin to load fuel into the reactor at Iran's first nuclear power plant on August 21.

A spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency made the announcement Friday, saying loading the reactor with fuel will be a key step toward starting the power plant in Bushehr. But he said the reactor will not be considered operational from that date.

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The White House said Tuesday that it does not expect the arrests of 11 accused members of a Russian espionage ring to affect relations between Washington and Moscow, shrugging off Russian denunciations of the busts as a throwback to the Cold War.

The FBI moved to arrest 10 suspects in the United States on Sunday in part because one of them was scheduled to leave the country, a Justice Department spokesman said. He did not specify which of the defendants was planning to leave.

The 11th suspect was arrested at Larnaca airport on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus as he was about to fly to Budapest, Hungary, Cypriot authorities said Tuesday. The man, identified in a U.S. complaint as Christopher Metsos, 54, was later released on bail but was told to remain on Cyprus for a month pending U.S. extradition proceedings. U.S. officials said Metsos acted as a money man for the ring and purported to be a Canadian citizen.

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Andrei Voznesensky, one of Russia’s most celebrated poets and part of a group of bold writers in the 1950s who helped revive Russian literature from its state of fear and virtual serfdom under Stalin, died Tuesday at his home in Moscow. He was 77.

His death was announced by Gennady Ivanov, the secretary of Russia’s Writers Union. Mr. Ivanov did not give the cause of death, but Mr. Voznesensky had a stroke several years ago, and some Russian news reports said he suffered a second stroke earlier this year.

Mr. Voznesensky’s poetry epitomized the setbacks, gains and hopes of the post-Stalin decades in Russia. His hundreds of subtle, ironic and innovative verses reflected alternating calm and stress as the Communist Party’s rule stabilized, weakened and then, in 1991, quickly disintegrated.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was... [recently] presented with the Russian Order of Friendship, for his "outstanding contribution to the cooperation and friendly relations between Russia and the UK"

The honour, which was awarded by Russian presidential decree by President Dmitry Medvedev, was presented by the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, His Excellency Mr Yury Fedotov, who said "What the Archbishop is doing helps tremendously to establish better understanding and to set a better climate in relations between Russia and the UK."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Though not even two decades have passed since the Soviet state collapsed in 1991, the Orthodox Russians who came to France to flee communism say they're starting to view Moscow with mistrust again. The reason: the recent move by Russia to take control of a dazzling Orthodox cathedral built in Nice during the reign of Czar Nicholas II, which some opponents say is part a wider, nationalistic power play by Moscow to regain symbols of Russia's historical, cultural and religious grandeur abroad.

The tussle centers on the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas — a breathtaking church topped with spires and domes that was built in 1912 on land that Nicolas' grandfather, Alexander II, had purchased a half century earlier. Initially intended as a place of worship for the Russian aristocrats and industrialists who flocked to the Côte d'Azur before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the cathedral became a spiritual and cultural focal point for the mass of exiles who fled to Nice during the Soviet era. Since the fall of communism nearly 19 years ago, the so-called "white Russian" community and its offspring has been joined by Russian jet-setters who've grown extremely wealthy under the country's current leadership and bought pricey mansions in Nice to use as their second homes. (See a brief history of Russians and vodka.)

To the Russian diaspora, as well as the 85,000 paying tourists who visit the church every year, the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas has represented a slice of Mother Russia on the shores of the Mediterranean. And that's exactly the logic the Russian government used to win a court case in France on Jan. 20 that recognized Moscow's ownership of the church. The Nice Russian Orthodox Cultural Association (ACOR), which managed the church under a 99-year lease it signed with the czarist regime in 1909, had maintained that it effectively inherited the cathedral when Russia's royal family was executed during the revolution. But the court upheld the Russian government's position that since the czarists had bought the land and built the church using state money, the cathedral remains the property of the Russian government, meaning that Moscow could legally reclaim it now that ACOR's lease has expired. Decades of Soviet uninterest in the property, the court decided, did not undermine Russia's entitlement to it today.

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On the second day, we were driving in a small bus from our hotel to a reception, and drove by a theater with a sign in Russian that read "Kosmos Cinema." I pointed to it and said to the co-pilot, look, that's the 'World Theater.'"

