Lenin: a centenary reflection
Statue of Lenin in Nohra, Germany. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. “Ленин жил. Ленин жив. Ленин будет жить.” “Lenin lived. Lenin lives. Lenin will keep on living.” This popular slogan reflected…
Paul Robinson
Next year in Ukraine, expect the unexpected
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a crowd at an end-of-year press conference in Kyiv, December 19, 2023. Photo courtesy President of Ukraine/Flickr. “No other activity is so continuously or universally…
A decade after Euromaidan, Ukraine more fractured than ever
A protester during Euromaidan, December 9, 2013. Photo by Ivan Bandura/Wikimedia Commons. Of all the political events that have rocked Europe in recent years, it is probably fair to say…
Shock therapy and Russia’s fatal turn
The Supreme Soviet building, otherwise known as the “Russian White House,” after being shelled, October 4, 1993. Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Scanpix. There are events that at the time seem to…
Nagorno-Karabakh and the failure of Armenia’s ‘colour revolution’
A billboard in Yerevan featuring the flags of Armenia and the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, October 7, 2020. Photo by Garik Avagyan/Wikimedia Commons. Thursday was Armenia’s independence day. This year, however,…
What the life and death of Yevgeny Prigozhin tells us about modern Russia
Russian oligarch and leader of the Wagner private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash on August 23. Photo by Mikhail Mettsel/TASS. “A dead man walking” was…
Ukraine and the pitfalls of foreign aid
A residential building in the city of Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, heavily damaged during the Russian occupation. Photo by Jesco Denzel/Bundesregierung. Few people came out of America’s 20-year war…
Russian liberalism’s false dawn
Russian theatre director Konstantin Bogomolov. Photo by Gavriil Grigorov/TASS. Theatre director Konstantin Bogomolov likes to shock. At the end of May, he was at it again, publishing an article denouncing…
Belgorod raid: Why are Russian neo-Nazis fighting Putin?
Pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters at a press conference after completing their Belgorod Oblast raid. Photo courtesy the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (UNIAN)/Wikimedia Commons. The war between Russia and Ukraine escalated further…
Russia and the emergence of the post-Western world
A man holds a Russian flag during demonstrations in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Photo by Issouf Sanogo. A few years back, at the University of Ottawa’s summer convocation, I was startled…
How Western sanctions drove Belarus closer to Moscow
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Photo by Serge Serebro/Wikimedia Commons. Philosophers like to distinguish between “deontological” ethics on the one hand and “utilitarian” or “consequentialist” ethics on the other. The first—associated…
Don’t despair: the world order is changing, but it is not collapsing
A destroyed Russian T-90A tank in Ukraine, March 3, 2022. Photo from Flickr. As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, it is hard not to be pessimistic about…
The blurred reality of Russian patriotism
Andrei Reshetin, former violinist in the Soviet rock group Aquarium, recently joined the Russian army and went to fight in Ukraine. Photo courtesy Glasnarod.ru. In 1966, the Soviet writer Vladimir…
Ukraine: the more war changes, the more it stays the same
Ukrainian artillerymen from the 24th brigade load an ammunition inside of a 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer at a position along the front line in the vicinity of Bakhmut, Donetsk region.…
What can Nikolai Danilevsky teach us about today’s struggle between East and West?
Russian philosopher, naturalist, and economist Nikolai Danilevsky. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. November 28 marks the 200th birthday of Russian thinker Nikolai Danilevsky. Relatively unknown in the West, Danilevsky is extraordinarily…
Financial war and its discontents
Panorama of Moscow Kremlin from Bolshoi Kamenny bridge. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Power and money go together. First the Dutch, then the British, and more recently the Americans, have succeeded…
Russia ups the ante in Ukraine
A monument in the shape of the letter “Z” is unveiled in Yekaterinburg. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. “War,” said the great Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, “is an act of…
Mikhail Gorbachev’s misunderstood legacy
A cartoon showing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev looking in dismay at a massive stone hammer and sickle, now shattered into many parts. Illustration by Edmund S. Valtman/Library of Congress. There…
Putin’s ‘ally’—a case of misreporting
Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. Photo by Mahdieh Gaforian/Wikimedia Commons. In British reporter Chris Ayres’s memoir War Reporting for Cowards, he describes the arrival briefing he got from the woman he…
Status anxiety and the war in Ukraine
A defaced mural of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Serbian capital Belgrade. Photo by Ana Simic. Years ago, I was an exchange student in the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher…