(7 comments) SHARE        Monday, January 31, 2022
Trump, Russiagate & Covid: How Corporate Media Profits from Fear There exists financial incest among corporate media owners and those with financial investments in the three Covid vaccines used in the U.S. Two of the biggest such financial entities with interests in the major media companies and all three of the vaccine makers are Blackrock Fund Advisors and Vanguard Group, Inc.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Weaponizing Human Rights and Democracy in Russia Has Backfired on the U.S. The U.S. likes to promote itself as a bastion of liberal democracy on the world stage. But if recent comments by Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov are any indication, it seems that the way in which the U.S. has advocated for liberal democracy and human rights in Russia has led to mistrust of American motives and has arguably done more harm than good for those Russians it is claiming to want to help. .

(4 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Enough is Enough: Russia Cuts Ties with NATO On October 18th, Russia announced it would formally suspend its mission with the NATO alliance, including ending official communication. It's important to look at what led up to Russia deciding it had enough and that it was no longer worth having an official relationship with the western military alliance as there is a lengthy historical context to the breakdown.

SHARE        Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Book Review: The Valediction - Two Independent Journalists' Dig for the Truth of the Other Afghanistan War Afghanistan has been in the news recently due to the end of the U.S.'s formal 20-year war there. However, there is a much longer history for the U.S. in that unfortunate nation that has been caught in the middle of imperial rivalries and power plays. That history has largely been obscured since the end of the Cold War. Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould have entered to shed light on this history in The Valediction. .

(3 comments) SHARE        Sunday, September 19, 2021
How Do Russians View Democracy in Russia? We hear a lot about Russia being a dictatorship under Vladimir Putin. It is said frequently by U.S. media commentators that there is no democracy, free media, or substantive rule of law in the country. The reality is much more complicated. Moreover, what Russians actually think about these aspects of their country and what the historical context of democracy is in Russia is rarely explored in any depth.

SHARE        Saturday, March 27, 2021
Book Review: Memoirs of a Russianist, Volumes I & II, by Gilbert Doctorow Russia analyst Gilbert Doctorow has written a 2-volume memoir that takes the reader on a journey through his years as a Russia specialist. Starting with college and graduate work in Russian history at two Ivy League universities followed by decades of business management and consulting work, Doctorow provides a rare peek into the last days of the Soviet Union and the chaotic transition of the Russian Federation.

(9 comments) SHARE        Saturday, February 20, 2021
The 75th Anniversary of "The Long Telegram": Was George F. Kennan's Assessment of the Soviet Union Accurate? February 22nd marks 75 years since George F. Kennan sent his famous "Long Telegram" to the State Department in which he provided an assessment of the Soviet Union that is credited with shaping the U.S. containment policy of the Cold War. Conventional wisdom generally has it that Kennan's assessment of the Soviet government was accurate. But was it?

SHARE        Friday, January 15, 2021
A Closer Look at Russia's Constitutional Amendments In January of 2020, Putin gave his annual Address to the Federal Assembly, announcing that amendments would be made to the Russian constitution. Now that those amendments and supporting legislation have been passed, we can look at how they line up with what Putin actually said in his speech.

(7 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 27, 2020
A Hot Mess of Innuendo: A Closer Look at Catherine Belton's "Putin's People" 'Putin's People' is an attempt to weave all the strands of the anti-Russia propaganda narrative into a coherent whole: Putin is a corrupt autocrat who has created a kleptocracy. His main purpose, however, is not just to undermine or prevent the development of democracy in Russia. His purpose, according to Belton, is to destroy western democracy in the U.S. and Europe ever since the end of the Cold War.

(4 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Putin on the Situation in Belarus, Interview With Rossiya TV In a recent interview with Rossiya TV, Vladimir Putin discussed several issues, including the current state of the Russian economy and the Covid pandemic. However, I have excerpted below the portion dealing with what is presently happening in Belarus. - Natylie Baldwin

(5 comments) SHARE        Friday, July 31, 2020
Why America Needs to Embrace Pluralism Instead of Exceptionalism Diplomacy will require the acceptance of a balance of power and pluralism. The United States is gradually losing its preeminent status of most powerful nation in the world. It is also gradually losing its ability to dictate what will be. It should therefore stop wasting its resources on an absolutist and "exceptionalist' agenda that inevitably leads to eternal and implacable conflict.

(5 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Is Putin a Nationalist and What are the Implications for Russia's Relationship with China and the West? In an interview with Rossiya 1 on May 17th, Putin stated that Russia - a country straddling two continents and 11 time zones - was more its own civilization than just a country. He also said that, while Russia may borrow useful ideas from others, it would retain its own independent path and had the ability to develop technologically in its own manner.

(4 comments) SHARE        Saturday, May 16, 2020
Is the U.S. the Norma Desmond of the World Stage As a fan of old movies in general and Sunset Boulevard in particular, I keep coming back to how the psychological profile of Norma Desmond's character seems so reminiscent of the United States right now - or more precisely the political class that dictates its policies and the narrative used to maintain the illusion.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, May 13, 2020
How We All Benefit from Improved U.S.-Russia Relations But, in fact, the U.S. and Russia together still have 1700 nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair trigger alert. Several scientific studies have indicated that, in addition to killing millions in the immediate aftermath of the explosions, even a limited exchange of these weapons would lead to nuclear winter within a year, wiping out much of our global agriculture and killing billions of people through starvation.

(2 comments) SHARE        Friday, May 12, 2017
The Russian Revolution, Stalin's Crimes and the Day the U.S. and Red Armies Met Up at Elbe Overall it was a fulfilling but exhausting day and I was glad to get back to the apartment. Later, I would begin processing what I had seen and learned from my guided tour through Russia's complicated history, from the Revolution to the Gulags & the Elbe meeting between the US & Red armies.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Victory Day & The Thwarted Quest to See Lenin's Tomb It's a shame that the Cold War and Washington's post-Cold War triumphalism have undermined our ability to acknowledge the sacrifices and achievements of the Soviet Union when we were allied against the Nazis.

(11 comments) SHARE        Monday, May 8, 2017
Greetings from Moscow The first thing one sees to their right as they begin the descent down into Moscow's main airport is the sun glistening off the Moscow River surrounded by lots of greenery. It gave me the pick-up I needed after an exhausting 24 hrs of minimal sleep, being crammed on several airplanes & literally running from one end of an airport to another because one flight was almost 2 hours late & nearly made me miss a connecting flight.

(24 comments) SHARE        Monday, October 24, 2016
Russia's Very Different Reality The demonization of Russian President Putin and Russia, in general, has reached alarming levels in the West with a new "group think" taking hold that ignores Russian realities and interests, writes Natylie Baldwin.

(51 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Has Zbigniew Brzezinski Really Changed His Tune? Zbig's idea that Washington could somehow implement a divide-and-conquer strategy with China against Russia is a pipe dream. The train has left the station in terms of Eurasia largely controlling its own destiny in the future and Zbig seems to be in denial.

(12 comments) SHARE        Saturday, July 30, 2016
Pre-Soviet Philosophical Thought & Contemporary Russia - Part I of III A common theme in Russian philosophy of the 19th and early 20th century involved trying to reconcile different forces and influences. To some extent, these are universal concerns for most cultures at various points in their development, but for Russia, it is perhaps even more so due to the nation's particular geography, climate and history.