In a flash, our interpreter jumped from her seat in the front of the bus and ran back to me and said, "On your entry forms you all said that you didn't speak Russian. How can you read that?"

I was startled, but said, "I can read Greek and the letters are a combination of English and Greek letters. I thought that was a reasonable translation of Kosmos Cinema."

"Why did you learn Greek?" she asked.

"To understand the Bible better," I replied.

See looked nervously at the other "guide" (guard) and then dropped her voice to a tiny whisper and said, "I have read 'The Cross and the Switchblade.'"

From then, we tried to steal a moment of conversation here and there in which she talked about being a Christian, despite the persecution that would come if it became known.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

If 2009 was all about recession, for Wall Street, 2010 will be all about recovery. One of the first signs of this will be seen in bankers' pay packets. January will be the month when investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and the more diversified conglomerates such as Citigroup and Bank of America, release details of what they intend to pay the "masters of the universe".

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The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace.

American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia’s overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race.

In the last two years, Internet-based attacks on government and corporate computer systems have multiplied to thousands a day. Hackers, usually never identified, have compromised Pentagon computers, stolen industrial secrets and temporarily jammed government and corporate Web sites. President Obama ordered a review of the nation’s Internet security in February and is preparing to name an official to coordinate national policy.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

When the U.S. government imagines the global future, the term BRIC features prominently. The concept was created in 2001 when researchers at Goldman Sachs identified four critical emerging powers—Brazil, Russia, India and China. By 2050, claimed these experts, the BRIC powers would be challenging the U.S. for worldwide economic supremacy. U.S. officials have taken this forecast very seriously. Hillary Clinton recently listed these four "major and emerging global powers" as vital partners in any future attempts to solve the world's problems.

The BRIC theory has political, strategic and military implications, but it also raises intriguing questions about the world's religious future. The BRICs will be the scene of intense debates about faith and practice—about coexistence and rivalry between different faiths; about the proper relationship between religion and state power; and, conceivably, about the use of religious rhetoric to justify an imperial expansion.

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned major powers on Wednesday against intimidating Iran and said talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme was "premature".

Putin, who many diplomats, analysts, and Russian citizens believe is still Russia's paramount leader despite stepping down as president last year, was speaking after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Moscow for two days of talks.

"There is no need to frighten the Iranians," Putin told reporters in Beijing after a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

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It is still far from certain whether Russia will support tough new UN sanctions against Iran.

In his talks with President Barack Obama in New York Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev's language was equivocal.

He said sanctions "may be inevitable". He certainly did not promise Russia would support them....

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Why did Obama change the plan?

In his announcement, the president gave two reasons for the change in policy:

First, the latest intelligence indicates that Iran is concentrating on short- and medium-range missiles rather than long-range missiles.

Second, technological advances in land- and sea-based interceptors and sensors mean they can now be more effective in defending Europe. Obama also said the new approach, using advanced versions of the SM-3 ship-based missile being developed for use by the U.S. Navy, will be more cost-effective and offer the military more flexibility.

For the next two years, the United States will deploy the sea-based Aegis weapon system, the SM-3 interceptor and sensors such as the Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance system to monitor threats, the White House said. More advanced systems will come later.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President George Bush • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Let other capitals go all weak-kneed when President Obama visits. Moscow has greeted Mr. Obama, who on Tuesday night concluded a two-day Russian-American summit meeting, as if he were just another dignitary passing through.

Crowds did not clamor for a glimpse of him. Headlines offered only glancing or flippant notice of his activities. Television programming was uninterrupted; devotees of the Russian Judge Judy had nothing to fear. Even many students and alumni of the Western-oriented business school where Mr. Obama gave the graduation address on Tuesday seemed merely respectful, but hardly enthralled.

“We don’t really understand why Obama is such a star,” said Kirill Zagorodnov, 25, one of the graduates. “It’s a question of trust, how he behaves, how he positions himself, that typical charisma, which in Russia is often parodied. Russians really are not accustomed to it. It is like he is trying to manipulate the public.”

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

President Obama arrived in Moscow Monday for a summit with Russian leaders aimed at reaching an agreement to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads, but also expected to touch upon the war in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, terrorism and the jousting for influence in other post-Soviet countries.

