*To read Part One, please click here. Since the beginning of this year, 18 Russian governors have “voluntary” resigned from their positions. In their place, President Vladimir Putin appointed “temporarily acting governors.” Some of these “temporary” regional heads were subsequently elected during local gubernatorial elections,... MORE

Over the past year, the Russian Federation experienced two large waves of resignations of governors. In spring 2017, the heads of seven regions—Perm krai, Novgorod and Ryazan oblasts, as well as the republics of Mari El, Udmurtia, Buryatia and Karelia—lost their posts. In autumn, the... MORE

Over the course of the past year, the Kremlin has been pushing the notion of the existence of a “civic Russian nation” (rossiiskaya natsiiya). This idea is meant to unify the ethnically, religiously and politically divided population of the Russian Federation. However, it is likely... MORE

On October 24, Eugen Sturza was sworn in as Moldova’s minister of defense by Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu. This put an end to an eleven-month-long battle over the appointment between pro-Russian President Igor Dodon and the nominally pro-Western government, controlled by Vlad Plahotniuc. After Dodon... MORE

The continuing, radical and apparently irreversible decline in the size of the ethnic-Russian community in Dagestan, the poorest and most heavily Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, is creating serious problems for both Moscow and Makhachkala. And these concerns threaten to lead to the destabilization... MORE

“In Russia, at the centennial of the 1917 revolution, they talk so little about it that some people abroad developed a sneaking suspicion this jubilee is kept out of sight of the citizenry because officials do not know what to say about it,” Alexander Baunov,... MORE

The just-ended 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress has confirmed Xi Jinping’s status as China’s “Emperor for Life.” The 64-year-old “core leader” has filled the country’s highest-ruling councils—the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)—with his cronies and loyalists. No cadres from younger generations were... MORE

On October 24, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued a revised version of its constitution (中国共产党章程). Since the current version adopted in 1982, it has been amended several times, including in 1987, 1992 and 2012. As the foundational document of China’s ruling political party—and in... MORE

In a rare show of solidarity, a large group of Kazakhstani intellectuals, writers, prominent public figures, as well as activists of diverse opposition forces and political parties released an open letter addressed to President Nursultan Nazarbayev, protesting the envisaged lease of land in Kostanay Region... MORE

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said, last October, that there are “many Catalonias” within the borders of the Russian Federation, areas defined by intensifying regional identities in opposition to Moscow (Charter97, October 10). Some in the regions and a few in Moscow actually argue that... MORE