By Elena Chinyaeva The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington produced a new international reality. The United States, battered by the attack, and its Western allies, who were flabbergasted by the events, took a pause, which Russian President Vladimir Putin skillfully used to promote... MORE

By A.V. Buzgalin Could the attacks on New York and Washington have happened if the Soviet Union had survived? Much has been written in the world press, with full justification, about the events of September 11 as a sort of turning point in the development... MORE

By Aleksandr Tsipko After the Republican victory in the U.S. presidential elections in autumn of 2000, many experts forecast a rapprochement between Russia and the West. Their optimism was reinforced by a whole raft of weighty arguments. Both Putin and Bush Junior came to power... MORE

By Marina Konnova, Ilya Malyakin In early 2001, Saratov Oblast was rocked by political scandal. Representatives of the ruling elite and the public in one of its most industrially developed rayons, Balakovo, suddenly announced with unusual unanimity that their municipal body intended to resubordinate itself... MORE

By Taras Kuzio During the tenth anniversary celebrations of Ukrainian independence in Kyiv on August 24, one guest was conspicuous--Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski. This was the first occasion that such a high-level guest had attended these annual celebrations from a country with which Ukraine had,... MORE

By Sergei Kolchin It is well known that the Soviet Union's oil and gas reserves, of which the Russian share was the largest, provided the main life support line for socialist bloc countries. The sliding scale of oil prices adopted within the Council for Mutual... MORE

By Volodymyr Zviglyanich Ukraine celebrated the tenth anniversary of its independence on August 24 with the rumble of a military parade in the style of post-Soviet surrealist pomp, which effortlessly transported those watching the spectacle back to the days when there was not even a... MORE

By Aleksandr Tsipko One has to hand it to President Vladimir Putin that he is determined to show Russia and the world that he is a unique political figure, that there is something special about him. Putin's pilgrimage in August to the holy places of... MORE

By Andrei Kolganov Vladimir Putin's coming to power in Russia has engendered (perhaps temporarily--a discussion we shall return to later) an atmosphere of some political spleen. Serious opposition to the regime has been made almost impossible, not only by the convincing victory, but also (as... MORE

By Taras Kuzio Belarus, a country that Freedom House, the New-York based human rights group, defines as a "presidential dictatorship," has been ruled by Soviet-Russophile Alyaksandr Lukashenka since 1994. [1] A November 1996 referendum judged unfair by Western organizations and governments extended Lukashenka's term in... MORE