The summit comes less than a year after the conflict in Georgia caused the worst tensions between the United States and Russia since the end of the cold war. Since taking office in January, Mr. Obama has called for a “reset” in relations, and the summit will offer the most telling evidence so far about how difficult it will be for him to achieve this goal.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said over the weekend that he was “moderately optimistic” about the possibility of success at the summit, noting that under President George W. Bush, relations between the two countries had significantly worsened.

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Russia’s population is shrinking alarmingly, its death rate double that in most developed countries. Conflicts in its north Caucasus republics have flared again. Its armed forces are woefully ill-equipped and poorly trained. Mr Putin has kept control by unleashing a virulent brand of anti-Western “patriotism”—the latest textbooks are as tough on America as they are soft on Stalin—and thuggishly silencing the opposition. Last year in a pretence of democracy Mr Putin installed Dmitry Medvedev (Mr Obama’s supposed host) as president while he himself became prime minister.

In the long term Mr Putin’s refusal to modernise his country will weaken Russia. Yet the place Mr Obama has to deal with now is still a potent force. The largest country on earth, Russia stretches from Europe to China. It is the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas. It has a seat on the UN Security Council and of course that nuclear arsenal. Above all it has the capacity to do both great harm and some good....

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Last week the four leaders of the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) formally met together in their first summit. I have been asked a number of questions about the event. First, did I really think this would ever happen? Second, would it have happened if I hadn't created the acronym? Third, what real purpose did it serve, and fourth, where do I think the Bric path is heading?

I've also beeen asked a couple of supplementary questions: why these four countries and why not Indonesia, Turkey or indeed Iran? And do I think the global credit crisis has changed the picture from our prediction a number of years ago, that the combined GDP of the Bric economies could exceed that of the G7 countries before 2040?

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With public hugs and backslaps among its leaders, a new political bloc was formed yesterday to challenge the global dominance of the United States.

The first summit of heads of state of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — ended with a declaration calling for a “multipolar world order”, diplomatic code for a rejection of America’s position as the sole global superpower.

President Medvedev of Russia went further in a statement with his fellow leaders after the summit, saying that the BRIC countries wanted to “create the conditions for a fairer world order”. He described the meeting with President Lula da Silva of Brazil, the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, as “an historic event”.

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says the world needs new reserve currencies.

Medvedev told a regional summit Tuesday that the creation of new reserve currencies in addition to the dollar is needed to stabilize global finances.

Medvedev has made the proposal before. It reflects both the Kremlin's push for greater international clout and a concern shared by other countries that soaring U.S. budget deficits could spur inflation and weaken the dollar.

Airing it at a summit meeting underlined the challenge to U.S. clout.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Where his radical contemporaries anticipated a day of renewal after a night of destruction, Dostoevsky could spot nothing but darkness in the nihilistic dawn. He dealt with the subject in Demons in the early 1870s, but the book did little to calm his fears about the damaging power of persistent unbelief. As a result, he came to the writing of The Brothers Karamazov still filled with anxiety concerning the destructive power of nihilism over Russian culture and the Russian family. Dostoevsky took the collapse of the family system in particular to be the symptom of a deeper catastrophic loss of established values that had resulted from the sudden decline, among the educated, of faith in God and in Jesus Christ. In The Brothers Karamazov, the novelist set out to reaffirm explicitly Christian values by demonstrating "their linkage to the supernatural presuppositions of the Christian faith, which for Dostoevsky offered their only secure support."

-- Roger Lundin, Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), p. 155

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Russia on Saturday sternly warned its foes not to dare attempt any aggression against the country, as it put on a Soviet-style show of military might in Red Square including nuclear capable missiles.

The display to mark the 64th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II came amid renewed tensions with Georgia after NATO's decision to hold war games in the Caucasus country infuriated Moscow.

"We are sure that any aggression against our citizens will be given a worthy reply," President Dmitry Medvedev said in a speech in Red Square side-by-side with powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

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A congressionally backed panel said today that religious freedoms were deteriorating in Russia, Turkey and four other nations that were added to a watch list of countries where people's rights to worship as they please or not to worship at all are at risk.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also named Nigeria as a "country of particular concern," joining 12 other countries that the commission considers the world's worst violators.

