Dagestan on the brink of war: Moscow and Grozny fight for influence in the republic By Igor Rotar Ominous reports from Dagestan appear constantly in the Russian press. News from the republic (especially from the districts bordering Chechnya) resembles battlefield dispatches: armed raids, kidnappings and... MORE

Ukraine's upcoming elections: a sociological perspective By Volodymyr Zviglyanich Ukraine will soon be entering a period of "election fever." After six years of independence, the country remains at the crossroads between a version of bureaucratic-oligarchic capitalism, a turn to a form of paternalistic state, and... MORE

Kazakhstan wants to attract foreign investments in its energy sector but to reduce the influence of Moscow By Sergei Kolchin Kazakhstan has huge resources of oil and gas and is keen to attract foreign investment to develop its energy industry. Its leaders are also determined... MORE

The Fortnight in Review Eyeball to Eyeball on the Budget Tensions mounted as the lower house of the Russian parliament prepared to debate the government's draft 1998 federal budget. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov called the government's spending plans "barbaric" and said his party would... MORE

The impending conflict between "left-wing" and "progressive" patriots in Russia By Aleksandr Tsipko The founding congress of Russia's new "Movement in Support of the Armed Forces, Defense Industry and Military Science" was held in Moscow on 20 September. It brought together more than forty organizations... MORE

Language and sovereignty: The politics of switching to the Latin alphabet in Tatarstan By Gulnara Khasanova It was a spectacle more impressive, more vivid, and bigger than any Tatarstan's capital had seen before. That's how the newspapers described the festivities that took place in Kazan... MORE

Who will defend Russia's workers if they are unable to defend themselves? By Aleksandr Buzgalin and Andrei Kolganov Russia's brief experience of radical economic and social reforms suggests that it is possible to rob the overwhelming majority of workers in our country, deprive them of... MORE

The Fortnight in Review An initiative by Boris Yeltsin over the past fortnight to rein in Russia's most powerful financial groups suggested that the country may be at yet another fork in the road on its long and still uncertain journey from the Soviet past.... MORE

Western and Ukrainian leaders made a strategic mistake by not treating Ukraine as a serious candidate for NATO admission By Volodymyr Zviglyanich According to Ukrainian deputy foreign minister Anton Buteiko July 9, 1997, was "the day of Ukraine." It was then that Ukrainian president Leonid... MORE

Russia's new young leaders aren't necessarily better than their predecessors, but they are different By Andrei Fadin The first six months of 1997 saw the rise to supreme power in Russia of a whole cohort of "young wolves" -- thirty- to forty-year-old politicians united less... MORE