By Sergei Oznobishchev Russia never ceases to amaze both itself and the rest of the world. One recalls that in Stalin's time, in spite of the absence of freedoms and the mass repressions, the slogan "Life has gotten better -- life has gotten more fun"... MORE

By Vladimir Socor On March 22, Moldova held parliamentary elections for the second time in its life as an independent democratic state. It conducted this exercise while in a state of economic crisis, political drift, territorial dismemberment, and vulnerability to Russian pressure through Transdniester --... MORE

Russia finally got a prime minister on April 24 when the State Duma voted by 251 to 25 to confirm President Boris Yeltsin's choice for the post, Sergei Kirienko. Many of the 450 deputies candidly admitted that they voted less for the thirty-five-year-old Kirienko, about... MORE

By Aleksandr Buzgalin and Andrei Kolganov The bloc with the beautiful name of Yabloko [which means "apple" in Russian] (the source of the name is the first letters of the last names of the coalition's founding fathers -- Yavlinsky, Boldyrev and Lukin) is somewhat of... MORE

By Igor Rotar In April, the situation in Mingrelia (the Black Sea region of western Georgia that borders Abkhazia) heated up again. It all began when Georgian special operations troops surrounded the house where Gocha Esebua -- who had taken members of the UN observer... MORE

By "Sadji" On June 4, 1990, bloody confrontations took place between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks in Osh Region, in southwestern Kyrgyzstan. The disturbances cost hundreds of lives on both sides. Ostensibly, the conflict arose over a plot of land on the outskirts of the... MORE

By Nabi Abdullaev For all their seeming liberality, the amendments adopted to the constitution of Dagestan at the March 19 session of the republic's Popular Assembly have substantially impeded the development of democracy in Dagestan. Situated at the southernmost point of the Russian Federation, Dagestan... MORE

By Rashid Akhmetov The Kama Automobile Factory (KamAZ) in Tatarstan's Naberezhnye Chelny was the brainchild of avid motorist Leonid Brezhnev. In the late sixties, the USSR had almost caught up with the US in the arms race and needed millions of modern heavy trucks to... MORE

By Alena V. Ledeneva Aside from the criminals themselves, only two kinds of people know much about organized crime: journalists and those charged with combating organized crime. In Russia and elsewhere, journalists are fond of writing headlines about the "Mafia." Such labeling tells us little... MORE

There was growing disquiet in Moscow as the awareness sank in that, when he sacked the entire government of Viktor Chernomyrdin on March 23, President Boris Yeltsin had no idea with what or whom he was going to replace it. On April 10, Russia's State... MORE