The Russian Awakening
Russian society is waking up and pushing back against Putin’s brand of authoritarianism, with the potential to bring about a transformation of the system into one based on the rule of law.
Russian society is waking up and pushing back against Putin’s brand of authoritarianism, with the potential to bring about a transformation of the system into one based on the rule of law.
The harsh verdict for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko demonstrates that Ukraine’s leadership prioritizes removing the opposition’s strongest candidate before parliamentary elections above good relations with the West.
By arresting former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian authorities were trying to both weaken the domestic opposition and get Moscow to soften its stance on the gas prices. They appear to have failed to achieve either objective.
The 1861 reform sounded the death knell for Russian feudalism, and attempts by the ruling bureaucracy’s to restore some aspects of feudal government should have no place.
Yeltsin was a revolutionary who destroyed the old order rather than building a new system. As a result, his years in power were often turbulent, but ultimately he managed to help Russia avoid collapse and civil war.
The use and misuse of history as a tool for political competition and control has become an increasingly visible phenomenon in public and political life in Russia and other post-Soviet countries over recent years.
Moscow suffers from a number of fundamental problems that are beyond the ability of any single individual to fix and reform in Moscow would require profound changes to the entire country.
The Ukrainian Constitutional Court’s decision to overturn the political reform of 2004 acts as a relative guarantee that, should the opposition win the majority in future parliamentary elections, it will not be able to threaten the president’s agenda.