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Martin Walker of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, writing in the Wilson Quarterly ("The World's New Numbers"), notes that Russia's declining fertility is magnified by "a phenomenon so extreme that it has given rise to an ominous new term -- hypermortality." Because of rampant HIV/AIDS, extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, alcoholism and the deteriorating health-care system, a U.N. report says "mortality in Russia is three to five times higher for men and twice as high for women" as in other countries at a comparable stage of development. The report, Walker says, "predicts that within little more than a decade the working-age population will be shrinking by up to 1 million people annually." Be that as it may, "Russia is suffering a demographic decline on a scale that is normally associated with the effects of a major war."

According to projections by the United Nations Population Division, Russia's population, which was around 143 million four years ago, might be as high as 136 million or as low as 121 million in 2025, and as low as 115 million in 2030.

Marx envisioned the "withering away" of the state under mature communism. Instead, Eberstadt writes, the world may be witnessing the withering away of Russia, where Marxism was supposed to be the future that works. Russia, he writes, "has pioneered a unique new profile of mass debilitation and foreshortened life previously unknown in all of human history."

"History," he concludes, "offers no examples of a society that has demonstrated sustained material advance in the face of long-term population decline." Demography is not by itself destiny, but it is more real than an arms control "process" that merely expresses the liberal hope of taming the world by wrapping it snugly in parchment.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

The Kremlin published its priorities Monday for an upcoming meeting of the G20, calling for the creation of a supranational reserve currency to be issued by international institutions as part of a reform of the global financial system.

The International Monetary Fund should investigate the possible creation of a new reserve currency, widening the list of reserve currencies or using its already existing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, as a "superreserve currency accepted by the whole of the international community," the Kremlin said in a statement issued on its web site.

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Russian President Medvedev has said he's willing to discuss the proposed US missile shield with Washington. But he added that any deal linking those talks with negotiations regarding Iran would not be productive.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev's comments came in response to a New York Times report that US President Barack Obama had written a secret letter to his Russian counterpart offering to halt the planned missile shield, which would be located mainly in Poland and the Czech Republic, in return for Moscow's help in stopping Iran from developing long-range nuclear weapons.

The Russian president welcomed the "positive signals" coming from the Obama administration with which he said he hoped to reach "agreements." "Haggling," however, was "not productive," added Medvedev on Tuesday, March 3.

The Russian president also said Obama's letter had not presented the issue in such a way.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

President Barack Obama sent a secret letter to Russia's president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

The officials who described the contents of the message requested anonymity because it has not been made public. While they said it did not offer a direct quid pro quo, the letter was intended to give Moscow incentive to join the United States in a common front against Iran. Russia's military, diplomatic and commercial ties to Tehran give it some influence there, but it has often resisted Washington's hard line against Iran.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Iran

Russia held out an olive branch to President Barack Obama today by suspending plans to deploy missiles in Europe, according to a report in Moscow.

An official from Russia's General Staff in Moscow told Interfax news that the move had been made because the new United States leadership was reconsidering plans to establish a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.

Deployment of Iskander short-range missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads, was being suspended in Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad in response, the unidentified official said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

The interim leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, seen as a modernizer who could seek a historic reconciliation with the Vatican and more autonomy from the state, was overwhelmingly elected patriarch Tuesday.

Metropolitan Kirill received 508 of the 700 votes cast during an all-day church congress in Moscow's ornate Christ the Savior Cathedral, the head of the commission responsible for the election, Metropolitan Isidor, said hours after the secret ballot was over.

Kirill defeated a conservative rival, Metropolitan Kliment, who received 169 votes, Isidor said. Another 23 ballots were declared invalid.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

Russian natural-gas exports through Ukraine to Europe halted for the first time in three years, threatening to create shortages as freezing weather spurred demand for power.

The two sides blamed each other for the disruption. OAO Gazprom, Russia’s gas-export monopoly, cut off all gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine at 7:44 a.m. Kiev time today, according to Ukrainian utility NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy. Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said Ukraine shut off a fourth pipeline after closing three others yesterday.

