Srl | Item |
1 |
ID:
125209
|
|
|
Publication |
2013.
|
Summary/Abstract |
Although the US-Russian relationship continues to deteriorate in the face of a vengeful Kremlin ban on American adoptions of Russian orphans, Vladimir Putin is still pursuing a strategy of influencing-and infiltrating-European political establishments. Given the amount of capital that Russia and her billionaire oligarchs have invested in the continent, this policy is as much defensive as it is self-interested. The European Commission's deadly-serious investigation into Gazprom's monopolistic practices, the beginning of the end of German Ostpolitik, and the ongoing dispute with Russia over the Syria crisis hint at an imminent confrontation between Moscow and EU countries. And while state-owned media outlets turn out anti-American propaganda to match equivalent policy measures, for the time being, Russia is still very much committed to swaying European opinion by using both transparent economic appeals (especially in the energy sector, the Gazprom case notwithstanding) and also the kind of Le Carré-esque skulduggery that was supposed to have vanished with the Cold War.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
ID:
115059
|
|
|
Publication |
2012.
|
Summary/Abstract |
There, but for an accident of geography, stands a corpse!" thundered Max Shachtman-once known as Leon Trotsky's "foreign minister"-in New York City in 1950. By popular account, the line had been cooked up that night by a young Shachtmanite named Irving Howe; it ended the debate between the anti-Stalinist socialist Schachtman and his opponent, Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party USA, who had been expelled from the party in 1946 at the behest of Moscow Central after suggesting that Soviet Communism and American capitalism might coexist after all.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3 |
ID:
105968
|
|
|
4 |
ID:
125299
|
|
|
Publication |
2013.
|
Summary/Abstract |
Since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency he never really left, Russia's descent into neo-Soviet authoritarianism has become daily more brazen. Dissidents are once again being put on show trials that call up the ghosts of Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Sinyavsky, and Yuli Daniel. Laws are being jammed through the Duma with the express purpose of making Western-minded Russians fear that they will be arrested for spying for foreign powers. Putin has adroitly dusted off a Cold War narrative in which the United States is trying to foment a "color revolution" in Russia using agents and hirelings, both foreign and domestic, and the people learn once again to fear enemies of the motherland in the employ of the "imperialist" United States.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|