By Leonid Finkelstein When Russian President Vladimir Putin uttered his now famous threat to the Chechen terrorists, promising to "soak them in the john" [mochit' ikh v sortire], public reaction was varied. Some were delighted, some were indignant, others shrugged an indifferent shoulder. Yet as... MORE

By Elena Dikun The biggest political scandal in January was the public put-down Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov received from presidential economic advisor Andrei Illarionov, the like of which no previous head of government had ever had to endure before. Illarionov is well known for... MORE

By Aleksandr Tsipko It is well known that the vast majority of people in Russia have a negative--even angry--attitude to the privatization of state property. There are many reasons for this. Soviet people genuinely believed that state enterprises belonged to everyone. They therefore equate the... MORE

By Andrei Kolganov There is nothing surprising in the fact that the economic revival in Russia which began in late 1998 is now giving way to stagnation. Even when the recovery was only just beginning, independent experts were pretty accurate in their predictions of how... MORE

By Elena Chinyaeva When Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, announced his resignation on December 31, 1999, it came as a shock. Few had expected him to part with power before the end of his term, though hardly anyone doubted that the man he named his... MORE

By Ilya Malyakin It is more than nine months since Vladimir Putin declared his "crusade" against separatist sentiments in the Russian regions. Having started with the war against the blatant separatism of Chechnya--which became his ticket to the presidency--he continued to play by the rules... MORE

By Nabi Abdullaev Kidnapping in Chechnya and the adjacent areas is as common today as it was before the Russians began their second military offensive in the breakaway region in 1999. Despite the torments of the war with Russia, Chechnya's notorious kidnapping gangs have been... MORE

By Taras Kuzio "Kuchmagate" continues to gather momentum.(1) On January 10 Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko admitted that DNA testing had finally confirmed the body found near Kyiv in early November was that of the murdered journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, who went missing on September 16. But,... MORE

By Volodymyr Zviglianich In a phrase coined by politicians and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic who came to life in the Gorbachev era--an era symbolized by the concepts of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)--the previous epoch in our history became known as the... MORE

By Aleksandr Tsipko Everyone in Russia feels that the year 2000 brought some positive changes, but not everyone realizes that all Putin's victories thus far have only affected the realms of consciousness. As yet one can speak only of an improvement in the moral and... MORE