The move, stopping all deliveries to Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, came after a halt in supplies to the Balkans yesterday and cuts to other countries. The dispute has already spread further and lasted longer than a similar conflict in 2006 which interrupted shipments to Europe.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Gas supplies from Russia to Europe plummeted overnight with four countries reporting a complete halt as the dispute between Moscow and Ukraine over payment rates dramatically worsened.

Kiev said that Gazprom, the Russian state gas company, had cut the flow by 60 per cent following Vladimir Putin’s threat yesterday to punish Ukraine for allegedly stealing fuel it is supposed to allow to transit through its pipelines en route to Europe.

The Bulgarian Government called a crisis meeting at 7am this morning and appealed to all consumers to limit their usage as the gas stopped flowing at around 3.30am on the coldest night of the year, as it did to Greece, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis.

Read it all from the front page of this morning's Wall Street Journal.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Appearances can be deceiving. Six months ago, when Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as Russia’s new president, many hoped there would be a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations.

The soft-spoken lawyer has never worked for the KGB. His reputation as a liberal seemed to contrast sharply with his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.

However, for the past six months it seems that President Medvedev has been working hard to dismantle his liberal image and revive memories of the Cold War.

Putin had a reputation for being tough, but it was under Medvedev that Russia used excessive force against Georgia, occupying part of its territory and crushing its military. Medvedev then defied world opinion by accusing the United States of instigating the war and by recognizing the independence of Georgia's two separatist regions.

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Yet the Church of England has not collapsed - not quite, anyway. And the result of the Archbishop's sabbatical in the United States is a splendid book on the wild, strange genius of Dostoevsky.

I was very glad to hear that he is quite unrepentant about having taken time off to write about the great Russian.

Rowan Williams says: "I think it is important that anyone in this sort of position does not become reactive, so your thoughts aren't determined by what's just come off the computer. And to keep that alive you need some sort of space.

"And I think it is some part of this job to try and keep stirring the cultural pot, even in a very limited way, and to say: when we are having all these debates about faith and atheism and science and so on, don't let's forget what lives of faith actually look like imaginatively, in ways that really serious writers and artists portray them, because if your view of religion is confined to a few fundamentalist platitudes, there's no debate there. Yes, just to remind people that some imaginatively serious non-trivial, non-Pollyannaish writers have lived with this. Yes, it's worth doing."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

"Terrorism, child abuse, absent fathers and the fragmentation of the family, the secularisation and the sexualisation of culture, the future of liberal democracy, the clash of cultures and the nature of national identity - so many of the anxieties that we think of as being quintessentially features of the early 21st century are omnipresent in the work of Dostoevsky, his letter, his journalism and above all his fiction. The world we inhabit as readers of his novels is one in which the question of what human beings owe to each other is left painfully and shockingly open and there seems no obvious place to stand from which we can construct a clear moral landscape. Yet at the same time, the novels insistently and unashamedly press home the question of what else might be possible if we saw the world in another light, the light provided by faith."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Russia said on Thursday it was ready to consider helping Venezuela develop a peaceful nuclear energy program, a gesture that will displease Washington as two of its sharpest critics draw closer.

"We are all ready to look at the possibility of operating in the sphere of peaceful atomic energy," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said as he welcomed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for late-evening talks at his residence on the outskirts of Moscow.

Nuclear energy is a sensitive issue between the United States and Russia, which this week forced the scrapping of an international meeting to discuss sanctions against Iran over its atomic program.

Russia has stepped up cooperation with Venezuela, an arch-foe of Washington, since coming under strong U.S. condemnation for fighting a war against Georgia last month.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • South America

In Moscow, there has been no official comment about Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Georgia. Russia has so far ignored or dismissed warnings from the West of economic and diplomatic consequences for its attack on Georgia. Russian officials appear to be enjoying defying the West.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Even as Russia pledged to begin withdrawing its forces from neighboring Georgia on Monday, American officials said the Russian military had been moving launchers for short-range ballistic missiles into South Ossetia, a step that appeared intended to tighten its hold on the breakaway territory.

The Russian military deployed several SS-21 missile launchers and supply vehicles to South Ossetia on Friday, according to American officials familiar with intelligence reports. From the new launching positions north of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the missiles can reach much of Georgia, including Tbilisi, the capital.

The Kremlin announced Sunday that Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, had promised to begin the troop withdrawal in a conversation with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who negotiated a six-point cease-fire agreement. Mr. Medvedev did not specify the pace or scope of the withdrawal, saying only that troops would withdraw to South Ossetia and a so-called security zone on its periphery.

The United States and European leaders reacted with wariness, and Russia’s recent military moves appeared to add an element of frustration.

“Well, I just know that the Russian president said several days ago Russian military operations would stop. They didn’t,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This time I hope he means it. You know the word of the Russian president needs to be upheld by his forces.”

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, on Saturday signed a revised framework for a deal to halt the fighting in neighboring Georgia, which has stirred some of the deepest divisions between world powers since the cold war. But the Kremlin then indicated that despite the accord’s approval, it would not immediately pull its troops from the country.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, told reporters that Russian forces would stay in Georgia as long as they were needed. He said their withdrawal would depend on the introduction of what he called additional security measures, without explaining what those were.

“The basic agreements do not determine the ceiling for the peacekeeping contingents,” Mr. Lavrov said. “How long it will take, I have already emphasized that it depends not only on us. We are constantly facing problems created by the Georgian side.”

Speaking at his ranch in Texas, President Bush described the Russian endorsement of the cease-fire as a “hopeful step.”

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

The United States accused Russia yesterday of waging a campaign to cripple Georgia’s ability to defend itself in the future.

As American military transport aircraft landed in Tbilisi to strong complaints from Moscow, the Russian Army undertook search-and-destroy missions on Georgian soil, defying the ceasefire agreement brokered by President Sarkozy of France.

Tanks and soldiers continued to occupy Gori despite promising to leave by yesterday. A Georgian military base in the city was destroyed and the Georgian Ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe accused the Russians of laying mines before a withdrawal.

The Pentagon vented its anger with Moscow by cancelling two joint naval exercises involving Russian ships. In a clear sign that the Georgia crisis was escalating into a broader superpower conflict, the US reached agreement with Poland last night over the controversial missile defence shield.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

GEORGE KENNAN, the dean of American diplomats, called “The Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s account of Stalin’s terror, “the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times”. By bearing witness, Solzhenitsyn certainly did as much as any artist could to bring down the Soviet system, a monstrosity that crushed millions of lives. His courage earned him imprisonment and exile. But his death on August 3rd...prompts a question. Who today speaks truth to power—not only in authoritarian or semi-free countries such as Russia and China but in the West as well?

The answer in the case of Russia itself is depressing. Russia’s contemporary intelligentsia—the should-be followers of the example of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and the other dissident intellectuals of the Soviet period—is not just supine but in some ways craven (see article). Instead of defending the freedoms perilously acquired after the end of communism, many of Russia’s intellectuals have connived in Vladimir Putin’s project to neuter democracy and put a puppet-show in its place. Some may genuinely admire Mr Putin’s resurrection of a “strong” Russia (as, alas, did the elderly Solzhenitsyn himself)....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Some 82 per cent of the population are members of the Georgian Orthodox Church, with the next largest tranche of faith being the 10 per cent who count themselves Muslim.

Such a devout populace might have expected a unified condemnation of an attack on such a solid and venerable household of faith.

Pope Benedict XVI managed, from his holiday in the Italian Alps, to call for an "immediate" end to hostilities in South Ossetia and urged negotiations between Russia and Georgia over the contested province.

But it sounded like a rebuke to two squabbling children, not a plea for an end to a bloodbath, and carefully made no reference to the wider incursion into Georgia.

Elsewhere, there has been a resounding chorus of silence in the cloisters. Nothing from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the latter vociferous in his condemnation of Robert Mugabe's aggressions in Zimbabwe.

Nothing from the Anglican Communion, so keen of late to re-engage on the international stage with its march through London in solidarity with the world's poor.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Russia and Georgia clashed on land and at sea Sunday despite a Georgian cease-fire offer and claim of withdrawal from the separatist province of South Ossetia, officials from both countries said.

Georgian officials said Russian planes bombed an area near the Georgian capital's airport and Russian tanks moved from South Ossetia into Georgian territory, heading toward a strategic city before being turned back.

A Russian general said Georgian forces directed heavy fire at positions around Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, early Monday, even though Georgia had claimed to be withdrawing from the shattered city and called for a cease-fire.

"Active fighting has been going on in several zones," the Interfax news agency quoted Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov as saying. He is commander of the Russian peacekeeping contingent that has been in South Ossetia since 1992.

Russia also claimed to have sunk a Georgian boat that tried to attack Russian vessels in the Black Sea.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and . . .he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul -- today, maybe, they haven't snitched any."

-- "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," 1962

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the reclusive icon of the Russian intelligentsia and chronicler of communist repression, died Sunday. He was 89.

His son, Stephan Solzhenitsyn, told the Associated Press that his father died of heart failure in Moscow.

The soulful writer and spiritual father of Russia's nationalist patriotic movement lived to be reunited with his beloved homeland after two decades of exile - only to be as distressed by communism's damage to the Russian character as he was by his earlier forced estrangement from the land and people he loved.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn returned from his Vermont refuge to a dramatically changed Russia in 1994 but deemed it a moral ruin after a monthslong odyssey to become re-acquainted with the country that had denounced him as a traitor, stripped him of citizenship and expelled him in 1974.

Hailed as Russia's greatest living writer, the author of more than two dozen books - in addition to commentaries, poems, plays and film scripts - won back his citizenship and the respect of his fellow Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although his books were best-sellers in the West, only "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published first in his homeland.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

Russia threatened to retaliate by military means after a deal with the Czech Republic brought the US missile defence system in Europe a step closer.

The threat followed quickly on from the announcement that Condoleezza Rice signed a formal agreement with the Czech Republic to host the radar for the controversial project.

Moscow argues that the missile shield would severely undermine the balance of European security and regards the proposed missile shield based in two former Communist countries as a hostile move.

“We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said ``economic egoism'' has led to what may be the worst economic contraction since the depression of the 1930s, and placed some of the blame on the U.S.

The Russian leader said no single country, even the U.S., can reverse the global economic decline alone, and claimed a role for Russia in finding a solution.

``An underestimation of risks by the largest financial companies together with the aggressive financial policy of the world's largest economy led not only to corporate losses; unfortunately, the majority of people on the planet became poorer,'' Medvedev said in St. Petersburg.

Medvedev was speaking at the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia's largest trade and investment fair, held in his hometown for a 12th year. Officials expect the event to match the $12 billion worth of deals signed last year.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

Iran demanded Sunday that Azerbaijan deliver a Russian shipment of nuclear equipment blocked at its border with Iran for the past three weeks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in his weekly briefing that his country has asked the Azerbaijani ambassador in Iran to get his government "to deliver the shipment as soon as possible."

The blocked nuclear equipment "is in the framework of Iran-Russia cooperation" and there should be "no ban on it," he said about the shipment destined for a Russian-built nuclear reactor in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

Azerbaijan has said it was seeking more information about the shipment due to fears that it might violate any of the three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Iran

It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began.

First came visits from agents of the F.S.B., a successor to the K.G.B., who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a “sect.” Finally, last month, they shut it down.

There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir V. Putin.

Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.

This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin’s tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working “in symphony.”

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Orthodox Church

Coca-Cola's main Russian bottling distributor has removed religious images from its drinks refrigerators after a group of Russian Orthodox believers accused it of blasphemy, a spokeswoman for the firm said on Thursday.

Local people in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, 400 km (250 miles) from Moscow, complained to the prosecutor's office last month about pictures of an orthodox cross and onion-shaped church domes on the outdoor refrigerators.

At the time, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Co. said it would not drop the marketing campaign and there had been no negative reaction in other Russian cities where similar images were used on the sides of the refrigerators.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia

In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad's politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer's Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga—one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.

Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.'s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world—and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world's second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

No one would label Putin a child of destiny. The only surviving son of a Leningrad factory worker, he was born after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, in which they lost more than 26 million people. The only evidence that fate played a part in Putin's story comes from his grandfather's job: he cooked for Joseph Stalin, the dictator who inflicted ungodly terrors on his nation.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia